Business Tech

Open-source companies' developer dilemma

Open source offers a fantastic way to reach developers and users of one's technology. Ironically, however, the very group most inclined to adopt open source is the least likely to pay for it.

Therefore, to make an open-source business thrive in enterprise software, vendors must learn to distinguish between developer-users and IT operations-buyers. As I'll explain, however, open-source companies may need to guard against becoming too successful in order to preserve their exit opportunities.

It is, of course, quite possible to make money in open source. Lots of it. Red Hat, for example, is approaching $1 billion in … Read more

Week in review: Apple unveils...Steve Jobs

Apple media events are usually notable for what was unveiled, but Wednesday's was more about who was there to do the unveiling.

While there were no tablet computers or an updated version of the Apple TV, and not even the long-rumored Beatles-iTunes deal, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs surprised everyone by anchoring the keynote, making it his first public appearance since October 2008.

Though technically he returned to work two months ago, it was as the host of Wednesday's Apple music event that Jobs publicly retook the reins of the company he founded. Jobs was the first person … Read more

Future AMD chip boasts 'human eye' reality

On Thursday, AMD demonstrated graphics chip technology that the company says approaches the arc and clarity seen by the human eye.

Eyefinity is a multi-display technology that will be part of future Radeon graphics chips designed to use up to six connected high-definition displays that can achieve "up to 12 times 1080p high-definition resolution, which approaches eye-definition optical clarity," the company said in a statement.

The goal is to create virtual environments so detailed that they seem optically real to the human eye. In a single PC, this yields a resolution of 268 megapixels, roughly equivalent to the … Read more

Microsoft sets up open-source foundation

Microsoft has created the nonprofit CodePlex Foundation to target increased communication between open-source communities and software companies.

Citing an under-representation of commercial software companies and their employees in open source, the CodePlex Foundation aims to work with particular projects to bridge the gap between the open-source and commercial worlds.

The Redmond giant has contributed $1 million to the foundation and has filled out its board and advisory panel with many Microsoft staffers, including Sam Ramji, who is leaving Microsoft as its open-source point man but is also becoming CodePlex Foundation's interim president.

Unlike other open-source foundations, such as the … Read more

Globalfoundries takes 'huge step' with Chartered merger

The proposed merger of Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing and Globalfoundries will help the AMD manufacturing spinoff propel forward in its bid to become a foundry leader, according to analysts.

Earlier this week, Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) and Chartered Semiconductor announced that they entered into a definitive agreement, in which ATIC would acquire Chartered for $1.75 billion. ATIC owns about two-thirds of Globalfoundries--the joint venture that the investment firm created with Advanced Micro Devices.

The deal is subject to Singapore's High Court and Chartered's shareholders, but according to market analyst iSuppli, chances are good the deal will go … Read more

Adobe offers CinemaDNG format for raw video

Adobe Systems on Thursday released a beta version of a file format called CinemaDNG the company hopes will simplify higher-end digital video processes and improve its quality.

The company behind Photoshop has developed a technology for still cameras called DNG, short for Digital Negative, and is trying to standardize it to encourage broader adoption. CinemaDNG takes the technology and applies it to video

For higher-end cameras such as SLRs, DNG records the raw data from the image sensor with no in-camera processing. That means there are no compression artifacts, no sharpening or contrast filters applied, no camera assumptions made about … Read more

Gartner: Agenda behind EU's Sun-Oracle probe

The European Commission's decision to further probe Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems has raised both questions and speculation.

Oracle said in April that it would acquire Sun, a server maker and software company whose assets include the open-source MySQL database. The deal has been approved by the U.S. Justice Department and by Sun's shareholders.

But the European Commission, the regulatory arm of the European Union, announced last week that it was opening an in-depth investigation into the $7.4 billion planned takeover, saying that a preliminary probe raised the specter of threats to competition in the … Read more

Survey: VMware, Red Hat to claim more IT dollars

IT spending may be tight, but chief information officers plan to increase their budget allocation to a select group of virtualization vendors, including VMware, Citrix, and Red Hat, according to a Goldman Sachs CIO survey released Monday.

It's not surprising that virtualization is top of mind and wallet for CIOs, but things look particularly rosy for Red Hat, given its position as the market leader in open source and a strong challenger in virtualization.

While the percentage of CIOs expecting to increase IT spending has grown since Goldman Sachs' last survey in June 2009, a full 69 percent expect … Read more

Oracle overtures to Sun customers mum on MySQL

Oracle has much to say to Sun Microsystems customers in a front-page advertisement it placed in Thursday's European edition of The Wall Street Journal.

The advertisement commits to greater investments in Sun hardware and Solaris software, but has absolutely nothing to say about MySQL. Is this a necessary omission to appease European regulators, or is it a sign of Oracle's intentions?

In the advertisement, Oracle commits to the following:

IBM, which has been cleaning up at Sun's expense, gets a warning from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison: "We're in it to win it. IBM, we're … Read more