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The publication in the Harvard Business Review of an article by Nicholas Carr titled "IT Doesn't Matter" raised much controversy. Carr's fundamental argument is that every widely used business technology conferred significant strategic advantage on early adopters but lost that potency as it matured....

Novell has announced it will indemnify users of its newly acquired SuSE Linux software systems. Following the lead of Hewlett-Packard, which was praised for its savvy in being the first Linux vendor to indemnify customers in the face of SCO's source-code claims last September, Novell said enterprise...

Mixing two of the hottest tech trends -- notebook computers and the Linux operating system -- Taiwanese computer maker EliteGroup and San Diego, California-based Lindows have announced the deployment of more than 300,000 Linux-based laptops to the U.S. market. The $700 machines -- preloaded with Lin...

A few years ago, the only IT system I wasn't responsible for at a multimillion-dollar company consisted of a SCO server with an ancient accounting application maintained by the remaining representative of the company that had originally sold it. At the time, I thought old Vitki (not his real name) w...

The people who run Toronto's municipal IT infrastructure have managed to ground themselves so securely between rocks and hard places that they're about to charge the taxpayer another hundred million or so to bail them out. It really is too bad, but Toronto's not exactly beloved by the rest of the co...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future of computing -- and that, of course, has to include Microsoft's future. Microsoft's own vision of its future seems clear. The company sees a transition to a secure Windows OS environment, continuing strength in Office and server applications, and deve...

The word "pusillanimous" is normally used to label actions judged to reflect a lack of moral courage on the part of the person taking the action. Thus people who can be rather easily pressured to undertake actions contrary to their own beliefs are often said to be pusillanimous, cowardly or weak-spi...

Didn't Netscape lose the browser war? Mozilla, the technology that lies underneath Netscape products and a slew of its own products, just gets better and better. Netscape is effectively dead, but Mozilla keeps on keeping on. In 2010 we'll look back and say 2003 was the year that Mozilla really began...

Dear Mr. McBride: I guess push is coming to shove, huh? You finally got a court to order release of the AT&T code, so things are coming together a bit on that end. It's an important legal step, and one I'm sure you'll be glad to get over with, despite the crowing going on among those who see it ...

Linux is poised to claim a major victory: the bourgeoning market for robot software. The battle is not over yet, but if developments in Japan are any indication of what the future will bring, Linux will rule the world of robots. The stakes are high. Carmaker Honda believes that robots will become th...

Wind River, one of the world's top embedded systems suppliers, has joined two key Linux proponent groups and solidified its intention to coexist rather than compete with the open-source operating system. As a supporter of Unix and its own proprietary VxWorks embedded operating system, Wind River sai...

Several computers supporting the 10-year-old Linux development project Debian were compromised by hackers late last week, causing a delay in the release of the latest distribution of the operating system and disrupting services for the project's 1,100-plus developers. Leaders of the open-source soft...

Mohandas Gandhi, a master of the tactics of civil disobedience against civilized foes, once had this to say about the stages of a successful campaign for an idea whose time has come: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." Advocates of open-source software...

Last week, Novell announced its purchase of SuSE for $210 million -- $50 million of it direct from an IBM investment in newly issued convertible preferred stock. This deal raises two difficult questions: What's Novell up to, and why, if the people behind SuSE wanted to cash out, didn't they do an IP...

The desktop may be the final frontier for Linux, but one company is using a combination of Windows interface strategy, Wal-Mart sales and a wide selection of software to try to match the inroads Linux has made in the corporate datacenter. That company is Lindows.com. There was much open-source hoop...