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This week’s free software is not exactly a newcomer. The digital image management software Picasa was purchased by Google two years ago from its original manufacturer. Since then it is offered by Google at no charge: http://picasa.google.com. I stumbled upon Picasa when I was looking for an easy-to-use image manipulation software for my parents who have recently bought a new digital camera. Easy-to-use was the keyword, and it seems to me that software cannot get much easier than Picasa. Granted, the image manipulation features are not very powerful, nothing compared to Photoshop, Gimp, or Paintshop, but they provide all the essential hobby photographer functions, such as contrast, colour, crop, straighten, crop, and red-eye adjustment, as well as a number of filters including sharpen, B&W conversion, saturation, tint, etc. The real power of Picasa, however, lies in its image management features.

The software makes it extremely easy to create and manage large image libraries. You can easily find images, copy and send single images, and keep track of new additions. The user interface is polished and innovative; it has a definite Mac feeling. The full-screen slide-show and time-line viewing functions are great. Perhaps the best thing about Picasa are its one-button features. By clicking a single button, you can export a selection of images to a web page, send images as an email attachment (Picasa resizes them automatically), print images or order prints, create a photo collage, or create a gift CD. In addition, Picasa provides functions for exporting photos to an online blog at Google’s www.blogger.com service, or adding photos to the Picasa Web Album, likewise a Google service, which allows you to create and share photo albums.

SCO has opened a new chapter in the epic drama Unix vs. Linux. According to an American news source, the company has recently renewed a framework agreement with its legal advisors, for which it needs to pay 5 million USD to finance the cost of litigation. SCO has already paid 3,762,000 USD for its ongoing dispute with IBM in the last quarter. These figures became known in the last quarterly report. This may be music in the ears of open source supporters and Linux fans, but SCO stakeholders have reason for concern. The company had to put up with losses of 4.69 million USD in the second quarter, whereas sales dropped from 7.8 to 5.7 million USD. It also remains doubtful whether the income from SCO Unix licenses will ever pay for the lawyers, since the total sales of Unix licenses amounted to only 34,000 USD.

Is SCO fighting windmills? The Linux train is long gone and it becomes increasingly clear that SCO has missed it. Not only were the claims that Linux infringes on SCO’s copyright doubtful from the beginning, but after four years in court, the company has made little headway. Despite all the publicity that the SCO vs. Linux case has gotten, Unix license sales did not pick up. The ultimate failure of establishing the legitimacy of SCO’s claims in court could prove devastating to the company’s financial future. It seems that CEO Darl McBride is on his best way to prove that the business model “litigation instead of innovation” doesn’t work. Perhaps we should be thankful to Darl McBride for teaching the software industry this lesson.