Linux Gram articles from March 2002

Linux Gram archives from March 2002

Sun Turns Gay Blade.
March 4, 2002... So Sun admitted Linux into its sanctum sanctorum and Sun, as already reported (CSN No 436), is doing blades and Linux and blades go together so Sun will be doing Linux as well as Solaris blades. The new initial entry will not change Sun's...

Poof, There Goes Another Linux Company.(Mission Critical Linux Inc.)
March 4, 2002... Mission Critical Linux Inc (MCLX), the two-and-a-half-year-old IBM Global Services wannabe, has sunk to its knees and died, killed by lack of business and money. Its 50 more-or-less remaining employees including CEO Robert Tumanic fired. Its...

GPL Fails To Get its Day in Court, But It Will Be Back in the Dock.
March 4, 2002... Well, it looked for a moment there like the GNU General Public License, the cornerstone of the great counter-intuitive open source and free software movements, might finally get tested in court the other day - something that's never happened...

NetWinder is Back from the Dead.
March 4, 2002... NetWinder server appliances are getting a new lease on life. A group of investors led by former IBMer Winston Morton has purchased the assets of Rebel.com, the Canadian Linux server appliance house that went into receivership last July...

Sun Lashes Out at IBM & Linux-on-a-Mainframe.
March 4, 2002... Sun Microsystems is out to leave its claw marks on IBM's Linux-on- mainframe initiative. So it's put a white paper out, signed by chief competitive officer Shahin Khan, on why running Linux on a mainframe is a lousy idea. It says Linux on...

AMD Demos ClawHammer.
March 4, 2002... AMD, which gets a kick out of stealing Intel's thunder, tried upstaging it this week at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF). In a suite nearby IDF AMD demo'd its first working Hammer silicon, the prospective 64-bit x86 chip, theoretically a...

W3C Outlaws RAND.
March 4, 2002... After getting badly roughed up by open source critics, the W3C has reversed its original policy on patents. Now it's got itself a revised Patent Policy Working Draft that dedicates the Internet consortium to producing only royalty-free...

Modifications To Settlement All Cosmetic.
March 4, 2002... This story is unchanged since it broke Thursday morning. Late Wednesday in response to the 30,000 largely critical comments made about their controversial antitrust settlement by competitors and individuals during the Tunney review,...

HP Vote Could Be Decided Monday.
March 4, 2002... Despite Carly's protestations that she's got the votes to win, her twelfth largest institutional investor, money managers Brandes Investment Partners LP, which controls about 1.3% of HP's stock, says it's voting "No." Brandes' decision...

Jabber Knocks Off G+J.(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... Jabber, IM software house, scored another coup, roping Gruner + Jahr Electronic Media Service, the big German publisher whose majority owner is Bertelsmann AG and whose stable includes Der Stern as a customer. G+J will use it to deliver...

AMD Stands Pat.(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... AMD said Wednesday that it continues to expect Q1 sales to come to about $900 million, resulting in a small net loss. It also expects to return to profitability next quarter and be profitable for the whole year.

SuSE Gets Another $3.8m.
March 4, 2002... SuSE, the German-based Linux distribution, has gotten $3.8 million in a second tranche of third-round financing. The money came from German VC AdAstra. The whole third round now amounts to $17.7 million. In October, SuSE got $13.9...

Awash in Red, Caldera Plans Reverse Stock Split.
March 4, 2002... Caldera, one of the four commercial Linux distributions, lost $11 million, 19 cents a share, on revenues of $17.9 million in its fiscal first quarter ended January 31. Excluding restructuring charges of $5.3 million, the net loss for the...

Governments Toy with The Prospect of Linux.(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... The Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI), an offshoot of the Philippines' Department of Science and Technology, has reportedly conjured up a Linux productivity suite and integrated install it's hoping to persuade the government to...

Opera 6 for Linux Betas.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
March 4, 2002... Opera Software has launched the first beta of its Opera 6 browser for Linux. Enhancements include display of non-Roman alphabets, a new cookie editor and contact list, improved window handling and plug-in support and greater speed and ease...

MontaVista To Support New Intel Chips.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
March 4, 2002... MontaVista Software plans to support Intel's new XScale network processors, the IXP2400, IXP2800 and IXP425, in its flagship MontaVista Linux 2.1 after they're released in the second half. The chips are targeted at core network applications,...

Chipset for Blades.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
March 4, 2002... ServerWorks has got what it calls a Pentium 4 chipset for blades and sub-$1000 entry-level servers up its sleeve. The widget, due in Q2, is called the GC-SL, the last of the company's Grand Champion family. SL stands for "super lite." It's...

