Sean Michael Kerner

Working together is something IBM wants to see happen with its Rational application development tools. To make it happen, the company is kicking off its Rational Software Development Conference this week by announcing upgrades to a dozen of its tools. ClearQuest 7, IBM Rational ClearCase 7, IBM Rational Functional Tester Plus, IBM Rational Portfolio Manager […]

Mozilla has updated its flagship FireFox browser to version 1.5.0.4 and, in the process, fixed no less than 12 flaws. Five of the vulnerabilities are classified by Mozilla as “critical” and two are rated as “high.” Among the “critical” vulnerabilities is “Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2006-32,” which fixes a potential memory corruption vulnerability. “Mozilla team […]

Sun Microsystems is undergoing a dramatic transformation. For the last few years it has moved away from some of its proprietary approaches toward a more open source approach to its tools and technologies. At its recent JavaOne developer conference, Sun finally made Java more palatable to Linux distribution by changing the license under which Java […]

Enterprise Linux leader Red Hat announced a pair of very different collaborative initiatives this week at its annual user conference. The 108 project is along traditional collaborative developer lines while the Mugshot project is much like a social networking effort you wouldn’t expect to see from a serious enterprise vendor. At first glance, Mugshot appears […]

Best practices information is the cornerstone of all good software development. Getting best practices information and processes, though, has long been a proprietary exercise. Until now. The Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) promises to be the first open source initiative build out of a framework to help developers and organizations manage and distribute software best practices. […]

Microsoft’s first retail attempt to enter the antivirus, anti-spyware marketplace is now on store shelves. Though Windows Live OneCare is new to store shelves, over half a million users are already using the software as beta testers. First announced just over a year ago, Windows Live OneCare offers maintenance, backup and performance tuning in a […]

Mark Shuttleworth is about to make history again. Four years ago, he became the second human in history to journey into space as a “tourist.” Now, closer to home, he’s expected to make a mark with the release of Ubuntu Dapper Drake, which may well challenge enterprise Linux frontrunners Red Hat and Novell and change […]

Mozilla has reached the latest development milestone for its next-generation Firefox 2.0 “Bon Echo” browser with a little anti-phishing help from Google. Anti-phishing capability, which Mozilla has branded “Safe Browsing,” is one of the marquee features in Firefox 2.0 and one of the reasons a third alpha is necessary. Now baked into Firefox 2.0 alpha […]

Google has announced that it will accept no fewer than a whopping 630 open source projects for this year’s Summer of Code. The number is up from last year’s 410 projects. Google’s Summer of Code initiative provides sponsorship funding for students to work at mentoring open source projects over the summer. Chris DiBona, open source […]

Open Source is changing the way that Gartner Group measures the application development market. The big loser as a result may well be proprietary Java application development tools. Laurie F. Wurster, research director at Gartner Research, explained that Gartner has undergone a major change in methodology. “Previous to this year we counted new license revenue,” […]

StreamCast Networks, owner of the Morpheus peer-to-peer (P2P) software, is suing eBay and 21 others for allegedly infringing on its rights among other claims. Morpheus’ master is seeking a worldwide injunction on the marketing and sale of Skype products and services in addition to billions of dollars in unspecified damages. The suit is an extension […]

They waited in IRC. They waited by their inboxes. They waited for Google to accept them. And nearly 1,800 applicants of Google’s Summer of Code 2006 finally got word their projects were accepted. Then came the rude awakening. “We sent about 1,800 e-mails that said that people were accepted who in fact were not,” Google’s […]