In the News Archive

From all of us at OSNews, we'd like to wish you a happy and healthy new year. In honor of the new year, we'd like to ask you: what headlines do you expect to read in the tech world in 2008? Are you expecting iPhone rev2? Or maybe Vista SP1's success? Perhaps Hardy Heron's world domination? Will Google's Android swallow the cellphone market? Can Facebook continue to rule the roost in social networking? Tell us what you expect in the comments!

Apple and Linux are engaged in battle – a battle to win over disgruntled Windows users. But who will win, and what will the consequences be for the loser? The most commonly held belief amongst Apple and Linux fanboys is that both factions are engaged in some kind of a war with Microsoft. The truth is that if you look at the market share figure for Windows, Mac and Linux, both Mac OS and all the Linux distros that have ever been released are dwarfed by Windows.

It does not happen every day that news related to computer technology - news we report on every day - makes its way to the headline news programs and newspapers here in my home country, The Netherlands. So when it does, I am usually on the edge of my seat, simply because it offers an interesting glimpse into how 'normal' people perceive our little world. The last few days, however, that casual interest has made way for something else - tooth gnashing irritation.

Break out the salt, boys and girls, it's time for some statistics again. "According to Net Applications, in June Windows Vista accounted for 4.52% of all systems that browsed the Web, up from January's 0.18%. Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30, hitting 0.93% in February, 2.04% in March, 3.02% in April and 3.74% in May. Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22% in January and hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June. If Vista's uptake trend continues, it should pass Mac OS X in Web usage share by the end of August." Do with it as you please.

Pocket Informant is one of the most successful PDA applications ever. However, it has not been immune to software piracy. The CEO of WebIS posted an open letter explaining how software piracy is hurting the industry, but also the consumer too and especially small software houses like his.

A recent IDC report showed Linux servers continuing to increase market share for x86 architecture with a second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, but the bigger news could be Microsoft's even bigger surge with Server 2003. The software giant's Server 2003 showed modest gains in Q1, with IDC reporting that Microsoft Windows Server revenue was USD 4.8 billion in Q1. This number represents 10.4% year-over-year growth and a gain of 1.9 points of revenue market share over the same period in 2006. Windows encompassed 38.8% of all server revenue in Q1 of 2007.

Linux is the clear winner out of a dispute between the Russian legal authorities and schools over who should carry the can over the use of pirated Windows software, The Inquirer magazine reports. Rather than attacking mobsters who peddle pirated copies of Windows directly to companies, the Russian coppers decided to lock up a Sepich headmaster who bought hot Windows software which came from Perm region’s Capital Construction Administration. Microsoft says that the incident has nothing to do with them, but it appears that Russian schools in the area are so scared about being shipped off to a Siberian Gulag, that they are buying Linux gear instead.

Canonical Ltd., the sponsor of Ubuntu, and Linspire Inc. the developer of Linspire and Freespire, on February 8 announced a technology partnership to integrate with each other's Linux distributions. Linspire/Freespire will be based on Ubuntu, rather than Debian, and Ubuntu will integrate with Linspire's CNR package installer/updater.

Adobe Systems today announced that it has released the full PDF (Portable Document Format) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Association for Information and Image Management. AIIM, in turn, will start working on making PDF an ISO standard.

Hans Reiser, the prominent Bay Area Linux programmer charged with murdering his wife, says he's seeking to sell off his open-source file system company, Namesys, to help pay mounting legal costs. In the first interview since his arrest, Reiser spoke this week about the future of his company and his legal travails from within the walls of Santa Rita Jail, where he is being held without bail.

For a while now, we've been trying to think of good ways to allow the readers of OSNews to find OS or tech-related jobs, or find new employees for their companies. We've partnered with CareerBuilder, for a start, so if you're looking for a job, (or want to fill one) check it out.. But what else could we do? Would you like to see a place where people can post OS-related tech jobs? Let us know in the comments of this story. On this subject, Openwave, maker of the popular mobile phone web browser, is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to work on the core of their next generation mobile browser: "Must have demonstrable, extensive, real-world experience, a deep understanding of C and a working knowledge of C++." Openwave's web browser engineering team has a long history demonstrating and testing with OSNews' mobile site (screenshot), so we thought we give them a hand by posting this.

"The simple question 'what's wrong with software patents?' stirs up controversy and divides the IT industry into two camps like no other. Every group has their own ideology about software patents. Those who don't like them claim that they are anti-competitive, that they are tools used by industry giants to crush free and open software, that they are bad for innovation, that they are monopolies. Those who like them claim that they are simply units of intellectual property, to be traded like any other commodity."

"Throughout the 1990's, Microsoft established families of integrated products that all contributed toward a successful platform, with many parallels to what Apple is doing today. Despite the two companies' very different motivations, products, and markets, both shared many common threads. Here's a look at how the two cautiously and enviously watched each other with the intent to learn from each other's actions, hoping to copy successes and avoid failures."

We at OSNews have tiptoed around the following unfolding story for a while now, scared we would wrongly damage Hans Reiser's image. However, now that he has been arrested as a suspect in this case, we cannot ignore it any longer. "Oakland police today arrested the estranged husband of 31-year-old Nina 'Nenasha' Reiser on charges of murder even though in the month since she vanished, investigators have found no trace of her body. Hans Reiser, a man who has recently refused to cooperate with investigators, was arrested today along with two additional unidentified people around 11 a.m. at an acquaintance's home in the 6900 block of Simson Street, according to police."