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Leading itemsVersion 2.0 of Troll Tech's Qt library will be released as open source. You can read their announcement for more information, including quotes from Eric Raymond, Linus Torvalds, and others endorsing the new license. What this means, in theory, is that the divisive desktop wars can end. KDE can be welcomed back into the free software fold, and we can all get on with making Linux better. Real life, of course, is a bit more complicated, and there are a couple of issues here that merit some thought. One is that not everybody is happy with Troll's new license (see the "letters to the editor" section this week for an example). The license (the "QPL") looks something like the Mozilla license, but different. They allow the distribution of modified sources, but only in the form of a pristine source set accompanied by a patch file. Troll Tech may incorporate patches into future versions of their "Professional Edition" of Qt if they so choose. Straight and modified binaries may be distributed, but source must be available and redistribution can not be restricted. In other words, it is not the GPL, but it is probably good enough. It does mean that linking KDE (which is GPL'd) with Qt is probably still legally questionable, but that is something the KDE people can easily fix if they want by tweaking their own license. The requirement to distribute as clean source and separate patches should not be a problem for most; Red Hat's and Debian's packaging systems already work that way anyway. So it appears that the KDE problem is truly fixed. So what is the other issue? Morale among some GNOME developers has dropped considerably. Some are saying that there is no longer any reason to pursue GNOME development and are dropping out. See, as an example, this message posted to the GNOME mailing list today. GNOME, which yesterday was the great Linux desktop hope, today looks like just the number two development in this field. We at LWN strongly encourage the GNOME developers to persevere. While the KDE problems certainly added some wind to GNOME's sails, it was never the real reason for the GNOME development. KDE, for all that it is clearly the best desktop that Linux has, looks an awful lot like so many other systems out there. GNOME was founded with a vision of doing things differently: tighter integration of applications through the CORBA bus, a more artistic and experimental look, choice of window managers, no dependence on any one company, etc. The fact that KDE will now sprout up on a lot more desktops does not change the value of that vision. The competition between the two desktop projects has also clearly helped to push both forward. GNOME is going to have to rethink its plans at this point. It would be nice to see more cooperation between GNOME and KDE, especially on complex applications like office suites. It might even be worthwhile to look at what a merger of the two projects would involve. But GNOME has not lost its reason to exist just because it now must share the free software high moral ground. GNOME has produced a lot of good software in a short time; we're looking forward to seeing what they come up with next.
Editor's update: we have gotten much feedback saying that the GNOME developers are not so demoralized as indicated here. It may well be that we have misinterpreted what we saw in the mailing lists. We still think that GNOME needs to continue... Do you really know what is lurking on your Linux system? Access to source code does a lot to build confidence in the integrity of the applications we are running on our systems. Since the source is open, we know that there are no back doors or other nasties in there. Right? Bruce Perens is not so sure, and he has written this feature article to explain why. Stable kernel 2.0.36 has been released at long last. This version of the 2.0 kernel, like the others over the past year, is largely a result of Alan Cox's efforts. One would hope that this would be the last of the 2.0 releases, but Alan has already been seen to murmur about a 2.0.37...
LWN is running off a new server with much better network connectivity; the bandwidth difficulties of recent times should be solved for a while. We are now hosted at NeTrack in, of course, Boulder, Colorado. Hopefully reading LWN will be a less tiresome process; the writing may not be any better, but at least you need not wait so long for it. Thursday, November 26, is Thanksgiving in the U.S. LWN will be taking the holiday off, so there will be no weekly newsletter published next week. We will return as usual on December 3. The daily updates page will continue to be updated during this time. We got the winners of the Linux Journal Editor's Choice Awards just before going to "press." Briefly, they are:
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November 19, 1998
