Linux Gram articles from October 2007

Linux Gram archives from October 2007

Adobe Buys Buzzword.
October 8, 2007... Told ya so. Told ya so. Told ya Adobe was gonna buy that free Buzzword online word processing widgetry so it can finally get into the Office business. Adobe, which invented desktop publishing and saved one of Apple's nine lives, denies...

Microsoft To 'Share' .NET Source Code.
October 8, 2007... Microsoft says it's going to release the source code for the .NET Framework libraries with the .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 release later this year. The code will be released under the read-only Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL)...

Microsoft Touches the Cloud.
October 8, 2007... In a move widely interpreted as a response to Google, Microsoft inched Office a tad closer to the web Sunday when it started accepting applications to play with some webby beta functionality it intends to introduce later this year called Office...

Google Adds Postini to Enterprise Apps.
October 8, 2007... Google said Wednesday that it's added Postini's e-mail security and compliance service to its Google Apps Premier Edition just as it was expected to when it said in July that it was buying the company for $625 million cash. The Postini...

SCO Modularizes for Fight.
October 8, 2007... SCO has named CTO Sandy Gupta, its smartest technologist, president of SCO Operations Inc, a subsidiary of parent company SCO Group, responsible for Unix and the SCO Mobile Server. He reports to SCO CEO Darl McBride, who remains president and...

HP Says No to Linux Consumer PCs.
October 8, 2007... Published reports to the contrary, Jeffrey Wade, the marketing manager of HP's Open Source & Linux Organization, says the company has no intention whatsoever of skipping down the same garden path as Dell and selling consumers PCs with...

ARM To Build Linux Platform.
October 8, 2007... Intel is going to have to wrestle ARM for the mobile market. ARM, whose chips are the most widely used in cell phones, has gathered MontaVista, Samsung, TI, Marvell, Mozilla and Movial together to build a Linux reference platform for...

Geez, Dell Loses to Sun on x86 Perceptions.
October 8, 2007... IBM and HP look pretty much like Tweedledum and Tweedledee to your average x86 enterprise customer, who, despite that fact, still has a tendency to favor the color Blue, except that HP gets singular points for following through on its roadmap...

Sun Reorgs - Again.
October 8, 2007... Sun, which hasn't been cutting the mustard in storage - and may secretly rue its pricey StorageTek acquisition - has decided to combine its storage and server interests into a group known simply as "Systems" - the third time storage has been...

Biometrics Goes Linux.
October 8, 2007... DigitalPersona, the biometrics authentication folk, has moved its One Touch SDK to Linux so developers can create fingerprint-enabled Linux applications. It figures it would be good for embedded Linux platforms and standalone systems in...

HP Toots its Own HP-UX Horn.
October 8, 2007... HP says it's going to stop hiding its light under a bushel and advertise the fact that it upgrades its 20-year-old Unix operating system roughly every six months - and has done so for the last three years. It's so taken with the idea that...

Linux Foundation Gets New Buddy.
October 8, 2007... Under a new pact, the Linux Foundation is supposed to collaborate with the Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA), a Japanese government research institute, to accelerate the adoption of Linux and open source software in the areas of...

eBay Regrets Skype Buy.
October 8, 2007... In a cautionary tale about the tulip-like valuations assigned too many of these Internet acquisitions these days - as well as the returns one gets off of a free business model - eBay as much as admitted Monday that it paid way, way too much for...

Somebody in Schleswig-Holstein Doesn't Like GoogleClick.
October 8, 2007... The data protection commissioner of Schleswig-Holstein Thilo Weichert has written to EC antitrust chief Neelie Kroes saying the proposed Google-DoubleClick merger would mean the violation of fundamental provisions of the European Data...

IBM Whips Up New Parallel File System.
October 8, 2007... IBM says it's gonna start shipping a new General Parallel File System (GPFS) that acts like a search engine to identify and migrate files between different storage pools, including tape, and feed high-speed BI and scientific computers. ...

Earth Class Mail & Microsoft Buddy Up.
October 8, 2007... Earth Class Mail, the start-up with the vision of traditional posts opening the mail and delivering it electronically, announced a relationship with Microsoft from Post Expo 2007 in Barcelona this week. Earth Class has moved its Linux-based...

