Our reader Wayne has asked, “The SCO Group Sold?” Another reader, Patrick, links to Slashdot, which in turn links to news that we covered the other day in brief. It’s about UnXis and one must remember that SCO’s Hans Bayer is behind it (at least in part). As a quick refresher see the following older posts:
Well, not yet. Eric Le Blan, now called Vice Chairman of UnXis, is quoted as speaking “outside the courtroom”, of all odd things to mention in a press release. Who is he supposed to be talking to for a press release? Is this more SCO street theater? Le Blan says UnXis will restore SCO to its “former glory”. And “UnXis will soon emerge as a major player in the information technology industry.”
Uh oh. There seems to be a disconnect with reality in this picture. UnXis has no history in software. What I keep remembering is that UnXis tried to buy SCO once before, and the court wouldn’t let it happen. Maybe the press release is to impress the judge. Who else would believe it at this point? Investors, maybe? You can’t find a dumber bunch, from all we’ve seen in the SCO saga.
I take this more as PR for the court and for the market, because while they talk like it’s a done deal, unless the fix is in, the Delaware court has to approve this proposed deal, and there could be objections filed still.
The Chapter 11 trustee for software developer SCO Group Inc., after several delays, held an auction and selected unXis Inc. as having the best offer to buy the business of selling Unix system software products and services. The sale will be up for approval at a Feb. 16 hearing.
unXis is to pay $600,000 cash and give the trustee warrants for 3 percent of its stock. The warrants will be exercisable after unXis has raised $4 million in equity financings. The exercise price will be price for the stock paid by the investor in the last round of financing that brings the total to $4 million.
In August 2009 the bankruptcy judge called for a Chapter 11 trustee, approximately one month before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver ruled in the company’s favor after six years of litigation with Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell Inc. The case went back to the district court where the judge and jury largely ruled against SCO with regard to rights in certain Unix software incorporated in network systems. The trustee sought permission to hold the auction after SCO’s interest in Unix was clarified.
After filing for bankruptcy protection in September 2007, SCO and an affiliate filed schedules listing combined assets of $14.2 million and debt totaling $5.2 million.
The case is In re SCO Group Inc., 07-11337, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington).
One must remember that unXis seems like a plot to refinance SCO and behind it there is some former SCO staff. Something smells funny here. █
Former Microsoft President Stephen Elop (now Nokia CEO), photo by Luca Sartoni
Summary: Suspicions of entryism at Nokia are fuelled by reports that Microsoft and Nokia will announce a partnership within days and the company’s existing management (not the CEO from Microsoft) will get canned
OUR reader Wayne says that “Analysts Suggest Nokia Commit Corporate Suicide” (by liaising with Microsoft) and our reader Satipera says that “Elop makes his move” when he prepares to fire executives at Nokia (maybe to be replaced with more former Microsoft colleagues, just like in VMware and other such companies where new leadership from Microsoft meant trouble). This is not for certain yet, but Reuters is one of the agencies/publications most focused on Nokia (especially with breaking news about Linux at Nokia) and it cites another publication in German (a German tabloid once said that Microsoft would buy Nokia).
The world’s biggest cellphone maker Nokia is likely to sack several executive board members in a management shake-up, a German weekly reported.
As rival companies have been eating into Nokia’s market share, Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop, who took over last September, is due to unveil a revamp of the company’s strategy, which could include organizational changes, on February 11.
Citing company sources, German weekly Wirtschaftswoche reported on Saturday that Mary T. McDowell, the executive in charge of Nokia’s mobile phones unit, may have to leave the company along with Niklas Savander, the manager of the markets unit.
