An anonymous reader writes “Brian Aker has announced that Sun has open sourced the Netscape Enterprise Server under the BSD license. This is the evolution of the original server Netscape sold in the 90’s during the rise of the first bubble. Almost twenty years later, Apache’s original competitor is now made available for anyone to use under an open source license.”
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mldkfa writes “Recently I told a friend about OpenOffice and how it was a great alternative to the big name pay office suites. She went home and searched on Google for it and thought she found the website, filled typical registration information, and downloaded OpenOffice.org 3.0. The next time she opened her e-mail she found a request for 98 [Euro] for her 1-year subscription to OpenOffice.org 3.0 from the company that she downloaded it from. Apparently the EULA stated this cost and here in Germany she is required to pay up. So I thought I would ask Slashdot, should she pay? On the OpenOffice.org German website there is a warning of these schemes being legal. Shouldn’t Sun change the license of OpenOffice.org to protect their fans or are they doing this to protect someone else? It has really made me think about recommending it to any more friends.” Below, read Google’s translation of the warning; it wouldn’t be the first time that open source software has been lightly repackaged and sold in ways that should raise eyebrows among anyone familiar with the wide, free availability of the same apps.
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Linux and open source software are a key component in the underlying infrastructure of the finance industry, but the higher layers of the stack are still dominated by a multitude of proprietary, in-house solutions. A software startup called Marketcetera aims to change that with a new, open source platform for building automated trading systems.
heybus writes “Economist Dean Baker, best known for calling the housing bust and warning of the ensuing economic collapse, has just published his recommendations for how to allocate President-elect Obama’s estimated 0 billion economic stimulus plan. Among other things, Baker calls for juicing the economy with billion worth of government spending to support the development of free and open source software. Baker’s idea is similar to the New Deal federal arts and writers’ projects: the government would fund projects as long as they produce freely available code. In addition to employing programmers, ‘the savings [to consumers] in the United States alone could easily exceed the cost of supporting software development.'”
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For years now, the little blue “E” has been gracing the desktops of Windows users around the world (though many might say it’s doing just the opposite!). Internet Explorer, notorious for its many security holes and being slow to patch them, continues to be one of the top choices for web browsing…
The embattled SCO Group Inc. is proposing to auction off its core products and use proceeds to continue its controversial lawsuits over the alleged violations of its copyrights in Linux open-source software.
Got To Get Me A Git writes “Distributed verison control systems (DVCS) seem to be the next big thing for open source software development. Many projects have already adopted a DVCS and many others are in the process of migrating. There are a lot of major advantages to using a DVCS, but the task of migrating from one system to another appears to be a formidable challenge. The Perl Foundation’s recent switch to Git took over a year to execute. The GNOME project is planning its own migration strategy right now after discovering that a significant majority of the project’s developers favor Git. Perhaps some of the projects that are working on transitions from other mainstream version control systems can pool their resources and collaborate to make some standardized tools and migration best practices documentation. Does such a thing already exist? Are any folks out there in the Slashsphere working on migrating their own project or company to a DVCS? I’d appreciate some feedback from other readers about what works and what doesn’t.”
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Google has released an early developer preview of Chrome 2.0, the next major version of the company’s open source web browser. The new version has improved rendering, several impressive user interface enhancements, and preliminary support for Greasemonkey scripts.
Mono, an open source implementation of the .NET runtime, is being used to build games for the iPhone and Wii. Ars looks at how static compilation has made it possible for Mono applications to meet Apple’s requirements for inclusion in the App Store.
On Elpeleg writes “The Perl Foundation has announced they are switching their version control systems to git. According to the announcement, Perl 5 migration to git would allow the language development team to take advantage of git’s extensive offline and distributed version support. Git is open source and readily available to all Perl developers. Among other advantages, the announcement notes that git simplifies commits, producing fewer administrative overheads for integrating contributions. Git’s change analysis tools are also singled out for praise. The transformation from Perforce to git apparently took over a year. Sam Vilain of Catalyst IT ‘spent more than a year building custom tools to transform 21 years of Perl history into the first ever unified repository of every single change to Perl.’ The git repository incorporates historic snapshot releases and patch sets, which is frankly both cool and historically pleasing. Some of the patch sets were apparently recovered from old hard drives, notching up the geek satisfaction factor even more. Developers can download a copy of the current Perl 5 repository directly from the perl.org site, where the source is hosted.”
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