An anonymous reader writes "The Apache Foundation revealed in Sinsheim, Germany their plans for a cloud version of OpenOffice.org based on HTML5. Chinese and German engineers use OpenOffice in 'headless' mode as a base."

Says a story at Slash Datacenter: "Dell announced Oct. 24 that it had taken the next step into the low-power server market through the development of a second ARM-based server platform, which it will donate to the Apache Software Foundation for software development and app porting. The 'Zinc' concept runs the Calxeda EnergyCore chip, an ARM-based processor that the company hopes will eventually be featured in data centers running specialized workloads. It follows Dell’s earlier effort, dubbed 'Copper,' which it released in May. Neither server is commercially available, with Dell saying only that it would bring the hardware to market at an 'appropriate time.' Dell has said that it believes that the ARM-based server market is approaching an inflection point, and that it believes now is the right time to help foster development and testing of operating systems and applications for ARM servers. It’s a big step for the company, which has historically been an all-Intel shop, only occasionally buying processors from AMD." The ASF has access to the server (humming in a data center in Austin), and it's been busy: developers have "performed more than a dozen builds within the first 24 hours of the servers’ deployment, and on-going builds are being performed by the Apache Derby, River, Tapestry, and Thrift projects."

rbowen writes "Apache OpenOffice has graduated from the Incubator, and now is officially a top-level project at the Apache Software Foundation." From the announcement: "As with all Apache software, Apache OpenOffice software is released under the Apache License v2.0, and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project's day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. Information on Apache OpenOffice source code, documentation, mailing lists, related resources, and ways to participate are available at http://openoffice.apache.org." (Download mirror on Sourceforge, too.)

hypnosec writes "A new patch for Apache by Roy Fielding, one of the authors of the Do Not Track (DNT) standard, is set to override the DNT option if the browser reaching the server is Internet Explorer 10. Microsoft has by default enabled DNT in Internet Explorer 10 stating that it is to 'better protect user privacy.' This hasn't gone down well with ad networks, users and other browser makers. According to Mozilla, the DNT feature shouldn't be either in an active state or an inactive state until and unless a user specifically sets it. Along the same lines is the stance adopted by Digital Advertising Alliance. The alliance has revealed that it will only honor DNT if and only if it is not switched on by default. This means advertisers will be ignoring the DNT altogether no matter how a particular browser is set up. The DNT project has another member – Apache. It turns out that Microsoft's stance is like a thorn to Apache as well. Fielding has written a patch for the web server titled 'Apache does not tolerate deliberate abuse of open standards.' The patch immediately sparked a debate, which instigated Fielding to elaborate on his work: 'The only reason DNT exists is to express a non-default option. That's all it does. [...] It does not protect anyone's privacy unless the recipients believe it was set by a real human being, with a real preference for privacy over personalization.'"

rbowen writes "The software that powers the SourceForge developer tools (SourceForge is owned by the same corporate overlords as Slashdot) has been submitted to the Apache Software Foundation Incubator. The SourceForge Blog reads: 'By submitting Allura to the Apache Incubator, we hope to draw an even wider community of developers who can advance the feature set and tailor the framework to their needs. With the flexibility and extensibility Allura allows, developers are free to use any number of the popular source code management tools, including: Git, SVN, or Mercurial. We are indeed willing to turn our own open source platform into a tool that everyone can use and extend, and we believe Apache is the best place to steward the process.'"

GMGruman writes "Simon Phipps writes, "As Apache licenses proliferate, two warring camps have formed over whether the GPL is or isn't falling out of favor in favor of the Apache License." But as he explores the issues on both sides, he shows how the binary thinking on the issue is misplaced, and that the truth is more nuanced, with Apache License gaining in commercially focused efforts but GPL appearing to increase in software-freedom-oriented efforts. In other words, it depends on the style of open source."

An anonymous reader writes "If you are looking for small niche features such as interactive word count, bundled report designer, or command line filtering etc – LibreOffice beats OpenOffice hands down. 'Noting the important dates of June 1, 2011, which was when Oracle donated OOo to Apache; and Apache OpenOffice 3.4 is due probably sometime in May 2012; Meeks compared Apache OpenOffice 3.4 new features to popular new features from LibreOffice: 3.3, 3.4, 3.5. It wasn't surprising to find that LibreOffice has merged many features not found in Apache OO given their nearly year long head start.'"

netbuzz writes "Citrix today announced that it is turning its development attention away from the OpenStack project, started two years ago by NASA and Rackspace, in favor of its own CloudStack platform, Apache and Amazon Web Services. 'Based on challenges of the technical maturity and where we are with CloudStack, (OpenStack) became a path not viable,' says a Citrix executive. Industry analysts contend that the move says more about Citrix and its needs than it does OpenStack and its future."

darthcamaro writes "The world's most popular web server is out with a major new release today that has one key goal — deliver more performance than ever before. Improved caching, proxy modules as well as new session control are also key highlights of the release. 'We also show that as far as true performance is based — real-world performance as seen by the end-user- 2.4 is as fast, and even faster than some of the servers who may be "better" known as being "fast", like nginx,' Jim Jagielski, ASF President and Apache HTTP Server Project Management Committee, told InternetNews.com." Here's list of new features in 2.4.

