Virtual Linux Open source News

SCO Reorganizes its Reorganization Plan

SCO turned up in bankruptcy court the other day to say that it was withdrawing its latest reorganization plan – the one where a mystery Arab moneybags was going to put $100 million at its disposal – and submit another one that has the same mystery Arab moneybags pumping even more money into SCO.

According to what SCO told us, and has yet to detail to the court because they’re still working on it, it’s a result of the due diligence.

Things are supposedly looking even brighter than before.

Bankruptcy trustee skeptical as SCO punts on reorg plan

A private equity firm that was prepared to fund SCO's reorganization is now having second thoughts. According to a memorandum of understanding that was revealed to the public in February, Steve Norris Capital Partners (SNCP) had tentatively offered to buy $5 million in stock and supply a $95 million loan for paying creditors and resurrecting the company. SNCP has now backed out of the plan and is instead negotiating a buyout of SCO assets.

Novell insists it�s winning the Linux wars

In the third of a series of interviews by Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian (right) insisted his company is not being hurt by its association with Microsoft.

“Novell grew 200% in the SUSE Linux marketplace year-over-year from an invoicing perspective,” he said. The overall market is growing at 22% according to IDC,” and “we’re taking some market share from our competitors.

ISO approval: A good process gone bad

You may have read our background article about ODF and OOXML and why Red Hat believes OOXML should not be approved as an ISO standard. This time, we focus on how the standardization process has been compromised at ISO.

ISO’s JTC-1 directives were designed to provide a fair, consensus-based way to design standards that are portable, interoperable, and adaptable to all languages and cultures. The OOXML proposal has suffered from two basic problems: (1) voting irregularities, and (2) the use of a fast-track process for a complex, new, large specification that has not received adequate industry review. The resulting specification was driven almost exclusively by one vendor, has not achieved industry consensus, and has had thousands of issues logged against it, largely due to issues involving implementability, portability, and interoperability. Although resolutions have been proposed for many of the issues that have been raised, there is virtually no time to review these resolutions to determine whether they fix the problems. And the voting irregularities have raised serious issues with the fairness of the process.

Is Microsoft really any more trustworthy?

Lately, Microsoft has been trying really, really hard to appear as open source's best friend. All I can say is: "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"

Microsoft continues to prey upon the overly cautious with patent deals

Apparently Microsoft has a thing for conservative Japan. Just when I thought Microsoft had closed patent cross-licensing deals with every Japanese firm ever to have considered corporate existence, Microsoft surprises me with a deal with Onkyo.

So far Microsoft's list includes the needy (the various second-rate Linux distributions and Novell, which is a first-class Linux distribution with second-class aspirations of how to build on its technical merit) and the overly cautious (Japanese and Korean electronics companies for whom it's easier to just pay rather than try to figure out whether Microsoft's machinations are worthy). Microsoft might consider this a Very Good Start, but to me it looks like a Very Poor End to Microsoft's attempts to afflict the world with its dubious patent-rattling.

Update: McBride ousted at SCO, lawsuits to continue

Lindon (UT) – The SCO Group plans to emerge from Chapter 11 soon and revealed that not only will it modify its business strategy towards mobile products, it will also replace chief executive officer Darl McBride and pick up the Linux and Unix license lawsuits against IBM and Novell.

The new owner of The SCO Group, investment firm Stephen Norris Capital Partners (SNCP), is planning to open a new chapter in SCO’s Linux lawsuit history, which started back in March of 2003 when the company filed a $1 billion suit against IBM. As part of its plan organization, SCO announced that it will appeal the proceedings, which will begin with an appeal against a key decision in favor of Novell from August 10, 2007, which also impacts the lawsuit against IBM.

SCO CEO likely will be forced out of job

Darl McBride said Monday he regrets that he is being pushed out as CEO of The SCO Group software company but not his decision to sue IBM and Novell, lawsuits that led to the company's bankruptcy and ultimately his departure.
McBride will no longer be CEO of the Lindon-based company if a bankruptcy judge approves the company's reorganization plan that aims to bring in new owners.

Microsoft's latest interoperability pledge: How free is 'open'

No move by Microsoft to share information with its competitors will ever be taken at face value, and certainly yesterday's new Interoperability Principle will come under very close scrutiny. Is this the opening of the floodgates the EC has been demanding?

In incremental, measured, if slow steps, Microsoft has made some efforts to comply with directives from the European Commission to make its software and protocols more interoperable with products from other manufacturers. Yesterday, the company surrendered one more boundary between its interoperability policy and the EC's dream situation, making a huge chunk of the information it published in response to the EC's order available to developers free of charge.

Microsoft To Open Source: Let's Be Friends

In a move that many industry watchers expected would happen just after hell froze over, Microsoft Corp. on Thursday unveiled a strategy for increasing its support for industry standards and improving its traditionally frosty relationship with open source communities.

Microsoft's new openness and interoperability plan focuses on high volume products such as Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007, as well as future versions of these products.