mbadolato writes "An article over at InformationWeek reports Oracle is aggressively adopting Linux both internally and for its products, despite SCO Group's threats earlier this week that it may sue those who don't pay licensing fees to the company. Chuck Rozwat, an Oracle executive VP, says the company has moved its IT infrastructure to Linux, a year after CEO Larry Ellis issued the mandate. In the coming year, Oracle will move its base development platform to Linux, including putting the open-source operating system on the workstations of 8,000 developers"

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has an interesting article about a recent benchmark conducted to compare five journaling filesystems available with the current 2.6.0-test2 Linux development kernel. The tests were conducted with a very simple shell script, mainly timing how long it takes to copy, tar, and remove directories. Looks like reiser4 is the fastest filesystem at the expense of consuming much more CPU, with ext3 trailing a ways behind."

An anonymous reader writes "According to SCO, if you have a TiVo set-top box, or those models of Sharp Zaurus which use Linux, someone now owes them $32, since the company wants money 'for each embedded system using Linux.' SCO also says government agencies must pay up to $699 for each copy of Linux that they use."

uninet writes "The SCO Group, Inc. today released a statement concerning the lawsuit filed against it yesterday by Red Hat, Inc. The release quotes Darl McBride, SCO's President and CEO, as being 'disappointed' with Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik for not being 'forthcoming' about Red Hat's intentions in a previous discussion." Reader psykocrime adds "According to this SuSE press release, SuSE has publically announced their support for RedHat's actions against SCO. Quoting from the press release: 'SCO has already been halted in Germany and we applaud Red Hat's actions to help end their activities in the US -- and beyond. We applaud their efforts to restrict the rhetoric of the SCO group -- and the FUD they are trying to instill -- and will determine quickly what actions SuSE can take to support Red Hat in their efforts.'" Read on for a few more links.

markds writes "After a long wait, the Gentoo team has finally released the latest version of their distribution. Gentoo Linux 1.4 is now available. 1.4 includes automated kernel builds, CFLAGS generation, the Gentoo Reference Platform, and support for netless installation." And Beost writes "It looks like our favorite disto gentoo has released two of the new v1.4 LiveCDs. Enjoy!" Reader Luke-Jr points to the list of official mirrors and "unofficial (though created by developers) BitTorrents." (Of course, you can also buy CD sets for a variety of architectures from the Gentoo store.)

pipeb0mb asks: "A few years ago, I worked for Chilliware, Inc. as the 'Technical Development Manager'. Some of you may remember us for the software iceSculptor, Mohawk and Mentor. Chilliware folded rather quickly and harshly back in May of 2001 due to money issues. Within days of the first layoff, everyone was gone, from the CEO and VP's to the receptionist. Now, years later, I've been digging through some old CDs, and am reminded that I still have the final production source code for the products we released in the retail channel. I've attempted to contact several folks over the past couple of years to gather information about the software and who owns it now. To no avail though. Either I get an 'I don't know' or 'No one' from the dis-interested parties. I feel like these programs are my children that never got a fair shot. I hate to see so much work wasted and lost to the ages. So, Slashdot: What do I do with this source code? It's a great deal of well commented and well written code, performed by over 100 developers in a former Soviet Republic (who formerly worked with Boomerang Software). Where do my binary children go now?" As things are now, if a company folds, the code is buried and forgotten unless someone buys the rights to it, before the source code is lost. This issue was discussed a long time ago and there didn't seem to be much in the way of answers. Have 3 years made any difference?

walterbyrd quotes: "'We believe it is necessary for Linux customers to properly license SCO's IP if they are running Linux 2.4 kernel and later versions for commercial purposes. The license insures that customers can continue their use of binary deployments of Linux without violating SCO's intellectual property rights.' SCO will be offering an introductory license price of $699 for a single CPU system through October 15th, 2003." Update: 08/05 18:24 GMT by M : After October 15, SCO says they'll want $1399. Better buy now!

miladus writes "eWeek reports that Walt Disney's feature animation unit (along with 2 other unnamed studios) are using Adobe's Photoshop in Linux. They use the Wine emulator to run the software and the 3 studios 'not known as team players, all three agreed that a project that would benefit the entire open-source community while delivering a technology they needed--was worth their cooperation'."

schmidt349 writes "SCO has issued a preliminary response to Red Hat's lawsuit, in which President and CEO Darl McBride advises that SCO will prepare a "legal response" to Red Hat's requests for injunctive relief. In addition, he promises that the countersuit that SCO will file may include "counterclaims for copyright infringement and conspiracy." His final statement-- that Red Hat's "decision to file legal action does not seem conducive to the long-term survivability of Linux--" is chilling in light of the business strategy that SCO has adopted in its sales of UnixWare licenses to actual and potential users of the Linux kernel."

