open-source software

Google grab bag: Chrome skins and Gmail tweaks

Time for our semi-irregular roundup of Google items:

Gmail Labs has produced three new features that people can try, according to Google's Gmail blog. One is a keyboard shortcut, "G" then "L," that brings people to a list of labels so they can show a specific category of messages. Another is the ability to move the Gmail control elements around on the left-side navigation bar, so users can reorder instant-messaging contacts, labels, and other items to put their preferred controls at the top. Last is the ability to pick your own colors for labels, … Read more

Google Code reverses open-source license ban

Google has undone an earlier ban on the Mozilla Public License, an option for open-source projects hosted at its Google Code site.

Ostensibly as part of an effort to discourage the proliferation of open-source licenses, Google dropped support for the MPL earlier in August. Now, though, the company reconsidered, restoring it and adding support for the Eclipse Public License as well.

"How we think about licenses is getting a bit more nuanced," said Chris DiBona, leader of Google's open-source team in a blog posting.

Before, the company had tried to discourage the increase in the number of … Read more

Red Hat's new CEO aims Linux at the cloud

Red Hat's new chief executive, Jim Whitehurst, has his eyes on the sky.

The former Delta Airlines chief operating officer, who took the reins of the most established open-source software company from Matthew Szulik in January, names cloud computing as a top priority. Loosely speaking, the term refers to computing services available to anyone online rather than custom data centers isolated within corporate confines, but it also dovetails with the general idea of computing services running at massive scale on a more flexible infrastructure.

"The clouds will all run Linux," Whitehurst said in an interview.

Being Red … Read more

When worlds collide: Microsoft funds Apache

Microsoft, one of the biggest rivals to open-source programming, has begun funding the Apache Software Foundation, one of open-source software's biggest supporters.

"Microsoft is becoming a sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation. This sponsorship will enable the ASF to pay administrators and other support staff so that ASF developers can focus on writing great software," said Sam Ramji, a senior director of platform strategy at Microsoft. He announced the move Friday in a speech at the Open Source Convention, and noted Microsoft's support of Apache on the software company's Port 25 blog as well.

Obviously … Read more

Q&A: Google's open-source balancing act

Chris DiBona's job--manager of Google's open-source programs--is a balancing act.

Google consumes a lot of open-source software for its own highly profitable business. But as he oversees the search powerhouse's open-source work, DiBona has to ensure that the company reciprocates. It can't be all take and no give.

Free and open-source software advocates can be powerful allies--but also vocal critics. For example, some have critized Google for its lack of support for the Affero GPL license, which can require those using software for a publicly available network service to share modifications they've made to an … Read more

Google could pick Git to manage Android code

Releasing 8.6 million lines of source code and expecting open-source programmers to join Google in its development is a technological challenge.

But when Google does make its Android mobile phone software an open-source project later this year, it looks likely it will take a page from the Linux playbook and use a tool called Git to manage that part of the work.

Linux leader Linus Torvalds originally developed the Git source-code management software in 2005. He didn't like available open-source tools for the chore, but encountered resistance in using a proprietary tool, BitMover's BitKeeper.

Torvalds liked the … Read more

Google carves an Android path through open-source world

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google didn't invent open-source programming or pioneer the mobile-phone software market, but when it comes to its Android project, don't accuse Google of playing follow the leader.

Although the company has long used open-source software within its internal operations, Android is Google's highest-profile attempt so far to use the collaborative programming method to change how computing is done outside the company's walls.

Google is hardly the first company to try using open-source software to shake up the industry. What's notable is Google's willingness to ruffle feathers in the open-source world, including … Read more

Red Hat lives on the edge with Fedora 9

Red Hat on Tuesday released the ninth incarnation of its enthusiast version of Linux, making a move that rival Ubuntu couldn't: the inclusion of the KDE 4 user interface.

That's because Fedora and Ubuntu have different approaches to new projects such as KDE 4, which is new, significantly different from KDE 3.5, and not yet settled down.

Red Hat has two versions of Linux, the free Fedora that's designed as a proving ground that can get new projects into the hands of early adopters while helping those projects to mature, and the subscription-fee-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux … Read more

Linux video project evades DMCA, back on Google Code

An open-source project called CoreAVC-for-Linux is back up and running at Google Code after a copyright tangle with a company called CoreCodec.

Google removed the CoreAVC-for-Linux project after CoreCodec said the software violated its copyright in a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) "takedown" letter dated April 30. "We have directly verified by downloading the file from the site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec's copyrighted software," the company said in the letter, available at the Chilling Effects Web site.

Now the project is online again, after the company sent a reinstatement … Read more

Delicious beta arrives for Firefox 3

Well, it took a few months, but Yahoo on Wednesday caught up to Firefox 3 with a beta plug-in for its Delicious bookmarking service.

The Firefox add-on for Delicious "now has full Firefox 3 support while retaining Firefox 2 compatibility," said Nick Nguyen, senior product manager for Delicious, in a blog posting.

Delicious lets people save their bookmarks online, tag them with descriptive keywords, and share them with other Delicious members.

It's only one plug-in, I know, but since I'd griped about its absence before, it's only fair for me to call out its availability for download … Read more