Open source software is shifting the software industry into a new paradigm, moving from developing proprietary code behind closed doors to developing code that can be shared, modified and redistributed openly. Key benefits associated with this shift is reducing de...

A company's decision to contribute to open source projects is usually business-driven. This article offers a review of the top reasons that can influence your company to contribute source code to open source or to start new open source projects.

The open source development model has unique characteristics that make it in some instances a superior model for developing software compared to the traditional software engineering cascade model. As with other practices, the open source development model had it...

Since the beginning of the software industry, nearly every software company in the world has followed the same business model: its own employees develop the software, which is closely held intellectual property, the software is delivered to clients in binary form,...

Organizations that gather and store critical information have to protect it. While there are tried and true techniques for data protection, there are also new and innovative ones. These new practices and tools greatly enhance an organization's ability to protect ...

Robert C. Seacord, a senior vulnerability analyst at the CERT/Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University, has just published the book Secure Coding in C and C++ (Addison-Wesley, 2005). I sat down with him to discuss software security in the Linux environment and elsewhere.

Firefox and Thunderbird are Open Source products that are made available by the Mozilla Foundation. Open Source development lets anyone who wants to to examine the source code, or if they wish, to modify it. There are a number of advantages to Open Source developm...

This article provides an update of the Carrier Grade Linux initiative, the CGL specification, distributions, platforms and deployments.

The emergence of commodity supercomputing has driven clusters based on the Linux operating system into engineering and scientific research organizations that couldn't afford their own supercomputing resources before. But Linux clusters have the potential to become...

Data Center Linux (DCL), one of four OSDL initiatives, has the goal to accelerate Linux adoption in corporate data centers. DCL provides a center of gravity for developers, users, vendors, and the open source community to work together to improve Linux capabilitie...

Marcel Gagné is probably best known for his three-time award-winning monthly column called 'Cooking with Linux,' where he impersonates a French chef serving up fine Linux fare and (naturellement) wine. Here he shares his views on the Linux Desktop.

The battle between IT professionals and those who use the Internet for destructive purposes is raging - and there's no end in sight. Reports of computer crime and incidents from the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University more than double each year ...

For this issue, I'm going to talk with long-time Linux author Mark Sobell. Mark's first Linux book came out in 1996, when Linux was in its infancy. In this interview Mark discusses Red Hat's Fedora Core 2 version of Linux and his experiences writing Linux books.

One of most exciting areas to emerge in information security has been honeynets. These networks are designed to be compromised in order to capture all the tools and activities of the attackers. We had the opportunity to talk with members of the Honeynet Project, a...

In previous LWM articles, we have discussed the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), Carrier Grade Linux (CGL), and the momentum Linux is gaining in telecom. We have also covered the current technological trend of companies moving away from proprietary technologie...

There is a lot of ongoing work to make the Linux kernel a viable operating system option for platforms running mission-critical applications. However, there is still some work to be done with respect to supporting new features. This article addresses some neede...

This article provides a glimpse into Red Hat: The Complete Reference Enterprise Linux and Fedora Edition (with DVD), published by McGraw-Hill/Osborne. It covers what you need to get started with Red Hat Linux - including the overall design of Linux, Linux distr...

Providing continuous service availability is a crucial factor for many industries, especially in the telecommunication sector. For instance, people always expect to hear a dial tone when they pick up their phones, and they always do. This is the level of reliabili...

OSDL's Carrier Grade Linux working group is hard at work on an open source platform for the telecom industry. This article describes the goals, structure, and working groups of CGL; presents the CGL architecture; and provides an overview of the CGL 2.0 requirements.

This article explores the recent trend toward open telecom platform solutions as proposed by three key industry consortia - PICMG, OSDL, and the SA Forum - working in the areas of highly available hardware, middleware, and carrier grade operating systems.

This article describes the HA-OSCAR architecture and features, and demonstrates how to set up a highly available Linux cluster using the first beta release of HA-OSCAR version 1.0.

IPv6 is the next-generation Internet protocol designed by the IETF as a replacement for IPv4. Most of today's Internet uses IPv4, which has been remarkably resilient in spite of its age; however, it is beginning to have problems in various features areas.

In this article, Ibrahim Haddad presents on the Open Source Development Labs Carrier Grade Linux Requirements and Ericsson's contributions in this area.