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The feedback on my recent column about the advantages of monoculture — that is, standardizing on one platform or vendor — was anything but monolithic. Any discussion of monoculture risks devolving into anti-Microsoft ranting. One reader ended an otherwise rational e-mail by proving that Godwin’s Law (“As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one”) also applies to e-mail discussions: “Remember, Hitler wanted a monoculture.” That’s the first time in the three-plus years I’ve been writing this column that I’ve elicited even the faintest Hitler comparison. I guess I’ve finally arrived.

I have created a timeline of the latest security bug. It shows how quickly the Mozilla developers handled the problem, tracking from the first mention in Bugzilla to the last CVS commit to the webpage. Readers get a peak into how development works over at mozilla.org, in particular into how security issues get resolved.

Yet for all its virtues, open source presents a dilemma: If important building blocks such as Linux and Apache are free, then how can commercial software vendors stay in business?

Opinion:The crackers currently have the whip hand over Windows, and Microsoft's assertion that Internet Explorer is now part of the operating system shows its flawed reasoning.

PARIS - Researchers at three French government-funded research organizations this week revealed something they hope will increase the spread of free, open source software in the country: a new license they say is compatible with the Free Software Foundation Inc.'s GNU General Public License (GPL).

Wietse Venema is best known for the software TCP Wrapper, which is still widely used today and is included with almost all unix systems. Wietse is also the author of the Postfix mail system and the co-author of the very cool suite of utilities called The Coroner's Toolkit or "TCT". He is currently working at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center and he has gratiously agreed to allow us to catch up with him and and see what he's been up to lately.

Just when Windows users thought it was safe to move away from Internet Explorer and its litany of security issues, a flaw has been detected in Mozilla, the open-source alternative to Microsoft's widely used browser. ... Future versions of Mozilla Firefox will include automatic update notifications, the foundation said, providing users with prompt information on security issues.

The loss of critical data can prove devastating. Still, millions of professionals ignore backing up their data. While individual reasons vary, one of the most common explanations is that performing routine backups can be a real chore. Because machines excel at mundane and repetitive tasks, the key to reducing the inherent drudgery and the natural human tendency for procrastination, is to automate the backup process.

Business services supporting Linux and open-source applications have attained mainstream status in Western Europe, according to a new report from IDC.

In a lively online discussion Thursday, Microsoft (Quote, Chart) engineers faced off with end users who lobbed irate questions, comments and a few tirades about its Internet Explorer browser. More than any topic, security reigned as the most pervasive theme during the online discussion, including when end users could see the next patch for vulnerabilities in IE. Throughout the session, which involved over 100 participants, members of the IE team appeared at home on the hot seat. "I've worked at Microsoft for 14 years and I have always felt like the underdog," said Hachamovitch. "Maybe the road behind us looks easy, but at the time going it wasn't. I welcome the feedback today. Getting informed is the only way I know to get better. The day we don't get heated feedback I'll be concerned."

Although Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer waxed optimistic about the company's Linux competition in his annual memo to employees, analysts and Linux leaders say Microsoft is losing traction fast and that its battles are "only going to get worse."

Developers at the open-source Mozilla Foundation have confirmed that the latest version of their Web browsers have a security flaw that could allow attackers to run existing programs on the Windows XP operating system. Developers said the flaw affects only Windows users, not computers running the Macintosh and Linux operating systems.

In light of a recent memo from the Executive Office that directs agencies to include open-source software in federal purchases, we interview an leading advocate of OSS in government.

Live demonstrations include how to use Linux as a file server and how to use Samba and Linux as a platform for Web applications. Rapid Application Development on Linux is demonstrated utilizing WebSphere Studio, which is based on Eclipse, the open source universal tool platform. This briefing also showcases Linux on the desktop. One ThinkPad notebook will be awarded at each developerWorks Live technical briefing being held in New York, Boston, and Colorado in July.

The Linux desktop is shaping up to be the multimedia turf of RealNetworks. The software maker's RealPlayer digital media system will become the default tool for playing video, music and streamed Internet files on Red Hat Linux desktops, as well as on Novell's SuSE Linux desktops, the vendors announced last week.

The French Ministry of Equipment's migration to Linux project is replacing 1,500 office and infrastructure Microsoft Windows NT servers with Mandrakelinux Corporate servers. Mandrakesoft, the premier European Linux player, was also chosen for deployment, training and support for its Linux solution.

On July 7 (yesterday) a security vulnerability affecting browsers for the Windows operating system was posted to Full Disclosure, a public security mailing list. On the same day, the Mozilla security team confirmed the report of this security issue affecting the Mozilla Application Suite, Firefox, and Thunderbird and discussed and developed the fix at Bugzilla bug 250180. We have confirmed that the bug affects only users of Microsoft's Windows operating system. The issue does not affect Linux or Macintosh users.

The Mozilla Foundation has just released a trio of new Mozilla releases to the fix the Windows shell: security vulnerbility reported earlier. Mozilla 1.7.1, Mozilla Firefox 0.9.2 and Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7.2 contain no new features other than a preference change that disables the shell: protocol handler. Users who have installed the ShellBlock 1.0 XPI patch in all their Mozilla applications do not need to upgrade. Visit the sample exploit page to see if you are at risk. More details and download links are available in the Mozilla Foundation's security bulletin about the shell: exploit.