Blackmoor Vituperative

Wise business IT executives should start considering SLED 10 for their main desktop operating system as well. Vista continues to be troublesome, and it’s looking more and more like Vista may not ship in January. XP remains a bad security joke and an operating system all in one.

If you’re considering a business desktop alternative, SLED 10 should be at the top of your shopping list.

(from DesktopLinux.com, A first look at SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10)

Nokia has made a major update to the Linux PDA it doesn’t want you to think is a Linux PDA, the 770.

Available for free download, OS 2006 edition introduces version 2.0 of Nokia’s Linux platform, Maemo. Included are system level performance improvements, support for VoIP clients, and Google Talk. There’s a full feature list here.

However, according to Nokia, the update breaks backward compatibility.

“Installed applications designed for OS 2005 will not be compatible with OS 2006 edition and will not be restored even from backup,” warns the company.

So, er … look out.

(from The Register, Nokia updates Linux tablet

Since day one of The SCO Group’s lawsuit against IBM on the grounds that the corporate giant had stolen its Unix intellectual property for the betterment of Linux, SCO’s opponents have shouted that there was nothing to the company’s accusations.

Now, more than three years since the fight began, lawyers think that the court’s recent decision to dismiss many of SCO’s claims has shown that SCO’s enemies were right all along.

What appears to be the real end of the case came on June 28. On that day, U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells dismissed about two-thirds of SCO’s claimed 294 examples of IBM contributing Unix code to Linux.

Is there anything of substance left to SCO’s case? The lawyers say no.

(from Linux Watch, Staking the Vampire: SCO’s case comes to an end?)

This is neat: Music publisher/distributor ships Linux PMP.

Playing on Apple’s past “Switch” ad campaign, which was aimed at getting Windows users to migrate to Apple’s Mac OS X-based computers, a few longtime Mac and open-source gurus are vocally publicizing their switch away from Apple’s platform to more open-source solutions.

Though the practical impact is impossible to gauge, their arguments have been making waves.

The first was Mark Pilgrim, who wrote free software for the Mac in the mid-1990s.

He is involved with various current open-source projects, was a certified Mac OS X trainer and has written about Web site accessibility and scripting.

In a post on his blog, Pilgrim wrote that though he has long been impressed by Apple’s hardware and software, he thought that the latter had grown less attractive and more “restrictive,” leading him to seek alternatives.

Pilgrim wrote that he regretted that Apple’s software, including the operating system, was not open-source (Pilgrim has published software under the GNU GPL [General Public License]; the license states that software published under it includes the source code, which users can modify to their liking as long as they document the changes.)

He noted that most applications he uses are so open — “Why keep running them on an operating system that costs money and restricts my rights and my usage?”

(from eWeek, Tech Gurus Say They’ll ‘Switch from Mac’)

And here I thought that there was no hope for Mac users once they drank the Kool-Aid. If even a Mac user can come to her senses, maybe there’s hope for other apparently-lost causes. Good heavens — I think I may be feeling optimistic!

While on the subject of the poisonous fruit, check out Defective By Design.

Wi-Fi software stack specialist Devicescape has released its “Advanced Datapath” 802.11 driver stack to the open-source community under the GPL.

Interesting news:

Red Hat, the leading Linux distributor, announced on April 10 that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire open-source Java middleware company JBoss.

JBoss has been rumored to be on the acquisition block for months. Earlier this year there was much speculation that Oracle was going to acquire the Atlanta-based JBoss, but JBoss CEO Marc Fleury said he had no immediate plans to sell the company.

Red Hat will pay at least $350 million for JBoss. That will be made up of 40 percent cash and 60 percent Red Hat stock. An additional $70 million may be paid depending upon JBoss’ financial performance. Oracle had been alleged to have been looking to pay from $300 million to $480 million for JBoss.

The deal is expected to close in May. If completed as planned it will add to Red Hat’s earnings next year.

In early Monday morning trading, the market enthusiastically greeted the proposed deal with a jump of almost 10 percent on extremely high volume.

(from eWeek, Red Hat to aquire JBoss)

Also worth reading:

Oracle refuses to confirm or deny that it spent the past few months working through the details of acquiring JBoss. But the rumor mill has suggested that Oracle uncovered code ownership issues when doing due diligence in preparation for an acquisition.

With Oracle refusing to comment, there’s no way to confirm that premise. But if it were in fact true that the deal proved too risky for Oracle, why would it be OK for Red Hat to buy JBoss?

(from eWeek, If Legal Questions Killed an Oracle-JBoss Deal, Why Not Red Hat-JBoss?)

There’s a really interesting article at SearchOpenSource.com about FSW Inc. switching to Linux. (FSW is a Connecticut nonprofit that offers people healthcare and social services.)

What makes this article different from most that I read is that it doesn’t just mention Linux, Firefox, and OpenOffice. These are great, and they’ll meet the need of 90% of the small businesses out there, but for large enterprises, they need more. They need virtualization. They also need something to replace Microsoft Exchange. This article doesn’t go into exhaustive depth on the decision making process FSW went through, but it does touch on these issues, and mentions what products they considered. This is good ammunition for IT directors out there who want to reduce their agency’s costs and increase their reliability by moving their core infrastructure from Windows to Linux.

The article also doesn’t gloss over the work involved. It’s a lot of work, make no mistake. But at the end of this phase of the transition, FSW saved $100,000 on their HIPAA compliance effort. That’s not trivial, and the great thing is that those savings carry forward — every time it would have been time to upgrade, or renew a license, FSW will save again.

This is really a great article. I think it does a lot to dispel the FUD that Microsft spreads about TCO.

This isn’t exactly a scoop, but hey, I’ve been busy.

Some have recently argued that corporate executives face increased risk of criminal liability under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) if their companies develop and distribute code licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The argument, as it has been made, raises significant concerns about SOX compliance, but it fails to clarify the scope and context of these points. We have reviewed these issues and, as discussed more fully below, there is in fact no special risk for developing GPL’d code under SOX. Under most circumstances, the risk posed to a company by SOX is not affected by whether they use GPL’d or any other type of software. Arguments to the contrary are pure anti-GPL FUD.

(from Software Freedom Law Center, Sarbanes-Oxley and the GPL: No Special Risk)

I’m not sure what Wasabi thought they were accomplishing by publishing their scare-tactics white paper, but anyone familiar with SarbOx and familiar with the terms of the GPL (and really, it isn’t hard to be one of those people, all it takes is some time to read up on them) can see that they’re blowing smoke. Shame on them.

DesktopLinux.com has a pretty good article summarizing why Linux users want Photoshop. I know I do. Gimp just doesn’t cut it.