Free Republic

IBM asked a federal court to bar the SCO Group, a Linux adversary, from distributing any Linux software, in the latest filing in their ongoing legal battle. In a motion for partial summary judgment filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, IBM asks the court to rule in favor of its counterclaim alleging SCO has violated the terms of one of the most common licenses under which Linux software is distributed. An IBM representative declined to comment beyond the text of the motion. An SCO representative said the company disputed IBM's allegations and would respond soon in...

IBM Files For Partial Summary Judgment on 8thCounterclaim (Copyright Infringement) -PDF and text Wednesday, August 18 2004 @ 06:37 PM EDT Man, this just isn't SCO's week. IBM has just filed *another* Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, this one on its 8th Counterclaim, the one for copyright infringement. No, silly, not IBM copying SCO. It's where IBM says that SCO has literally copied more than 783,000 lines of code from 16 packages of IBM's copyrighted material. They are asking for summary judgment as to liability and a permanent injunction. Here's the lesson. You don't ever want IBM legally mad at...

Take a look at the largest companies in the world. Of them, only Microsoft makes the majority of its money from software licensing. A handful of them ..... make some of their money from software sales, genally a small part. A few... make a small portion of their revenue from retail sales of software. So the vast majority of large global companies consume software rather than produce it...if the cost of software is driven down by competition from open source, and thus a major cost of doing business is reduced for global industry, will it be a net gain or...

IBM Goes For the Jugular -- Files Motion For Partial Summary Judgment on Contract Claims! Monday, August 16 2004 @ 11:16 AM EDT Here is IBM's Redacted Memorandum in Support of Motion for Partial Summary Judgment On Breach of Contract Claims, filed by IBM on Friday. It's a hundred-page document. As you will see, they are going for the jugular now. Astoundingly, they say that all parties involved in the contract between AT&T and IBM have now provided testimony in discovery that IBM has the right to do whatever it wishes with its own code, contrary to SCO's claims, or...

The open-source movement has had a remarkable run of success that has seen software such as the Linux operating system and the Apache Web server emerge as major challenges to Microsoft. However, the movement is now facing a crisis. At its heart is a question that has been around from the very beginning: How does software owned by everyone and by no one survive in a world where copyrights and patents shape the legal landscape? The question is being forced on a number of fronts, and if open source is to play an important role in software's future, the issue...

"Based on our analysis, Microsoft Windows has one half the Total Cost of 0wnership (TC0) of modern Fedora Core Linux based technologies." [Source link is a PDF, Adobe Reader required.]

The best method known for getting people extremely angry at you is simply to be right where they're wrong -- especially if you give them any opportunity to read a moral subtext into whatever they're wrong about. It's sometimes okay be a tiny bit smarter than the people you work with, but it's always devastating to working relationships to be proven right if that makes people feel you are somehow morally better than they are. Have that happen and they'll soon be calling you smug, self righteous or pious. No matter how humbly you do the self-effacing shuffle, the working...

Here is Novell's Motion to Dismiss, the Memorandum in Support of the Motion to Dismiss, the Declaration of Bruce Lowry and the Declaration of David E. Melaugh, plus their Motion for Leave to File an Overlength Memorandum and the Order granting them leave. Lots to read, but the first two may take a few more minutes to show up on the server. I suggest you start with the declarations and then the ExParte Motion to File an Overlength Memorandum, and then the Motion to Dismiss and then the Memorandum. And I wrote that before I knew that the Motion and...

The threat of higher fees may now be the only way to prod more companies into buying SCO Group licenses because further lawsuits have been put on ice. SCO is hinting that it may soon raise the cost of its intellectual property (IP) licenses, which it says companies running Linux need to buy in order to avoid being sued. Many in the open-source community have been angered by SCO's ongoing claim that its proprietary Unix code has been illegally included within Linux. The company is currently involved in legal action against IBM, Novell and AutoZone. Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive,...

Microsoft executive Martin Taylor's schedule is packed with meetings like the one in June when he met with representatives from French drugmaker Aventis in his Redmond, Wash. office. Aventis has tied together groups of computers running not Microsoft's operating system but the freely available Linux. These high-performance clusters can analyze proteins at blazing speeds. "That's great for Linux," Taylor said cheerily, at the time. That same week -- by coincidence, the company says-- Microsoft announced plans for a new version of Windows software to handle exactly the kind of high-performance computing Aventis had set up. Says Taylor now, "I'll knock...

