Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Last week, I listed the top five things Linux can learn from Microsoft. Well, its a two-way street: Microsoft could really stand to learn a few things from Linux, too. Yes, I know I sound like a crackpot to some of you, since most of you are reading this on Windows-based PCs. But consider, if […]

On July 27, the FSF (Free Software Foundation) and the SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) released the next discussion draft of the GNU GPL (General Public License) version 3. In addition, the groups released the first draft of the revised GNU LGPL (Lesser General Public License) version 3. Since the release of the initial GPLv3 […]

The SCO Group is going down swinging. In its recent attempt to breathe life into its IBM lawsuit, the company alleged that IBM destroyed evidence. Specifically, SCO claimed to the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City that, “Weeks after SCO filed its lawsuit, IBM directed dozens of its Linux developers within its Linux Technology […]

The Fedora Legacy group is ending its support for Red Hat 7.3 and 9, and Fedora Core 1 and 2. Older-model Fedora support will end with the release of Fedora Core 6 Test 2. Test 1 was released in late June. Test 2, described as a feature-complete and development-freeze release, had been scheduled for July […]

AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) is acquiring ATI Technologies, one of the top two graphics processor makers, for around $5.4 billion. AMDs aim is to grow its market share in the mobility and commercial markets, according to AMD CEO Hector Ruiz. What does this mean for Linux users? The combined company will still make discrete ATI […]

You have to give The SCO Group Inc. credit for persistence, if nothing else. Even after Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells strongly dismissed the majority of the companys claims that IBM had contributed Unix code to Linux, SCO keeps on fighting. In its latest move, the Unix company filed an expected appeal to Judge Wells ruling. […]

Linux does a lot of things right—open source, security, reliability—but its far from perfect. In fact, Linux and its vendors could stand to learn a few things from Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft. Like what? Heres my list of the top five things that Linux could learn from Microsoft. 1. MSDN With Linux and open-source software, all […]

The newest SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, Version 10, is so close to being done that you can almost taste it. Novell released the gold master the week of July 3 to its partners, and the server version, SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), based on the same code, is also almost ready for release. This is […]

To Googles recent purchase of Writely, a company that makes a Web-based word processor; the creation of Google Spreadsheets; and the release of Google Calendar, you can now add impending broad support for the ODF (OpenDocument Format) to Googles online office moves. During the 4th of July week, Google quietly joined the ODF Alliance. The […]

Today, July 11, is the day Microsoft is ending all support for Windows 98, 98SE, and ME. And, when they say ending all support, they mean ending all support: “Microsoft will end public and technical support by this date. This also includes security updates.” So, you can either start hauling your older systems to the […]

So, the EU finally let Microsoft have it. European Union regulators fined the boys from Redmond 280.5 million euros—thats 357.3 million American dollars—for defying a 2004 antitrust ruling and warned the company that bigger fines were to come. How big? It could go up to 3 million euros a day after July 31 if Microsoft […]

Red Hat, the leading Linux distribution company, is facing a patent infringement lawsuit from FireStar Software, an object-transaction and business process integration company. FireStar is asserting in its suit that JBosss Hibernate 3.0 infringes its 2000 U.S. Patent No. 6,101,502. (Red Hat acquired JBoss in June.) This patent details a method of interfacing an object-oriented […]