Open Source

A new analysis by a supporter of open source software revealed that 7 out of 10 Android and iOS applications marked as containing open source "failed to comply with basic open source license requirements.”

OpenLogic, which makes open source software support, scanning and governance tools, reported that it had analyzed 635 mobile applications for Android, iPhone and iPad, out of which 66 contained open source software under the Apache, GPL or LGPL licenses. The vendor found that 71% of the 66 apps violated key obligations required by the open source licenses.

Google is facing a lawsuit over patent and copyright infringement in developing its Android operating platform. Google is accused of copying at least seven and as many as 43 Android files directly from Oracle's Java source code. It is not known yet whether the files were actually included with the shipping version of Android, but they were open sourced by Google under an Apache license, and that alone could be legally problematic for the company.

A Ubuntu-based computer tablet is rumored to come in early 2011. "A new Linux powered tablet is on it's way!" writes Andrew Sykes, publisher of the China-based gadget site Gizchina.

Sykes cites unnamed sources and says that the tablet tunning Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 will be powered by an Intel 1.6 GHz Atom and will include 2GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD.

The latest financial statement of Mozilla revealed that Google still drives 86% of revenue to the open source company. In an audited financial statement for 2009 Mozilla lists an unnamed search company (as in previous years) under "concentrations of risk." In 2008, Google accounted for 91 per cent of Mozilla's revenues, so the risk has dropped.

Google and other industry experts believe that the lawsuit launched by Oracle against Android is not just an attack on the search giant but it targets open source Java community.

New research from Appcelerator firm shows that Android enjoys high popularity along with iPhone among US app developers and in some positions Android even gains ground on the Cupertino OS. The mobile developers survey found that 90% of 2,733 polled programmers were ‘very interested’ in creating apps for iPhone while 81% were ‘very interested’ to create applications for Android.

Nokia which started in the 19th century as a rubber works is now most popular for its mobile phones that cover majority of the markets with an offering ranging from ultra low-cost phones to high-end smartphones with the latest "must-have" technology.

However, now the company is consolidating its phone fleet with only 22 models released in the first half of 2010 compared to roughly 35 in the latter half of 2009. And as described by Asia Pacific head of marketing, Will Harris, the company is "a business in transition".

With the efforts of Google and other tech giants Linux platform seems to be gaining momentum with its further move from servers to user devices like tablets, smartphones and TV-sets, notes the piece in the Computerworld magazine.

At Computex computer show in Taipei, Taiwan, many vendors exhibited multiple Apple iPad-like tablets running Android Linux or other embedded Linuxes such as the latest MeeGo embedded Linux.

Yahoo unveiled its plans to open source its internal “cloud serving” platform that will be, as the company puts it, halfway between Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud and Google's App Engine. The platform known simply as “Cloud” provides the company's internal developers with on-demand access to computing resources. One of the main feature that distinguishes it from Amazon is that it spins up "containers" of server power that are pre-configured for things like load-balancing and security. That way, developers needn't handle the load-balancing on their own.

The next major upgrade planned by Mozilla for its popular web browser will be Firefox 4.0 instead of 3.7. The company has recently confirmed that the new version of the open source browser will be known as Firefox 4.0 while the planned 3.7 version will be marked as 3.6.4.

Earlier, the developers planned to follow Firefox 3.6, the last major release, with Firefox 3.7 around the middle of the year.