Red Hat Buys JBoss--Your Move, Novell
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

There have been rumors since early this year that open source and commercial Java middleware distributor JBoss was in play, and that software giant Oracle was pursuing the company as well as Zend Technologies, which distributes a popular open source alternative to Java called PHP. JBoss was definitely in play, but the company has agreed to be acquired by commercial Linux distributor Red Hat for $350 million rather than Oracle, which oddly enough puts Novell in a funny position. READ MORE >

Novell Launches Public Build System, Previews SUSE 10.1
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

One of the things that Novell got when it acquired commercial Linux distributor SUSE in November 2003 was a content versioning system called AutoBuild, that SUSE used to create its own distribution of Linux, including all of the thousands of applications that go into a distro. When Novell took its SUSE Linux development effort to an open source, community effort, one of the things it promised to do was improve and extend AutoBuild for that project. Last week at LinuxWorld, Novell went one step better. READ MORE >

Linux Is Almost as Popular as Solaris for Oracle Databases
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Applications tend to drive platform choices when all other economic factors remain equal, but since 2000, all economic factors have not remained equal and that is why Wintel and Lintel platforms took off as RISC/Unix platforms were too pricey for some IT budgets. It is now six years since the bottom fell out of the worldwide dot-com economy and IT budgets felt the crunch, and Linux is so established that it is about ready to draw even with the darling of the dot-com era, the Solaris platform, among Oracle database customers. READ MORE >

Microsoft Gives Away Virtual Server, Supports Linux
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

When you are the wealthiest company in the world (in terms of cash on hand and ongoing quarterly profits), you have some options that other companies just don't have when it comes to dealing with competition. And last week, at the center of the LinuxWorld maelstrom of open source projects and products, Microsoft threw a few surprises at the Linux and virtualization camps when it announced that not only would it be giving away the latest iteration of its Virtual Server 2005 software for free, but that it would also provide technical support for Linux running inside virtual machines inside VS 2005. READ MORE >