Stories about: CNET

Open-source advocates have lashed out at SAP after a senior executive's "bold and ill-informed" criticisms.

When it comes to open source vendors and innovation, Bill Gates doesn't waver. In an interview at Microsoft's annual Professional Developers Conference (PDC) last week, Gates told CNet, "I don't think that someone who completely gives up license fees is ever going to have a substantial R&D budget and do the hard things, the things too hard to do in a university environment."

"Headlines like this...really drive me nuts," writes Sun's president and COO Jonathan Schwartz in his most recent blog. He is referring to the Forbes Magazine headline on September 1: "Sun Micro Still A Potential Threat To Linux." Not so, Schwartz thunders, using his deliberately provocative lower case 'l': "Sun is not a threat to GNU/linux. Innovation is not a threat to GNU/linux. dTrace is not a threat to linux. Nor is Solaris 10, nor Janus." What is a threat, then? The answer, according to Schwartz anyway, is: Red Hat.

Intel is to give Linux support for its Centrino chipset, the company's general manager of software and solutions, Will Swope, has told journalists at the LinuxWorld conference in New York.

An ambitious initiative in South East Asia is set to challenge Microsoft's dominance. The Japanese, Chinese and South Korean governments are to back a scheme to build an operating system explicitly intended to dislodge Windows in Far Eastern markets, according to reports in Asian newspapers on Monday.

Open source presents a viable option for developing Web services if developers are willing to work with tools that are not as easy to use as commercial products, a consultant said during a Web services conference here Tuesday.

I promise. This is not going to be another long tirade about Microsoft's latest FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) assault on free software and the GNU General Public License (GPL). There may be a short screech or two, but by the time this column appears, most of us will have gotten past Craig Mundie's May 3 speech in New York and moved on to the next RAT (Really Annoying Thing).

Both Microsoft and Red Hat have had back door security issues exposed. This is a comparison of the two incidents and how they have been resolved