Group: Linux potentially infringes 283 patents, Aug 02, 2004

Linux potentially infringes 283 patents, including 27 held by Microsoft but none that have been validated by court judgments, according to a group that sells insurance to protect those using or selling Linux against intellectual-property litigation.

Dan Ravicher, founder and executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, conducted the analysis for Open Source Risk Management. OSRM is like an insurance company, selling legal protection against Linux copyright-infringement claims. It plans to expand the program to patent protections.

Of the 283 patents, 98 are owned by Linux allies, OSRM said, including 60 from IBM, 20 from Hewlett-Packard and 11 from Intel. The months-long review examined versions 2.4 and 2.6 of the kernel, or heart, of Linux, Ravicher said.

The growing normalcy of Linux in corporate computing realm will be on display this week at a show devoted to the open-source operating system.

Linus Torvalds launched Linux as a student project nearly 13 years ago, but by the late 1990s it attracted support from the computing industry. Now Linux is a staple of the information technology diet and a component of computing company strategies to get an edge over their competitors.

At the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco, some of those strategies will be on display. Among server sellers, IBM will tout its efforts to build a new ecosystem of programmers and software packages on its Power processors. Hewlett-Packard will boast of its efforts to use Linux to woo customers from rival Sun Microsystems. And Sun will use Linux to showcase its new software and storage directions.

Longtime Microsoft partner Unisys has begun offering Linux from Red Hat and Novell on its multiprocessor servers, a change of heart that reflects a new seriousness about the open-source operating system.

Unisys already offered Linux in 2003 on its ES7000 servers, but tellingly it decided against using the two commercially popular versions in favour of the product from the SCO Group. Unisys announced the new Linux support in conjunction with the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo this week in San Francisco.

Linux may be popping up on an increasing number of desktop PCs, but there is little hope of it becoming a serious player in the PC sector.

Gartner has played down recent high-profile contract wins for Linux-based PCs. The research firm claimed that just because Linux will ship on five per cent of all PCs worldwide in 2004, this does not mean it is being used. Gartner estimated that only two per cent of the total PCs shipped in 2004 will be used with Linux.

CRM will be a hot topic at the LinuxWorld show in San Francisco as a new open-source CRM software company launches and an existing player announces that it's porting its CRM software to Linux.

SugarCRM Inc. will officially launch at the show, while E.piphany Inc., which SugarCRM's founders have ties to, makes its Linux move

An updated version of the world's first Linux smartphone will soon be available to US cellular subscribers in the Chicago area. Shanghai-based e28's e2800+ has been available in China since July, and builds upon e28's previous e2800 model, which was the world's first commercially available Linux smartphone, e28 says. The device, which targets business uers, features dual-band 900/1800MHz communications, a GPRS/CSD modem, and a 300K pixel camera.

Netline Internet Service GmbH, of Olpe, Germany, will announce at LinuxWorld this week that it is open-sourcing its Open-Xchange Server, the core technology behind its Linux-based groupware, collaboration and messaging application, under the GNU General Public License.

That move will let customers and partners download the code for free and contribute to the project.

U.S. government agencies announced purchases of two large supercomputers last week, including a massive 10,240-processor system for use by NASA that will likely be ranked among the world's most powerful computers.

The NASA system, from Silicon Graphics, is based on Itanium 2 processors running Linux. The other system, an IBM supercomputer purchased by the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office uses 2,944 Power4+ processors and runs IBM's AIX version of Unix.

On the lookout for new markets for Windows--and for ways to stymie Linux's opportunities-- Microsoft will expand its cheaper version of Windows XP into more countries, an executive says.

Windows XP Starter Edition, Microsoft's biggest weapon in opening up emerging markets outside the United States and Western Europe, is currently part of pilot programs in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Starter Edition, said Will Poole, senior VP of Microsoft's Windows client group, in a presentation at Microsoft's annual financial analyst meeting on Thursday, is designed "to have a lower price that is appropriate for the emerging market needs."

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