Sean Michael Kerner

If you can’t beat them, join them? That may well be Microsoft’s mantra, as it joins the open source community today with the blessing of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). After weighing the software giant’s license terms against 10 criteria defined by the Open Source Definition, the OSI said it approved the the Microsoft Public […]

When an enterprise has a handful of systems, it needs technology to manage them. Into that seemingly mature and competitive systems management space has come a new startup called KACE, which uses hardware to manage hardware by integrating patch, state and image management into one box. “The discipline of systems management has been around since […]

Open source storage startup Cleversafe is set to challenge the decades-old RAID approach to distributing storage with its global Dispersed Storage Network (DSN). With a traditional RAID array, data is striped across a number of disks, a fixed number of which are required to be operational for the data to be recreated. With its new […]

It’s about to get a whole lot easier for web developers to develop Ajax rich internet applications. The Eclipse Foundation today is formally releasing its Eclipse Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) 1.0 application which brings the Eclipse plug in model to web developers. “RAP is a runtime project and it’s the first Ajax middleware project that […]

For the past two decades, firewalls have represented the first line of defense in network security. But one startup is claiming that firewalls have been showing their age in recent years. Naturally, it has a solution. That firm, Palo Alto Networks, next week is expected to release its Firewall product lineup, sporting transparent integration with […]

The first patent suit filed against Linux has hit the courts, with a patent holder taking aim at enterprise Linux vendors Red Hat and Novell. The suit, filed in a Texas state court by intellectual property firm IP Innovation LLC, claims that the Linux vendors are infringing on its U.S. Patent No. 5,072,412. The patent, […]

So Microsoft is waving the patent stick. Again. Is there any substance to his latest claims about open source and Microsoft’s patents? Somehow, that part got lost in the hyped-up coverage of his latest threats. This publication and many others published Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s comments when he once again claimed that somehow Linux users, […]

With billions of mobile devices in use today and only more expected in the near future, software vendors of all stripes are looking to wireless platforms to expand. That’s true even for established PC Web browser vendors like Mozilla, which this week announced a new push to bring its popular Firefox offering to the mobile […]

A potential pitfall for embedded developers is actually determining what silicon and what board to use. It can turn into a time and money pit. Enter embedded Linux developer MontaVista with a potential solution: a new online test drive service for virtual problem solving. The MontaVista Test drive acts as online virtualization lab and enables […]

The business intelligence software market is all about enabling business users to make sense of their data. But sometimes the data’s complexity can make it a daunting task. Open source BI vendor Pentaho claims it has a solution in the new Pentaho Business Intelligence 1.6, which provides a semantic metadata layer. “Pentaho has been marching […]

With a major new kernel point release, Linux this week continues inching its way toward becoming a real-time OS, and ideally winning new converts in key industry verticals and embedded designs. Among the many driver additions, bug fixes and updates in Linux kernel 2.6.23 — the OS’s fourth large kernel point release of the year […]

PHP vendor Zend is set to kick off its annual ZendCon conference today with a number of announcements that will make the open source development language more attractive to Microsoft Windows platform users. The improvement of PHP’s performance on Windows is a result of a joint effort between Zend and Microsoft. “Both sides are making […]