Red Hat, the industry’s leading Linux, bought JBoss seven years ago to take on the app server giants IBM and Oracle. Under Red Hat, though, JBoss lost its sex appeal among open-source and Java devs. I look at how spinning up Vert.x can put the sexy back into Red Hat – but at the expense [...]
The PC revolutionized business but it wouldn’t have succeeded without the spreadsheet and Lotus 1-2-3 from Mitch Kapor – it was a revelation in power and simplicity. However, it’s Bill Gates and Excel that got the glory and the money. I wrote and jointly commissioned a series of pieces for The Reg celebrating Lotus 1-2-3′s [...]
Open source, it’s said, is an inevitable force and closed-sourcers who resist will fail. If that’s true, why did the founder of the world’s default big-data processing framework – Doug Cutting, creator of the Google MapReduce-inspired Hadoop used by Amazon.com, Facebook and Yahoo! – have so much to fear from Oracle and Microsoft before they [...]
With just $500 Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded Atari on June 26, 1972. 10 years later Atari was making $2bn in sales while games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man were the first to break the one million sold barrier. You can read my take what made the Atari star burn so bright, outliving the [...]
With $16bn in its pocket, half-reports are running rife about what’s next for Facebook. Is it a smart phone built using ex-Apple engineers? More acquisitions? A reported deal for Norwegian browser maker Opera makes sense for a company answerable to shareholders and that must get out from under Apple. Opera also means millions more customers [...]
Boot to Gecko, Mozilla’s open-source handset, is key for the web and Mozilla according to Mozilla’s Europe president Tristian Nitot. For Mozilla, it means life after Firefox and for mobile it means freedom and openness in a closed and controlled Apple and Google world. Can Mozilla convert the success it’s had with Firefox on the [...]
Oracle suffers a sudden loss of Java VM talent, bought with Sun Microsystems in 2010, to Adobe Systems. Signs are Adobe’s tuning a Flashless version of its ActionScript language that takes on ECMAsript cousin HTML5 in gaming. Read my exclusive on the Oracle exodus here.
Scientists are developing technology to crunch growing volumes of data for intensive apps like search. They are marrying Nobel-award winning work in graphene with new theories in RAM and electron spin to devise a chip architecture combining memory and logic they say spells the end of conventional silicon electronics. I spoke to the physics and [...]
Outgoing Government G-Cloud director Chris Chant says the fad for IT outsourcing has sapped Whitehall’s ability to set the nation’s tech strategy while the entrenched interests of incumbent IT suppliers stands in the way of G-Cloud’s success. Government must recruit a new wave of decision makers and civil servants have the courage to stand up [...]
Apple is joining Microsoft, IBM and AT&T as the latest tech company to be prosecuted by the US government for competing unfairly against rivals – this time ebooks, readers and tablets are the problem. Apple’s defense is weak but the government’s chances of winning, taking down Apple and changing the market, are weaker still based [...]
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