In a passing remark about how 'there may someday be a redistributable JVM RPM at jpackage,' a mailing list last week prompted new speculation that IBM's version of open-source Java might be on its way since 'someday' - apparently - 'may even be next week.'

IT managers who are about to reach for the aspirin as they try to figure out their open source corporate position should grab this book with both hands instead. As the title suggests, it's pragmatic and deals in realism, not ideology.

As a person who is running a young company that develops open source software as a primary activity, I'm frequently asked to comment on the business models that are at play in the industry.

There is a growing trend of open source-based applications running mainstream business-critical applications. Part of this is due to the availability of new solutions software that, when added to the open source application stack, greatly expands the overall reliability and scalability...

The Free Software Foundation was founded when software was becoming increasingly proprietary and restricted, with software vendors asserting more and more control over what customers could do with their software.

Novell has set a fall deadline for its new corporate Linux version release that merges two Linux applications Novell recently acquired. Novell purchased SUSE Linux this year, and the previous year picked up Ximian. Up until now the two companies have not merged products or software.

Costa Mesa, CA, based Emulex Corp., announced that future version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 will support the networking company's drivers for its host bus adapter (HBA) boards.

Does the open source community provide world-class security technology? Can organizations stop dealing with commercial vendors for security software? To avoid any undue suspense, the answers are: 'Emphatically yes' and 'Maybe, but you probably need to make an investment of some kind.'

Democrats are taking full advantage of Linux and open source software (OSS) in their bid to win the White House in 2004. Leveraging the successful e-campaign strategies pioneered by Howard Dean during the primary season, all of the democratic candidates embraced Linux and OSS in some f...

What began as a small movement based in a Finnish student's apartment has mushroomed far beyond his or anyone else's expectations. Linux, sprung from Linus Torvalds' imagination, has alighted in countless data centers and now stands tall as the software strategy centerpiece of technolo...

LWM's editor-in-chief, Kevin Bedell, recently had the opportunity to ask Ranajit Nevatia, director of Linux Strategy for VERITAS, a few questions about how Linux is impacting VERITAS and how the company is contributing to the world of open source.

LWM's editor-in-chief, Kevin Bedell, spoke with Sun's John Fowler about what's new - with Sun, with Fowler's new position, and with Sun's place in the open source world - and learned a little history as well.

During testimony yesterday in the antitrust trial challenging Oracle's proposed takeover of PeopleSoft, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison defended the company's $7.7 billion bid for PeopleSoft Inc. as a bold but necessary move to ensure Oracle's survival in a highly competitive industry.

M9 has been out now for a couple of weeks, and wow, has the Eclipse team made some major progress! The tool has lots of new features (which we will look at shortly) but also has some great performance fixes and fleshing out of existing features. In particular the Ant editor works like ...

Just recently Gartner reported that IBM has overtaken BEA in application server market share. The interesting thing is that Gartner's expression of market share is in a single number, dollars. While dollars are certainly an important factor in declaring a market leader, is this an accu...

In February 2004 David Skok's new VC firm - Matrix Partners - orchestrated, with Accel, a $10 million investment in JBoss, Inc. This first round of funding in an open source company was a bold play, but then David Skok, famous in the Java arena as the founder of SilverStream Software -...

The convergence between telecom and datacom is a two-way process, with both worlds contributing their experience and best technology to the future network. One area where telecom companies have extensive experience is computer clustering, and more specifically, providing high-availabil...

'Linux received a fair amount of attention in 2003,' writes the OSDL's head honcho Stuart Cohen. 'Perhaps a little bit more than its fair share.' You can tell that a technology has made it into the mainstream, Cohen adds, when it's the cover story in major business magazines; or perha...

While OSCAR (Open Source Cluster Application Resource) has been conceived for clusters with disks since its very first version, diskless and systemless support was a feature that a lot of people expected. The Center for Scientific Computing has built several clusters without disks; we ...

