Virtual Linux Open source News

Software Developer Hans Reiser Leads Police To Wife's Body

Prosecutors could provide leniency in sentencing Wednesday in exchange for Reiser's last-minute cooperation.

Hans Reiser led police and prosecutors to his wife's dead body Monday.
In April, a jury convicted the computer engineer of killing his wife. Reiser maintained his innocence during the trial. Prosecutors could provide leniency in sentencing Wednesday in exchange for his last-minute cooperation.

Thirty-one-year-old Nina Reiser was last seen dropping off the couple's two children at Hans Reiser's home in Oakland, Calif. in September 2006. Police found her vehicle with groceries and Nina Reiser's pocketbook and cell phone inside. Since the phone's battery was missing, police were unable to trace her last steps through cell phone tower signals.

It's not the Gates, it's the bars

By Richard Stallman
Founder, Free Software Foundation

To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers.

That statement may surprise you, since most people interested in computers have strong feelings about Microsoft. Businessmen and their tame politicians admire its success in building an empire over so many computer users.

Debian 4.0r3 available in the Linux Identity Set magazine

Linux Identity Set magazine includes 3 DVDs, or 18 000 packages, amongst
which you should find all what you need. These DVDs are optimized for
32-bit Intel architecture, which is the most compatible architecture
used today, working even with Core 2 Duo or AMD64 processors. The
magazine will help you apprehend Debian in the simplest way possible.

You can find more information here

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.