Nimey writes "IBM has gotten Linux certified under the Common Criteria specification. " What this means is that government can consider Linux when making purchasing decisions. Linux got the highest rating possible.

dan.hunt asks: "Klaus Knopper was interviewed here and the interviewer, technobeast, asked: 'If you were asking the questions, what would be the 1st one you would ask?' Klaus answered in part 'What are you missing in the available Free Software, and how would you like to change that?'"

rimmon asks: "I'd like to know what experience have you made with [network-enabled chatting programs] as tools to communicate with your boss, with your employees or your customers? Does your company utilize [Instant Messenger or IRC] as a communication tool (to communicate with customers, between employees and Pointy Haired Bosses? If you use or provide [chatting systems]: Is this technology an effective tool to communicate? What are the Pros and Cons? What type of chat technology do you use and what flavor of chat (open, moderated, etc.) works best for you?"

Displaying my ignorance asks: "We have a small workgroup running on Windows XP Professional; we do not have a domain server. We use Peachtree accounting software which is supposedly multi-user. Unfortunately, multi-user does not translate into allowing two people to be in the same module (i.e., accounts receivable) at the same time. Because the users are in different buildings they often crash Peachtree because they don't know that someone else is already in that module. These crashes result in the loss of data since the last backup. I am therefore trying to locate software, compatible with Windows XP, which would allow a user to create pop-up messages for display on the remote screens. It needs to be a pop-up, not just a flag in the system tray; ideally it would be a flashing neon sign which fills most of the screen [grin]. Because we do not have SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) Messenger appears not to be a solution. Any suggestions?"

An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat has released a PR Newswire article stating that it intends to sue SCO Group to prove that it doesn't infringe any of SCO's intellectual property regarding the Red Hat Linux platform, and to hold it accountable for its actions and smear campaign. They've also announced the creation of a legal fund, to which they've pledged $1M US dollars to fight complaints such as these, called the 'Open Source Now' fund."

An anonymous reader writes "Have we missed the boat in terms of selling Linux to the average Joe? The writer of this article at NewsForge certainly thinks so. He points out that most people don't yet get the idea of a free operating system, and that the best way to start winning them over is to provide free software for Windows, such as OpenOffice.org." This sentiment isn't new, but unlike a lot of commentators, the writer in this case is in a good place (as a retailer who's tried selling Linux-equipped systems) to observe the man-on-the-street reaction to Free operating systems as of 2003.

ChilyWily writes "Reuters is reporting that Sun Microsystems Inc. has agreed to resell and support closely held German software firm SuSE's version of the Linux operating system, the leading variant in Europe, the companies said on Friday. This agreement follows a similar one in May between Sun and Red Hat Inc. While I'm happy to see Sun's finally beginning to warm up to Linux (aka if you can't beat 'em, join 'em strategy) I wonder if this is too late for Sun?"

irabinovitch writes "Andrew Morton (Linux 2.6 kernel mantainer) and William Irwin will be speaking at SCALE 2x. You may remember last year's SCALE conference from a previous Slashdot posting ." SCALE will be taking place on November 22 of this year.

An anonymous reader writes "We're constantly hearing how the source based nature of the Gentoo distro makes better use of your hardware, but no-one seems to have really tested it. What kind of gains are involved over distros which use binary packaging? The article is here."

cameronhunt writes "This article (shameless plug alert - I'm quoted in it) presents a growing trend of integrating simulated and live training in the military - often using Linux and Open Source methods, standards, and protocols. This trend isn't just in the military, but increasingly found everywhere from games to everyday life. I'll be talking more about this at LinuxWorld."

DCowern writes "Mandrake today announced 9.2 beta 1 of their distribution. More interestingly, Mandrake has included a test version of kernel 2.6 in cooker (their development version). It's dated 27 July so it should be on all the cooker mirrors in the RPM2 directory by now. If you can't find it on your favorite mirror, it's definitely on ftp.sunet.se." Better yet, Bruha points to BitTorrent files for the 1st 2nd, and 3rd ISOs, and a link to the Mandrake 9.2 wiki, writing "Note that the beta1 installation uses the same kernel as 9.1 did, so if you had problems installing 9.1, you may want to wait for beta2 (which will use an updated kernel)."