OStatic

JavaScript programmers, rejoice! It's been a good week for open source from big companies. Earlier this week Yahoo! released its Traffic Server it acquired from Inktomi, and now Google has unleashed Closure Tools. These are part of the toolset that Google uses to create JavaScript-heavy applications like Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Maps.

There will be three updates to Android by the end of the year. They're all named after desserts.

Chrome OS proves Google can hype, but can it win? It used to be that only Microsoft could pre-announce a product to mass hysteria, then under-deliver for the first few iterations.

Google and open source finally kill Clippy. Microsoft is selling Office 2010 as an action flick whose first scene is at the graveside of Clippy, the paperclip help icon.

Five ways to help secure Apache on Linux. Apache is one of the most popular web servers available, and it's easier to secure than you may think.

6 reasons to license software under the GPL. Programmers are plagiarists.

Chrome's mission: making Windows obsolete. Is Google's new operating system bad news for Microsoft's Windows efforts?

Microsoft Azure to capture open source revenue streams. It will support many major open source apps and platforms.

Tim O'Reilly and the Cassandra act. He says the web is under threat from closed applications.

Google has actually managed to patent displaying patents.The USPTO buys in.

The Mozilla Foundation has posted its financial statements and tax info for 2008, and a FAQ on the topic for those of us with short attention spans. While plowing through financial statements may not be the most exciting topic for Free and Open Source advocates, it's worth taking a look at what Mozilla has achieved as an independent project, where it's going, and how other projects might be able to emulate Mozilla's success to fund more and more FOSS development.

The good news is that, as of the end of their 2008 fiscal year, Mozilla is weathering the lousy economy pretty well. According to Mitchell Baker's post, reported revenues were up 5% from 2007, and the bulk of that revenue comes from the Firefox search functionality linking back to Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay. But Moz got dinged by the financial crisis in 2008, losing nearly $8 million of its long-term portfolio.

Google kicked off the launch of its Chromium OS project today with a presentation on Chrome OS. The first thing you'll notice is that the name of Google's consumer product will be Chrome OS, while the open source project is named Chromium OS. My guess: Google will bless the usage of the Chrome OS name by granting trademark rights to those who comply with Google's standards. Google didn't say that, but that's what I would do. Word is that the video of today's announcement will be available on YouTube in a day or so.

The next thing I noticed is that Chrome OS will be completely cloud-based . As in, no local data. As in, all web apps all the time. As in, it's only useful to the extent that there's an internet connection. This will likely prove to be a Google Rohrschach test. Those already predisposed to disliking anything Google does will find this horrifying. Those who think Google is the bee's knees will conclude that it's not completely evil and, indeed, is the next logical evolution of desktops-in-the-cloud technology.?

The Google phone is coming soon. There are rumors that Google is getting into the phone-building business.

Netherlands' open source policy goes double Dutch. A report from an open source conference in Amsterdam.

Has Windows Mobile lost 28 percent market share in a year? That's what Gartner researchers report.

KDE 4.4 due out in February of 2010. Here is what to expect.