Corporate stuff

Updated at 9 a.m. PDT with comment from Apple, at 9:45 a.m. with more background on Psystar, and at 11 a.m. with details from the suit.

Apple has sued Psystar, the company that for months has been selling the Open Computer, a Mac clone.

The suit was filed July 3 in U.S. District Court in Northern California. Although the action is listed in the federal court's electronic filing system, the complaint itself is not available.

Thanks to some shoe leather on the part of our ZDNet colleagues, we have a copy of the suit, … Read more

In the ever-rotating, but never stopping merry-go-round that is Microhoogle, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday night that Microsoft has been looking for partners in recent days that would help it make a new bid for Yahoo's search business.

The newspaper, suggests though, that because Microsoft canceled a scheduled meeting with Chairman Roy Bostock on Monday, that perhaps it is not finding any willing compatriots for a Yahoo move.

The paper also reports that Microsoft has met with Carl Icahn in recent days, urging the billionaire to keep pressing his proxy fight in an effort to motivate Yahoo's … Read more

Linspire, the Linux company started by high-tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson, is ready to fully assume its place as a footnote in operating system history.

As previously noted, the company is being swallowed by Xandros, another of the smaller Linux players. The deal is expected to be officially announced Wednesday.

"The Linux business is going through some healthy and necessary consolidation, which will give resulting companies greater assets and size to deliver on larger initiatives so Linux can touch more people," Robertson said in a statement.

Linspire is best known for its Linux distribution, once known as Lindows. Robertson … Read more

Microsoft said Monday that it is adding a new licensing option, this one dubbed Select Plus and targeted largely at midsize firms.

The program's two main attractions are the fact that it is not tied to a specific term and it makes it easier for different subsidiaries of a company to take advantage of their combined purchasing power.

The additional option runs counter to the trend at Microsoft, which has been working to scale back the number of different licensing plans. The company had managed to shrink its number of options--from 107 programs in 2006 to 23 as of … Read more

Bill Gates' farewell speech to Microsoft reminded employees that the company knows how to come from behind as well as to lead.

"In some cases, those are the ones that bond you the most," Gates said, recalling some of the tougher times. "You know when IBM decides to attack you or when some legal ruling isn't quite right, and you have to do a press conference afterward."

Gates, whose voice cracked at times, thanked Microsoft's employees for all of their dedication as he marked his final day as a full-time Microsoft employee. (Note: I … Read more

One of the best parts of working on the Bill Gates transition stories was checking in with some of the pioneers of our industry.

Although the audio here was part of the reflections package that posted earlier Tuesday, I thought it was worth calling out our files of three luminaries reminiscing about Gates.

Below are the words of Ethernet creator Robert Metcalfe, Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, and VisiCalc's Dan Bricklin.

Gates 'isn't evil' Ethernet co-inventor Robert Metcalfe heavily criticized Gates in the 1990s on issues of Micrsoft's anticompetitiveness. Yet, he admits he likes Gates, even if … Read more

There's even more information now public on the lengths to which Yahoo went to create a compensation program that critics say was aimed at making a takeover bid more costly.

Yahoo had sought to keep the details from being made public, but a Delaware Chancery Court judge unsealed the information on Monday.

"I conclude that defendants have not satisfied their burden to show good cause for the continued filing of the portions of the complaint under seal," Judge William Chandler III wrote in his opinion. As a result of the ruling, the proposed class-action suit against Yahoo'… Read more

The Federal Trade Commission has given its approval to Carl Icahn's efforts to accumulate Yahoo holdings, according to a Reuters report.

In addition to overseeing actual mergers and so forth, the agency also looks at large stock purchases, the news agency noted, saying the approval was listed in an agency report that comes out several times a week.

Of course, of all the people looking to acquire pieces of Yahoo, Icahn is the one least likely to encounter antitrust scrutiny. Google has raised concerns over a Microsoft purchase, while Microsoft has questioned whether Yahoo should be allowed to do … Read more

With Microsoft's announcement of yet another patent cross-licensing deal this week, it would seem nearly everyone has a deal with Redmond.

The company has inked a lot of deals since it began its patent deal push a few years back, signing folks from Sun Microsystems to Novell to Samsung. So it's getting a lot less interesting to write up each one of these things. As the latest one crossed my desk earlier this week, I had an idea. Rather than write up a story on how another name got added to the list (Pentax), I'd focus on … Read more