SCO Backs Off in Germany - Out-of-Court Settlement with Univention Reported, Mar 01, 2004

We have news from Germany. It seems, according to Computerwoche, that SCO Group GmbH (SCO's German branch) agreed, on February 18, 2004, to an out-of-court settlement between it and Univention and will refrain from saying in Germany some things it says in the US constantly. There are four things they have agreed not to say in Germany, on pain of a fine of €10,000 euros per offense -- that's about $12,500 USD -- and one thing they can't say unless they present proof within a month of the settlement date.

The SCO Group, which claims ownership to the Unix operating system, identified on Monday a company that has agreed to sign a license to use Linux.

EV1Servers.net, a Houston-based company that hosts Web sites for clients and a division of Everyones Internet, signed a deal with SCO for running thousands of Linux servers without facing legal consequences from SCO. EV1Servers.net didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Mozilla project is riding a torrent of industry, media and end user praise for the Mozilla 1.6 Internet suite and recently released technology previews of the organization's next generation Mozilla Firefox browser and Thunderbird email application. For example, close to one million people downloaded Mozilla 1.6 in the first 20 days after it was released and an even greater number have downloaded Mozilla Firefox 0.8 since it was released on February 9. The rapidly growing demand for Mozilla applications continues to showcase the innovative capacity and excellence of its open source development model.

“When the government purchasing law comes out, Linux will win a piece of the market,” said Fang Xingdong, chairman of China Laboratory, an independent software consulting firm. “Of course, the party that will be most affected will be Microsoft.”

Webmaster's note: Release announcement of XFree 4.4. This version has raised some controversy due to a change in licensing.

At Day Two of the EDGE 2004 Conference & Expo, the afternoon Keynote Panel was titled, simply, "The Open Source Debate." The theme chosen by Moderator Kevin Bedell, editor-in-chief of LinuxWorld Magazine, was Linux Two Years Out.

In their opening statements, the panelists briefly summarized the position of the organizations they represented. For Sam Greenblatt, SVP and Chief Architect of Computer Associates International Inc.'s Linux Technology Group, the position is crystal clear: "Commercial software (he’s given up using the term ‘proprietary’ he said) will have to embrace Open Source," Greenblatt said, "or it won’t exist."

IT services companies offering open source solutions have joined together to form a national body called Open Source Industry Australia which will look to increase the take-up of software belonging to this genre among the corporate, government and education sectors.

Con Zymaris, the chief executive officer of the Melbourne company Cybersource, who serves as the contact person for OSIA nationally, said the new organisation would be a business-focused industry group for providing software solutions and services.

The World Bank recently issued a report on Open Source software, providing international agencies and governments some instructive guidelines on the its use of Open Source, and how best to implement Open Source solutions to tie in with existing commercial software from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and others.

The report, "Open Source Software: Perspectives for Development," was prepared by The Dravis Group for the World Bank's infoDev Symposium, and includes some notable advice for how IT-constrained foreign firms might explore Open Source options. The report also contains wisdom that even some seasoned U.S.-based firms might benefit from:

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