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It's been a torrid few weeks for the open-source movement, but good news came last week when the local government in Munich said it would spend about 30 million euros ($61 million) switching 14,000 computers from Microsoft's Windows and Office productivity software to the open-source Linux operating system and OpenOffice. The news was a huge blow to Microsoft, which is so worried about the Linux threat to its dominance that it has set up a special Linux fighting fund to provide super-discounts to win contracts from schools and Governments. The good news follows a bombshell legal claim that Linux was...

SCO Group, embroiled in a bitter legal dispute over Linux, indicated Friday it could take legal action against software maker Novell, and said it plans to release this week proprietary code that has been copied in the open source operating system. SCO chief executive Darl McBride told analysts and reporters in a teleconference that the company would release "hundreds of lines of code" that prove its claims. "The month of June is show-and-tell time," he said. "Everybody's been clamoring for the code -- show us two lines of code. We're not going to show two lines of code, we're going...

LOS ANGELES, May 30 (Reuters) - SCO Group Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOX), in a dispute with IBM and others over claims its intellectual property rights to the Unix operating system have been violated by competing software, on Friday said it will begin to open its code in a bid to show it has been improperly used. On a conference call with reporters and analysts, Darl McBride, the president and chief executive of Lindon, Utah-based SCO, said the company was willing to give proof to the technology industry and others that code from Unix appears in the Linux operating system as well. SCO...

It's really quite simple. If "techie" companies like Linux really want to bring down Microsoft's monopoly, they need to quit putting most of their energy into making "cool" software and focus on the four factors necessary to compete at Microsoft's level.Lawsuits by the government and competitors against Microsoft have failed to break down Microsoft’s monopoly within the software industry. This has just reinforced the free market argument that the real way to beat Microsoft is through competition. Unfortunately, most of Microsoft’s most promising competitors have failed to do the four things necessary to beat Microsoft – sell easier to use...

Microsoft Co-Opts Open Source On Its Terms May 26, 2003 SCO license deal highlights Microsoft's endorsement of for-profit development By John Foley, with Larry Greenemeier and Aaron Ricadela In the controversy that pits the SCO Group, owner of one of the original Unix operating systems, against Linux distributors, Microsoft has come down on the side of SCO. Yet, overlooked in the stir created when Microsoft recently licensed SCO's Unix for use in some of its products is the fact that Microsoft has been easing restrictions on its own code. May marks the second anniversary of Microsoft's so-called shared-source initiative,...

Computer Hardware & SoftwareBoies' TakeVictoria Murphy, 05.28.03, 6:03 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO - Hired gun David Boies can't understand why no one likes his client. All SCO Group did was file a billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM claiming the computer giant was sharing code secrets with open source developers. Somehow, everyone thinks SCO is in it for the money and out to thwart Linux. In Boies' eyes, it's hard to see how anyone could jump to that conclusion. The $1 billion in damages and future royalties SCO (nasdaq: SCOX - news - people ) is seeking won't put a mere dent...

Bruce Perens writes: "We knew that SCO's attack on Linux was a lie. But we never dreamed of the big lie behind it. "This morning, Novell announced some of the terms of the company's 1995 agreement to sell its Unix business to SCO. The shocking news is that Novell did not sell the Unix intellectual property to SCO. Instead, they sold SCO a license to develop, sell, and sub-license Unix. The title to Unix copyrights and patents remains with Novell. To back up this assertion, Novell refers to public records at the Library of Congress Copyright Office and the U.S....

Kurt Pfeifle writes "Steve Ballmer's recent trip to Munich to offer up to 90% rebates for the Microsoft Software Assurance and Licenses was in vain. The ruling party of Germans biggest city and self-proclaimed 'technology capital' now decided to migrate 14.000 workstations to Linux and an OSS office suite. A study comparing the alternatives had assigned 6218 (out of 10.000) points to Linux/OSS, while the MS Windows platform only scored 5293. Babelfish translation of the latest newsticker story."

Waltham, Mass. -- Linus Torvalds won't render his own verdict on SCO Group's legal case against IBM until the Unix code in question is revealed in court. In an e-mail response to CRN, Torvalds, widely considered the father of Linux, said he is awaiting judgment until SCO identifies the Unix code IBM allegedly misappropriated and handed over to the open-source community. But at this point, he said he's skeptical the case has merit. "SCO isn't even telling what they have, and I'm not a lawyer anyway," Torvalds wrote. "The people I've spoken to seem to think the merit of the...

Microsoft threw its weight behind SCO Group's battle against Linux Monday by declaring that it would license Unix technology from SCO in order to "ensure intellectual property compliance across all Microsoft solutions." Microsoft's license covers a patent and source code from Unix.SCO claims that the Linux kernel holds Unix intellectual property owned by SCO. The company has moved to hold IBM (Quote, Company Info) responsible, unleashing a $1 billion lawsuit against the company for misappropriation of trade secrets (though not copyright infringement, to date). Still, the company has conceded that some of the alleged Unix code in the Linux kernel...

Outside and in-house legal counsel advised the SCO Group to send a warning letter about Linux use to the CEOs of 1,350 companies Monday, SCO CEO Darl McBride says. In a letter dated May 12, SCO Group, which holds the license to the original AT&T Unix operating system, warned commercial users of the open-source Linux operating system that "Linux infringes on our Unix intellectual property and other rights." McBride also said in the letter that "legal liability that may arise from the Linux development process may also rest with the end user." In an interview Thursday, McBride said the company,...

By Reuters May 15, 2003, 7:32 AM PT Microsoft has had a strategy to discount its products heavily when the software giant competes for orders against the emerging license-free Linux operating system, according to a report. The International Herald Tribune newspaper said Thursday that according to internal Microsoft e-mail it obtained, Microsoft's chief sales executive, Orlando Ayala, last summer authorized executives to offer steep discounts. "Under no circumstances lose against Linux," Ayala was quoted saying by the newspaper, adding that the discounts could be paid for by a special fund. The newspaper also cites a Microsoft marketing manager as saying...

In the long term, the battle centers on the hearts and minds of developers.The development and growth of the Linux operating system has brought a new question to the lips of IT managers: Why should I buy Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)? Five years ago, the answer would have been easy. With the dominant development tools, client operating system and client applications, Microsoft owned a certain portion of the enterprise. But now that the Linux OS is rapidly maturing and companies are looking to shrink IT budgets, the choice is not so easy. Almost everything enterprises once found unique to Microsoft they...

I keep reading all these tales of woe of people having bad experiences with Linux. Sure, I've had my own bad experiences, across many an OS, but just lately I've been running a Red Hat Linux 9 desktop full-time at home and have yet to run into any major issue. What follows is an overview of my personal experiences with Linux. But first, a bit about me. Linux Just Works, Part I Editorial Notice: All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of osnews.com I've been involved with computers since my Dad brought home an Atari 400....

Put yourself in his/her shoes. You're a budding young technical writer and the one word you hear popping up in almost every tech-related conversation is, you guessed it, Linux. Now look in the mirror and try to tell yourself you're more than a writer. After all, you write about technology because it not only interests you, but you're accurate and fair enough to tell it like it is. Maybe not. We've used the word Linux here to signify Linux as an OS. Thus unless it is specifically mention Linux as a kernel within the context of the article it means...

NEW YORK -- At a gathering here Tuesday of current and potential Oracle ISV (independent software vendor) partners, Oracle Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison extolled the virtues of Linux and predicted that the open-source operating system will soon decimate Microsoft in the battle for the data center market. "(Microsoft has) already been killed by one open-source product. Slaughtered, wiped out, taken from market dominance to irrelevance," Ellison said, speaking of the Apache Web server's displacement of Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Services) technology. "They had a virtual monopoly on Web servers, and then they were wiped off the face...

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Vulnerability: CAN-2003-0127 The Linux 2.2 and Linux 2.4 kernels have a flaw in ptrace. This hole allows local users to obtain full privileges. Remote exploitation of this hole is not possible. Linux 2.5 is not believed to be vulnerable. Linux 2.2.25 has been released to correct Linux 2.2. It contains no other changes. The bug fixes that would have been in 2.2.5pre1 will now appear in 2.2.26pre1. The patch will apply directly to most older 2.2 releases.

SCO sues Big Blue for $1 billion; HP, Sun reassure customers The SCO Group last week announced a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM Corp. for allegedly sharing SCO’s proprietary technology with the open source software (OSS) community. SCO also claims to have warned Big Blue in a letter that if IBM doesn’t address its concerns, SCO will revoke its Unix license within 100 days. The implications of this move are unclear for IBM’s AIX installed base, but some industry watchers concede it could at least temporarily prevent IBM from shipping AIX. “That’s exceedingly unlikely, however,” stresses Rob Enderle, a senior...

Major Internet vulnerability discovered in e-mail protocolBy DAN VERTONMARCH 03, 2003The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been working in secret for more than two weeks with the private sector to fix a major Internet vulnerability that could have had disastrous consequences for millions of businesses and the U.S. military. Since Feb. 14, the DHS and the White House Office of Cyberspace Security have been working with Atlanta-based Internet Security Systems (ISS) to alert IT vendors and the business community about a major buffer overflow vulnerability in the sendmail mail transfer agent (MTA). Sendmail is the most common MTA and...