Linux/Open Source News

Dell has taken the wraps off a new mini-notebook PC squarely aimed at U.S. consumers. Called the Inspiron Mini 9, the PC maker's first offering in the so-called netbook category sports an 8.9-inch LED screen with a resolution of 1024x600 pixels.

Microsoft hasn't publicly commented on Google's new Chrome browser, but Redmond's Internet Explorer 8 team may wind up echoing Mozilla's makers: We're not worried.

San Francisco - They're back! Just when you thought the "browser wars" were over, with the two camps ??? Microsoft and Mozilla.org ??? settling in for a kind of intransigent d??tente, along comes Google to stir things up all over again. Clearly, Google is unhappy with the current state of browser geopolitics and feels it needs to roll its own in order to ensure a robust base for its myriad hosted applications (that is, Gmail, Google Docs, and so on).

Google on Tuesday released the beta version of its new open-source Chrome Web browser. Google executives gave the press a tour, and addressed the first questions of how it will compete with more established offerings.

Will Google Chrome sink Firefox? Not exactly, according to Mozilla chief executive John Lilly.

Intel Corp. has acquired Opened Hand, a London-based company which specializes in mobile Linux development and services.

San Francisco - A decade ago, European countries leapt out of the gate to take the lead in the radical open source movement -- none more so than France -- and left U.S. developers in the proverbial dust. Through policies and high-profile projects, the French Republic for years has been advocating for all open source all the time, in government and education.

San Francisco - An open-source technology has been launched to help developers using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 find duplicated code in their software projects.

Mozilla Labs has rolled out an experimental Firefox plug-in that promises to streamline the way Web surfers manage the mountains of information online. Called Ubiquity, the proof-of-concept prototype is an experiment with two parts -- it's both an interface and a development platform, notes the plug-in's developer, Aza Raskin.

Mozilla Labs on Tuesday introduced a language-based add-on for its Firefox browser that lets users insert data into e-mails or navigate the Web without switching back and forth between multiple windows.

San Francisco - The Linux Foundation on Wednesday plans to announce an event enabling Linux users to interact with the Linux community, including high-level maintainers and developers.

The Mozilla Foundation is on the verge of adopting a new software-programming technique that promises to dramatically improve the speeds at which browsers interact with the Web. The first step, the nonprofit organization said, will be to optimize the way that JavaScript runs in Firefox 3.1 -- the next incremental update to Mozilla's popular open-source browser.

San Francisco - Standardization efforts for the next version of JavaScript have taken a sharp turn this month, with some key changes in the Web scripting technology's direction. JavaScript creator Brendan Eich, CTO of Mozilla, has helped forge a consensus on how to proceed with the direction for JavaScript's improvements. "JavaScript was sitting still. It was stagnant," he says.

San Francisco - Mainsoft, which enables developers to leverage Microsoft Windows development skills to build applications for other platforms, on Monday is introducing updates to development products for Java, Linux, and Unix, adding support for Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 IDE.

SEATTLE--Imagine your laptop is stolen.

San Francisco - Mozilla this week is touting technology to boost performance of its JavaScript engine and Web applications.

On Friday, Mozilla announced a new component in Firefox that will significantly speed up the browser's JavaScript performance.

WALTHAM, Mass. - Microsoft Corp., expanding on an alliance with Novell Inc., has agreed to buy as much as $100 million more for subscription certificates for Novell's Linux products, Novell said Wednesday.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp plans to pay software maker Novell Inc up to $100 million in additional subscription fees due to strong demand for Novell's open-source Linux software that partners with Microsoft's proprietary Windows software.

San Francisco - Microsoft on Wednesday is expanding its agreement to supply Linux support certificates from Novell, which originally was part of a controversial arrangement set in late 2006.

A new beta software development kit is out for Android, the open-source mobile operating system backed by Google. Version 0.9 of the SDK was announced Monday on the Android Developers Blog.

San Francisco - Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, has joined the Linux Foundation, the foundation said Monday.

Commercial software developers, listen up: If you think open source is a free toolkit from which you can borrow at will, take a good look at Wednesday's legal ruling. A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in New York City, where many intellectual-property cases are heard, overturned a Northern California court decision in Jacobsen v. Katzer, a pivotal case in open-source and Creative Commons law.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. federal appeals court has ruled that the holder of a copyright to a computer programming code made available for free public download can enforce an "open-source" copyright license to control future use of the work.

The open source community – and tech-savvy model railroad enthusiasts – were handed a victory Wednesday when an appeals court ruled that people who use open source content can be found guilty of copyright infringement if they do not adhere to the license terms set out by the creator.

San Francisco - A beta release of the open source NetBeans 6.5 IDE is being offered by Sun Microsystems on Wednesday.

On this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I talk about the big story of this month--the Olympics.

According to a Web report, there may be some problems with integrating the Google-led open-source mobile platform Android into devices, delaying the release of an Android phone until early next year.

Microsoft, one of the biggest rivals to open-source programming, has begun funding the Apache Software Foundation, one of open-source software's biggest supporters.