Here are just a handful of picks from the past week, starting with Linspire. It’s worth emphasising that Turbolinux has very little written about it in the English-speaking world, except some occasional security advisories that are quite universal.
Linspire
Kevin Carmoney turned from a Microsoft FUD salesman to a snake oil peddler on the face of it. Maybe it’s rude to say this, so judgment is left for the readers to make.
Here is a new press release where he uses “iPod Touch” hype in order to draw more attention to his dating service (which ought to work with… well, browsers). He obviously got his way because there is already a copy pasted in MacDailyNews (increased publicity).
Online Dating Comes to Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch
[...]
Kevin Carmony, recently-resigned CEO for desktop Linux vendor Linspire, started the free Dating DNA service in August of last year. Dating DNA provides free and open Web Services which bring 1-click compatibility scoring and other sophisticated dating features to Social Networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Craigslist, as well as to Internet devices such as Apple’s iPhone and the Chumby web appliance (www.chumby.com).
Carmony believes that just like everyone’s genetic DNA is different, so too is everyone’s “dating DNA.” A person’s “dating DNA” is represented by a unique 9-digit number, exclusive to that individual. Users can get their free Dating DNA Number by visiting www.datingdna.com and answering a series of questions about themselves and their dating preferences.
For what it’s worth, Greenpeace too recently admitted picking on (or at least mentioning) Apple products for their hype, in order to attract more attention to their messages. It’s a dishonest practice though.
Xandros
Other than some Eee PC news, Xandros was mentioned for the following new press release.
Viyya Technologies and Xandros Sign LO
Viyya Technologies, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: VYON), the developer and marketer of the world’s most advanced, web-based information management application and Xandros, Inc., a leading provider of mixed-environment management tools, intuitive Linux solutions, and Scalix e-mail services, are pleased to announce the signing of a Letter of Intent. The companies plan to jointly market an integrated, Linux-based software solution specifically designed for the new Netbook and Mobile Internet Device (MID) markets.
Linux desktop distribution vendor Xandros and Web content management firm Viyya Technologies have announced they will jointly market integrated, Linux-based software for “netbook” and Mobile Internet Device (MID) devices. Meanwhile, Xandros has strengthened its collaboration with Microsoft on its mixed-environment BridgeWays management tools.
When it comes to press releases from Linspire and Xandros, Linux Desktop is most typically the news site to pay attention first (or be the only one to bother).
A Scalix configuration book is being advertised by LinuxPR. Scalix is now owned by Xandros.
Packt is pleased to announce a new book on Scalix, the open source e-mail and groupware server that runs on Linux. Written by a renowned Linux author Markus Feilner, this book teaches users to install, configure and administer the Scalix Collaboration Platform.
That’s about all for this weekend, at least as far as playing nice with sellouts is concerned. That’s just what the “do-no-evil” in headlines represents, in case you are new to this site.
We began those weekly postings after OpenSUSE voices complained that we only share negative news about Novell while ignoring the rest. It’s really a case of addressing their needs, or what some politely asked for. █
This week ‘People of openSUSE’ scope out openSUSE Product Manager Michael Löffler known for his great work in helping setting up the openSUSE Project, bridge between Novell and community, openSUSE Shop, and so much more..!
Speaking of Zonker, he gave a quick status update on the merger of SUSE forums. That was just a few days ago.
A few weeks ago we announced that we’d be merging suseforums.net, suselinuxsupport.de, and the openSUSE support forums at forums.novell.com into one central forum under forums.opensuse.org. (You can visit the URL right now if you like, but there’s little there aside from the initial announcement…)
[...]
In this case, “quiet” only means that things are moving along quite well. The current thought is that we’ll be ready to launch the merged forums in mid-May.
A PC that comes with OpenSUSE preloaded was taken for a test drive in the UK and here are the findings.
The LinuXPC looks lovely in its Apple-like brushed aluminium casing. Upon first switching it on, you’re asked to complete a few simple tasks – set your administrator and user details etc – before the default openSUSE 10.3 desktop loads. All my hardware was detected and correctly configured.
[...]
On the plus side, it’s a superbly built, tiny PC with a reliable Linux OS. There’s enough hardware and software to make you highly productive, and with the included two-year, pick-up-and-return warranty, it’s good value at £500 (inc VAT).
