Open Source » Opinions »

  • Which platform: Cathedral or open source?

    Have you ever experienced a software bug and thought to yourself, "I could fix that"? If you could, would you? How could that even be possible?

    Written by Larry Borsato • 18 July 08 10:29

  • Groundwork Monitor: serious network management

    Last week I began to discuss a remarkable virtual-appliance-based system for network monitoring and management called Groundwork Monitor Community Edition.

    Written by Mark Gibbs • 17 July 08 09:51

  • Nagios, lots of network management for nothing

    A couple of weeks ago I reviewed WhatsUp Gold and liked what I found. Of course the topic of network management tools is one that is close to the heart of every network manager so a flurry of letters followed.

    Written by Mark Gibbs • 11 July 08 08:40

  • Bank of America to support Firefox, finally

    I know what you're asking about that headline: "Is he trying to tell us that the US's second-largest bank does not already support the world's second-most-popular Web browser?"

    Written by Paul McNamara • 11 July 08 08:06

  • Bad blood over Linspire's sale to Xandros

    One of the first commercial Linux distributions aimed at the average computer user, Linspire, has just been sold to Xandros and undergone a name change to Digital Cornerstone. Xandros may not be very commonly known, but it is the distro being used by Asus on the EeePC.

    Written by Carl Jongsma • 07 July 08 08:53

  • Hacking tools: A new version of BackTrack helps ethical hackers

    Version 3.0 of BackTrack has been released. BackTrack is a Linux-based distribution dedicated to penetration testing or hacking (depending on how you look at it). It contains more than 300 of the world's most popular open source or freely distributable hacking tools.

    Written by Roger A. Grimes • 30 June 08 10:57

  • Symbian deal will open up mobile platform market

    The global battle to control the smarts in your smartphone escalated this week when some of the combatants redeployed their forces in two big moves.

    Written by Brad Reed • 27 June 08 10:58

  • Microsoft on Symbian's open-source move: Good luck with that

    Microsoft has welcomed the transformation of the Symbian mobile-phone platform into an open source project, because the software giant contends the change will create a host of new problems for the Symbian community.

    Written by John Cox • 27 June 08 09:21

  • Nokia: Open source developers should play by our rules

    I was a little surprised to hear Nokia vice president of software Ari Jaaski's comments last week. Not long ago, Nokia got off to a great start by embracing open source for its mobile device business. But now, according to Jaaski, it's the open source developer community that needs to adapt to the ways of commercial software vendors, not the other way around.

    Written by Neil McAllister • 20 June 08 09:42

  • How Microsoft lost the office file format battle

    Score one for the good guys: Last week, Microsoft announced that not only would Office 2007 Service Pack 2 support the ODF (Open Document Format) standard, but the productivity suite would not offer support for the ISO standard version of Microsoft's own OOXML (Office Open XML) format until its next major version, release date unknown.

    Written by Neil McAllister • 30 May 08 11:41

  • Why open source needs an attitude adjustment

    Recession be damned. The first quarter of the year saw a record $203.7 million of venture capital flow to young open source companies. You'd think that would be a cause for celebration, but for too many members of the open source community money is, well, icky.

    Written by Bill Snyder • 23 May 08 11:27
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    Make older add-ons work with Firefox 3.0

    If you're like me, you've been playing around with the beta releases of Firefox 3.0. The new version of the open source browser is better-looking, uses less memory, and feels snappier all around. There's just one problem: Every time they release a new beta version, some of your extensions and add-ons are bound to stop working. With the release of Firefox 3.0rc1, almost none of them work.

    Written by Neil McAllister • 21 May 08 08:36

  • Firefox 3 First Look

    I've loved Firefox since version 0.93. It was so much better than Internet Explorer and the other alternatives that I couldn't imagine using anything else. But, then Firefox's memory leaks went from annoying me to ticking me off; I started having real stability problems with it on both Windows and Linux; and security holes started appearing far more often. I was about to switch to Safari on Windows and MacOS and Konqueror on Linux, when Mozilla got serious about not just fixing, but rebuilding Firefox. Now, Firefox 3 release candidate 1 was released early. Based on my quick look at it, I may end up sticking with Firefox after all.

    Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols • 19 May 08 12:21
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    How to avoid the Debian SSH key attacks

    If you are running a Debian-based Linux system and haven't already caught up with the announcement [1] that there was a major flaw with the generation of SSH, OpenVPN, DNSSEC, SSL/TLS session keys and X.509 certificate key material, you might want to update your system to address the problem.

    Written by Carl Jongsma • 16 May 08 08:35

  • All you need to know about Office Open XML

    Now that Microsoft has successfully lobbied to get its Office Open XML document format approved as an international standard by the ISO, it should put just as much effort into showing IT managers that it will offer value beyond attracting the interest of government customers.

    Written by Computerworld Staff • 23 April 08 12:08
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    What to do when developers take code snippets with them

    Every good carpenter has a box of tools he carries from job to job: a hammer of just the right weight, a selection of drill bits, and so on. As he gains experience, his toolbox gets heavier with new, and sometimes specialized, equipment. Similarly, programmers accumulate their own tools as they move from job to job, but these tools are digital and often include snippets of code written over the years.

    Written by Bill Snyder • 18 April 08 08:12

  • Towards more progressive open source

    I found Oracle's statements on open source, tendered at the Linux/Open Source on Wall Street conference, intriguing to say the least. I'll begin by making it clear that I don't doubt the veracity of the database giant's experience with its customer base.

    Written by Alex Fletcher • 07 April 08 10:35

  • Open source databases: the 97-pound weakling

    Linux, Apache, JBoss, and other open source technologies are kicking sand in the faces of the big boys on the operating system and middleware tiers, but when it comes to the database world, open source is still a 97-pound weakling. And despite some heady growth numbers, that's not likely to change anytime soon.

    Written by Bill Snyder • 04 April 08 09:30

  • Ubuntu 8.04 beta: an agile upgrade

    The beta of the next version of Ubuntu Linux has arrived, though judging by its stability and polish you'd be hard pressed to tell it's a testing release. Ubuntu 8.04, code-named "Hardy Heron," is scheduled to be an LTS (Long Term Support) edition, and you can tell its developers have worked diligently to make it worthy of the title.

    Written by Neil McAllister • 25 March 08 09:46

  • An excellent FOSS installer for your tool kit

    This week I was going to continue with my discussion of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers 4.0 but, as is so often the case, I got distracted by another problem.

    Written by Mark Gibbs • 12 March 08 08:50
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