           
Why Linux?
Glad you asked! Linux
is commonly known as a server operating system or an operating system
for advanced users. Can a non-pro use it, and why should he or she do
so?
While Linux did begin
its life as a server operating system and an
operating system for advanced users, Linux has made significant progress
in a most key area: its graphical user interface.
Linux now has a very
easy to use interface for both the Windows and Mac crowd. The desktop
looks, acts and feels incredibly familiar, as do applications such word
processors, spreadsheets and photo editors.
Here are a few reasons
to use Linux:
FUNCTIONALITY
Linux comes with many tools you normally must buy separately if you run
Windows or Mac, including a full featured office suite (amazingly similar
to Microsoft Office) and a complete software development kit that is comparable
to Visual C++.
STABILITY
Linux is a very stable operating system. Linux systems don't crash often,
and don't need to be rebooted for anything other than upgrading the operating
system itself.
(ALMOST) NO VIRUSES
Linux is not prone to viruses. Because of how Linux handles data, a virus
cannot overwrite system files or append itself to applications unless
you are working as the "root" user. Linux has no registry or
DLL files, so Windows viruses have no effect on Linux at all.
PRICE
Linux is available for download for free. You have the option of buying
Linux CD sets at a very low price. But the two or three core disks, with
thousands of applications and tools, are there for the taking. And these
are "crippled" versions. They have the same files as the CDs
in the store box.
OPEN SOURCE
Linux is completely Open Source, meaning programmers around the world
have access to its "source code", which is code programmers
can read and modify. While this may not affect you as an end user directly,
it affects you indirectly because this means that Linux and its tools
and apps are under continuous, shared development. And updates to the
operating system and all the other software is a snap.
INDEPENDENCE
If the maintainers of traditional proprietary software (such as Windows
or Microsoft Office) stop working on it, or choose to ignore your problems,
you're on your own. Nobody can help you. DOS users remember a great program
called Q&A. Once the company that developed Q&A went out of business,
another company bought this marvelous app and then let it die. If someone
stops maintaining a Linux software application, someone steps in and continues
the work. The software is not "company owned" and controlled,
and so won't become a Q&A.
SPEED of development
Due to the its open source nature, many programmers from all around the
world work on Linux, causing it to develop and mature much faster than
other software.
FLEXIBILITY
If you need a feature in an application (or the operating system itself),
you don't need to turn to the maker of the application to get it in -
any
programmer can do it for you!
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Linux
News and Notes
One hundred days after filing
its lawsuit against IBM, the SCO Group Inc.
says it's prepared Friday to take action against IBM for allegedly violating
its Unix licensing contract by allegedly feeding Unix source code to the
Linux community. If SCO Group can enforce its case against IBM-SCO says
it has the right to revoke all AIX licenses-it may then turn its attention
to other areas of the Linux market, including leading Linux distributor
Red Hat Inc.
SCO Group's claims are potentially a huge threat to the IT industry, says
Michael Collins, a technology lawyer with firm Beirne Maynard & Parson
LLP.
And Brian Ferguson, a partner with McDermott, Will & Emery, says SCO
Group wants "to be able to wave around a new license from IBM."
When SCO Group on March 7 filed
its $1 billion lawsuit against IBM, alleging
that IBM improperly shared SCO Group's proprietary Unix technology with
Linux developers, SCO Group also sent a letter to IBM giving the company
100 days to resolve the matter. June 13 is the end of that period. SCO
Group
says it has the right to cancel IBM's rights to Unix System V if an arrangement
isn't reached.
It would be within SCO Group's
rights to order every copy of AIX "destroyed," says Darl McBride,
SCO Group's president and CEO. McBride
acknowledges the situation isn't likely to come to that. In fact, he says,
he'll leave different scenarios open to IBM. The most likely outcome,
he says, is license payments.
AIX of course couldn't be somehow
whisked off computers because of the
conflict. "If you get your driver's license revoked, that doesn't
mean you can't drive, but you're skating on thin ice. The morning of June
14, you'll have all of these companies driving without a license,"
McBride says.
IBM execs say SCO Group is
blowing smoke about revoking the company's Unix license, and they're unlikely
to take any action before Friday's deadline.
IBM's rights to Unix are "irrevocable and perpetual," a spokeswoman
says.
The company isn't saying much more about the case. In a written response
to
the Utah district court where the suit was filed, IBM claims it's "fully
paid up" regarding its license and hasn't "misappropriated or
misused" the Unix source code.