* openSUSE: Google Summer of Code projects announced
* People of openSUSE: Michael Löffler
* openSUSE Build Service Version 0.9.1 Release
* KDE 4.1 Alpha1 Live
* First look at SUSE on the HP Mini-Note
The second thing is the OpenSUSE-based KDE 4.1 Live CD. which now had Alpha1 on it.
Stephan Binner’s openSUSE KDE 4.1 Alpha1 Live has been uploaded and is there for you to try. It is the first real release of the KDE 4.1 branch after almost 45000 commits and is the result of 4 months of steady KDE development. It has rough edges, but it is a nice preview of things shaping up to become usable and ready for the KDE loving user.
Most importantly perhaps, the third thing is the announcement of Beta 2 of OpenSUSE 11.0. Francis Giannaros heralded this in the mailing lists some hours ago. The messages was as follows.
The openSUSE team is proud to announce the second Beta release of
openSUSE 11.0! New changes include countless bug fixes, as well as the
import of the new openSUSE 11.0 artwork for login, splash screens and
more. The live installation should work, but there are several known
quirks, so be sure to check the most annoying bugs list before
proceeding with the live installation.
For screenshots and additional information, see the news posting at:
Remember that this is a beta. It may not be safe to run for production
systems, and should be used by users interested in testing the next
release of openSUSE for bugs.
Most Annoying Bugs
===============
Live CD:
* Automatic Configuration after boot into installed system behaves
weird (Bug #385563, Bug #385558)
* Installation leaves traces of Live system (Bug #385829)
See the Most Annoying Bugs[0] page on the wiki for an up-to-date list.
If you want to help testing our standard test-cases, just take a look
at openSUSE.org/Testing, and in particular the Testing:Features_11.0
[1] sub-page which includes a definitive list of the features added
into openSUSE 11.0. You can also coordinate with others and subscribe
to the opensuse-testing@opensuse.org mailing list to help with our
organized testing.
openSUSE 11.0 Beta 2 is a great time to start testing-out openSUSE
11.0 before it is officially released. You can directly help and
contribute to the openSUSE distribution by filing bug reports and
giving feedback to the developers.
* Reporting bugs: Please report all bugs you find on in our
Bugzilla as explained on bugs.openSUSE.org.
* Discussion and feedback is very welcome as well; the most
appropriate place is the opensuse-factory@opensuse.org mailing list.
Or in the #opensuse-factory IRC channel.
For other queries and ways to communicate with the openSUSE community
take a look at the http://openSUSE.org/Communicate wiki page.
The next planned release[2] is openSUSE 11.0 Beta 3 on May 13.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to save quite a bit of money on your network is to utilize a Suse Linux Enterprise Server (or any other GNU/Linux Server) as a Domain Controller for Windows Clients.
More interesting and important were articles about Novell’s JeOS, which turns out to have a free sibling called LimeJeOS. CRN tested this.
Getting started on JeOS was fairly simple. Reviewers downloaded the VMware package and obtained an activation code from Novell’s web site. The virtual machine file was opened using VMware Server. When the virtual machine is powered on, it doesn’t load a graphical interface like SUSE does ” it merely checks and loads a handful of hardware packages, such as detecting a network controller and configuring the network interface. Once the ten or so components have been configured, the user is prompted to login at the command line. After logging in as root, the operating system was registered with Novell in order to access the entire library of SLES packages for installation. Running zypper, the package installer, shows that all of the packages are available, such as SuSEFirewall2, Mozilla Firefox, python, apache, and postgreSQL.
[...]
This wouldn’t be Linux if there wasn’t a community-based version. Named LimeJeOS, this is a variant of openSUSE.
SUSE is not the first Linux flavor to join the appliance and JeOS party ” Canonical launched Ubuntu JeOS and Red Hat expects to have an Appliance Operating System in beta mid-year. That said, Novell has the channel presence and well-defined support packages to make the shift to SUSE-based virtual appliances a possibility.
Lora Bentley wrote about it too. There’s also a little catfight over there in Lora’s blog at the moment. Palamida is responding to an article about Black Duck’s latest acquisition.
Microsoft pushed its own proprietary LAN Manager and unroutable NBF protocol in the early 90’s. The strategy of the day among network software vendors was that if proprietary protocols could be maintained, then locks on entire corporations’ networks might also be maintained. When that strategy failed for Microsoft, it first reverse engineered Novell’s IPX (because Novell wouldn’t license the technology — it was part of their competitive DR-DOS), in order to allow Microsoft’s operating systems to interoperate with Novell Networks. Realizing that only strengthened Novell’s position, Microsoft ultimately championed the open standard TCP/IP protocol.
