China Martens

IBM Corp. retained its lead of the Top500 list of supercomputers with its BlueGene/L System installed at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in Livermore, California. The system topped the twice-yearly list of the fastest computers in the world for the third consecutive time and is likely to remain number one for some time since its size doubled earlier this year.

Black Duck Software Inc. is making its protexIP/OnDemand software-compliance assessment service available free of charge through to the end of the year, according to a company executive. The service analyzes software projects to determine whether they contain any pieces of open-source code and ensures that the code meets licensing obligations.

IBM Corp. is working to promote a "virtuous cycle of growth" within its operations, according to a senior Big Blue executive. The hope is that increased employee productivity results in collaboration which in turn stimulates innovation which then drives productivity and so on.

The new man in the number-two spot at Novell Inc. has a major task on his hands: how to get the troubled company's business back into alignment. Part of the company's restructuring will be reflected in Novell's upcoming layoffs, due to be announced at the same time as the software vendor's fourth-quarter financial results, he said.

Three organizations are teaming up to offer what they claim is the first open-source compliance insurance policy to provide coverage for companies around the world that are using open-source software in their businesses or within their own operations. The three organizations are risk mitigation consultancy Open Source Risk Management Inc. (OSRM), a Lloyd's of London underwriter Kiln PLC and a Lloyd's broker Miller Insurance Services Ltd.

Sun Microsystems Inc. made a flurry of announcements centered around its Solaris 10 operating system Wednesday. The news included the release of a new version of its Java Enterprise System (Java ES) subscription-based enterprise middleware, which will now support additional non-Sun operating systems.

Black Duck Software Inc. is making its protexIP/OnDemand software-compliance assessment service available free of charge from Tuesday through the end of the year, according to a company executive. The service analyzes software projects to determine whether they contain any pieces of open-source code and ensure that the code meets licensing obligations.

IBM Corp. is due to unveil its first two 64-bit servers based on Intel Corp.'s dual-core Xeon chip, formerly code-named Paxville DP, when the chip giant launches the processor Monday. Under a promotional deal to last through year-end, Big Blue will sell one of the servers for the same price as the single-core model it replaces, according to an IBM executive. The move is designed to provide an additional incentive for users to adopt dual-core computing sooner rather than later.