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Weekly news wrapup: Caldera, 'world's largest Linux company,' says GPL is weak

By JT Smith on May 13, 2001 (8:00:00 AM)

- By Grant Gross -
Caldera CEO Ransom Love shook up the Open Source community this week with a couple of pronouncements. What made the most news: Love's partial agreement with Microsoft executive Craig Mundie, who ripped into the supposed evils of the GNU General Public License a couple of weeks ago.

Love chatted up several technology journalists this week, and he told them that the GPL was Open Source's "weakest point" and hinted that Caldera was working on a BSD-type of license. Caldera also completed its acquisition of pieces of Unix company Santa Cruz Operation and then announced that it has become the world's largest Linux company.

Love also talked to NewsForge's Jack Bryar this week about a wide-ranging list of topics, from Caldera's "world's largest" claim to the GPL to Caldera's place in the Open Source community.

Red Hat doesn't like Netscape

But this isn't the Caldera weekly news wrapup. Other news broke out, too. Linux distributor Red Hat announced this week it would dump Netscape for the Mozilla browser once Mozilla reaches the 1.0 version (maybe we should say if Mozilla ever reaches the 1.0 version). For the record, we should mention that the long-awaited browser did announce its 0.9 version this week.

Torvalds doesn't like software subscriptions

Linux father Linus Torvalds punched back at Microsoft this week after the Mundie speech. Torvalds criticized software subscription schemes, like Microsoft's software renting plan announced this week. Torvalds said software subscriptions are just plain bad for customers, although we all know, of course, that Microsoft would never do something to prop up its bottom line at the expense of consumers. (Note sarcasm.)

Also worth reading, if you didn't get enough of the Open Source community's response to Mundie last week, is Torvalds' comments in an interview with ZD Net.

New in NewsForge

You saw these stories first in NewsForge this week:

News editor Dan Berkes broke the news that a company called CodeWeavers is releasing a program that will allow Linux Web browsers to run Windows plug-ins such as Quicktime and Shockwave.
We reported on IP.com and The Foresight Institute's launch of a "defensive" intellectual property database for programmers who don't want to patent their work at PriorArt.org. However, Free Software leader Richard Stallman argued that the Web site won't solve the problem of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issuing patents for very minor creations.
Editor-in-chief Robin Miller reported on the Open Source Initiative board's vote to grant the OSI Certification Mark to two licenses, the Apple Public Source License, version 1.2, and IBM's Common Public License, version 0.5.

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