Sean Michael Kerner

It’s a busy time for Mozilla Firefox developers. Late Tuesday, Mozilla released Firefox 3.5.4, updating its browser to address issues outlined in 11 new security advisories — more than half of them for critical flaws. On the other side of the spectrum, Mozilla today is set to release the first beta of the next version […]

From the ‘Resistance is Futile’ files: Microsoft has thousands of developers building code for its platforms using Visual Studio. Thousands more use open source Eclipse based IDEs to develop their code and Microsoft wants them to target Windows platforms too. To that end, Microsoft today announced a series of interoperability initiatives to help Eclipse users […]

From the ‘Do Ask and Do Tell‘ files: Open Source software has a role to play in the national interest and national security of the United States. That’s the gist of a new U.S Department of Defense (DoD) Memorandum providing clarifying guidance on the use of open source within the DoD. While the tone of […]

From the ‘Long Release Cycle‘ files: Remember the Mozilla Suite? Or maybe you remember Netscape Communicator? Neither of those all-in-one browser solutions exists under either of those names anymore, but their successor SeaMonkey is still (surprisingly) around and kinda/sorta moving forward. Today, the SeaMonkey project released version 2.0.  Yeah version 2.0. We’ve got IE 8, […]

If you can’t build your own networking gear, then why not OEM it? That’s what Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) is now doing with a new deal with networking vendor Juniper Networks (NASDAQ: JNPR). Under the terms of the agreement announced today, Dell will OEM Juniper MX routers, SRX services gateways and EX switching gear. The Juniper […]

Networking vendor Cisco has billions of cash on hand and isn’t afraid to use it to augment its core offerings. The latest acquisition for the networking giant is Software as a Service (SaaS) Web security vendor ScanSafe. Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) is set to pay $183 million in cash for the privately held ScanSafe. The company said […]

With more than 8 million users, Ubuntu Linux is among the most popular Linux distributions. But what is its mission? What are Ubuntu and Canonical, its lead commercial sponsor, really all about? Ubuntu has desktop and server releases, and is gearing up both user and cloud services, all of which are set to be updated […]

From  the ‘English Monopoly‘ files: ICANN is meeting in Seoul, South Korea this week with a big agenda. At the top of the list is a proposal to finally begin the process of accepting and delivering International Domain Names (IDNs). Until now all top level domains (TLDs) have only supported ASCII (basically the Latin alphabet). […]

Networking vendor Brocade is often thought of as just being a datacenter player — a perception that company executives are keen to change. Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) also has enterprise campus as well as service provider offerings competing against the big boys of carrier networking like Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), Juniper (NASDAQ: JNPR) and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU). […]

From the ‘Friends in High Places‘ files: Is Red Hat making a play for the open source database market? Linux leader Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) is investing in open source database vendor EnterpriseDB, the official announcement is set for release on Tuesday October 27th. The official press release does not disclose the exact amount that Red […]