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Microsoft server share jumps in 2001 Microsoft's share in the server operating system market jumped in 2001, according to a new report, yet analysts question whether the software giant will be able to offer a repeat performance for 2002. The Redmond, Wash.-based company's market share for shipments of new server operating system licenses jumped to 49 percent in 2001 from 42 percent in 2000, according to a research report released by IDC on Monday. Over the same time period, rivals either held steady or lost market share, the report showed. The IDC numbers represent sales of new licenses, not market...

<p>The unthinkable has happened: an informal partnership between a Microsoft project called .Net and an ordinarily Microsoft-bashing camp of programmers who have set out to produce a free twin of the .Net framework, a set of programming tools.</p> <p>The effort, called Mono, is a rare bridging of the chasm between the commercial world and free software -- more commonly referred to as open-source software -- a movement in which the Linux operating system is at the forefront.</p>

Do Windows users have a choice? Sure. They can continue to run the older version of Windows with the original license, but if they do they are begging for someone to crack them. Bruce Sterling had it right when he said at the recent O'Reilly OSCON, "Microsoft Windows is slowly but surely becoming an armed terrorspace. It's like an airport. You go into an airport nowadays, it's really kind of amazing that the people who run them still expect you to spend money in there. They still pretend to you that you are this pampered jet-set consumer, instead of a...

<p>Apple Computer is looking toward a 64-bit future for the Mac -- courtesy of PowerPC partner IBM.</p> <p>According to sources, IBM Microelectronics, a division of IBM, is working with Apple on a 64-bit PowerPC processor for use in the latter's high-end desktops and servers.</p>

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc. SUNW.O will announce on Wednesday plans for inexpensive desktop computers based on the free Linux operating system in a bid to undermine archrival Microsoft Corp.MSFT.O . Marking a second plunge into world of Linux, a free, collaboratively developed operating system, the Sun machines will be based on cheap commodity parts and ship in a few quarters, Vice President John Loiacono said in an interview. Sun's announcement came at the start of a user conference, SunNetwork, beginning Wednesday in San Francisco. Sun is known for its million-dollar machines that manage networks and...

newsmakers Jim Allchin is not buying the argument that there's any confusion about Microsoft's message on Web services. If anything, he says, it's just the opposite. Earlier this summer, Bill Gates allowed that Microsoft's .Net Web services strategy was progressing more slowly than anticipated. But Allchin, who is responsible for Microsoft's platform strategy, maintains that the industry adoption of XML (Extensible Markup Language) Web services is proceeding apace, any speed bumps notwithstanding. "In terms of the overall vision of XML Web services, I think it's been quite successful," he says. Allchin, who recently oversaw the first update to Microsoft's Windows...

HP today announced that HP ProLiant servers have delivered the first Linux TPC-C benchmark results running Oracle 9i Real Application Clusters on the Red Hat Linux Advanced Server operating system. With this benchmark, HP ProLiant servers become the first industry-standard server platform to offer enterprise-class performance for a clustered Oracle database in a Linux environment. Demonstrating the cost and maintenance benefits of running Linux-based hardware and software in enterprise-operating environments, an 8-node cluster of HP ProLiant DL580 servers using Intel® Pentium® III Xeon processors and HP StorageWorks MSA1000 storage system achieved 138,362.03 tpmC (transactions per minute) at a cost of...

Windows critic shown HP's door By Garry Barker Technology Editor September 13 2002 If Microsoft fears anything, it is Linux, the free, open-source operating system that is challenging the dominance of Windows software, especially in network servers.Linux has been adopted by Dell, IBM and Hewlett-Packard who offer it as a parallel solution to Windows, yet, according to those of darker mind who watch the convoluted politics of the IT industry, even the biggest companies use a long spoon when supping with Bill Gates.About 10 days ago, Hewlett-Packard fired Bruce Perens, one of the most respected Linux experts in the US because,...

The view from the desktopby Dennis E. Powell It's a year later, and the tears come as readily now as they did then.I was sitting here, at this very desk, in this very chair (itself a survivor of the old New York State Supreme Court Building in lower Manhattan), working on the column that would run the next day on Linux Planet. The phone rang. It was my wife, who was phoning from a meeting at work. There was something on the news about a plane having hit the World Trade Center. The television had been on in the background,...

Pak Govt may choose Linux as platform instead of Windows Naveed Ahmad Updated on 2002-09-06 10:08:42 ISLAMABAD, September 06 (PNS): While the government continues to engage Microsoft Corporation in dialogue to seek exceptional discounts for making its software as platform for official operating systems, a recent notification suggest that the stage is being set to adopt Linux instead. "Linux is going to be the cornerstone of this initiative, as it is world over the Open Source movement," said the official correspondence confirming its decision to replace the pirated Windows-based systems already in use in the government offices. On the other...

