Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

The idea that Linux is primarily a community-based project based on the work of thousands of independent, idealist hackers died a quiet death at home on March 27. The proximate cause of death was the Linux Foundations naming of its new board of directors. This leading nonprofit Linux organizations board included many Fortune 500 executives […]

Its been over two years now since the Free Software Foundation started to seriously work on revising that key open-source license, the General Public License. On March 28, were finally going to get … the next draft. Ive got a bad feeling about this. I always knew that there would be a lot of trouble […]

On March 27, Oracle and the OIN (Open Invention Network) will announce that Oracle will become an OIN licensee. By doing this, Oracle opens the doors to making some of its patents available royalty-free to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against Linux. OIN members—which currently include IBM, NEC, […]

Microsoft, yes Microsoft, will soon be doing open-source developers a real favor. The software giant has decided to open-source the core portions of the Visual FoxPro DBMS (database management system) software to its CodePlex community development site. At the same time, Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be making new versions of the […]

SALT LAKE CITY—Novell will soon release a major upgrade to its SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 line. The enhancements, announced at the companys annual BrainShare trade show, will be rolled out in the form of the operating systems first service pack, SP1. “Service packs” usually consist of bug-patches, with few major changes. Like Microsoft with its […]

SALT LAKE CITY—Novell announced the next generation of its OES (Open Enterprise Server) operating system, at its annual BrainShare tradeshow March 19. OES 2 adds 64-bit Xen-based virtualization, dynamic storage support, and Windows domain support, and marks the final transition from Novell NetWare to SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server). The new OES is built on […]

Almost two years ago, the FSF (Free Software Foundation) started work on the first update of the GNU GPL (General Public License) in over a decade. A last-minute hitch, though, is keeping the license from appearing. The FSF announced at the May 2005 LinuxWorld Expo that the GPLv3 would be out soon . The project […]

SALT LAKE CITY—Microsoft and Novells partnership is more than the cosmetic addition of Microsoft as a platinum partner to Novells annual BrainShare partner conference. Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian said during his keynote speech that the companys recent partnership with Microsoft represented an “ecosystem change” for Novell. Hovsepian went on to say that “This deal was […]

Novell and SWsoft have partnered to combine Novells SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with SWSofts Virtuozzo virtualization software, to deliver an integrated virtualization server, SWSoft announced today. Novell has long used Xen virtualization in its SLES open platform. With this augmented version of SLES, uses will have the choice of using either Virtuozzo or Xen […]

With the release of Linux-based Xandros Server 2.0 Standard Edition, well-known Linux desktop vendor Xandros offers compatibility and other services that may give Microsoft SharePoint Server some competition. In the new server, due in April, Xandros will include O3Spaces Workplace 2.0 office collaboration software. With Workplace 2.0, users will be able to use OpenOffice.org, StarOffice […]