Also: NTT DoCoMo, Intel and IBM team for security spec; start-up promotes wikis; ICANN kicks off .net competition
Open source software proponents received a potential boost from the U.K. government last week with a release of a report citing the well-documented advantages on the server side, and also growing maturity on the desktop front. The assessments were made by the U.K. government’s central procurement agency, the Office of Government Commerce, in summarizing its trials of open source software use in the public sector. The OGC cited progress in desktop products, such as OpenOffice or Sun’s StarOffice, for “transactional workers” who handle routine duties, but not for “knowledge” or “power users” who require more advanced capabilities. However, 85% to 90% of the desktop users at government trial sites were transactional users who could perform their jobs with basic word processing, e-mail and spreadsheet tools, the report said. In addition to its maturing functionality, open source software has related benefits in terms of hardware because it requires less memory and a slower processor speed for the same functionality that proprietary applications offer, the OGC report said.
With an eye toward making mobile devices and the commerce services that run over them more secure, NTT DoCoMo, Intel and IBM last week published a jointly developed security specification called the Trusted Mobile Platform. It aims to provide an end-to-end security architecture for mobile wireless devices, including hardware and software components and technology protocols, the companies said. It also incorporates security technologies and controls such as tamper-resistant modules, domain separation and authorization and management protocols, the group said. Trusted Mobile Platform is designed to protect against viruses and other security threats, and let phones be used for more advanced applications such as “e-tickets” and “e-wallets” that could be used to pay for goods in stores and online. It includes a protocol to show that a device is a trusted member of a network and can be safely connected to other devices, the companies said.
A Silicon Valley start-up aiming to catapult wikis into the mainstream and transform the editable Web sites into an application development platform has attracted a flood of interest for its product beta. Nearly 3,000 companies, small and large, have signed up for free beta test accounts with JotSpot, the company says. Wiki is a term derived from the Hawaiian word for “quick” and describes Web sites that can be accessed and changed using a simple browser-based user interface. Especially popular among tech-savvy people, probably the most visible wiki is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia created by thousands of people. JotSpot seeks to make wikis more accessible by adding a “what you see is what you get” editor that even novice users should be able to handle. And to make wikis more useful as a collaboration tool, JotSpot gives each wiki page that it hosts an e-mail address, which lets users add an archive of e-mail messages to pages.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers was expected to kick off a competition to operate the .net registry last Friday with its release of a draft request for proposals. Confirmation was unavailable at press time. The domain name industry expects a final RFP to be issued in mid-November, with bids due in early January. The high-profile contract is scheduled for award next spring, and a June cut-over date is anticipated. The competition is expected to pit incumbent VeriSign against upstarts Afilias and NeuLevel. Afilias operates the .info registry and provides back-end registry services for .org and eight country code top-level domains. NeuLevel operates the .biz and .us registries. The competition will be fierce because .net is a critical piece of the Internet infrastructure. Only 4.9 million .net names have been registered, compared with nearly 30 million .com names. However, .net names are often used for the name servers and e-mail services that underpin major e-commerce sites and corporate VPNs.