OpenSUSE Moves to Rev 10.3.
October 8, 2007... Novell's free community source code, openSUSE, moved to rev 10.3 Thursday. The widgetry includes a Linux-Windows dual-boot configuration, an improved user interface, enhanced multimedia support and Microsoft Office file compatibility with the...

Three Heads Better than Four?
October 8, 2007... Ya know those three-core desktop processors AMD put on its Q1 roadmap? Intel says AMD is being forced to do it because it can't get its quad-core Barcelona to yield. Chip watcher Nathan Brookwood suspects AMD may try to make the tri-cores run...

Dell Accountants Nailed for Insider Trading.
October 8, 2007... The plot thickens at Dell where the SEC has now charged three accountants with insider trading in 2005. Using put options they basically sold short ahead of poor numbers coming out. Two of them have settled already. Salvador Chavarria is paying...

Microsoft Mum on Second EC Appeal.
October 8, 2007... In France Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wouldn't tell the AP whether Microsoft is going to appeal the decision of the Court of First Instance supporting the European Commission's antitrust finding to a higher authority or not. The...

Morgan Stanley Hangs Black Crepe over MPU Market.
October 8, 2007... Morgan Stanley thinks it's spotted telltale signs of doubling ordering in MPUs - like the fact that processor shipments were up 12% in the June quarter but PC shipments were only up 1% - and is expecting a "below-seasonal quarter in either...

Ingres Acquires Integrators.
October 8, 2007... Ingres has acquired two system integrators: Luminary Solutions Ltd in Leeds, England and Management Information Systems (MIS) in Perth in Australia for their enterprise application skills. Terms were not disclosed.

Lotus Symphony Claims 100k Downloads.
October 8, 2007... IBM claims 100,000 downloads of its free Lotus Symphony software the first week the repackaged OpenOffice suite was out.

Microsoft Could Always Spend Itself Out of the Box.
October 8, 2007... Microsoft could do more multibillion-dollars deals like its $6.1 billion acquisition of online ad house aQuantive, CEO Steve Ballmer said at a press conference in Zurich. Reuters quotes him as saying, "We do not rule out any more deals like...

Computer Measure Group Sets Meeting.(Computer Measurement Group)(Conference news)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... The Computer Measurement Group, the folks responsible for planning, measuring and managing the world's largest IT infrastructures, want us to tell you that they'll be having their annual conference in San Diego December 2-7 at the Manchester...

Red Hat & Novell Linux Sued for Patent Infringement.
October 22, 2007... Red Hat and Novell have been sued for patent infringement in what is believed to be the first suit for patent violations ever brought against Linux - and neither of the companies bringing suit - surprise, surprise - is Microsoft. Nope....

Ballmer Claims To Like Small Bites.
October 22, 2007... Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that the company would continue to make about 20 acquisitions a year each priced at $50 million-$1 billion for the next five year in preference to giant acquisitions like its...

Feisty Fawn Yields to Gutsy Gibbon.
October 22, 2007... Evidently Novell should be afraid - very afraid - because Canonical with its Ubuntu distribution, Dell's little playmate, the Linux Dell's pre-loading on a few of its PCs, clearly has designs on Novell's place in line behind Red Hat, the Linux...

Novell Ships US Linux Jobs to India.
October 22, 2007... Novell is laying off 250 people in the US and moving the jobs to India. It hasn't said who but reportedly they're mostly Linux product management and development. The company's Provo, Utah site, still its biggest single facility, got hit the...

OSI Blesses Microsoft Licenses as Open Source Licenses.
October 22, 2007... The Open Source Initiative, keeper of open source licenses, has accepted two - count 'em, two - Microsoft licenses as, well, open source licenses. The decision wasn't unanimous but was described as "overwhelming" by OSI president Michael...

Laptops. Laptops. Laptops.
October 22, 2007... It's another runaway quarter for laptops - with expectations of a "very strong" Q4. Worldwide PC shipments were up 15.5% in Q3 and most of what's selling is laptops, particularly in EMEA, IDC says, "pushing global growth to rates not seen...

Apple To Uncage Leopard.
October 22, 2007... Leopard, Apple's sixth-generation Mac OS, the one that was delayed so apple developers could focus on iPhone, is supposed to hit the shops on Friday October 26 at 6pm. Apple says it's accepting pre-orders. Mac sales, while still...

