IT 2003: The news in review

[Renew Deal]

This past year saw legal controversy, attempted hostile takeovers worms, and a handful of emerging technologies

By InfoWorld staff December 22, 2003

The economy grabbed a lot of headlines in 2003, but competing for space in the IT arena were lawsuits, acquisitions, security issues, and technology upgrades.

SCO vs. IBM, IT titans’ on-demand initiatives, Oracle’s attempt to buy PeopleSoft, viruses and spam, compliance, and Wi-Fi dominated the news, which also included the nascent life of utility computing, the emergence of 64-bit computing, and vendor smokescreens around real time.

Perhaps the year’s most controversial story was the landmark copyright lawsuit SCO filed against IBM. The suit claimed Big Blue violated its contract with SCO by including derivative works from SCO’s System V OS into its products. In an attempt to put the fear of God into anyone who produces Linux-based products, the company also claimed that the GNU GPL (General Public License) is invalid and that Linux violates the company’s Unix copyrights. If the lawsuit remains in court, it may not be resolved for years; industry observers, however, speculate that the matter will be settled out of court in 2004.

Despite the lawsuit, corporate and third-party developers did not steer clear of Linux development in 2003. On the contrary, Linux made measurable inroads into Microsoft’s market share on the server side. On the desktop side, Novell acquired SuSE Linux and Ximian Software, a systems-management software vendor.
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http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/12/22/50NNreview_1.html

[dfong63]

1. and Clark saying "let them do the software in India"