Hewlett-Packard launched an OS designed specifically for cloud computing, called the HP Cloud OS. Initially, however, the software can only be obtained by purchasing HP systems.

Manufacturing giant best known as the maker of Apple's iPhone is working with Mozilla to build up the Firefox OS ecosystem. Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer, has become the latest company to back Mozilla's Firefox OS and is developing more than five devices running the mobile operating system for its customers.

The Taiwanese manufacturing giant is working on the devices as part of a new partnership with Mozilla to build up the Firefox OS ecosystem, the companies said on Monday.

Google is feeling the heat over its decision to build its new Hangouts IM and audio/video chat product with proprietary technology that doesn't support server federation via the XMPP industry standard, but the company is defending its move.

Specifically, Google maintains that XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) industry support is weak, which dilutes its purpose as a common protocol, and that its technology hasn't kept up with the times.

Geeksphone begins selling two phones, the Keon and Peak, starting Tuesday. These lower-budget models are geared for programmers building Web apps for Mozilla's open-source OS.

 
The opening screen of Firefox OS running on a Geeksphone Keon.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

In an effort to attract a more diverse set of contributors, enterprise software vendor Citrix has donated its open source Xen hypervisor to the Linux Foundation.

Citrix announced the donation Monday at the Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit, being held this week in San Francisco.

The Linux Foundation will support continued development and maintenance of Xen. As a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project, the newly named Xen Project will get support infrastructure and guidance from the nonprofit foundation.

Canonical, which runs Ubuntu, is working with the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on the project. Canonical, the organization behind popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, is working alongside the Chinese government to deliver a state-endorsed operating system.

According to Canonical, it's working alongside the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to bring a suitable Ubuntu version to China. The operating system, which will be known as Ubuntu Kylin, is expected to be released in April.

Collaboration software vendor Open-Xchange plans to launch an open-source, browser-based productivity suite called OX Documents.

The first application for the suite is OX Text, an in-browser word processing tool with editing capabilities for Microsoft Word .docx files and OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice .odt files, the Nuremberg, Germany, company announced on Wednesday.

Dell's 12th-generation PowerEdge server line now supports the use of Ubuntu 12.04 across the board, thanks to a new agreement between the hardware maker and developer Canonical that provides Ubuntu Advantage services to Dell's customers.

Dell now offers 74 server models certified for use with Ubuntu, according to Canonical -- the most of any major hardware OEM. The company's 12th-generation line, which was released in February 2012, is its latest and most advanced.

Already a platinum member of the cloud operating system platform OpenStack, IBM officials said open source code from the project will be the foundation of the company's cloud strategy moving forward, including a new product it announced today. At the company's Pulse show in Las Vegas, IBM announced SmartCloud Orchestrator, a service that helps customers configure the compute, storage and networking resources for applications to run on the company's SmartCloud platform.

Compression is about 100 times slower than conventional methods but compresses about 5 percent better, Google said. Google is open-sourcing a new general purpose data compression library called Zopfli that can be used to speed up Web downloads.