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Steve Strout, CEO of the Americas SAP Users Group (ASUG), is no longer with the organization, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Ruby on Rails 2.2, an upgrade to the popular Web application framework, was released Friday, featuring an internationalization framework and stronger support for HTTP validators, according to the Ruby on Rails Web site.

Citing the weak economy, SAP has cut the cost of developer subscriptions for its NetWeaver platform by roughly 50 percent, according to a post this week on an official company blog.

The New York Times used Ruby on Rails to pull together, analyze and display election results in near real time on one of its busiest Web traffic days ever. How did nytimes.com scale up Rails -- a framework known for quick development turnaround but less than lightning fast performance?

Marking the two-year anniversary of their controversial interoperability agreement, Microsoft and Novell this week are announcing upcoming availability of both the beta version of Moonlight, which puts Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application technology on Linux, and the general release of Advanced Management Pack for Suse Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.

Open-source database vendor Ingres unveiled Ingres Database 9.2 on Tuesday, the first major release of the venerable software in more than a year.

Sun Microsystems is slashing its workforce on a scale typically reserved for automakers, announcing Friday that it plans to lay off up to 6,000 employees -- a restructuring that comes on top of earlier cutbacks made over the past year.

Novell plans to publish later this month or in December the architecture document of FOSSA, its long-term strategy for the management and deployment of resources both within and outside the enterprise.

Open source management software provider Hyperic this week introduced an upgrade to its platforms that lets IT managers monitor virtual environments, better plan for capacity and track performance of services delivered via cloud computing.

Expressing a now-familiar theme, a Microsoft executive at the ApacheCon conference on Friday morning touted Microsoft's efforts to be more open, highlighting moves such as offering the company's "M" modeling language under the Microsoft "Open Specification Promise."

Microsoft has given its most ringing endorsement of open source Web browsers to date with chief executive officer Steve Ballmer not ruling out adopting such technology as an alternative to its own popular Internet Explorer, saying it is "interesting".