Nokia is about to announce a new deal with Microsoft, says Engadget (we’ll know if this is true in a matter of days) while Intel may be further distancing itself from Microsoft not just with MeeGo/Moblin (Microsoft-Nokia alliance can diffuse it) but also with other platform decisions. According to the Microsoft boosters, Intel is also pulling out of Seattle. “In the short term in Seattle, the surprise decision translates into a sudden spate of researchers looking for new work elsewhere at Intel or at other tech companies, such as Google and Microsoft,” say the boosters. Well, Microsoft doesn’t do much ‘research’ in the West anymore and all it can come up with are patent applications (for offensive actions) and Google ripoffs, which we’ll expand on in an imminent post. These companies are trying to save money — maybe offshoring at times — because the race to the bottom is on with China. Nokia too is no exception here as it famously shut down operations in Germany a few years ago. Research is becoming a luxury and I’m fortunate to still be part of this dying field of operation (focusing on development, not just patent monopolies and PR). It will be very sad if Intel and Nokia end up becoming clients of the monopolist, which obviously slows down technological progress. █
Today’s IT world is dominated by Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android and a handful of other operating systems – but what about in years gone by? We look back at five operating systems that enjoyed their own (often brief) limelight before fading away.
Therefore, do not give Linux to your mother or father. They might end up loving it, learning what they never could and, worst of all, putting an unsuspecting technician accustomed to Windows to shame.
ALSA 1.0.23 was released in April 2010 as a major update to the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, but it’s finally been outdone by ALSA 1.0.24. The ALSA 1.0.24 update is also very significant and delivers on quite a number of sound card / audio processor driver improvements.
We are excited to announce Camp KDE 2011 which will be held April 4 and 5, 2011 in San Francisco, California at the Hotel Kabuki. Camp KDE is co-located this year with the Linux Foundation’s Collaboration Summit which takes place April 6 and 7.
Held annually in the United States, Camp KDE provides a regional opportunity for KDE contributors and enthusiasts to gather and share their KDE experiences. Co-location with the Collaboration Summit will allow Camp KDE attendees a unique opportunity to learn from and share their experiences with members of many other successful open source software projects.
One thing we already know is that we feel we’re on the “right” track with activities now and will spend a significant investment of our resources in 4.7 to fleshing them out further.
SalixLive Fluxbox 13.1.2 is now ready and completes the collection of Salix Live CD 13.1.2 series.
As in the Salix Fluxbox standard edition, the Live CD edition offers a functional, reliable and responsive desktop environment that is fully equipped with modern and powerful tools, while its minimalistic Window Manager is designed to stay completely out of the way.
I’ve had this handy countdown graphic on Click for the past couple of weeks. Not that Debian is in the habit of setting release dates, but this particular image came about after the project itself announced that Feb. 5 or 6, 2011 would be the target date(s).
After 24 months of constant development, the Debian Project is proud to present its new stable version 6.0 (code name “Squeeze”). Debian 6.0 is a free operating system, coming for the first time in two flavours. Alongside Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is introduced with this version as a “technology preview”.
After two years of development, Debian 6.0 is released. It comes with your choice of KDE, GNOME, Xfce, LXDE, and lots of your favorite applications. Debian runs on all sorts of computers including 32-bit PCs, 64-bit PCs, PowerPC, SPARC, MIPS, Intel Itanium, and ARM processors. This release also includes two new Debian GNU/kFreDebian versions.
OpenStack – the open source “infrastructure cloud” project founded by Rackspace and NASA – has released a second version of its platform codenamed Bexar.
Bexar includes updates to both halves of the project: OpenStack Compute, for serving up on-demand access to readily scalable processing power, and OpenStack Storage, a similarly scalable storage platform.
A good looking 3D interface is a primary focus of the new Ubuntu desktop (Natty Narwhal) but Canonical has assured that a 2D fall-back will be available
Computer Lab International (CLI) released a new Ubuntu-based Linux operating system for its MT2300 and ST6800 thin clients, which use Via Eden C7 processors clocked to 500MHz and 1.6GHz, respectively. The OS features Firefox, the CLI Device Manager, plus support for RDP, Citrix ICA 11, host terminal emulations, VNC client/server, and VMWare View4, the company says.
