MS removes licensing clause under pressure

Amid mounting pressure from competition regulators, Microsoft will scrap a clause in its licensing contracts with PC manufacturers. The clause prevents them from enforcing any hardware patents they have that may have implications for software, reports InfoWorld.

The so-called non-assert clause will be removed from all licensing agreement renewals for Windows from August of this year, Microsoft spokesman Tom Brookes said on Monday. "We recently reviewed this provision again after receiving comments on it from some of our OEM (original equipment manufacturer) customers and have decided to delete the provision in its entirety from the next round of OEM contracts," Brookes said.

He denied that simultaneous investigations of Microsoft by Japanese and European competition regulators led the software firm to scrap the clause. "It`s coincidental," he said. Read the story for a fascinating history of this clause.

Microsoft is expected to formally debut and demonstrate the beta version of Software Update Services (SUS) 2.0 at the Microsoft Management Summit 2004 next week, CRN.com reports.

The beta is expected to be available by the end of the month but the actual release of the code into the hands of select testers may slip until April, sources have said. The long awaited patch management server code for Windows Server 2003, expected to ship in mid-2004, has been significantly enhanced and will include support for the first time for Office, SQL Server and Exchange patches, as well as new hooks for ISVs, sources said.

IBM paid its CEO, Sam Palmisano, $6.95 million in salary and bonus in 2003, up 17% from 2002, according to a federal filing on Monday.

Forbes reports that Palmisano, who was named chairman at the start of 2003 after being promoted to CEO in 2002, was paid a salary of $1.55 million and a bonus of $5.4 million. He also received deferred compensation of $769 095 and other compensation of $181 500.

Dell has revealed its plans for enterprise virtualisation, disclosing an expanded partnership with VMware. Dell will use VMware software to enable single physical servers to act as two or more separate or "virtual" systems. The platform will be deployed on Dell two- and four-processor servers, reports InformationWeek.

As rivals such as HP, IBM, and Sun have increasingly aligned their business around adaptive - or on-demand computing strategies, Dell until now hadn`t joined in the snowballing trend.