Search

There's nothing like a good legal battle to whip up passions, and the SCO Group-versus-the-open-source-world dogfight is no exception. Rhetoric runs high. From the open-source advocates, it's "you're stifling free thought in the name of greed." SCO allies counter with "you're attacking the core valu...

I've been puzzled by Sun's Linux strategy for a long time. On the software side, things make sense: Linux is Unix, so supporting Linux in the short term brings new value to Solaris in the long term. On the hardware side, however, I couldn't see any logical reason for Sun to sell x86 boxes until just...

In stark contrast to the long waits typical for Windows users wanting to patch software vulnerabilities, recently discovered security weaknesses in the core of the Linux operating system were addressed by major vendors in a matter of just a few days this week. Two security vulnerabilities in the Lin...

Microsoft's Get the Facts site, which I discussed in my LinuxInsider column last week, "Getting the Facts About Windows and Linux," makes the case that Windows is cheaper than Linux. The site includes a contribution from Meta Group dedicated to the proposition that the combination of Linux plus a da...

If you read a report sponsored by the Flat Earth Society in which an independent research organization found the world to be flat, would you believe it? I'd guess not, but any reputable research organization hired to survey the society's membership on the question would have to come to that conclusi...

Looking to head off bugs and to allay fears that its software is not as robust as its competition, MandrakeSoft announced a new development process this week that the company hopes will broaden the appeal of its software. According to the company, which is known for its Linux distributions targeted ...

Promising marked performance and reliability improvements and further demonstrating that Linux is ready for prime-time enterprise use, open-source developers led by Linux creator Linus Torvalds and production kernel maintainer Andrew Morton have released version 2.6 of the operating system kernel. T...

Australia. Down under. Oz. For most of us, those words conjure up images of kangaroos and coral reefs, of red deserts and a landmark opera house. But behind those icons lies another reality -- that of a sophisticated, technologically advanced society; an economy that has outperformed the rest of the...

While watching CNN last week, I suffered one of those brain spasms that leave you holding an idea you can neither rationally assess nor forget about. I still can't assess the idea -- and I'm about to ask you for help on that -- but my attempts to do something with it did give me a deeper insight int...

Claims and counterclaims now have turned into dueling subpoenas, as IBM and SCO continue to spar over allegations that a Linux kernel promoted by Big Blue was copied from SCO's Unix System V source code. Earlier this month, IBM issued subpoenas for SCO investors and analysts, including Bay Star Capi...

Last week, Novell announced its purchase of SuSE for $210 million -- $50 million of it direct from an IBM investment in newly issued convertible preferred stock. This deal raises two difficult questions: What's Novell up to, and why, if the people behind SuSE wanted to cash out, didn't they do an IP...

The desktop may be the final frontier for Linux, but one company is using a combination of Windows interface strategy, Wal-Mart sales and a wide selection of software to try to match the inroads Linux has made in the corporate datacenter. That company is Lindows.com. There was much open-source hoop...

In what is being viewed as the maturation of both the company and the Linux operating system, Red Hat has announced it will no longer produce or support its free, consumer version of Linux. Industry analysts praised Red Hat's move to ride a building wave of Linux adoption by exclusively selling Ente...

If you sell products, measuring sales in terms of dollars during some reporting cycle -- like a quarterly or annual period -- makes perfect sense. It's dollars you're interested in, so dollars you measure. That's not true, however, for the open-source community. If you give away the product, then us...

A looming October 14th deadline could result in a widening of SCO Group's legal assault on Linux and distributors of the open-source operating system as the Lindon, Utah-based company mulls plans to pull another Unix license, this time from SGI. SCO laid the groundwork for the move -- which would ex...

Calling it a "migration product" intended to take desktop users away from Windows and toward 64-bit computing and the new 2.6 Linux kernel, SuSE Linux announced its 9.0 desktop update will be available next month. The German software maker said SuSE Linux 9.0 will provide support for both 32- and 64...

In response to attacks on the Linux operating system launched by SCO, which claims its own Unix source code was incorporated into the open-source software, Hewlett-Packard is indemnifying its Linux customers against any potential SCO litigation. The move comes after SCO, which has sued IBM for $3 bi...