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityWe mentioned security problems with klogd in our column last week. This week, Red Hat issued an advisory for sysklogd and provided updated rpms for the problem. One of the sysklogd maintainers posted a comment to Bugtraq on the security problem, indicating that the current version of klogd is not vulnerable to the reported buffer overrun, which was fixed some time ago. In a corollary note, Debian reported that they are not vulnerable to the problem because they are using a current version of sysklogd. Red Hat also came out with updated Samba rpms for an installation permissions problem with Samba initially reported in Red Hat 5.2, but, it turns out, affecting all Red Hat versions. Debian examined the security problems and declared the Debian was not impacted; no upgrades to Debian systems are required. Here's an update on the Xinetd /tmp race problem we mentioned last week. First, S.u.S.E. updates for Xinetd are available at ftp.suse.com. Next, Marc Heuse posted a long message with more information on the problem and his updated security fix for it. Flemming S. Johansen posted a nice summary of recent Bugtraq discussions of the Netscape browser's "What's Related" feature. It covers how the feature can be abused and mentions a lot of other resources and links that discuss both Netscape's and other applications' implementation of this type of functionality. In short, you will likely want to disable this "feature". Duncan Simpson posted this report of buffer overruns in catdoc. No official updates have been posted, but his report includes a patch. Buffer overflow vulnerabilities in Junkbuster were reported to Debian. They announced that these vulnerabilities were fixed in version 2.0-3.2. All later versions are okay. An immediate ugprade of junkbuster is recommended. Marcelo Tosatti reported a /tmp race problem with bootpd. No official updates to bootpd have been reported as of yet. Tatu Ylonen put out an official comment on the "sshdwarez" or "sshdexp" binaries that has been running around. They claim to be ssh exploits, but are actually a basic trojan program that will add entries to your password file and report them back to the author, if you choose to run the binary. KDE 1.0 klock can be exploited to gain root access to a system because of the way it attempts to run a supporting binary, kblankscrn.kss. If that binary is not in the same directory as klock, your system may be vulnerable. Perhaps not too surprisingly, the above report was swiftly followed by a report of multiple KDE security vulnerabilities. David Andersen's comment was, The general problem is that KDE trusts user supplied environment variables too much. KDE has responded quickly with a fix that modifies KDE screensavers and klock so that they no longer run setuid root. SSH Communications Security issued a press release describing their planned support for the Twofish encryption method. This will be available in ssh versions 2.0.11 and above, not in the widely used 1.2.X versions, which have a more liberal licensing policy. S.u.S.E. has released a patch for the "umlaut import bug" reported in Linux Office Suite 99. The patch apparently fixes a problem with importing MS Word 97 documents into Applixware. |
November 19, 1998 |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentThe current development kernel release is 2.1.128. Linus is up to the sixth prepatch for 2.1.129. This prepatch is almost 900kb, and includes a lot of Sparc and PPC fixes, and a new frame buffer card for a number of Matrox video cards. There is also a 2.1.128ac3 patch available from Alan Cox.
Version 0.99H of the 3c59x ethernet driver is out. This release contains fixes for the notorious 3c905B adaptor, and a number of other fixes; see the announcement for more. Donald Becker hopes that this version will be the one that gets turned into V1.0. Is your Linux system Euro-ready? Probably not. Guylhem Aznar has put together a set of files which may be used to make a Linux system ready for the European Union's new currency. It consists mostly of keymap and font files to allow for entry and display of the new Euro symbol. See his README file for more information. You may also download his package (a 53K gzipped tarball) if you wish to experiment with it. Why is the PCMCIA subsystem not a part of the standard kernel? That question came up a couple weeks ago, after some changes in the 2.1 series broke PCMCIA (again). This week David Hinds, creator and maintainer of the PCMCIA system, posted the answer. It turns out that there are a couple of reasons:
OpenBIOS 0.0.1 has been released. The OpenBIOS project, remember, is an effort to create an open source BIOS for PC-class machines. It can't yet do anything interesting like boot an operating system, but it's on its way. See the announcement for more information on this release and how to get it (or how to help with this project). |
November 19, 1998
Since we're a weekly publication, chances are we'll be behind a rev or two on the kernel release by the time you read this page. Up-to-the-second information can always be found at LinuxHQ. |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Distributions page. |