Evidently Marx Was Right, Religion is an Opiate.(Red Hat)
March 4, 2002... Red Hat, the ostensible high priest of Linux, is said to be rapidly turning into the cultural equivalent of a Russian Orthodox church under the communists, a pretty museum piece that nobody uses. Red Hat's problem is it's too religious, and...

Is Linux Really Selling Mainframes?(IBM)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2002... Players close to the situation say it might be an awful lot of fun to take a peek at IBM's books and find out exactly how many mainframes it's actually sold on the back of Linux. Watchers claim the number purchased in the name of server...

Sun Will Have its Own Linux Thanks to Red Hat.
March 11, 2002... Sun is going to have "its own implementation of Linux," it said Monday at an odd "Linux Day" press conference that it held to clarify what it said on February 7 when for some reason or another it hurried to announce that it would admit a second...

An Open Letter to Sun from the Linux Establishment.
March 11, 2002... Sun has posted this provocative white paper attacking IBM and the whole idea of Linux on the mainframe. IBM has so far officially maintained a John Wayne posture. You know, "Never complain. It's a sign of weakness." But it's ticked and...

IBM to Sun: Bugger Off.
March 11, 2002... I have just read the piece entitled "Sun Lashes Out at IBM & Linux- on-a-Mainframe" from the last issue. Sun must be really hurting to resort to this type of effort. Their "will they/won't they, do they/don't they" Linux strategy is...

Okay, Top This, a Six-Processor Coppermine 1U.(Western Scientific )
March 11, 2002... Little privately held Western Scientific has stolen a march on density, going where no one has gone before. It's got a 1U rack- mount server packed with an unheard-of six 1GHz Coppermine Pentium III chips, the building block of a Red Hat-based...

GPL Enforceable & Binding, Federal Judge Apparently Thinks.
March 11, 2002... Apparently a federal judge in Boston thinks the GNU General Public License, the open source touchstone never tested in court before, is an enforceable and binding license. At least that's what the Free Software Foundation says she said...

Linux NetworX Finally Makes Note of CEO's Departure.
March 11, 2002... Well, shucks, no wonder he hasn't been returning phone calls. Linux cluster specialist Linux NetworX finally got around to admitting the other day that its founder and CEO Glen Lowry quit in October. The Salt Lake City concern said...

Slashdot without the Pesky Ads Will Cost Ya.
March 11, 2002... VA Software's ad-starved media arm OSDN is starting to charge for access to Slashdot, the chat room beloved of open source nerds, if Slashdot's cranky, commercially intolerant readers want to avoid the large-size ads it's started putting on the...

Weighing the Hammer.(Advanced Micro Devices planning for Hammer chip)
March 11, 2002... AMD chairman Jerry Sanders made a pilgrimage to Morgan Stanley the other day flush with the insinuation that Microsoft would have a 64- bit Windows for his prospective Hammer chip. Mind you, Microsoft has yet to speak for itself and say...

Carly & Walter Race Neck-and-Neck Down the Stretch.
March 11, 2002... Hear that sound? That's the sound of silence. Why, it must be a few minutes since anybody in the HP arena called anybody else over there a dirty name. It won't last long. Carly and Walter are coming down to the wire and the race remains...

W3C Sets Up in Korea.(Brief Article)
March 11, 2002... W3C has opened an office in Korea. Meanwhile, XML Encryption Syntax and Processing and Decryption Transform have become candidate recommendations.

HP Downgraded.(Brief Article)
March 11, 2002... Standard and Poor's has downgraded HP's debt rating because its hardware business is challenged and its business and management may be disrupted if the Compaq acquisition doesn't happen.

MontaVista Does Taiwan.(Brief Article)
March 11, 2002... Embedded house MontaVista Software is expanding its presence in Asia and setting up a distribution channel in Taiwan to peddle its software. Taipei-based information appliance design services provider Master Integrated Appliances (Master...

Caldera's Reverse Split Okay'd.(Brief Article)
March 11, 2002... Caldera stockholders have approved a one-for-four reverse split of its stock. It'll happen on Thursday, March 14. It's the only way Caldera could make it look like it was worth anything, not to mention stay listed. The last time it inched above...

Sony Selling Linux Kit for PlayStation 2.(Brief Article)
March 11, 2002... Sony has started taking pre-orders for its Linux kit for the PlayStation 2 game console in the US. The $200 kit, expected to ship on May 22, will let users run Linux on the popular PlayStation 2 and use the console as a fully functional...

