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Jun. 22, 2007 A start-up located in the French Alps near Grenoble is readying a tiny ARM-based Linux single-board computer (SBC) in a USB key form-factor. Calao, based in Sant Martin le Vinoux, is also readying a tiny Linux SBC designed to plug into QIL (quad in-line) IC sockets. Spread the word:digg this story Calao's USB-9260 USB key-sized SBC measures 3.3 x 1.4 inches (85 x 36 mm). It is based on an Atmel AT91SAM9260 processor, an SoC (system-on-chip) powered by an ARM926EJ-S core clocked at 190MHz. The SoC targets "advanced applications such as GPS application processors," according to Atmel....

Intel and Microsoft remain the closest of partners. But a sibling rivalry is brewing. In fact, Intel's growing investments in the open source community reveal five key trends that should worry Microsoft investors over the long haul. In its latest move, Intel Capital has invested an undisclosed sum in Centric CRM, a small open source application developer. Of course, this isn't the first time Intel has pumped money into open source. The chip giant's venture capital team has also invested in MySQL and JBoss (now owned by Red Hat), among others.

There's a very interesting paper published by Goldman Sachs and posted by Hewlett Packard, Fear the Penguin [PDF]. You will recall that both companies sent representatives to join Steve Ballmer and Ron Hovsepian on the stage and to speak about how wonderful it all was on the day Microsoft and Novell announced their deal. According to the paper, Linux is going to take over the corporate data center. Here's the first paragraph: Linux-on-Intel appears likely to emerge as the dominant platform in corporate data centers. This paradigm shift should have significant implications for a broad range of enterprise IT vendors....

The trade press reported a lot of rumors this past week about the chances for a patent protection pact between Red Hat and Microsoft similar to the agreements Microsoft negotiated with Novell, Xandros, and Linspire. Red Hat doesn't appear to be interested in the least. Here's why. First, Red Hat disagrees with Microsoft's assertion that Linux infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property. Spokesperson Leigh Day pointed to a page outlining Red Hat's position on IP infringement, and said, "We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency."...

-- Red Hat Linux has received a new level of security certification, one that should make the software more appealing to some government agencies. Last week IBM Corp. was able to achieve EAL4 Augmented with ALC_FLR.3 certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, putting it on a par with Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Trusted Solaris operating system, said Dan Frye, vice president of open systems with IBM.

Intuit said Wednesday it will allow QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions to operate on Linux servers. For Intuit, the move is a bit of a milestone–QuickBooks is the first of its products work on open source software.

[Updated June 14] -- Linspire Inc. has announced an agreement to license voice-enabled instant messaging, Windows Media 10 CODECs, and TrueType font technologies from Microsoft for its Linux distribution. Additionally, Microsoft will offer protection to Linspire customers against possible violations of Microsoft patents by Linux. Spread the word: digg this story In his June 14 weekly Linspire Letter, Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony stated, "This agreement will offer several advantages to Linspire Linux users not found anywhere else, such as Windows Media 10 support, genuine Microsoft TrueType fonts, Microsoft patent coverage, improved interoperability with Microsoft Windows computers, and so on." Linspire...

(Columbus) – Microsoft has rejected a U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance request to abandon its partnership with the nation’s leading anti-hunting organization. Microsoft, the software giant, will make a $100,000 donation to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and is partnering with the group on a pilot program called the i’m Initiative. Through the new program, whenever a Windows Live Messenger user has a conversation using i’m, Microsoft will give a portion of the program’s advertising revenue to one of ten organizations selected by the user. The HSUS is one of the choices, and there is no limit to the...

I can feel them…the flames…they’re coming. But I have to ask this question again (yes, I’ve asked one very much like it before) in light of recent events. The recent events, of course, involve the release of a particular Linux distribution with a funny African sort of name and, maybe more significantly, the first tier-one vendor’s adoption of said funny-sounding distro as an OS choice. Macintosh, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly focused on consumer appliances (oh yeah, AppleTV, that has applications in the classroom), notebooks (even their “budget” Macbooks are running Core 2 Duos), and high-end workstations (rumors...

When Dell put up its IdeaStorm community-feedback site, the company was surprised by the strong response in favor of shipping personal computers with Linux. The PC company then announced that it would offer Ubuntu Linux on select systems, and as of yesterday, they are taking orders. So it turns out that not including Windows saves the consumer $50 from the regular list price.

The day Linux advocates have been waiting for has arrived . Dell has announced three different systems with Ubuntu 7.04 installed: the XPS 410n and Dimension E520n desktops and the Inspiron E1505n notebook. However, those expecting lower prices for their Linux boxes may be disappointed because there is little or no price differential between the Linux and Windows models. In fact, the entry level E520 Windows desktop is significantly cheaper. Related stories * Novell, Microsoft, patents and the EFF * Dell and Ubuntu: why bother? * BadBunny macro worm targets OpenOffice * Has Microsoft violated the GPL? * Microsoft: shades...

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.