DistributionsDebianJosip Rodin has written a draft of a Debian New Maintainers Guide. He is currently up to version 0.12 and has received a very positive response to the document so far. If you've been considering becoming a Debian Maintainer, check this document out.As you might expect, the proposed changes to the license for the next release of Qt quickly became a hot topic on the debian-devel list. Some problems with the license were spotted and it is not yet clear whether it clears up all the problems with distributing KDE, but the license is at level 0.9 and the general impression was that Troll Development was interested in comments and hoped to make minor corrections to the license before it becomes final. The only changes they won't be making are ones that will detract from their ability to continue selling a commercial version of Qt for customers developing commercial code. MandrakeGael Duval has sent out the latest Mandrake News. It mentions that Linux-Mandrake 5.2 (Leeloo) will be available next Thursday (November 26, 1998) for FTP download. They also mention that they are looking for new contributors and distributors.Red HatMany, many messages are being posted reporting problems installing RedHat 5.2 from files downloaded via a non-Linux operating system to a vfat partition. The problem is that the 5.2 install procedure is apparently more sensitive to case than the 5.1 procedure. Misty Linville and others worked through a solution to this problem. Here is a post that describes how to deal with the problem fairly easily (or, if that one is not clear, here is another post that covers the same problem.SlackwareThe big news for this week is, of course, the release of Slackware 3.6. The announcement calls it the best release of Slackware yet. Slackware 3.6 is based on the 2.0.35 Linux kernel but includes 2.1.125 test kernels, and Linux 2.1/2.2-ready utilities. Also included is run-time support for glibc programs. That is excellent news for Slackware fans. New hardware support, new popular applications (such as the Gimp) and more complete this latest version.The new release of Slackware also covers ZipSlack, Slackware's new installation option. They promise installation within 5 minutes and it can run on systems with only 4MB of RAM. That last capability may assure Slackware's continuance for many years to come as other distributions become larger and larger and therefore more difficult to run on older hardware. S.u.S.E.The problem with world-readable backup shadow files reported last week has not been confirmed. In fact, several S.u.S.E. boxes have been tested and failed to duplicate the behavior. Therefore, the problem report is likely to have been an isolated incident. |
November 19, 1998
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed. |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development toolsJavaSince the court finds that Sun is likely to prevail on the merits and that it may suffer irreparable harm if Microsoft is not enjoined, a preliminary injunction is hereby issued against Microsoft ... The above welcome words are from the court's preliminary ruling against Microsoft based on infringements of copyright and unfair trade practices involving the Java Technology. More welcome words can be found in the actual ruling, although you'll have to search towards the end; it is a very long document. Microsoft has been given some fairly powerful incentive to conform and conformance will include supporting Sun's JNI and disabling Microsoft's extensions by default. A warning to users that choose to enable Microsoft's extensions that the resultant code may not run on all JVMs must also be displayed. Xenon-SQL V2.2.9.8 has been announced. Called "the java based interactive SQL Editor", the latest version contains support for several new features; it is now multi-threaded and new components have been added to take advantage of this. PerlAn Advanced Perl Programming Tutorial will be held in Boulder, Colorado, December 1st through the third. Tom Christiansen will be teaching.Net::DICT 0.02 is now available. This module "implements an objected oriented interface to the DICT dictionary lookup protocol". PHPDidier Legein has started a newspage dedicated to PHP3. The PHP News Ledger is now available. It includes pointers to new projects being developed with PHP.PythonGuido van Rossum has released IDLE 0.1, a Tkinter-based IDE for Python. He is following the rules of release early and often, so this first version is very preliminary. It is currently only usable for PSA members with the latest 1.5.2 alpha release of python. He noted that a public beta release is due out soon.The Python conference is over. From what we've heard, it was an exciting time. Paul Everitt posted Kudos to all involved. In addition, Conference Proceedings, Tutorial notes and T-shirts are now for sale. A. M. Kuchling's development diary summed up his impressions of the International Python Conference. Cameron Laird's Python-URL!, the weekly guide to Python, is out. It covers the release of the Principia source code, the use of python in the Avalon supercomputer project, and a variety of pointers to python-related postings of interest. SmalltalkDonald M. MacQueen has started up a new Smalltalk Advocacy page at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SmalltalkAdvocacy. He encourage people to stop by and contribute.Tcl/tkMoses Dejong sent us the announcement for the alpha release of Jacl & Tcl Blend, Jacl is a Java implementation of Tcl 8.0 and Tcl Blend is a Tcl extension that gives you access to the JVM from the Tcl interpreter. Moses sent some notes on the important points about this release.Cameron Laird put together this week's Tcl-URL! (Mark Roseman returns next week). The new edition puts together a host of links to useful articles. The tcLex mailing list, a list to host discussions around tcLex, a lex-like Tcl extension aimed to build lexers written in Tcl has been announced.
