Sun SPOT technology set for open source, Jan 20, 2008

Sun is expected to announce next week that it will make the Sun SPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) device platform available via open source, but a user expressed concerns about Sun's commitment to the technology.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds, in an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation Tuesday, stressed that version 2 of the GPL (GNU General Public License) still makes the most sense for the Linux kernel over the newer GPL version 3.

The growing prominence of Linux in China is resulting in an industry event to take place there in February, co-sponsored by the Linux Foundation and Chinese OSS Promotion Union, the foundation announced Monday.

Developers of the Python programming language are working concurrently on two upgrades to the core platform, both to arrive in 2008, representatives of Python said Wednesday.

With an incremental update to its Solaris 10 OS, Sun is extending the platform's virtualization capabilities to accommodate Linux and Solaris on the same computer.

A call by Novell's CEO for a standardized way to certify Linux applications Wednesday was subsequently greeted with skepticism by a high-ranking official at rival Linux distributor Red Hat.

"We attribute [the decline] largely to the increase in developers beginning to target Linux and different Linux [distributions]. Both Novell and Red Hat are the two dominant ones right now," said John Andrews, the CEO of Evans Data.

Developers of Moonlight, a Linux client version of Microsoft's new Silverlight multimedia technology, are closing in on feature-completeness, a leader of the project said on Monday.

Sun has unveiled compiler and tool technologies that work on multicore chip architectures and extend to application development on Linux.

Justin Steinman, Novell director of product marketing for Linux and open source, has dismissed Microsoft’s claims that there are infringements of Microsoft intellectual property, in the Linux operating system.

Oracle's venture into the Linux market was called "a bit disingenuous" by a Red Hat executive speaking at the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, Calif. on Tuesday.

"If Microsoft forces us to make a choice of Vista or Linux, they might just be unpleasantly surprised as to the choice many of us will make,"

Open Source Java opens up opportunities on Linux as well as in the desktop and mobile spaces

PHP 5.2, the latest version of the popular open source scripting language, is set to be released this Thursday, Zend Technologies Co-Founder Andi Gutmans said on Tuesday.

Sun Microsystems executives led by Rich Green, executive vice president of Software, are slated next Monday evening to provide an update on plans to offer Java in an open source format.

Microsoft is not viewed as an open source proponent, but a key executive said the company recognised its benefit and was becoming more open itself.

Expect the open-sourcing of the Java programming language to be done in incremental steps, with some pieces available by next June -- but not the entire platform, Robert Brewin, co-CTO of Sun Microsystems' software group, said Monday afternoon.

At a recent panel discussion, leaders from free software vendors talked about the effect the widespread adoption of non-proprietary applications is having

Power in computing has shifted from proprietary, Microsoft APIs to URLs on the Web and content provision, Google Vice President Adam Bosworth said during the Zend/PHP Conference & Expo on Friday.

Oracle and PHP tools maker Zend Technologies on Monday will announce plans to enhance open source PHP development on Oracle databases via a free package called Zend Core for Oracle.