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Would You Date Microsoft? 247

Posted by Zonk from the i-will-refrain-from-comment dept.
teslatug writes "Channel9 has an interview with Bill Hilf of the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft. Hilf argues that the majority of companies advocate open source solely so that they can drive customers to their core business, which is not open source. He calls this his 'donut theory.' Hilf also sees RedHat in this model, with support being their core. He compares this to dating, where you have to offer your date value in order to entice them. In his view, Microsoft offers developers a platform where they can make money selling their software. The virtues of 'free as in freedom' and the value of open source to the desktop users are skirted, but he makes an interesting point about big businesses like IBM and Oracle."

Microsoft Won't Assert Web Services Patents 155

Posted by kdawson from the so-don't-sue-me dept.
Andy Updegrove writes, "Microsoft has just posted the text of a new promise not to assert its patents with respect to 35 listed Web Services standards. The promise is similar to the covenant not to assert patents that it issued last year with respect to its Office 2003 XML Reference Schema, with two important improvements intended to make it more clearly compatible with open source licensing. Those changes are to add an explicit promise not to assert any relevant patents against anyone in the distribution chain of a product, from the original vendor through to the end user; and to clarify that the promise covers a partial as well as a full implementation of a standard. It's all part of a recent wave of such pledges made by companies such as IBM, Nokia, and Oracle, and a significant shift in how Microsoft is dealing with open standards."

Pro MySQL 100

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Rob Lanphier writes "I'm sure there are plenty of people like myself who do a fair amount of programming against MySQL databases, and consider it a feature of the product that it's pretty easy to do without having to fuss much with the actual database. Still, it's nice to look at what goes on under the hood, even if smoke isn't pouring out from beneath it. Pro MySQL by Michael Kruckenberg and Jay Pipes provides a broad well-organized exploration of intermediate and advanced MySQL topics that is a satisfying overview of the database management system." Read the rest of Rob's review.

SQL Pocket Guide, Second Edition 50

Posted by samzenpus from the all-the-answers-in-your-pocket dept.
Graeme Williams writes "So many dimensions are folded into this compact book that it took me more than a few moments to see what I was looking at. In the space of 184 pages, SQL Pocket Guide, Second Edition documents, explains, illustrates and compares the most common SQL statements from Oracle (10g), DB2 (8.2), SQL Server (2005), MySQL (5.0) and PostgreSQL (8.1), with occasional notes on previous versions, and pointers to more material on the author's web site. The book bills itself as "A Guide to SQL Usage" and it has an ample amount of explanatory material in addition to syntax and examples." Read the rest of Graeme's review.

To Support, or Not Support Oracle? 64

Posted by Cliff from the oracle-devs-wanted dept.
knuckles79 wonders: "The suggestion to drop Oracle support has divided the OpenACS community. OpenACS is a toolkit for building community websites. It was derived from Ars Digita's ACS code base which originally supported Oracle. When Ars Digita went bust after the tech crash, the ACS code was released as open source, and a community of developers continued to maintain and extend the code base. Up until now, OpenACS has supported both PostgreSQL and Oracle. However, the only active development within the project supports PostgreSQL. Now, those with an interest in Oracle support are threatening to divide the community, as they want the community to continue to support Oracle, even though they themselves aren't actively contributing financial or development support for their favoured database. They have essentially been given a 'free ride' all this time. Should OpenACS continue to support Oracle, or drop it in favour of a full open source stack?"

Oracle 'Losing Patience' with XenSource, VMware 165

Posted by Zonk from the just-hug-and-make-up dept.
HiTech writes "eWeek has an article looking at Oracle's frustration with both XenSource and VMware over their reluctance to work together. The goal is to develop a single interface for virtualization solutions in the Linux kernel. Oracle's comments follow those by Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman at Oscon last week that XenSource and VMware were butting heads instead of working together to come up with a joint solution. Brian Byun, VMware's vice president of products and alliances, admits the company had been approached by a neutral third party for offline mediation to establish how best to make this happen. But Simon Crosby, the CTO for XenSource, rules out any mediation, saying he believes the two companies are committed to solving the real technical issues."

