You are here: Home / Archives for open source community

Oracle drops OpenOffice from commercial software portfolio – IT News from V3.co.uk

April 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Oracle has announced it is dropping the OpenOffice application suite from its commercial software offerings, and handing the code to the open source community.

The company said in a statement that it would be concentrating its open source efforts on MySQL and Linux, where there was a broad base of corporate and government support. Oracle didn’t say if it would still be investing in OpenOffice going forward.

“Given the breadth of interest in free personal productivity applications and the rapid evolution of personal computing technologies, we believe the OpenOffice.org project would be best managed by an organization focused on serving that broad constituency on a non-commercial basis,” said Edward Screven, Oracle’s chief corporate architect.

“We intend to begin working immediately with community members to further the continued success of Open Office. Oracle will continue to strongly support the adoption of open standards-based document formats, such as the Open Document Format (ODF).”

via Oracle drops OpenOffice from commercial software portfolio – IT News from V3.co.uk.

Filed Under: Tech Bytes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Surprise Winner in Oracle v. Google: Microsoft – PCWorld

August 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Oracle’s suit against Google has one clear winner: Microsoft. With Google’s Android tied up in litigation, and Oracle becoming the latest villain in the open source community, Microsoft has a chance to make inroads in the mobile market and elsewhere.

Oracle is suing Google, claiming that Android infringes on Oracle copyrights and patents that are related to Java. Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement:

“In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement.”

Google begs to differ. Android doesn’t use Java in Android, but instead a Java compatible technology called Dalvik. Google claims the Oracle suit is “baseless,” and will fight it.

No matter what happens with the suit, though, it hurts Google, and helps Microsoft at a time when Microsoft is particularly vulnerable in mobile. Android use has skyrocketed, jumping to 17.2% market share today compared to 1.8% a year ago. Meanwhile, Windows Mobile has become practically a footnote in mobile, dropping to 5% of the market.

Android’s success has been fueled by the large number of phone makers building smartphones based on it. Those phone makers, though, may be scared away by this suit. IDC analyst Al Hilwa told Computerworld:

via Surprise Winner in Oracle v. Google: Microsoft – PCWorld.

Filed Under: Tech Bytes Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Department of Defense (DoD) Memo Highlights Strategic Advantages of Open Source

October 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

With the current U.S. administration being tech-savvy and promising transparency, many in the open source community have been hoping to get more visibility and traction in the government’s procurement cycles.

It looks like the U.S. Department of Defense might have noticed — or at least has decided to catch up with other government organizations around the globe — as they make it easier for their staff to make use of open source. A recently released memo has been cause for some FOSS community jubilation.

DoD Memo Clarifies Open Source Policies

A widely-distributed memo released by David Wennergren, Deputy CIO of the U.S. Department of Defense offers clarification on the use and development of open source software within the DoD. The memo begins by briefly defining open source and explains that — as we all knew — “there are many OSS [open source software] programs in operational use by the Department today, in both classified and unclassified environments.”

via Department of Defense (DoD) Memo Highlights Strategic Advantages of Open Source.

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,