"Alex Ionescu, the ReactOS kernel coordinator, has resigned. Alex first joined the project in 2004, around the 0.2.2 release. Since then, he's been at the center of quite a few squabbles about how to code the kernel. However, Alex has also been responsible for completely rewriting the kernel almost from the ground up. Today, about 60% of the kernel code is probably his. The reason for Alex's departure is because of his joining David Solomon's Expert Seminars as an instructor. Because this job would place him in close contact with many Microsoft programmers and also give him access to other Microsoft properties, continuing with the project would have resulted in possible conflicts of interest."

"Tired of all the ads on AIM? Want access to more services than just Yahoo!? There are lots of IM client choices besides the big three - AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger). The software we examine here lets you hook into any of these three services, and usually more besides, like Jabber. Not all of these applications will offer all of the features you'll find on the big guys - video and voice chat come to mind - but most of them do a good job of unobtrusively keeping you in contact with your comrades."

"What's the best way to attract a pile of threatening lawyers' letters from Microsoft? Sell pirate copies of Windows? Write a DRM-busting program? Londoner Jamie Cansdale has just discovered a new approach. He had the temerity to make Redmond's software better. As a hobby, Cansdale developed an add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio. TestDriven.NET allows unit test suites to be run directly from within the Microsoft IDE. Cansdale gave away this gadget on his website, and initially received the praises of Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft was so pleased with him, it gave him a Most Valuable Professionals award, which it says it gives to 'exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who voluntarily share their high quality, real world expertise with others'. However, his cherished status did not last."

From information posed on the OpenSolaris discussion boards 4Front Technologies plan to offer the source code of OSS v4 under both the CDDL and GPLv2 licenses. "The rumors are true, we're planning on open sourcing Open Sound (on June 14th). We will be offering the source code under CDDL to Solaris and GPLv2 for Linux BSD, OpenServer etc."

"The Symphony OS Project is pleased to announce the release of Symphony OS 2007.06. This is our first release based fully on Ubuntu and even though many improvements have not yet made it into this release, we hope to speed up the release schedule over the next couple months to help us settle into our new Ubuntu base system."

Perhaps overcome with excitement (and forgetting that Apple doesn't like such pre-emptive disclosures), Sun's Jonathan Schwartz announced today at Sun event in D.C. that Apple would be making ZFS 'the file system' in OSX 10.5 Leopard. "In fact, this week you'll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developer Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS X."

The European Union's second highest court is expected to rule on Sept. 17 whether the European Commission was right in 2004 to find that Microsoft violated antitrust laws, sources familiar with the matter said. Sept. 17 is the final working day before the retirement of Court of First Instance President Bo Vesterdorf, who is presiding over the landmark case. The ruling is expected to clarify whether the European Commission can continue to pursue the case, or whether it must pull back and permit Microsoft to continue its business practices.

"I remember the day I was interviewed at VMware. I was asked what I would do to improve Workstation, and one of the things I said was that it would be nice to make a VM go rootless. That is, pull application windows out of the VM and make them integrate well with the operating system. I wasn’t the only one. A lot of people wanted this type of feature. It’s been discussed for years, but it’s always been hard to find the manpower to do it. But competition is good, and we finally got some people on this feature. And it turned out spectacularly."

"Netscape is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Netscape Navigator 9.0 Beta 1. The release is now available for download from browser.netscape.com for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Some of Navigator 9's new features are listed here; for a complete list, see What's New in Netscape Navigator 9? at browser.netscape.com."

RSBAC, a European security solution similar to SELinux, has released the latest stable 1.3 series. The new 1.3 release incorporates file descriptor caching, bringing the level of performance on par with other solutions. Their servers are also running mod_rsbac, an Apache module replacing SuExec without loss of performance due to forking, and with a higher level of privilege separation.

Times change. When the movies came about people said that it was a trend that will die soon. When the TV came out, even more people said that it won't catch on. And here we are again, at the dawn of IPTV, finding the first professionally-made, web-only, live action series: Sanctuary. Co-created by one of Sci-Fi Channel's Stargate SG-1 producers, Stage3Media's Damian Kindler was very kind to answer some of our questions about the promising project, which recently even hit a Guinness record as the most expensive web-only production ever ($4.5 million CDN). You can view behind-the-scenes and previews here and the first full 17-minute webisode here (includes a cameo of Stargate: Atlantis' own David Hewlett), while you can support the project by buying the HD DRM-free version of the webisodes at the official site. Read more in our interview inside!

"Mozilla is having a nightmarish security week. The company released a security-fix version of its Thunderbird email client late yesterday after updating its Firefox browser, a Firefox Google toolbar extension, and its SeaMonkey web application suite - all within the last six days. The new Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 replaces 1.5.0.10."

Asus and Intel have teamed up to develop a USD 199 notebook PC, the companies announced here on June 5. In a keynote address given by Sean Maloney, an executive vice president at Intel and chief marketing and sales officer, Jonney Shih, chairman and chief executive of Asus, was invited on stage to unveil the 'Eee PC', an inexpensive laptop designed to help spread computing to poorer regions. Two models were demonstrated: a USD 199 and USD 299 model. They represent part of what Intel is now calling its 'World Ahead', market initiative, giving virtually anyone around the world a chance to own a PC. In addition, Intel has announced major updates for its C++ and Fortran tools.

Via Technologies has unfurled a prototype for a mini notebook that will compete against similar small computers touted by Samsung and Intel, but sell for less. The Taiwanese company is also showing off motherboards that will appear in smart phones in about a year.