Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Wakey, wakey, lets look at the facts, shall we? Ive heard from several people in the last day say that Novells support for Open XML in OpenOffice.org 2 represents a fork in the code. Ah … no, I dont think so. What Novell is actually doing is throwing its support behind the Open XML/ODF Translator […]

Last week saw the end of most of The SCO Groups claims that IBM contributed Unix code to Linux. Now, Novell has filed a motion that undercuts all of SCOs contract claims against IBM, based on a “silver bullet” clause in the original sale of Unix to SCO. In its latest legal move against SCO, […]

The Linux Professional Institute, the leading vendor-neutral Linux certification organization, is updating its recertification policy to ensure that Linux professionals skills and knowledge are still up to date and relevant. People who already have their LPIC (Linux Professional Institute Certification) will have to recertify every five years or, alternatively, earn a higher certification status. Previously, […]

The first fruit of the recently announced Novell/Microsoft interoperability agreement arrived on Dec. 4, with Novells announcement that its version of the OpenOffice productivity suite will now support the Microsoft Office Open XML format. The release candidate of Novells modified version of OpenOffice.org 2.02 is now available for Windows for free download by registered Novell […]

SCO took big hits this week—both in the courts, and in the stock market. Regardless of what SCOs management decides to do, the companys stockholders seem to have finally had enough of the troubled company. First, on Nov. 29, U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball affirmed Magistrate Judge Brooke Wellss June 28, 2006 Order. In […]

Novell on Nov. 30 announced its latest NetWare upgrade operating system, the Linux-powered Novell Open Enterprise Server 2. Although OES 2 wont be out until early in the second quarter of 2007, it already has support commitments from Novells software partners. The list currently includes backup solution vendors CA, CommVault, Symantec, and Syncsort, along with […]

Corel promised months ago that it would support the OpenOffice.org Open Document Format. Now, it says it will support both ODF and Microsofts Open XML next year. Beginning in mid-2007, Corel will provide open, view, and edit functionality for Open XML and ODF as a first step toward comprehensive support for both formats. The company […]

You may have noticed that I dont cover news about the , Linux, Novell, et al. much anymore. Theres a reason for that: SCO doesnt matter anymore. Oh, its not like theres no news coming out of the courtrooms anymore. There is. For example, there was a recent story about SCO accusing IBM of destroying […]

It got little notice at the time, but Richard Stallman, the leader of the FSF (Free Software Foundation), said at the fifth international GPLv3 conference in Tokyo on Nov. 21 that the Novell-Microsoft patent agreement is not in violation of the GPL version 2. Stallman, the primary author of the GNU General Public License (GPL), […]

“That was fast!” said one acquaintance on learning that the first OpenSUSE 10.2 release candidate put in its appearance on Thanksgiving afternoon not three weeks after Beta 2 arrived. The release is currently available for downloading via both ftp and BitTorrent. “OpenSUSE 10.2 RC1 comes in different medias,” according to Andreas Jaeger, Novell/SUSEs project manager […]

There has been a great deal of heat in open-source circles over the Novell/Microsoft patent deal, but Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth took it to a whole new level when he went to the main OpenSUSE list to invite OpenSUSEs developers to abandon Novell SUSE for Ubuntu. In his OpenSUSE list note, Shuttleworth opened by slamming […]

Most people think that OpenOffice.org is a strong office-suite in its own right. But, when it came to a back-office document collaboration and management engine, like Microsoft SharePoint to enable OpenOffice users to work together, it was a different story. Things have changed, with the release by Dutch firm O3Spaces B.V. of a program that […]