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November 19, 1998 |
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Development projectsBryan Brunton wrote in to tell us about his new open source legal software project, tentatively entitled "VirtuaLaw". The project would first create an open source legal case management system, using the GPL for the Linux client. If you are interested, contact Bryan for more details or to offer assistance. Some screen shots and explanation of capabilities are up on the web. Didier Legein, having dove into PHP3 a year ago, decided to make a contribution to the Open Source community. As a result, he has now released html2Phax, a new "webfront" to Hylafax based on Apache and PHP3. GNOMEThe first releaseof the GNOME Disk Catalog, version 0.01, has been announced. It is a program for cataloging Zip disks, CD-ROMS, etc.ht://DigGeoff Hutchison wrote us again to say that ht://Dig development is moving along well, with one or two more betas coming fairly soon and a full 3.1.0 release out perhaps before the end of the year! For those interested in testing, weekly CVS snapshots are available. If anyone wants to volunteer to produce a binary package, they should contact Geoff.WineA new version of the Wine FAQ has been published. Check it out and get your questions answered! | |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and businessComdex brought out a number of announcements this week, but perhaps the most interesting were the new enterprise support programs for Linux. Two different vendors have made announcements:
In previous weeks we have mentioned the Linux business breakfast that was held in Melbourne, Australia, on November 17th. Here now is their report on how it went. They got an attendance larger than they had hoped for, and managed to engage in some serious and effective Linux advocacy. This breakfast should be looked at as a model of how similar events could be held elsewhere. Congratulations are in order. The "NewHoo" web directory has been purchased by Netscape; henceforth it will be known as directory.mozilla.org. NewHoo, which first hit the scene as "GnuHoo," is an attempt to build an alternative to Yahoo using volunteer editors on the net. They immediately came under a great deal of criticism, mostly because their directory database, so nicely created by a volunteer community, would be under the proprietary ownership of the GnuHoo folks. This bit of non-openness eventually led to them dropping the "Gnu" from their name, and, presumably, led to a "lower than it could be" level of enthusiasm among their volunteer community. This message, sent to their editors, describes how NewHoo will work under the Mozilla umbrella. The most significant change is that the directory will be made available under a "free use license." Proprietary no longer, NewHoo can now become a true open community effort, and it may yet achieve its ambitious goals. As the net gets larger, closed efforts like Yahoo have an increasingly hard time keeping up. In the end, an distributed community effort like NewHoo may well prove to be the only way of creating a truly comprehensive directory of the web. VA Research has received a venture capital investment from Sequoia Capital. This investment should help VA Research, arguably already the premier Linux systems VAR, take a place at the head of the pack. The amount of this investment, and just what VA will do with it, has not been disclosed; the press release is pretty vague. LinuxWorld ran a review of Oracle8 for Linux, check it out here. "Oracle8 for Linux is a bit bare-bones right now, but Oracle promises enhancements are on the way." Press Releases:
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November 19, 1998 |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the newsHere is a selection of generally interesting articles from this week.
Quite a bit of this week's press was inspired by Comdex - either by the direct Linux presence there, or by announcements that were made in that setting. These include:
And here is a set of miscellaneous and introductory, and non-English press. For some amusement from the "doesn't get it" department, check out this letter published in The Industry Standard (scroll about halfway down). "Yes, [Linux] is free today; however, if it ever picks up steam and gets enough functionality to handle larger operations, I can guarantee you that some entity will own the rights to it, or to the service of it, and they will charge a large price. Then it will defeat its original purpose of being 'free' and 'open' and 'universal.'" Internet World says Yes, you can build a router from a Linux box. But be prepared to upgrade it later on. Don't forget the Bob Young/Ed Muth faceoff in Network World Fusion. Both have put in pieces saying why they think their system is better. (NW Fusion is a registration-required site). Some coverage of this forum can also be found in this CNN article, reprinted from NW Fusion. ZDNet UK interviews Corel's Mike Cowpland. "...we're getting WordPerfect 8 out next week to the enthusiast community - a very substantial community - and after that we're making sure our suite works with KDE ... and GNOME..." French-capable readers may want to check out this article in Libération (in French) entitled "Linux et les logiciels libres: Vers une nouvelle utopie concrète?" ("Linux and free software: towards a new concrete utopia?"). It's a fairly academic piece about free software and capitalism. There is also an English translation of this article, thanks to Elliott W. G. Noel. (Found in NNL). Klaus Krtschil wrote in about this brief article (in German) about HP's Firehunter and Intel's Torrent demonstration. (Babelfish translation available here). Windows NT Magazine has run a Linux article this month. Unfortunately, it won't appear on their web site for a few months. Fortunately, Christopher Young wrote up and sent us a summary and review of this article. Thanks, Christopher! Pål G.Larsson sent us a pointer to this article in Aftenposten. If you don't read Norwegian, however, there's not much to appreciate above (what appears to be) a university-era picture of Linus. The article is evidently about the Holloween documents and the qualities of Linux in general. Pål also pointed out this article, also in Norwegian, which is a review of StarOffice. This article in InfoWorld talks about the upcoming 2.2 release and the growing acceptance of Linux in general. "...the writing is on the wall: Linux is growing fast." (Thanks to Didier Legein). Here is the Guardian article on Richard Stallman. It actually spends as much space on Eric Raymond as on rms. "Raymond's movement might be designed to exclude Stallman, but it's not one he wants to join. 