Adobe has recently launched its new open source site, a significant move that reflect the extension of its open source focus. There are several positive effects on this site, particularly users can find a total number of nine (9) projects, with the notable one Flex 3 SDK, as well as the intention to put its applications that support Linux platform. On this site, users will access to available projects, source, documentation, but notice carefully will know that Adobe is demonstrated a strengthened focus on Flex 3 and BlazeDS. Additionally, this site also keep users in touch with some of our favorite bloggers by providing a blogroll on the sidebar of the site.

It should be noted that Adobe’s new open source site will help speed both the Adobe and Linux growth through application support. They definitely trying to improve the existing Adobe Reader and Flash on the Linux distributions.

Despite the initiatives that named after open source was promoted by Microsoft in several years ago, but I still hardly find any correlation between Microsoft and open source. Sometimes, I thought this is a tactical move that Microsoft trying to raise its public image in the industry. Today, a video has been uploaded to YouTube entitled, “Is Microsoft Open Source’s Friend?“, as embedded in below, watch it.

Drupal.org, a popular open source content management system (CMS) provider is officially launching the Drupal version 6.0. For a seven years old CMS startup since its first inception in January 15, 2001, and with the released of six major versions, for them it’s no doubt a remarkable achievement. In launching this version, Drupal reported that there are more than 1,600 issues have been resolved during this release cycle, and it also took them more than one year of development since the previous version 5.0. From this, you probably know how much contribution that Drupal community, comprised of over 700 individuals have submitted to this latest version. As expected, the core idea behind Drupal is to give its users a very good PHP & MySQL framework in building the powerful and robust Web sites.

This version 6.0 began by satisfying some immediate and recognizable requirements and needs, such as an improved installer, ease the users in setting up the Drupal sites whether their purposes are for blogging or building the Web sites. Language features have also been revamped, so if a user want to translate a post, translation can be done through the built-in interface, without having to install any additional module. Perhaps the most notable change in this version is the OpenID support. The OpenID client module has been added to the core of this version. In other words, users can sign on to a site with their OpenID accounts. To do this, Drupal has moved the long time favorite Drupal.module out of the Drupal package. Additionally, jQuery 1.2.3 is included in this version, a feature that jointly effort between the jQuery and Drupal communities.

Currently, there are over 100 third-party plugin modules already available for this newly Drupal release. With Drupal version 6.0, Drupal.org is poised to further growth, they should expected reaching more than 300,000 users by end of this year (Now they have registered 240,000 users).

via [CenterNetworks]

The popular open source content management system (CMS) Joomla has released the newest version, i.e version 1.5. Overall, this is the latest stable version after they have recently organized the “Squash Bugs” events with the purpose to fix the priority 1 & 2 bugs in this version before it went public download. Since Joomla first inception in two and a half years ago, the version 1.5 represented a milestone for them, as several new enhancements can be found on it. Building extensions will be much easier and faster with the new API released by Joomla. Other than this, new user interface for site administrators, with several functional improvements ranging from single installer, media manager, core article manager to friendly search engine URLs. As stated by them, one of the most powerful features of the Joomla framework is the new component objects based on the Model-View-Controller programming pattern, in which Ruby on Rails, another Web development framework that heavily based on.

Until now, for existing Joomla sites that still using version 1.0, this version remains as a “caution” if they want to migrate their sites to this newest version. The main reason was that this upgraded version has nothing to do with any of the security problems found on the previous version 1.0 and the version 1.5 is still under refinement when refers to the migrating issue.

This week I came across a new software that turned itself from a $65 shareware to open source, it’s Enso that developed by Humanized. I like what they’ve said in one of their blog posts: It’s the destiny of all software to eventually become free. If you’re in the middle developing a new software, be awared to this statement if you want to develop a software with a price tag in the software industry.

If you’re the first time that heard of Enso, it’s in fact an interface tool that help a user to write commands to her computer, such as open calculator, open internet explorer, open firefox, and etc. It is available on Windows platform and based on a product concept that instead of go through few steps in opening the Windows menu, all you have to do is press the “Caps Lock” key and write your command. Once the command is typed, simply release the Caps Lock and it’s done, the application you intended to open is display on your computer screen.

Some have compared this software tool with Quicksilver, a Mac tool with a similar functionality, but Humanized has insisted Enso was based on the different kind of technologies.