Linux in the news

Microsoft to license Unix code (News.com)

The plot thickens: News.com reports that Microsoft has decided to license Unix from SCO. "Late Sunday, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said acquiring the license from SCO 'is representative of Microsoft's ongoing commitment to respecting intellectual property and the IT community's healthy exchange of IP through licensing.'" (Thanks to Ashwin N. and Cecil Whitley).

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Online petition challenges SCO (vnunet)

Vnunet covers an online petition which challenges SCO's claim to ownership of intellectual property in Linux. "Now the creator of an online petition is inviting users to sign up to challenge SCO to sue them. A message on the website reads: "I am a Linux user. I feel that SCO's tactics toward an operating system of my choice are unjust, ill founded and bizarre.""

Comments (3 posted)

Torvalds Suggests DiBona for SCO Panel (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal takes a look at who might be on the panel of experts to which SCO will reveal their allegedly stolen UnixWare code. "Appointing a believable panel would be difficult, Torvalds said in an e-mail interview. "I suspect the people I'd like to see are not people SCO would care for or [who] would be able to sign an NDA on it. The thing I would want is somebody who is able to actually trace things back in time to be able to make a judgment of whether it came from UnixWare or from Linux. Somebody who is technical enough and has enough background in the kernel that he can follow it down without going mad", he said."

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Linux vendors confused by SCO actions (ZDNet)

ZDNet talks with Linux vendors about the SCO lawsuit. "Red Hat also indicated that it did not yet see SCO's tactics having an effect on business. "We've seen no indication from enterprise customers that these statements from SCO have been a deterrent from viewing Red Hat as a trusted provider of Linux solutions," the company said in a statement on Thursday."

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The fear war against Linux (News.com)

News.com has an article by Bruce Perens on the announcement that Microsoft will license SCO's Unix patents and the source code. "Who really benefits from this mess? Microsoft, whose involvement in getting a defeated Unix company to take on the missionary work of spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about Linux is finally coming to light."

Comments (19 posted)

Microsoft Agrees to License Unix (Wired)

Wired takes another look at SCO, IBM and Microsoft. "Since the lawsuit, people have "suggested that SCO doesn't own any Unix patents," [SCO VP] Hunsaker said. The Microsoft deal "is part of an ongoing effort to validate our intellectual property rights... (and) shows very clearly we own Unix patents because Microsoft just licensed them," Hunsaker said."

Comments (12 posted)

Microsoft, SCO and Linux (IT-Director)

IT-Director is running a column by Robin Bloor on the SCO case. "What the Microsoft deal will do, if nothing else, is help finance SCO so it can pursue its legal games. Indeed some people suspect that it is a Microsoft legal action by proxy - which may be the usual conspiracy theory in motion, but who knows."

Comments (2 posted)

Tragedy to farce--the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit (ZDNet)

For those who haven't seen enough of this stuff yet: ZDNet has published an Eric Raymond rant about the SCO lawsuit. "In order to make its case against IBM, Caldera has had to push the claim that Linux was a pathetic makeshift until the corporate hand of IBM injected into it secrets stolen from the ancient Unix code. Besides being ludicrously false, this enraged every Linux developer on the planet. Accusing us of trafficking in stolen goods was bad; implying that we were incompetent was far worse."

Comments (14 posted)

IBM to debut new desktops for businesses (News.com)

News.com covers new desktops from IBM. "The ThinkCentre line will initially consist of three models: the ThinkCentre S50 small-size machine, the A50p multimedia computer and the M50 that IBM will ship with desktop versions of Red Hat or SuSE Linux. More models will be added as the year progresses."

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IBM and T-Rex (IT-Director)

IT-Director digs up some information about the T-Rex mainframe. "The second factor and the one that brought the mainframe back to life was Linux. Implemented in a virtual machine environment on the mainframe, Linux proves to be very economical "per instance" and cheaper to configure and run than on any other platform."