Qnap Systems announced additions to its Linux-based Turbo NAS family of network attached storage devices for the home/SOHO market. The TS-x12 lineup includes the four-drive (up to 8TB) TS-412, the two-bay TS-212, plus the single-drive TS-112, each providing a 1.2GHz Marvell 6281 processor, 256MB of DDR2 memory, plus gigabit Ethernet and USB connectivity.
Our customer was looking for centralized SCM, where all the revision control functions take place on a shared server, so we didn’t go through evaluations around which is the best approach (distributed or centralized).
We easily jumped to the conclusion that Subversion could be a better option than CVS, given CVS status and known open issues, then we used SOS Open Source tools to look deeper into the Subversion project.
Google finally released Google chrome 9 stable, 2 weeks later than it’s promised release-date. We have summarized top 5 must-try features in google-chrome-logothe new chrome!
WebGL is a relatively new standard that emerged in 2009 with the support of the Khronos group. It provides a set of JavaScript APIs that wrap the functionality of OpenGL ES, allowing developers to render 3D graphics in the Canvas element. Mozilla and Apple have also adopted the standard and have their own increasingly mature implementations. Google officially supports WebGL with hardware-accelerated rendering in Chrome 9. To take the feature for a spin, you can try out some of the WebGL demos at the Chrome Experiments website.
Hello, this is Rob Helmer from the Mozilla WebDev team.
I’m here to introduce a project we’ve been working on
for the past few months: Perf-O-Matic 2.0
The LibreOffice 3.3 solution is available in more than 30 languages, and offers strong support for standards such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Open XML, Open Document Format, and PDF. This open source software also enjoys the support of a large global community.
The interface in the LibreOffice 3.3 is familiar to Microsoft Office, but is also easy to personalize according to tastes. It will work on the go, but does not offer as much as other platforms in terms of cloud, mobile and collaboration capabilities.
Yesterday was a great day in for us – our first new partner for 2011 was announced. Many people in the UK and in the international Open Source Community will be familiar with Simon Phipps , and his new work with new company ForgeRock.
The UK Cabinet Office has appointed a new government-wide CIO and is on the hunt for a an ICT director to drive open source and open standards within the public sector.
Diaspora, the hottest new open source project, is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License or AGPL. So are two other new, popular cloud applications, RapidFTR and ownCloud. Add to that popular forges Launchpad and Gitorious. According to Black Duck data, the number of AGPL projects grew 74% in 2010. The numbers and profiles of AGPL-licensed projects are becoming significant. So what is this AGPL thing and what does it mean to you?
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) identified an initial set of five standards that it sent for consideration by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Technical Conference (FERC) for adoption as part of its Smart Grid Interoperability Roadmap. However, panelists at the FERC Technical Conference held today reported unanimously that the standards are not ready for adoption by the Commission.
A man with a low IQ has been banned from having sex by a High Court judge who admitted the case raised questions about “civil liberties and personal autonomy”.
Steam-engined vehicles are quaint, retro and obsolete … right? Well, maybe not. The current land speed record for a steam-powered vehicle currently sits at 148 mph (238 km/h), set by the British car Inspiration team in 2009. Now, Chuk Williams’ U.S. Land Steam Record (USLSR) Team is hoping to steal that title in its LSR Streamliner, powered by a heat-regenerative external combustion Cyclone engine – an engine that could someday find common use in production automobiles.
The New York based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented detainess in lawsuits seeking their release, reacted angrily to the death, blaming President Barack Obama for a policy that allows their continued detention there without charges.
Former U.S. President George W. Bush, under fire from human rights group over allegations of ordering torture, has canceled a visit to Switzerland where he was to address a Jewish charity gala.
Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod’s annual dinner on February 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.
Embattled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, whose regime has received billions in U.S. aid, has been in the global media spotlight of late. He’s long been “our bastard,” but he’s not alone.
Let’s take a look at the other dictators from around the planet who are fortunate enough to be on Uncle Sam’s good side.
