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Open source database vendor MySQL AB is floating a new license exception among members of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community in a bid to permit bundling of MySQL alongside PHP. In the view of at least one prominent member of the community though, the Free Software Foundation (FSF), backer of the GPL license that is at the root of the controversy, really doesn't represent the needs or opinion of the core base of PHP, the popular open source scripting language.

gclinux (Ricardo Wagemaker) has written an excellent howto so that you can install Project Looking Glass on JDS.

Jim Stallings, who has been general manager of corporate Linux at IBM, has taken over several other initiatives as well, IBM said Friday.

Two former Red Hat executives said they will launch later this year a Linux platform, called Conary, that will enable customers to tailor their Linux distributions yet still get vendor support. Erik Troan, among the original employees of Red Hat who served as vice president of Product Engineering and director of Product Marketing, and Kim Knutilla, a former Cygnus executive and Red Hat vice president of Engineering Services, this week revealed their platform plans and launched the company they co-founded, Specifix. The company is based in San Jose, Calif. Knutilla is Specifix CEO.

Traditionally, the end of an era is marked by terrible portents and cataclysmic events. As signs go, the sight of Sun's Scott McNealy exchanging banter (and hockey shirts) with Microsoft's Steve Ballmer might seem mild enough, but the shift it represents is indeed epochal. The two companies come from very different backgrounds: Microsoft grew from the world of the first personal computers, Sun from workstations. But as their ambitions overlapped in the networked business world, Scott McNealy's strategy has been increasingly defined by his fierce and vocal opposition to Microsoft, especially once the latter took over from IBM as the driving force in computing.

ELX Linux, the Hyderabad-based Linux distributor, is overwhelmed with the sales of its Biz Desk 4.0 Linux and claims that it is months ahead of the competition. Manojit Majumdar, head-sales, ELX, explained, "When we started selling three months ago over the Internet, the response was very encouraging and we set up a channel in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. We will now be building our channel in Delhi and Bangalore as well."

Sun Microsystems Inc. said this week that it is thinking about offering some of its Java Enterprise System (JES) under an open source license, although no final decisions have been made.

Opponents of open source software applauded a recent memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget that they claim puts proprietary software on competitive footing with open source software in federal procurements. “We think it’s a great memo,” said Bill Guidera, policy counsel for Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., referring to a letter issued to agency CIOs and senior procurement officials by OMB IT and e-government administrator Karen Evans.

As Wi-Fi become ubiquitous, Linux has jumped on the bandwagon. In this article, Roman Vichr explains how Linux has helped -- and been helped by -- a number of wireless tools and projects. Linux, Linux, Linux -- the versatile, stable, scalable, diverse, and competitive platform has gone wireless. It's becoming the universal tool for almost everything, and it has found its place in wireless solutions, from desktops and servers with wireless access to access point systems. Learn more about how Linux is enhancing wireless networking.

One of the most critical parts of Java development is understanding the complete state of a development effort as quickly as possible. That's the goal of Apache's Maven project, which released its milestone 1.0 release this week. "Maven has a long history of pushing out beta after beta, so this is definitely an important release," Jason Van Zyl, Maven architect release manager, told internetnews.com. "For users it means that they will have something reliable now for their production builds."

Patch management vendor Shavlik Technologies took its first step away from Windows Friday as it shipped an agentless patch management solution for Linux. HFNetChkPro for Linux 2.0, which uses the same technology as Shavlik's for-Windows HFNetChkPro, supports Red Hat Linux clients, and doesn't require any software to be installed on the end user machines.

In a laudable effort that has resulted in systematic migration of over 500 desktops as well as servers from Microsoft Windows to the Linux platform, Delhi based Om Logistics has immediately realized a cost saving to the tune of more than Rs 2 crore per year. What’s more, the company has forgotten what dealing with the menace of viruses and worms is all about.

It powers more than 70 percent of all Web servers and routes much of the world's e-mail traffic. It makes surfing the Internet simple and provides the muscle behind Google Inc.'s search engine and countless e-commerce sites. It's open-source software, a wide spectrum of programs developed not under the lock and key of a single company but by the communal efforts of volunteers who often start with little more than common interests and e-mail discussion groups.

In the GNU General Public License (GPL), Richard Stallman was working toward a noble purpose. Software should be free-as-in-freedom, and every user should be able to obtain the source code for the software they use. Unfortunately, that isn't the way things have turned out. The GPL has come to resemble digital rights management (DRM) more than it resembles freedom. Does that sound a little extreme? I'll explain.

Whether you're just sick to death of Windows problems or you're looking for a better return on investment, lightweight approaches to the Linux desktop deserve your attention. OK, so you're ready to at least start thinking about switching to a Linux desktop. What should you be looking for?

All Government technology procurement will now have a preference for open source software (OSS), under the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Masterplan made available to the public this morning.