Microsoft South Korea Concedes Defeat.
October 22, 2007... After the way its appeal in Europe crashed and burned, Microsoft evidently figured its appeal of the antitrust decision against it in South Korea didn't stand a chance either - because rather than suffer the ignominy of a loss - it asked to...

Chip Demand Blows Intel Up, Up and Away.
October 22, 2007... Intel earned $1.9 billion in the third quarter or 31 cents a share, up 43% year-over-year, on record revenues of $10.1 billion, up 15% - way better than the $9.6 billion that Wall Street expected and way better than Intel had guided to. Its...

AMD Results Worse than Thought.
October 22, 2007... AMD lost $396 million, or 71 cents a share, in the September quarter on revenues of $1.63 billion, up 18% sequentially and up 23% year-over-year. Its operating loss was $226 million. Those losses, better than last quarter when it lost $600...

Novell Left with Two WordPerfect Antitrust Claims.
October 22, 2007... The US Circuit Court of Appeals has left standing a Baltimore district court's decision to throw out four of Novell's six claims in its WordPerfect antitrust suit against Microsoft because the statue of limitations had expired. But the two left...

Apple To Open iPhone to Known Outsiders.
October 22, 2007... In a missive to the world Wednesday Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the company was working on an SDK that will let third-party applications on the iPhone, ending that particular kafuffle. It will take until February to organize it, he said,...

Patent Watch.
October 22, 2007... The federal judge who doubled the $19.6 million jury award made to Broadcom in its patent suit with Qualcomm this summer because the infringement was willful may overturn his own decision. See, two weeks later the US Court of Appeals for...

BEA Rejects Oracle's Hostile Bid.
October 22, 2007... It's unclear where BEA is going to run and hide to avoid a shotgun wedding, but its board late Friday rejected Oracle's $6.66 billion marriage proposal. In a letter to Oracle that the board made public it expressed irritation that Oracle...

SAP Contributes to Eclipse.
October 22, 2007... SAP has contributed a NetWeaver tool to Eclipse, its first experience contributing widgetry to the open source IDE. It says it will be easier for Java developers to analyze memory use in applications created in Eclipse. It should give them a...

Openbravo Verges on Commercialization.
October 22, 2007... Openbravo, the company with the open source SME ERP solution, has tied up with rPath to create a software appliance using rPath's rBuilder, Openbravo's first commercial product. An appliance should simplify deploying and maintaining the...

CorraTech Kicks Off Open Source Integration Project.
October 22, 2007... CorraTech has started an open source project called OpenSuite under the new GPL 3 license dedicated to the integration of open source applications. It describes it as the "glue required to make independently developed open source...

Fusion Not Fusing?(Brief article)
October 22, 2007... Hmmm. Oracle may be having a problem with its vaunted next-generation Project Fusion meant to lash all the software it's acquired together with its homegrown stuff. Seems the guy running Fusion, senior VP John Wookey, is being replaced by...

Intel CFO Steps Down.
October 22, 2007... Andy Bryant, Intel's longest-serving CFO, in office since 1994, and a revered fixture in the industry, is stepping down to give his number two, assistant CFO Stacy Smith, a shot at the job. Smith will still report Bryant, who has been named...

Backdating Watch.
October 22, 2007... HP has agreed to pay a hefty $117.5 million to settle a class action stemming from Mercury Interactive's backdating adventure. HP acquired Mercury last year for $4.5 billion and in May agreed to pay the SEC $28 million in penalties.

Gateway Merged into Acer.
October 22, 2007... Gateway is now part of Acer. The deal closed on Tuesday, making Acer the world's third-largest PC maker and leaving Lenovo, now number four, to hunt for other ways to expand since it's been denied Packard Bell, which will soon become the third...

Jury Selection Started in Reiser Trial.
October 22, 2007... They've started weeding out jurors to decide whether Linux programmer Hans Reiser killed his missing wife or not. The process is supposed to take a few weeks. All the authorities have got is circumstantial evidence and any panel has to be...

Google Scores.(Financial report)(Brief article)
October 22, 2007... Google, the company that Steve Ballmer thinks is a precocious toddler and a one-trick pony, came in Thursday with Q3 earnings up 46% to $1.07 billion on revenues up 57% to $4.23 billion. After subtracting advertising commissions, Google revenue...