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Ballmer on Linux (Register)

The Register covers a meeting held by Microsoft with European industry analysts to discuss Linux and other Open Source Software (OSS). "Overall the day indicated that Microsoft is now happy to recognise that the influence of Linux is growing. It is clear that we can now expect Microsoft to attempt to build its case for Windows as an operating system based on rational arguments rather than a simple dismissal."

Comments (3 posted)

How Microsoft Warded Off Rival (NY Times)

Several readers have pointed out this NY Times article (registration required), which indicates that Microsoft has probably violated European anti-trust laws in its efforts to win over Linux at all costs. "The Microsoft campaign against Linux raises questions about how much its aggressive, take-no-prisoners corporate culture has changed, despite having gone through a lengthy, reputation-tarnishing court battle in the United States that resulted in Microsoft's being found to have repeatedly violated antitrust laws."

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Playing the Linux Game, By email (IT-Director)

IT-Director tells us how to play the Linux Game. "IBM has done well playing the Linux game. Although in theory Linux doesn't belong to anyone, in practice it belongs to those that can profit from it most and thus it belongs most to IBM. It belongs to Hewlett Packard and Dell too of course. It doesn't belong to Sun Microsystems much and it belongs least to Microsoft. Just to confirm this, Steve Ballmer recently said, yet again, that Microsoft will not port its products to Linux."

Comments (2 posted)

TORCH Independent Consultant (TIC) Program announced (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews covers a new consultant program for the fledgling Free/Open Source Medical Software industry. "The TIC program is designed to provide independent consultants with the information and tools needed install and support the electronic health record application TORCH. TORCH is licensed under the GPL and can be downloaded from the Open Paradigms,LLC website."

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If the glass slipper fits (InfoWorld)

InfoWorld examines the maturing of open source. "The real issue for open source is adjusting from being remarkable to being important. There's a real distinction between the two. Remember when cell phones were new? Your first call was probably to a friend to say, "Hey, guess what! I'm on a cell phone." If you called your friend today with the same message, chances are your friend would ask, "Are you feeling OK?" Open source advocates should be pleased that many open source technologies (Linux, MySQL, Apache) are so entrenched in the enterprise (that is, important), and that their presence is similarly unremarkable." (Thanks to Lenz Grimmer)

Comments (2 posted)

PeopleSoft: .Net is IT 'asbestos' (News.com)

News.com reports that PeopleSoft President and CEO Craig Conway called Microsoft's .Net initiative the information technology equivalent of asbestos. "Speaking at the software company's 2003 Leadership Summit in Sydney, Australia, Conway said the state of the global economy makes it imperative for businesses to control IT costs. He advocated Linux-based server-centric operating environments for enterprise applications as one way to achieve this goal."

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Developing Countries Gain from Free/Open-Source Software (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal looks at a report from Finland that says FLOSS use is increasing around the world for business, education and political needs. "Free software and open source's "inherent qualities" also make it a prime tool for achieving local language educational software, "especially for languages which are not deemed commercially viable for proprietary software vendors". "If the adoption of FLOSS in developing countries is done wisely, it can help stimulate indigenous software industry and create local jobs", says the study."

Comments (5 posted)

Congress calls to arms against pirates (News.com)

News.com looks into a new congressional caucus devoted to combating piracy and promoting stronger intellectual property laws. "Joining Wexler as co-founder of the caucus is Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., who helped author a note last fall to 74 fellow Democrats assailing the Linux open-source operating system's GNU General Public License as a threat to America's "innovation and security." Smith's district includes the Seattle surburbs near Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters. The third founder is Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., a first-term congressman and former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives who was once Gov. Jeb Bush's running mate."

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Interview with Display Works Inc. (KDE::Enterprise)

KDE::Enterprise interviews Display Works Inc., about KDE and how it is used in the company. "We began about a year ago to migrate our desktops to KDE 2.1.2 for our front office staff. We intentionally provided very little in the way of training to give us a real evaluation of KDE as a desktop. Our staff are generally not at all sophisticated computer users, and we wanted a direct experiential measurement as to what we would call the "competence" of KDE as a work environment. The experiment was a tremendous success."

