OStatic

Few recent trends in storage have had as much momentum as Network Attached Storage (NAS). A NAS device can make a network more efficient and secure by supplying file-based data storage services to networked devices, or it can be used for applications such as streaming media. FreeNAS is free, lightweight, open source network-attached storage server software, based on FreeBSD. You can find a good tutorial on how to set up a free NAS server with it here. We recently caught up with Olivier Cochard-Labbe, FreeNAS founder, and Volker Theile, project administrator.

Who says contributions to open source have to be software-based? As Datamation notes,ﾠ NTT America, a Tier 1 carrier and a division of Japan-based NTT Communications, is now helping open source by donating IPv6 transit to the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC). There is also a release out about the arrangement. Mozilla, FreeBSD and many other open sourcers are positioned to benefit from the donation.

Who ya gonna call? Ready for the third-party, volunteer open source software security police? Open source software is often criticized for not including the robust security features, and response to security issues, found in commercial software counterparts. In addition, code from smaller open source projects is often wrapped into code for bigger projects, which can introduce security issues where there were none before. Now, with backing from Google, several well-known security professionals have launched oCERT--a public effort to provide security handling support and response for open source projects.

You probably saw the comments from Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie this week, regarding his vision of a slow integration of technology platforms if Microsoft does acquire Yahoo. Ozzie told the Financial Times that seeking to quickly smash things together would be reckless. However, most of the analysis of these comments is centering on how Microsoft might approach integrating Yahoo's online advertising with its own platforms. This misses some huge points, not the least of which is that Yahoo runs almost entirely on open source software, and Microsoft will have to embrace that if it picks up Yahoo.