Stories about: OFT

Some of the most oft-repeated comments attributed to Bill Gates through the years were not uttered by Bill Gates. Take for instance "640K ought to be enough for anybody," which he supposedly said in 1981 to note that the 640K bytes of memory in IBM's PC was a significant breakthrough. Or his alleged comment that if General Motors "had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving [US]$25 cars that got 1,000 miles per gallon."

Microsoft's plan to include ODF support in its Office suite next year reflects continued challenges for the OOXML file format, as the industry moves ahead with adopting ODF and sorts out OOXML's troubles.

A British consumer advocacy group is charging that Microsoft and other major software companies engage in misleading and unfair practices related to end-user license agreements (EULAs), and has asked for an investigation by the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

The Open Document Format saw a marked uptick in use last year across the globe, according to the ODF Alliance's 2007 report.

Apple has filed an updated application with the US Patent & Trademark Office for a product activation and anti-piracy technology that would give the company the same kind of control over its software as the oft-criticized Windows Genuine Advantage platform provides its rival, Microsoft.

Officials in New York are nearing decision-making time about which XML-based office document format, ODF or OOXML, that state will use across the IT systems of its agencies as the debate over a universal file format continues.

Google's introduction of its Android device operating system and Open Handset Alliance on Monday could help create just the breed of mobile Linux platform that many enterprise IT managers have been waiting for, industry experts contend.

The head of the open-source group that will decide whether to certify Microsoft's "shared source" software licenses as open-source licenses said that more than half of Redmond's licences appear to automatically fail the group's rules.

You see it sprinkled liberally in mailing lists and forum discussions: IANAL. "I am not a lawyer." Of course, legal analysis often follows -- sometimes well informed, but often wildly incorrect or outdated. Debates about GPL enforceability are no different. Copyright law, though, has evolved to shrink the gray areas significantly.

Oracle continued to top the worldwide database market last year, propelled by companies migrating to Oracle Database running on Linux, according to figures released by two leading market research companies.

Linspire, best-known for its commercial distribution of Linux aimed at consumers, said Monday it will create a free, open-source version called Freespire.