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NewsVac: News from around the Web
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Can the Feds enforce Net neutrality? Maybe not
6 hours, 18 minutes ago
Federal regulators may be probing Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent filesharing traffic, but can they actually take action, if they choose, against the company or any other broadband provider on Net neutrality grounds? -
End of Intel, AMD duopoly near? Via readies Isaiah chip
14 hours, 18 minutes ago
Is the end of the Intel-AMD duopoly nigh? Via Technologies is hoping this may be the case when it announces the "Isaiah" processor later this month. -
Looking towards IPv6
2 days, 1 hour ago
We care a lot about the health of the Internet. Recently, we've become increasingly concerned that IPv4 addresses — the numbers that computers use to connect to the Internet — are running out. Current projections place IPv4 address space exhaustion somewhere in late 2011, and while technologies such as Network Address Translation (NAT) can offer temporary respite, they complicate the Internet's architecture, pose barriers to the development of new applications, and run contrary to network openness principles. -
Verizon, Mozilla to join LiMo Foundation
2 days, 2 hours ago
The LiMo Foundation is adding several well-known entities to its roster of mobile phone players, including Verizon and Mozilla. -
Dell to cut PC energy use by 25 percent
2 days, 6 hours ago
Bragging rights in the PC industry have shifted from being cheap on price to efficient with energy. -
It's official: The future of Sun/MySQL is open...and closed
1 week, 2 days ago
The Sun faithful who attended the CommunityOne Conference this morning may not have noticed, but Sun and its MySQL executives were very clear about Sun's open-source strategy going forward, despite news reports that seem to have missed the nuances: -
Why Google Has Failed in Enterprise Market
1 week, 2 days ago
Google definitely won the search market, at least thus far. And yes, Google owns with consumer branding for being "liked" without a question. But will they win in the Enterprise realm until their online products have had a little more time in the oven? -
200 Million Pages Can't Be Wrong: Intel Sabotaged AMD's Business
1 week, 2 days ago
The legal action filed by AMD against Intel in 2006 got new evidence to support AMD's allegations claiming that it had been sabotaged by its arch-rival on the processor market. According to the latest information emerging from the trial, AMD gathered 200 million pages of documents that say Intel paid its partners to ditch AMD. -
Is Microsoft Weaker After Failed Takeover Bid?
1 week, 3 days ago
The cliché "Go big or go home" is a business philosophy that Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer is used to embracing in a bear hug – nearly always, as is his impetuous nature, on the side of going big. -
Interview: Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun
1 week, 4 days ago
Engadget got the chance to sit down with Jonathan Schwartz, the pony-tailed CEO of Sun Microsystems. Being the gadget blog that they are, Engadget asked Schwartz about the long-missing JavaFX Mobile platform Sun has promised, Java on the iPhone, and competing with Microsoft as an open source vendor. -
Report: A peek behind the Yahoo-Microsoft meltdown
1 week, 5 days ago
With Microsoft withdrawing its offer for Yahoo, wonder how it reached that point? BoomTown's Kara Swisher has an interesting take. -
Yahoo: Microsoft's price just wasn't right
1 week, 5 days ago
Microsoft didn't value Yahoo highly enough, Yahoo said after Microsoft's withdrew its acquisition offer. Yang calls the episode a "distraction" that's "behind us now." -
Cisco:networking is hot again
1 week, 6 days ago
NAC, Trustsec, PCI, Linux and more are all on the table as Cisco VP outlines the network giant's strategy moving forward. -
Microsoft and Yahoo! renew their marriage talks
2 weeks ago
Microhoo: Microsoft and Yahoo! have pulled their chairs back up to the proverbial negotiating table. Citing an unnamed source, The New York Times insists the two giants are now in "active merger talks." -
DoJ beats up tech firm for H-1B only job ads
2 weeks ago
Small fine, humiliation by press release.... A Pittsburgh computer consultancy is paying $45,000 in civil penalties over claims it discriminated against legal US residents by advertising only for developers on H-1B visas.… - More News
Linux.com : Business
Linux rides pillion on Mumbai city buses
In the swarming Indian metropolis Mumbai, it can be a gymnastic exercise just to fish in your pocket on the packed city buses and stretch out your paying hand to the conductor. Many commuters have opted instead for a 'smart' and cashless way to pay, provided, in part, by Linux. Named Go Mumbai, it is a prepaid smart card for BEST (Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport) bus journeys.
