Sean Michael Kerner

Though the open source FreeBSD operating system has changed in many aspects over the last 16 years of its life, one item that has remained relatively static is its underlying network routing architecture. No more: It’s getting an overhaul with the upcoming FreeBSD 8.0 release. FreeBSD 8.0, due out next month, will include a new […]

From the ‘Read The Fine Print‘ files: A new Microsoft-sponsored study from NSS Labs is out with a finding that IE 8 is the most secure browser, when it comes to catching, socially engineered malware. The study however did not look at the security of the browser or related plug-ins (like Flash). What is socially […]

More developers are contributing more code to the development of Linux, and are speeding up in the process, according to a new study from the Linux Foundation. The latest “Who Writes Linux” report is now its second year, tracking the development of Linux from the 2.6.24 kernel to the recent 2.6.30 kernel release. The report […]

What is the most popular programming language used by open source developers? The answer depends on how you define popularity. According to a new study from Black Duck, a software-license code analysis vendor, C represents more than 40 percent of all code written for open source software. Black Duck made its determination by counting the […]

Do enterprise apps make for good virtual appliance apps? According to enterprise software vendor Oracle, they sure do, but they need to have the right technology behind them. Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) today unveiled a new open source technology called Oracle VM Template Builder, which enables users to build their own virtual software appliances. “When you […]

How do you secure a wireless network for a convention of hackers? That’s the question that wireless networking vendor Aruba Networks has been answering for the last four years as the wireless service provider for the Black Hat security conference. Black Hat takes place this week in Las Vegas, and Aruba is providing the wireless […]

Technology vendors and governments are racing towards adopting Smart Grid technologies which could help to improve energy use and conservation efforts. But the Smart Grid, and in particular the smart meter part of the grid, could also introduce a new class of security threats. In April, a report came out claiming that the current US […]

Intel’s Wind River subsidiary is now the leader in embedded Linux, at least when it comes to revenues, according to the market analysis by VDC Research. Wind River, which was acquired in June by Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) for $884 million, has more than 30 percent of the total market revenue for embedded Linux, VDC found. Wind […]

Microsoft made waves this week with their GPLv2 contribution of virtualization code. On the other side of the coin, Microsoft continues to take issue with open source vendors over the issue of patents. One vendor that has called on Microsoft to be more open is Red Hat. In a blog post, Red Hat’s legal team […]

Microsoft’s march toward Linux interoperability is taking a leap forward this morning with the release of 20,000 lines of code under the GPLv2 open source license. The code release includes a trio of Linux drivers designed to help Linux operating systems better run as guests on Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 through its Hyper-V virtualization technology. […]

Mozilla’s Firefox 3.5.1 browser is now out with fixes for one critical zero-day vulnerability that first became public earlier this week. The zero-day flaw is a vulnerability in Firefox 3.5’s Just-in-Time (JIT) JavaScript compiler. Mozilla’s security advisory describes the vulnerability as “an exploitable memory corruption problem.” Security researcher Simon Berry-Byrne publicly posted proof-of-concept exploit code […]

Infonetics Research is now forecasting a recovery of the telecom/datacom equipment market in 2010. Phew. While the recession officially started in the US in 2008, Infonetics is now reporting that the telecom and datacom (networking) equipment vendors they track, hit global revenues of $150 billion in 2008. That represents a year over year growth rate […]