Microsoft Shows Linux the Love, Apr 10, 2006

With a high-profile executive speech at LinuxWorld and the launch of a new Web site focusing on open source, Microsoft has been cozying up to the Linux penguin this week.

In a show of unity that is rare in the technology industry, nearly everyone has agreed that Linux is not ready for prime time when it comes to the average user in desktop deployment.

In some ways, it is the scrappy contender versus the tested old-timer, as PHP and Perl duke it out to win developer attention. But more often, the two scripting languages get along just fine, thank you, and developers are glad to have both.

As it boosts large companies that offer services, and smaller firms that sell software and training, open source has the potential to line even more pockets on its way toward wider adoption.

Novell announced Monday that it is consolidating some of its business units in order to concentrate more fully on Linux and identity management.

Four business units have now been made into two, which will also necessitate management changes at the company.

Fixing the Qt flaw quickly was a priority, said Thomas Biege, a member of the SuSE security support and auditing team, in an interview with LinuxInsider. "Every application which is linked against the Qt3 library and used the vulnerable function of image handling can be crashed or exploited to execute arbitrary code by processing a malformed image," he said.

Analysts have noted that one of the reasons Linux adoption is not proceeding at a brisker pace is that many companies have custom applications and legacy systems that would be too expensive to migrate. With the ability to bring Linux into a legacy environment, Gilbert believes that it will change the pace of Linux adoption.

Although SCO's litigation has not alienated every open-source advocate, the company will still have difficulty in generating positive feelings in the larger community. "They've lost quite a bit of goodwill," George Weiss of Gartner research said. "Whether they can come back from that remains to be seen."

In a recent statement, Oracle's Singapore-based Executive Vice President Derek Williams noted that nearly one-third of the company's software sold in China now runs on Linux. He called the trend to Linux use "an unstoppable wave." Oracle has said that China is the company's fastest-expanding market.