Peter Galli

A new Microsoft-funded study has found that open-source developers do not believe that licenses such as the upcoming GNU General Public License 3.0 should enforce software patents or prevent deals like the Microsoft-Novell patent agreement. The study by Harvard Business School professor Alan MacCormack, in collaboration with Keystone Strategy, is titled “A Developers Bill of […]

SAN FRANCISCO—H&R Blocks use of open-source technologies is not about saving money, but rather about creating revenue, acquiring and retaining customers, and providing technologies they really care about, said Mark West, the companys CIO, at the annual Open Source Business Conference here on May 22. “Newest is not always best, but neither is the most […]

Microsoft will announce May 21 plans to create a project to develop an open-source translator project between Chinas Unified Office Format and the Ecma Open XML File Formats, which are closely tied to Microsoft Office. The Redmond, Wash., software company will also release the beta for its translation tools for PowerPoint and Excel that support […]

Microsoft has reshuffled its organizational chart again, this time adding the Developer and Platform Evangelism team to its Server and Tools division, and then moving that merged entity into the Business division. The server and tools business, which falls under the leadership of Senior Vice President Bob Muglia, was moved “intact” from the Platform and […]

Microsoft has announced that it will shell out $6 billion in cash to buy aQuantive, which owns interactive ad agency Avenue A RazorFish, as well as Atlas, a set of advanced tools for advertisers and publishers, and DrivePM, which matches advertiser campaigns with publisher inventory. The motivation for the deal appears simple: Microsoft wants to […]

LOS ANGELES—Some of the changes in the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 are a response to features and performance advantages that have made Linux an attractive option to Microsoft customers. One of these is the fact that Linux has less of a surface area, which led customers to believe that Linux is inherently more […]

LAS VEGAS—Attendees at Microsofts Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here got an in-depth and deeply technical keynote outlining the changes to the Windows kernel and other key areas, and how partners can take advantage of these. In his presentation on May 16, Mark Russinovich, a technical fellow in Microsofts platform and services division and the third […]

LOS ANGELES—The significant hardware trends driving IT industry today have resulted in “a perfect storm,” a time of great change and opportunity for the industry, Bill Laing, general manager for Microsofts Windows Server division, told attendees here at WinHEC on May 16. Microsoft is gung-ho about the transition to 64-bit computing for both the industry […]

LOS ANGELES—Microsoft is doing research on multiple fronts aimed at bringing computing into every aspect of peoples lives and improving the ways that they communicate, said Craig Mundie, the companys chief research and strategy officer, during his keynote speech at WinHEC here. On the health care front, Microsoft is experimenting with optical recognition technology that […]

LOS ANGELES—The 2,700 attendees at Microsofts annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here are going to get an earful about Windows Vista, the upcoming Windows Server “Longhorn” and Windows Home Server—and thats just from the keynote addresses. “There are three big themes for this conference, the first of which is the industry impact of the Windows […]

LOS ANGELES—Nearly 40 million copies of Windows Vista have been sold in the first 100 days following its release, more than twice the sales of Windows XP over the same time period, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said in his opening keynote here at the 15th annual WinHEC. “We have been amazed by the response to […]

Microsoft is using the threat of patent violations by the free and open-source software community to try to drive enterprise customers to SUSE Enterprise Linux and to further muddy the waters around the next version of the upcoming GNU General Public License. As part of this latest strategy, Microsoft has, for the first time, put […]