Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

The shoe’s on the other foot. Microsoft has made a multi-billion dollar business from FUDing its competition, now Google is enjoying its chance to see how Microsoft likes the same treatment by objecting to its proposed purchase of Yahoo. It took Google less than a weekend to respond to Microsoft’s offer for Yahoo. By February […]

My long-time friend and colleague Mary Jo Foley recently talked with Sam Ramji, Microsoft’s director of platform technology strategy at the company’s Open Source Software Lab. The subject of their conversation was: “Exactly what it is Microsoft is trying to do with open-source software anyway?”The answer? “Our focus is getting OSS [Open-Source Software] on top […]

Most people still think of Microsoft as the unchallenged superpower of the software world. It’s not. Microsoft doesn’t just want to buy Yahoo; if it wants to have a decent shot at still being the number one company in the world by the decade’s end, it must buy Yahoo. Microsoft has been beginning to decline. […]

Asustek, the company behind the popular Xandros Linux-powered Asus Eee PC 4G ultramobile PC, knows it’s got something good going on, and so it’s going to push its Linux desktop PCs for all it’s worth. In 2008, Asustek will be releasing an entire line of Linux-powered PCs: the E-DT (desktop PC), E-TV and E-Monitor. The […]

If you believe my long-time colleague John C. Dvorak, Sun purchasing open-source database power MySQL was “perhaps the worst single event I have ever witnessed in the history of tech mergers and acquisitions.” Nonsense! This is Sun’s best deal ever. Besides, the worst technology acquisition of all-time is still Compaq buying DEC. Let us have […]

When I last looked at the stock market – 2 p.m. EST, Jan. 29 – VMware’s stock was being beaten to death by crazed sellers. How badly? Try down $27.30 per share, or 32.9 percent since the market opened. Ouch! And why were they throwing stock overboard like passengers tossing other passengers off an overloaded […]

Technically, Vista is pure misery. It eats system resources like an elephant does peanuts, Windows applications break and its so-called improved security is a joke. I know it. You know it. Even Microsoft’s most devoted yes-men know it–although they won’t admit it–and perhaps Microsoft knows it as well.What else can explain why Microsoft is now […]

After a soft-launch in December, Hewlett-Packard on Jan. 23 officially released a pair of new open-source initiatives to help businesses and developers track their free and open-source software programs and licenses: FOSSology and FOSSBazaar. HP is not doing this on its own. While the open-source management and tracking programs and business processes underlying these initiatives […]

IBM has seen the future, and in its vision, Linux-based servers and desktops will be powering tomorrow’s office with Lotus Notes and Symphony in what it calls an open collaboration client solution. The IBM open collaboration client solution brings together Lotus Notes; the Lotus Sametime messaging platform; WebSphere Portal; the Lotus Connections social networking software; […]

For more than a year now, Microsoft and Novell have appeared to be best buddies. While it is true that two former enemies are now on good terms, they’d never agreed to settle one issue: Novell’s lawsuit against Microsoft for illegally crushing WordPerfect. Now, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., has […]

Today, I have a temperature of 99 degrees Fahrenheit, a headache, my blood pressure is 100 over 71, and my heart-heat is around 90 beats per minute. I have felt better. Now, if Microsoft’s plan goes the way it wants, my Windows computer will soon be reporting all of that, and more, to my boss. […]

The rumors had been flying for a while that MySQL was looking for a buyer and Sun Microsystems was interested in purchasing the open-source DBMS powerhouse. Why? Because Sun has wanted to offer its enterprise customers a compelling end-to-end software stack for their needs. It’s a truism in enterprise-level software buying decisions that at the […]