Stories about: Apache Software Foundation

When Microsoft completed its acquisition of San Francisco-based startup Powerset in July, it acquired more than just search-engine technology. In the HBase component of Powerset's product, Microsoft also acquired open-source code that is actively being redistributed back into the Apache Software Foundation's Hadoop project.

At this point in the game, Microsoft should really come clean with a statement that rescinds its Linux/patent/suing threat altogether. Granted, Microsoft put itself in a hard spot with this one, since it had its channel singing the same tune for those murky months after the threat. If it stands up says, "Sorry, just kidding!" that won't make the channel partners happy, particularly if they used the threat to convince customers they must buy SUSE or Windows over Red Hat and other distros. But the fact is, we are seeing actions by Microsoft that indicate that the "suing Linux users" jig is up.

The obvious thought came to me while writing last week's column, that about the only folk (other than the deluded and amoral management of the SCO Group) that want the SCO Group effort attacking Linux and other open source initiatives to succeed is Microsoft. So I decided to explore that side in this follow-up column, but a bit of reading led me to the conclusion that things are not as simple as they appear.

Mobile computing has become a dominant focus in the open source arena, a theme on prominent display at a major open source technology convention last week.

I couldn't make it to OSCON last week, but I have read the announcements that Sam Ramji, the director of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, made at this open-source software show. They were the friendliest things I've ever seen come out of Microsoft towards open source.

Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Yahoo are partnering for cloud computing research and education in order to advance the development and adoption of large-scale, data-intensive Internet-hosted applications and related IT infrastructure.

Microsoft on Friday expanded its support for the open-source community by giving money to the Apache Software Foundation, the first time it has given money to the long-standing open-source project.

The Open Web Foundation, a non-profit organization intended to help create an "Open Web," was announced Thursday at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON) in Portland, Oregon.

IBM said Monday that it doesn't plan to open-source its DB2 database, despite a published report quoting a company executive in the U.K. saying that an open-source move might become necessary.

Advocates of free and open source software (FOSS) in the Philippines are aspiring for a larger and active local community with the upcoming Philippine Open Source Summit (POSS) slated on June 23 to 24 in Cebu City.

Databases are getting faster every day. But they're still a significant bottleneck for many Web applications or Web sites.