A Field Guide to Free Software Supporters, Jan 23, 2008

Hearing the terms "free software" or "open source," you might imagine that they referred to a single school of thought. Even "free and open source software" (FOSS) suggests only two different outlooks: Free software, which values political and philosophical freedom, and open source, whose main interest is enhanced software quality.

For more than a year now, Microsoft and Novell have appeared to be best buddies. While it is true that two former enemies are now on good terms, they'd never agreed to settle one issue: Novell's lawsuit against Microsoft for illegally crushing WordPerfect.

IBM opens the door for Linux-based servers and desktops with a new Lotus Notes and Symphony bundle for SUSE, Red Hat and Ubuntu Linux.

Hewlett-Packard has launched the FOSSology Project, a tool for tracking and monitoring the use of free and open-source software within an IT environment.

With Linux on the desktop going from a slow crawl to verging on an explosion, many have toiled with the question: How do we make this happen faster? A well-known Austin-based Linux Advocate thinks he has the answer.

Sun Microsystems has purchased MySQL and released Java under the GPL. Chief executive Jonathan Schwartz has also speculated that there could be a future release of Solaris under the GPL, but what are the implications of such a move.

A mass attack ongoing for the past month against Linux Apache Web servers has become increasingly successful because its break-in method makes use of an automated password and installation process, according to a security researcher monitoring its progress.

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