It's a David-and-Goliath battle,
Collins says. "David's got some pretty good
weapons, a pretty accurate slingshot, but there's a lot of other work
that David also has to do."
David, in this case, thinks
it's done enough work to bring down IBM. It has
identified the lines of code it says were copied from Unix to the Linux
kernel. Although this code has been shown to a handful of analysts, SCO
hasn't gone public, it says, in order to protect its intellectual property.
McBride says the existence
of Unix source code in the Linux kernel puts Red
Hat and other Linux distributors in the "hot seat." SCO Group
is "focused on
vendors that we have contracts with, because those are the easiest"
to hold
accountable, he says. A Red Hat spokeswoman says her company can't comment
on the situation because Red Hat hasn't been contacted by SCO Group, nor
has it been shown the code in question.
SCO Group's goal isn't to "chase
every company that's selling Linux," McBride says. The goal is to
get its fair share of revenue from its intellectual property.
It nonetheless would "behoove"
Red Hat and companies that sell Linux-based
products to sign SCO Group's nondisclosure agreement and "do the
comparison," Collins says. "Red Hat, for example, doesn't want
to be charged with willful copyright infringement. Now that SCO Group
has put them on notice, it would be prudent for [Red Hat] to have their
IP lawyers and
programmers take a look at this."
Perhaps surprisingly, Linux
player Sun Microsystems is golden in SCO's eyes. "The company that
has the best standing with us is a company that's paid a lot of money
to us over the years, and that's Sun Microsystems," McBride says.
In the mid-1990s, Sun paid
more than $100 million to Novell for a Unix
royalty buyout and the ability to redistribute the Unix source code in
derivative works, he says. Novell owned the rights to Unix at the time.
"Sun
wanted to control their destiny related to derivative works," McBride
says,
while IBM paid $10 million to buy the rights to an older Unix. It allegedly
didn't pay for the rights to bypass the owner of Unix on derivative works.
"Think of [Unix] System
V as the trunk of a tree, with flavors such as AIX,
Solaris, and HP-UX as branches," McBride says. Based on this model,
there
are two types of violations SCO Group is seeing today. The first is
line-by-line code copying right into Linux, right down to the comment
code.
SCO Group has found the same comments in both Unix and Linux in some cases,
he claims. The second violation relates to the Unix flavors. "We're
finding code showing up in Linux that is coming from these branches,"
he says. "That is a straight-out violation of our contracts."
The whole controversy began
in December, when the company found that some of its Dynamic Link Libraries
were being copied into Linux, McBride says. SCO Group's response was to
put together a licensing program to protect its intellectual property.
This new license would extend a company's rights to the Unix code base,
which has developed over time. Essentially, the new licensing program
gives customers rights to versions through System V.
SCO Group distributed a proposal
for this Unix licensing program to a number of vendors, including IBM,
McBride says. For the most part, feedback was positive or neutral, he
says. "The only company that had a violent reaction was IBM."
According to McBride, IBM said that if the license plan wasn't dropped,
IBM wouldn't do business with SCO and would encourage others to do the
same. He says that after LinuxWorld in January, IBM followed through on
its threats and stopped doing business with SCO Group.
This made SCO suspicious, so
it began looking into IBM's use of Unix,
McBride says. "It was disconcerting as to why IBM was so concerned
about
this," he says. So SCO started to do some digging into how IBM was
using the intellectual property that they were licensing from SCO Group.
McBride says it was like "pulling on a piece of string. This whole
thing keeps
unraveling, right down to the source code. We found significant problems
with IBM, which led to the March lawsuit."
McBride says he and his company
have become targets of both physical and
virtual aggression. A man allegedly called his office to challenge him
to a
fistfight, he says. When McBride's secretary called back to get time and
place, and the guy said he was just kidding. Someone also reportedly
accessed an SCO Group conference call claiming to be Gartner analyst George
Weiss, then said disparaging things about SCO Group. Soon after, the real
George Weiss checked in to say it wasn't him. SCO has also been the target
of denial-of-service attacks, McBride says.
The Linux business model was
bound to change, and some people are having a hard time accepting this,
he says. "The whole concept of getting something for nothing just
doesn't hold up," he says. "The notion that you're going to
run a Fortune 1,000 company on something that in the end could be more
like Napster than an enterprise (news - web sites) software system, it's
a big question mark."
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