Linux in the news

SCO's IBM suit triples--seeks $3 billion (ZDNet)

ZDNet discusses SCO's latest moves, which include raising the requested damages to $3 billion. "The suit also adds illegal export issues stemming from the worldwide availability of open-source software. SCO claims IBM has breached its contract by making multiprocessor operating system technology available 'for free distribution to anyone in the world,' including residents of Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya, countries to which the United States controls exports. The open-source technology IBM released 'can be used for encryption, scientific research and weapons research,' the suit said." The new complaint also affirms that read-copy-update is one of SCO's issues; as this LWN article from last week (still subscribers only) showed, that will be a hard one for them to prove.

Comments (24 posted)

Rule out Linux on the desktop until 2005, says Giga (vnunet)

Vnunet covers a Giga Information Group pronouncement saying IT decision-makers should rule out Linux on the desktop until at least 2005. "'It's a high risk strategy to make any decisions based on being upset with Microsoft or wanting to give Linux a chance. This is no time for platform religion,' [analyst Rob Enderle] said."

Comments (8 posted)

We must protect digital intellectual property to foster innovation (ZDNet)

Here's a fun column in ZDNet on the importance of intellectual property protection. "I think the open source movement does even more damage to the perceived value of bits. By advocating that all software should be basically free and that developers should work in a communal environment for everyone’s benefit, the open source movement greatly denigrates the public’s perception of the value of digital intellectual property."

Comments (23 posted)

Meet free software developers at LinuxTag (NewsForge)

This NewsForge article looks at the projects coming to LinuxTag taking place July 10 - 13, 2003 in Karlsruhe, Germany. "LinuxTag, which is itself organised along the lines of a Free Software project, combines a free conference program lasting three entire days, a business congress aiming at professional users and enterprises, a government congress aiming at members of governmental agencies, a workshop program maintained by the attending projects and an exhibition consisting of commercial and non-commercial booths."

Comments (none posted)

Roll up for LinuxUser & Developer Expo (Register)

The Register heads for the LinuxUser & Developer Expo, coming to Birmingham, UK later this month. "Heavyweights in the open source community such as Alan Cox, Jon 'Maddog' Hall and Tim O'Reilly are down to present keynotes at the show, which is part of the Networks for Business 2003 conference taking place at the Birmingham NEC on June 24-26."

Comments (none posted)

HP sets up separate Linux unit (News.com)

News.com reports that HP has set up a new Linux division. "In his new role as vice president of Linux, Martin Fink will report to both ESS boss Scott Stallard and HP's chief technology officer, Shane Robison. Fink had been a vice president in the company's Business Critical Systems unit before the last reorganization. Within the Linux organization, HP plans to add a director of marketing, director of strategy and a director of engineering, although those positions have not been formally named."

Comments (9 posted)

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

ComputerWorld looks into Microsoft's latest acquisition; the RAV technology from Romania's GeCAD Software Srl. "GeCAD's RAV AntiVirus for Mail Servers supports a host of e-mail server products, including the free Sendmail, Qmail and Postfix, and is available for a variety of operating systems, including many flavors of Linux and BSD. Pricing per e-mail domain instead of per mailbox is another major draw, experts and users said." Microsoft plans to discontinue the RAV product line. (Thanks to Jay R. Ashworth)

Comments (19 posted)

Expect to see more Linux anti-virus products soon (NewsForge)

NewsForge predicts that more anti-virus products for Linux will emerge to replace RAV, and covers the discounts and deals currently available for RAV customers. "Steven Sundermeier, Central Command product manager, says his company is not only not in danger of being bought by Microsoft, but that "Linux is an increasing part of our business. One of the niches of our business plan is the Linux market." To help grow that niche, Central Command is offering RAV users who 'upgrade' to their Vexira product between now and September 30 a 25% discount."

