Red Hat's Linux for PC delayed again, Sep 26, 2007

Software maker Red Hat, which had planned to introduce a new version of its Linux software for personal computers in August, say that the product won't be out until next month at the earliest.

Dell NZ can't say when the Ubuntu-packing PCs will make it to New Zealand - or if they will at all.

Sun Microsystems is revamping its Solaris operating system, incorporating key pieces of rival Linux software in a move that could gain better support from developers who have massed behind Linux.

By this time next year you may well be using a Linux desktop at work.

The web browser wars are over and Microsoft won, right?

Well someone's forgotten to tell Ben Goodger and his team at the Mozilla Foundation because this Kiwi software engineer is taking market share from Internet Explorer (IE) with Firefox, the browser that's smaller yet smarter than just about anything else available.

NZX - the New Zealand stock exchange - has become the first major New Zealand company to adopt the Oracle 10g database running on Red Hat Linux.

Apart from being able to consolidate 21 databases into one, the new NZX system runs faster, more reliably and at less cost, says the company's tech team.

Open-standards software is gaining momentum in Brazil with the help of the Government, which says it wants to develop domestic technology without having to pay hefty licence fees.

Nothing that has been thrown at Microsoft has yet been able to break its monopoly on the client operating system market, where surveys variously suggest it has a 90 per cent to 98 per cent share. On the server side, it still accounts for more than half of server software sales, despite the increasingly popularity of Linux.

For Geer and others this is distressing. That's because the workings of society depend more on computers than ever before - from the card reader we swipe to get into our office to the systems that run the power and telecoms networks to the databases that make sense of our financial transactions.

The argument is that by letting Microsoft become so dominant, we've set ourselves up for "the blue screen of death" of all time - or what one security firm has dubbed the "$100 billion cyber catastrophe".

Asked if SCO ANZ's demands for licence fees could be a breach of the Fair Trading Act, Commerce Commission's spokeswoman Jackie Maitland says its preliminary view is that "no one should pay an invoice unless they are clear on the obligation to pay". Furthermore, Maitland says that "it is not clear that SCO are entitled to charge end-users who have downloaded a product on the condition they understood the product was free".

A person or a company falsely claiming to have ownership of a product or service or the rights to payment could breach the Fair Trading Act, said Maitland.

Brazil's government is urging its massive bureaucracy to use free software like Linux on its computer systems in a cost-cutting move that could cost Microsoft millions of dollars in lost revenue.

The initiative seeks to reduce the cost of proprietary software licenses the government needs to use programmes like Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs about 90 per cent of the world's computers.

The government says it spends more than 100 million reais, or about US$34 million ($54.05 million), a year on license payments, an amount deemed too big for the cost-conscious, left-leaning administration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Consumer electronics giant Panasonic will use Linux instead of Microsoft's Windows Media Centre operating system as a base for multimedia entertainment systems that combine TV, video, and stereo with computers and internet access.

Panasonic executive vice-president Yukio Shohtoku told a news conference in Japan that it was working with Sony and other Japanese electronic firms on a Linux-based system.

He said Panasonic would also use Linux for digital home networking systems that would communicate within the home and across telephone lines.

"SCO is damaging the reputation of Linux and could be slowing the uptake of Linux by making people think twice, especially when they have to get lawyers in."

He wants the Open Source Society to try to establish "a genuine right to use Linux here".

McBride declined to reveal the sources of his allegations, but he claimed that IBM was involved in Novell's and Red Hat's responses to SCO's lawsuit. "Even though IBM looks like they're not really involved in it, they're very involved," he said. "From a PR standpoint, they're able to extract themselves from (the dispute), and so they throw Red Hat at us, they throw Novell at us, they have (Open Source Initiative President) Eric Raymond on their payroll. They have all these guys that they fund and then they just step back and watch the fracas go on."

CD duplication company Software Images has refused a request to copy 500 Linux software CDs for a Linux Installfest this Saturday, because of concerns the job would breach a contract with Microsoft and infringe intellectual property rights.