Sean Michael Kerner

High availability clustering technology has long been the domain of expensive, proprietary systems. Sun Microsystems (Quote) may well be changing that; the systems vendor will open source its Open HA (High Availability) Cluster code to Sun’s OpenSolaris community in stages over the next 18 months. “The intention is to foster an open community, including the ability […]

After nearly 16 years of use, the GPL — the cornerstone license of the Free Software Movement — has officially been revised. GPL version 3 (GPLv3) was released today by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), capping a turbulent 18-month period of debate and discussion. On a webcast from FSF’s headquarters in Boston, FSF founder Richard […]

The official final release of the GPL is is expected today and it’s possible that over 5,500 projects could be migrating to it in very quickly. Software vendor Palamida, which develops an application that is used to identify licenses and potential licensing issues, estimates that at least 5,509 projects have indicated an intention to move […]

I can still remember the day two years ago when one of my fellow editors at internetnews.com told me he heard that the GPL version 2 (define)was going to be revised. I rebuked him, noting that nothing would change with the GPL — so long as the SCO litigation over alleged copyright infringement in the […]

Nearly seven months after it bought security firm Ironport for $830 million, Cisco (Quote)is leveraging the investment into a new strategic direction. Ironport’s anti-spam, security software and appliance technologies are now part of the new Cisco Self Defending Network 3.0 platform, which integrates a wide range of security products from the networking vendor. “What we’re […]

Reporter’s Notebook: Convergence. Triple Play. IP. Ethernet. After four days at NXTcomm in Chicago, I probably heard each of those words 1,000 times or more. Make no mistake about it, as I had figured before the show even began, NXTcomm 2007 was, indeed, all about convergence, what that means and how to do it. The […]

CHICAGO — Convergence has been a key IT buzzword for years. For Alcatel-Lucent it means a few different things, because it applies to both IT convergence, as well as the convergence of the two companies. In a meeting with press and analysts at NXTcomm here, Cindy Christy, president of Alcatel-Lucent North America, outlined how her […]

Government users, it’s time to trust Linux vendor Red Hat (Quote). After over a year and a half of effort, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 has now achieved the Evaluation Assurance Level 4 (EAL 4+) for Labeled Security Protection Profile (LSPP), Controlled Access Protection Profile (CAPP), and Role-Based Access Control Protection Profile (RBAC). The new […]

Novell and its former partner Open-Xchange are updating their collaboration offers in an effort to make their respective products more feature rich for users. For Open-Xchange it’s an update to its flagship Open-Xchange Server 5, though it’s not a full release. “This release was sort of a combination between a service pack and a maintenance […]

Mobile Linux growth is accelerating, but mobile Linux standards have not kept pace until now. The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum is finally ready to announce its 1.0 specification, or at least part of it. The first version of LiPS 1.0 includes the LiPS Reference Model, Address Book and Voice Call Enabler, and User Interface […]