Open Source

Despite their dubious reputation, tech pirates are engines of innovation, because they're always ahead of the curve, daring to run where angles fear to tread.

The search engine giant unveiled several projects this year with an intent to help speed up the Internet. Google is betting more speed means more Web traffic, and more customers.

Google -- when it first introduced Android -- called it a joint project by the Open Handset Alliance, a group of companies supporting the operating system. But partners say the software is developed in-house at Google. And at least one analyst says the development is "absolutely Google-controlled and managed."

While some netbook users will be happy to run Windows 7 Starter Edition, there are some notable open source alternatives. Here is a guide to three Linux-based operating systems which you can download for free

ING Life execs in India realized that to contribute to the firm's rural push they needed to sharply lower the cost of setting up branches. They began by attacking IT infrastructure -- moving from Windows to Open Source systems. The results were swift and spectacular.

The motion capture technology that is often used to create realistic-looking action sequences in movies and video games takes a lot of manual labour to correct flaws. But thanks to a Toronto college and a Montreal developer, one games studio is now spending less time reconnecting limbs to all the right places.

Poisoning education, locking in users, abusing standards, and threatening user security are some of the so-called "sins" of Windows 7, according to the Free Software Foundation.rn

Microsoft and free open source software aren't always mutually exclusive. Check out these ten applications that you can run on your Windows computer right now.

A new way of tracking and capturing employee and customer ideas and data using an made-in-house CRM tool has worked wonders for YES Bank. In a short time, this relatively new banking firm has improved customer service by 60 per cent and turnaround time for its processes by almost 70 percent.

Intel has tailored this open source operating system for the Internet and multimedia use. Anyone can download the new v2.0 to give the netbook OS a spin -- but should you even bother?

In this roundup we take a look at five free - and fabulous - alternatives to using Microsoft Office Project. None of these are from major software companies. Four of the five are open source while the fifth, jxProjects, is advertising-supported. We'll show you what each of these applications offers, and how easy they are to use, even those unfamiliar with project planning. rn

These highly-anticipated open source software releases are free to download and use. From Web browsers to complete Operating Systems, many of these downloads are just as good if not better than paid-for software equivalents.

Your ear doesn't have to be pressed to the ground for long to hear angry grumblings in the open source community about leeches, vampires, or freeloaders.

Students from Toronto's Seneca College have made a stellar contribution to Firefox's 3.5 release candidate, overhauling the infrastructure and localizing the browser to many different languages. The win-win partnership between Seneca and Mozilla has led to huge improvements in the firm's software, and jobs for Seneca graduates.

Keith Curtis, who was a programmer with Microsoft for 11 years, never used Linux until he quit his job in late 2004. Today he is a Linux fanatic and is convinced that free, software is technically superior to Redmond's proprietary software. Open source will lead to the inevitable fall of his former company, Curtis believes.rn