Turbolinux drinks Microsoft's IP-protection kool-aid, Oct 23, 2007

Microsoft and Turbolinux, a major Linux distributor in Japan and China, announced on Oct. 22 that they had signed a business deal that advances Linux-Microsoft Windows Server interoperability, furthers research and development collaboration, and provides IP (intellectual property) assurances for Turbolinux users.

In business, as in many other things in life, it is relatively easy to plan for failure. I guess we all do it in some small way, one of the most common being the way people back up their digital personal files to guard against hardware failure or file corruption. But how does one plan for success?

Dimdim calls itself the world's first free Web meeting service based on an open source platform. Users can share their desktops and files while chatting and videoconferencing with meeting participants. Dimdim was originally licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), but the possibility of a big deal with a university made Dimdim executives eventually change to the GNU General Public License (GPL) instead. By changing the software's license from the MPL to the GPL, "we are making it easier for the community to use our product," says Dimdim founder DD Ganguly.

RidgeRun has introduced a Linux-based SDK (software development kit) for Texas Instruments's sub-$10 TMS320DM355 digital video SoC (system-on-chip). The SDK is intended to jump-start the development of cost-constrained, battery-powered devices with multimedia requirements such as high-definition video.

The European Union said Monday that Microsoft is now in compliance with its antitrust rulings -- paving the way for greater use of open source operating systems like Linux in the workgroup server market.

First, let's make this clear. Oracle Unbreakable Linux was, is now and is for the foreseeable future going to be based on Red Hat's Red Hat Enterprise Linux codebase. It is not, however, going to be simply RHEL's twin in every way.

Microsoft has given up its nine-year fight against antitrust regulators in Europe, saying yesterday that it would not challenge a court judgment from last month and would share technical information with rivals on terms the software giant had long resisted.

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