Gates: We will crush Google just like we crushed Netscape!

Bill Gates hinted the software giant will crush Google in the same way that it crushed Netscape -- by integrating enterprise search deeply into Windows Vista, Office 2007, Outlook 2007 and SharePoint 2007 and with the rest of the Windows platform and also with emerging web services from Microsoft.

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Linux, open-source, and control

Could a Red Hat or Novell somehow take over Linux and become like Microsoft?

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InformationWeek: Ballmer says Microsoft To Focus On Linux Competition, Software-As-A-Service, Internet Advertising

CEO Steve Ballmer said Linux has been outselling Microsoft in areas such as file services, E-mail security, and E-science, which demonstrates that Microsoft needs to innovate.

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OpenDocument Approved by ISO

The six month voting window for ISO/IEC adoption of the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard closed on May 1, and at midnight (Geneva time) last night it was announced internally that ODF had been approved by the ISO members eligible and interested in casting a vote. The vote passed with broad participation and no negative votes (there were a few abstentions), and ODF is now ISO/IEC 26300. While there are still some procedural steps internal to ISO/IEC that are required before the official text of the standard will be finalized and issued, these steps (described below) are formalities rather than gating factors.

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Open Source Quality

Under a contract with the Department of Homeland Security, Coverity is establishing a new baseline for software quality and security in open source based on defects detected in dozens of the most critical and widely used open source projects in the world. See how the LAMP stack and other open source projects compare to each other and to your own code.

In collaboration with Stanford University, Coverity is establishing a new baseline for software quality and security in open source based on the analysis of over 30 of the most critical and widely used open source projects in the world. Under a contract with the Department of Homeland Security, we apply the latest innovation in automated defect detection to uncover some of the most critical types of bugs found in software.

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FOSS Is Not Free if It's Not Free From Complexity

This article argues that freedom from complexity is an essential part of the first FOSS freedom - the freedom to run a program. Freedom to run means nothing if the exercise of such right excludes people who do not possess high technical knowledge or advanced skills sets. Without the guarantee of "ease of use", the freedom to run FOSS for most users is a hollow promise.

via Slashdot

Linux WiFi Leaps Forward

Linux's wireless capabilities are poised to take a big step forward, with the release of an 'advanced' 802.11 driver stack to the open source community under the GPL.

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