Novell’s role in this story aside, there is no mentioning of the BSD code. Credit blindly given to Microsoft? Need we also assume that Microsoft invented the word processor, the spreadsheet and the graphical user interface just because these were made widespread?
“Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox’s store before I did and took the TV doesn’t mean I can’t go in later and steal the stereo.”
At the cheapest end of the new offering is the Teradata 550 SMP, which is a departmental data warehouse that has been developed to run a single application or support test and development workloads. The platform supports up to six terabytes of storage capacity, and operates on either Novell SUSE Linux or Windows.
The Teradata 2500 sits at the middle of the newly-announced range, and is priced at $134,000 per terabyte. The fully integrated, scalable platform sports dual-core Intel processors, enterprise-class storage, open Novell SUSE Linux 64-bit operating system, and the Teradata 12.0 database and utilities.
• The Utah Valley Entrepreneurs’ Forum; Omniture; the Open Source Technology Center at Novell; the Provo Business Development Corp.; Utah Science, Technology and Research; and the Utah Fund of Funds will host a free lecture series featuring speaker Josh Coates, who will discuss “Raising Capital: The Simple, Well-Understood Path.” Make sure that the projected numbers for your startup tech venture work on paper before launching that business. Aim for a realistic 60-70 percent gross margin with a $500,000 contingency buffer. And don’t put the task of raising capital before the operations of your business on your list of priorities. Time: 11:30 a.m.- 1:30 p.m. Location: Mountain View room, Novell Cafeteria, 1800 S. Novell Place, Provo. Please purchase your own lunch at the Novell cafeteria prior to these events. Contact Linda at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or at (801) 705-9303 to reserve your place.
Of course, “wow” can mean a lot of different things. In this case, it seemed to translate to something like, “It’s funny, but whoa. Where in the world did this come from? And how on earth did you get the CEO of Novell and these other people to play along by asking for advice in these video clips?”
It was a big day for many teachers and students; listening to experts from Microsoft, Novell, and Certiport about industry insights.
Watch Novell’s and Microsoft’s relationship in this new press release.
WS-Management Has Been Ratified as a Final Standard Based on Implementation Experience
[...]
“A key piece of the technical collaboration agreement between Microsoft and Novell is to support the DMTF’s WS-Management as a standards-based, interoperable protocol that leverages the web to manage desktops, servers and virtualized environments across distributed infrastructures,” said Eric Anderson, vice president of engineering at Novell. “Novell is committed to bringing open source and open standards together to provide system management interoperability across mixed IT environments, which will ultimately help to reduce the cost and complexity of IT management.”
In a fear-inspiring piece from CIO Magazine you could see Novell mentioned only in a semi-flattering context.
Novell and Sun for example, are working to re-explain and emphasize to the press and customers that they “get” virtualization. When you think virtualization, you probably think one name: VMware. (Did IBM pop into your mind? I didn’t think so.) The bigs other than VMware find themselves having to work hard to win your virtual affection.
And here is the announcement about Novell and Microsoft working together in this area.
Novell to work with Microsoft to build upon technical collaboration agreement and develop advanced management solutions based on open source and industry standards
Jacqueline Emigh, who covers Novell frequently, showed the readers of Beta News how Novell is praising Microsoft.
In another expansion to their 18-month-old interoperability agreement, Microsoft and Novell introduced software tools designed to let systems administrators monitor Linux, Unix, and Windows servers from within Windows.
[...]
“This is a great milestone,” Wagner told BetaNews. “I really applaud Microsoft for joining the open source community.”
Of course, Microsoft will not be reinventing IT management by taking these steps. But it will improve its reputation in data centers. It will take Microsoft some time to catch up with CA, HP, Tivoli, and the rest when it comes to heterogeneity.
– Microsoft this week set its sites on becoming a dominant enterprise management vendor, but experts and users say first it will have to define the scope of its goals, improve the platform, and prove it can be the caretaker of non-Windows systems.
The company laid out its plans this week at its annual Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) for a cross-platform enterprise data-center management infrastructure that includes hooks into Linux and Unix systems.
