Sun Microsystems today announced the members of their Executive Committee which will oversee the Java Community Process (JCP) program, the community-based process for developing Java technology specifications, reference implementations and associated compatibility test suites. These ECs will serve in full capacity in guiding the JCP program until the first general EC election. Of particular note is the inclusion of various Open Source leaders, including Caldera and The Apache Software Foundation.

chromatic returns with a book tuned for anyone whose answer to heterogeneous networks is SAMBA, and wants 500 pages of practical advice (and answers to common problems) distilled from the fountain of SAMBA knowlege.

Our original interview with two SCO Presidents somehow turned into responses from just one, returned long after they were promised. Anyway, here are answers to your questions about SCO from David McCrabb, President of their Server Division.

On Monday, April 17th, we requested questions for Richard M. Stallman. Here, at last, are his answers. Warning: The interview below contains mature concepts and strong opinions. It may not be suitable reading for easily-angered readers whose views conflict with Mr. Stallman's.

TreeRat sent us a Salon story by Simson Garfinkle about legit companies and spam. Its an interesting piece: it talks mostly about Caldera, but mentions several other offenders. The Spam in my INBOX is somewhere aroung 20-30 a day (mind you most of it is press releases from PR firm mailing lists, and random lists that "helpful" slashdot readers subscribed me to). Thank god for filters. But this is a problem we don't think as much about -- normally we think of spammers as slimeballs in basement sending out a hundred thousand emails advertising 'printer toner sale' or 'hot naked sluts want you' featuring 900 numbers and typos, not legitimate businesses.

From a hundred feet up, the action on the floor at FOSE would look like that of any technical tradeshow. Eager vendors try to get their names into the heads of buyers, and the aisles are jammed with swag-toting prospects. The show floor has plenty of the power suits and eager vendors that any other shows do, but also more than a scattering of military insignia, camouflage and Marine crew cuts. And for the first time, just a quick stroll from the 50,000 square foot Microsoft display, this year's FOSE floor also featured Linux vendors and a dedicated Linux pavilion. (Read more.)

Carnage4Life writes: "ZDNet has an article on Ransom Love's (Caldera CEO) speech at the Comdex/Spring 2000-Linux Business Expo. The high points of his speech include his fears that the Linux revolution may be silencing lots of others by its success; [the contention that] proprietary software isn't all bad (Sun's Star Office is his example); Linux is as much a proprietary system as any other since the GPL forces one to adhere to it's rules just as proprietary licenses do; a brief description of the road map of Caldera's Linux development in the future; and finally a few comments on what he felt was the too-strict demand by some open source licenses that all code should be opened." Some good points, but mainly a lot of unsurprising viewpoints considering Caldera's outsider position in the actual Linux Community.

Fred Palmer noted that Caldera has officially begun trading their stock. The stock is currently trading several points above where they opened: congrats to everyone who got in on this one, but especially to the guys at Caldera. Now lets see what they do with it ... Linsight has a good summary if you're interested.

kerskine writes,"It seems that there's strong demand for Caldera's upcoming IPO CNET reported that they've raised their strike price to $10-$12. This news is in sharp contrast to more negative appraisals such as this article from Forbes.com." I only know of a small number of Linux Developers who got "The Letter" from Caldera on their IPO. Gotta wonder about that.

t-money writes, "The Helix Code Web site went live this morning. They have a pre-release of their Helix GNOME desktop, which includes the latest development version of GNOME (gnome-core 1.1.5). " Thanks to all the people who wrote in about the Helix Code launch - I've got also got some information from Nat Friedman of Helixcode about what they are doing, so read more. And can I say Wow. This looks cool.

Eric Feldman writes, "Novell will finally be showing its NDS product running natively on Linux. Red Hat is listed as a vendor who will be at the Brainshare conference in March, and Caldera was there last year. The article also talks about some open-source license problems Novell has been having, as well as the possibility of some parts of Groupwise being released under Novell's Open Source License. The next version of Groupwise (code named BulletProof) is supposed to be announced at Brainshare also. It will be XML-based and tightly integrated with the directory."

A reader writes, "Caldera has priced its IPO. See here in Wideopen for what little there is to read about it. " Summary: $7-9 expected range of price, while selling 5 million shares. Update: 02/26 01:31 by R : Slightly deeper story at News.com.

Soko writes "Linux-Mandrake has joined SUSE, Red Hat and Caldera in porting their distribution to Alpha and SPARC architectures. The announcement was originally found on freshmeat and talks about getting help from Alpha Processors Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. MandrakeSoft has ported its latest popular version of the Linux operating system, Linux-Mandrake 7.0, to the above processors. "

Mirele writes "The Salt Lake Tribune reports in an article today that a lot of formerly secret documents that Microsoft had submitted in the now-settled Caldera case have been unsealed. These documents include a deposition by a former Microsoftie that indicated she had destroyed e-mail correspondence when urged to do so by her boss. They also show Microsoft's inclination to overdesignate documents as secret. The judge unsealed all but about 30 documents. "

We asked Jim Hall a bunch of questions Monday. Today we get answers about the reason for and future of FreeDOS, along with a sprinkling of advice for FreeDOS users and developers. Thanks, Jim, for taking the time to do this. (Guys like you, who work on "lower profile" open source projects, don't get nearly as much recognition as you deserve.) Click below for the complete interview.

Caldera Systems, who's currently IPO Bound also has created one of the most popular distributions for use in the business environment. Click below to read more about how to use Caldera OpenLinux - and thanks to Terry Collings for the review.

This week, Michael Cowpland, CEO of Corel, gives CEO-ish answers to your questions. There was one important question that didn't get asked because, sadly, it wasn't moderated high enough by the Tuesday noon (EST) cutoff time to be included in the group of questions we mailed to Corel. But as you can see, other Slashdot readers helped answer it anyway, and the other questions and answers shed a lot of light on Corel's current and future Linux plans, which is the main thing we're interested in, right? (More below.)

An anonymous reader pointed us to a CNet article that talks about Turbo Linux getting $50M in capital from a variety of investors including Dell, Compaq and others. Also talks about Caldera and Linuxcare and the whole Linux Market right now.

Well we figured it was either Caldera or LinuxCare, but I've seen the Press Release: The latest Linux Company to file for an initial public offering is Caldera Systems. (btw they need to win an award for 'Linux company CEO with name most likely to be confused with an action hero' for Ransom Love) No word on when or shares or anything, but I'm sure all will trickle out in due time. The rumors are raging that Linuxcare is due to file their S1 before the end of the week.

Hallow writes "While terms of the agreement remain confidential, according to a C:Net story, Caldera and Microsoft have settled out of court with Microsoft making a one-time only payment of about $150 million USD. This is much lower than the 1.6 billion in damages Caldera was seeking." Well, yes. Personally, I don't think Microsoft likes their chances in court these days.