Linux Gram articles from August 2003

Linux Gram archives from August 2003

SCO To Claim GPL Is Invalid.(General Public License )(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... We said that IBM may have opened up Pandora's Box when it dragged the General Public License (GPL), the touchstone of Linux, open source and the free software movement, into the SCO case last week in its countersuit. SCO has been dying to...

OSDL Wades into SCO Debate.(Open Source Development Lab)
August 18, 2003... The Open Source Development Lab waded into the roiling waters of the great SCO debate the other day. OSDL's current position is that "Absent clear, open and publicly available evidence that using Linux violates rights that SCO has not...

SCO Strikes Again, Terminates Sequent's Unix License.
August 18, 2003... In another move likely to inflame the open source community - if it can get any more bent out of shape than it already is - the SCO Group terminated Sequent Computer Systems' SVR5 Unix license Tuesday for improperly transferring its source code...

Fortune 500 Signs Up for SCO's Linux License.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... Six days after it finally disclosed what a Linux license would cost, the SCO Group on Monday was saying that an unidentified Fortune 500 had signed up as SCO's first so-called Intellectual Property Compliance licensee for SCO Unix Rights. ...

SCO Never Had It So Good.
August 18, 2003... For the second time in its life, the SCO Group, the otherwise failed nine-year-old Linux distributor, has earned money, proving that there may be something to this licensing campaign it's waging after all. In its July quarter, SCO came...

CA Owes Canopy Offshoot $40m.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... According to a settlement cut Monday on the courthouse steps with the Canopy Group and Canopy company Center 7 while they were picking a jury inside, Computer Associates is to pay a cool $40 million to get out from under breach-of-contract...

Oracle Soldiers On.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... Oracle has now given itself until midnight September 19 to acquire PeopleSoft, the second extension of its hostile $7.3 billion tender offer that it's made. The extensions are attributed to the lengthy review of the two-month-old bid that the...

Scalix Debuts Messaging & Calendaring Product.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... Scalix has formally introduced its messaging and collaboration platform for large Linux environments. Based on HP's discontinued OpenMail product, the Scalix platform includes the Scalix Server, which provides the messaging and calendaring...

SuSE Supports SQL Anywhere Studio.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... Sybase subsidiary iAnywhere Solutions Inc said it's got a technology alliance with SuSE giving it access to the developments SuSE makes in its OS and support for the optimization of SQL Anywhere Studio, the mobile/embedded database, on SuSE...

Jonas Might Swallow BEA.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... Credit Suisse noticed the same, um, tension we did last week between Red Hat announcing support for an immature open source application server called Jonas and its announcing it will provide joint solutions with BEA - pre-configured,...

Deutsche Bank Analyst Reacts to SCO Code.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... "Our review of source code and documents appears supportive of SCO's claim, though we are not legal experts and IP matters are not always transparent." - Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Brian Skiba after looking at SCO's example proof under...

Opteron Score Two More Big Clusters.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... The Los Alamos National Lab, whose determination to implement bleeding-edge technology hasn't been rotted out like in the commercial sector, is going to use AMD's newfangled Opteron chip in two big Linux clusters, one called Lightning, the...

Anti-Patent Banner Raised.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... "SCO is nothing beside the threat that the open source developers face from software patents, a fight that we are losing badly. Next month, the European Community parliament is expected to vote for unified European software patenting. In its...

Oracle Moves to the Letter "G".(10G DBMS)(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... Prudential now says that the next major version of Oracle's database is called 10G ("G" for grid) rather than 10i and that it's expected next month at Oracle's user meeting, which runs September 7-11. The actual ship date is elusive. The...

100 View Poached Code.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... SCO Group CEO Darl McBride said Thursday during a conference call with Wall Street that a hundred people had signed NDAs and viewed the code SCO alleges Linux copied. Presumably these folks are going to be core of its binary licenses.