Comments (none posted)

Red Hat Reports Q1 Revenue Of $27.2 Million (ComputerWorld)

ComputerWorld reports on Red Hat's revenue for the first quarter of 2003. "In a statement issued after the close of the U.S. financial markets, the Raleigh, N.C.-based company said it had a net income of $1.5 million for the quarter that ended May 31, compared with a net loss of $273,000 in the previous quarter and a $4.6 million net loss one year ago. Red Hat reports its figures using generally accepted accounting principles." (Thanks to Jay R. Ashworth)

Comments (none posted)

Will SCO's Suit Chill the Penguin? (E-Commerce Times)

E-Commerce Times is running a "special report" on the SCO case. The article is most interesting in that it shows that the wider press is beginning to figure out that there are GPL issues involved in SCO's having distributed the disputed code. "'The GPL issue is something we've just recently been looking at,' SCO spokesperson Blake Stowell told the E-Commerce Times. 'It's been said that maybe we've contributed Unix source code to Linux, because SCO was formerly a distributor of Linux.' However, Stowell said, when the company discovered that its source code had been incorporated into Red Hat Linux, it stopped distributing its own version of Linux and ended any further Linux development. This move, he noted, showed that SCO was acting according to another GPL clause that could shore up its case." It's about time they started thinking about the GPL...

On a similar front, NZheretic's comment to another LWN article is worth a look for those who haven't seen it; there's a great deal of detail regarding SCO's involvement in the Trillian project, which worked to bring Linux to the ia64 processor.

Comments (12 posted)

Did SCO open Unix source code? (ZDNet)

ZDNet looks at the implications of SCO having shipped its (claimed) code under the GPL. "The issue isn't as clear-cut as either SCO or its opponents would have it, said John Ferrell, an intellectual-property attorney with Carr and Ferrell. 'If anybody tells you they have the definitive answer, they're crazy,' he said. But he'd give the edge to SCO in the situation, not because of its interpretation of the GPL, but because of a legal principle stemming from the 1887 sale of a pregnant cow in Michigan. That case established the so-called doctrine of mutual mistake, under which a contract can be nullified if two parties--in this case SCO and a company using Linux--misapprehended the true nature of what was in the contract."

Comments (33 posted)

SCO cancels IBM Unix license (News.com)

News.com reports that SCO has dropped its bomb. "SCO said that the termination of the AIX license means that all IBM Unix customers also have no license to use the software. 'This termination not only applies to new business by IBM, but also existing copies of AIX that are installed at all customer sites. All of it has to be destroyed,' [SCOsource manager Chris] Sontag said." That should make SCO some more friends, and convince the world of the benefits of proprietary software as well.

Comments (22 posted)

What SCO Wants, SCO Gets (Forbes)

Forbes is running an article on the litigious history of SCO, its backers, and its management. "In other words, like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will agree. They should wake up. SCO may not be very good at making a profit by selling software. (Last year the company lost $24.9 million on sales of $64.2 million.) But it is very good at getting what it wants from other companies. And it has a tight circle of friends." (Thanks to "alonzo").

Comments (57 posted)

The Brazilian Public Sector to Choose Free Software

The Brazilian government is planning to migrate 80% of all state-owned computers from Windows to Linux. HispaLinux covers the announcement (in Spanish). PCLinuxOnline has a translated summary by Gonzalo Porcel. Or read the full Google translation. (Thanks to Leon Brooks)

Comments (none posted)

Linux in Europe (IT-Director)

IT-Director looks into Linux adoption in Europe. "Following the recent decision by the City of Munich to opt for Linux on the desktop, it is worth taking stock of the progress of Linux in government circles across Europe. This is, in my view, a determining point in the Linux story, because if European governments move to Linux in a big way, it will boost the momentum for Linux everywhere. We have thus assembled a set of press clippings which chart Linux acceptance in government."

Comments (none posted)

South Australia urged to drop bill on Open Source software (TheAge)

TheAge reports that South Australia is getting pressure from Microsoft backed Initiative for Software Choice (ISC) over a proposed Open Source software bill. "ISC executive director Bob Kramer said in the letter: "The ISC believes that if this 'preference' legislation were to be enacted it would severely limit software choices for South Australia's government, harming not only its citizens, but also South Australia's vibrant information and communications technology (ICT) industry." You can find a draft of arguments for the bill here, along with a link to the actual bill. (Thanks to James Berry)

Comments (2 posted)

Interview with Marc-Andre Lemburg (EuroPython)

EuroPython continues a series of interviews with the people who will be speaking at the EuroPython and Zope Conference. This week meet Marc-Andre Lemburg author of mx Extensions for Python. "EuroPython: On which parts of Python are you working as Python developer? Which parts interest you most? MAL: Since I wrote much of Python's Unicode implementation building on an initial prototype written by Fredrik Lundh a few years ago, I still maintain most of it. These days I tend not to have much time to actually do coding work, but I try to overlook the general design and make sure that it stays in line with what the original idea behind the Unicode integration."

