Sean Michael Kerner

Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) announced today that it had found 283 issued, but not yet court-validated, software patents in the Linux kernel. The findings are the result of a thorough Linux patent review sponsored by OSRM, a firm that provides risk mitigation and insurance offerings to the open source community. The review however did […]

According to new research published by Evans Data this week, a significant majority of Linux servers have never been infected with a virus and have never been compromised by a malicious attack. A word of caution though: The results come from a July survey of only 500 Linux developers. In that survey, 78 percent of […]

For many developers, there’s usually more than one dynamic language that they use to do their jobs. It’s also ActiveState’s job with its latest IDE release for professional developers using open source dynamic languages, Komodo 3.0. Dynamic languages such as Perl, PHP, Python , Tcl and XSLT are all part of the Komodo IDE, which […]

First came MSNbot, Microsoft’s Web-spidering content bot that is part of its new MSN search initiative. Now, MSN is powering its media partner MSNBC’s beta test of Newsbot, a customized search-driven news service. MSN’s Newsbot service for MSNBC (a television and online joint venture of NBC and Microsoft) gathers stories from more than 4,800 news […]

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider Voiceglo said today it has closed a deal to distribute its Web-based telephone service through the eDonkey peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Calls between users of the eDonkey network will be free. Through upgraded calling plans, customers can make or receive calls outside of […]

Security has overtaken cost cutting as the top concern of IT managers with more than 75 percent of those polled in a new IDC study rating security as a very or extremely significant challenge. According to IDC, the heightened level of security as a top concern has also had a corollary effect on IT security […]

Members of the Sun Microsystems-led Unified Testing Initiative (UTI) now have GeoTrust in their corner. GeoTrust, arguably the world’s second largest certificate authority, said it would provide digital signing services for the Java Verified program on J2ME-enabled devices . A cooperative effort of Sun as well as mobile device manufacturers Motorola, Nokia, Siemens, and Sony […]

In the world of open source programming languages, few have had the success that Perl has enjoyed for the past 17 years. This week, the Perl 5 Porters, the group responsible for maintenance and development of Perl, released the latest version, Perl 5.8.5. “Perl 5.8.5 implements a number of minor bug fixes, and provides improvements […]

At its Shanghai OpenWorld conference Tuesday, Oracle announced that it will speed adoption of Linux in the Asian market by bumping Asianux to its world-class Linux support program. Oracle also announced that it is now fully certified on the Asian Linux platform. The certification means that Asianux users can receive joint technical support on the […]

Hot on the heals of the official release of PHP5 last week, Zend Technologies, the corporate backer of the open source scripting language, has launched the latest versions of its flagship Zend Studio and Zend Performance Suite products. The latest tools are part of the company’s goals and role in the evolution of the open […]

It’s all over. The Microsoft vs. Lindows saga reached a stunning conclusion with the joint announcement of a worldwide settlement Monday. The agreement involves the Lindows name itself as well as the usage of copyrighted Windows Media files that are currently shipping with their Linux distribution. Microsoft will pay $20 million to Lindows to give […]

No one is ever particularly happy when earnings need to be restated, especially in the litigious United States. On Tuesday, Linux vendor Red Hat on the advice of its auditor