Showing headlines posted by dave

What do you do as an IT buyer when your technology vendor switches over to a new operating platform? Do you adapt accordingly or switch vendors? Eveready Industries Ltd has chosen the first option, based on its reading that at least compatibility will not be an issue in the future. Thus, as Oracle patronizes Linux, Eveready’s management has embraced Linux at the server-level too, since they have an Oracle Database.

It's no wonder Linux is awash in lawsuits. No sooner do I reveal the real truth about Linux – that I wrote it! -- than a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies try to horn in on the action. It's a good thing I didn't spill the beans about time-traveling back to invent the wheel.

A friend of mine wrote to me and asked me how he could go about switching to Linux*. I sent him an email back with some suggestions about how to approach it and he suggested that I should share this with others, so here it goes.

Last year I bought an IBM T30 Thinkpad, intending to install Linux on its hard drive sometime. Meanwhile, using a Knoppix LiveCD let me run Linux on the laptop while retaining the factory Windows XP installation. The notebook is my travel machine, so I also bought a Linksys WPC55AG PC Card wireless network adapter that supports 801.11a/b/g for the Thinkpad. For secure wireless Linux surfing, I was determined to find some configuration that would work with minimal intervention at boot time and that was easy enough that my wife could load it.

The US Courts' server migration project will put core applications and services on ProLiant servers running Linux.

Building on its contributions to the open source community and commitment to interoperability, Novell is sponsoring the Openswan project, a Linux* implementation of the IPsec (IP Security) standard that provides a common approach to securing Internet-based communications.

Microsoft is being accused of a plan to sink Linux using the US Patent system. So claims Eben Moglen, a Columbia University law professor, the general counsel for the Free Software Foundation and a board member of the Public Patent Foundation (PubPat).

Today the Eclipse Foundation announced general availability of the royalty-free 3.0 release of the Eclipse Platform, adding enhancements that improve flexibility, scalability, interoperability and responsiveness. Eclipse is an award-winning universal platform for tools integration, software modeling and testing that has been broadly adopted by commercial vendors, academic institutions and open technology developers. With release 3.0, Eclipse now extends its sophisticated object-oriented development technologies to support a rich-client platform (RCP) that enables construction of desktop applications.

Eugene, Ore.-based GarageGames doesn't just benefit from the open source philosophy, it embraces it -- an odd thing for a company in an industry that traditionally thrives on closed technology and secrets, and where marketers often dictate development. On April 20 GarageGames released the Torque Network Library (TNL) technology behind the Torque Game Engine's multiplayer network code under the GPL license.

Linux has been seen as saviour software or a much-hyped alternative. Whatever your take, you would like to know if, and how, it saves you money. Here's a clearer picture.

The burgeoning Linux market in China now has a new star in Xteam Software, which is set to be a leader in the open-source community in China. Founded in 1999, Xteam is the world’s first Chinese Linux OS provider. The company recently acquired the software unit of a state-owned enterprise, Beijing Development, for HK$424.27 million (US$54.4 million), instantly making it the software giant in the local Linux industry.

In Malaysia, where the government openly supports open source software (OSS) and is drafting a National Open Source Policy, Microsoft has made it clear it will oppose any guidelines that institutionalise a procurement preference for the open source platform.

Worries over intellectual property can make for strange bedfellows. In the case of Microsoft Corp.'s nearly ubiquitous FAT (file allocation table) file system, it's Microsoft and the Linux community.

Linux adoption in EMEA, and in the Public Sector in particular, continues to gather steam as Novell has announced that the second largest city in Norway, the City of Bergen, has chosen Novell's Linux technology to underpin its technology infrastructure, moving away from its proprietary UNIX and Microsoft Windows applications platform. The City of Bergen's two phased implementation of SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 8 will impact 50,000 users of the City of Bergen's administrative and educational networks.

The now AOL independent Foundation seems instead focused on Firefox - the "lightweight" browser - and I'm convinced that some within the foundation wishes the Browser Suite formerly known just as "Mozilla" would just go away.