Sean Michael Kerner

NEW ORLEANS—Over the last few months, a whole lot of people have been very worried about the privacy of their information. The revelation that the National Security Agency can potentially decrypt traffic from the Web has made a lot of people question their online providers and what can be done to protect privacy. In a […]

NEW ORLEANS—Intel is a leading contributor to Linux as well as many other important open-source efforts, including the OpenStack cloud effort. In a keynote presentation Sept 18 at the LinuxCon conference here, Dirk Hohndel, chief Linux and open-source technologist at Intel, detailed why open source is important to Intel for development and for the cloud. […]

NEW ORLEANS—Linus Torvalds, who created the open-source Linux operating system 22 years ago, took the keynote stage at the LinuxCon conference along with fellow kernel developers to talk about the state of Linux kernel development. Throughout the hour-long session Sept. 18, the panel was peppered with a barrage of questions on a wide variety of […]

NEW ORLEANS—The open-source Xen hypervisor project was once the only major virtualization technology on Linux. Over the years, its prominence and its community faded, but thanks to a spirited set of initiatives, Xen is now back. In a session at the LinuxCon conference here, Lars Kurth, chairman of the Xen Project Advisory Board, detailed his […]

NEW ORLEANS—Google Director of Open Source Chris DiBona took the keynote stage at the LinuxCon conference here on Sept. 16 with a key message: Android is open source. DiBona plays a key role at Google in helping to make sure that his company does right by the open-source community and is compliant with open-source licensing […]

A week after Microsoft patched its Internet Explorer (IE) web browser for 10 privately reported security issues, the company on Sept. 17 warned about a new issue. That’s right, Microsoft after all of its patching of IE in recent months, missed one. In its advisory, Microsoft noted that is investigating public reports of a remote […]

Mozilla on Sept. 17 released its latest open-source Firefox browser update for both Android as well as desktop versions for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. The Firefox 24 release is light on new user-facing features and heavy on security fixes, providing 17 security advisories, seven of which Mozilla has rated “critical.” Among the critical […]

Hewlett-Packard is doubling-down on its security portfolio with the announcement Sept. 17 of its new Threat Central security intelligence service that is all about enabling collaboration among organizations to share security information. HP is also updating other components of its security portfolio to take advantage of the new security intelligence, including the introduction of a […]

Linux Development: 7 Surprising Facts About Who Writes Linux Apps By Sean Michael Kerner Linus Torvalds Isn’t Top Linux Kernel Developer Although Linus Torvalds continues to lead Linux kernel development, he is not the leading contributor. In fact, Torvalds currently ranks 101st on the latest “Who Writes Linux” report for the number of patches generated […]

NEW ORLEANS—At the annual LinuxCon USA conference that started Sept. 16, Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin detailed the current state of Linux and how it is evolving in 2013. Zemlin didn’t shy away from discussing the challenges either. And he wasn’t the only one speaking about the state of Linux at the conference. Gabe […]