According to Server Tracker as reported at CNet, Windows Servers accounted for $17.7 billion in sales over 2005, while Unix servers accounted for $17.5 billion.

Linux server sales were third at $5.3 billion.

While these figures mean that Microsoft now leads the server market, this shouldn’t be confused with server use - according to Netcraft, Linux servers on the internet still account for over 60% of use, with Windows servers at less than half that figure.

The SCO group is pushing OpenServer 6 into beta testing, amid a backdrop of steep declining revenues.

The company gained notoriety in 2003, when it launched a $5 billion lawsuit against IBM, claiming that proprietary Unix code had been built into Linux by the company.

The move originally sent shockwaves through the computing industry, and has led to the development of worms that can use an infected computer to attack SCO’s website.

In business terms, the company has lost standing within the development community upon which it had otherwise depended, and has suffered financially for it. As reported by CNET in SCO reports deeper loss, shrinking revenue:

The company reported a loss of $6.5 million, or 37 cents per share, for the quarter ended Oct. 31, compared with a year-earlier loss of $1.6 million or 12 cents per share. The Lindon, Utah, company’s revenue dropped from $24.3 million to $10.1 million over the same period.

SCO has also suffered from poor relations with a parent investor, the Canopy Group, as well as accounting problems. Even worse, in its far-reaching court case against IBM it has so far failed to materialise evidence of any actual legal infraction.

OpenServer 6 provides a last push for the company for profitability, but with so much of its user-base already alienated, it may require more than just a new software release to help the company pitch to original markets.

Students of computer scientist Daniel Bernstein in the autumn Semester were told to search for security flaws in Unix applications - a task that counted toward 60 percent of their grade for the class.

So search they did - and uncovered dozens of security holes across a number of Unix applications, ranging from “minor slipups” to “serious” security vulnerabilities.

Student James Longstreet has their list published on his website.

Whilst the exercise has obviously raised eyebrows in the open source community, Bernstein insists that students of computer science must be able to take responsibility for the code they work with - not least for detecting security problems.

However, as he originally insisted each of the 25 students discover 10 flaws, but only a total of 44 were collected, he is apparently thinking of changing the way he grades the students based on what they learned instead of by quantity.

Joe Brockmeier at ZNet comments on the long haul wait for the next Debian version - Debian Sarge - which according to the posted developer updates won’t be seeing an official release until well into 2005.

However, he does make some good points on the stability on the currently available test version, and lauds the advantages of the general availablity of such releases, as opposed to simply waiting for a full OS to be dumped on the wider community.