open-source

Heads up, Skype.

Shortly after releasing software for audio and video chat as an open-source project called WebRTC as open-source software, Google is beginning to build it into its Chrome browser.

The real-time chat software originated from Google's 2010 acquisition of Global IP Solutions (GIPS), a company specializing in Internet telephony and videoconferencing.

The obvious beneficiary for the project is Gmail, whose audio and video communications ability today requires use of a proprietary plug-in. Gmail chat is getting more important as Google's VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) efforts mature and integrate with the Google Voice service.

But Google … Read more

There's no such thing as "the" open-source license. There are lots of them. Sixty-nine to be precise if one accepts the Open Source Initiative (OSI) as the definitive arbiter of what is open source and what is not.

Some are essentially legacy licenses; in general, the continued proliferation of licenses has abated in recent years but it's often more trouble than it's worth to fully retire licenses that are still in use by active software. Others won't be relevant to a specific type of copyrighted material, such as software programs. (Material under an open-source … Read more

Most open-source companies rely on business models (and development models) that aim to leverage large global communities of users and developers. The goal? Monetize some percentage of a very large number of community members. So it's hard to imagine a more unlikely candidate for an open source play than Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), an industry dominated by big enterprise proprietary vendors such as Oracle and SAP that sell to Global 2000 organizations.

Openbravo, a Spanish-based ERP start-up, recently expanded its sales and executive footprint to the United States (the company's third largest market), with new CEO Paolo Juvara … Read more

The bottom line: If you like living your digital life in the browser, then Chrome OS could be a clarion call that's hard to resist. It's fast, it's geared for an Internet tether yet able to function on its own, and it's a bold step into the future of how operating systems work. However, it's untested on a large scale, and concerns about its effectiveness and utility are not without merit.

Review: Welcome to the Chrome channel. Available on laptops from Samsung and Acer, Google's new operating system is all Chrome, all the time. … Read more

The open-source audio and video jukebox Miro debuts a new version today that wants to be iTunes for Android. Miro 4 for Windows (download), Mac (download), and Linux (download), adds simple and effective desktop-to-Android synchronization to the program, which also offers media file conversion, torrent management, podcast catching, and media discovery. The Android syncing features focus on music and videos and includes built-in app browsing and management via in-program access to the Google Android Marketplace and the Amazon.com Android Marketplace.

"We set the bar very high. We want to be the open iTunes," said Nicholas Reville, co-founder … Read more

IBM said today that it will invest $100 million on research for analytics and big data projects and expanded its portfolio accordingly. The company also launched Hadoop-based services.

Hadoop is open-source technology that's used to analyze unstructured data. Both Yahoo and Google are heavy Hadoop proponents.

IBM said it is launching InfoSphere BigInsights and Streams software to analyze unstructured data such as text, video, audio, and social media. The software, cooked up by IBM Research, is based on Hadoop and more than 50 Big Blue patents.

Read more of "IBM launches Hadoop-based analytics software, big data services" … Read more

The open-source Scala programming language is getting a big boost today in form of venture-funding for a new start-up.

Typesafe is launching the first commercial entity behind Scala, founded by Scala creator Martin Odersky and flush with $3 million from Greylock Partners.

Scala is a general purpose programming language designed to express common programming patterns in a concise, elegant, and type-safe way. It integrates features of object-oriented and functional languages and reduces code size in comparison to Java.

Greylock also funded Red Hat and Cloudera so it's no surprise that Typesafe will be taking a page from those companies … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Android is open-source software, but it doesn't come with much of an open-source community, and the Google leader of the project explained why yesterday.

Because people can scrutinize Android's source code, modify it, and build it into their own hardware, the mobile operating system qualifies as open-source software. But Google exercises tight control over what gets built into the official Android software, what gets released as Android, and when that source code appears--especially with the tablet-oriented Honeycomb version.

The reason for Google's approach is so the company can control Android's interfaces, the underlying features that … Read more

It's no secret that companies of all kinds use third-party software in their own products. Mobile OEMs are a great example--new phones often contain code from of hundreds of code suppliers--both open source and proprietary.

A new "Software Integrity Risk Report" commissioned by software analyst Coverity and conducted by Forrester Research points to a growing discrepancy in the quality and security standards businesses are applying to their internally developed code versus code supplied by third-parties.

This can lead to an increased risk of software defects, translating to an increased risk of software failure and impact to brand … Read more