Another country has decided that they would be better off using Open Source software instead of proprietry “binary only” software from the likes of Microsoft. South Africa has announced that as soon as possible they will be swapping to Linux and OSS in government departments. It could be a tactic to get better pricing from companies like Microsoft, but time will no doubt tell.

In other MS news, they just lost a patent case with Alcatel-Lucent regarding the playing of media files and their office suite just got some more competition from Google in the form of Google apps premium.

Lastly, ITwire, notes the irony that Steve Balmer of Microsoft has been making comments about the potential legal problems with Linux, even going so far as to suggest they may sue GNU products, while on the other hand Microsoft themselves have just lost a 1.5 billion patent lawsuit themselves.

These statements about IP violations in Linux are being made by the CEO of a company which is being sued by AT&T for sending development work overseas to avoid US patents. Lest we forget, this is the same company which was successfully sued by Eolas for infringing patents relating to browser plug-ins.

There’s more. A small company named Visto is suing Microsoft for alleged mobile email and data patent infringements; another firm VirnetX is taking action against the Redmond giant for alleged patent infringement in VPN. Remember, Timeline successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement in SQL Server.

Apparently Microsoft is of the “Do as I say, not as I do” philosophy , they don’t want their own IP taken, but seem to have little respect for anyone elses.

Godaddy has decided to move all of its 4.5 million parked domains to a Microsoft Windows server platform. The move from Linux is supposedly to maximize assets and permit rapid deployment of new technologies.

Said the quotes in the Microsoft Press Release:

“Our business is based on providing the best possible service at the lowest possible price. This strategy requires us to maximize all of our resources, particularly our technology assets,” said Warren Adelman, GoDaddy.com president and COO. “It was clear from all of the testing we’ve conducted that Microsoft provides an efficient and scalable operating platform, while also providing the performance needed to handle our extraordinary growth.”

I am sure they spent some time trying to figure out what is best for them. But I really wonder what the politics were behind this move as I have never seen anything slicker about Windows server hosting over Linux, and I have definately not seen any example where it is a less expensive deployment.

I am developing a new site for a client, and set him the task of finding his own web hosting. I gave him a list of requirements which included perl / cgi access, and therefore a Unix / Linux server operating system. He shopped around and decided GoDaddy.com had a package that would suit his needs. I agreed with the specs and he went ahead.

Several weeks have passed and last night I logged in to the server via FTP to start uploading files, and was a little surprised to see no cgi-bin. A bit of hunting around revealed that I was in the unfamiliar environment of a Windows NT server, meaning that a cgi-bin would be redundant as would the use of perl / cgi scripts for forms and a shopping cart.

Oops! Someone made a mistake that I would have to live with.

I pondered that the real problem here was not whether a Linux or Windows server would be ‘better’, but that under a Windows server environment I would need a crash course in ASP. That would slow my progress on the site significantly.

As I pouted to myself I asked my client to approach GoDaddy and see if the hosting could be moved from a Windows server to a Linux server without incurring a financial penalty. I expected no joy and prepared to research ASP, however the following happened:

• GoDaddy Tech Support sent an automated acknowledgement to my client;
• Tech Support then responded in detail on the same day;
• The advice was to log-in at their site and make the necessary changes at a “My Account” screen;
• A simple radio button and submit button enables a change in server operating systems (“ASP to CGI Hosting”) that is free, and takes 24 hours to update / complete.

I am still amazed at how flexible this approach is! I thought for sure that a host would have a list of hurdles and hoops such as payment of a change fee, cancellation of account / establishment of a new account, or some other bureaucratic approach to penalising you for being a nuisance. But the GoDaddy service proposition is a stand-out, and I think sets the standard for other hosts (and ISPs, come to think of it) in terms of putting customers first.

I’m impressed!

There are compelling reasons for Windows users to switch to (or at least evaluate) Linux, but when you know no other world than Windows or don’t want to even think about partitioning your precious hard drive, it can be one heck of a leap of faith! As a Windows user wanting to try Linux but scared of losing the world as I knew it, I found a risk-free method of trying Linux without threatening the installation of Windows safely installed on my PC.

Mandriva Move and Knoppix are two different flavours of Linux that reside entirely on a bootable LiveCD. Mandriva Move or Knoppix are not installed on your hard drive, they actually run from the CD without touching or threatening your Windows operating system in any way. This allows scaredy cats like me to experiment with Linux until my heart is content, then eject the CD and return to my Windows safety blanket just as I left it.

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Today Opera release an upgrade to the Windows and Linux version of it’s Version 8 Opera browser, labelled as 8.01. At the same time they released version 8 Opera browser for the Macintosh operating system. We don’t mind the Opera Browser to be honest, but find Firefox superior for our purposes for two reasons: (1) Firefox is free and Open Source versus Opera that is proprietary and either a purchased or advertisement supported and (2) we love the Firefox extension system. However, we certainly prefer Opera to Internet Explorer because of much tighter security and better W3C standards compliance. Some sites make a big deal that this is a security upgrade being quietly released. Frankly, all browser upgrades now include some security enhancements and unfortunately if they say that is a major cause of the release, people try to trumpet how they had flaws. Darned if they do and darned if they don’t. Recent and regular updates are the key — and of course they include security enhancements if it is a decent company.

In other browser news, AOL has released an update for Netscape 8 which fixes an IE XML problem and several bugs. You can download the free updated browser here. Microsoft also released a patch to IE in their last patch Tuesday which you should already have if you use XP, but if not you can get it via Windows Update.

Microsoft has decided to strategically take on open-source software as a true competitor according to this article at News.com. Open Source software has long been taking business from such expensive competitors and in the long run that is a good thing for the consumer and businesses.

LAMP is the combination of four things used in combination from the open-source arena:
L is for Linux,
A is for Apache Web Server,
M is for MySql, and
P is for PHP, Perl or Python.

Used in combination, or as a stack in the parlance of the web engineers, they offer a formidible set of capabilities, with much lower risk of virus propogation and much less bloat generating great speed advantages.

Microsoft’s response, according to that article, is to argue that its products are cheaper when you look to the total cost of ownership: maintenance, upgrades, support, etc. In reality, however, I think just the opposite will be true for many organizations and individuals. Further, Microsoft is going to be offering some express or lite versions of software in an effort to cut the up front costs. Don’t fall for it, it is just a hook to eventually force you to buy the more expensive versions down the road. Competition is a good thing when done fairly. So go Microsoft, compete, but compete by doing a better job.

Linuxense has issued a hacking challenge. For the first 48 hours, if it gets that far, no shell accounts will be available. The server is at: 202.88.234.250 After that time, shell accounts will be available during the remainder of the 96 hour challenge.

If you can get to root you can either:
leave your mark, or
take down the server

There are some specific rules about how to do it — be sure to read them. Should be fun.