Comments (none posted)

Interview with Mike McCormack (Wine HQ)

WineHQ Interviews Mike McCormack. "How many Australian Wine developers live in South Korea and work for an American company? If you said just Mike McCormack then you'd be correct. Mike studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Sydney but now lives in Seoul half the time. The other half he lives in Minneapolis. Full time he's a Wine developer working for CodeWeavers. The arrangement works well for him - he gets to see his girlfriend regularly and has time to concentrate on work too."

Comments (none posted)

The O'Reilly Factor: How Python Grips the Enterprise - Part II

OpenEnterpriseTrends.com has an interview with Alex Martelli. "In Part II of OET's exclusive interview with Alex Martelli, author of O'Reilly's popular Python in a Nutshell and Python Cookbook, we turn to how commercial developers of any stripe (Java, ASP.NET, Win32, C++) can best get started with using the Python scripting language to help their applications share data and business logic. In this discussion, Martelli also includes some great practical tips for your own starter project."

Comments (none posted)

Eight Questions for George Dyson (O'Reilly)

O'Reilly interviews computer historian George Dyson. "One of the first significant expenditures of machine cycles at IAS (second only to thermonuclear bomb calculations and meteorology) was a series of experiments conducted by the viral geneticist Nils Aall Barricelli to see if code could be prompted to evolve, within the "artificial universe" of the von Neumann computer, on its own. All the questions raised by Barricelli are equally applicable and equally instructive with regard to the evolution of software "in the wild" today."

Comments (none posted)

Working smarter, not harder: An interview with Kent Beck (IBM developerWorks)

IBM's developerWorks features an interview with Kent Beck. "Extreme Programming (XP) founder Kent Beck likes to say he made up XP's fundamentals during a particularly troubled project in 1996. While strictly true, from talking to him you sense he'd really been formulating the process for quite some time. Find out what Kent thinks about the contribution of the Java platform to software development's success (or lack thereof) in this exclusive developerWorks interview."

Comments (2 posted)

Web services visionary (IBM developerWorks)

IBM's developerWorks has an interview with web services developer Sam Ruby. "Sam Ruby, a member of the IBM Emerging Technologies Group, has become a key part of several Web services-related open source projects over the last three years, including Tomcat and the IBM SOAP stack. He's still contributing both his code and his insight to the community. He spoke with Bob McMillan on a number of topics, including the appeal of open source, the future of Web services, and the power of Web logs."

Comments (none posted)

Emulate legacy operating systems on Linux (IBM developerWorks)

Here's an article from IBM developerWorks on emulating legacy operating systems on Linux. "One of the best things to do with a Linux box is to run programs for other operating systems on it. It can simplify your life considerably. Companies spend millions on "server consolidation" in hopes of reducing maintenance, administration, and even heat burdens. They're usually just moving between different flavors of UNIX, though. What they often don't realize, however, is that the range and quality of Linux-hosted OS emulations -- some of them rather old, like CP/M, RSX, OpenVMS, and DOS -- are quite high. Moreover, companies don't always understand just how much this software can enhance the convenience of server-room operations."

Comments (none posted)

Keeping the alligators out of your sewer (NewsForge)

NewsForge looks at tools to keep crackers out of your network. "While many vulnerability assessment products can test Linux clients and servers, most run only on Microsoft or, in the case of MacAnalysis, Apple platforms. We've highlighted two that can run on Linux, and one standalone hardware device."