Yahoo Complains to EC about GoogleClick.(European Commission)(Brief article)
October 22, 2007... Yahoo has been complaining to the European Commission about Google's proposed $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick ahead the trustbusters' decision as to whether they'll do a major three-month investigation of the deal, a decision due by...

Penguin Adds Funding.
October 22, 2007... It looks like Penguin Computing has raised another $3.11 million in additional later-round financing. Earlier this year it got a $9 million second round and $10 million before that in late '05.

ebMS 3.0 Standardized.
October 22, 2007... ebXML Messaging Server (ebMS) 3.0: Part 1, Core Features is now an OASIS standard. It defines a Web Service-based method for exchanging business information. Version 2.0 was standardized by OASIS in 2002 and ISO in 2004.

Troop Movements.
October 22, 2007... The head of Red Hat worldwide operations Joanne Rohde has retired and will consult with the company for the next six months. Meanwhile, it's made its VP, global operations Nick Van Wyk, an ex-EMC/Legato guy, senior transformation officer as...

Sony Cell Ops Go to Toshiba.
October 22, 2007... To regain focus, raise money and cut spending, struggling Sony is selling its chip operations, which include the unusual Cell chip used in its PlayStation 3, to Toshiba. Well, selling off 60% anyway. They're setting up a new $857 million joint...

It's an OS, No, It's a Phone.
October 22, 2007... HTC, the Taiwan handset maker, is gonna ship 50,000 cell phones based on Google's Gphone operating system to developers by the end of the year, according to UBS.

Linus & the Dysfunctional Family.
October 22, 2007... So the Wall Street Journal was writing the other day about Linux' failure to dominate the world and used as a prime indicator the fact that Linus Torvalds' father and sister back in Finland use Windows, not Linux.

Samba Wins Protocol War; Microsoft Bends to Open Source Business Model.
October 29, 2007... Microsoft, which has decided not to appeal the Court of First Instance's September 17 ruling in favor of the European Commission and its 2004 antitrust order against the company, has also agreed to bend its terms to the open source business...

Turbolinux Next To Sign Microsoft Patent Pact.
October 29, 2007... Microsoft has enticed Turbolinux into one of those "we-won't-sue-your-users" IP license like Novell, Linspire and Xandros before it. The assurances, based on Microsoft's claims that Linux and open source software violate 253 Microsoft...

Microsoft Sued for $33m over IM.
October 29, 2007... A South Korean ISV called Digito.com that created Soft Messenger, the first Korean instant messaging program, has filed suit against Microsoft seeking $32.7 million in damages, according to the English language local publication Digital Chosun....

Citrix-XenSource Deal Done; HP & Dell Climb On.
October 29, 2007... Practically on the eve of VMware's first quarterly report as a publicly traded company - and it's been on a hysterical tear since it IPO'd - Citrix closed on its $500 million acquisition of VMware's open source virtualization rival XenSource...

Oracle & BEA Trade Threats; BEA Wants $21 a Share.
October 29, 2007... After playing coy for a couple of weeks BEA came out Thursday and told Oracle what its price is: a probably unrealistic $21 a share, a number close to $8.2 billion rounding up, roughly $1.6 billion more than Oracle has offered. Oracle,...

Microsoft Quarter a Blowout Thanks to Vista & Office.
October 29, 2007... For all the badmouthing it gets, Microsoft keeps trudging gloriously on - this time far enough out to tickle its stock out of its usual quagmire and score a multi-year high of $35.72 after hours, up 11.6%. The company posted revenues of...

AMD Scores Perception Points.
October 29, 2007... AMD's side - probably its Washington lobbyists - got the New York Times to run with a story - on Monday's front page, mind you, above the fold - about how the head of the Federal Trade Commission Deborah Majoras, who's got control of the...

EC Studying Google's 'Concessions' on DoubleClick Acquisition.
October 29, 2007... The European Commission said Monday that it's going to take another two weeks and change to weigh the widely criticized Google-DoubleClick deal and either rubberstamp it or plow into a deeper, months-long investigation. It was supposed to...

XO Production Delayed by Bugs.
October 29, 2007... Eleventh-hour bugs have held up the production of One Laptop Per Child's XO machine and the production hiccup is going to throw a monkey wrench into the non-profit's "Give 1 Get 1" fundraiser, according to Reuters. Production has been...

