SCO filed for liquidation

 August 10, 2012

As already mentioned in a previous post, the SCO economic situation is not one of the best ones.

After close to 10 years from SCO litigious policy against all UNIX companies and having already declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, they have filled for Chapter 7.

The difference between the Chapter 11 and Chapter 7 is that Chapter 11 is a situation where the management is still confident that the company can survive after restructuring and reorganization. Chapter 11, on the other hand, is filled when the management believes there is no way the company can survive and will therefore initiate the liquidation process.

Linux Pocket Guide by Daniel J. Barrett, O'Reilly

 April 19, 2012

This is one of my favorite book about Linux. Probably is the most favorite one. In the last years I’ve been looking for a book that was like a printed man with some more explanation and a rigid order. This book does all this plus something more (that I’d rather not having).

I really liked the professional to professional user, since otherwise it would be much bigger and boring for pro users. I’ve to say that thanks to this the book is really small.

Download.com bundles malware in downloads

 December 6, 2011

Gordon Lyon (also known as Fyodor), the creator of Nmap, sent an email yesterday to the Nmap mailing list pointing out that the C|Net Download.com website is altering Nmap downloadable files injecting malware into them. It’s also possible that other files delivered by C|Net Download.com are also subject to the same problem.

This event is a very problematic one since it will create a complete loss of trust toward Download.com. It also reminds us of a critical aspect of security: all chain steps need to be secure and trusted.

Brain Jumble

 May 22, 2011 -  Settala, IT

Last weekend, the ViGLug organized an event in Settala called Brain Jumble. The idea of this three-day event was to have a set of conferences on Linux in Business on Friday, Linux in the Public Sector on Saturday, and Linux in the Instruction Sector on Sunday.

The event has been a success, with more than 15 speeches and many people participating in it. During those talks, many topics got covered, from Linux to Qt, to Open Street Map. There have also been talks on democracy and Open Source.

Ubuntu

 April 30, 2011 -  Settala, IT

SCO v. Novell

 June 18, 2010

Back in the 80s, SCO was one of the first companies to sell a UNIX operating system. The history of SCO is a complex one, with many acquisitions, merges, and renames. But, long story short, they affirmed to be the rightful owner of many aspects of UNIX. SCO leveraged this supposed ownership and sued many companies such as AutoZone, DaimlerChrysler, IBM, and Novell to obtain royalties.

The importance of those litigations is given by the fact that if it is true that SCO is the owner of UNIX, this will imply that they are also the owner of Linux or at least some parts of it. The fact that such a litigious company like SCO would be the owner of Linux would be a nightmare with a substantial impact on open source companies and communities to the point that Linux’s future would be in danger.

Microsoft just sent a huge patch to the Linux Kernel

 July 26, 2009

In a historical twist, now Microsoft contributes to Linux Kernel. This fact can seem absurd, but Microsoft sent a 22k lines patch to better support Linux on Microsoft’s Hyper-V last week.

On the one hand, we have to remember that Steve Balmer, Microsoft CEO, back in 2001 affirmed compared Linux and Open Source to cancer. On the other hand, it does make sense for Microsoft to ensure that Linux properly runs on Hyper-V, and there is no better way to do so than to commit the code themselves. Also, Microsoft has entered into a deal with Novell for many millions of dollars around Linux and Windows interoperability in 2006.

Qt embraces LGPL

 January 20, 2009

Last week, Sebastian Nyström (Vice President of Qt Software) announced that Qt would have one additional license from the next release: the LGPL.

This is a huge change from the previous Qt licensing policy and a good step in the path that Qt started many years ago.

We shall not forget that until 2000, Qt was released in a double Commercial/QPL license, and while the QPL name is Qt Public License, it was not considered Free Software by the Free Software Foundation. In 2000, they added the GPL license to the mix, which solved all issues for the open-source community but still forced the non-open-source customer to buy from Qt Software.

Google's Android 1

 September 28, 2008

Last week, Google unveiled Android 1.0. The first device that will feature this OS is going to be HTC Dream.

The Android platform is Google’s reply to Apple’s iOS. Or, at least, this is my read on the matter and the meaning I’m giving it in this article.

The main difference between Android and iOS is that Android will allow multiple companies to create competing Android devices. On the one hand, this will create more options for the consumers; on the other hand, it will create a less coherent experience.

Introduction to KDE4

 May 14, 2008 -  Sebastopol, CA, US

I’ve already talked about the NBLUG in a previous blog post. Yesterday night I presented at NBLUG an Introduction to KDE4.

In the talk, I’ve shown KDE4 features as well as look and feel. New features that will land in 4.1 also were discussed. After the talk, the people in the audience did ask some questions. I appreciated the interest of the present people in the new updates in the KDE and desktop space.