Should MS open-source Windows?
The Wall Street Journal is calling on Microsoft to open-source Windows, reports IT Business Edge.
It asks the question: Why can't Windows be proprietary, for-profit and copy-protected - while at the same time be open for user control and inspection? If Windows were a car, you'd never be able to open the hood and see what was underneath.
Windows is Microsoft's flagship product. The company has been so resistant to open source in the past, it would take an awful lot before its leaders would give in, particularly on Windows.
Open source 'not a threat'
A group of computer manufacturers, distributors and dealers in the country believe the emergence of the open source software technology is not a threat to the industry, says Sunstar.
Instead, the group considers open source technology as a source of "grassroots ideas".
"Expertise in the open source software technology is still very limited," said Wesley Ngo, director of the Computer Manufacturers, Distributors and Dealers Association of the Philippines.
Delta Dental gets open source
Pentaho, a start-up that develops open source business intelligence software, has signed up Delta Dental of Virginia as a customer, winning the business from SAP's Business Objects. It's the latest addition to a growing list of medium to large businesses trying out Pentaho's open source BI product, reports Information Week.
Delta Dental of Virginia, a provider of employee dental benefits programmes with $320 million in annual revenue, says it's using Pentaho's extract, transform, and load, or ETL, and reporting tools.
The software provides its clients with historical reports to facilitate their access to such things as claims information and enrolment data. Systems used for the effort include anOracle Linux server, a JBoss Application Server, and an Oracle 10g database.
Facebook goes open source
After watching Web developers build 24 000 applications through the Facebook platform since its opening in May 2007, the social network decided to build upon this rapid increase by releasing the platform code on 2 June under an open source licence, says eWeek.
In the effort, dubbed Facebook Open Platform, Facebook is open-sourcing most of the code that runs Facebook Platform. This includes the REST API, FBML parser, FQL parser, and FBJS sanitiser and proxy, along with implementations of many of the popular coding methods and tags.
The move follows the OpenSocial initiative by Google, MySpace and others to release open source APIs that let programmers build hooks into any participating Web site.
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