Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Novell Inc. released to its SuSE Linux line on Friday numerous fixes to bugs that could enable a number of types of attacks, including DoS. The new set of patches fixes a variety of problems that can be exploited to cause denial-of-service, spoofing and cross-site scripting attacks, as well as to disclose sensitive information or […]

One of classic Star Treks best episodes was “Mirror, Mirror” For those of you who have somehow managed not to see it, in this episode Kirk, McCoy, Uhuru and Scotty are caught by an ion storm in mid-beam-up and end up in an alternate universe Enterprise, crewed by evil versions of their comrades. I dont […]

The Free Standards Group has decided to break up the single, core Linux Standards Base specification into different modules that can be combined to create a server or desktop LSB standard, but what do the companies behind Linux and the analysts make of this move? Is it, as one writer on Slashdot has it, a […]

IBM has started a round of depositions aimed at gleaning as much information as possible about the contents of communications between The SCO Group and its business partners. A subpoena for one such deposition was served on Intel Corp. for a deposition to be held Wednesday at a Marriott hotel in Santa Clara, Calif. This […]

The Open Source Initiative announced Tuesday that it is replacing its longtime president, Eric S. Raymond, and other officers. The moves are part of the groups plans to expand its activities beyond its management of the Open Source Definition and the certification of open-source licenses to include creating a registry of open-source software projects and […]

According to a report in The Salt Lake Tribune, recently ousted executives of The Canopy Group Inc. are suing Canopy, the parent company of The SCO Group Inc., for at least $100-million and a return to their positions, alleging that they were illegally fired in December. Sources close to Lindon, Utah-based Canopy confirmed that the […]

The Public Patent Foundation is questioning how Sun Microsystems Inc. is granting the open-source software community rights to more than 1,600 of its patents. PUBPATs executive director, Dan Ravicher, wrote in an open letter Friday to Suns chairman and CEO, Scott McNealy, that there are serious questions about what Sun really means to do with […]

The Mozilla Foundations popular open-source Web browser Firefox took another step forward in mainstream acceptance with the announcement that Speakeasy, a Seattle-based national broadband ISP, is offering a customized version of Firefox 1.0 to its customers. The Speakeasy Edition of Firefox is currently available as a download from Speakeasy. It will also be distributed as […]

Now that SCO has finally won one, should you be any more concerned about using Linux than before? No, I dont think so. As John Ferrell, a founding partner of Palo Alto, Calif.-based technology law firm Carr & Ferrell LLP, said, “This must be a saccharine-sweet victory for SCO—certainly a case of be careful what […]

On Tuesday, Sun Microsystems Inc. will announce that it will be using its newly minted Common Development and Distribution License open-source license for its long-promised Open Solaris project. However, creating a developer community around such plans to open-source Solaris will not be easy—for many reasons—according to analysts and industry figures. Sun has long promised that […]

How significant was The SCO Group Inc.s victory in its discovery motion over IBM in the companies ongoing battle over Linux copyright and Unix contract issues? It depends on which analysts and lawyers you talk to about Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells decision. Wells granted SCOs discovery motion, in which the Lindon, Utah, company had demanded […]

Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells of the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City gave The SCO Group Inc. a rare victory in its ongoing battle with IBM over whether IBM placed SCO-copyrighted Unix code in Linux. In her order, Judge Wells granted SCOs discovery motion, in which the Lindon, Utah, company had demanded that IBM […]