GNU's Feet of Clay.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... It appears that the primary FTP servers housing the seminal GNU software project sponsored by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was compromised by an intruder back in March. The FSF doesn't think any source code was maliciously modified.

IBM Takes Ice Pick to Dell.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... Since Dell has given up on 32-bit Intel-based eight-way, IBM has come with a program it calls "Dell on Ice" to chase after Dell customers with its own xSeries 440 and 445 and its BladeCenter. The campaign would position big iron against two-...

Dell Income Up 24%.(fiscal 2004 2nd qtr ended Aug 1, 2003)(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... The Dell machine continued to churn out solid results. For its fiscal '04 second quarter ended August 1, the company earned $621 million, or 24 cents a share, on revenues of $9.78 billion. Revenues, which were slightly higher than Wall...

Sun Courts x86 ISVs.(Brief Article)
August 18, 2003... Sun has apparently expanded its Linux ISV Advisory Board with an x86 ISV Advisory Board to tighten up hardware and software integration on its x86 platform. The company is pushing Solaris x86 on the widgetry.

At Least a Fourth of Linux Tainted, SCO Says.(SCO Forum)
August 25, 2003... SCO at SCO Forum, its user and reseller shindig, in Las Vegas this week declared that "The DNA of Linux is coming from Unix" and shored up its IP claims by itemizing - for the very first time - how many lines from Unix were allegedly copied...

SCO Denies It's Suit-Happy.(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... According to some exuberant press reports the SCO Group is behaving like Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado and is running up "a little list" of recalcitrant Linux users and is getting ready to sue at least one of them because it won't pay SCO's...

Ex-SuSE VP To Collect SCO's Linux Tax in Europe.(Gregory Blepp)(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... Ah, sweet irony. Gregory Blepp, the guy who had a lot to do with pulling United Linux together when he worked for SuSE as VP, international business and was on the United Linux board of managers guiding the operating system's fate, has...

SCO Rebuffs Penguinistas' Scorn.
August 25, 2003... The SCO Group, wilting a bit under the constant barrage of criticism aimed at it lately for refusing to show the code it alleges Linux copied from Unix, flashed a couple of slides in public meetings at the SCO Forum this week in Las Vegas. They...

Nutch Aims for Top Search Engine Perch.
August 25, 2003... Google might have to fight more than just Microsoft, Yahoo and AskJeeves if a nascent open source initiative to develop a search engine gains momentum. A California-based non-profit outfit called the Nutch Organization has embarked on the...

HP Blows It.
August 25, 2003... As HP CEO Carly Fiorina said about the company's Q3 results Tuesday, "We should have done better." The company's also not going to make its prior guidance for the second half. Maybe the Compaq acquisition is finally catching up with it, now...

Dell Smells Blood.(reduces prices after hears HP earnings lower in Q3)(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... There's more than one great white shark swimming in the waters off California looking for lunch. Dell uncaged one Wednesday as soon as it smelled blood in the water. HP, which came up short in its third quarter, confessed that part of...

Free Software Lawyer Lashes Out at SCO.
August 25, 2003... The lawyer for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Eben Moglen has come out swinging at SCO's contention that the GPL is invalid and trumped by federal copyright law by allowing unlimited copying and modifications whereas federal law only allows...

SCO Spends a Moment Talking Products.
August 25, 2003... Despite the fact that it's a social outcast - Silicon Valley.com has called it the "North Korea of the open source world" - the SCO Group went ahead and held the traditional SCO Forum this week in untraditional Las Vegas. Besides...

Novell Loses More Money.(Q3 2003)(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... The once great, now humbled Novell, which has cast its fate with Linux, lost $12 million, three cents a share, on flat revenues of $283 million in its third fiscal quarter ended July 31. It earned $10 million same time last year. The results...

CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL.
August 25, 2003... Editor's Note: We don't know who wrote the following spoof, but it's an amusing piece of work. DEAR SIR/MADAM: I AM MR DARL MCBRIDE CURRENTLY SERVING AS THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE SCO GROUP, FORMERLY KNOWN AS...

