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First you get everyone riled claiming open source and Linux infringe on your patents, then you won't detail those patents. Why? The paperwork. Yes, Microsoft cited administrative overhead for not detailing the 235 Microsoft patents its chief legal counsel recently told Forbes exist in Linux and open source. Microsoft patents attorney Jim Markwith told OSBC it would be "impossible" for Redmond's bureaucrats to respond to the volume of responses that would result form disclosure. Also, apparently, it's ungentlemanly to name names. "Most people who are familiar with patents know it's not standard operating procedure to list the patents," Markwith said....

"Microsoft patent threat to Linux! The world ... It ends!" shriek the headlines. There's so much hysteria over this it's like a being trapped in pre-teen sleepover. "And when they got home, a bloody hook was hanging from the car door handle!" "SQUEAL!!" Can we all get a grip, just for a few minutes, pretty please? Ignore all those sources of conventional wisdom who rarely dig into a story, but simply slap together a Frankensteinian blend of warmed-over press releases and quotes from random people who get quoted just because they answered the phone. I know, we all love gossip...

NYSE undertakes IBM mainframe migration to Unix and Linux The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is migrating off a 1,600 millions of instructions per second (MIPS) mainframe to IBM System p servers running AIX and x86 Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) servers running Linux, with the first part of the move going live today... ...(SIAC), the NYSE's technology arm, said the bottom line for the migration was the bottom line. He estimates the move will halve the cost of transactions, and though he wouldn't detail how much that would mean on a yearly basis, he said it is "serious financial savings, very...

May 13, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Microsoft Corp. on Sunday confirmed reports that it reportedly believes open-source software users owe the company royalties on 235 alleged patent violations. In an interview with Fortune magazine, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, and Horacio Gutierrez, the company's vice president of intellectual property and licensing, said open-souce software, including Linux, violates 235 Microsoft patents. And Microsoft wants distributors and users of open-souce software to start paying royalties for these alleged violations. "This is not a case of some accidental, unknowing infringement. ...There is an overwhelming number of patents being infringed," Gutierrez said. Microsoft executives in...

Linus Torvalds has hit back at Microsoft's claims that it holds 42 patents that are infringed by the Linux kernel. Torvalds, the leader of the project to create the Linux kernel, was contemptuous of Microsoft's claims and has asked Redmond to name the infringements so that their veracity can be challenged and workarounds found. "Naming them would either make it clear that Linux is not infringing at all (which is quite possible, especially if the patents are bad), or would make it possible to avoid infringing by coding around whatever silly thing they claim," he said in an email exchange...

AMD will soon deliver open graphics drivers, said Henri Richard just a few minutes ago, and the audience at the opening keynote of the Red Hat Summit broke into applause and cheers. Richard, AMD’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, promised: “I’m here to commit to you that it’s going to get done.” He also promised that AMD is “going to be very proactive in changing way we interface with the Linux community.”

The Japanese government wants to go open source, as a way to rely less on a single vendor IT software infrastructure. And plenty of vendors are lining up to help make this happen.

Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant. A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers....

"My guys are big advocates of Linux," says Martin High, director of IT at Valeo Behavioral Healthcare in Topeka, Kan. "We're taking a hard look at it on the desktop." Wait. On the desktop? For a business? That's right. And from a look at things, it shouldn't be as surprising as it might seem, for a number of reasons.

Toshiba is also contemplating installing Linux on its systems, Toshiba Italy computer division manager Luigi Cattaneo has revealed.

In 2004, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. In 2007, Dell, a top computer manufacturer, is introducing pre-installed Ubuntu Linux on its main PC lines. The worlds of baseball and the desktop will never be the same. Dell also is saying something else that's equally important about the desktop world. It's saying, for the first time in more than a decade, that standard x86 PC users have a choice. For the first time since OS/2 mattered, users have a choice again. No more are users stuck with Windows. No more are they forced to pay the Microsoft tax.

See for example this thread first. Dells to come with LINUX installed? I'm sure that Bill Gates is appalled He's gasping for breath-- "No blue screen of death?" "Hasta la VISTA, Bill!" Dell called.

In a joint statement released today, Dell Inc. and Canonical Ltd. announced that Dell will now offer laptops and desktop computers pre-installed with Ubuntu Linux 7.04. The computers will be sold via Dell's web site, said Canonical's director of operations Jane Silber. "We have worked with Dell to get Ubuntu fully supported and fully certified on Dell hardware," she said. "Ubuntu has the full endorsement of Dell."

According to security expert Eugene Kaspersky, we are at the brink of seeing a significant rise in malware attacks on Mac and Linux platforms. So, are hackers ready to target a broad range of platforms or is this merely hyperbole from a security firm that wants to sell products?

I’m watching the progress that Dell is making with their second desktop Linux effort and am increasingly wondering how long before the Linux supporters make it clear to Dell this is a bad idea. While some are being patient, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that many don’t fundamentally understand why this is vastly more difficult than it looks, and why Dell will desperately need their support, not their constant criticism, to justify continuing the effort. This week let me try to explain why it is nearly impossible, but not actually impossible, to do desktop Linux from an OEM’s...

For people wanting simplicity from their Linux distribution, Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) may well be the best release ever from any Linux company. While using Feisty Fawn from the late beta stage and right on up to upgrading to the final version, I kept thinking “Feisty is so easy, my mom could use this!” Not to say you can’t get more obtuse with command line syntaxes in Feisty, but for the folks that wants their Linux distro to work with a minimal amount of fuss, Feisty Fawn is a smashing success. The installation is really as easy as 1-2-3 and...

Dell today revealed that it will restore the option to use Windows XP on some of its home systems, marking a potentially damaging blow to Microsoft's hopes for the newer Windows Vista. The Dimension E520 and E521 as well as virtually all of the company's Inspiron notebooks can immediately be custom-ordered with XP in Home or Professional editions, giving cautious buyers the opportunity to use the earlier OS. The change in policy was the result of user feedback, Dell claims. While a popular request through the company's IdeaStorm website, the choice was substantially outnumbered by requests for pre-installed Linux, US-based...

As far as the old guard are concerned, however, Ubuntu is no longer real Linux. For traditional Ubuntu users of course, such talk is anathema because Ubuntu like all the other distros is built around the Linux kernel. Thus, the argument rages between the Linux elitists, who couldn't give a damn whether the year of the Linux desktop ever arrives, and the Linux evangelists who would like to see Linux distros like Ubuntu and Suse replace Windows as the desktop system of choice. Related stories * Samsung latest to buy Linux patent protection from Microsoft * Microsoft aims to double...

What operating system do the heads of Fortune 500 companies run on their personal laptops? In the case of Michael S. Dell, president and CEO of Dell, it's Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn.

Serial entrepreneur Peter Dawe, who helped bring the internet to the UK, is launching a "safe" Linux distro tailored for the technophobe. The idea behind his BabelLinux distro is to give users a free, go-anywhere bootable OS, which is likely to be attractive to operators of public internet PCs. BabelLinux is tailored for simplicity, to give users access to the seven most common applications. It boots from the (free) CD, and once booted the OS can't write to the local hard drive or USB media. Instead, users can store their data online in the "BabelBank" - which is how the...