Novell asks a judge to scrap SCO's lawsuit, May 13, 2004

A federal judge on Tuesday took under advisement a request that he dismiss The SCO Group's "slander of title" complaint against Novell Inc. -- a ruling that could foreshadow the fate of SCO's separate, marquee Linux-rights suit against IBM.

Typical open-source project development strategies work well for free software but don't flourish in commercial settings, according to one expert.

Jim Herbsleb, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's International School of Computer Science, part of the Institute for Software Research, previously worked at Bell Labs at Lucent Technologies Inc., where he studied why open-source projects such as Apache have been so successful in employing a distributed development method. He spoke at the Open Source Conference in Toronto this week.

Both China and India are developing their Linux expertise in anticipation of a market boom -- they're even designing economic policies around this. Other governments, such as Singapore and Taiwan, plan to move their server architectures from Windows to Linux.

Microsoft on Tuesday night released the source code for its Windows Template Library under the open-source Common Public License and posted it on SourceForge, the open-source code repository.

The Windows Template Library (WTL) is a library for developing Windows applications and user interface components. It also extends the Active Template Library (ATL) and provides a set of classes for controls, dialogs, frame windows, GDI objects and more.

Opera Software ASA on Wednesday released the latest version of its Web browser, redoing its user interface, expanding its e-mail features and adding support for chat and RSS feeds.

Opera 7.50, which went into beta last month, marks the first release in which the company has synced its browser releases across all operating systems. The move is particularly significant for Mac OS X users, since Opera's releases of its browser for the Mac had lagged behind versions for Windows and Linux.

Linux will power a customizable GSM/GPRS mobile phone, set to launch in July, that will support "SmartSkins," snap-on covers that contain tiny embedded Linux subsystems that add games, music videos, or other content or functions.

The phone will be marketed by Korean handset manufacturer Curitel under the name "Identity," but was designed by a company called "Wildseed" (formerly GitWit). WildSeed will develop and market SmartSkins -- including GameSkins and MusicSkins -- that will work with "SmartSkin-compatible" phones -- of which the Identity will be the first.

On Monday, IBM announced it was launching a Web-based software suite that would offer Microsoft Office-like applications. But unlike Microsoft's Office, IBM's Lotus Workplace software is designed to be used over the Internet and is accessible from systems running Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix as well as handheld devices.

Ian Wesley, IBM research director at Ovum, said that the new software is a way for IBM to offer its existing Lotus customers an upgrade path and is not a direct attack on Microsoft's Office suite.

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