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Legal news and analysis for IT professionals, including antitrust lawsuits, and patent and trademark disputes

  • ITwhirledRSS

    The voice of small business

    Posted June 29, 2004 - 2:21 pm

    Since 1943 the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has been lobbying Washington on behalf of small businesses. Topping the current list of issues: health insurance costs, availability of liability insurance, and worker's compensation costs. While technology doesn't rank among the top 10, it is certainly not off the NFIB's radar screen.

  • The compliance minefield of corporate "Chinese Walls"

    Posted June 29, 2004 - 11:58 am

    While the corporate decision-makers may want to tear down walls between the various lines of business, and their "silo-ed" data, they could be opening up a can of worms. The data, once unified, could pose legal and regulatory issues.

  • How CIOs Should Prepare for Sarbanes-Oxley

    Posted June 29, 2004 - 11:51 am

    Follow Gartner Group's four-phase approach to meet compliance requirements.

  • New Sarbanes-Oxley deadlines give big firms a break

    Posted June 29, 2004 - 10:03 am

    Mark your calendars. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) pushed back deadlines for compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. A public company with market capitalization over $75 million and on an accelerated (2004) filing deadline now has until the date of its first annual report, after 15 November 2004, to comply with the requirement to identify and test internal financial controls. Any other publicly traded company must comply with Section 404 by the date of its first annual report, after 15 April 2005.

  • A rosy look at compliance

    Posted June 20, 2004 - 3:32 pm

    Experts from storage vendors EMC, Unisys and Information Builders and research firm Cap Gemini say that compliance with new federal and global regulations is not only a necessary investment, it

  • As It HappensRSS

    Open source Solaris plan draws lukewarm response

    Posted June 9, 2004 - 7:37 pm

    Sun's announcement that Solaris will soon be an open source product met has met with a somewhat underwhelming response from the industry: open source advocates feel that Sun as a company won't truly embrace the open source philosophy, and Solaris users don't really see how the decision will affect them.

  • As It HappensRSS

    Gartner: Linux source code could still be an issue for enterprises

    Posted June 9, 2004 - 7:25 pm

    In the wake of the uncertainties caused by the SCO lawsuite, Linus Torvalds has established a stricter regimen for adding code to the Linux kernel. But a report by Gartner says that enterprises that use Linux are still potentially vulnerable to legal challenges.

  • As It HappensRSS

    China seeks to develop its own technology standards

    Posted June 1, 2004 - 12:08 pm

    The People's Republic of China is making a big splash in the high-tech world, but it isn't necessarily joining hands with international standards groups. When it comes to standards, the Chinese government seems to be taking a page from Microsoft's book: Embrace and extend.

  • As It HappensRSS

    Latest MySQL fails to quiet licensing critics

    Posted June 1, 2004 - 11:00 am

    MySQL AB has put out a new incremental release of its open source database. However, many critics say that MySQL's licensing terms still make it impossible to bundle with several prominent Linux distributions.

  • Sarbanes-Oxley compliance automation mandatory for larger companies

    Posted May 24, 2004 - 5:14 pm

    Ventana Research suggests that companies with more than 5,000 employees use a formal and fully automated system in order to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley mandates. The obvious reason is that an automated system can do a better and faster job than manual approaches. The article concludes with a look at some of the ways to automate compliance.

  • Eye on compliance: Think like a fighter pilot

    Posted May 20, 2004 - 3:18 pm

    This article draws some parallels between achieving compliance, and a being a fighter pilot. Corollaries are: Maintain project management control. Never allow a catastrophic failure. Never allow internal conflicts to interfere with your mission. Never deplete resources beyond critical levels. Never be caught unprepared.

  • As It HappensRSS

    SCO is changing the industry, but not slowing Linux

    Posted May 18, 2004 - 10:40 am

    In the year since the SCO Group left the Linux business and began its legal cases, major industry players have been more reluctant to talk about their use of Linux. But the numbers show that Linux adoption hasn't slowed.

