open source - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• Why Android users are such a happy lot

  Smartphone users tend to hold strong opinions about the various mobile platforms out there, often displaying feverish loyalty to the one they use and outright disdain for all others.

• ClamAV promises free antivirus app for businesses

  Most of us don't like paying for antivirus (AV) software, but at least home users can rely on one of the free options, such as Microsoft Security Essentials, avast!, or AVG Free.

• Is Android less secure than iPhone? Um, no.

  One can only hope that security software provider Trend Micro saw a nice sales boost after the proclamation of its chairman earlier this week that Android phones are more vulnerable to hacking than iPhones are. If it didn't, those blatantly self-serving statements were made for nothing.

• For an old or slow PC, try Puppy Linux 5.2

  There's no doubt Canonical's popular Ubuntu Linux distribution gets the majority of attention in the Linux world these days, but there are myriad others equally worthy of consideration.

• 10 new open source projects to watch

  One of the most exciting things about open-source software is the sheer diversity of projects that are always under way. Aiming to recognize some of the most promising of those projects, Black Duck Software on Friday announced its 2010 open-source "Rookies of the Year" list.

• Why Apple’s iPhone Will 'Drown in a Sea of Androids'

  Google's Android mobile platform may still follow Apple's iPhone in the smartphone race, according to fresh Nielsen data released Monday, but that advantage may not last long.

• 5 things Linux does better than Mac OS X

  Were it not for Windows' long-standing installed base and overwhelming market dominance, it seems unlikely that anyone would argue seriously for the merit of the operating system, plagued as it is by high prices, security problems and vendor lock-in.

• Chrome patches show the power of open source--and Google

  Google's patching of vulnerabilities in its open source Chrome Web browser last week wasn't so much notable in itself; Microsoft, to be sure, is forever issuing patches for the many bugs that afflict its products.

• 11 free Linux apps your business needs now

  Despite the wealth of free applications out there, many small business owners continue to spend an inordinate amount of their all-too-scarce resources on software.

• What Android's impressive growth means for you

  Rather than bore you with an opening line about how Android phones outsold the iPhone last quarter, I'm going to begin with an anecdote:

• First look: Firefox 4 Beta 1 shines on HTML5

  While it's impossible to sum up the thousands of enhancements and bug fixes both big and small, the Firefox 4 beta version brings the browser that much closer to taking over everything on the desktop. There are fewer reasons for anyone to interact with an extra plug-in or the operating system. Remember when people cared about whether a machine was Windows or Mac or a Commodore 64? Remember when software needed to be written in native code? Those days are fading away quickly as the browser is more able than ever before to deliver most of the content we might want.

• Eclipse: Developers growing more fond of desktop Linux

  Developers in the Eclipse open source community are becoming more inclined to use Linux as their primary desktop operating system, according to a report released Monday by the Eclipse Foundation that gauges sentiments on software development issues.

• Open-source software's hidden snags

  When CIO Daniel Chan was first prompted to use open-source software, cost savings weren't top of mind.

• Horde open source groupware preps version 4 release

  The Horde open source messaging and groupware project is gearing up for the first major release of its application suite and development environment in years with version 4 due in mid-2010.

• Open source helps Facebook achieve massive app scalability

  People all over the world spend a total of eight billion minutes a day on Facebook. Some 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared every week, 400 billion Web pages are viewed every month and the site logs a staggering 25TB of data every day. David Recordon, senior open programs manager at Facebook, talks about how the social networking giant uses open source tools to achieve its massive app scalablilty.