Yes, there is good news in the software industry. It is Stardock. Steam is a very close second, only losing points due to the default requirement of an internet connection. But both companies avoid copy protection in a traditional sense.

What started out as a positive effort to promote Vista's many benefits - the "wow starts now" - has devolved into kind of character assassination of its predecessor, Windows XP.

Nice write-up at LinuxPlanet.com on how Linux beat out Solaris and NT in a real-world cook-off: "Quite honestly, Oracle didn't run as well on Solaris as on Linux." That statement is a shocker to me, considering I work at one of the largest online stock brokerages and they rely upon Oracle on the top-of-the-line Sun Solaris multiprocessor boxes. The final Linux configuration? VA Linux Box + RedHat Linux + Oracle + Rainbow Technologies CryptoSwift EN 1000 + Network Appliance NFS servers. A very interesting architecture indeed! This is excellent evidence that Linux is ready for prime-time. The only real disadvantage for Linux, in my opinion, is good middleware, meaning Tuxedo servers from BEA Systems (Tuxedo is arguably the dominant middleware platform) or something comparable. This is the largest deployment of Oracle on Linux yet and the story may convince some to take a fresh look at Linux.

ZDNet is reporting that Sun will attempt to one-up Linux vendors and Microsoft by eliminating licensing fees. To compete with Microsoft and Linux, Sun is expected to announce opening up the source of Solaris 8 during its unveiling. Interestingly, Ed Zander, Sun's president emphasizes that Sun will never adopt Linux as its operating system. [In my opinion, this strategy is close, but no cigar. Even if Sun were to completely open source Solaris, it would still have to grab mindshare away from Linux. Linux is simply too potent a force to stop or even slow. By the time Sun realizes this, it will be too late for them. In my mind, perhaps the only strategy that might work is if Sun folded all of the improvements of Solaris into Linux. Give to the open source community freely. Then their technology would "influence" major aspects of the Linux kernel and Sun would gain a lot of respect from the open source crowd for their efforts. It is sheer stupidity to think than any one company can compete against the entire Linux Internet community.]

Another expose on LinuxOne by BusinessWeek. (LinuxOne is planning to offer an IPO to cash in on the Open Source revolution though it is a mere shell of a company.)