SCO Files for Bankruptcy Protection
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

It was not a very auspicious way to begin a trial this week. Last Friday, beleaguered Unix vendor and one-time Linux wannabee the SCO Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, only one full business day before its long-awaited trail in its lawsuit against Novell over who controls the rights to the intellectual property and copyrights to Unix gets underway. While various lawsuits SCO is involved in concerning who owns Unix, who is violating licenses, and who may or may not have dumped code into Linux are very much alive, the question now is will SCO be alive to pursue them. READ MORE >

Sun and Microsoft Go All the Way with Windows
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you thought that Microsoft and Sun Microsystems were already in bed together when it comes to supporting Windows on Sun's "Galaxy" line of Opteron and Xeon servers, it turns out that the two former rivals were actually just making up after a protracted fight and had only progressed to fooling around on the couch. Last week, with the announcement that Sun is a full OEM partner for Windows, Sun and Microsoft have consummated their partnership fully. READ MORE >

SAP Plants Its Flag in Mid-Market Territory with SaaS Apps
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Application software giant SAP certainly is not the first company to bring hosted applications to market on a subscription basis to the midrange market, but the German company's top executives made it clear at the launch in New York yesterday of the forthcoming 'A1S' product line, officially called Business ByDesign, that SAP intended to dominate the mid-market much as it currently does for applications aimed at the largest enterprises in the world. The stakes are high, and SAP took great pains to explain why it has moved slowly and deliberately as it chases the mid-market with a software as a service (SaaS) approach. READ MORE >

As I See It: The Dons of Dialogue
by Victor Rozek

Back in the 400s BC, two obscure Sicilian poets, Sophron and Epicharmus, wrote what scholars believe to be a series of two-performer plays. Although their work did not survive, it acquired an ancillary importance because it inspired the work of a more notable personage, Plato. He used the theatrical format to develop what would become known as the Platonic dialogues--instructional vignettes in which Socrates and one or more interlocutors expound on the finer points of philosophy. READ MORE >