In the aftermath of IBM’s announcement of intent to buy ILOG, it would be all too easy for us to reflect back on a conversation with ILOG’s chief executive Pierre Haren last winter at its annual user conference covering survival in the software industry.

Haren’s description of the typical life of a software vendor is that first you get a handful of successful references, then replicate to at least 20 to 30 successful accounts, then you start thinking about what your company wants to do when it grows up. Haren’s implicit message was: eat or be eaten.

The next version Debian has come a step closer to completion with the freezing of the current testing distribution version codename Lenny. This will form the basis of Debian 5.0, expected in September.

Microsoft is working on a project, codenamed Midori, to create an “internet-centric” operating system to replace Windows.

Analysis If you listen very carefully, you'll hear a new beat coming from the drums in Microsoft's marketing department these days.

Microsoft settled a patent lawsuit with Vertical Computer Systems Inc (VCS) late last week.

Oracle has turned up the heat in its already torrid legal attack on SAP, accusing high-ranking executives throughout the German company of knowingly approving a program that illegally downloaded five terabytes worth of Oracle software and support materials.

Business Objects users have been left confused and angry after a bungled attempt to merge their product support with a system serving SAP customers.

Microsoft has quietly released to manufacturing a tweaked version of Windows XP to run on the One Laptop Per Child XO computer.

SAP today rejected claims by British customers that its new support pricing scheme will unfairly slap small and medium-sized businesses with extra costs for services they won't use.

Microsoft has dismissed analyst house Forrester Research's report on slow corporate adoption of Windows Vista as sensationalist and schizophrenic.

The UK SAP user group today called on the German software giant's customers to scrutinise plans to force them to cough up almost a third more for their contract.

Microsoft has traded its exclusive deal to plaster Facebook with banner advertising for the right to pump Google-style contextual search ads on the profit-lite website.

When the product sucks but you can't bring yourself to admit the horrible truth, what's the next logical step? Blame the message, the messenger or the recipient of the message. Simple.

The man who led Microsoft’s recent failed bid to buy Yahoo! is leaving the software giant after more than 15 years with the company.

OSCON Billionaire, cosmonaut and founder of the fast-growing Ubuntu Linux distro Mark Shuttleworth dreams impossible dreams.

No, not a return to the stars. He believes in something that's far harder for mortal open source engineers to achieve.

OSCON: Exclusive Canonical has been in talks with Sun Microsystems and SpringSource to support one of their open source Java application server stacks in the Ubuntu core, to increase Ubuntu's enterprise adoption.

OSCON Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, next week plans a major update to its massive code hosting and project management platform Launchpad.

OSCON Once it was the desktop, now mobile phones and embedded devices represent the future of Linux, according to open source fans.

Seattle firm Implicit Networks is suing Adobe, IBM, Oracle and SAP for patent infringements.

Facebook's decision to release under open source a large-scale data management project similar to - and inspired by - Google's BigTable has received backing from an unusual quarter: Microsoft.

The Business Software Alliance claimed yesterday that software piracy in the US is costing the industry $11.4bn and local government $1.7bn in lost taxes.

When Microsoft's top brass tell people the company's still working on getting its online services right, they ain't kidding.

The Department of Health has named Capita as its preferred supplier for the NHS website - NHS Choices.

A US district court judge yesterday ordered SCO to pay Novell $2.5m for unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty and conversion.

SAP is forcing users to migrate to its top level support program, and charging them an additional 5 per cent of their license maintenance fees a year for the privilege.

Fastscale is bringing its unique brand of software shrinking to Windows Server.

Members of Apple's brand-new App Store have cleaned up their act after accusations of unprofessionalism and queue jumping to get their software noticed by iPhone users.

Freetards clambering to get their hands on the latest candidate release of MySQL 5.1 were yesterday locked out of Sun Microsystems' download servers for several hours.

Citrix Systems is developing a set of Open Virtual Machine (OVM) format tools that will let virtualized applications jump across different hypervisors.

Microsoft has tagged schoolkids as the UK's worst culprits for illegally downloading files from the net.

Europe's highest court could strengthen the rights of database creators to protect their work. One of the European Court of Justice's Advocates General has issued an opinion backing a German University's right to stop others using information it compiled.

Exclusive Salesforce.com is chucking out the last of it Sun Microsystems' Sun Fire servers this week, ending one of Sun's most bragged about relationships.

An open source software project, originally propped up by European Commission (EC) funds, has released an alpha version of its quality control program, Alitheia Core.

Microsoft, it seems, is reaping the benefits of years spent patching Windows online, beating online update services from newer - and sexier - rivals.

The world of open source gets the equivalent of an Oscar awards ceremony later this month when code-host SourceForge announces the winners of its second-annual vote on the community's top projects.

And this year SourceForge is loosening the bow tie and letting down the hair, by inviting nominations for projects that could land you in hot water.

The International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) is refusing to discuss a leaked paper that suggests it has already rejected appeals against the ratification of Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an international standard.