The events in Egypt cannot help but remind me of Portugal. Here, there, and everywhere, now and before, the United States of America, as always, is petrified of anything genuinely progressive or socialist, or even too democratic, for that carries the danger of allowing god-knows what kind of non-America-believer taking office. Honduras 2009, Haiti 2004, Venezuela 2002, Ecuador 2000, Bulgaria 1990, Nicaragua 1990 … dozens more … anything, anyone, if there’s a choice, even a dictator, a torturer, is better.
The true scale of the theft of overseas aid money by corrupt foreign regimes is disclosed in leaked documents obtained by The Daily Telegraph. Tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been pocketed by their ministers and officials, much of it used to buy luxury goods.
One of the crown jewels of secret pre-Gulf War negotiations was unveiled tonight when the notorious Glaspie Memo, or as it is now known 90BAGHDAD4237, was released by WikiLeaks.
The cable, whose official title was “Saddam’s Message of Friendship to President Bush” details the meeting between US Ambassador April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990, just a week before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
The meeting has long been a matter of speculation, as it had long been speculated that comments by Glaspie had led Saddam to believe that the United States was giving them the green light to invade Kuwait if diplomacy failed.
The memo reveals indeed Hussein expressing concern about the Bush Administration’s position on Iraq owing to its participation in military exercises with the United Arab Emirates and pledges to “defend its allies” in the region. He complained the US pledges were making Kuwait and the UAE refuse to negotiate with Iraq. He also expressed concern about negative media coverage in the US, which Ambassador Glaspie assured him did not reflect US policy and singled out a Diane Sawyer report on “nuclear bomb triggers” for condemnation.
Rather Glaspie assured Saddam of Bush’s friendship and expressed support for the negotiations being set up by Hosni Mubarak for the weekend of July 28-30. She also explicitly said the United States took no position on the border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait, though the summary also mentions that she made clear the US wanted the move solved peacefully. Hussein assured that no action would be taken against Kuwait if the negotiations showed some progress, which seemed to suit the US at the time.
But the talks didn’t accomplish anything and by August 2 Iraq was invading Kuwait. Within hours the mutual friendship was completely torn up and US officials were railing against Iraq. A few months later the US invaded for the first time, sparking invasions, decades of enmity, sanctions which killed massive numbers of Iraqi civilians and, eventually, a full US occupation which continues to this day.
Secret documents show that British ministers arranged to meet their Libyan counterparts to give them advice on how Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi could be freed.
The revelation appears to contradict the previous Labour government’s claims that it did not “interfere” in the proceedings, and that the decision to free the convicted terrorist was taken by the Scottish government alone.
After umpteen calls for restraint by ministers, weighing the public relations impact, and consulting colleagues and advisers, Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond has made his most difficult decision. The multi-millionaire is set to accept a £9m bonus, one of the largest in the world, and will be followed by the bosses of the other major banks. This shows that they are all in something together, even if it’s not what the rest of us are in.
Mr Diamond canvassed close City friends before deciding to take the bumper bonus which he fears will reignite the row over bankers pay. Sources close to him said: “Bob’s been in a real dilemma as he can’t stand this country’s culture of banker-bashing and finds our attitude to bonuses extraordinary. But he is also aware of public opinion, so sounded out people about whether he should turn down his bonus again for the third year, take less or give some to charity.”
More than a dozen Indian students from among hundreds who have been scammed by a dodgy university in California have been radio-tagged with tracking devices in an action New Delhi described as “unwarranted,” and asked to be removed even as angry community activists said it is a violation of their rights and dignity.
Authorities from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who interrogated scores of Indian students who were evidently conned by the sham Tri-Valley University in Pleasanton, California, left radio-tracking devices on the ankles of several victims. The students said officials told them the devices, fitted with GPS technology, were meant to keep track of their movements while the administration examined their cases.
After watching yesterdays sitting of the Industry Committee with the CRTC in the hot seat answering questions about the UBB debacle one can only conclude the the people charged with making these decisions about it are woefully inept at being able to do so.
CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein told the Industry Committee that they were delaying implementation of UBB for 60 days so that they can once again review the situation after a large public outcry and requests for delay from two of the initial applicants for UBB itself, one of which being Bell Canada.
