Development

10 questions for Layer 7 Technologies CTO Scott Morrison

Name: Scott Morrison

MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor on implications of 'the mobile wave'

MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor's big interest these days is "the mobile wave," which refers to a re-ordering of technology and modern life through the proliferation of iPads, smartphones and the increasingly sophisticated software that runs on them.

10 questions for Recall Senior VP and CFO Allison Aden

Name: Allison Aden

10 questions for Hortonworks CTO Eric Baldeschwieler

Name: Eric Baldeschwieler

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst weighs in on strategy, Oracle and growth

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst is coming up on his five-year anniversary at the helm, following his arrival in December 2007. Under Whitehurst's leadership, Red Hat's revenue has grown from US$523 million in its fiscal 2008 to more than $1.1 billion in its fiscal 2012, without deviating from its core strategy of open-source infrastructure software.

10 questions for ownCloud CFO Dan Curtis

Name: Dan Curtis

Google's software-defined/OpenFlow backbone drives WAN links to 100 per cent utilization

Google, an early backer of software-defined networking and OpenFlow, shared some details at the recent Open Networking Summit about how the company is using the technology to link 12 worldwide data centers over 10G links. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix caught up with Google Principal Engineer Amin Vahdat to learn more.

Open source identity: Bitcoin technical lead Gavin Andresen

Originally from Melbourne, Australia but now living in the US, Gavin Andresen is the technical lead of the Bitcoin virtual currency system. Started by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, Bitcoin is a digital currency system consisting of an open source client and P2P network. The aim of the Bitcoin project is a decentralised, secure peer-to-peer currency system that does not rely on banks or central transaction processing authorities. To generate “Bitcoins” people on the network use a cross-platform, open source client developed in C++. In addition to the open source aspect of Bitcoin, there is now an emerging market in services around the cryptocurrency such as exchange portals and virtual clearing houses. Previously, the Open Source Identity series has featured interviews with Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson, Linux’s Linus Torvalds, Jan Schneider of Horde, Mark Spencer of Asterisk fame, Spine CMS creator Hendrick van Belleghem, Free Telephony Project founder David Rowe, and PulseAudio creator Lennart Poettering. This time we talk to Gavin Andresen about the new, decentralised approach to money – Bitcoin.

By Rodney Gedda | 21 March, 2011 14:29

Tags: open source, e-commerce, money, open source identity, currency, encryption, P2P, Bitcoin, Gavin Andresen, internet banking

Q&A: Inverse CEO on building an open source Exchange alternative

Use of open source e-mail groupware systems in the enterprise has been lacklustre with most organisations opting for products from Microsoft, IBM or cloud providers like Google. The market is ripe for competition and Canadian company Inverse is set to provide another option by integrating the OpenChange project’s Microsoft Outlook compatibility software into the SOGo open source groupware suite. With a complete Exchange server replacement scheduled for release early next year, we spoke with Inverse president and CEO Ludovic Marcotte about open source groupware development, native Microsoft Exchange interoperability and data integration standards.

By Rodney Gedda | 26 October, 2010 14:13

Tags: Microsoft exchange, Microsoft, SOGo, groupware, Inverse, openchange

Google: Concerns over Instant unwarranted

Google shook the search market last week with the launch of Instant, a new feature that lets the company's search engine refresh results on the fly as people type their queries.

By Juan Carlos Perez | 14 September, 2010 03:20

Tags: advertising, Google Instant, Google, internet, search engines

KDE innovation still brewing amid stable 4.5 release

With KDE Software Compilation (SC) 4.5 released this week, the open source project has made another stepping stone towards its goal of providing a modern, free desktop people can adapt to their needs. TechWorld caught up with KDE developer and spokesperson for the project, Sebastian Kugler, about what was achieved with this latest release and how KDE SC can be more innovative.

