Archive

Certifying Linux technicians is a developing trend. The Linux OS is growing up. This is pushing many computer engineers and IT professionals to prove their skills as programmers and systems administrators. While not quite a common job requirement yet, some employers and high-level software developer...

When it comes to creative works, such as a drawing or a piece of writing or music, the law is pretty clear about what is a derivative work and what isn't. Not so much with software. If the software is open source -- that is, licensed under the GNU General Public License or a similar license -- the w...

After a one-week delay, Novell released its fourth quarter earnings Thursday, saying that higher-than-expected costs associated with an ongoing restructuring would weigh on results even as sales of its Linux products surged higher. The restructuring effort could now cost as much as $70 million, Nove...

It's not too often the public schools figure prominently in the Linux blogs, but sure enough, this week they drew a surprising amount of discussion on a few different sites. Specifically, news broke on Tuesday that the mayor of Birmingham, Ala., has signed a purchase agreement for 15,000 laptops fro...

Novell announced Wednesday that it has decided to postpone the release of its fourth quarter and full-year 2007 earnings reports, both of which were scheduled for Thursday. The cause, it said, was an inquiry from the Securities and Exchange Commission, with which Novell has had a series of exchange...

The third version of the GNU General Public License version 3, released last summer, is on the slow road to acceptance. The new licensing conditions usher in numerous changes in how open source software developers regulate what users of their freely distributed programming code are legally able and ...

Two companies have hit Linux vendors Red Hat and Novell with a patent infringement lawsuit alleging their products use technology first patented more than a decade ago. IP Innovation and Technology Licensing filed the suit on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Texas, a popular jurisdiction for patent...

Linspire released its Linspire 6.0 Linux distribution, which contains a mix of open source and proprietary drivers and software and is the first commercial offering from Linspire to provide customers with Microsoft patent covenants. There was only one word missing that could have made the announceme...

While Linux has come a long way in the past 10 years, I think it's safe to say that it hasn't yet taken over the world -- nor has Linux reached its full potential. Linux continues to become more mainstream every day -- we now see Linux hosting mission-critical servers in the enterprise, large financ...

Novell has set loose OpenSuse 10.3, the latest version of the company's free Linux distribution. More specifically, OpenSuse 10.3 was created by the OpenSuse project, the community Novell sponsored, which now has 54,000 registered members. To improve the user experience, OpenSuse 10.3 includes a fle...

Intel has created a new open source energy-saving project -- LessWatts.org -- which it hopes will help drive innovations so that Linux-powered servers, PCs and even household devices use up less juice. Intel unveiled the project at its Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Friday, noting that th...

In the aftermath of the SCO Group filing for bankruptcy on Friday, reactions from analyst and community quarters are less gleeful and more sober about lessons learned. There weren't any champagne corks popping at the headquarters of the Linux Foundation following Friday's announcement. "The lawsuit ...

When a Web surfer clicks on an icon to launch his or her favorite Web browser, only the geekiest of the geeky pay any thought to which engine layout is at work. The typical Web user has no clue that a different browser choice may also include a different browser layout engine. If anything, most Inte...

Siemens and BMW are the latest enterprise-scale customers stepping up to the Microsoft-Novell alliance plate. Under the Microsoft-Novell alliance, business customers pay Microsoft for certificates that get them Novell Suse Linux and services. Microsoft and Novell are teaming up to maximize interoper...

A survey by the investment banking and securities firm UBS found that fewer CIOs will deploy Linux than in the past, but the results are being met with shrugs in the Linux community. According to UBS, more than 90 percent of CIOs who are not Linux users said they would not deploy Linux in the calend...