Chris Preimesberger

BURLINGAME, Calif.—An increasing number of next-generation business and social-networking Web applications over the next few years will be originating from their users, rather than from software companies, an IBM executive told the audience at the Zend PHP Conference and Expo Wednesday. Not only will the applications be conceptualized by non-technical people, they will be built […]

Oracle Corp. on Tuesday released its quarterly Critical Patch Update, closing 85 security vulnerabilities with 23 patches in its databases, servers and enterprise applications. Oracle describes “critical patch update” as “a collection of patches for multiple security vulnerabilities. It also includes non-security fixes that are required (because of interdependencies) by those security patches.” Seven of […]

GroundWork Open Source Solutions Inc., an IT operations management software maker, Monday announced GroundWork Monitor 4, a new release of its end-to-end, open source-based IT monitoring package. Monitor 4 is an enterprise-ready IT system monitor built on open source tools such as Nagios, Jetspeed and MySQL. “Most current IT monitoring software overloads users with unnecessary […]

The open source software industry gained a new government lobby Friday with the launch of the National Center for Open Source Policy and Research, introduced during a presentation at the Government Open Source Conference in Portland, Ore. The National Center is a non-profit organization promoting the use of open source software solutions within government IT […]

Apple Computer Inc. Friday juggled two senior management positions, promoting Tim Cook to chief operating officer and Tony Fadell to senior vice president of the iPod division. Cook, 44, who has served Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple as executive vice president of worldwide sales and operations for three years, will continue to report to CEO Steve Jobs. […]

Intentionally or not, Linspire Inc. may be trying to become the “Education Linux” distribution. The San Diego-based desktop Linux software maker, formerly known as Lindows, Thursday launched a new, low-cost licensing program for schools who wish to install a Linux desktop operating system as an alternative to the more expensive Microsoft Windows operating system. Through […]

Enterprise Linux software maker Red Hat Inc. Thursday launched a new security certification program for IT managers and Linux sysadmins and developers, Red Hat Certified Security Specialist. It is the first enterprise Linux certification program of its kind, the company said. Red Hat has long had RHCE (Certified Engineer) and RHCA (Certified Architect) programs in […]

Although OpenOffice.org had planned to release the final 2.0 version of its open-source office suite on Oct. 13—the fifth anniversary of the founding of the organization—the community has decided to hold off due to a “show-stopping” problem with the software, community members said Wednesday. Instead, OpenOffice.org will make available a third release candidate, probably by […]

OpenSSL.org Project on Tuesday released a software update to fix a flaw in all previously released versions of OpenSSL—up to versions 0.9.7h and 0.9.8a—that could allow hackers to compromise ostensibly secure Web servers. The vulnerability could allow a hacker to force an OpenSSL-enabled site to use the outdated—and potentially insecure—SSL version 2.0 protocol. A number […]

Enterprise Linux software maker Red Hat Inc. Tuesday announced that it has appointed Brian Stevens as its new chief technology officer and vice president of engineering. Stevens formerly served the Raleigh, N.C., company as vice president of operating system, storage and clustering development, and has spent the past four years leading Red Hats enterprise strategy. […]

Emboldened by the state of Massachusetts decision last month to require the use of open-standard document formats in all state offices by Jan. 1, 2007, a group of open standards advocates Monday created a special interest group to promote the OpenDocument format. OpenDocument is an open-standards document format created by the Organization for the Advancement […]

Novell Inc. released a large amount of primary desktop-usage research—including more than 200 video clips of users bumbling their way through unfamiliar computer interfaces—to the software development community Monday, as part of a new program aimed at making Linux desktops a more comfortable fit for users. The company, based in Waltham, Mass., released the research […]