News (11)

Gates is gone but the fight goes on: Stallman

To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers. Read more »

Rift divides FOSS community, says Linux body

Linux Australia's immediate past president believes moderate open source developers are being pushed into "a refugee situation" between the 'free software' and 'commercial' hardliners. Read more »

AU government commissions open source procurement guide

The federal government has commissioned a sourcing guide designed to give departments and agencies an improved understanding of the procurement processes involved for open source software and solutions. Read more »

Open source adoption ramps up

Eighty five percent of companies are already using open source software, with most of the remaining 15 per cent expecting to do so within the next year, according to analysts at Gartner. Read more »

Yahoo to chop at least 1,400 jobs

Yahoo yesterday in the US reported a 64 per cent drop in net income for the third quarter, issued cautions about a weakening advertising market, and confirmed that layoffs were indeed on the way. Read more »

Sun sheds light on its open-source future

Simon Phipps, Sun UK's chief open-source officer, surveys the open-source landscape and reaffirms his company's commitment to open-software development. Read more »

Ignore 'fads' when examining OSS: Govt

Federal government agencies must disregard any "novelty value" when assessing open-source software, and use the same metrics as with other ICT solutions, according to a new government procurement guide. Read more »

SQL Server 2005 gets second service pack

Microsoft has released a second free service pack -- a large, recommended update -- for its popular SQL Server 2005 database application. Read more »

Newest GPL draft leaves Novell in the clear

The Free Software Foundation released the final draft of an updated General Public License late last week, a draft that prohibits future deals similar to the Microsoft-Novell patent pact but lets that one go ahead. Read more »

South Australian companies miss out on outsourcing contracts

Initiatives designed to teach small local IT providers how to engage with the South Australian government have been described as nothing more than pre-election sweeteners. Read more »

Features (7)

Special report: Linux.conf 2005

Builder AU will be covering the latest news, interviews and blogs from Linux.conf.au 2005 live in this special report from Canberra. Read more »

Perceiving the true potential of technology

Robin Christopherson, head of accessibility at AbilityNet, says he owes everything to the freedom technology has provided Read more »

In defence of proprietary software

Open source advocates believe that emerging governments should give preferential treatment to their products. But why shut out proprietary software? It's profitable, attracts investment and creates jobs. Read more »

What the open source industry stands for

I read Iain Ferguson's "Linux: Time to take the next step" piece recently and thought he had captured the zeitgeist of the Linux industry market well: if we were still in 1998. Read more »

Insights into Linux Web site deployment

Peter Harrison, author of the Linux Quick Fix Notebook, discusses the Web site hosting decision making process and shares his thoughts concerning the future of Linux. Read more »

Sun's Hassell: Straight to the source

Managing Director of Sun Microsoystems Australasia Jim Hassell talks about future directions for the company in the face of tough markets and increased competition. Read more »

Security and open source software: An analysis.

This article from Australian technology commentator Con Zymaris examines the security threat of open source software. Read more »

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  • Staff Crying, mooning and leaving

    In this week's roundup we see that continuous whining can get results, Linux users get 64-bit Flash and Moonlight previews, the latest in the Yahoo/Microsoft relationship and Senator Conroy ducks and weave in Senate Question Time. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Brendon Chase Sun eye Web developers with Netbeans 6.5

    Despite the recent employment axe hitting Sun the company has pushed out a new release of its Netbeans open source IDE with an eye to appeal more to Web developers. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

  • Renai LeMay BarCamp buzz: Let the hacking continue

    Attending last weekend's BarCamp in Sydney, it was hard to escape the conclusion that a certain "dot-com bust" flavour had seeped into the kool aid previously being drunk by Australia's web 2.0 and early stage start-up sector. Read more »

    -- posted by Renai LeMay

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