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If you're like millions of people who don't mind getting their hands a bit dirty with software configuration, you can download and install a blogging package. One of the most sophisticated such packages is WordPress, which is distributed under the GNU Public License. Version 2.5 of WordPress was released at the end of last week, and it is a significant improvement over an already impressive piece of software.

The latest release of WordPress includes many new features. But the biggest and most important feature of all is the user interface, which has been overhauled and improved to make blogging even easier. Learn more.

Want a complete, printed reference for Rails that dedicates a separate chapter to each topic? Look no further than The Rails Way, a new book by Obie Fernandez.

Ruby on Rails is one of the best-known open-source Web frameworks currently in use. It combines the Ruby language with an MVC (model-view-controller) architecture, a powerful object-relational mapper known as ActiveRecord.

InfoWorld's survey of IT professionals indicates that open-source usage will continue to grow in the coming years. Why, and what does this mean for open-source developers?

MapReduce is Google's secret weapon: A way of breaking complicated problems apart, and spreading them across many computers. Hadoop is an open source implementation of MapReduce that you can use on your own computers, in the same way.

How does Hadoop work, and how might you best use it? Especially if you were interested in the recent news involving Yahoo and Hadoop, or if you're interested in cloud computing, it's worth finding out.

Daniel J. Bernstein is well known for writing top-quality, secure software for Unix systems. But a combination of unusual coding and administrative practices, together witih a source-only license, kept DJB's programs relegated to a small number of Unix gurus.

Now that the programs have been released to the public domain, might they have a chance of becoming truly popular?

Have you hit a brick wall when working with Ruby on Rails? Do you want to understand what is going on behind the scenes in your Rails application? Are you looking to squeeze the best possible speed out of your Rails apps? Advanced Rails might well be the book you're looking for.

Ruby on Rails has become, over the last few years, the latest hit among Web application developers. While it is often compared with Perl, PHP, and Java, Rails is not a programming language.οΎ 

A letter and petition from well-known open source activist Bruce Perens raises questions about how the open source world is governed, and how the decade-long movement can keep potentially hostile forces from changing its direction. Open source software has existed for many years. But we have only had a common definition and term for 10 years. We know this, because it was only in April 1998 that publisher Tim O'Reilly hosted a summit for the authors of several well-known software packages -- including GNU founder Richard Stallman, Perl author Larry Wall, Linux creator Linus Torvalds, and Python author Guido van Rossum.

The Software Freedom Law Center just announced its fourth victory over a software company that incorporated GPL-licensed software in its proprietary product. What happens when the SFLC sues a software company, and how can proprietary software vendors best work with the open-source world? The answer depends, as always, on the license.