Meet Karl Paetzel, HP marketing manager for Linux and open source (video)
Karl Paetzel is quoted frequently about Hewlett-Packard's ever-increasing Linux and open source efforts, which now include open source licensing detection and governance tools. Here's a chance to see and hear him a little more "up close and personal" than in a traditional text interview.
Meet Inna Kuznetsova, IBM's Linux Strategy Director (video)
I always ask people who market (as opposed to develop) GNU/Linux and open source products or services what Linux distribution they use on their own computers. More often than not, the answer is along the lines of, "I'm a marketing person so I use Windows. The techies use Linux." Inna, on the other hand, uses not one, not two, but three different Linux distributions on her home computers. When she tells an IBM client Linux is the way to go, she obviously means it, and this surely makes a difference -- even if it's only a subtle one -- in her work.
As the SCO rolls
Reality, as good writers know, is sometimes stranger than fiction. SCO's recent performance in the U.S. District Court in Utah is a perfect example. With years to prepare, SCO executives made some remarkable statements in their attempt to show that SCO, not Novell, owns Unix's copyright.
KnowledgeTree business model hits many a niche
These days, effective document management means accessibility from anywhere on the planet, electronic storage, reliable backup, and instant document modification updates. KnowledgeTree offers all that and more. It's available in several editions, including an open source community version (which we reviewed last year) that businesses can tailor to their individual needs.
KnowledgeTree co-founders explain their commercial open source business strategy (video)
KnowledgeTree produces document management software that is available either under GPLv3 or, for commercial use, under a proprietary license that restricts code redistribution. In this video, KnowledgeTree co-founders John Thorne and Daniel Chalef explain why they decided to go open source, the differences between their open source and proprietary versions, and why supporting a "community version" helps both the company and KnowledgeTree's many users.
Social networking for sports sits on an open platform
Sportsvite.com, a kind of MySpace for ballers, exists because Steve Parker and a few friends wanted to find a better way to organize softball leagues and other casual sports teams in their New York neighborhoods. Parker, who lists badminton as a favorite sport on his Sportsvite.com profile, says he has always been an advocate of using open source, and thought it would be a great idea to build an Internet service that would make it easier for people to team up for amateur sports.
Meet Monica Kumar, Oracle's senior Linux and open source marketing director (video)
Oracle may be making a little less noise recently about Unbreakable Linux, but it's going strong -- and Monica Kumar is in charge of marketing for it. She's a consistent (and engaging) IT trade show speaker, but since only a tiny percentage of the world's population (or even of Linux.com readers) will ever have a chance to meet her in person, the next best thing is to "meet her" in this video interview.
Social networking gets a Ringside seat
Bob Bickel, co-founder of Ringside Networks, says companies need to harness the power of social networking and entice customers to visit corporate Web sites with the same eagerness they show for sites like Facebook. He believes the Ringside Social Application Server -- an open source platform that puts social networking tools on any existing Web site -- is the answer CEOs are looking for.
Open source applications Keep You Safe
Personal data safety is big business lately. There are a variety of ways to protect your identity or keep your personal information from the prying eyes of dishonest people, but Eric Wolbrom has what he believes is a unique service. Keep You Safe makes it possible for subscribers to store all their personal data securely in a virtual online "safe deposit box," and share the key with someone they trust. When Wolbrom, a self-described "security geek," finally had the chance to launch Keep You Safe, he knew that building it on Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) was the best way to keep his customers' data secure.
SugarCRM CEO John Roberts tells us how his company developed (video)
SugarCRM Inc. was one of the first application-specific open source companies. It has gone from three employees to over 160 between 2004 and 2008. SugarCRM has taken some heat over its dual-licensing system. Roberts explains why this licensing scheme is a financial necessity for the company, and offers some excellent advice for people who want to start their own open source-based companies.
