FTC raids Microsoft's Tokyo office over Windows XP contracts, Feb 26, 2004

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday raided Microsoft Corp's Japan headquarters on suspicion that the firm violated the Antimonopoly Law in connection with software licensing deals with Japanese personal computer (PC) makers.

Sources close to the action said Microsoft has allegedly forced Japanese PC makers to accept a contractual clause stipulating that they will not bring a case to court even if the software giant's technologies are very similar to those developed by Japanese firms.

Webmaster's note: Thanks to Nicola for sending in this link. It's in Italian, but the gist is that the city of Rome is slowly (piano) going to adopt Linux. You can get a fair translation using Google's language tools.

Mettiamo subito in chiaro una cosa: noi non ce l'abbiamo con Microsoft". Mariella Gramaglia, assessore alla Comunicazione del Comune di Roma, ci tiene a porre nella giusta prospettiva quello che molti vedono come l'ennesimo ceffone assestato dal movimento open source a Bill Gates e soci: a partire da maggio, Linux inizierà a rimpiazzare Windows nei computer dell'amministrazione capitolina, ponendo Roma sulla stessa strada di Monaco e di altri comuni che, in Europa e nel mondo, hanno deciso di affidarsi al software libero.

Customers in the Asia-Pacific region are expressing significant interest in Novell's new Linux products both on the server and the desktop, according to the company's regional president, Rhonda O'Donnell.

"This is not surprising at all, considering that a number of big companies in the region have some kind of skunkworks Linux test program going on in the backroom," Ms O'Donnell said.

Novell, which has long been known for its networking prowess, recently acquired the German Linux company, SUSE Linux, which has the second highest sales among commercial Linux distributions. Novell also bought Linux desktop and server software maker, Ximian.

In the battle for commercial Linux supremacy, there are two heavyweights slugging it out: Red Hat and SuSE. But picking a winner is a difficult call and, in the end, may come down to a matter of personal preference.

There are differences -- yet on the technology side, the bottom line is that both companies use the same Linux kernel as the foundation for their open-source software offerings.

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