In January, as thousands of Linux OS enthusiasts streamed onto the show floor and into conference sessions at the 2004 LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, they caught up with an old friend who many barely recognized. In a span of only 12 months, Linux has evolved from an emerging technology ...

To say there is general confusion about Linux and open source software within many organizations is an understatement. The confusion seems to stem from misunderstanding the Linux and open source philosophy but is due in no small part to misinformation. Attempts at understanding Linux a...

Welcome to the third installment of my Linux Careers column. The last two columns focused on recruiting strategies in the open source community. Now I want to examine certifications and their place within the open source community. This topic will be covered in two separate columns.

There's no question that the open source community has a lot going for it. Besides a staggering amount of developer power that can be turned against important problems, the open source movement also has a passion and commitment that the commercial software world often envies.

Those who like .NET may find themselves lamenting, 'I still have to deploy applications on the Windows operating system. I am still locked to one vendor - Microsoft.' If this sounds like you, Ximian's Mono project might be the answer. The Mono project was started in July 2001 by Miguel...

One of the problems with open source software is that it isn't controlled or monitored. It's all very well for us Linux types to sit here and say, 'Open source software is better,' but how do we quantify and qualify that statement with hard evidence that will convince our customers, us...

In the past few years blogging has taken the geek world by storm, and lately it's started to pull in the non-geeks as well. The act of maintaining a weblog, or blog, isn't too impressive in itself, but it represents an interesting change in interpersonal communication models.

In this article, Ibrahim Haddad presents on the Open Source Development Labs Carrier Grade Linux Requirements and Ericsson's contributions in this area.

In reponse to a query on the Groklaw site, someone has posted a very instructive crash course in the history of the Free Software/Open Source world. It's worth reading, and all its original links are here reproduced in full.

The self-described 'Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project,' Richard Stallman, writes in a Letter to the Editors of Linux.SYS-CON.com that recent commentators could be right in saying that UserLinux is a step forward from today's commercial GNU/Linux distros, but denies that the developers...

Traditionally dominated in the past by OEM vendors hawking off-shore CD-R drives and line printers for resale, COMDEX this year has shifted toward more of a software focus, including Open Source, says LinuxWorld senior editor James Turner wearing a different hat as a conference track c...

Open source software (OSS) development and use, as described by the General Public License (GPL) and other similar licenses, creates tremendous gains in the quality and volume of software development and use, says Paul Nowak - in a new application of Garret Hardin's seminal 1968 Scienc...

Computer users need to be taught to value freedom, says Richard Stallman, so they will defend it - and recognizing the value of freedom yourself is the first step in helping to do this.

Eric Raymond has the unique ability to focus on low-level technical details while at the same time tracking the highest-level technology trends. His book The Cathedral and the Bazaar is both a great history of early Linux development and a great introduction to the workings and the cul...

If the software you're considering is an operating system, like Linux, then the GNU Public License (GPL) is good for your business. If it's an application or a software ingredient, then the GPL may be bad for your business.

There is a potential conflict of interest between business and society, and that conflict can arise in free software. It's up to all of us to choose how to resolve that conflict.

Last week, the company began showing code to U.S. analysts that, it claims, prove that the source code to the Linux operating system contains sections of code lifted directly from SCO's Unix code base.

DOD policy called a victory for the open-source movement and a precedent that will lead to a jump in usage of open-source software at DOD and elsewhere in government.

In light of SCO's finding, Novell reluctantly acknowledged that the amendment 'appears to support SCO's claim that ownership of certain copyrights for Unix did transfer to SCO in 1996.' Patents, however, are a different matter.

The German subsidiary of The SCO Group Inc. has temporarily shut down its Web site after a local Linux user group received a restraining court order against the U.S. software group, but plans to reactivate the site shortly.

While conspiracy theories are fun, Joe Barr is certain of two things. One is that Linux is going to continue its inexorable march to the desktop. The second is that the Microsoft monopoly is not going to go gentle into that good night.