Meet IT industry analyst Dan Kusnetzky (video)
Dan Kusnetzky is one of the people you see quoted all over the place, especially about GNU/Linux and its effect on the computing world. But not many people (as a percentage of the world's total population) have had a chance to sit down with Dan and learn who he is in any kind of personal sense, so one day I lugged my video gear to Dan's home office in Osprey, Florida, and handed him a microphone. He spoke for 19 minutes, which is an awfully long time for an Internet "get to know you" piece, but since Dan's opinions have been known to sway industry perceptions (and some IT companies' stock prices) more than you'd think possible for an individual, I'm running the whole thing here, because some of what Dan has to say is important to management and business types who need to know how the open source segment of the IT industry has gotten to where it is today, and where it may go in the near future.
Red Hat's business model: the "elevator speech" version (video)
We hear a lot about this or that open source business model, but rarely does anyone explain in a simple, succinct way exactly how an open source company makes money. In this video, though, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst does exactly that. In less time than an elevator takes to reach the top of a high-rise office building (supposedly the maximum time a basic investment pitch should take), he tells potential investors how Red Hat profits from developing and distributing freely distributed software.
IDC bullish on Linux in the enterprise
IDC analyst Al Gillen, who is giving the opening keynote at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit kicking off today in Austin, Texas, is expected to cite figures from an IDC white paper entitled "The Role of Linux Servers in Commercial Workloads" that show that Linux has done well and proved itself in the enterprise, and is expected to continue that trend through 2011.
Software patents underlie a novel open source business model (video)
"Software patents are evil." Ask almost any free or open source software advocate, and they'll tell you that software patents kill creativity and keep computer science from advancing as rapidly as it would if everyone shared their basic work with everyone else, unencumbered by patents or other restrictions. But computer science professor Fred Popowich of Simon Fraser University says this is not necessarily true. So does attorney Larry Rosen, who spent many years as legal counsel for the Open Source Initiative starting (literally) before it had a name.
Initiative helps farmers in rural India using OSS
"India is like a long snake. While its head is moving into the twenty-first century, the tail is still in the sixteenth. And there are people all over its body." Those lines by computer guru Ed Yourdon sum up the inspiration behind Jagriti e-Sewa ("Jagriti" means "awakening" in Punjabi and "Sewa" means "service"), a non-governmental organization (NGO) that uses open source technologies to bring much-needed knowledge and advice to farmers in the Indian state of Punjab.
Consultant hopes open source apps will "snap together" someday
DPCI, a technology consulting firm based in New York City, specializes in providing custom content management solutions. DPCI uses open source software and recommends it to clients who need powerful, flexible content management solutions, but face budget challenges in a belt-tightening economy. President and founder Joe Bachana says he discovered the merits of building a business on open source first through personal experience.
IT managers can turn to peers at CMG for solutions
Making changes to your existing infrastructure is fraught with decisions. What's the best way to consolidate servers? How can we better manage the resources we have? How will the changes we're planning impact service and performance? Sandbox environments only provide theoretical information. Vendor solutions can number into the dozens, so it's easy to get overwhelmed. The Computer Measurement Group (CMG) understands that, so for more than 30 years it has been amassing a huge database of knowledge so you can learn from the successes -- and failures -- of others.
Acquia ties success to growth of Drupal
In the last year, a growing number of companies based on free and open source software (FOSS) have come out of stealth mode. One of the latest is Acquia, which provides services for organizations that use Drupal, the popular content management platform. "Until now," says Jeff Whatcott, Acquia's vice president of marketing, "there hasn't been a Red Hat or Ubuntu of the Drupal world." Acquia plans to fill that gap by selling subscription services that will improve what Whatcott calls the "few rough edges and gaps" in Drupal, at the same time that the company establishes itself in the eyes of community.
FOSS helps Krugle help developers search for code
In three years, Krugle, the company behind the code search engine of the same name, has gone from an idea to a company that's starting to produce revenue. CEO Steve Larsen, a veteran of half a dozen startups, attributes this brief time to market as being due largely to free and open source software (FOSS). According to Larsen, FOSS has shaped most aspects of the company, including its hiring practices and relations with business partners and users.
