Sean Michael Kerner

Make no mistake about, the Linux 2.6.x kernel is a *large* undertaking that just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Apparently it’s also getting harder to maintain as well in terms of ensuring that regressions don’t occur and that new code is fully tested. That’s where the new ‘Linux Next’ effort comes in. Linux next started […]

2008 marked not just the beginning of a new year for Linux vendor Red Hat, but also a new beginning for its new CEO Jim Whitehurst. Whitehurst takes over the CEO job from Matthew Szulik, who held the post until the end of 2007. Szulik joined Red Hat in 1998 and led the company through […]

Linux vendor Red Hat is on a mission to dramatically expand the market share for its JBoss middleware platform.  In a press conference today during the JBoss World event in Orlando Craig Muzilla, vice president, Middleware Business at Red Hat declared that Red Hat was setting a strategy in motion to capture 50 percent of […]

Apple has patched its Mac 10.5 Leopard for the second time in its young life. Meanwhile, its older sibling, Mac OS 10.4 Tiger, will also get its share of fixes. In total, the vulnerabilities are serious enough that the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has issued a Technical Cyber Security Alert. “The impacts […]

Mozilla is now out with its latest Firefox 3 milestone release – Beta 3. With most of the Firefox 3 Betas and Alphas to date there have been changes that you would notice if you looked for them and actually started to use the browser. With Firefox 3 Beta 3 (FFb3) you get hit with […]

Sitting at the heart of the Internet itself are the key A and J root DNS servers that help to ensure that Internet traffic goes where it’s intended. So it only makes sense that for the coming IPv6 adoption to actually occur, those two root servers need to be on-board. Fortunately, that’s exactly what’s happening. […]

The idea that Open Source users use only open source tools to evaluate and deploy open source solutions may not be entirely accurate — if a recent study is any indicator. In its second annual Open Source Barometer study, open source content management vendor Alfresco found that hybrid uses of LAMP — the acronym for […]

Technical Cyber Security Alert TA08-043A has just been issued by US-CERT warning of multiple vulnerabilities affecting Adobe Reader and Acrobat. The vulnerabilities affect Adobe Reader version 8.1.1 and earlier as well as Adobe  Acrobat  Professional,  3D, and Standard versions 8.1.1 and earlier. The worst of the vulnerabilities could potentially allow an attacker to execute arbitrary […]

Surprise. Surprise. In a new study from IBM’s Internet Security Systems (ISS) X-Force, IBM reports that Web browsers are under siege from organized crime. The X-Force report claims that the cybercriminals are making increasing use of ‘camouflaging’ techniques. According to X-Force, in 2006 camouflaging was only used by a small percentage of attackers while by […]

Mobile Linux vendor Trolltech announced today its new Qtopia Phone Edition 4.3. Among the new enhancements that Trolltech  claims are faster boot times, Microsoft Outlook synchronization and a ‘Finger-touch user interface’. The finger touch interface capabilities sound interesting and could lead to a new generation of easily developed touch screen products. On a broader basis, […]

The end of ‘Decade Zero’ for Open Source is now over. Decade One begins now. This past Saturday the Open Source world celebrated the 10th anniversary of Bruce Perens’ defining document of the Open Source revolution, the aptly titled The Open Source Definition. I spoke with Perens about the anniversary last week over on the […]

On Feb. 9, 1998, the open source movement was born. It was on that historical day a decade ago that Bruce Perens published the defining document of the open source movement, the Open Source Definition. In the last 10 years open source has gone from being a manifesto to becoming a powerful force across nearly […]