software

A co-worker sent me a link to the kids pages at the US Patent and Trademark Office. Part of me is delighted that our government is trying to make itself more accessible to children. Indeed, next month I intend to take advantage of that very accessibility when our family visits Washington DC to see the three co-equal branches of our federal government and the various departments they operate. If we are lucky, we might even meet one or more of our elected representatives in person!

But part of me is mortified by the levels of propaganda filling pages that purport to be educational and the thought that millions of children may be exposed to such propaganda without thought or review by tech-savvy parents.… Read more

During my trip to Raleigh, I was fortunate to catch up with Iain Gray, vice president of Global Support Services at Red Hat. With my Alfresco hat on, I wanted to find out how Red Hat manages support, and with my CNET hat on, I wanted to share that insight.

Specifically, I wanted to get Iain's perspective on how open-source support differs from support in the proprietary software world. (You can tune in to a Red Hat video of Iain talking about this topic, too.)

Iain brings to Red Hat over a decade of support and services experience honed at Sun and SCO Group (back when it was a Unix company, not a law firm). As such, the obvious question was...… Read more

The NOD32 antivirus program from ESET has its share of enthusiasts. After a long, detailed review of the field, Scot Finnie in February called it the best antivirus product of 2007.

Based on Mr. Finnie's reviews and recommendation, I've been installing NOD32 on the computers of some of my clients. I've also lived with it a bit on one of my computers and had no major gripes.

Until yesterday.

I was about to run Microsoft Update on a Windows XP machine for the third or fourth time, and was getting tired of waiting for it complete. So … Read more

DENVER--Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner said Thursday that there was a good reason that partners complained last year that the company was short on details on its "Software Plus Services" strategy.

"The reason we didn't share it with you is we didn't have it figured it out," Turner said. And although the company announced more details this week, Turner said the company is still trying to figure out just how to add services.

"We're continuing to re-evaluate, re-look at, re-examine the opportunities," he said in a wrap-up keynote speech at … Read more

Competitors were quick to respond to Microsoft's latest plans for hosted CRM.

Microsoft's pricing was clearly aimed squarely at Salesforce.com, which was quick to dismiss Microsoft's entry into the market, noting that the company has been talking about its plans for sometime without actually releasing the product.

"I think that Microsoft has announced this service more often than Roger Federer has won Wimbledon," Bruce Francis, Salesforce VP of corporate strategy, said in a statement.

Another rival, SugarCRM, took issue with the notion that rivals don't offer the option of moving from a hosted … Read more

We haven't heard a lot from the folks at FileMaker recently, but they've got a new version of their database software for PCs and Macs out in stores.

The wholly owned subsidiary of Apple unveiled FileMaker 9.0 Tuesday, the "most dramatic new offering in years," according to the press release. I'll admit it's been years since I checked out FileMaker (it was actually required learning as part of a "computer science for business students" class at Boston College in the mid-1990s). The last major release, FileMaker 8.0, arrived in 2005.… Read more

Lee Gomes today interviews Jenny Blank, the senior director of enforcement at the Business Software Alliance (the "other BSA"). Net net: you don't want to talk with Ms. Blank. On the other hand, this is also a lesson in why open source makes so much sense: stop fretting about IP infringement and instead focus on IP distribution. You want people to use your software.

It's expensive to chase down piracy. (Microsoft largely gave up this fool's errand in China, and has profited as a result.) But the BSA ensures it's also expensive to pirate:… Read more

DENVER--Microsoft on Tuesday detailed the pricing for its Dynamics Live CRM product, the hosted version of its customer relationship management (CRM) software.

The professional version of the software will list for $45 per user per month, though during 2008 it will sell for $39 per user per month. The higher-end enterprise version, which includes offline data access, will sell for $59 per user per month.

Microsoft will offer the professional edition of the product at no charge, starting this quarter and through the end of the year as part of an early access program.

In an effort to keep its … Read more

Palamida has been tracking the movement of open-source projects from GPLv2 to GPLv3 and estimates that 119 projects have converted (to GPL/LGPLv3), which represents less than 1 percent of projects using the General Public License, or GPL. Nothing to write home about, in other words.

Why is the uptake so tepid? Well, the rampant FUD around version 3 probably helped, but I don't think that's the main issue. I actually think the primary problem is that GPLv3 didn't go far enough, in many ways. It's an updated version of GPLv2, which is good, but it … Read more