If you have ever thought to yourself, "gee, I'm not a programmer, and I can barely afford my daily bread, how can I help an open source project," here is your answer. Download this buggy code and report on what's wrong so it can be made right.

Anyone seeking a case study of how a proprietary software company can "embrace and extend" itself into the open source world should stop thinking Microsoft and start thinking Blackboard.

CoPress, the brainchild of former University of Oregon editor Daniel Bachhuber, aims to build a vertical of college papers within the CMS market, with managed hosting and training.

When I was invited to speak at the STS Forum in Kyoto in 2006, I thought it would be a good idea to write an extremely concise white paper-3 pages total-comparing and contrasting open source software and proprietary software. Since then I have been invited to speak about, defend, and expand upon that paper. Now it's time to give it an update. read more

The mission of the new mySQL Foundation would simply be to hold the code base together, to provide a central point for updates, QA and bug fixes, to run the "official" version of the code base and plot its future direction. To run the forge, in other words.

What should open source be doing in a car? What would you do that Sync isn't doing now? How should an open source community focused on automotive features be managed? And what features should be off-limits to the open source community?

Ubuntu 9.10 advances Canonical’s ambitious push into cloud computing — and the enterprise. Ubuntu is best known for its Linux desktop and there are several desktop improvements in this upgrade — including a faster boot and login and enhanced audio and and 3G broadband connectivity. But the spotlight is on the server side. Canonical claims the new edition [...]

Several years ago, we had the chance to visit a crocodile farm in Queensland, Australia. There were several highlights, not least the chance for the children to hold a crocodile - a very small one, of course, with its jaws taped shut. Even with one that small, the frisson of terror remained and the children all laughed nervously for the camera.read more

Combining open source and proprietary technology in the way Qualcomm wants to do, while legitimate, does threaten to maintain the vendor lock-in that open source is meant to fight. Just because you draw a picture does not mean the pig is really flying.

Reviews on the desktop version are negative, due to the fact you can't run multiple drives with the current code base.

Microsoft has made another play at interoperability with a key open source software offering. At Eclipse Summit Europe on Wednesday, the Redmond, Wash. software giant announced that it is working on four open source projects with two open source companies — Tasktop Technologies and Soyatec — to enable Eclipse users to develop on Windows 7 and [...]

Cut through the bureaucratese and you do have a remarkable turnaround in attitudes. Under the previous Administration contracting was the only way to go. Now officers are being allowed to try do it yourself solutions.

It's pretty clear that the programming of a few little features don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy software world.

The image that often comes to mind when I think of Black Duck is of Daffy and his friends flying across the sky when Elmer Fudd & Co. start blasting from down below. On the other hand lawyers and spies can also use Black Duck software, so security through obscurity may be a bad move.

A list of supported netbooks is available, but the company is suggesting you pack a thumb drive with its Ubuntu Netbook Remix when you go to the store, just to make sure. Should make Friday at Fry's fun.

Open source scored a victory at the White House this week with the government’s choice to switch to Drupal for whitehouse.gov. The U.S. government’s technology team announced that it had selected the open source content management system to make http://www.whitehouse.gov more transparent to consumers and developers. This will allow programmers to view, inspect and fix the web [...]

You can't force the market. If you're selling something others are giving away they won't buy from you. The price you charge must be related to what everyone else charges. And if you try to make everyone else charge it's called collusion.

With code visibility, you and your vendors become partners in trying to make something work. The vendor can't over-promise, but you can't over-assume either. This may be one of main hidden reasons for IT failure, the two sides of the transaction not being on the same page.

Google is betting that carriers and manufacturers will play enough hands with it that it can gain some market share. Right now that looks like a pretty good bet. Microsoft is like a gambler with a fistful of dollars that can't find the game.