SCO CEO: Novell-SuSE breaks SCO contract, Nov 18, 2003

The non-compete agreement prohibits Novell from directly competing with SCO's Unix-on-Intel business, McBride said. "When (The Santa Cruz Operation) sold us the property, included in the property was a non-compete," he said. "Last time I checked, Linux was intended to compete with our core products."

Unix developer The SCO Group Inc. said today that it is extending an agreement with its lawyers to defend itself against new copyright issues in a move that will take a multimillion-dollar bite out of its fourth-quarter 2003 financial results to go toward paying legal fees.

The company, which is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with IBM over a Unix license, said it plans to take a charge of $8,956,000 in its fourth quarter, which ended Oct. 31, to pay Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP and other law firms representing SCO. Of that total, $1 million will be paid in cash, and the remaining amount will go toward the issuance of 400,000 shares of common stock, the company said.

This month, IBM's Linux efforts will reach a milestone as it registers the 100,000th developer working with IBM software to create Linux-based applications, Big Blue's Software Development Group announced.

Every month IBM tracks an average of 2,000 developers who register to build applications for the software. And, on a monthly basis, those developers create an estimated 750 new Linux-based applications that run on IBM software.

A few weeks ago I bemoaned the state of Windows compatibility for Linux. I was disappointed with Wine and CrossOver Office. I noted that VMware was a better, if more expensive, solution. Readers quickly told me I was missing something -- Netraverse's Win4Lin, which lets you run Windows from within Linux. And, after playing with Win4Lin for some time now, I see how right they were.

You can use Win4Lin with Windows 95, 98, and ME, but not 2000, NT, or XP. You need a Windows boot diskette as well as a Windows CD. Be sure your boot diskette matches the version of the CD; the first time I tried, they didn't match, and the error message I got was obscure enough to send me to Netraverse's tech support department. Also be sure you're not trying to install it on a laptop that doesn't hot-swap its removable diskette and CD drives; that's what stopped me on my second try.

Red Hat's decision to stop supporting its free Linux distribution has caused two Canadian universities to rethink their directions when it comes to the open source operating system.

Both the University of Toronto (U of T) and the University of Waterloo (UW) in Waterloo, Ontario are in the process of deciding whether to pay for Red Hat's enterprise version or switch to other distributions such as Debian, or Red Hat's new free Linux — Fedora Core 1.

"It came as no surprise to us that Red Hat was having a hard time selling free software," says Ian Howard, Unix systems administrator, information systems and technology at UW. "But for the virtues of Linux, choosing to buy a vendor-supported version and having the overhead of administering licenses and subscriptions and the loss of the empowerment takes away the actual desire for using Linux in the first place."

Linux is a rising star in the geeky, back office of computing. Its gains have come as an operating system for the data-serving computers that run corporate PC networks and serve up Web pages. On the desktop, Microsoft’s Windows, which is perceived by many as easier to use, still reigns supreme.

But IBM and the Open Source Development Lab, whose membership includes Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Intel, are beginning a drive to promote Linux as an alternative to Windows on the desktop.

One indication of their more aggressive approach came last week when an IBM executive, Samuel J. Docknevich, delivered a speech at a technology conference outside Boston titled "The Time is Now for Linux on the Desktop."

By law, companies must provide apocalyptic forward-looking scenarios in their SEC filings. They need to show they've thought of everything, to fend off potential class action suits just in case the sky really does fall in.

But in a filing yesterday the SCO Group gave a strong hint that while it anticipates riches from IP licenses, its current business is falling apart. Deeply embedded in the risks portion of the filing is this statement:

"We are informed that participants in the Linux industry have attempted to influence participants in the markets in which we sell our products to reduce or eliminate the amount of our products and services that they purchase. They have been somewhat successful in those efforts and similar efforts and success will likely continue. There is also a risk that the assertion of our intellectual property rights will be negatively viewed by participants in our marketplace and we may lose support from such participants. Any of the foregoing could adversely affect our position in the marketplace and our results of operations. "

Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Scott McNealy always seemed like he was tilting at windmills when he said Sun would challenge Microsoft's dominance on the desktop computer.

But McNealy announced today that the Chinese government has pledged to deploy a million computers in the next year using Sun's Linux desktop software. The cost: $50 per license for Sun's desktop software, which includes its Star Office 7.0 productivity program that is a clone of Microsoft's Office suite. Microsoft Office can cost more than $400 a copy.

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