  • Lawmaker: Security clearance delays harm homeland security

    Posted May 10, 2004 - 9:07 am

    The House Government Reform Committee has sent Defense Secretary Rumsfeld a warning about the backlog of government workers waiting for security clearance. The Committee has also recommended some changes to alleviate the situation, among them new IT iniatives that are as yet unnamed.

  • As It HappensRSS

    Linux seller licenses Windows Media technology

    Posted May 6, 2004 - 5:33 pm

    Is the ideological age of open source ending? Japanese Linux vendor TurboLinux has licensed Windows Media codecs from Microsoft for upcoming versions of its software. The company cited the prevalence of Windows Media formats in Japan as the basis of its decision.

  • As It HappensRSS

    French Linux users: Don't pirate Microsoft

    Posted May 6, 2004 - 4:35 pm

    A French Linux users group is urging a crackdown on piracy of Microsoft products, and wants labeling to reveal how much the cost of bundled OSes and office suites add to the price of a computing. Read on to find out how these moves might help Linux adoption.

  • As It HappensRSS

    Will open source prevent your company from being acquired?

    Posted May 4, 2004 - 11:22 am

    You may have built much of the value of your company on open source software - but when it comes time for an investment group to buy you out, they may be scared off by the open code in your portfolio. This article examines the issue, and takes a look at ways investors can educate themselves and companies can protect their own value.

  • As It HappensRSS

    Red Hat seeks to reawaken SCO case

    Posted April 26, 2004 - 9:30 pm

    Red Hat is continuing its aggressive moves against the SCO Group. The Linux distributor is seeking a declaration that it isn't violating SCO's copyrights or trade secrets. The suit was stayed pending results of the SCO-IBM battled, but Red Hat wants to move forward.

  • Spyware eludes easy answers

    Posted April 26, 2004 - 9:20 am

    A top US consumer protection official speaking at the Federal Trade Commission says that regulators and the industry are not currently ready to take on the issue of the software that tracks web-surfing.

  • What is a small business?

    Posted April 10, 2004 - 3:14 pm

    The federal government

  • As It HappensRSS

    The GPL: A simple guide

    Posted April 7, 2004 - 8:15 pm

    The GPL and open source licenses like it are the bedrock of the open source movement, but many in the business world still don't fully trust or understand them. This article, written by researcher Robin Bloor, breaks it down into terms that are meaningful to the average executive.

  • ITwhirledRSS

    If they develop it, will it work? Exploring Gmail

    Posted April 7, 2004 - 10:37 am

    Google Inc.'s free e-mail service, Gmail, has received a huge amount of interest in the past week. It seems safe to assume that within a few days of the service going live, it will have several million people apply for an account. One gigabyte multiplied by several million could represent the world's largest-ever storage order. It could also represent the world's single largest privacy problem due to Google's business model where content-related ads will pop up as you read your incoming mail.

  • ITwhirledRSS

    SCO Linux licensee has second thoughts on deal

    Posted March 26, 2004 - 10:09 am

    Less than one month after becoming the first publicly announced purchaser of The SCO Group Inc.'s controversial intellectual property license for Linux, Houston-based Internet service provider Everyones Internet Ltd. is reconsidering the benefits of doing business with the Linux community's enemy number one.

  • The Sarbanes-Oxley act is causing a quantum leap in the storage industry

    Posted March 24, 2004 - 9:38 pm

    Politicians bearing new regulations have been a boon for the storage industry. The net effect is to double the number of copies of every document that companies must keep, and to double the length of time for which they are kept. As a result, an average firm's storage needs will more than double annually.

  • As It HappensRSS

    The both-source way to open source revenues

    Posted March 19, 2004 - 11:12 am

    How can for-profit companies make money from open source but still be good community citizens? At the Open Source Business Conference, major open source players discussed a "both-source" model, in which a mix of open and proprietary licenses are offered, sometimes in the same product suite.

  • As It HappensRSS

    MySQL addresses open source license problem

    Posted March 13, 2004 - 4:25 pm

    The open source MySQL database recently changed its licensing terms in such a way that made it no longer compatible with PHP, an open source scripting language that is commonly used in conjunction with MySQL. But MySQL has now amended its license again to fix the problem.

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