Mandrake announces 9.0 Beta, Jul 24, 2002

Given the choice of enjoying the summer in the beautiful south of California or working on the Mandrake Linux distribution, the twisted MandrakeSoft developers chose to stick around and present "Mandrake Linux 9.0 Beta 1."

As with any Beta, this one is probably loaded with nasty bugs which may cause serious problems on production systems. Betas are only suitable for installation on test systems -- you've been warned!

The UK government yesterday announced its policy on Open Source software, and as far as we can figure out, it seems to be cautiously pro. In answer to a parliamentary question (and we strongly suspect 'plant' here), Home Office minister Douglas Alexander said: "I am pleased to announce new policy on the use of Open Source Software within UK Government. It explains how we will consider Open Source Software solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT procurements and award contracts on a value for money basis, seeking to avoid lock-in to proprietary IT products and services."

"With Kylix 3, Borland has brought industry standard, and enterprise powerful tools to the Linux development community. The addition of C++ support in Kylix means that any class of Linux application, from GUI to database to Web Services, can be created quickly and cost effectively with the most popular Linux programming language," said Jeff Bates, co-founder of Slashdot.org and director OSDN Online.

IBM has released DB2 v8.1 for Linux (Intel 32 and 64 bit). New features include multi-dimensional clustering (queries and analytics nearly 100% faster), self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing, self-protecting, and the ability to consolidate Web Services queries through a single SQL statement

MandrakeSoft, the French Linux distributor, says it is on track to profitability by the end of this year, following a sharp increase in revenue and some cost cutting. The results buck the general trend of the high-tech industry in general and Linux companies in particular, which have both faced hard times due to the downturn in technology spending.

Caldera International stock rose 13 cents, or 14 percent, to $1.08 in midday trading Tuesday after the company announced it completed a process to repurchase shares from two major investors, Tarentella and MTI Technology. Caldera, which sells Linux and Unix, acquired about 4.3 million shares--31 percent of its outstanding stock--at 94 cents per share, reducing its outstanding shares to 9.5 million, the company said Tuesday. The move makes it less difficult for Caldera to raise funding, the company said.

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