Blades Hit the Other Side of the Pond.
March 11, 2002... A little English start-up by the name of Psi-Domain Ltd that's managed to garner some sexy accounts apparently because Linux talent is pretty thin on the ground over there is going to be pioneering server blades in Europe, practically virgin...

Fujitsu Strikes Out on Linux Offer.(Brief Article)
March 11, 2002... Fujitsu says it offers Linux support on its old line of mainframes but not one of its customers has taken it up on its offer. The Japanese company recently exited the mainframe business after being an IBM plug-compatible maker for years and...

Trailer Park Trashy.
March 11, 2002... Sun must have slipped out to have a smoke when the coach got around to talking about good sportsmanship and playing by Marquis of Queensbury rules. IBM reports being blocked from accessing the white paper Sun wrote trashing Linux-on-mainframes....

Lotus To Shrivel.(Brief Article)
March 11, 2002... There are going to be layoffs at Lotus. How many is unclear, but it's unlikely to be pretty. They've started in software.

OSDL To Push On to the Data Center.(Brief Article)
March 11, 2002... The big vendor-backed Open Source Development Lab is reportedly going ahead with that data center working group it was distracted from when the opportunity to put together that carrier-grade effort fortuitously walked in the door some weeks...

Crystal Balls.
March 11, 2002... This is how Merrill Lynch sees what's going on. It says that after centralization (mainframes), decentralization (PCs), recentralization (big Internet servers), decentralization in the form of blade servers is making a comeback. Sun for some...

Hadda Happen.
March 11, 2002... Seems there's going to be a blades show. TRP Investments is trying to pull a Server Blade Summit together as part of an existing triptych expo that already includes the SAN Conference, VPNcon and DSLcon. The Blade Summit is supposed to be the...

Microsoft & its Cunning Doomsday Scenario.
March 11, 2002... On Monday under pressure from the press Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's videotaped deposition for the remedy the starts on March 11 was made public. In it he said Microsoft would have to take Windows off the market if the nine rebel states...

Shocked. . .(Correction Notice)
March 11, 2002... I was quite shocked to see that a Linux publication would be spreading misinformation about the GPL. In the article, "GPL Fails To Get its Day in Court, But It Will Be Back in the Dock," Raga Rao makes the statement, "According to the license...

Serious Error.(Correction Notice)
March 11, 2002... I would like to point out that there is a rather serious error in your February 19 article "Good Lord! Microsoft Actually Open Sources Something. No, Really, Honest." The article claims that the license is an open source license when, in fact,...

The Hanging Chad II Threat: HP Vote Results Won't Be Known Immediately.
March 18, 2002... Hewlett-Packard is guiding the press not to expect a decision on how the vote for the soul of the iconic company goes on Tuesday, March 19. It's saying, "It's possible the results may not be known for a few days, or even a few weeks." ...

Egenera Fields Back-end Blades Way Before Anybody.
March 18, 2002... Intel's Foster MP announcement this week was the signal for Egenera to press the pedal to the metal and move into what it calls its BladeFrame 2.0 phase, its second-generation box. The start-up officially acknowledged the existence of those...

Red Hat Swings AOL Deal.
March 18, 2002... Red Hat has inked a deal to provide AOL Time Warner Linux server software, services, support and consulting, according to sources familiar with it. Red Hat is being coy about it and not admitting it exists. Neither is AOL. Still the news...

MandrakeSoft in Financial Crisis, Pleads for Help.
March 18, 2002... MandrakeSoft, the French Linux distribution, is asking users for help to tide it over supposedly short-term financial difficulties and avoid layoffs. Mandrake, which went public last summer and sold off roughly 22% of its equity to raise...

Mandrake 8.2 RC1 Debuts.(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... MandrakeSoft is offering downloads of Mandrake 8.2 Release Candidate 1. The RC comes with new features such as an encrypted file system, automatic detection of hot-plug devices and an improved GUI. Mandrake said it was close to launching 8.2...

HP Sponsors Linux-Itanium Consortium.
March 18, 2002... Hewlett-Packard and seven research institutions have set up a global consortium whimsically called the Gelato Federation to develop Linux-based applications for the Itanium. Gelato is Italian for ice cream. It's a code name that stuck like...

MontaVista Nets Another Big Fish - Panasonic.
March 18, 2002... Just as we predicted two months back, embedded Linux house MontaVista has landed Panasonic as an investor (CSN No 434). The money from Panasonic Digital Concepts Center (PDCC) is part of MontaVista's third round and takes its total funding...

