Today, Red Hat took a public stand challenging the standards for patenting software. In the Biliski case that is now before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, this patent issue is ripe for consideration. In a friend of the court brief submitted to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in the Bilski case today, Red Hat describes the special problems that patents pose for open source and seeks modification of the standards for patentable subject matter that take open source into account. Here is a quick summary of our …

Mono is a project led by Novell (formerly by Ximian) to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET compatible set of tools, including among others a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime. Mono can be run on Linux, BSD, UNIX, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows operating systems.
Microsoft has a version of .NET available for FreeBSD, Windows and Mac OS X called the Shared Source CLI (Rotor). Microsoft’s shared source license may be insufficient for the needs of the community (it explicitly forbids commercial use). The Mono project has many …

Joel Cohen of The Simpsons and John Halamka of Harvard Medical School to discuss the use of open source solutions in the entertainment and healthcare industries
Raleigh NC – March 11, 2008 – Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Joel Cohen, writer and co-executive producer for The Simpsons, and John Halamka, MD, MS, CIO of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, will keynote at the fourth-annual Red Hat Summit, taking place June 18-20, 2008 in Boston, Mass. In addition, …

Shuttle today announced that the newly launched $199 KPC will feature the Foresight Linux operating system. With an intuitive interface and user focused design, Foresight does away with the need for users to be familiar with Linux.
A host of the latest software is packaged with the operating system, giving users convenient and enjoyable access to music, photos, videos, documents, and the Internet. Even keeping up-to-date with the latest features and fixes is a simple process with the user friendly update button.
Foresight uses the revolutionary Conary® Package Manager developed by rPath …

ReactOS is a computer operating system intended to be binary-compatible with application software and device drivers made for Microsoft Windows NT versions 5.x and up (Windows 2000 and its successors). It is composed entirely of free software, by means of a complete clean room reverse engineering process.
Although the project is in the alpha development stage as of 2008, many Windows programs already work well. While the ReactOS kernel has been written from scratch, the userland is mostly based on the Wine compatibility layer for Unix-like operating systems.
ReactOS is primarily written …

Introduces Immediate Worldwide Availability of Enterprise Services and Complete Open Source Portfolio of MySQL Database Products
SANTA CLARA, CA February 26, 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it has completed the acquisition of MySQL AB, developer of the world’s most popular open source database, for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. Sun also unveiled the immediate availability of MySQL’s complete portfolio of products and enterprise services backed by its 17,000-strong global sales and services organization and its extensive international network of authorized distribution channels. Sun now provides …

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — February 20, 2008 –AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that it has open sourced it’s AMD Performance Library (APL). Now referred to as “Framewave version 1.0,” the goal of this new open source project is to further enable the performance-optimized APL and expand its functionality beyond the existing core media capabilities, ensuring developers have an accelerated conduit to high performance application development. Contributions by partners, customers and the broader open-source software development community will accelerate library optimizations and feature enhancements in-line with their respective needs while AMD software …

Barracuda Networks Defends the Use of Free and Open Source ClamAV Software for Internet Security
Campbell, Calif., Jan. 29, 2008 – Barracuda Networks Inc., the worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances, today announced it plans to defend itself, the open source community and the free and open source Clam AntiVirus software from a patent threat by Trend Micro. Barracuda Networks’ decision to take action comes after repeated requests from Trend Micro demanding Barracuda Networks remove ClamAV from its products or pay a patent license fee.
“Trend Micro’s actions illustrate …

In a move to beef up its cross platform offerings for mobile phones and desktop applications, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced Monday that it will acquire software platform and frameworks developer Trolltech for $153 million. Nokia said the Norwegian firm’s Qtopia software technology it will help in the spread of its Ovi Web portal. It also said the company software is used in several thousand applications including Skype, Google Earth, and Adobe Photoshop Elements.
“Trolltech’s deep understanding of open source software and its strong technology assets will enable both Nokia and …

What is Linux?
Simply put, Linux is a computer operating system like the Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows. The difference is that Linux is open source; anyone can view, modify, and redistribute the underlying code. Further, while OS X is designed to run only on Apple hardware, and while Windows runs primarily on x86 processors from Intel and AMD, there are many distributions or flavors of Linux, compiled to run on a wide array of hardware, everything from high-end corporate servers and mainframes, to home PC’s, to cell phones.
Linux began …