By Rodney Gedda | 11 August, 2010 05:50

Tags: software development, kde, open source, innovation, desktop linux, kde4

Google VP Mayer describes the perfect search engine

Last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said during the company's earnings call that Google had implemented about 120 search quality improvements during the third quarter as it moves toward its ultimate goal: "We want to get to the perfect search engine."

By Juan Carlos Perez | 11 November, 2009 08:44

Tags: Google, search engines

Interview: PayPal's developer network senior director, Naveed Anwar, and VP, platform and emerging technologies, Osama Bedier

PayPal’s developer network senior director, Naveed Anwar, and VP, platform and emerging technologies, Osama Bedier, who were in Sydney for this week's Web Directions conference, chat to Computerworld about PayPal's plans to open its payment platform to third-party developers.

By Kathryn Edwards | 09 October, 2009 13:01

Tags: software development, paypal

A-Z of Programming Languages: Scala

A Twitter developer has said that Scala could become the language of choice of the modern Web 2.0 startup. LinkedIn also uses the language. So do with many other big corporate names including Sony Pictures, EDF and SAP. Martin Odersky tells us about Scala’s history, its future and what makes it so interesting.

By Dahna McConnachie | 18 August, 2009 11:32

Tags: a-z of programming languages, programming, LinkedIn, twitter, scala

The A-Z of Programming Languages: Erlang

Our series on the most popular programming languages continues as we chat to Erlang creator Joe Armstrong

By Kathryn Edwards | 16 June, 2009 15:03

Tags: a-z of programming languages, erlang

KOffice on version 2.0, extensions, and being like Firefox

The idea of an application that supports third-party extensions and add-ons users can download and install in one click may be more applicable to Web browsers than office suites, but the developers at the open source KOffice project have developed such an architecture where all components are modular. TechWorld interviews the marketing coordinator for KOffice, Inge Wallin, to find out where this lesser-known of the open source office suites is headed now version 2.0.0 has arrived and what excites its developers. Building an easy, intuitive, cross-platform, and extensible platform like Firefox is high on the agenda.

By Rodney Gedda | 28 May, 2009 16:05

Tags: ooxml, kde, Firefox, KOffice, odf, openoffice, kde4

The A-Z of Programming Languages: Tcl

Our series on the most popular programming languages continues as we chat to Tcl creator John Ousterhout.

By Kathryn Edwards | 08 May, 2009 13:22

Tags: software development, a-z of programming languages, open source, python, mars lander, tcl, java

The A-Z of Programming Languages: Falcon

Computerworld's investigations into the most widely-used programming languages continues as we chat with Giancarlo Niccolai the creator of the Falcon programming language.

By Kathryn Edwards | 09 April, 2009 11:10

Tags: a-z of programming languages, open source, Falcon, programming, scripting language, C

The A-Z of Programming Languages: Bourne shell, or sh

On this occasion we speak to Steve Bourne, creator of the Bourne shell, or sh. In the early 1970s Bourne was at the Computer Laboratory in Cambridge, England working on a compiler for Algol68 as part of his PhD work in dynamical astronomy. This work paved the way for him to travel to IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center in New York in 1973, in part to undertake research into compilers. Through this work, and a series of connections and circumstance, Bourne got to know people at Bell Labs who then offered him a job in the Unix group in 1975. It was during this time Bourne developed sh.

By Howard Dahdah | 05 March, 2009 08:45

Tags: a-z of programming languages

Open source identity: Spine CMS creator Hendrik Van Belleghem

Looking for a Web-based content management system that uses Perl instead of PHP? Want to serve dynamic and static content with PostgreSQL, not MySQL? What started out as a hobby project by Hendrik Van Belleghem, based in Bazel, Belgium, has grown into Spine – a Perl Web content system for Apache on Unix systems. With so many LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) content systems available, Spine offers a refreshing alternative with the tried and tested Perl language and is database independent. Open Source Identity interviews Van Belleghem about Spine, a lesser-known alternative to the popular Web CMSs.

By Rodney Gedda | 04 March, 2009 11:02

Tags: perl, cms, lamp, open source identity, mysql, postgresql