Sean Michael Kerner

When news of the Novell Microsoft partnership broke last week, the release was long on rhetoric and short on details, specifically financial details. Now, after a week of relentless criticism in open source circles, Novell is fessing up and opening up on what the deal with Linux nemesis Microsoft adds up to: about $348 million […]

Sun and Ubuntu GNU/Linux are getting even closer. Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu distribution and Sun are expanding their existing partnership to Sun’s x86 hardware. That means Sun will now certify Ubuntu and Canonical will support Ubutnu running on the Sun Fire X4100 and X4200 servers, as well as the Sun Ultra(TM) 20 […]

VMware has long held a dominant position on Windows servers as the virtualization technology of choice. Rival XenSource has its eye on VMWare’s share of that pie. The open source virtualization provider went for a bigger slice of the Windows virtualization market with its XenEnterprise for Windows release today. XenEnterprise for Windows builds on XenSource’s […]

Analysis: Yesterday’s surprising announcement by Microsoft and Novell on Linux is very good news for Novell. It could also be very bad news for open source Linux. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft and Novell are supposed to work together on interoperability and patents, such as its inter-office suite (Office to OpenOffice). Certainly, interoperability […]

UPDATED: Microsoft is the mortal enemy of Linux, right? Not necessarily. In a surprise announcement, Microsoft  CEO Steve Ballmer and Novell  CEO Ron Hovsepian took the stage at a San Francisco hotel this afternoon to provide details on a partnership that will forever change the Linux landscape. Microsoft is partnering with Novell on Linux. No […]

China is accelerating its IPv6  deployment with the addition of a 40 Gigabits per second (Gbps) link on the long haul between Beijing and Tianjin. The 40G link is considered one of the fastest links anywhere on Earth and is a key element of China’s Next Generation Internet (CNGI) IPv6 infrastructure. The 40G link is […]

In an expansion of its Open AIM effort, AOL is offering all kinds of “Whimsical” ways for Web developers to do widgets and mastermind new mashups. The latest Web-based application programming interfaces  from AOL are a set of widgets, called AIM Whimsicals, that enable AIM’s Web integration with other sites. Developers can now use AIM’s […]

Google does a great job of opening up its applications to developers, yet it’s not exactly a point-and-click affair to get them to work. Until now. Google’s code, specifically Google Maps, Checkout and Search, are getting a developer assist by way of WebAssist’s Dreamweaver Tools for Google, a free add-on for Adobe Dreamweaver users. With […]

PHP on Windows is no longer an oxymoron. Microsoft is officially helping to fund a joint effort with PHP vendor Zend to ensure that PHP works well on Microsoft’s server platforms. “We’re announcing a multi-year agreement to make sure that PHP is a first-class citizen on the Windows Server platform,” Zend co-founder Andi Gutmans told […]

Google is officially in the wiki business, with its acquisition of JotSpot. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, though according to Google’s FAQ, the deal is officially closed. JotSpot was founded in 2004 by Excite.com co-founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer. According to Kraus, Google had attracted the attention of JotSpot over […]

TORONTO — Mike Shaver, co-founder of the Mozilla project, believes that everyone has a super power that can be used for open source good. Don’t worry if that super power isn’t big. Though Mozilla is a big project, it wants people to start small. Shaver delivered the opening keynote at the fifth annual Free Software […]

The Web of 2006 is a cloud of loosely interconnected bits of information and content. The dream of the Web’s creator, Tim Berners Lee, is to connect the dots in a Semantic Web. With the help of the in-development W3C GRDDL specification, the Semantic Web takes a step closer to becoming an implementable reality. The […]