Sun's Twin-Core Gemini Chip Recycles Blackbird.(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... At the Hot Chip Conference this week Sun opened the kimono a bit on its newfangled low-power h-Series server-on-a-chip (SOC) Sparc chip, known as the Gemini, that it'll be pointing at Xeon DPs and MPs and AMD's redoubtable Opteron around the...

IBM Slaps Dell with its Glove.(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... IBM is out to exploit Dell's abandonment of the eight-way Intel boxes (CSN No 509) - and the allegation, which IBM may have started, that Dell's shelving its blade efforts (CSN No 508) - and has taken to offering Dell customers a way to - as it...

Chinese Server House To Build Opteron Boxes.(Dawning Information Industry Corporation Ltd.)(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... AMD says that Dawning Information Industry Corporation Ltd, a Chinese server maker that recently built the country's largest DP super server, a three-teraflop system run on 644 Intel processors, is going to launch a line of one-way and two-way...

Gateway Debuts New Server.(960X )(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... Close on the heels of its first quad server, struggling Gateway, which is hoping to make servers into something of a life preserver, introduced one for small and mid-sized businesses and workgroups in large organizations on Thursday. ...

Adaptec Debuts NAC.(Adaptec ANA-7711F and ANA-7711C )(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... Storage products vendor Adaptec has launched a gigabit Ethernet network accelerator card (NAC) aimed at boosting the performance of servers used in high-performance computing. Targeted at Linux server clusters, Adaptec's NAC offloads...

Neoware Does OK.(Q4 2003 earnings)(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... Thin client vendor Neoware Systems turned in a strong performance for its fiscal fourth quarter ended June 30 earning $1.7 million, or 12 cents a share, on revenues of $15.82 million. This time last year, the King of Prussia, Pennsylvania...

Red Hat Gets New Marketing Veep.(John Young)(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... Red Hat has tapped ex-Compaq VP John Young to be its VP of marketing replacing Mark de Visser who jumped to start-up Agitar Software a few weeks ago. Young was responsible for product marketing in Compaq's Industry Standard Systems Division...

Number Two Guy in Linux Takes Off.(Alan Cox)(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... Alan Cox, Linus Torvalds' trusty lieutenant, says he's taking a year's sabbatical from his formal employer Red Hat - and operating systems in general apparently - to go back to school to get an MBA, a move that couldn't hurt at all. Guys like...

IBM Readies Virtual Four-Core Chip.(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... IBM is out to rub the collective nose of Sun and Intel in the dirt. At the Hot Chips shindig this week, IBM sketched out the Power5 chip that's due to hit IBM iSeries and pSeries servers in a staged release around the middle of next year....

Could Novell Pocket NeTraverse?(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... Rumor has it that Ximian was close to buying NeTraverse last year before it looked in its larder and found it empty. So, one wonders whether Novell, Ximian's new owner, will be tempted to buy NeTraverse too, especially in light of the little...

More Sun Layoffs Predicted.(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... According to the inimitable f*%#edcompany.com, Sun will have layoffs again this October, the third round this year. It says the numbers won't be as high as the first two layoffs and so will be characterized as "redeployments" rather than a...

Trouble Can Be Genetic.(Tarantella delaying filing Q3 2003results)(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... Being in tight places must run in the family. Citrix wannabe Tarantella, which is all that was left after they cut SCO out of it and handed it to Caldera to create the SCO Group, has put off filing its Q3 results and cancelled its scheduled...

Linux Networx Debuts Cluster Center.(Brief Article)
August 25, 2003... Linux Networx has set up a solutions center to serve as an educational and validation resource for cluster technology. Sponsored by Intel, Infiniband hopeful Mellanox, Oracle, Micron, Seagate and Myricom, among others, the center is equipped...