Showing headlines posted by henke54

The U.S. government sought to influence the European Commission over Microsoft's antitrust case, according to Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Kroes said the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, Belgium, had asked her to be "nicer" to Microsoft ahead of her decision to fine the software giant 280 million euros ($357 million) in July. The commissioner criticized the approach. "This is of course an intervention which is not possible," Kroes told Dutch newspaper Financieele Dagblad this week.

Banksys Belgium’s electronic payment system leader - is implementing IDX-PKI from OpenTrust to centralize and strengthen a critical application: the management of digital identities. IDEALX, the European provider of security & trust infrastructure (OpenTrust) has been selected to supply an integrated front-line solution. Electronic payment systems are evolving rapidly, and Banksys is constantly offering its customers new innovative services. These services require the highest degree of security, and Banksys has selected IDX-PKI software as a critical infrastructure to enhance the security of its applications.

What kind of contract includes a provision that one of the parties has the right to violate the contract with impunity? Well, the Windows XP EULA for one, as an interesting analysis of Microsoft's legalese points out. Several readers have justifiably praised LinuxAdvocate.org's "Windows XP EULA in Plain English" page in which each section of the current Windows XP Home EULA is printed side-by-side with a clear explanation of what it means. Given the fact that most of us have "agreed" to it or a very similar Microsoft EULA, the LinuxAdvocate's analysis is definitely worth reading. But the plain English description of one section in particular caught my eye.

Page 1 of 4 With the release of Collax Business Server (CBS), Microsoft's Small Business Server 2003 (SBS) is starting to look a little like France in 1940, with Germany amassing troops on the border, readying invasion. Collax has made it no secret that it intends to battle Microsoft for the small business server market and is aggressively seeking soldiers in the form of solution providers.

Many readers tell me they're avoiding Microsoft. Some object to the cost, some to the security problems, and many are appalled at Microsoft's abuse of good customers with paperwork problems through the Bully Software Alliance. So today the information is for the Anybody But Microsoft (ABM) crowd, and others who are unaware how much progress has been made in the last two years on alternative operating systems and applications.

THIRUVANANTHAPRUAM, AUG 25: After the cola ban, it is now the turn of Microsoft to log out of Kerala. Children in 12,500 high schools in the state, India’s most literate, will not be taught Windows. Instead, instructors are lining up Linux for them. This is because Kerala has chalked out a plan for migrating its high school students to free software platforms in three years.

Channel partners are making good money on Linux, and the more Linux business they do, the more profitable they are, according to a sponsored survey of 400 qualified respondents conducted by the Institute for Partner Education & Development (IPED).

A WEB SITE has launched into an attack on the 15 year old Linux in a tirade which puts the attack on James I in the shade. The writer or writers accuse Linux developers of being puerile while Unix is "an extremely user hostile OS". Further Linux "has always been extremely flawed, and hopeless inferior to the design philosophy of Apple - later adopted by Microsoft". The site describes nearly always members "of the Linux faith" as living in a "land of delusion".

The Franconia region around Nuremberg, Germany, hopes to establish Europe's first "Linux Valley" with the launch of a new business campus focused on open source innovation. Linux Business Campus Nuremberg e.V. (LBCN) has opened the doors of its new Innovation Center in the Maxtorhof office center north of the city's historic center, the association said Wednesday. The group is targeting young companies interested in developing new Linux-based or open source-based software applications. Companies locating in the new complex will pay no rent for the first three months, and an "attractive" rent after this period. The offices have air-conditioned rooms for server farms.

TOKYO — Sony, Matsushita and three other Japanese electronics makers plan to develop a join standard for new Internet televisions that will make it easier for people to see video available on the Web, a Sony spokeswoman said Thursday. The new televisions will use Linux operating systems instead of Microsoft Windows, it added. That feature is aimed at cutting the time needed to boot up and reducing the risk of virus infection.

