Now that the Justice Department and Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly are content with the wrist-slapping meted out to Microsoft, few expect any abatement in the company's abuse of its monopoly power. Although many argue that, eventually, the markets themselves will bring about more balanced competition, the markets that Microsoft dominates operate on different economic principles than most others. The last twenty years brought such dramatic technological change that it'll be much harder for competitors to dislodge Microsoft from its perch atop the industry than it was for Microsoft to dethrone IBM a generation ago.

Jef Raskin, who helped design Apple's classic user interface, is working on a new system, THE, that could be a big improvement. BusinessWeek features an article introducing the technology. Jef also replied to our forums here and here a month ago, explaining his system.

IBM and Hewlett-Packard garnered billions of dollars in revenue from Linux-related products in 2002, the companies said this week. Update: IBM: 'Linux is here to stay'.

A judge has ordered Microsoft to make it easy for Sun's popular programming language to work with Windows. But the remedy may be too little, too late, Salon says. Update: Microsoft appeals Java must-carry ruling.

SciTech Software, Inc. today announced that it has completed the initial release of SciTech SNAP Graphics for QT/Embedded. This release is based on SciTech latest System Neutral Access Protocol (SNAP) architecture and shows SciTech's resolve to further enable the emerging embedded market with a level of graphics performance usually reserved for mainstream desktop machines. Additionally, SciTech began alpha testing on a new Linux version of SciTech SNAP Graphics.

"Many companies standardized on Windows NT and Office 97 as their corporate personal computing environment for good reasons. Windows NT 4.0 was touted (by Microsoft) as the most stable, secure OS available. And Office 97 was described as a quantum leap ahead of its predecessors (and competitors). But it's been six years, and many environments are in dire need of a face-lift." Read the article at ZDNet.

"The Linux computer operating system is coming of age. Nurtured since the early 1990s by software hobbyists and adopted more recently by giant computer companies led by International Business Machines, it is on the verge of becoming a mainstream technology in the corporate world. Its maturation has potentially far-reaching implications for the software industry." Read the article at FT.com. AustralianIT has a similar article too.

The newest version of QNX Photon microGUI will enable multi-layered graphical interfaces which allows embedded developers to create sophisticated GUIs that display a mix of static and dynamic content. The multi-layer support will be available in the latest rollout of QNX Neutrino RTOS.

MandrakeSoft CEO Bancilhon is trying to line up venture capital. "We have enough cash to go to the end of the month, but we're struggling," he says.

The GNOME Foundation has entered into an agreement with Bitstream who will donate ten high quality fonts to be used with free software (KDE, XFree86, Gnome as well as others). This means distributions can finally ship free desktops/applications with a set of high quality fonts. On other X11 news, XFree86 4.2.99.4 snapshot (4.3 beta) is available for testing.

"Apple Computer has quietly extended an overture to the Unix community, with the release of software that would make it easier for Unix applications to run on the Mac operating system." Read the interesting article at News.com. "The XFree86 Project had been working on a port for OS X, and Apple "took the ball and ran with it a little further and integrated it more tightly into the system. We also made it easier to download," Apple's Brian Croll said." NewsFactor has a similar story too. Update: Another Mac editorial today, this time a bit more controversial though.

SCO Group has hired high-profile attorney David Boies to see whether Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and versions of BSD infringe on Unix intellectual property the company owns.

"Robertson isn't the only one hoping to cash in. Software companies like Red Hat, Mandrake, and Suse all offer Linux products that compete with Windows. But Lindows has a few things those companies don't: It has Robertson's bombastic personality to sell it, and it has a better pitch--that it is easier to install and use. Wal-Mart, which began selling Lindows-ready PCs on its website in September, has had such success with the offering that by Christmas it was having trouble meeting demand." Read the two-page interview with Lindows' CEO at Fortune. Robertson also appeared on TV.

We spoke with Bill Moffitt, Product Line Manager for Solaris at Sun Microsystems. The second update to Solaris, called Solaris 9 12/02, was released this month. (Sun puts the month and year of the release date after the version number. Apparently, it was "released" in December, but don't ask why it was only made available a few days ago). In addition to bug fixes and updates that you would expect in a release like this, Sun has included a couple of big extras for capability and performance.