DOJ Won't Join Chorus Seeking Extension of Microsoft Consent Decree.
October 29, 2007... Consistent with its position that the 2002 consent decree imposed on Microsoft did what it was supposed to - and that the European Commission is misguided - the Justice Department says it has no intension of seeking to extend the decree's...

VMware Outdoes Itself.(EMC)
October 29, 2007... VMware outdid the expectations of the Street's most bullish speculators Wednesday when it delivered earnings of $65 million, or 18 cents a share, three times what it made a year ago, on revenues up 90% to $358 million. The pundits, who...

Apple Quarter a Turnover.
October 29, 2007... Gee whillikers. After hours on Monday Apple, the PC company people love to love, started behaving like Google. While its Q4 conference call was in progress its stock price went up almost $13 to over $187, a personal best, a position it then...

20/20 Interview Delays Murder Trial.
October 29, 2007... It seems that ABC's 20/20 is going to do a piece on Linux file system programmer Hans Reiser and the murder case against him on Friday, November 2 and that that's one of the reasons the opening statements in his trial have been pushed back from...

Tulipmania 2.0.(Brief article)
October 29, 2007... "There's definitely a lot of betting going on, and it's not rational." - Book publisher and conference thrower Tim O'Reilly, who coined the phrase Web 2.0, on the Bubble-style amounts of money going into Internet start-ups as quoted in the New...

Rackable Rumors.
October 29, 2007... In the run-up to its numbers Thursday there was chatter on Wall Street about Rackable maybe being an acquisition target. CNBC linked it to IBM. Such rumors have been in the air on and off since Rackable caved under competitive pressure.

Levanta Raises $8m.
October 29, 2007... Levanta, the old Linuxcare turned specialist in Linux data center automation, marrying virtualization technology with Linux lifecycle management, has raised $8 million from existing VCs Levensohn Venture Partners, vSpring Capital and Walden...

Novell Names Americas President.
October 29, 2007... Novell has named Tim Wolfe president of Novell Americas. He was VP and general manager of the company's East region in the states. An IBM veteran, he is supposed to accelerate Novell's shift from direct Linux sales to channel sales. Tom...

Intel Opens 45nm Fab.
October 29, 2007... Intel officially opened its new $3 billion 45nm plant, Fab 23, in Chandler, Arizona on Wednesday and on Thursday started churning out the Penryn chips it's supposed to announce November 12. AMD won't move to 45nm until the middle of next year....

Isn't Cisco Supposed To be Tight with Salesforce. Com?(Oracle Corp.)(Brief article)
October 29, 2007... Oracle is mating Siebel CRM On Demand with Cisco's WebEx Connect ecosystem, which like the Salesforce.com AppExchange platform is supposed to deliver web-based programs and enable third-party developers to create mashups. WebEx mashups,...

Really?
October 29, 2007... In its effort to box SCO into an irretrievable corner, Novell has been telling the bankruptcy court in Delaware where SCO fled that SUSE is still a separate company from Novell.

Web 2.5 Maybe.
October 29, 2007... Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen figures it'll take the better part of 10 year for applications to be delivered strictly by the web.

So Much for Lingua Franca.
October 29, 2007... After a bit of kicking and screaming France has backed the so-called London Agreement that will make European patents cheaper to get. They won't have to be translated into so many darn languages.

Forecasts 'Dangerous': Google.(Brief article)
October 29, 2007... At its analysts' day the other day, Google remained reluctant to forecast how its Google apps will fare and evaded off the question of whether it could get 5%-7% of the SMB segments saying predictions were "dangerous." It claimed it's a...

Yoo-Hoo, Salesforce.
October 29, 2007... On January 1 Microsoft is planning on cutting the Dynamics CRM hosting fee that it charges channel partners by 40% to $15, a move that it supposed to be directed at Salesforce.com, whose average selling price is supposed to be around $65.

Happy Birthday, OpenVMS.(Brief article)
October 29, 2007... VMS, or rather its modern avatar OpenVMS, is turning 30 and - having been gussied up with open source tools like Apache, XML, Java and JavaBeans - still claims to run 300,000 systems worldwide in the financial community, hospitals,...