Mozilla releases Firefox 4 Beta 11

Less than two weeks after Firefox 4 Beta 10 arrived, the Mozilla Project has released an 11th beta for version 4.0 of its open source Firefox Web browser, says H-Online.

Firefox 4 is the non-profit organisation's next-generation Web browser based on version 2.0 of the Gecko rendering platform (the Firefox 3.6 branch uses Gecko 1.9.2) and features a new Add-ons Manager and extension management API, as well as a new 'tabs on top' layout.

Firefox 4 Beta 11 features the addition of support for the proposed 'Do Not Track' header - users can enable the DNT option via a check box under the 'Advanced' tab in Firefox's Preferences.

Microsoft has publicly welcomed a significant new federal government policy, which will require departments and agencies to evaluate open source software wherever possible, describing it as "sensible and pragmatic", ZDNet says.

Withdrawing from its 2005 declared position of 'informed neutrality' on open source, the US federal government in late January revealed that government agencies would have to consider open source software equally alongside proprietary software when buying products worth more than $80 000.

In a statement published on Microsoft Australia's GovTech blog, the company's local director of corporate affairs Simon Edwards said the company welcomed the new policy. "The policy's requirement to consider open source software in all software procurements seems both sensible and pragmatic," he wrote.

IBM and Oracle have divvied up the leadership of OpenJDK - the leading open source Java project - giving IBM the sort of Java control it spent ten years fighting Sun Microsystems for, writes The Register.

The new bylaws for the OpenJDK community outline a governing board that consists of a chairman, vice-chairman, OpenJDK lead, and two members at large.

Oracle has given IBM the power to appoint the vice chairman, while Oracle will appoint the chairman and the OpenJDK lead.