James Niccolai

(IDG News Service) — Unix developer The SCO Group has filed a lawsuit against IBM Corp. charging it with misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition and other illegal actions related to IBM's Linux business. The suit seeks at least US$1 billion in damages. IBM obtained its Unix license in 1985 from AT&T Corp., which developed the operating system, SCO said in a statement. In 1995 SCO purchased the rights and ownership of Unix and thus became the "successor in interest" to the Unix licenses doled out by AT&T to IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and others, SCO said. In its suit filed Thursday in the State Court of Utah, SCO alleges that IBM tried to destroy the economic value of Unix, particularly Unix on Intel Corp.-based servers, in order to benefit its Linux services business. It charges IBM with misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unf... (more)

Interview: MySQL rides open source wave into DBs

SAN JOSE (IDG News Service) — Since its founding in 1995, MySQL AB has managed to establish itself as the provider of the best-known open-source database on the market and hopes to dent the armor of big name vendors such as IBM, Oracle and Microsoft. With a product that lacks many features found in software from those top vendors, the Swedish company is aiming at a slice of the database market that it sees as commoditized, where companies can use a low-cost product like MySQL for everyday needs. Meta Group analyst Charlie Garry has called it "the wildcard in the competitiv... (more)