'Please make it clear that I have nothing to do with Open Source,' he says. 'I do not describe what I do as Open Source. That term is a mistake.'" "There is life after Windows" declares this article (in Portuguese) in the Brazilian "Diario de Parnambuco". It's an introductory article about KDE, primarily. (Here is the Babelfish link, but it's tough going). Thanks to Paolo Sedrez. "Benji" sent us a pointer to Linux: It's Free, It Flexible, and It's Here to Stay (Part 2) in Intraware SubscribNews alert. It concentrates on reactions from the first article, touching on cost and support issues. There are some silly numbers being passed around, though: "With 150,000 developers reportedly working on the kernel alone, Linux has the resources and flexibility to stay nimble." No wonder the linux-kernel list is so busy... C|Net covers the Applix OLAP offering. "It's only now that corporations are coming forward or even finding out that Linux is running in their operations." A lot of folks sent us pointers to Transmeta-related information this week, in the wake of their new patent on (what seems to be) a multi-instruction set processor. People interested in pursuing the subject further can see, for example, this Wired News article or this one in News.com. |
November 19, 1998
``Linux may be a great way for computer-literate individuals to get under the hoods of their computers for little cost, but it's nothing more than a convenient form of protest and public relations for the major software vendors that plan to support it.''
``Linux ... retains the potential of being a successful desktop operating system. I say 'potential' because its main success is in functioning as a sleek dedicated server.''
``Why Microsoft is freaked out about Linux is no mystery. Redmond pretty much designed Windows NT and IIS to be the cheap Web and Intranet server platform. Along come Linux and Apache-a pair that does everything NT can do and is just a bit more stable, faster and cheaper.''
``Uh, what? 35 million lines of code? What exactly does this thing do? And how is it supposed to become the operating system for the rest of us? ... Folks, this is becoming a joke.''
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesPreserving the Information Ecosystem is a paper published on the web by Stephen Adler. Therein he gives his view of how the Internet has made the free software phenomenon (and others) possible, and expresses concern that our "Information Ecosystem" be properly cared for and not taken for granted.EventsO'Reilly has announced a set of joint open source conferences. It appears that there will be a set of independent but colocated conferences on Perl, Sendmail, Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, and perhaps other systems as well. There's time to plan ahead on this one: the conferences will be August 21-24, 1999, in Monterey, California. (See also Wired News' coverage of this announcement).Irish folks may want to check out Intersocs conference '98. The Irish Linux User Group will be doing a Linux demo there on Saturday, November 28; evidently Alan Cox will be there as well. Stéfane Fermigier (of NNL fame) sent out this summary (in French) of Richard Stallman's recent talk in France. Web sitesLe Slashdot? Thanks to NNL we have a pointer to Da Linux French Page, a French-language site seemingly (but evidently not) based on the Slashdot code.Eric Kahler's FVWM Web Page has moved. Links to this site should be updated to http://mars.superlink.net/eric/fvwm.html. User Group NewsWayde Allen provided a summary of the last Boulder, Colorado LUG meeting. The presentation was on Amateur Packet Radio Networking.A new user group is forming in the Hague, the Netherlands. Check out their announcement for more details, and best of luck to them! Julien Nadeau and friends are looking for a LUG in the area of Halifax, Canada. If they don't find one, they are interested in founding one. The Dutch Linux User Group plans to attend the Hobby Computer Club days in Utrecht, being held November 20th through the 22nd. Here is their announcement, in Dutch, with an English version at the end. A second install party will be held on December 19th, 1998 in Dusseldorf, Germany. The Linux User Group in Stuttgart, Germany, now has its own domain. Check out http://www.lug-s.org for more information. Mailing ListsThe SEUL Project has started a new mailing list, seul-edu, specifically to cover the educational uses of Linux and all its aspects. For more information, check out their announcement.Help WantedMuch to everybody's surprise, Red Hat is hiring again. This time they are after a couple of system engineers.In related news, Richard Stallman wants to know about it if you have employment positions open now for developing or maintaining free software. He is trying to gauge whether there are a sufficient number of these jobs to warrant a GNU project job page. |
November 19, 1998
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Software Announcements
