Tag archive: Unix

Computing pioneer Dennis Ritchie died this past weekend at age 70, becoming the second technology giant to pass within a week — the other, of course, being Apple's Steve Jobs. Although Jobs was unquestionably the better-known figure, Ritchie was the creator of the C programming language and one of the primary developers of the Unix operating system, both of which have had profound impacts on modern technology. Unix and C lie at the heart… Read More

The father of the C programming language and the UNIX operating system, Dennis Ritchie, died this past weekend at the age of 70 following a long illness News of Ritchie's death was publicly reported by software engineer Rob Pike, a friend and former colleague of Ritchie's, who posted the sad news to Google+. “[Ritchie] was a quiet and mostly private man, but he was also my friend, colleague, and collaborator, and the world has lost a… Read More

OpenBSD development lead Theo de Raadt says that he believes a government contracting firm was hired to write back doors into communications and encryption technology, but that those back doors, if written, did not make it into the OpenBSD code base. However, he is still encouraging contributors and users of the open source project to audit the code to look for any problems—and a few other issues have been uncovered. The controversy… Read More

Novell raised eyebrows last week when the company announced it was going private via a $2.2 billion purchase arrangement with Attachmate. However, the aspect of the deal that sent a chill through the Unix and open source community was that a consortium led by Microsoft was buying some 882 patents from Novell in a $450 million deal. While neither Microsoft nor Novell are commenting on what patents and IP are involved in that sale, Novell has… Read More

It's one thing to vow that you won't go down without a fight…and it's another to tilt at windmills. A Utah jury has found that Novell owns the copyrights to Unix. The ruling perhaps puts the final nail in the coffin of SCO's claims that Linux infringes on copyright it acquired from Novell…although SCO still maintains Linux includes proprietary code that would need to be licensed from SCO. “This… Read More

Just when you think you're out…they pull you back in. That might be what Novell is thinking today after a federal appeals court overturned a 2007 trail court decision that granted the copyright of the Unix operating system to Novell, apparently putting an end to an ages-long legal dispute between the companies…and which has threatened to engulf Linux operating systems. The reversal apparently clears the way for the—now severely… Read More