Second Silverlight hits beta

The second version of the open source edition of Microsoft's Silverlight media player has been released to beta testing, says The Register.

Moonlight, which puts the Silverlight player on Unix and Linux, updates the initial open-source player with fixes tackling security and performance.

Project leader Miguel de Icaza is reported to have said he expects Moonlight 2.0 to be finished and ready for availability in time for Microsoft's Professional Developers' Conference (PDC), in November.

Many designers are familiar with open source software, such as Linux, in which the source code is available to all, but fewer are familiar with organisations offering open source hardware, states EDN.

These organisations release free information, including schematics, bill-of-materials information, and printed-circuit-board-layout data, covering the overall hardware design.

With this information designers can build or add to a freely available design and in many instances, open-source software supports the original design, providing additional advantages.

Terracotta, an open source Java caching vendor, has acquired EHCache earlier this week, reports InfoWorld.

EHCache provides an alternative to Terracotta's approach to Java caching - while Terracotta can approach the JVM layer without application changes, EHCache requires the application be modified with caching in mind.

Terracotta founder and CTO, Ari Zilka, says: “Terracotta's interface in more than 50% of use cases has been EHCache.”