Database vendor Ingres has teamed up with Red Hat to offer an open source developer stack with features intended to be comparable to proprietary offerings from the likes of IBM or Oracle. The Ingres Development Stack for JBoss combines the Ingres database with Red Hat’s JBoss Developer Studio and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. This allows the development of Java applications and provides the middleware and database software to support those applications, Ingres said in an announcement.

The New Zealand Open Source Society is calling on Auditor-General to scrutinise government procurement of Microsoft software after the collapse of negotiations for a new three-year all-of-government software licensing deal.

The stream editor, sed, is a filtering program that automates repetitive editing tasks and is used to process information sent from other Linux commands in pipes. In the simplest form sed looks like…

As the month of May closed, a number of top open source application vendors announced beta releases and forthcoming upgrades.

These include open source CRM, security and ERP vendors. 

SugarCRM, of Cupertino, Calif., announced the beta release of version 5.5 of its namesake open source CRM package. The forthcoming upgrade will offer advanced mobile, collaboration and web services. Version 5.5 , which is expected to ship this summer, offers a new mobile studio that allows enhanced customization of SugarCRM for mobile devices and new dynamic teams capabilities that allows end users to easily add individuals or teams to a specific CRM record to allow for better collaboration on solutions. 

The enhanced web services framework in version 5.5 improves performance of and the integration of applications into CRM applications. The upgrade will also feature a REST interface and easier REST services development, which enables complex interactions between the CRM system and e-commerce systems, billing services and social networks, the company said. Version 5.5 will also offer a new themes frameworkand advanced password management.

SourceFire, which oversees development on the Snort open source intrusion detection and prevention engine, announced last week the release candidate of Snort 2.8.5 as well as plans to deliver virtual security appliances and cooperate with Intel on next gen Snort technology, the company announced. SourceFire said Snort 2.8.5, available for preview at http://snort.org/downloads, will offer:

Policy-per-VLAN functionality, so administrators can apply different security policies to distinct traffic sets.

Rate-based attack prevention, for blocking potentially malicious network communications.

 Improved handling of SSH traffic.

Meanwhile,  open source ERP player Compiere launched last week a manufacturing module for its open source ERP solution that can be deployed on permise or in the cloud. Compiere Manufacturing can be customized without programming and will offer advanced cost management and analysis and reporting tools to improve production costs. The Compiere Manufacturing module will be available starting June 15, the Redwood Shores, Calif. company said

D*I*Y Planner Dynamic Templates is a nifty little application that comes with a few handy templates you can tweak and save as ready-to-use PDF documents.

It looks like Dell is diversifying their operating system options for people that buy the Studio XPS 13.3-inch notebook in that the notebooks now come with Ubuntu, a Linux-based operating system.

PLplot is a cross-platform software package for creating scientific plots that has been in continuous development since its inception 17 years ago. On May 23, 2009 the PLplot developers quietly celebrated our ten thousandth commit since our initial software repository was populated back in May 1992.

Back in April, we looked at the Linux kernel patches for Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology (TXT), a mechanism to verify the integrity of the kernel before booting it. Since that time, another version of the patchset has surfaced. The relatively few comments on the feature were largely concerned that there might be opposition to its inclusion—not because of technical considerations, but instead because of ethical concerns about what TXT could enable.

[Well, this should start a conversation or two.. - Scott]

From the Hail Bob64! dept.:
Ready or not, Slackware has now gone 64-bit with an official x86_64 port being maintained in-sync with the regular x86 -current branch. DVDs will be available for purchase from the Slackware store when Slackware 13.0 is released. Many thanks go out to the Slackware team for their help with this branch and a special thank you to Eric Hameleers who did the real heavy lifting re-compiling everything for this architecture, testing, re-testing, and staying in-sync with -current.

The FBI has confirmed reports that it was forced to shut down it’s external unclassified email network “as a precautionary measure” following the discovery of a virus infection. Wonder if it was a Windows system, bet it was!