In the News Archive

"According to a Reuters report that crossed the wires late today, the speculation is that Microsoft will make bids to buy both Rational and Borland. Shares of both Rational and Borland are up on the news, and so far both IBM and Microsoft have no comment on this report." This from Java Developer news. I've been digging around but haven't been able to get a confirm or deny from MS sources.

"I wasn't a believer in Linux at Microsoft -- I couldn't be a believer at Microsoft. But Linux is clearly the biggest competitive challenge that Microsoft has ever faced. It's unlike anything before -- there's not a company behind it. It's very elusive, in a way. I don't think Linux is going to be successful as a desktop replacement. But Linux is going to surround new appliances and new segments, and really affect Microsoft through prevention of Microsoft from moving into new segments effectively." Read the interview at ComputerWorld.

J. Todd Slack emailed in and asked us to inform everyone that their donations towards the FreePepper project will be returned to all who contributed. The contributions from the community were a bit above $500 USD and that was obviously not enought as $11,000 were needed to open source Pepper. "I have come up with the funds privately to buy Pepper and I will be returning everyone's donations in the next few days. I thank everyone who donated" Mr Slack said. Pepper will stay commercial and it will not be open sourced.

"Having spent more than $1.2 trillion on information technology in the United States alone from 1995 to 2000, companies now want to wring the elusive productivity and bottom-line gains from this massive outlay. If buyers are glad to end their spendthrift ways, IT providers of course have a different perspective: After years of heady sales growth, they are now engaged in bare-knuckle competition as the industry confronts sated customers and overcapacity." Read the article at C|Net News.

Today is a solemn day of introspection and rememberance here in the United States, and we here at OSNews would like to send our condolances to those who lost loved ones in the attacks on the Pentagon and Twin Towers. Though most of the people of the world did not experience the attacks first hand, there are very few people in the world who were not affected by them in some way. I know it's a bit off-topic, but I'd like to open up a discussion thread today for people to air their feelings about the events of a year ago, and where they think things stand today. And if you read on, I'll get things started by talking a bit about what happened to me on that day and since.

OneStat.com, today reported that Microsoft's Windows operating system has a global usage share of 97.46 percent. Microsoft's Windows still dominates the global operating system market. The global usage share of for Apple's Macintosh operating system is 1.43 percent and is the second most popular operating system in the world. The three most popular operating systems according to OneStat are: 1. Windows 97.46%, 2. Macintosh 1.43%, 3. Linux 0.26%. All numbers are an average of the last 2 months. The other big statistics company, StatMarket, placed (in June 2002) Microsoft at around 95%, MacOS at 2.4% and Linux around 0.35%.

One year later, the jury is still out on whether the tech industry's most contentious merger was worth the effort. The company still faces the same criticisms: Technology mergers rarely work.

So, ReactOS 0.20 was released very recently, the guys seem to make strides. NewOS had a new version too. Syllable is set for a new release, 0.4.1, in two weeks time, with lots of changes on the desktop part of the OS. Kurt Skauen, the AtheOS creator, is now presumed alive, he was just flying around! The MenuetOS web site has lots of new screenshots, they now have implemented skinning. SkyOS now has a sound API, based on OSS. FreeType 2.1.2 was released, and it is presumably much faster than before. A new IDE for Linux, named Anjuta, seems very interesting too, while mySQL, Lua and GnuCash had new versions too. On the downsides, we had Maarten Hekkelman quitting the Pepper business, while the guy who released ReBorn 1.0 just a week ago - a ReBirth clone, we were the first to report on it -, was instructed from Propellerhead Software to remove ReBorn from his site. Sad.

Linux sales lost some ground to Windows last year, but are expected to climb in coming years as distributors create new revenue streams. Meanwhile, Windows showed hefty gains. Read it at ZDNews.

Ailing software companies have the highest hurdles to clear to get back in business--a McKinsey study found that only 13 percent of the 492 firms examined were successful. Why is it so difficult? The study can be found at News.com.

Cheap hardware, free trips to the United States and all the popcorn you can eat--life's a junket if you're a computer programmer in India. Read the report at ZDNews.

The Open For Business web site features a review of the OEone Homebase 1.3 operating system. OEone is based on Red Hat, however its user interface is brand new, it has been written from scratch (in the Mozilla XUL API). The company behind OEone also sells machines with their software pre-installed, a software developed in such a way to resemble something between an Internet Appliance and a light iMac-like office workstation. OEone is something to definately check out, since they offer more than IAs do, however they are built in such a way to be simplistic, just like IAs. An older review of both the OEone machine and software can be found at NewsForge.

"As visitors to SoftwareMarketSolution.com know, we've reviewed Don Rosenberg's Open Source, 'The Unauthorized White Papers' (Wiley), and think it's an excellent look at the business, marketing, and legal issues surrounding the Open Source movement. If you have any interest in the Open Source movement we strongly recommend you purchase a copy and keep it close by. Don is a Ph.D. and the president of Stromian Technologies, a highly respected and well known consulting firm in the industry." The interview is mainly about the success and failures of Linux and open source in general.

"The way things are going with the proposed merger between Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer, the next thing you'll see is a supermarket tabloid headline blaring, "Fiorina punches hole in Hewlett's prize cello with high heel," with a subhead that reads, "Carly takes revenge for Walter's plot to have hairdresser make her bald." The real thing is pretty close to that." Read the editorial at ZDNews.