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Interview: Talking pizza and packets with Samba co-founder Tridge (NewsForge)

NewsForge interviews Andrew Tridgell. "Much in the same way that Cisco founders Sandy Lerner and Leonard Bosack invented the router so they could send emails to each other across the Stanford University campus, Andrew Tridgell just wanted the three computers on his home network to talk to each other. The three computers, a PC running DOS, a Sun workstation, and a DECstation 3100 running Digital Unix, needed a common protocol that all could understand. Hacking on what he thought was a proprietary protocol of a DOS-Unix program called Pathworks, Tridge (as he's known) accidentally found himself reverse-engineering the heart of Microsoft's networking, the SMB protocol."

Comments (1 posted)

Interview with Andreas Mohr (WineHQ)

WineHQ features an interview with Wine developer Andreas Mohr. "This week Andreas Mohr finds himself in the hotseat. Andi was born in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1977 and grew up in Renningen, near Stuttgart. He did the usual military service after high school and in 1997 began studying electrical engineering at Stuttgart University. Now he's attending the University of Applied Sciences in Esslingen studying computer science. Besides the normal CS classes Andi is focusing on embedded systems, automation, and networking."

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Administer Linux on the fly (IBM developerWorks)

This article on IBM developerWorks shows how to use the /proc filesystem to get a handle on your system. "This article includes hints and tips for performing various administrative tasks and changing your system without rebooting. Linux provides various ways to change underlying operating system values and settings while keeping the system up and running."

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Database Users Keen on Linux 2.6 Kernel (eWeek)

eWeek examines the improvments to the 2.6 kernel that will help database users. "Tim Kuchlein, director of information systems at Clarity Payment Solutions Inc., a developer of prepaid electronic payment systems, said the ability for the kernel to support extra memory will enable his company to work its database like Google: running on all memory, all the time."

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Can Ogg Vorbis change digital audio? (NewsForge)

NewsForge looks into open source digital audio products. "Xiph.Org is an umbrella organization for a group of open source multimedia development projects. Other projects operated by Xiph.Org include Ogg Theora , a video code developed in cooperation with On2 Technologies ; Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC); and Speex , a low bitrate codec designed for speech compression. Vorbis, however, is probably the highest-profile aspect of the project."

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Can software developers form an 'open source' union? (NewsForge)

NewForge proposes a union for software developers. "There has never been a successful union-style organizing movement among software developers. Ian Lurie, who runs a Seattle Web design firm, believes this is because traditional "industrial" union structures don't serve programmers' needs very well, but that a new, "open source" union structure based on pre-industrial craft guilds might make lives better for people in the job-nomadic IT industry."

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NASA Technical Report Recommends Adopting Mozilla Public License (MozillaZine)

According to MozillaZine, NASA has selected the Mozilla MPL as a license to distribute some free software under. "Adam Hauner wrote in to tell us about a NASA technical report which recommends that the US space agency distribute some of their software under the Mozilla Public License. The report, by Patrick J. Moran of the NAS Systems Division at the NASA Ames Research Center, explains how open source is compatible with NASA's mission and evaluates several licenses before recommending that the Mozilla Public License be an option for software distribution."

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Open source in the stars for NASA? (News.com)

News.com covers a NASA analyst's recommendation that the agency move some software development to an open-source model. "That report found that open-source software "plays a more critical role in the (Department of Defense) than has been generally recognized" and argued that, if open source were banned, the military's information security would plummet and costs would rise sharply."

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Key battles forge fate of free software (SiliconValley)

Dan Gillmor looks at the SCO and OpenTV cases. "If the FSF is right that OpenTV is violating the GPL, and if this behavior is found to be legal by the courts, the entire free-software and open-source movements could be derailed. Agreeing to share the improvements you make in the GPL-licensed software you've used is an essential part of the larger ecosystem."

Comments (6 posted)