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Open source software could make the next generation of Internet businesses successful under the principle of `many hands make light work'.

Last week, I talked about the IBM cell processor expected for Sony PlayStation 3.This week I want to think out loud about what happens in the industry if Toshiba launches a PC based on this processor into the Asian market and IBM promptly follows suit with a series aimed at the American and European markets. Such a machine would run Linux, be compatible with most Linux software

This article is based on a talk that I first gave at Warburg-Pincus' annual technology conference in May of 2003. Since then, I have delivered versions of the talk more than twenty times, at locations ranging from the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the UK Unix User's Group, Microsoft Research in the UK, IBM Hursley, British Telecom, Red Hat's internal "all-hands" meeting, and BEA's eWorld conference. I finally wrote it down as an article for an upcoming book on open source," Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software," edited by J. Feller, B. Fitzgerald, S. Hissam, and K. R. Lakhani and to be published by MIT Press in 2005.

Ken Preslan sent out a mail to the Linux kernel mailing list announcing that Red Hat has released the GFS under the GPL, open-sourcing the cluster file system. They're now targetting towards getting GFS included in the mainstream kernel.

IBM, Dell, Intel and Oracle, among others, last week formed the OpenIB Alliance to develop an open-source version of the InfiniBand software stack.

Nexedi.org has published an article introducing "umibuilder," an interesting free software tool that can be used to update Linux packages. The tool is perhaps most useful for automating security updates of systems using Mandrake Linux. Because it downloads the latest versions of RPMs from the Internet, Umibuilder can also be used to automate security updates of Mandrake systems, according to the article.

Open source has become hip, trendy, dope, and cool. "Based on Open Source Technology" is used by more than one proprietary software company as a marketing boast. Even Microsoft, everybody's favorite symbol of software proprietarism, now boasts about releasing software under an open source license. Obviously, the phrase "Open Source" is now considered a plus when trying to sell software. Will this lead to more open source contributions by companies trying to associate themselves with this "movement" or will it lead to the death of open source as we know it?

At the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC) yesterday, Novell announced the launch of its High Performance Computing (HPC) Linux Competency Network, a program designed to attract technology partners with supercomputing expertise as well as fellow travellers keen to tap into the growing market for supercomputing solutions.

Red Hat lifted the wraps on its storage file system based on Linux and made its source code available under the General Public License (GPL), Red Hat spokeswoman Leigh Day said. Called Red Hat Global File System (GFS), the cluster file system and volume manager combo are essentially the same product that the company picked up in the December when it purchased Sistina Software.

Sun attacks Red Hat as being expensive and not fitting of the enterprise, while trying to promote the benefits of Open Source in the enterprise. Says they would attack SUSE if SUSE had any marketshare. Interesting, since Sun's Java Desktop is based on SUSE Linux.

The 64-bit squabble will heat up Monday, when Intel comes out with its first 32/64-bit chip for workstations and servers.

Nexedi.org has published an article introducing "umibuilder," an interesting free software tool that "allows rapid creation of [shrink] wrapped GNU/Linux solutions which can then be distributed on flash memory or on live CD." The tool is perhaps most useful for automating security updates of embedded systems incorporating Mandrake Linux.

According to the Guidelines to the Development of the Software Industry promulgated by the Ministry of Information Industry earlier this year, China will encourage innovations in integrated circuits and software, and focus on government procurement, property rights trade, software export, foreign investment attraction, embedded software certification and Chinese Linux platforms in 2004.

Spreadsheet development has more or less solidified over the past year -- the majority of the features that most people need are already there in long-established proprietary programs like Excel and Lotus 123 -- and that means that the door is open for smaller companies and free software projects to grab market share with capable, inexpensive products. That's probably the best way to describe SoftMaker's $49.95 PlanMaker 2004 for Linux, which was released earlier this month: capable, inexpensive, cross-platform competition for Microsoft Excel 2003. You won't find a more Excel-compatible spreadsheet on any operating system, but Microsoft compatibility is far from PlanMaker's only worthwhile feature.

Chris Dunphy wrote a nice four page KDE 3.2.1 Review in March which we obviously missed and which imo hasn't received the attention it deserves yet. On the other side we were notified by "illogic-al" that he has written a short "What's New, KDE 3.3 Preview" based on KDE 3.3 Alpha. The first KDE 3.3 Beta with more completed features is expected to be released in about one week.

A well-written guide that explains how Postfix's features reflect its design and what they can do for your system.

PHP 5 is a very popular point for discussion within the PHP community. With the third Release Candidate released on the 8th of June and the Zend PHP 5 Coding Contest, it is easy to see that the full stable release of PHP 5 is just around the corner. At this very late stage of development, I managed to obtain an interview with the two original creators of PHP and Zend - Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans - to find out more about their lives as developers of possibly the most popular Web programming language ever!

Linux company Red Hat has begun selling new software for creating a communal storage system that spans many devices in a network--part of its effort to expand beyond its core operating system business.