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekOpen source and open data. This page advocates standardizing the file formats used for many popular applications, such as word processors, spreadsheets, and even databases. Your editor has seen many efforts at standardizing data formats over the years; it is not an easy task. But the rewards can be great if a format is successful. See, for example, the NetCDF format, which has brought sanity to some types of scientific data. It's a prize worth trying for. The Silicon Valley Linux Users Group gets to have an unfair amount of fun, and their web page reflects it. See, for example, the reports from their recent demonstration at the opening of the Microsoft Silicon Valley campus. "The Microsoft people thanked us afterward and bought a round of beers and sodas for everyone keeping themselves under control." Those wanting a free software news site with more of a Microsoft-centric orientation may want to check out the Why you shouldn't use Microsoft products site. |
November 19, 1998 |
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Letters to the editorLetters to the editor should be sent to editor@lwn.net. Preference will be given to letters which are short, to the point, and well written. If you want your email address "anti-spammed" in some way please be sure to let us know. We do not have a policy against anonymous letters, but we will be reluctant to include them. |
From: "Will Tsui" <will@netpedia.com> To: <editor@lwn.net> Subject: Web Hosting for Open Source Projects Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 23:39:20 -0500 Greetings, My name is Will Tsui and I am in charge of a site called Netpedia (http://www.netpedia.com/). We would like to invite anyone developing open source software to get a complementary subdomain on netpedia.net. This is a "no catch" deal. We don't require links, advertisements, etc. Here developers can host their websites and keep the web community informed about their contributions. If you are interested in this offer to all open source developers, e-mail me for further info. Thanks for your time, Will | ||
From: "Ricardo Galli" <gallir@atlas-iap.es> To: <lwn@lwn.net> Subject: Linux and databases Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 16:04:32 +0100 Dear LWN editor, I send you this letter because I see a lot of press articles about = Oracle and Informix coming to Linux community, but nobody mentions that = there are other companies supporting and providing very good comercial = application for Linux OS. One of these companies is Empress Inc. (www.empress.com) that developed = a very fast and reliable RDBMS altoghether with a complete development = toolkit. We were using it from middle 1996, when I bought our first Empress suite = for Linux. Since then we are very happy with the product and it = overpasses in performance other RTDBMS servers. Our applications span from dynamic web pages (many, many, = www.atlas-iap.es/kuhn/ just as one example), digital newspapers = (www.diaridebalears.com) to an AAA server (programmed with embedded SQL = in C programs) where our Radius and Tacacs+ servers act as clients (we = provide dial-up Internet access services) of the AAA server.=20 Should be note that both, Linux boxes and Empress servers run very = stable with almost no maintenance at all. Our first Linux/Empress server = (an old Pentium 133) is still working and need 0 (yes, ZERO, we just = have to delete the long apache logs twice a year) maintenance and is = serving more than 100.000 queries a day.=20 Furthermore, our own AAA server (see some stats at the end), which was = developed in C using Empress development toolkit never had a problem at = all, it works on a database with 15 tables, with the bigger one (access = logs) having more then 2.000.000 records. Please note that we do not have any commercial relationship with Empress = Inc. (we pay all of our licences at standard prices). I just thought = this a good story and that it's very worth to take a look to this = company that is supporting Linux providing a very good RDMS and a = complete development toolkit from the very beginning. I feel also that = they are ignored in Linux press/media. STATS from the AAA server (running on a Pentium II 300 MHz). gallir@star:/home/people/gallir > dbstats=20 DBSERVER(862): CPU load (0-1): 0.001434 Sec/ops: 0.0304 PID: 10451 Elapsed: 85 days 22:58:08 Ops: 350789 Childr: 1 Max: 5 Overlds: 0 ** Parent Times User: 00:00:08.69 Sys: 00:03:44.83 Total: 00:03:53.52 ** Total Times User: 01:39:26.67 Sys: 01:18:00.23 Total: 02:57:26.90 Congratulation for LWN, specially for daily updates section. It's the = best source of up-to-minute Linux information. Best regards, --ricardo galli University of Balearic Islands Atlas IAP S.L., Internet Service Provider | ||
To: editor@lwn.net Subject: reply to Kastrup From: Nathan Myers <ncm@cantrip.org> Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 20:08:51 -0800 [I don't want to start a flame war, but David Kastrup's long, prominently placed, but badly misinformed letter demands a response.] David Kastrup predicts doom ("Microsoft Linux") and denigrates GNU g++. While his opinions are easily ignored, the false history he has promoted needs to be countered. He wrote: C++ has hobbled free compiler development: the incredibly complicated language definition has caused gcc development to freeze. The FSF's non-commercial development infrastructure of the gcc compiler for the comparatively simple C language could not keep up with the complications of the C++ language. This has resulted in the splitoff of egcs, mostly managed by Cygnus, a commercial entity and large-time contributor. In fact, C++ has nothing to do with the development of the Gcc C compiler. (They share only a back-end code generator.) The slowdown in development of Gcc had nothing to do with C++ -- blame administrative and personal problems