Vaughn-Nichols really hits the nail on the head with this excerpt: Why do you think Linux sites, like this one, Linux Today, and many others have Microsoft ads running on them? Because, Microsoft buys the ad space, and the Linux companies almost never do. It's that simple. For a long time, Linux distributors have lived off the Linux news sites, yes, like this one, which report on every small Linux move. Guess what guys. That's great for building a niche. Congratulations, it worked. It also worked for the Amiga and OS/2, It sucks at growing a mass-market. It's also beginning not to work. Oh, more people every month are reading our family of Linux publications. I'm sure that's true of the other Linux news sites. I remember, however, when the new generation of online news sites, like Slashdot, also carried all the big Linux news and a lot of the small stuff. Now, many big Linux stories don't even make Slashdot or Digg.

[O.k., I can agree we need to ipmrove our marketing efforts. Some of these are the kinds of things we've been debating about as a community for years. The OEM argument sends chills down my spine in light of the discussions about OEMs here on LXer. - dcparris]

Mac guru and software developer Mark Pilgrim recently switched to Ubuntu Linux after becoming fed up with proprietary Mac file-formats and the increasing use of DRM technologies in the MacOS. I've been a Mac user since 1984, and have a Mac tattooed on my right bicep. I've probably personally owned 50 Macs, and I've purchased several hundred while working as an IT manager over the years. I'm about to make the same switch, for much the same reasons.

Plucky little Belgium. Always the scene of upheavals across the centuries, and sometimes the place where gigantic battles have been fought. Now this David amongst European countries could be risking the wrath of that Goliath of software companies, Microsoft. The Belgian government's decision to use only open formats for exchanging documents is pure common sense. The whole reason for having standards bodies and the standards they produce is to guarantee compatibility and stability above individual companies' commercial concerns. Millions of Euros of taxpayers' money is spent funding bodies like ISO, so it would be foolish to then ignore the work they do.

Microsoft has become the first major beneficiary of a patent precedent set by the US Supreme Court last month. The software giant does not have to stop using technology that infringes someone else's patents as long as it pays the patent holder.

It appears that the European Commission has had a sudden change of heart on the issue of software patents. In its response (Microsoft Word document) yesterday to a question posed by a Polish European Parliament member, the EC said that the European Patent Office would not grant any more software patents and that any patents that have already been granted may now be challenged and overturned in court.

China is counting on senior members of the open-source community to help formulate policy ideas to promote open-source software, according to a local software executive. The China Open-Source Software Promotion Union (COPU), a government-backed industry group, has established a think tank comprised of 19 prominent open-source executives from overseas to develop a framework for better international cooperation. The group will hold its first meeting in Beijing during July and will meet annually, said Song Kewei, the assistant to COPU's chairman. Its primary focus is to advise COPU on how local companies and the government can promote the adoption and development of open-source software in China, he said. Among those that have agreed to participate in the group are Brian Behlendorf, co-founder of the Apache Web Server Project; David Axmark, co-founder and vice president of MySQL AB; Marc Fleury, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of JBoss, and Andrew Morton, the maintainer of Linux kernel version 2.6.

The battle is no longer being fought at the file level. It's being fought at the network level.

Anti-software piracy group the Business Software Alliance (BSA) is offering a £20,000 reward to anyone who informs on their employer using illegal or unlicensed software. The BSA already has an online hotline for people to report the use of illegal software within UK organisations but it has now doubled the reward from £10,000 to £20,000 until the end of June this year.

[The dirty rats! The nice thing about the FOSS community is that you get to resolve most disputes amicably. In other words, "we don't do that here." Apologies to Warren Woodford - dcparris]

Security features introduced in Windows Vista will make setting up PCs to boot in either Linux or Windows far more difficult, according to security guru Bruce Schneier. Vista is due to feature hardware-based encryption, called BitLocker Drive Encryption, which acts as a repository to protect sensitive data in the event of a PC being either lost or stolen. This encryption technology also has the effect of frustrating the exchange of data needed in a dual boot system. "You could look at BitLocker as anti-Linux because it frustrates dual boot," Schneier told El Reg.

[Hmmm... We're sure this is all accidental. Yeah right. - dcparris]

Our biggest customer is the Andalusian regional government in Spain, which is using an Ubuntu derivative we helped create. That's hundreds of thousands of desktops. We have some deals with banks and retailers I can't disclose right now.