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International Business Machines Corp.'s IBM.N pension plan, which it revamped in the 1990s, is unfair to older employees, a federal judge in Illinois ruled on Thursday. Judge G. Patrick Murphy of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois held that IBM's pension plan violated age discrimination provisions of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. IBM, based in Armonk, New York, first moved in 1995 to a system of pension benefits that would accumulate steadily each year, rather than growing slowly early in employees' careers and accelerating rapidly in their final years of employment. IBM said it would...

IBM exec: 'Forces' at work against Linux By Andrew ColleyStaff Writer, CNET News.comJuly 30, 2003, 12:57 PM PT An IBM executive has claimed that a "set of forces" is attempting to derail Linux, and hinted that Microsoft and SCO Group are among those responsible. Al Zollar, a general manager of sales for IBM eServer iSeries, told delegates attending the company's Asia Pacific Strategic Planning Conference in Queensland, Australia, on Tuesday that a "set of forces" was attempting to stymie adoption of the open-source operating system. "They're mostly located in Redmond, although they have recruited a few allies," said Zollar. Microsoft...

IBM has inked a $1.1 billion, 10-year information technology services contract with ABB, a Swiss power and automation technologies company. IBM Global Services will take responsibility for the operation and support of ABB's information systems infrastructure in 14 countries in Europe and North America, representing some 90 percent of ABB's information systems infrastructure. Under the deal, announced Monday, IBM will take over the management of ABB servers, operating systems, corporate networks, personal computers and help desks. The deal builds on two pilot contracts between the two companies signed in 2001 worth about $600 million. "This long-term deal allows us to...

The SCO lawsuit against IBM for Unix copyright infringement "is not going away", industry experts have warned. Enterprise Unix customers must immediately review their software licence indemnity clauses to see whether they are at risk, according to an advisory issued by analysts the Yankee Group. "Corporations should take nothing for granted. Review the indemnity clauses in all software contracts, particularly IBM's," the analyst said. "Contact IBM or the reseller directly to determine whether you are covered and to what extent." The Yankee Group went on to warn that many software vendors have a cap on liability coverage and urged IBM...

Comparing Server OSes: Why SCO UNIX Is A Bad Idea by Jem Matzan It's a rather difficult mission to shop for an operating system for a server. When most people think of server OSes they think of Unix, and when they think of Unix they think of SCO, the company that owns the Unix source code. But there are so many more choices out there, the least of which offers a bonanza of advantages over SCO's Unix products. Having said that, let's explore the Unix world and take a look at what it has to offer the server and workstation...

update IBM has launched a counterstrike against SCO Group's attack on Linux users, arguing that SCO's demands for Unix license payments are undermined by its earlier shipment of an open-source Linux product. IBM's assertion came in a message to its sales force last Thursday evening, four days after SCO said Linux users must pay the company for a Unix license or face possible legal action. SCO Group, owner of the Unix intellectual property, contends that Unix code was illegally copied line by line into Linux and that companies such as IBM illegally transferred improvements made to Unix into Linux. SCO's...

<p>Many Linux customers have no intention of paying The SCO Group for a UnixWare license that would indemnify them from legal liability for using the open-source operating system.</p> <p>SCO, which is suing IBM over Unix for more than $1 billion and which claims that Linux is an illegal derivative of Unix, last week said Linux users are also violating SCO's Unix copyrights, particularly now that SCO has registered a U.S. copyright for its Unix System V source code.</p>

IBM Sponsors Gay Chamber of Commerce The nation's first National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce or NGLCC, said Thursday they will partner with IBM to launch a diversity development and procurement program to bring technology opportunities to GLBT-owned companies. The program, says NGLCC, was inspired by the National Minority Supplier Development Council, or NMSDC, a certifying body for minority owned businesses, which creates development and procurement opportunities with major corporations. "Since GLBT owned businesses do not qualify as minority businesses under NMSDC guidelines, tremendous financial opportunities are forfeited," said NGLCC's co-founder Chance Mitchell. IBM will be the founding corporate...

ARMONK, N.Y. (July 23, 2003) -- The National Football League and IBM announced a three-year agreement naming IBM as the NFL's official information technology (IT) partner. The agreement is centered on helping the NFL create the technology platform required to support next-generation digital media and other critical new business ventures for the NFL. As part of the agreement, IBM will receive the rights to use NFL and Super Bowl marks and imagery in its advertising and marketing efforts. It also will receive prominent presence on numerous NFL media platforms, including NFL.COM and NFL Sunday Ticket (the NFL's out-of-market satellite subscription...

July 22, 2003 I.B.M. Explores Shift of White-Collar Jobs OverseasBy STEVEN GREENHOUSE ith American corporations under increasing pressure to cut costs and build global supply networks, two senior I.B.M. officials told their corporate colleagues around the world in a recorded conference call that I.B.M. needed to accelerate its efforts to move white-collar, often high-paying, jobs overseas even though that might create a backlash among politicians and its own employees. During the call, I.B.M's top employee relations executives said that three million service jobs were expected to shift to foreign workers by 2015 and that I.B.M. should move some of...

