Samba developers quash serious bug, May 15, 2007

Users of the open-source Samba software are being urged to patch their code following the discovery of a critical bug in the file-and-print software.

The Redmond giant said open-source software violates hundreds of its patents; bloggers ask which ones, and how it plans to collect

Following his second presentation of his talk on the status of GPLv3, Professor Moglen sat down with me for an exclusive interview. We discussed his departure from the Free Software Foundation; his personal history with Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel; the battle with Microsoft over its patent agreement with Novell; his history with free software; and what he would like for his students, for programmers, and even for reporters on the fringes of media corporations to learn about how to change the world.

"We're not litigating. If we wanted to we would have done so years ago," said Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's VP for intellectual property and licensing, in an interview.

A Microsoft move to seek patent royalties from open-source distributors and users may be an attempt to use legal threats to deflect attention from company problems.

Originally announced a couple of weeks ago and formally launched in Spain last week, the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded (UME) project this week opened the way for developers to join the project.

The Linux Foundation is prepared to defend any Linux user charged with violating Microsoft's patents, but Executive Director Jim Zemlin adds that a critical review of Windows code would show that it can be claimed to violate other vendors' patents as well.

The tidbit about the chairman’s new notebook was yet another sign that the computer maker is taking Linux seriously as a viable alternative to Windows.

The technology audit and firing come as the district attempts to transition many of its computers from the Windows ME operating system to a Linux operating system.

“Software prices will eventually fall to zero. The open-source software movement has already started that commoditisation.”

... while Microsoft's latest claims may sound terrible to the layman, any attorney worth his or her salt will know that these are old and basically bogus statements. So, why is Microsoft trotting them back out again?

Norway is the latest European country to move closer to mandatory government use of ODF (and PDF).

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