Since the free, online Wikipedia user-created encyclopedia began in 2001, the Linux-based IT infrastructure behind it has been expanded and lassoed together to keep up with the demands of the popular Web site.

A surge in demand for netbooks is helping drive business for Linux, as the devices are designed to be low-cost with smaller storage, according to Novell's chief technology and strategy officer for Linux.

The full depth of IT's involvement in Wall Street's meltdown is unknown, but one plan to stop it from happening again calls upon a growing IT trend: open source.

Mozilla will use a several-week delay it recently added to the Firefox 3.1 schedule to build a private browsing mode and beef up the browser's address bar, the company said yesterday. Three weeks ago, the company said it would insert four to five more weeks into the timetable, part of a reaction to changes in the browser market, including the introduction by Google of its Chrome browser. Then, Mozilla said it would probably use the time to add a privacy mode and to punch up its TraceMonkey JavaScript engine performance.

As we've seen time and again, in an increasing number of enterprise software categories, open source has become a promising alternative to commercial software. But there's no free ride.

Yahoo this week began rolling out a beta version of a new Web Analytics tool that it says will provide up-to-date reports and graphs showing metrics like sales, page views and sources of traffic to Web site operators.