Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal, Mar 07, 2008

Open-source pioneer and Novell Vice President Miguel de Icaza Thursday for the first time publicly slammed his company's cross-patent licensing agreement with Microsoft as he defended himself against lack of patent protection for third parties that distribute his company's Moonlight project, which ports Microsoft's Silverlight technology to Linux.

When Matthew Szulik left Red Hat abruptly for family health reasons in December, many people were scratching their heads over the company's new choice of CEO - a young executive from Delta Airlines, Jim Whitehurst.

When Matthew Szulik left Red Hat abruptly for family health reasons in December, many people were scratching their heads over the company's new choice of CEO: a young executive from Delta Airlines, Jim Whitehurst.

Officials in New York are nearing decision-making time about which XML-based office document format, ODF or OOXML, that state will use across the IT systems of its agencies as the debate over a universal file format continues.

The fate of a Linux visionary who is charged with murder will be decided in a trial starting Tuesday in Oakland, California, while the fate of the file system he created remains left in the hands of an open-source community rapidly losing interest in the technology.

A group that was set up to promote the Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) is abandoning its support of that file format in favor of a set of specifications developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

The Linux Foundation Wednesday revealed that two attorneys well-known in the open-source community will make up the legal team for the group, which is aimed at protecting the interests of Linux in the community.

Leaders of Microsoft Corp.'s strategy to make its products more interoperable with competitive technologies said the company still hopes to strike a Linux pact with Red Hat Inc. similar to the partnerships it's forged with Linux vendors Novell, Xandros and Linspire.

New York has become the latest U.S. state to ponder whether to use open standards for government document formats, though the move is not necessarily good news for proponents of the ISO standard ODF (Open Document Format).

VA Software has folded its software division and changed its name to Sourceforge. The former Linux vendor will focus its business entirely on the web.

The expected approval of the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3) could further muddy the waters for Microsoft's claims it will collect payment on its patents for Linux technology as there is a question about whether the company's interoperability deal with Novell will violate the forthcoming final draft.

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.

IBM VP Scott Handy describes strategy and priority for Linux and open-source initiatives.

Texas and Minnesota may become the second and third U.S. states to adopt ODF (Open Document Format for XML) as the standard file format for government documents instead of the file format that Microsoft uses in its Office 2007 software suite.

Despite claims by executives, Microsoft is limited in striking Novell-type deals with other companies

Not to be outdone by Microsoft's recent release of Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla is planning the second major release of its rival Firefox browser tomorrow.

Martin Taylor, best known for his role in leading Microsoft's anti-Linux "Get the Facts" campaign, has abruptly left the company, Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday.

A group of self-titled "political activists" in Massachusetts has started an aggressive campaign to get browser users to switch from Microsoft's Internet Explorer to Mozilla's Firefox.

Many feel it’s been Schwartz, not McNealy, who has been steering the ship through some of Sun’s boldest moves in recent years. In addition to personnel cuts, they include product maneuvers such as open sourcing Solaris as the proprietary OS bowed to competitive heat from Linux, and creating a new per-user pricing structure for its Java Enterprise System software suite when competitors such as IBM and BEA Systems trumped Sun in the Java software market.

Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) this year will get some open-source competition. Linux proponents plan to hold the first-ever FreedomHEC conference for Linux hardware engineers immediately following the Microsoft gathering in late May.