Open Warfare in Open Source, Aug 22, 2006

Disagreements over what should be included in the free software license's next version have pitted the movement's leaders against each other

The back and forth is emblematic of Sun's efforts to embrace the open-source movement. Executives like Phipps frequently point to the company's open-software roots in the 1980s, and Sun's major contributions to high-profile projects ranging from Mozilla's Firefox Web browser to the OpenOffice project to the Apache Web server.

Levanta's resurrection is almost unbelievable to Arthur Tyde, Linuxcare's original CEO and founder. He had been pushed aside in the late '90s but returned to running the company after the market crashed, personally pink-slipping some 180 people, and overseeing Linuxcare's slow, gradual decline into obscurity. But unlike much of the disgraced class of 1999, Linuxcare never went under.

Our core Linux business grew 20% quarter-over-quarter. Why? Our strategy is different than Red Hat's. They are approaching this as an edge server play, and it's an enterprise play. [In other words, Novell sells Linux as part of large company-wide deals, not just to run on individual servers.] We are making extra investments in Linux on the desktop and [products for retail] point of sale and banking that we think are going to be very successful. Desktop revenue grew 100% last quarter.

Can open-source upstarts compete with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft? It's an uphill battle, but customers are starting to look at the alternatives

In 2005, the software movement finally gained traction in Corporate America and saw a new influx of VC cash. How will 2006 shape up?

A last-minute deal helps the troubled software company top quarterly sales expectations, but that success doesn't mean it's out of the woods

As handset producers look harder at open source, the pressure is building on software makers Symbian and Microsoft

Say what you will about Novell CEO Jack Messman-- and believe me, many people are these days-- he's no dummy.