Stories about: MySQL

Zimbra has long been one of my favorite open source products. I remember getting a first demo of Zimbra from CEO Satish Dharmaraj at the Red Hat conference about three years ago, while they were still in stealth mode. Satish, Scott Dietzen and the rest of the crew weren't setting out to build a me-too mail client. They were attacking a much larger problem.

Sun Wednesday said it would offer support to corporate users of OpenSSO open source identity technology and introduced a new version that also protects companies against patent infringement suits.

The open source MySQL database began life as a lightweight alternative to big, resource-hungry database management systems, such as Oracle or Sybase. Over the years, however, users have clamored for more and more features, causing MySQL's codebase to swell with capabilities that had previously only been found on its commercial cousins.

Intel is readying a second release of the Moblin open-source platform for mobile computing, with plans set for an alpha-level version in a few weeks, an Intel official said at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in the US on Wednesday.

Last week I began to discuss a remarkable virtual-appliance-based system for network monitoring and management called Groundwork Monitor Community Edition.

Windows Vista debuted to muffled applause, followed by lackluster sales. Up until June 30, cash-strapped businesses looking to avoid the cost of upgrading to new Vista-compatible hardware could still purchase trusty Windows XP. Now, however, Windows XP is available only as a costly "downgrade" from Windows Vista--if you buy a copy of Vista, you can install the 6-year-old XP operating system using the Vista license.

A good CRM package does you no good if employees aren't willing to use it. Case in point: IMA Financial Group, a medium-sized financial services company based in the US. IMA had installed a commercial customer relationship management system that "was flexible and configurable and attractive on the front end," says business processes manager Jennifer Hallam.

While perhaps best known as a major social networking site in the Web 2.0 vein, Facebook is becoming a popular place to interface with potential customers, similar to what companies such as Scribe and iLike have done. Facebook also is being viewed as a place for enterprise collaboration, with Serena Software leveraging the site for this purpose. To get perspective on Facebook, InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill recently spoke with Aditya Agarwal, Facebook director of engineering. Agarwal formerly worked in the Oracle server technologies division.

Sun Microsystems is sponsoring a collaborative environment for building and hosting social applications that would run on environments like Facebook and OpenSocial.

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday unveiled free tools to help Web developers and site administrators defend against the rapidly growing number of SQL injection attacks that aim to hijack legitimate sites.

Funambol has delivered an open source email client for the new iPhone, and has won new funding for its bid to offer a free alternative to the Blackberry.