“Novell is pleased to be part of this alliance with IBM and others to help customers better manage data complexity along with operational, energy and cost efficiencies, which is precisely the value proposition around SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and virtualization in the data center,” said Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of product management for Open Platform Solutions at Novell. “Novell is committed to green computing, virtualization, security and data center management, all priorities of the new program.”
IBM has pulled in technology notables, including Brocade and Citrix, as well as Emulex, Eaton, Juniper Networks, Novell, RedHat, Sun and VMware. Participating vendors will gain increased exposure to potentially new clients, and benefit from joint go-to-market activities and joint-development projects a well as exposure to early interoperability development, according to IBM.
More than four years after filing a lawsuit about alleged misuse of the Unix operating system, the SCO Group will get its days in court, beginning today in Salt Lake City.
Somehow I don’t think so. SCO has managed to use the legal system to its advantage for years. Somehow it manages to appeal things, and somehow it keeps managing to find people to help bankroll its efforts.
More than four years after filing a lawsuit about alleged misuse of the Unix operating system, the SCO Group will get its days in court, beginning today in Salt Lake City.
Kimball’s ruling not only put SCO’s claims against IBM in jeopardy but also left it with a potential bill from Novell for Unix fees for as much as $37 million. The trial that begins Tuesday is to determine how much, if anything, The SCO Group owes Novell.
But Lee Hollaar, a professor of computer science at the University of Utah who teaches classes on intellectual property law, said last week the trial is a shadow of what the original case promised to become.
As expected, Groklaw was right at the centre of things, predicting how things would develop.
How the Trial Will Go, Beginning Tomorrow (SCO v. Novell)
The trial in SCO v. Novell — which has morphed into exclusively Novell’s counterclaims against SCO — begins tomorrow morning, and the parties have filed a Joint Pretrial Stipulation [PDF] and then an Amended one [PDF]. For purposes of this trial, Novell is the plaintiff and SCO the defendant, so Novell will be going first. Thanks to the Stipulation, we know how the trial is structured. Each side will limit itself to 10 hours. It’s 10 hours sort of like football, though, so don’t imagine it will all be over in, say, a long day or two days. A football team might have a minute left on the clock, but it takes a half hour to play it out. Similarly here, 10 hours each doesn’t count things like conferences with the judge at the bench and things like that.
Lawyers for The SCO Group Inc. told a federal judge Tuesday that anything it might owe to Novell Inc. for improperly licensing an older version of the Unix computer operating system to other companies is minimal.
But Novell attorneys told U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball that the pre-1995 version of Unix to which it still holds the copyright, under an earlier ruling by the judge, was a substantial part of what SCO licensed in agreements with Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and other companies.
Mighty Wayne, whom I correspond with sometimes, has joined Ars Technica and recently began covering the SCO case as well. He lives nearby. For an article with some humour and fairly clear bias, consider this.
Novell grilled McBride for the better part of 10 minutes about “filling a form 10-K or 10-Q with the SEC that contained a false statement.” Novell’s counsel reiterated that two separate 10-Q forms filed by SCO did not include Sun or Microsoft revenue generated by UnixWare licenses. McBride adamantly denied any wrong doing, saying that the licenses were for the trunk of SCO intellectual property consisting of multiple brands, not the UnixWare product branch. This was the most hostile point of the day, with the council asking him the same question in several different ways. After two hours on the stand, McBride stepped down.
Watch the tags and the caption on the image.
It was claimed yesterday that Groklaw is being flooded by participation which includes SCO employees. Someone told me this by E-mail and pointed at some evidence (he has read Groklaw for years). Here are some transcripts Groklaw got hold of, thanks to various people who are physically there.
Novell Corp. says SCO Group Inc. owes it nearly $20 million. SCO says it owes Novell virtually nothing.
Those two stances are the focus of a four-day trial that started Tuesday in federal court in Salt Lake City. The companies fighting over Lindon-based SCO’s licensure of certain technologies in 2003 and 2004 and how much Novell should get from that licensing.
After many hasty speculations [1, 2, 3] Novell has insisted that it is not the next SCO [1], but the following last article raises a brow.
Novell may expand its claims
Company says Unix also found in Microsoft, Sun Microsystems products
Issues at a trial involving The SCO Group Inc. and Novell Inc. threatened Wednesday to spill out once again into the wider software industry, with a Novell attorney indicating it might make claims against Microsoft and Sun Microsystems over Unix code in their products.