When the government surprisingly listened to a public outcry this week and ordered the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to review its recent decision on Internet-billing issue, a lot of people were left wondering what just happened.
Perhaps the primary concern I’ve heard expressed – and the most understandable on a human level – is that if we’re not vigilant, “bandwidth hogs,” a group of monstrous e-gluttons, will waste all of our precious Internet with their ravenous downloading, surfing and streaming of what we should all assume to be content of questionable taste.
Just a couple of comments on the proposed CRTC cash-grab for Internet usage.
First, I find it troubling that the media is constantly referring to this proposed metering of Internet usage as having “Internet users” up in arms. The use of the term Internet users like we are some kind of subset of society comparable to “smokers” is extremely deceiving. Everyone, today is an “Internet user.” From the telecommuter earning his or her living on the Internet, to the journalist confirming facts for a story, to the grandmother who uses Facebook to stay in touch. The Internet has become part of the fabric of all of our lives. Internet user is us.
They very much want to find out the “identity of the Fail0verflow Defendants and third parties who are illegally distributing the circumvention devices” and try to connect them with Hotz. But I think I see some serious privacy issues associated with Sony’s requests, as I’ll show you.
Jason Kilar, the chief executive of Hulu is heading for a showdown with News Corp, Walt Disney and NBC Universal, the media companies that own the online video site, after he criticised their traditional television business model.
As record labels, digital music stores, and music subscription services continue their struggle to convince music fans to pay for music, Google’s YouTube — itself a major repository of recorded music — claims that giving away music for free generates as much money for copyright holders as charging for it, with profound implications for freemium digital music services such as Spotify and the much-rumored Google music service.
Somebody in IRC has just told us that Aaron Bockover is leaving Novell. He wrote: “banshee guy is leaving novell… time to break out the fizzy? … might be good ammunition to convince ubuntu to stop shipping it” (it’s up for Canonical to decide really and it’s not too late as the next release is over 2 months away). █
Summary: The companies behind the Linux-powered MeeGo and the Linux-powered WebOS are occupied by friends of Microsoft (CEO positions), but what will they do in the face of the Linux-powered Android?
IT increasingly seems like Microsoft’s Elop (a former president) will have Microsoft and Nokia wed each other, just like we feared. As a recap of previous posts about this issue, consider:
Engadgethas the headline “Nokia, Microsoft announcing partnership next week, possibly involving Windows Phone 7?”
This time around, it’s said that Microsoft will be the partner announced on the 11th — and though Nokia’s uptake of Windows Phone 7 would be the obvious strategic shift, it’s important to note that these companies have actually partnered before with pretty trivial consequences for the market; it’s entirely possible they could be ramping up to do that again, sharing apps and services between Windows Phone 7 and Symbian / MeeGo. We doubt it, but it’s within the realm of reason.
[...]
First off, the elephant in the room: recently-appointed CEO Stephen Elop comes from Microsoft on good terms and has clearly been given marching orders to take Nokia in a new, more profitable direction; the Symbian Foundation’s gutting happened on Elop’s watch, for example, and he just hinted a few days ago that joining an existing ecosystem could make sense.
These two companies signed some of their previous deals around communication applications and a sub-notebook (which never seemed to materialise really). It will be interesting to see what their announcement will be all about. In any event, the fact that they partner shows what a disastrous entryism we have here. Another company which builds phones with Linux is HP, which is run by Apotheker (a former Microsoft ally [1, 2, 3]). He became CEO and Hurd bought some Linux-related assets before he was ousted [1, 2, 3, 4]. What will Apotheker do with that? Well, first of all he “asks employees to get rid of iPhones”. We don’t know what comes next. Will they all be pressured or maybe forced to use WebOS-powered phones (with Linux)?
At the end of the day, all those ownership changes and cases of entryism should bother everyone involved. SCO too is said to be passing its business to another company:
In an email, SCO today (Friday) informed its partners that UnXis Inc. was chosen as the successful bidder for SCO’s Unix software business on 26 January. The slightly convoluted phrasing is probably due to SCO’s current reorganisation under Chapter 11. On 16 February, the transaction is to be submitted for approval to the bankruptcy court where SCO’s case is pending. The email also quotes Hans Bayer, SCO’s Vice President Worldwide Sales, as saying that “We are delighted that after years of shifting targets, that under the UnXis ownership, we now will be prepared to create a truly customer driven, fully supported, open systems platform for high reliability enterprise computing”.
We have already mentioned UnXis in the following old posts:
It is worth seeing what it all leads to. Microsoft is sometimes compared to a cult and whatever helps Microsoft make a profit — even if these are lawsuits against Android (lawsuits from former Microsoft employees) — cannot be ruled out. One need not look far to see how the Gates Foundation, for example, sometimes promotes Microsoft directly in all sorts of ways. It’s not as though Microsoft’s history lacks examples of dirty tricks and entryism, or even payments to SCO which sued Linux. █
Summary: The government’s obsession with code which cannot be seen (or believed not to be seen) comes back to haunt it
EVER since 2007, Techrights has covered many examples from the UK where the use of proprietary software — especially Microsoft software — is rather extensive.
Chinese cyber-spies penetrate Foreign Office computers
[...]
China has penetrated the Foreign Office’s internal communications in the most audacious example yet of the growing threat posed by state-sponsored cyber-attacks, it emerged tonight.
William Hague told a security conference in Munich that the FO repelled the attack last month from “a hostile state intelligence agency”. Although the foreign secretary did not name the country behind the attacks, intelligence sources familiar with the incidents made it clear he was referring to China. The sources did not want to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the issue.
Time to drop Microsoft Windows then, right? It is known that this operating system is used on desktops in the British government, unlike Munich’s. Munich shrewdly decided to use code which is visible to everyone and is therefore more hardened and throughly tested. Windows hasn’t the same merits. China's crackers get access to Microsoft's source code anyway (whether Microsoft hides it or not). Nobody should be shocked that China routinely penetrates government systems in the West if it is made so easy.
“Nobody should be shocked that China routinely penetrates government systems in the West if it is made so easy.”Novell’s proprietary software too turns out to have new flaws [1, 2], even in products that have existed for many years, unlike young one that Novell is promoting (see the PR circus about Vibe and a bit about Henderson and John Stetic of Novell).
Due to the code being secret, developers have little or no incentives to polish it and secure it. In general, proprietary software tends to be less secure, as indicated in fact by a lot of studies. If the UK wants its security to be improved, then it’s time to embrace transparency. Secrets leak sooner or later anyway, causing far more damage than disclosure of something that was done under public scrutiny all along. █
Summary: The OOXML situation in LibreOffice/The Document Foundation raises further questions, which must not only be answered but addressed too
The statement from LibreOffice's 'umbrella' organisation did not quell the protests over OOXML exporters, which seem to have been inherited from Novell’s deal with Microsoft and the Novell influence in The Document Foundation (TDF). While LibreOffice rapidly replaces OpenOffice.org in GNU/Linux distributions (there are even new icons now), Linux Journal has this new article which questions the decision and statement from TDF:
Soon after the release of LibreOffice 3.3, the Steering Committee posted their position on OOXML support in LibreOffice. Some of those that have tested the LibreOffice office suite knows that they can open and save in Microsoft Office formats. So, The Document Foundation supports OOXML then? Well, no, not really.
According to a new foundation wiki page, The Document Foundation does not support OOXML. It states the foundation supports only Open Standards such as the OpenDocument Format (ODF). But if users can read and write to Microsoft Office documents, isn’t that OOXML support?
It’s time for LibreOffice to dump those exporters (along with the rest of the Go-OOXML ‘DNA’) and quit pretending that they are necessary. Some key people in this project receive their wage from Novell, which in turn received the money from Microsoft. This is a recipe for conflicts. Novell’s Michael Meeks even received at least one software patent from the UK and this patent may now be passed to Microsoft. █
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