at the FSF -- but was anyway solved in exemplary fashion by the formation of the Egcs group. Egcs is not "mostly managed by Cygnus"; on its steering committee of 13 members, I count four Cygnus employees. While the Cygnus employees are supremely competent, they are far from alone in their contributions, as may easily be seen by a glance at the Egcs web site, even though many large contributions have not been acknowledged by name there. Gcc, as delivered in the Egcs package, is as advanced as any C++ compiler available. Its incredibly rapid development since the Egcs group provided a new rallying point stands as a shining example of what free software can accomplish. Make no mistake: this was not a case of a corporation taking over development from a failed free software project. It was a classic case of users taking the source, and the development process, into their own hands when the previous maintainer failed to keep up. The Egcs group has more than equal to the "incredibly complicated" C++ language. Nathan Myers ncm@cantrip.org | ||
To: esr@thyrsus.com From: "Khimenko Victor" <khim@sch57.msk.ru> Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 20:49:14 +0300 (MSK) Subject: How it's possible ? RMS forgot OSS definition or what ? "After reviewing the QPL, I find that it meets all the criteria to be considered Open Source," said Eric Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar paper and joint copyright holder of the Open Source trademark. "This license should allow Open Source software to compete on features and polish rather than ideological position, which will be better for the Open Source community." How it's possible ???? QPL is NOT compatible with Open Source Definition ! "Caldera Systems is very excited about Troll Tech's decision to publish Qt under an Open Source license," said Ransom Love, President and CEO of Caldera Systems. "Customer response and feedback to the KDE desktop environment included in our OpenLinux 1.3 release has been overwhelming. Offering Qt under an Open Source license will allow KDE to stand on its technical merits without causing undue concerns to the development community over licensing terms." "SuSE congratulates Troll Tech for their wise decision to put Qt under an Open Source License. SuSE thinks that this step will (hopefully) unite the Linux community again," said Burchard Steinbild, Managing Director of S.u.S.E. GmbH. "SuSE wishes Troll Tech much success with their products and hopes their reputation in the Linux community rises after this move, they have deserved it." What's this ??? Are you are all blind or what ? 1) QPL is not OSD-compliant 2) Even if QPL will be fixed to be OSD-compliant this will not change even jot for KDE ! To resolve KDE copyright problem QPL should be GPL-compliant, not OSD-compliant ! The Open Source Definition (version 1.0) http://www.opensource.org/osd.html : -- cut -- 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. -- cut -- THE ONLY WAY TO DISTRIBUTE "DERIVED WORK" IN QPL IS FOLLOWING (from http://www.troll.no/qpl/): -- cut -- 3. You may make modifications to the Software. In order to preserve the integrity of the unmodified version of the Software, modifications must be distributed in the form of patches, and the following restrictions apply to each patch: a. Application of the patch must not modify copyright notices in the Software. b. The patch must be explicitly licensed by the following clauses without additional restriction: Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this patch, to deal in the patch without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the patch, subject to the following conditions: Any copyright notice and this permission notice must be included in all copies or substantial portions of the patch. c. The patch must include an accurate description of the modification, the date of the modification and the author of the modification. -- cut -- Clearly not OSD-compatible ! For KDE is more important that QPL is not compatible with GPL (and GPL compatibility is MUCH more restrictive then Open Source Definition; NPL & MPL are OSD-compatible but not GPL-compatible !!!): http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html -- cut -- 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. -- cut -- What's this ? You all want KDE problem to be resolved so much that you could not understood clear English ? Or may be I'm misunderstood something (Enlish is not my native language after all)... | ||
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 17:04:00 -0500 From: "Zygo Blaxell" <Zygo.Blaxell.zblaxell@nt.com> To: editor@lwn.net Subject: Balkanization of Linux HOWTO [Unlimited unmodified attributed distribution permitted] Now that Linux is starting to turn the heads of major business entities, I keep seeing other Linux people asking the question "What should we do next?" or "What should we do to stop the new Microsoft threat?" My answer is simple, direct, and to the point: "Do exactly the same thing we've always been doing." For those who joined the party late, this is what we've been doing: 1. Producing the best software. 2. Supporting and defining open standards. 3. Creating replacements for existing closed-source software without infringing on protected IP rights. 