Date: 05/19/05     Keywords: linux, microsoft

Contrary to the assumptions of many of us, a lot of people are going to find Microsoft's Eiger offer compelling. Eiger will be a version of Windows XP for "obsolete machines" -- obsolete in that they run operating systems Microsoft no longer supports.Yes, such machines can run Ubuntu Linux, which is free. There are a [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=283&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/19/05     Keywords: no keywords

Fundamentally most outsourcing contracts substitute tweedle dee for tweedle dum and it should be no surprise, therefore, when interchangeable people and technologies produce interchangeable disasters.

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=282&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/19/05     Keywords: security, linux, microsoft

In his latest entry, Dana asks whether the Linux process is insecure, because it's not possible to warn the "vendor" before warning the general public about security flaws in Linux. He also notes that "Microsoft has theoretical control of this situation." There are several problems with this line of reasoning. I'm not [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=281&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/18/05     Keywords: security

Time for me to play devil's advocate again.The Schneier Wave graph to the right may be the most famous diagram in computer security. It's named for Bruce Schneier of Counterpane, a leading computer security expert. As Schneier explained back in 2001, vulnerability to a security bug is highest between the moment the problem is revealed [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=280&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/18/05     Keywords: no keywords

the Unix community thinks a machine with two CPUs should do twice as much work as a machine with only one, but Windows people expect it to go twice as fast

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=279&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/17/05     Keywords: software

NetBeans 4.1 has been released for download, under the Sun Public License, and Netbeans director Tim Cramer says cellular application developers are finally hearing its call.In just six months, as it has gone from Version 3.x to Version 4.1, the software has been downloaded 1 million times, he told ZDNet, because "NetBeans makes developing mobile apps just [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=278&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/17/05     Keywords: no keywords

Look at history from 1980 forward and what you see since is that the Wintel consortium evolved around the IBM PC to give us about 24 years of predictable change in which the dominant architecture became ever faster, but didn't really change in character. Look ahead, and you see all that changing: in effect it's 1979 all over again with two big competitors getting ready to duke it out and the current market leader, now Intel instead of Zilog, effectively sidelined for the duration.

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=277&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/16/05     Keywords: microsoft

When a politician wants to send a signal to a rival they can do it by "privately" meeting with an opponent in a way they're certain will become public. Thus Microsoft's flirtation with Red Hat is really aimed at sending a message to IBM. The message: you can't have it both ways.Open source gives IBM [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=276&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/16/05     Keywords: no keywords

From Red Hat's perspective this could be a marriage made in heaven -- offering both a defense against the two greatest strategic threats it faces and a graceful way for key players to fold their tents and steal away into the night.

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=275&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/16/05     Keywords: microsoft

CNET reported last week that Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer met for lunch in New York. That's something like Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh chowing down together -- you just wouldn't expect it to happen. I wonder if the waiters were asked to sign NDAs? It doesn't look like [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=274&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/13/05     Keywords: no keywords

Open source will need a much bigger market share before the open source process can fill fast-changing niches faster than proprietary solutions.

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=273&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/13/05     Keywords: no keywords

One of the fastest-growing markets for open source in the world is Africa. (The satellite image is originally from NASA.)If you think of sub-Saharan Africa in terms of jungles or primitivism, you're making the same mistake Europeans do when they think of America as the Wild West. Africa has a large, and growing middle class, spurred [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=270&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/12/05     Keywords: security, linux, microsoft

Security may be one of the biggest challenges facing the open source enterprise.When I say enterprise, of course, I mean enterprise -- hundreds of servers, thousands of desktops, and truly heterogenous environments.Because of Microsoft's desktop dominance it has made important early moves. (And let's not get into how much more secure Linux is than Windows. Patches [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=269&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/10/05     Keywords: no keywords

Just in the nick of time, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has shot down the Federal Communications Commission's over-reaching efforts to require hardware to honor the "broadcast flag." The broadcast flag rule was to go into effect for devices manufactured on or after July 1, this year. The [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=268&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/09/05     Keywords: no keywords

While at an event called Blognashville over the weekend it dawned on me that many open source projects, and bloggers, share a very basic problem. Their business processes seem backward.Bloggers and open source projects often start with their own unmet needs. The bloggers want to be heard. Open source contributors want to use the result themselves. [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=267&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/06/05     Keywords: no keywords

We've been following the progress of Debian's upcoming stable release ("Sarge") for some time, and now is a good time to check in on Debian's progress. Let me preface this by saying that I'm a big fan of Debian, the distribution and the community that actually produces the distro. Having said that, I have [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=266&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/05/05     Keywords: no keywords

Much of the commentary on John Carroll's piece about Third World open source movements was political. (The illustration is by Linda Herzog of Vista, California, a member of the Nature Artists group.) This is not surprising. It seems nearly everything is political these days. But it is distressing and totally unnecessary.The GPL is a license. [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=265&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/04/05     Keywords: no keywords

One reason closed-source developers may continue to feel smug is they have a working business model. Charging for code is an easy business model. You know how hard to work on a project based on how many people pay you for it, and how much they pay. I know open source code doesn't always mean [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=264&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/03/05     Keywords: microsoft

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith says the company wants a sit-down with the open source community. That kind of talk brings out the Blofeld in me. (That's Donald Pleasence as the Bond villain from Jamesbond.com.) Maybe it's because the statement seems like an admission of weakness and unease coming from Redmond and a business culture [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=263&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Date: 05/02/05     Keywords: no keywords

Fortinet has apparently settled the suit filed by Harald Welte earlier this month. Welte, who founded gpl-violations.org to bring vendors into compliance with the GPL, managed to get an injunction against Fortinet which banned the company from distributing products containing GPL'ed code. Now that the case with Fortinet seems to be taken [...]

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=262&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog