Peter Galli

OAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, West Africa—A veritable whos who of West and Central African governments are starting to arrive in this small West African country for the regions first Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Best Practices Forum. The conference, which is being hosted over June 6 through 8 by Blaise Compaoré, the president of Burkina Faso, […]

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso—Microsoft has signed a strategic partnership agreement with the government of this West African nation to invest in building its Information and Communication Technology capacities, and to support broader e-government initiatives to strengthen Burkina Fasos knowledge-driven economy. To that end, Microsoft and local partners launched the ICT Best Practices Forum – West and […]

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso—The United Nations Industrial Development Organization and Microsoft have announced a partnership to set up PC refurbishment centers in Africa. These centers are designed to help address the hardware, software and training needs of entrepreneurs with small and midsize businesses, with the ultimate goal of producing a refurbishment model that can be used […]

Microsoft, shrugging off licensing moves to prevent it from repeating its controversial patent deal with Novell, has signed a set of broad collaboration agreements with Linux provider Xandros that include an intellectual property assurance under which Microsoft will provide patent covenants for Xandros customers. These covenants, which are almost identical to the patent agreement and […]

Novell has welcomed the provisions of the fourth, and final, draft of the upcoming GNU General Public License 3.0, which allow it to include technologies under this license in SUSE Linux Enterprise, OpenSUSE and other Novell offerings. On May 31, the Free Software Foundation released the fourth and final draft of GPL Version 3, referred […]

The final version of the GNU General Public License 3.0 should be published before the end of June, bringing to an end some 18 months of discussions around the new license, the Free Software Foundation said on May 31. The FSF also released the fourth and final draft of GPL version 3 on May 31, […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Enterprise IT users are looking for the major Linux vendors to update their enterprise products less frequently and to give them much more guidance about what is included in the patches and upgrades. That was the message from users at the Open Source Business Conference here May 22, who spoke about the […]

Microsoft does not believe there is an inherent contradiction between its recent statements that free and open-source software infringes on 235 of its patents, and the veiled legal threats that go along with that, and its attempts to reach out and build bridges with the open-source community. “In fact, one makes the other possible, especially […]

Microsoft plans to reach out and work more closely with IBM and Cisco Systems on the interoperability front, as this is what its customers have told the software maker they want. Specifically, these moves follow feedback from members of Microsofts Interoperability Executive Customer Council, which was established in June 2006 to solicit input from enterprise-level […]

Novell filed its delayed annual report with the SEC on May 25, including as attachments the technical co-operation and patent agreements it entered into with Microsoft in November 2006. The 10-K filing for the fiscal year, to Oct. 31, 2006, was delayed as a result of a stock option investigation, which was recently concluded, allowing […]

SAN FRANCISCO—Novell plans to share more details of its controversial patent and interoperability agreements with Microsoft when it files its 10-K annual report, which has been delayed due to a stock option investigation, with the SEC. “We will be making our SEC filing by the end of [May], and we will publish the Microsoft agreements […]

SAN FRANCISCO—Open-source software and the community around it does not need to be legitimized anymore as it is now legitimate, Red Hat CEO Matt Szulik said in the opening address at the Open Source Business Conference here on May 22. In his address titled “The Evolution of Open Source in the Enterprise,” Szulik said that […]