Articles by Elizabeth Millard

On Saturday, August 28, it is possible a new holiday will be born: Software Freedom Day. Organized by grassroots groups, the worldwide event is an effort to promote wider use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) One of the largest regions to see events associated with this day will be Asia, which will have software giveaways in Bangladesh, India...

After years of job losses due to the decline in the manufacturing and lumber industries, the Pacific Northwest may be seeing a bright spot for growth as call centers target the region Oregon seems to have more pull when it comes to new centers being put in. Recently, Royal Caribbean chose the state for a new 1,000-job call center that would be the ...

The UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has asked Microsoft to change an ad that claims Linux has been found to be over 10 times more expensive than Windows Server. The group evaluated the truthfulness of the ad after a number of public complaints were filed In the ad, Microsoft cites figures from a META Group study that measured the costs o...

Linux vendors have issued patches to address vulnerability in the Qt, a software toolkit that simplifies writing and maintaining GUI applications for the X Window system The flaw was unveiled by security researcher Chris Evans, who uncovered a heap overflow in the BMP image decoder in Qt versions prior to 3.3.3. Flaws were also discovered in prior ...

Macromedia announced that this week it will begin shipping Flex Builder, a new integrated development environment designed to streamline Flex application development The company noted that creation of Flex Builder was prompted by the adoption of Flex. Flex is a server-side framework that generates user interfaces that run in the Flash client and co...

With the recent release of Summer 04 and positive earnings news, Salesforce.com seems poised to capture more of the enterprise market, including larger companies that it has not targeted in the past Founded in 1999 by a former Oracle executive, Salesforce.com provides customizable CRM applications and services and has approximately 168,000 subscrib...

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a consortium of technology companies and workplace of Linus Torvalds, has announced a major upgrade to its Scalable Test Plaform (STP) enterprise-grade testing services for the Linux kernel Introduced in 2001, STP provides a set of test suites on a wide range of hardware platforms so developers can validate ...

Micro Focus International, a provider of legacy application development and deployment software, announced Wednesday that it will provide a method for migrating legacy applications to HP and IBM Unix and Linux servers The migration service is part of the company's "Lift and Shift" offering, which combines technology from Micro Focus with services f...

At this week's Crypto 2004 conference in California, several papers were presented that demonstrated vulnerabilities in algorithms that are often used to create digital signatures. Although the results are preliminary, many in the security community are concerned about what such weaknesses might mean for digital signature use in the future The algo...

Linux Networx has announced that two Department of Defense centers will be using Linux cluster supercomputers from the company to conduct battlefield simulations The clusters are part of an initiative to modernize the DOD's supercomputing capabilities, said Major Kevin Benedict, program manager at the U.S. Air Force's Maui High Performance Computin...

In court documents filed Friday, IBM has asked for dismissal of a second major component of the lawsuit filed against the company by SCO. IBM is arguing that SCO's breach of contract allegations should be removed from the lawsuit IBM has been accused of violating its contract with SCO by improperly using Unix system code that was provided and owned...

UserLinux is due for public beta on September 1, but already some are questioning whether the distribution can survive in an enterprise market rife with competitors The project's leader, Bruce Perens, noted that the distribution will be free and will have the same functionality as other distributions currently on the market.

Munich announced that patent concerns will not affect a planned migration to Linux for 14,000 of the city's desktop computers Although the city had unveiled a plan last year for the move, on August 4 it decided to postpone the program, nicknamed LiMux, citing legal and financial concerns over software patents that it wanted to clarify before procee...

SCO's litigation against IBM and other companies over the use ofLinux has led many in the open-source community to consider the softwarecompany an enemy. But recently SCO has been attempting to clarify its position on theissue, noting that it not only uses open source in its products but also has contributed to open source in the past and will con...

As Linux moves into mainstream corporate environments, Microsoft has acknowledged that open-source software is a growing threat. The software giant, however, stops short of calling Linux a serious competitor for the desktop Microsoft also has placed a section on its Web site titled "Get the Facts on Windows and Linux," which includes case studies o...

Thin client vendors have shown a greater presence at this week's LinuxWorld conference than in the past, with Wyse Technology, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems all offering new products. The moves set the stage for broader deployment of the technology in the coming year IDC analyst Bob O'Donnell told LinuxInsider that the announcements are a cl...

IBM announced that it will not use its patents against Linux, and it encouraged other software companies to make the same vow As the owner of 60 patents on which the Linux core might infringe, IBM could wreak havoc on Linux if it chose to do so. The new promise, delivered at LinuxWorld, emphasizes the company's commitment to open source....

Hewlett-Packard will be the first major PC maker to offer a Linux-based notebook computer, the company announced at LinuxWorld in San Francisco. The Compaq nx5000 business notebook PC will be preinstalled with Novell's SuSE Linux 9.1, along with OpenOffice, CD-R/RW support, DVD and media player, wireless and Bluetooth connectivity, and HP support ...

Last year, the SCO Group spent most of its annual conference focused onits intellectual property litigation. This year the company is working to emphasize its products and boost enthusiasm for the future of Unix In an interview with LinuxInsider, the company's CEO, Darl McBride, noted that 90 percent of the conference is about products, which is in...

The SCO Group kicked off its annual technology summit with a dual focus on launching new products and fighting IBM through litigation Because it is being held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, the company used several movie clips to introduce its two key speakers, senior VP of worldwide marketing Jeff Hunsaker and CEO Darl McBride. The tone of each in...