'We don't need no stinkin' Windows' - Novell boss, Mar 23, 2004

Webmaster's note: There is another story posted today about the Novell conference and Linus Torvalds attendance, but I have to confess that I couldn't resist the title of the story

Speaking at the event in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Monday, Messman proudly declared that the 225 PCs at the show were running on SuSE Linux or the Ximian desktop -- and asserted that the entire show would be Microsoft-free this year. "This year BrainShare don't do no stinking Windows," he shouted, to an audience peppered with Linux zealots. The reference, well known in the US, is to the Humphrey Bogart movie "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", in which desperate bandits proclaim that they 'don't need no stinkin' badges'.

The European commission is preparing to fine Microsoft a record-breaking €497m (£333m) for abusing its dominance of the personal computer software market.

Representatives of national competition authorities from the 15 European Union governments took less than an hour yesterday to approve the proposed penalty put forward by the EU competition commissioner, Mario Monti. The meeting had been scheduled to last all day.

The penalty was far higher than had been expected. The commission has the power to levy a fine equal to up to 10% of sales, which would in Microsoft's case mean a fine of $3.5bn (£1.9bn), but penalties rarely reach the 10% limit.

Novell Inc. underscored its commitment to Linux Monday by surprising BrainShare conferencegoers with an appearance by none other than Linus Torvalds, creator of the freely distributed operating system.

The Finnish programmer, whose decade-old program today challenges Microsoft's long-dominant Windows, was greeted by thundering applause -- and a couple of Finnish flags -- as a crowd of 6,000 welcomed him to the opening session of BrainShare's 20th annual edition of tech-related workshops and seminars in the downtown Salt Palace Convention Center.

SCO Group has begun targeting Australian Linux users in its legal campaign to claim ownership of some code in the open-source operating system.

SCO has engaged lawyers to "contact Linux users" about its controversial Linux licencing scheme, after its US legal counsel reached 1500 of the world's largest Linux users in May.

SCO Australia-New Zealand general manager Kieran O'Shaugnessy would not say how many Australian organisations had been contacted, but claimed at least one sale had gone through for a SCO Linux licence.

A software industry regulator in China has become the second organization from the country to join the Open Source Development Labs, a group that develops and promotes Linux.

The Beijing Software Testing Center (BSTC) will focus on developing and refining internationalization features for the Linux operating system, U.S.-based OSDL said in a statement released Thursday.

The Office of the E-Envoy has begun a consultation on the adoption of open source software as part of a drive to put pressure on commercial software providers to provide the best deals to the public sector.

The consultation document said, "Open source software is not a hype bubble that will burst, and UK government must take cognisance of that fact."

Karim Yaghmour, author of Building Embedded Linux Systems, told me he saw a demo of a Linux system that could boot in less than one second. This is, of course, a requirement for many consumer electronic devices such as palmtops, and it was at the CE Linux forum a couple months ago that he saw the demo.

Only two years after publicly hugging a Microsoft executive live on stage in Sydney, Sun Microsystems' chief technology evangelist Simon Phipps has branded opponents of open source as "luddites" and predicted current proprietary vendor dominance will crumble through the sheer collective will of a new generation of IT managers.

"The luddites fighting the move to open source are certain to be defeated. Different parts of the software market may move to open source, but at different speeds, but the move is an inevitable societal trend," Phipps vowed.

At this point, with 563 ballots resulting in 491 votes from 482 developers, "Choice 2: Re-affirm support for non-free" has carried the day. "Choice 1: Cease active support of non-free [3:1 majority needed]" failed to even win simple majority (more people preferred further discussion than option 1).

 View older news this year: Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
 View news from other years: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999