open source

open source - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

  • Weka development stays at Waikato Uni

    Reports that the University of Waikato's Weka open source software project has been sold and staff transferred to a US software company have been somewhat exaggerated.

  • Why open source is under-utilised in graphics

    There’s no shortage of open source programmers out there. According to a recent study of 5,000 developers by research firm IDC, 71% say they have used open source software, and half reported that use of open source is increasing within their organisations.

  • Sun's open source silicon blazes trails

    Traditional hardware design is a top-down process. If you need a CPU, you choose one from the various manufacturers’ catalogues and then build your device around its specifications. If a given part doesn’t suit your needs perfectly, you can sometimes work around its limitations in software, but otherwise you’re stuck. Only the largest electronics vendors can afford to dabble with custom components.

  • Ingres resurgent: price is right and it’s open source

    Ingres was one of the mainstream relational databases till it was bought by Computer Associates in 1994. Now, it is making a comeback as an open source option, having been purchased by a private equity firm, Garnett & Helfrich Capital. CA retains a 20% stake in the new Ingres Corporation, which was officially launched in November 2005, coincidentally on the same day Microsoft released SQL Server 2005.

  • Open source tsunami disaster software promises help

    The Sahana project was originally developed to help cope with the disastrous consequences of 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. A free and open source disaster management solution, the integrated system is a set of web-based disaster management applications for managing information before, during and after a disaster.

  • Open source and .Net aren’t mutually exclusive

    Python developers had reason to celebrate this week, with the release of IronPython 1.0, a full implementation of the Python language for Microsoft’s CLR (Common Language Runtime). With IronPython, Python programs can run as first-class managed code on the .Net platform.

  • Eclipsing the future: .Net rivalry today and tomorrow

    The Eclipse Foundation has established itself as a premier open source software tools project. The organisation has gained support from vendors ranging from IBM (which helped found Eclipse in 2001) to Borland Software, BEA Systems, and seemingly every other major player in the software industry except Sun Microsystems and Microsoft.

  • Reconciling Microsoft and the open-source movement

    If you support open source, one of the initial things you learn is that you must bash Microsoft. It’s understandable; of all the proprietary software companies in the world the one in Redmond takes the cake for ill-will towards the open-source community. Just look at the famed “Halloween documents” to see the extent of the bad blood.

  • Binary blobs mean few apps are purely open source

    My column last week on virtualisation and the Linux kernel drew some flak from readers who didn’t agree that VMware’s VMI (Virtual Machine Interface) proposal offered a better approach than that of the open-source Xen project.

  • Apple's retreat from open source isn't all bad

    We all cheered when Apple began experimenting with community-driven, open source development for its flagship operating system, Mac OS X. But if those experiments are now drawing to a close, should anyone really be surprised?

  • McAfee’s spin on open source security threats

    According to the editor’s letter in the recently released inaugural edition of Sage, a magazine produced by anti-malware vendor McAfee: “Open source is not to blame for current security trends.” Maybe not, but apparently it’s still expected to take the blame.

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