September 5, 2002 An Alternative to Microsoft Gains Support in High PlacesBy STEVE LOHR overnments around the world, afraid that Microsoft has become too powerful in critical software markets, have begun working to ensure an alternative.More than two dozen countries in Asia, Europe and Latin America, including China and Germany, are now encouraging their government agencies to use "open source" software — developed by communities of programmers who distribute the code without charge and donate their labor to cooperatively debug, modify and otherwise improve the software.The best known of these projects is Linux, a computer operating system that Microsoft...

<p>But now Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, forced to ease up on those restrictions. The biggest beneficiaries of the New Millennium ABM Club may be proponents of Linux, the open-source operating system, long considered to be as potentially disruptive to Microsoft's dominance as a missile strike on Communist-era Moscow.</p>

The Register: Sun May Play Greater Open Source RoleSep 4, 2002, 17 :30 UTC (0 Talkback[s]) (591 reads) "Its new role as a Linux evangelist could see Sun Microsystems Inc release features found in enterprise-level operating system servers to the open source community. "A senior executive at Palo Alto, California-based Sun last week didn't rule-out the company's possible donation of high-end technologies to the open source community. Technologies would be donated during development of Sun's own brand of Linux. "The announcement marks Sun's increasing participation in Linux and open source. It follows nearly two years of machinations that saw...

<p>With the release of Netscape 7.0, Netscape Communications Corp. and its parent AOL have finally completed the transformation of the browser from a powerful and highly customizable Web and e-mail client to an intrusive home-user-focused client more on par with Microsoft Corp,'s MSN Explorer and the AOL client itself.</p>

Venezuela eliminates govt. software piracy By Thomas C Greene in Washington Posted: 09/03/2002 at 06:54 EST Venezuela has announced an official policy of preferring open source software products to proprietary ones in the public sector, according to an article by Linux Today's Brian Proffit. Apparently, from now on all software developed for the government must be licensed under the GPL. Even software used for Internet access to e-government must run GPL'd apps on a GPL'd operating system. For new purchases, free software is to be preferred to proprietary wherever practical. Reasons for the switch include a desire to promote the...

Most software is poorly designed and built. This statement comes as no surprise to anyone in the software industry and is elucidated well by Charles Mann in his popular article "Why Software Is So Bad". I have proposed a framework for better software architectures in my article "Most Software Stinks", which served as one of the sources for Mann's piece. But even if everyone accepted my proposal for improving software design (which they don't), there is still a problem. How do we get software designers and programmers to raise the quality of their work? Because few people ever see their...

On the Internet, software wants to be free. But as the Free Software Foundation and many others point out, the word "free" here is not about price; it is about liberty. "Free" is used as in the phrase "free speech" (a right we covet), rather than the phrase "free beer" (always too good to be true) or "free kitten" (which sounds good, but has a high overhead). Confusion arises because free software mostly has a zero price tag as a natural consequence of the original license, the GPL, that enforces the liberty of developers to use code created by their...

August 26, 2002 Vol. 160 No. 9The Little Penguin That CouldReady to dump Windows? Rival operating system Linux is showing up in easier-to-use packagesBY CHRIS TAYLOR Imagine dining at a restaurant where there are just two dishes on the menu --and because one is being eaten by 90% of your fellow diners, the waiter advises you to order that. That was the choice facing computer consumers throughout the 1990s. You could select from a few relatively pricey Apple computers that ran Mac OS on the one hand, and a horde of cookie-cutter Windows-based PCs on the other. A third operating...

<p>It's in the air, big changes are afoot. Yeah, tech stocks remain in the toilet, but underdog companies and technologies are beginning to make significant inroads, and the established superpowers are feeling less secure every day. Is this news? Not really, because it's been happening slowly over time, and certainly many ET readers have been closely following and even promoting these changes. Big power shifts are underway. The signs have been subtle and cumulative, but the one that put me over the top was IBM's recent national TV ad pushing their enterprise Linux solutions in a big way (more fervently than any past IBM ads I can remember).</p>

Australasians desert Microsoft for Linux Licence move irks firms By INQUIRER staff: Tuesday 20 August 2002, 11:44   A REPORT IN The Australian suggests large organisations are deserting Microsoft and moving to Linux as a result of the new licensing policies it introduced at the end of July.The paper quotes a market research firm, S2 Intelligence, as saying that resentment at the licensing policies accounted for the move.Organisations which have already said they will switch include Air New Zealand, the Aussie federal government, and other firms moving away to the Linux operating system.But Microsoft insists that Linux, rather than pushing...