OStatic

If you're looking for an easy to use open source project management tool to manage the workflow of your software development team, then take a look at Retrospectiva. It's powerful software on its own that becomes better when you add on modules to make it even more functional and flexible.

Retrospectiva is designed with an eye toward engineering teams that need a tool to carry them through the entire development life cycle. It tracks issues and tickets, manages goals and milestones, and offers code review and revision management features as well. Retrospectiva also includes support for Subversion and Git.

If you're deleting miscellaneous unimportant files on your computer, simply dropping them in the trash or deleting them ought to be sufficient. If you need to permanently and irrevocably erase files to keep them from ever being resurrected, however, then you need a reliable file shredder. Here are four of the best open source applications to try.

Eraser - This tool for Windows removes data from your hard drive by overwriting it with patterns that make files unreadable. It works with any hard drive that work with Windows and even erases files and folders that were previously deleted. Eraser also has a scheduler so you can automatically erase files on a regular basis.

Open source collaboration software vendor MindTouch announced today that its widely-used enterprise collaboration platform is now available in the cloud. This is great news for businesses who want a service comparable to Microsoft SharePoint, but don't want the headaches of proprietary software or the hassles of a lengthy installation process.

If you're a regular reader of OStatic, then you know this move is one of series of releases MindTouch has launched to drive the future of collaborative networks. Following the creation of the MindTouch Creative Knowledge Base and the MindTouch Collaborative Intranet, a move to the cloud was the next logical step.

Open source network monitoring software vendor Zenoss announced the release of Zenoss Enterprise 2.5, the company's commercial version of its flagship product. It sports several new features, most notably Amazon EC2 monitoring that provide users with dynamic snapshots of performance and the ability to drill down on performance issues with inside the instance monitoring.

Zenoss Enterprise 2.5's focus is on scalability and security with an eye toward future datacenter platforms and technologies. Additional new features include:

Opengear, open source infrastructure management solutions vendor, announced a new centralized monitoring system this week aimed at the IT needs of medium-sized businesses. Opengear Monitor helps customers easily monitor their distributed environments, and rectify problems with just a few clicks in a browser window.

Opengear Monitor comes with the popular infrastructure monitoring system Nagios pre-installed in a 1RU CMS6100 hardware appliance, and is capable of managing up to 255 distributed hosts and more than 1,000 services. A wide variety of plugins for Nagios means the system is extensible for monitoring additional apps and services.

The Linux Foundation announced a trio of FOSS community members have been elected to its Technical Advisory Board (TAB), joining seven seven existing members whose job it is to collaborate on with the Foundation on issues of concern to the Linux community. Also re-elected for another term are Linux kernel developer John Corbet and Novell's Greg Kroah-Hartman.

Rounding out the rest of the TAB:

If you've got a knack for developing games and want to create one on an open source multiplayer online framework, then have a look at Arianne. Written in bare C and running on a Java platform, the application lets you focus on creating your game while Arianne does the heavy lifting on its server architecture.

What started out as a tiny app written in pseudo-C++ is now a client-agnostic server framework that uses Python for game description, MySQL in the backend, and a TCP transport channel to communicate with other players.

As I just got done saying a couple days ago, we here at OStatic love our chumbys. The always-on wireless device is as cute as it is handy, keeping you connected to all your favorite Web sites like Flickr, Weather.com, and Twitter. The chumby is fully hackable, from its open source software to its leather-and-plastic housing. Now, the chumby has a little sister fresh on the shelves -- the chumby One.

The newest chumby still sports a touchscreen, accelerometer, and a stereo headphone output jack. Unlike its big brother, however, it also features an external volume knob, FM radio tuner, and a slot for a rechargeable lithium ion battery (not included).

The rest of the specs:

A snappy little Webbook appropriately named litl made its debut this week, bringing with it an interesting twist on the ultra-portable computer craze. It's a lot like the Chumby (a perennial favorite of the OStatic staff), in that it lets you share content with other users, connect to the Internet, and add modules to collect data from your favorite Web sites.

Litl's operating system is rooted in open source -- Ubuntu, to be exact -- but its uniqueness lies in the sleek design. When not being used as a laptop, users can prop it up like an easel then set it to display photos or stream content from Weather.com and other popular Web sites.

Opponents of cloud computing cite data loss and vendor lock-in as a primary dangers of relying on such services. They're valid points, but since cloud computing isn't going away anytime soon, it's time to start finding solutions instead of simply sounding alarm bells.

Today's guest editor, Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange, shares his thoughts about what it would take to make cloud services more reliable and trustworthy.