Foster MP Chips Appear Like Clockwork.(Intel Foster 1.2GHz, 1.5GHz, 1.6GHz)(Product Announcement)
March 18, 2002... Intel announced its new 1.4GHz, 1.5GHz and 1.6GHz MP Foster chips this week as scheduled, giving it a new high end for IA-32 servers. When optimized, and depending on the application running, the new parts can up performance 30% over their...

Fujitsu-Siemens Goes Blades.
March 18, 2002... Fujitsu-Siemens Computers is going to jump into blades with a new 3U Primergy BX300 Blade Server that uses Tualatins on its compute blades, Intel's Pentium III 800MHz low-voltage processors. The box, meant to run either Windows 2000 Server...

IBM's Great 16-way Intel Box Still a No-Show.
March 18, 2002... Folks waiting for IBM's heralded 16-way Foster MP system, code named Vigil and officially dubbed the x440, had better not hold their breath. IBM won't deliver the thing until July, which according to the last secret internal schedule we saw...

Microsoft Offers EC a Concession.
March 18, 2002... Microsoft has offered the European regulators a concession. It says it'll license its Core CIFS protocol royalty-free so other companies can create an implementation of the thing on non-Windows clients and server operating systems. The...

Sun Tries New Way To Stamp M'soft's Passport 'Canceled'.
March 18, 2002... Sun's gonna try to make a buck off its Liberty implementation and at the same time stake out no-go areas where Microsoft's detested Passport is clearly stamped "canceled." It said Tuesday that it would make a so-called Sun ONE Platform for...

AMD Server Chip Gets Upgrade.(Product Announcement)
March 18, 2002... With Intel making a fuss over its Foster MPs, AMD hadda say something so it wheeled out the Athlon MP 2000+ for servers and workstations. It was only able to get third-tier operations like RackSaver and Boxx Technologies to run with the widget,...

IBM Marketeer Joins Neoware.
March 18, 2002... Neoware, the resurrected thin client house, pulled off another little coup and enticed Howard Hunger, the highest-ranking IBMer on its shopping list, to the company as executive vice-president of worldwide marketing and business development....

Sun Sues Microsoft for $3 Billion.
March 18, 2002... Skip this one if you read it in real-time last Friday. Sun Microsystems last Friday morning filed its expected private antitrust suit against Microsoft for playing fast and loose with Java. Sun said it was suing to "remove unlawful...

HyperTransport Consortium Grows.(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... AMD's HyperTransport Technology Consortium has picked up a swat of new members including a few sterling names. Newbies includes NEC Electronics, which called HyperTransport "compelling" and said it would develop HyperTransport macros for its...

TimeSys Gets $15m.
March 18, 2002... TimeSys has raised $15.5 million in new funding from a bunch of investors including Sun, Philips Electronics, Nissin Systems, The Hillman Company and Adams Capital Management, which led the round. TimeSys CEO Larry Weidman also pitched in...

Mail Box.(Letter to the Editor)
March 18, 2002... To the Editor: During the past three months, Linuxgram has posted several articles about Caldera International that have been based on rumor, speculation and conjecture. We would like to set the record straight on many of these items that...

Blade Chip Due from Intel.(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Hmmm. Seems it must be about time for Intel to make good the promise it made around Comdex and come up with a re-engineered two-way low- voltage Tualatin chip and chipset for blades.

A Little Melody from AMD.(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... AMD is reportedly working on a Sledge-Hammer development system code named Melody that the operating systems people could use.

Wind River Does Something with BSD.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
March 18, 2002... Wind River, which just delivered itself of BSD/OS 4.3, says 5.0 will be out this half and will have a new symmetrical multiprocessing kernel that offers fine-grain locking. Apparently this next release still won't integrate with the company's...

Linux Stiffed.(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Hmmm. It seems the British government has cut open source dead in favor of proprietary widgetry in its Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) trial, part of its efforts to get government services online by 2005. Red Hat and open source advocate...

Linux Passes NetWare by a Nose.(IDC report)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... In the last quarter of last quarter, Linux passed NetWare for the first time as the second most popular operating system on Intel servers, squeezing past NetWare by a single percentage point, according to IDC. Windows had better than two-thirds...

The Great BitKeeper Snit.(Brief Article)
March 18, 2002... Some of the Linux kernel hackers got into a real snit, with petitions, because Linus was using a piece of, heavens, proprietary software called BitKeeper for version control. They were afraid making it part of the official process lent, gad,...