Comments (none posted)

Real-time alerting with Snort, part 1 of 3 (NewsForge)

This NewsForge article contains excerpts from the book Intrusion Detection with Snort by Jack Koziol. "Real-time alerting with Snort is highly customizable. You can pick and choose which alerts to be notified of in real time by assigning a priority to each rule or classification of rule. Each rule can have an individual priority attached to it, and every rule can be included in a classification of rules that has a priority attached to it."

Comments (none posted)

Savanna: A User's Perspective on JuK

KDE.News has a review of JuK, an mp3 Jukebox application for KDE. "Okay, I admit it: I'm a blonde who isn't a techie. I'm learning because it is kind of fun, but I'll only go so far. I know most people who will read this will probably chuckle because this is for a techie site, but it is worth noting that I am a user who has switched her desktop from Microsoft to Linux with KDE. That is a pretty big jump."

Comments (none posted)

Mozilla on speed: Firebird 0.6 (MadPenguin)

MadPenguin.org reviews version 0.6 of the Firebird browser. "This browser is the beginning of something wonderful. I say it's the beginning because it is very obvious that it is a work-in-progress and is pre-1.0, but let me tell you it is pretty impressive for such an early build."

Comments (none posted)

Mozilla Firebird Plugin Review (Neowin.net)

Neowin.net reviews a number of Mozilla Firebird plugins. AdBlock, Autoscroll, LiveHTTPHeaders, Popup ALT Attribute, Mycroft, User Agent Switcher, and Web Developer are covered.

Comments (none posted)

Review: Pogo Linux StorageWare S212 Server (NewsForge)

NewsForge reviews the new Pogo Linux StorageWare S212 Server. "The server comes with Red Hat Linux 9's three-CD set, plus a Pogo Linux Recovery CD, which contains all the post-install scripts required to bring the box back into factory condition. It includes kits for the 2.4.20-9 kernel, official update RPMs to Red Hat 9 (very handy), and other Pogo Linux personality items like wallpaper and splash screens."

Comments (none posted)

Review of Quanta Plus (ContentPeople)

ContentPeople features a review of Quanta Plus. "In recent times, we have seen the advent of Linux as a prominent web development platform, no doubt as a result of the popular LAMP framework: Linux Apache MySQL PHP. Thanks to its open source nature, it has given everyone access to an enterprise class environment for web applications. The LAMP community has created a variety of supporting text editors, tools and utilities to help you craft your web applications. One of the most popular is the Quanta Plus web development environment."

Comments (none posted)

Slash'EM: The Sum of All NetHacks (O'ReillyNet)

O'ReillyNet takes a look at the game Slash'EM, a variant of NetHack. "Slash'EM is written in C, with its Qt windowing interface in C++. Of course, because of its NetHack lineage, the current release contains lots of code which the present team did not develop originally. Normally, incorporating code from outside a project can be a problem due to incompatibilities among various open source licenses, but things work differently within the NetHack family. J. Ali Harlow, 36, a programmer for the Applied Vision Research Centre of City University in London, England and one of the current maintainers of Slash'EM, says, "There's no such problem with code that has been written to be used with NetHack. We seek to use the best of these whenever possible.""

Comments (none posted)

YALAX: Yet Another Look At Ximian (Tux Reports)

Tux Reports reviews the Ximian Desktop 2. "There are as many different philosophies for the perfect desktop as there are Linux developers and users. Each of us has developed our preferences and opinions. Some of us may perceive Ximian Desktop 2 as nothing more than GNOME with some eye-candy, or an attempt to clone Windows. Others may argue that following the KISS principle, by simplifying the applications, system menus and documentation, avoids overwhelming new users. In other words, one person’s opinion is another person’s opportunity to complain."

Comments (none posted)

One-day Linux project brings Internet to disadvantaged Miami kids (NewsForge)

South Florida area LUG members help inner city kids in this NewsForge article. "11 a.m. - Chris Williams, a Ft. Myers programmer and sysadmin, huddles with Gonzalo. They decide to replace the existing Red Hat installation on the server with Mandrake 9.1 because of its ease of administration, plus the fact that Gonzalo is used to Mandrake, and he's the one who will be responsible for ongoing maintenance of the Center's computers."

Comments (none posted)