But there is something here that the Linux development community should not miss: SCO has shown the extent of its contempt for you. Without IBM as fairy godmother, says SCO, you could never have achieved what you have achieved with Linux. That is an insult of the highest order - the worldwide free software development community has been slandered in a big way. Whatever happens with this case, we should not forget what this company thinks of us.
I have been given a copy of an article, supposedly to run in the Wall Street Journal tomorrow, which reports that Caldera Systems (which now does business as the SCO group) has filed suit agaist IBM for multibillion-dollar damages over supposed disclosure of SCO's intellectual property to what SCO calls the “free software community”.
The SCO Group, the GNU/Linux developer formerly known as Caldera, yesterday filed a lawsuit that could be worth more than $1 billion against International Business Machines Corp. According to a press announcement on the SCO intellectual property division's web site, “As a result of IBM's unfair competition and the marketplace injury sustained by SCO, SCO is requesting damages in an amount to be proven at trial, but no less than $1 billion, together with additional damages through and after the time of trial.”
In the days before the presidential election in 2000, the local Republican Party held a large political rally in my town. During the rally, while the crowd anticipated the arrival of then Governor Bush, a chant could be heard throughout the arena: “No More Gore! No More Gore!” Here was a large group of people that felt it was time for change in the U.S. Government and this determination was expressed in that chant that spread across the building. Today, the GNU/Linux community doesn't face an election, but it does have a good reason to come up with its own chant, perhaps something along the lines of “SCO Needs to Go.”
The LinuxInstall.org project has unleashed a “Development Release 3.0rc1”: “LinuxInstall.org now supports Dual-Boot Configuration. Can a Linux Installer automatically configure Linux for Dual-Boot configuration with Windows? Yes, it can with LinuxInstall.org!
This particular article focuses on OpenOffice.org (the office suite formerly known as OpenOffice), in particular its word processor component. Please note that this article is from a KDE-centric viewpoint. Almost all of the items mentioned here, however, apply equally well to GNOME and other desktop environments.
After spending time with Torsten Rahn and Everaldo Coelho earlier this year, we continue our Creative Penguin series in a discussion with Tuomas “Tigert” Kuosmanen and Jakub “Jimmac” Steiner of Ximian. If you've ever admired the beautiful artwork of GNOME, these are the gentlemen responsible for it. How did they get involved? Why should you be interested in desktop artwork? They discuss all of this and more with Open for Business' Timothy R. Butler.
MandrakeSoft's Mandrake Linux 9.1 made a major step towards release today as the first release candidate started appearing on servers. The distribution, which has been in “beta” for about a month, should be available in stores mid-second quarter 2003.
Ok folks, while I generally like the X Window System, I will be the first to admit that setting fonts has always been a major pain. It's one of those things in X where someone can always point at it and say “See, this is why X sucks!” Well, not for long. There's a new system being prepped for XFree86 4.3 and it's already somewhat in use for X 4.2. It's called fontconfig, and it will make things a whole lot simpler. Read on below.
Lindows.com, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of an integrated antivirus service for LindowsOS. This new service, called VirusSafe, uses the best-of-breed VexiraTM Antivirus for Linux workstation by Central Command, a leading provider of antivirus software and computer security services. Lindows.com has addressed the #1 software request for its desktop Linux operating system at the low price of just $29 annually.