First time accepted submitter colinneagle writes "Open source has been so successful in giving us software like Linux, Apache, Hadoop, etc., why wouldn't the open source method work with other types of software? Probably no one expected that the criminals behind vast malware trojans would adopt open source methods to make their malware more dangerous, but they have. According to this report from Seculert Research, the makers of Citadel, a variant of the Zeus Trojan are using open source models to hone their code and make the Trojan more dangerous."

revealingheart writes "Mozilla has announced the release of the Mozilla Public License 2.0. The new version provides for compatibility with the Apache and GPL licenses, improved patent protections and recent changes in copyright law. The full license text is available online. Mozilla has updated their wiki with plans to upgrade their codebase; Bugzilla has also said that they will update (with an exemption to keep the project MPL only). The MPL was previously incompatible with other copyleft licenses like the GPL. The new version is compatible (unless exempted) and doesn't require multiple licenses (as currently stands with Firefox and Thunderbird). This will allow Mozilla to incorporate Apache-licensed code; but will mean that their software becomes incompatible with GPL2 code."

tsamsoniw writes "With financial backing from the likes of Michael Dell and other venture capitalists, open source upstart Nginx has edged out Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Server) to hold the title of second-most widely used Web server among all active websites. What's more, according to Netcraft's January 2012 Web Server Survey, Nginx over the past month has gained market share among all websites, whereas competitors Apache, Microsoft, and Google each lost share."

darthcamaro writes "There has been a tonne of hype about Big Data and specifically Hadoop in recent years. But until today, Hadoop was not a 1.0 release product. Does it matter? Not really, but it's still a big milestone. The new release includes a new web interface for the Hadoop filesystem, security, and Hbase database support. '"At this point we figured that as a community we can support this release and be compatible for the foreseeable future. That makes this release an ideal candidate to be called 1.0," Arun C. Murthy, vice president of Apache Hadoop, said.'"

Thinkcloud writes "In an open letter, the Apache Software Foundation has made its plans for OpenOffice clear, including an Apache-branded OpenOffice suite targeted at developers coming next year." From The H: "The ASF says it does not want to force any vision on the ODF community noting that 'it is impossible to agree upon a single vision for all participants, Apache OpenOffice does not seek to define a single vision, nor does it seek to be the only player' in the large ODF ecosystem. Instead, it wishes to offer a neutral 'collaboration opportunity' and notes that its permissive licensing and development model are 'widely recognised as one of the best ways to ensure open standards, such as ODF, gain traction and adoption.'"

angry tapir writes "A yet-to-be-patched flaw discovered in the Apache HTTP server allows attackers to access protected resources on the internal network if some rewrite rules are not defined properly. The vulnerability affects Apache installations that operate in reverse proxy mode, a type of configuration used for load balancing, caching and other operations that involve the distribution of resources over multiple servers."

think_nix writes "After the resignation of Apache from the Java SE/EE Executive Committee, the time has now come for Harmony to be added to the Apache Attic. Harmony was 'the project to produce an open source cleanroom implementation of Java.' An open vote was taken within the Project Management Committee, which resulted in a 20-2 majority to discontinue development."

Trailrunner7 writes "Two weeks after releasing a fix for the range-header denial-of-service flaw that was much-discussed on security forums and mailing lists, the Apache Software Foundation has pushed out another version of its popular Web server that includes a further fix for the same flaw. Apache 2.2.21 has a patch for the CVE-2011-3192 vulnerability that the group previously fixed in late August with the release of version 2.2.20. The vulnerability is an old one that recently resurfaced after a researcher published an advisory on a modified version of the bug and also released a tool capable of exploiting the vulnerability."

An anonymous reader writes "The National Security Agency has submitted a new database, Accumulo, to the Apache Foundation for incubation. Accumulo is based on the original BigTable paper with some extensions such as the ability to provide cell-level security. It appears there are some hurdles that must be cleared concerning copyright before the project could be accepted."

CWmike writes "The Apache open-source project has patched its Web server software to quash a bug that a denial-of-service (DoS) tool has been exploiting. Apache 2.2.20, released Tuesday, plugs the hole used by an 'Apache Killer' attack tool. On Aug. 24, project developers had promised a fix within 48 hours, then revised the timetable two days later to 24 hours. The security advisory did not explain the delay."

Trailrunner7 writes with the report that "The Apache Software Foundation plans to have a fix available in the next day or so [Note: that means today, now. --Ed.] for the denial-of-service problem in Apache that was publicized late last week. The bug, which in some forms has been under discussion for more than four years, involves the way that the Web server handles certain overlapping range headers. The vulnerability is a denial-of-service bug, but it is considered serious because a remote attacker can essentially take a targeted server offline with little effort and resources. The Apache Software Foundation, which maintains the popular open-source Web server, updated its advisory on the vulnerability, saying that it expects to have a full fix available for the vulnerability within the next 24 hours."