IT Reference Posters? 43

Posted by Cliff from the no-cubicle-should-be-without-one dept.
bighead314 asks: "Maybe I haven't had enough coffee, or my brain power has gone down while working through my lunch break, but I cannot seem to find a good source for getting command/syntax reference posters for our office. We are looking for some SQL, UML, Oracle 10, and other reference posters to plaster on the walls for quick reference. However, the search for a site/company that sells more than just one poster has yielded nothing. Anyone out there have some good links or know of places were these can be purchased without having to buy 10 accompanying SQL Server magazine subscriptions just for the insert?"

Do You Like Your Workflow or BPM Software? 58

Posted by Cliff
Dukhat asks: "I am really interested in firsthand experiences with these kinds of products and in unbiased reviews, since Google primarily gives me marketing information and vague overviews of how BPM is good for business. I have already looked at an earlier article on work-flow patterns, which gave me a few products to look at. I am trying to compile a short list of work-flow and BPM software to evaluate, but I am having a hard time determining which products are even worth evaluating. The situation is worsened by the fact that work-flow tools are often bundled with CRM or Business Intelligence packages. I am not dead set on using a big package, but I need to know more about their real world pros and cons before I can decide whether to build it myself instead. I am looking at both BPM and work-flow software, since some BPM software can also do work-flow, but it may be more worthwhile to just use a rules engine for automated processes and use a specialized work-flow tool." Dukhat has a fairly long list of software choices that he needs to whittle down. What packages would you recommend and why?

Oracle Fights EpicRealm Patents 56

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the always-squash-the-little-guy-first dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Oracle is now fighting EpicRealm's web patents after Safelite settled with EpicRealm, then asked Oracle to pay, as per their software license agreement. EpicRealm's patents are vague and 'describe a technique where a web site updates only part of a website instead of having to rebuild the entire page. That may look a lot like DHTML, but apparently it isn't the same.'"

Oracle to Offer RedHat Support? 223

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the declarations-of-war dept.
rs232 writes to tell us ITP is reporting that Oracle's Larry Ellison recently called Red Hat's ability to honor their support contracts effectively into question. Taking that claim one step further, Ellison claims that Oracle will soon start offering support for Red Hat Linux users. From the article: "The reason for this move, which Oracle executives later declined to provide any real detail on, is that Red Hat isn't doing a good enough job of providing that support itself, Ellison said. 'Red Hat is too small and does not do a very good job of supporting them [customers],' he said."

Why Oracle Isn't Part of the OSDL 193

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the breaking-it-down dept.
darthcamaro writes "Some may wonder why OSDL, the self-proclaimed center of gravity for the Linux Universe and employer of Linus Torvalds, does not include Oracle as a member. Well, in a recent interview Wim Coekaerts, Director of Linux Engineering at Oracle has spelled it out in no uncertain terms. From the article: 'The thing that was really kind of revolting is that OSDL goes out and basically says that they represent the Linux community while there is no direct feedback line back to the community.'"

Why Ballmer Should Leave Microsoft 341

Posted by Zonk from the insert-cheap-chair-throwing-joke-here dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the announcement of Bill Gates' departure from the top spot at Microsoft, CNN Money is carrying an article arguing that Steve Ballmer should step down as well." From the article: "Since Gates stepped down as CEO in 2000 in favor of Ballmer, the company has floundered technically and strategically. As the company's chairman, chief software architect and supposed visionary, Gates deserves blame for missing the wave of Web-based software that has propelled Google and Yahoo. But Ballmer has made gaffes of his own in his longtime role as head of the company's business side. They include an undistinguished push into business applications to compete with Oracle, financial maneuvers that have failed to stir the stock - which has slumped 16 percent so far this year - and continuing antitrust problems in the United States and Europe."

A Database for the Office? 156

Posted by Cliff from the something-to-start-small-and-build-on dept.
travellerjohn asks: "I work in a small company (200 people in 7 offices), where the staff uses Microsoft Access to create various databases. Most of the time they lose interest before the databases become complex or important enough to warrant the IT department getting involved. However, from time to time, someone turns up at our door looking for help with their pet project, often starting with statements like 'it should work over the intranet' or questions like 'why can't it store documents and pictures?' or 'how do I control user access?' When we sit them down and explain how much it will cost to rewrite their database in PHP/VB/JSP, or whatever we sound unhelpful and expensive. What database tool does Slashdot recommend I provide our staff? It has got to be easy to use, web enabled, capable of storing documents and pictures and offer user level security. We have tried Sharepoint with some success but that is pretty limited, too, and I have looked at Oracle Application Express. Open source would be good, but I would pay for the right product. Any suggestions?"