SCO is giving the "tainted" Linux users out there a way to clean up their filthy ways via a licensing program that will begin in the coming weeks. After dolling out threats of legal action, SCO has called on enterprise Linux users to come forward and pay for code the company claims to own. The legal zealots at SCO reckon Linux has grown up too fast by nicking technology such as support for large SMP systems from its copyrighted Unix code. SCO plans to start calling Linux customers this week, asking them to pay up or face the consequences. "Following...

SCO readies new Linux licensing program Users would get access to OS without fear of litigation By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service July 18, 2003 The SCO Group is preparing a new Linux licensing program that it claims will allow users of the open-source operating system to run Linux without fear of litigation. The program will be announced "within the next month or so," according to SCO spokesman Blake Stowell, but on Monday the company will announce what he calls a "precursor" to this program in a press conference with SCO Chief Executive Officer Darl McBride and SCO's high-profile attorney...

Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Return To Double-Digit Growth for First Time In Nearly Three Years Worldwide PC Shipments Increased 10 Percent in Second Quarter of 2003 STAMFORD, Conn., July 18, 2003 — Driven in part by highly competitive pricing, worldwide PC shipments totaled 32.8 million units in the second quarter of 2003, a 10 percent increase from the same period last year, according to preliminary results from Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT and ITB). The worldwide PC market has not experienced double-digit shipment growth since the third quarter of 2000. "The PC industry performed better than expected, which suggests...

CRN Interview: Linus Torvalds Says Matter Is A Vendor-To-Vendor Contract Dispute By Steven Burke & Heather Clancy, CRN 6:28 PM EST Tues., July 15, 2003 Linux creator Linus Torvalds defended the integrity of Linux intellectual property in an interview with CRN Editor Heather Clancy and Editor/News Steven Burke at the CA World conference. Torvalds--who recently left Transmeta to work on Linux full-time at the Open Source Development Lab--talks about Read Copy Update code, copyright protection and SCO during the half-hour interview. CRN: How has the SCO-IBM lawsuit affected Linux? Torvalds: The biggest effect by far has just been a lot...

IBM nabs California welfare contract By Robert Lemos Staff Writer, CNET News.com July 14, 2003, 5:32 PM PT California awarded an $801 million contract on Monday to IBM to consolidate the state's ailing child-support computer systems. "This is a very high priority program for the administration," said David Maxwell-Jolly, project leader for the California Department of Health and Human Services. "It has a high level of participation." By 2006, California wants its six different child support systems pared down to two connected by a central database system. By 2008, the state government wants to have an operations center that...

IBM's pitch that on-demand e-business will reduce IT costs and make everything work better sounds good, especially to CEOs who don't understand that the technologies to make it happen just don't exist. A CEO watching a football game or a golf tournament on TV today is reminded during the commercial breaks of something about his IT infrastructure. He's reminded that it's a mess. The bearer of this bad news is IBM. The message embedded in its ads (once you finish laughing at befuddled businesspeople peering through "magic business binoculars" or examining the "universal technology adapter") is simple: Your IT is...

FSF Statement on SCO v. IBM Eben Moglen June 25, 2003 The lawsuit brought by the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) against IBM has generated many requests for comment by FSF. The Foundation has refrained from making official comments on the litigation because only the plaintiff's allegations have been reported; comment on unverified allegations would ordinarily be premature. More disturbing than the lawsuit itself, however, have been public statements by representatives of SCO, which have irresponsibly suggested doubts about the legitimacy of free software overall. These statements require response. SCO's lawsuit asserts that IBM has breached contractual obligations between the two...

IBM Flips the Switch on Deep Computing on Demand; GX Technology Plans to Transform Business with Supercomputing On Demand 26 Jun 2003, 09:43am ET - - - - - ARMONK, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 26, 2003--IBM today ushered in the era of deep computing on demand with the start up of its first facility designed to deliver supercomputing power to customers over the Internet, helping to free them from the fixed costs and management responsibility of owning a supercomputer. Additional facilities are planned nationally and internationally. IBM's deep computing on demand will offer scalable, highly secure systems that customers can access...

Ashton was a macaw that lived in the lunch room at George Tate's software company, Ashton-Tate, home of dBase II, the first successful microcomputer database.  There is a lot about that long-gone company that was unusual.  There was the macaw, of course, which was named for the company, not the other way around.  There was George Tate, himself, who died at his desk when he was only 40, but still managed to get married two weeks later (by proxy -- please explain that one to me).  And later there was Ashton-Tate's copyright infringement lawsuit against Fox Software that pretty much...

<p>Linus Torvalds, the founder and lead developer of the Linux open-source operating system, has some strong views about the legal dispute between The SCO Group and IBM, which he shared with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli in an e-mail exchange last week. Torvalds also last week announced he was taking a leave of absence from Transmeta Corp. and becoming the first full-time fellow at the Open Source Development Lab, where he will continue to drive the next version of the Linux kernel, 2.6, due later this summer.</p>