Zend Server includes:

* Fully supported and certified distribution of PHP 5.2
* Fully supported Zend Framework 1.7 release
* Integrated native installers (RPM/DEB/MSI)
* Web-based administration Interface
* Comprehensive out-of-the-box database connectivity
* Powerful PHP monitoring capabilities to identify problems and help fix them quickly
* URL-based output caching required by today’s modern web applications
* Zend Optimizer+ - byte code cache to boost application performance
* New “Guard Loader” to enable processing of Zend Guard encoded files

To join the beta program, simply download Zend Server from: http://www.zend.com/en/products/server/downloads. For installation questions, support and feedback, visit the new Zend forum at: http://forums.zend.com/ and login using your Zend ID.

For detailed Zend Server information visit: http://www.zend.com/en/products/server/, contact us, or register for the “Unveiling of Zend Server” webinar next week.

Effective November 30, 2008, SugarCRM will no longer provide maintenance patches for versions prior to and including Sugar v.4.2.1. Effective February 28, 2009, SugarCRM will no longer provide maintenance patches for versions prior to and including Sugar v.4.5.0. If you are on an earlier version, we strongly encourage you to upgrade to the latest supported version. For those who remain on an unsupported version, only very critical security issues will be considered after the above dates. 

The following sections outline SugarCRM’s end-of-versioning (EOV) plan. Additionally we’ve included a short FAQ that provides answers to some common questions in this context.

What is the EOV plan?

We will be retiring Sugar product lines in a phased manner as shown below:

Sugar 4.2.1 - End of version effective from November 30 , 2008
Sugar 4.5.0 - End of version effective from February 28, 2009

Why should I upgrade to 5.0/5.1?

We have added many platform and functional improvements on the 5.0 platform. A few are listed below.
• Improved performance and scalability provide by the new metadata-driven model
• Advanced customization capabilities using Module Builder and Studio
• New AJAX based email client
• New customizable Homepage and Dashboards
• New Flash chart engine with Gauge and Funnel charts
• Scalable importing engine

What does End-of-Version mean?

End of Version means that SugarCRM will not be producing any further maintenance patches or bug fixes for an affected version, after the effective dates. SugarCRM’s Customer Support can assist you with upgrading to the current version of Sugar.

What will happen to the add-on products and plug-ins?

All add-on’s and plug-in’s will also be impacted by this plan. 

How does it impact me?

Community members who are using the affected versions will no longer be able to get fixes for the bugs that are reported. It is advised that user move to SugarCRM’s most current version.

Source: http://www.sugarcrm.com

And McNealy will report just how large those benefits are.

It’s intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software. Open source does not require you to pay a penny to Microsoft or IBM or Oracle or any proprietary vendor any money.

And he wants open source mandates.

The government ought to mandate open source products based on open source reference implementations to improve security, get higher quality software, lower costs, higher reliability - all the benefits that come with open software.

Coming from McNealy, the opinion is hardly a neutral analysis. Sun is a vigorous proposal of open source and Unix; cofounder Bill Joy was a primary author of BSD. During his tenure as CEO, McNealy’s hallmark was his constant attacks on Microsoft and Bill Gates.

In his inaugural speech, Obama said:

those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

The question is how much longer spending huge amounts of taxpayer money on proprietary solutions can be justified as “spending wisely” or something other than a “bad habit.”

Michael Tiemann, VP of RedHat and head of the Open Source Initiative, estimated the global waste in using proprietary software at more than $1 trillion annually.

This is the kind of change we need if we are ever going to see the government reform its operational capabilities and cost basis. If they fail to do this, it’s one more stick in the mud. The capital markets are telling us today we can no longer afford much more status quo.

At TruthOut, Dean Baker has called for a $2 billion investment to further development of open source for the desktop.

This money can be used to further develop and simplify open source operating systems such as Linux, as well other forms of free software. The payoffs from this spending would be enormous. Imagine that every computer buyer in the world would be able to get a computer for which the operating system was free, as was almost all the software that they would ever use.

This would surely save consumers an average of at least $200 per computer. With sales at close to 20 million a year, the savings in the United States alone could easily exceed the cost of supporting software development. Adding in the benefits (and presumably some contributions) from the rest of the world, we will be way ahead by going the route of publicly funded open software.

I think Baker probably misses the ball on this one. I fully support expanded government funding of open source developments. But the real benefit is not in demolishing Microsoft’s market for Windows but in developing more and more robust database, cloud and distributed computing solutions. Cost savings for government and business would free up money to invest in R&D, expand into new markets and increase hiring.

Source: http://government.zdnet.com/

While 1.7PR is not a feature complete release in the 1.7 series, it nevertheless contains some very important features scheduled for the 1.7 production release:

• New Zend_AMF component
• Dojo Toolkit 1.2.0
• New ZendX_JQuery component
• Support for dijit editor
• Metadata API in Zend_Cache
• Google book search API
• Performance enhancements
• Application-wide locale with other i18n enhancements
• File upload form element enhancements