Novell presented letters it sent last year to Microsoft and Sun in which Novell said it did not believe that licensing agreements between those companies and The SCO Group were valid. As a result, the letters said, the two companies could be “exposed” to claims by Novell.
Don’t forget the many millions of dollars Microsoft is likely to pay Novell in the WordPerfect trial.
We wrote here before about smears, libel and personal attacks that come from Microsoft Munchkins [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Here is an example from several hours ago where libelous accusation got directed at and used against me. It’s not unusual, but you deserve to see what tactics are being used.
So which one of the voices in your head gave you the information Roy Schestowitz?
BTW just on the chance that you might have contributed something, which is highly doubtful, I’ve taken the liberty of emailing the UK Standards Body Lawyers with information all about you. Everything from your self castration experiments to your odd sexual preferences. It’s all in Google. Gotta seed and index you know…..
This should be a lot of fun.
These are all lies of course.
Among the responses to this Munchkin (Gary M. Stewart), who has been doing this for over 10 years under literally hundreds of fake names:
Oh, and what “self castration experiments” or “deviant sexual practices” has roy posted about?
YOU might have posted them in roy’s name. But we know for a fact you DIDN’T. It was you or one of your cronies who did that and you damned well know it.
GOD you’re scum. Lowest for of life. Post inflamitory stuff about someone IN their name, and then constantly drag it up later to attack them as if they themselves posted it.
You, are an utter cunt.
Apologies for the language above, but you can hopefully see just how rude and repellent it’s intended to seem. Some people want this man to be sent to prison. The aspiration here is to associate people and forums with negative things (thus distracting or driving people away). The same characters are, for a proven fact, doing the same thing in Digg, Slashdot, ZDNet and a few other sites that are open for participation. At the moment, Groklaw gets ‘infected’ by them as well (SCO employees caught and Microsoft marketers too, beyond just suspicion). Intimidation through peers and employers is not unusual either.
For context and background about this: Unknown pseudonyms posted via Web proxies various things ‘on my behalf’, under my name. They then cite themselves (or a fake voice with my name next to it) in various Web sites. They still send this libel to people, in order to be used as a weapon. This has gone on for years and this leads to friction sometimes.
There are some other interesting things to note nowadays. Corruption by Microsoft, for example, may have been rebutted by false allegations about IBM corruption (‘manufactured’ at the right time by Microsoft). At the moment, serious technical deficiencies in OOXML, including Office 2007 non-compliance, is rebutted by Alex Brown who is lying about ODF just as Noooxml.org predicted. Tim Bray was right when he said two weeks ago that the OOXML standardisation attempt has been “brutal and corrupt.”█
“Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors’ technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time.”
ECMA (and its clients) controls ISO to a degrees [1, 2]
The ISO process was called “brutal and corrupt” by one of the most senior participants
A departing senior member, who was also the Convenor of OOXML, acknowledged that there was rigging in the progress, or a "standardisation by corporation," i.e. standards in exchange for money.
Rob Weir has just published “ODF Validation for Dummies”. He responds to something rather appalling from Alex Brown, Convenor of the OOXML BRM. Alex Brown is said to have been involved (or intervened externally) with the BSI as well. It was a secretive meeting, so it’s hard to tell for sure what actually hapepned there; there is a lawsuit against the BSI at the moment [1, 2].
One could venture to guess that Alex Brown is being implicitly called a “dummy”, but not in the sense that certain ‘dummies’ (expressing passiveness) are can be controlled by mega corporations or their common interests. For that we have seen some rather convincing evidence before, followed by admission of faults.
Anyway, here is the post from Rob Weir, in case you are interested in the gory technical details.
I think you agree that these are bold pronouncements, especially coming from someone so prominent in SC34, the Convenor of the ill-fated OOXML BRM, someone who is currently arguing that SC34 should own the maintenance of OOXML and ODF, indeed someone who would be well served if he could show that all consortia standards are junk, and that only SC34 (and he himself) could make them good.
Of course, I’ve been known to pontificate as well. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that. The difference here is that Alex Brown is totally wrong.
But let’s see if we can help show Alex, or anyone else similarly confused, the correct way to validate an ODF document.
This is getting rather ugly, but an ugly process simply begs for it. You reap what you sow. █
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