Archive

We recently saw what is being described as the ending of the seven-year-old SCO contract and intellectual property dispute that dragged Linux through the mud before it propelled the open source OS into much broader enterprise use and credibility. You'd think the lessons of SCO would be a shining exa...

If you use Linux instead of Microsoft Windows, its free availability may well be a deciding factor. But the fact that virus and malware contamination are less likely to take down your Linux computers is no doubt an essential influencing factor as well. But does using a more popular Linux distro like...

Having covered Linux in the enterprise and business arenas for more than 10 years, I've seen some dramatic changes in the way the open source operating system is developed and used. However, never has there been as much change in the Linux landscape and market as right now, given the impact of cloud...

In a move designed to protect the free and open source software community, the U.S. Justice Department has intervened in an intellectual property case involving four dominant IT enterprises. The transaction involves software developer Novell and a consortium made up of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and E...

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0, which was released last November, packs a hidden punch: The latest version of the operating system pre-bundles patches with the kernel. The disguised fixes have shaken up some controversy, but Red Hat contends that the move is aimed at making it more difficult for rival...

Canonical, which leads the Ubuntu project, has reportedly decided to switch from the OpenOffice productivity suite to LibreOffice in future versions of the popular Linux distribution. Version 11.04 of Ubuntu, also known as "Natty Narwhal," is expected to be the first release to incorporate LibreOffi...

CPTN, a consortium set up by Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC to acquire hundreds of Novell patents, appears to have inadvertently faked out the open source community by withdrawing its proposal from the German Federal Cartel Office. News reports on Tuesday noted the event and alluded to possible su...

So Turkey Day has come and gone for another year here in the good old U-S-of-A, but what comes next might be even better -- at least from a geek's perspective. That's right, it's Black Friday once again, and the tech shopping deals are ripe for the picking. Who has time to worry about Novell, Attach...

It's hard to imagine a topic more central to the argument for or against free and open source software than security. Hardly a day goes by without news of some fresh exploit in the Windows environment, after all -- but what about Linux and other open software? Can they do better? That's essentially ...

The question of security is one that has plagued proponents of proprietary and open source software alike for as long as there has been a choice. Is free and open source software more secure by virtue of all the many pairs of eyes that can see the code, identify vulnerabilities and fix them? Or is "...

The MeeGo community, formed by Intel and Nokia, on Thursday released the MeeGo distribution infrastructure and operating system base to developers. Images released are Intel Atom-based netbooks; ARM-based Nokia N900; and Intel Atom-based handsets running on the Moorestown chip. The Thursday release ...

After six years of battle, a federal jury has ruled that Novell owns the rights to the Unix operating system. In 2003, the SCO Group began campaigning to get Linux users to pay it license fees, arguing that unspecified SCO intellectual property had been improperly included in Linux. SCO filed suit ...