Weekly news wrapup: Big tech loves Linux

– by Grant Gross –

Linux was on display this week in New York, with huge cartoonish booths dominating the trade show floor at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. But some reports from the show floor questioned who dominated the conference, the suits or the geeks.

Indeed, the reports coming from LinuxWorld focused on big tech companies saying how business-friendly Linux is, and how the tech firms drove the show, not the Linux community.

Even the mainstream media got in the act, with sites like ABCNews.com. hailing Linux as “serious business.” Heck, even Microsoft was at the show, gathering not-so-convert intelligence about the main thorn in Microsoft’s side. Doug Miller, the guy who was the spy, predicted that many Linux businesses will falter and interest from mainstream tech companies would wane by the end of the year. If he’s not worried, he could’ve stayed home in Redmond.

Linux: The big business’ friend

We’ll check back on that prediction in 11 months, but for now, LinuxWorld was a virtual love-fest between Linux and the tech giants, sans Microsoft. IBM pledged $300 million more toward Linux development, above and beyond the $1 billion Big Blue had already committed. Intel sent a bigwig to the show, and he asked attendees to help the company “push Linux and Open Source software to their limits.” In what Inter@ctive Week called a “clear break of the tacit Intel/Microsoft alliance,” Intel committed $24 million to the Open Source Development Lab.

Sun Microsystems unveiled Java for Linux appliances, and Hewlett-Packard announced an agreement to make Ximian Gnome the default desktop on its HP-UX. Not to be outdone, Compaq announced plans to market Linux clustering products.

Those were just some of the deals announced at LinuxWorld, Mr. Miller.

A good year for greed

For those fans of the Recording Industry Association of America (and we know there are millions of you out there), the group’s Hillary Rosen posted a 2000 wrapup this week. The folks at RIAA think they had a very good year. Don’t worry, Hillary, the fight’s just begun, and reports are already coming in about the RIAA losing favor with Congress.

New in NewsForge this week

OK, so we had a more than a dozen stories from LinuxWorld — too many to list here. Here are a few:

Hardware reporter Jeff Field caught a glimpse of the “world’s first dual DDR Athlon” and was able to perform some quick benchmark tests on the pre-release 760MP board.

News editor Tina Gasperson’s LinuxWorld journals were fun; here’s part I and part II. Writer Eric Ries’ observations from the floor also made readers laugh. Here’s part I and part II.

Tina also checked out rumors about Applied Data Systems’ sparse booth at the show, and was told that the truck didn’t show up with demos of ADS’s new sleep mode for StrongARM platforms.

Writer Julie Bresnick was fed Argus Systems Group’s marketing about its Pitbull security products and found a security expert who wondered whether the company’s tools were worth the price.

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.