Red Hat releases Catalyst programme

Red Hat is combining its portfolio of open source software with applications from third-party independent software vendors and selling the bundles to customers through the channel under a programme unveiled this week, reports Channel Web.

The move is designed to broaden the market for Red Hat software by developing more complete solutions for midsize companies, said Roger Egan, vice-president of channel sales in North America.

Red Hat unveiled the Catalyst programme at the Red Hat Summit & JBoss World conference in Chicago last week.

European Union (EU) regulators has started an antitrust probe into US software maker Oracle's takeover of Sun Microsystems, saying they wanted to make sure Oracle was committed to developing Sun's rival open source database software, MySQL, states Associated Press.

EU approval is now the main stumbling block for the $7.4 billion deal which has already been cleared in the US by the Department of Justice.

The European Commission now has 90 days - until 19 January 2010 - before it makes a final decision to clear the deal or block it.

Stanford photo scientists are out to reinvent digital photography with the introduction of an open source digital camera, according to ScienceDaily.

This will give programmers around the world the chance to create software that will teach cameras new tricks.

If the technology catches on, camera performance will no longer be limited by the software that comes pre-installed by the manufacturer.