As a director of the Linux Foundation and a Linux SCSI developer, James Bottomley opened the Linux-Kongress in Hamburg, Germany this week with a keynote investigating the commonalities and differences among the various Open Source operating systems. He describes Linux as the liveliest variant among them.

Information Appliance Associates have started a beta test program of a synchronization tool for Linux and Blackberry.

A new product, Iron, is a viable alternative for those reluctant to reveal their personal data when using Google's Chrome browser. The Iron browser is based on Chrome's source code.

The OpenOffice project has taken the next step toward version 3.0 of its free office package by publishing release candidate 2 (RC 2)

The U.S. network backup software provider TOLIS Group is preparing a new version of its BRU Server data security product and promises significant enhancements.

U.S. company Codeweavers today offers a special Google Chrome version of their CrossOver runtime environment for free download, giving Linux and Mac users the opportunity to test the search engine vendor’s new browser.

Several groupware developers have come together to work on Project OpenMapi, an open source API, based on Microsoft's Mapi.