Software groups warn of FTA dangers By Online Staff August 6, 2004 The US-Australia Free Trade Agreement poses a grave threat to the entire Australian software development industry due to the legal framework on intellectual property which is required upon adoption of the pact, the Open Source Industry Association and Linux Australia have warned. In a statement issued in Melbourne today, both organisations said the FTA would hamper Australia's ability to efficiently compete in global markets. "Much like the introduction of a flawed patenting regime for pharmaceuticals, adoption of a flawed patent regime for software is not in Australia's interests,"...

NEWS    IBM says it won't assert patents against Linux kernelBig Blue exec challenges IT to establish procedures to avoid infringement claims   By  Ed Scannell August 04, 2004  SAN FRANCISCO -- In his keynote address on Wednesday at LinuxWorld, IBM Senior Vice President of Technology and Marketing Nick Donofrio assured the Linux nation his company would not assert its formidable patent portfolio against the Linux kernel and strongly advocated others to promise the same. Donofrio's remarks were in response to a statement earlier this week from the Open Source Risk Management organization based on its research and initial analysis of...

NEW YORK - The nasty legal battle between SCO Group and IBM may soon grow wider, as SCO executives have dropped a new bombshell. In private interviews during their annual user conference in Las Vegas this week, SCO executives said they have discovered that IBM lacks proper licenses for its Unix-based AIX operating system, heart of a multibillion-dollar business for IBM. SCO alleges that since 2001, AIX has contained code for which IBM does not have a license. Moreover SCO claims to have found internal IBM e-mails in which IBMers acknowledge this shortcoming.

HP exec calls for fewer open source licensesHP's VP of Linux says there is only confusion in having so many licenses    By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service August 04, 2004  SAN FRANCISCO -- The open source community needs fewer licenses and the large number of software licenses used to release open source code is becoming a significant issue for developers and users, said a senior Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) executive speaking at the Linuxworld Conference & Expo here Tuesday. "A lot of people don't realize that today there are dozens and dozens of open source licenses," said Martin Fink,...

Press Release Munich, 07/30/2004 - When the city administration of Munich decided to migrate its IT infrastructure to the Linux operating system, it made headline news around the world. That project is now threatened by software patents. In May the EU Council and Commission have reached "political agreement" to legalise software patents and reject all limits of patentability for which the European Parliament had voted in September 2003. Software patents are considered the greatest danger to the usage and development of Linux and other Free Software. A cursory search by FFII revealed that the Linux "base client", which the city...

Linux potentially infringes 283 patents, including 27 held by Microsoft but none that have been validated by court judgments, according to a group that sells insurance to protect those using or selling Linux against intellectual-property litigation. Dan Ravicher, founder and executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, conducted the analysis for Open Source Risk Management. OSRM is like an insurance company, selling legal protection against Linux copyright-infringement claims. It plans to expand the program to patent protections.

Now as you have most likely surmised from the title, this article is intended to spoof the plethora of articles proclaiming that 'Linux is NOT, has NOT, and NEVER will be ready for the desktop', but the content of this article is also intended to be both factual and informative for those that have been schnookered by the anti-Linux hype. Introduction In simple terms, we should define what 'ready for the desktop means'. A simple definition would be a graphical user interface in which applications have icons and can be launched in an intuitive manner. Well certainly MS Windows 95...

Inadequate Security Poses National Security Threat Dan O'Dowd, CEO, Green Hills Software Inc.Design NewsJuly 19, 2004 Linux is being designed into future U.S. defense systems, including the Army's Future Combat System (FCS), the Land Warrior, and the Global Information Grid, which will connect future military systems into one network. This spread of Linux into defense systems is cause for serious concern. Linux security is inadequate for defense use. The operating system used in defense is the foundation of its overall integrity. The operating system controls all of a system's functions, communications, and security; if it is compromised, an enemy can...

SCO's attempts to rescue its relationship with BayStar Capital, its biggest backer, have come to naught. On Friday morning, Eastern time, SCO announced that the stock buyback deal it agreed with the unhappy investment firm had closed. Two hours and five minutes later, Baystar issued a statement saying that a) no it hadn't and b) we'll see you in court, matey. BayStar is the sole remaining major investor in SCO. Last year, it invested $20m in Series A stock, and then picked up another $20m worth of stock offloaded by the Royal Bank of Canada. In April, it told SCO...

I downloaded Red Hat version of Linux last night. I am having trouble even get started installing the software. Before I invest any more time, is it worth me installing Linux on my home computer? I do not write my own software. However, I am attracted that the system is free, and the applicable software is cheap Lindows office, $29. I would like your thoughts. Also, will all my Windows based software work with Linux?