Friday, January 19, 2007
1/19 SNR II
- SL Trib: "SCO takes another hit in its lawsuit against IBM".
- Another Dan Goodin piece at El Reg: "SCO faces new setback in IBM case".
- Another CC piece at InternetNews, "In Defense of SCO?". The title refers to the weird, sudden appearance of a (purported) Bear Stearns analyst who was all gung-ho about the lawsuits, all of a sudden. I expect Darl's wondering where this guy was back in 2003.
- That Blankenhorn guy asks "Are open source obsessions healthy or useful?". Seems he gets a lot more hits when he talks about SCO & Microsoft, and he thinks this is a little pathological. Which I suppose it is, and I suppose I'm contributing to the phenomenon by linking to his piece about it. Oh, well.
- An oldie-but-goodie you might have seen before: a Slashdot post about Darl's ignominious days at Franklin-Covey's ill-fated dot-com division.
- An announcement about a Linux software suite from Unisys. Just a few short years ago, Unisys was a diehard Microsoft ally, back when they thought Win2k/2k3 Datacenter would help sell some of their way-cool 32+ processor x86 boxes. That would've been great, if Windows had been up to the job. But no. The announcement mentions they're targeting commercial Unix users, specifically including UnixWare. And surprisingly, SCO hasn't sued them yet.
- FWIW, a Y! troll posted this comparison of Windows vs. Linux security vulnerabilities.
- Is Sun going to relicense Solaris under GPLv3? It's a definite maybe at this point. Until there actually is such a thing as GPLv3, further speculation may be a tad premature.
- If you're like me (unlikely), you have a deeply conflicted love/hate relationship with Trusted Solaris. The security model is simple and elegant, but using the thing in practice fills you with total, unreasonable anger. Sun's trying to integrate this weird branch of Solaris into the mainstream OS, but they're running into a few snags on the way.
- HP-UX 11i v3 is getting ready to launch, supporting both Itanium and the older PA-RISC platforms. Recall that OldSCO & HP briefly partnered up to port SVRx to Itanium way back in the late 90's, in a project with the weird codename of "Summit 3D". When that deal fell through, Project Monterey with IBM was SCO's backup choice, and then that fell through, too. And the Itanium itself hasn't been doing that well in the marketplace either, come to think of it. OldSCO bet on the wrong horse over 10 years ago, and NewSCO is still dealing with the ugly aftermath. Holy inflexible business model, Batman!
- You probably don't care about HP's wierd and unfriendly NonStop OS (which they got from Tandem, via Compaq), but your bank and stock exchange do. FWIW, HP's NonStop group is making a big foray into data warehousing. Yes, yes, I know you're yawning, etc. I only mention this because I almost got roped into porting a Unix app to the Tandem NonStop OS some years ago, and the project got just far enough for me to regard the prospect with great fear and loathing. On the other hand, the NonStop platform is reputed to be extremely reliable, which is something, certainly.
- A company in Spain has announced Linux+Solaris codecs for various Window Media formats. So now you can finally migrate your gigantic pr0n collection to your Linux box. Or, alternately, use it for something boring and respectable.
- From a couple of days ago, a SearchOpenSource piece titled "IP attorney: Bankrupt or not, SCO case is 'boring'". Speak for yourself, buddy. This baby is like "Days of Our Lives" for nerds. I have this cynical feeling that when a lawyer says a case is boring, it's because he isn't getting paid to work on it. If money starts coming in, suddenly, magically, the case isn't boring anymore.
- From TechNewsWorld, "Linux and Open Source: One Step Closer to the Mainstream". I've been seeing this headline for years now. Reaching the "mainstream" is starting to seem annoyingly asymptotic.
- New from Motorola, and actual Linux phone for the US market. The big deal here is that it apparently contains a Linux port of Windows Media Player. And all this time MS said it would be impossible. Feh.
- Also in the mobile arena, word is that the other iPhone, the one from Cisco, is a GPL violator. You'd think they'd have learned how to play by the rules by now, after their Linksys troubles and whatnot.
By brx0 @ 3:59 PM 