User Mode Linux 77

Posted by samzenpus from the penguin-power dept.
Ravi writes "There is commercial grade software like VMware (which does full virtualization) as opposed to open source approaches like Xen which do partial virtualization. But besides these two, there is a very interesting piece of software called User Mode Linux (UML), which can be used to create virtual Linux machines within a Linux computer. Unique to UML is that support for it has been incorporated into the mainstream Linux kernel tree and it is now a fully supported part of the official Linux kernel. On this note, UML gains a lot of significance. UML has been created and maintained by Jeff Dike, who is known throughout the Linux technical community. And when someone who has created a popular software decides to author a book on the subject, then that book is sure to hold a lot of promise. So when I came across the book titled User Mode Linux, authored by Dike under Bruce Perens' Open Source Series, I just couldn't resist getting my hands on it." Read on for the rest of Ravi's review.

What is Your Backup Policy? 124

Posted by Cliff from the never-go-too-long-without-one dept.
higuita asks: "A few days ago, I was asked to check our backups policy, how they are being applied and to try to make it safer and more useful. Being new to the company, I started to check what is being done right now and found several problems. Since I don't have much experience with enterprise backups, what are the most used backup policies, software and global ideas about this issue? We have less than 1000 workstations (Windows and Macs), about 20 Oracle and Exchange servers (split between Windows, Solaris, and Linux), and it all needs to be backed up. Right now, we use the HP data protector with several tapes, where most things have a weekly full backup and daily incremental backups, and that most full backups are archived permanently in a safe we have for this purpose. We also have off-site storage for backups, as well. What practices and policies do Slashdot users implement for backups they perform at their office (home backups practices I am not interested in)?"

Open Source Game Development 147

Posted by samzenpus from the free-games dept.
Boudewijn Rempt writes "Amazon's recommendation system recommended me "Open Source Game Development: Qt Games for KDE, PDA's and Windows" when I was looking for an introduction to OpenGL. While it does contain two chapters on OpenGL, there's much, much more. It's not just an introduction to writing open source games, it's a complete introduction to participating in open source projects like KDE." Read the rest of Boudewijn's review.

Oracle Exec Strikes Out At 'Patch' Mentality 264

Posted by Zonk from the this-post-to-be-patched-later dept.
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net has an article up discussing comments by Oracle's Chief Security Officer railing against the culture of patching that exists in the software industry." From the article: "Things are so bad in the software business that it has become 'a national security issue,' with regulation of the industry currently on the agenda, she said. 'I did an informal poll recently of chief security officers on the CSO Council, and a lot of them said they really thought the industry should be regulated,' she said, referring to the security think tank."

Oracle Unveils New Open Source BerkeleyDB Release 103

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the time-for-first-impressions dept.
Mark Brunelli writes to tell us that Oracle has released the newest version of the open source Oracle BerkeleyDB Java Edition. From the article: "The new release of the Java embeddable database is the third to come out in three years and the first new version to come out of Sleepycat Software since Oracle purchased the open source stalwart back in February. Rex Wang, Oracle's vice president of embedded systems and a former vice president of marketing at Sleepycat, said the latest release lets Java developers take advantage of a new Persistence application programming interface (API) that provides greater flexibility and new performance optimizations that enable applications to run faster."

Microsoft Flirts with Open Source 163

Posted by Zonk from the don't-be-coy dept.
Vin Daryl writes "ZDNet reports on Microsoft's love-hate relationship with open-source software." From the article: "The interoperability lab focuses on getting products from open-source ISVs such as JBoss, to work on the Microsoft platform, he said. 'For example, we often collaborate with JBoss, but in certain areas we might compete with them. It's competition and cooperation,' Hilf explained. 'Over time, as you see the open-source marketplace maturing and becoming more commercial, I think you'll see more of that kind of dynamics. It's not something that's unique to Microsoft,' he said, adding that IBM and Oracle also compete, and at the same time, cooperate with open-source vendors. "

Oracle VP Robert Shrimp on Enterprise Search 11

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the irrational-hatred-of-file-folders dept.
garzpacho writes "BusinessWeek interviews Robert Shrimp on the enterprise search market. Shrimp talks about about the importance of corporate search, addresses what some claim is Oracle's lateness to the arena and takes a few shots at competitors: 'Our main competition is the filing cabinet...The manila file folder is the ultimate enemy.'"

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