I'm puzzled by Microsoft's apparent confusion over the release date for Longhorn. Many stories over the last two weeks have discussed potential repercussions and conspiracy theories. The leading one being that they want to wait until the anti-trust consent order runs out so they can keep the document apis secret. I don't buy that at all.

A new production version of the MySQL database, version 4.0.15, has been released. Additionally, MySQL Studio 4.2.5 is out: a set of MySQL GUI tools for database management, import/export, backup and monitoring tools for OSX and Windows. Firebird-SQL 1.5 RC-6 is out too, release notes. In the meantime, SAP unveils GUI Machine, a set of dev RAD tools, while an Oracle executive says the company is building a consortium of industry players to help create standards for commercial use of grid computing. Interesting results of the recent TPC-H benchmark performance testing on Clustered and non-Clustered 100GB and 300GB configurations.

The BeOSJournal spent some time with Michael Phipps, who is the Project Leader of OpenBeOS, and orchestrates the entire direction of the project. On other OpenBeOS news, their latest newsletter is out.

The popular X11 DE, XFce, 4.0-RC4 was released. Release notes, download here.

Back in the 80's when the PC world made its change from 16 to 32 bit processors, people were excited. They were probably most excited about what the hot new 32 bit OS (IBM/Microsoft's OS/2) promised to do on the new 386 class of processors from Intel. But the jump to 32 bits scratched some real itches, like a need for advanced multitasking and vivid graphics. Now that we're on the cusp of moving to 64 bits, the incentive for making the switch isn't there. A ZDNet article has more.

In the continuing SCO/Linux saga are responses from Linus Torvalds and Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond to Darl McBride's open letter of a few days back.

The end of an era for BSD/OS: Yesterday, on the bsdi-users mailing list, it was reported that Wind River Japan had announced that they will be discontinuing BSD/OS Internet Server Edition (ISE) on Dec. 13, 2003. The final version of BSD/OS, BSD/OS 5.1 ISE, will be available as an upgrade for 5.0 ISE customers in October with sales ending on December 31, 2003. This will be available in binary and binary with source code, as with previous releases.

The Dot reports that KDE 3.2 Alpha-1 is available on the main FTP and more mirrors will be picking it up soon. This source release includes KDevelop 3.0a6 among other goodies. Use Konstruct to build.

Every tier-one computer company has a core of individuals who act as the company's Big Brains. At IBM and Novell, they are known as "fellows." Same for Microsoft. More often than not, company Big Brains hole up in labs and rarely make public appearances. Not Jonathan Schwartz, one of the Big Brains at Sun Microsystems. Recently, VARBusiness senior executive editor T.C. Doyle caught up with Schwartz to learn more about his dual mission. Also, Sun Microsystems may add a provision to some of its Java licenses to protect consumers from Linux-related lawsuits filed by the SCO Group. "You license Java--we will indemnify you on Linux," says Sun's Jonathan Schwartz.

Microsoft identified three vulnerabilities in Windows on Wednesday that could have a similar effect to that of the dreaded MSBlast worm of August. The flaws, which affect Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and the 64-bit versions of Windows XP, are the latest in a string of critical weaknesses identified in Windows recently.

Jono Bacon has published his articles he wrote for LinuxMagazine.UK: "Getting started with Qt", "Qt Designer and KDevelop for beginners", "Using Qt Designer", "Getting to Know Debian" and other articles. Jono recently gave us his opinion in the current... non-competiveness between Gnome & KDE.

Speaking to thousands of attendees at Oracle's customer and partner conference, Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison launched Oracle's Grid Computing initiative, but to explain its significance, he dialed back the clock to 1964, to the advent of mainframe computing. Also, beta customers tap into Oracle Grid Computing while Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 achieves record-breaking benchmark with Oracle and HP.

Tonight we had a quick chat with YellowTAB's Bernd Korz over the Zeta OS. The German engineer, manager and spokesperson of YellowTAB is speaking of the release date, the changing goals of Zeta and more. Read more for the interesting transcript.

Debian GNU/Linux, the largest of Linux distros when measured in gigabytes, provides fertile ground for technical discussion. Last week, Robert Storey published Part I of his lengthy installation and configuration odyssey. This week, after having survived a typhoon and three power blackouts, he's back with the second and final part of the review.