Free Thinkers

> IAN PRATT Watch out VMware. The co-founder of XenSource and chief architect of Xen, an open-source virtualization project launched in 2001, is rapidly reshaping the Intel virtualization market. With support from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Red Hat and Novell, Pratt&'s company officially launched its first Xen hypervisor in August 2005. XenSource plans commercial products for the Linux/open-source world this quarter and Windows solutions in the first quarter of 2006.

> MITCHELL BAKER Baker, president of the newly launched Mozilla Corp. and Mozilla Foundation board member, is giving Microsoft&'s Internet Explorer a bona fide run for its money in the post-Netscape era. Since being launched last November, Mozilla&'s FireFox 1.0 browser has gained a respectable 7 percent share of the browser market, according to Web site analysis firm Net Applications. As Mozilla polishes FireFox 1.5 for delivery, Microsoft is responding by providing a stand-alone version of its planned Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP in advance of the Windows Vista launch in 2006.

> ANDREW TRIDGELL After joining Linus Torvalds as one of two Open Source Development Lab fellows, Tridgell continues work on version 4 of his Samba open-source file and print server, which will fully function as a Windows Active Directory Domain Controller. Samba was first launched as an SMB server for Unix in 1992, and the current popular version allows Windows clients to access its core open-source operating system services via Simple Message Block and Common Internet File System protocols.