4. Sharing information as widely as possible, without hesitation, in hope that it will find the right person to act upon it. In http://www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?INW19981109S0020 Michael Dell explicitly states that Microsoft pays Dell to pre-install Internet Explorer and Netscape doesn't, so Dell ships IE by default. "Free" software can't compete with that kind of business logic, nor should it try. We can expect the last of the large closed-source vendors to make desparate attempts to gain market share, including such desparate tactics as paying customers to introduce dependencies on closed-source products into their critical business systems. Our response to that should be to consistently produce better products until the closed-source vendors run out of new ideas or money. In the recent past, open standards have had published specifications but typically only proprietary implementations have been available. Even specifications that include sample source code are still not entirely open, because you can't use the code without a closed-source OS, libraries, or compiler tools. Now that we have complete open-source operating systems, and therefore pure open-source all the way from the API layer to the bare hardware, it is no longer necessary to have standards "tainted" by the lack of at least one fully open-source implementation. We should advocate that the term "open standard" means that not only is the specificiation published, but at least one completely open-source implementation (right down to the bare hardware for software, or right up to the API layer for hardware) is available. Given the past explosive growth and continuing persistence of legacy closed-source software, it follows that many good ideas have previously been implemented in closed source. Linux is a re-implementation of Unix, WINE is a re-implementation of Win32, and so on. This will be necessary as long as there exists closed-source software that does not have an open-source equivalent. We should educate vendors of closed-source software about their golden opportunity right now to re-release their products as open source before competitive open-source implementations of those products exist. We should follow that up by aggressively implementing legally-clean, high-quality replacements for significant closed-source software from vendors that do not co-operate. The message is, was, and always will be "release source or die," but today the message is perhaps a little louder than it was yesterday. It is good that people with solid marketing, sales, and PR expertise are entering the Linux community. Linux doesn't just need software developers: it needs technical writers, venture capitalists, lawyers, advertisers, pure researchers, teachers, guinea pigs, testers, journalists, managers, and all the "other people" that a big software company would have access to. Some of these people are following the open-source tradition in fields very distant from software: for example, last week I read a good introductory document with some practical tips on doing one-on-one marketing of Linux and another document that explains how to write a press release. We still need to find good ways that people with work to be done can be connected with skilled people with time to spare, and we cannot possibly be too good at bringing lots of "newbies" up to speed quickly and painlessly. We should NOT be: 1. Trying to control or manage open-source development. 2. Going out of our way to support legacy closed-source systems. 3. Trying to rigidly standardize everything, or produce a "one true Linux" in any form. Open source software in general and Linux in particular work as well as they do because every developer has a vested interest--whether financial, practical or purely social--in the end product. Enforcing specific external goals will destroy a productive open-source development group, or at least limit its capabilities to those of a closed-source development group. People should always do their best work first. If some particular job needs to be done, then those who benefit most from that job should put together the resources to have it done, and those who are good at a particular job should be allowed to do it. Widespread support of open standards means that support for closed-source systems before they are replaced is merely an unnecessary distraction. Many closed-source systems do not offer any opportunity for continued development once the original system has been duplicated, as the existing installations cannot afford any modifications or extensions to existing functionality. In the extreme, closed-source systems are supported via emulation of the hardware that they run on, creating a burden for user and developer alike while providing no benefits to either at all. The best way to support a legacy closed-source system is to produce an open-source implementation of that system or a convenient migration path to a replacement open-source system. This liberates the closed-source vendor's customers by breaking the vendor's monopoly on licensing, support and distribution services, and allows customers to enjoy reduced costs, better product, and better support, all at the same time. Note that Linux has already successfully replaced closed-source Unix implementations for many purposes and is now far ahead in some areas. The computing industry in general--open and closed-source vendors included--is still decades or even centuries away from achieving a "one true" anything. After 40 years we still don't have "one true character set" (ASCII, ISO-8859-*, Unicode...), so why should we expect a large API like POSIX, Java, or Win32 to become a permanent standard overnight? The best software and hardware available today is still very limited, and if history is any kind of guide to the future, it will all be obsolete tomorrow. Trying to evangelize "one true"ness just imposes restrictions on people with good ideas, destroys the flexibility that prevents obsolescence, and pre-empts the benefits of research and development before they even start. Even Microsoft, arguably the most vocal proponent of "one true"ness, is beginning to feel trapped by this goal as their costs skyrocket while growth declines. Some Linux users will need rigid, supportable stability, and some Linux vendors should provide it to them; however, at the same time nothing should get in the way of those who want early access to the latest in research and development. | ||