Articles by Jay Lyman

The legal battle over alleged unauthorized incorporation of Unix source code into Linux is leading to scrutiny of the GNU General Public License (GPL) that covers the use and distribution of open-source software In its $3 billion lawsuit against IBM, Lindon, Utah-based SCO has claimed commercial users of Linux are benefiting from SCO Unix V source ...

Los Alamos National Laboratory announced plans with system builder Linux Networx to build a Linux cluster supercomputer, using AMD Opteron processors, that will rank among the top 10 of the world's fastest computers and will facilitate nuclear weapons research Salt Lake City, Utah-based Linux Networx -- which also scored a second deal for a smaller...

Lindon, Utah-based software company SCO has broadened its licensing attack against IBM by terminating a Sequent license on the same grounds it used as the basis for its earlier claims against IBM. SCO maintains that its Unix source code was used in Linux and therefore violates SCO's rights SCO, suing IBM for billions in an intellectual property sui...

Interoperability of different Web services specifications came closer to fruition with this week's release of the Basic Profile 1.0 by the Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) organization Covering commonly used Web services specifications, including SOAP 1.1, WSDL 1.1, UDDI 2.0, XML 1.0 and XML Schema, the Basic Profile provides guidelines for how...

As some antivirus vendors raised their alert rating on a Windows worm that has infected thousands of home and corporate computers, the spreading code continued to take over machines that might be used in an attack on Microsoft The worm -- referred to as MS Blast, Blaster and LovSan -- does not require that users inadvertantly launch any executable ...

A widely anticipated threat materialized this week as a worm that exploits a Microsoft Windows flaw began infecting some of the millions of vulnerable machines around the world. Experts said the relatively simple "Blaster" worm -- also referred to as "LoveSan" -- was spreading at a steady pace Monday but was not infecting machines at the same rate...

Privacy advocates and foes of the Recording Industry Association of America's campaign to subpoena the names of file-sharing computer users from universities and service providers have won a small battle in the war over online music trading. A U.S. District Court has invalidated the RIAA's subpoenas to two Massachusetts universities The court uphel...

Consumer information held by Acxiom, one of the largest collectors and processors of such data, was reportedly accessed and downloaded recently by an intruder who broke into the company's massive database Law enforcement officials, who notified Acxiom of the breach, have arrested a suspect in Ohio. Acxiom claims the unlawful access to files contain...

The Linux legal war increased in scope and ferocity this week as IBM coutersued SCO, which had claimed Big Blue wrongfully used SCO Unix source code in Linux. Meanwhile, the open-source community has almost unilaterally aligned against Lindon, Utah-based SCO by supporting the counterclaim. The IBM counterclaim, which asks the courts to stop SCO fr...

New coded exploits that take advantage of a widespread Microsoft Windows vulnerability have been posted online. By most reports, malicious scans to expose vulnerable systems are running rampant a week after government warnings regarding the flaw Security experts said the scans for the vulnerability -- which involves a flaw in the Remote Procedure C...

IBM has added to the legal mix in its fight over source code claims by Lindon, Utah-based SCO Group, with a counterclaim against the smaller software company filed in court Thursday. IBM's complaint refutes SCO's arguments about solicitation of Linux licenses and returns the legal favor by claiming SCO's commercially available software has directl...

Seeking to target the embedded applications market, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices has announced the acquisition of National Semiconductor's Information Appliance (IA) unit and the Geode family of microprocessors AMD said the deal, terms of which were not disclosed, will make it the only company with the resources to deliver a standard architectu...

Referring to new evidence in its investigation of Microsoft's anticompetitive practices, the European Union's commission in Washington, D.C., has offered the software company one last opportunity to respond before pursuing remedies The European Commission, which has conducted an antitrust probe of Microsoft for about five years, said new evidence f...

The next major step for Linux might be to penetrate higher-security computing environments, primarily in government and financial services, thanks to a certification achieved by an open-source configuration from SuSE and IBM, the companies said Calling it "the first ever security certification of Linux," Big Blue and German software maker SuSE said...

A denial-of-service (DoS) attack that took down Microsoft's Web site Friday, two days after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned of a widespread Windows vulnerability, is being investigated by the Redmond, Washington-based software company and law enforcement officials Microsoft has some clues as to the origin of the outage, which lasted...

An e-mail worm posing as a system administrator message was rapidly spreading over the Internet as workers returned to the office Monday and unwittingly contributed to its proliferation by opening attachments The worm, dubbed "MiMail," indicates to receivers that their e-mail account will soon expire and tricks users into opening an attachment that...

Security will move farther from the fallible hands of users and closer to the heart of the computer with a deal announced by Intel and Wave Systems. The deal will help bridge the gap between hardware and software protection Chip giant Intel will use software from Lee, Massachusetts-based Wave Systems to support a security measure known as the Trust...

Users of Sun Microsystems' hardware will now have another open-source software option thanks to an alliance between Sun and SuSE that means Sun will sell and support SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 on Sun's x86 systems. According to the deal announced Friday, SuSE will become a Java 2 Standard Edition licensee and will distribute Sun's Java Virtual...

After receiving nearly 200 subpoenas to turn over information about users of its Internet service, communications giant SBC has filed suit against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), calling the subpoenas a misapplication of copyright law In a U.S. District Court complaint, filed by SBC's Pacific Bell Internet Service in San Franc...

The latest update to Sun Microsystems' Solaris operating system includes the option of using the open-source Gnome desktop interface, but the network computing giant is still sending mixed signals on open source and Linux, according to industry analysts The release, called Solaris 9 8/03, is scheduled for August 13th and will include support for Sp...