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Some folks, notably Stéfane Fermigier of AFUL, think that this event could be more profitably used to showcase the benefits of free software. After all, the net is built on free software, and free systems remain the best way to be a part of the net. The Fiesta as a whole appears to be in no hurry to recognize free software, so AFUL has put up its own Internet Fiesta page (in French, English may be had via Babelfish). They also have a list (English translation) of 32 free software related activities happening in France as part of the Internet Fiesta. This list represents a great deal of organizing on the part of many people. They are to be congratulated, and we wish them the best of luck.

Folks in or near the Netherlands may want to check out the Internet Fiesta Installfest being held in Utrecht.

Another Fiesta-related event - this one in Denmark - is the European Linux Yearbook. Their goal is to close out the Fiesta by writing - entirely within the 24 hours of March 21 - a book on the status of Linux in Europe. It's intended to be a highly cooperative project with many participants; they wish to show the power of the Linux/free software development model. This undertaking is ambitious indeed, but we bet they can pull it off. Happy Fiesta! (Note, at press time the ELY site appeared to be having problems; hopefully they will get it fixed shortly).

Apple will make part of their OS available under an open source license. They got Eric Raymond on stage to say that their license (the Apple Public Source License) is cool, so it must be true. Actually, the openness of the license has been a recent point of debate, as addressed in this letter from Bruce Perens, Wichert Akkerman and Ian Jackson. Eric's, and OSI's, response rebuts their arguments. Legalese easily generates confusion and dissension.

However, what Apple has opened up is mostly the lower-level parts of MacOS X. That includes the BSD-based core as well as higher-level packages like Apache. In other words, what they have released is mostly freely available already; the stuff that truly distinguishes an Apple system remains proprietary. Certainly it is their right to do so, and perhaps understandable as well.

Nonetheless, a question does come up: how committed is Apple really to open source? Are they sincere? Or are they just releasing code that does not matter much to them in order to catch some of the cachet, such as it is, that the open source movement currently enjoys? Apple has always strongly held on tightly to its proprietary systems and intellectual property - to the point of nearly destroying their business. It's not clear that this approach has really changed much.

Let's welcome Apple as they dip their toes in the open source water. With any luck, they will be pleased with their experience and dive in more fully in the near future. (See also: Apple's open source page and press coverage in MacWorld, the San Francisco Chronicle, Wired News and News.com).

Also relevant to Apple's move is Bruce Perens' article on license termination. This articlediscusses the clause found in a number of commercial open source licenses which allows for instant termination of the right to use the software in the event of patent or copyright difficulties. In fact, should a corporation decide that withdrawal of an open source license was in its interest, it would be simple to come up with some sort of threat sufficient to allow triggering of the termination clause.

Apple's license, like a number of others, contains such a clause. Opinions differ on how bad this particular case is - see the comments by Perens and Raymond cited above. Nonetheless, developers working on code governed by such a license should be aware that their right to use the code - and the (perhaps years) of effort they have put into improving it - could vanish in a day. As time goes by and corporations become more comfortable working in the open source realm, one can hope that these sorts of termination clauses will eventually start to disappear.

As a sort of followup to last week's "free" vs. "open source" editorial, interested readers may want to check out another editorial on the free/open topic which has been published on opensource.oreilly.com.

This Week's LWN was brought to you by:

• Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor
• Elizabeth O. Coolbaugh, Managing Editor

See also: last week's Security page.

Security

News

Security Reports

Reports on Netscape Communicator 4.51, which was released last week, indicate that it has not fixed all of the security problems that have been identified (see this site for examples). As a result, many people recommend that you continue to disable Javascript when using the latest version to visit untrusted sites.

An overflow in Lynx 2.8 has been reported. No confirmation of the report has been posted so far, nor any mention of a possible exploit so far.

Updates

Gnuplot, not GNU plot, is the correct name of the program mentioned in last week's security section. Our apologies for the error. Gnuplot is not associated with the GNU project or the Free Software Foundation.

Resources

A Call-for-Votes has gone out regarding the creation of a new newsgroup called comp.os.linux.security. As one might expect, it is intended for the discussion of security issues under Linux. Send in a vote before April 5 if you have an opinion on the matter.

The March Issue of Cryptogram has been released and is either available, or will be shortly. Check out the crypto-gram page for subscription information.

Events

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

See also: last week's Kernel page.

Kernel development

Not that all is perfect, of course. 2.2.3ac2contains quite a few fixes, including one for an unpleasant disk quota hole in NFS. Also included in this patch is (we believe) the first public release of Alan Cox's I₂O layer as an experimental addition.

While we know no more than anybody else, it is beginning to look like the sort of calm that prevails before Linus, without warning, releases 2.3.1 to the world and the fun new development cycle begins anew.

Some people may be surprised to hear that the Alpha port is limited to 1GB of RAM. After all, small RAM limitations were supposed to be a feature of those old 32-bit processor chips. But, as it turns out, supporting large amounts of RAM on the Alpha brings its own set of challenges. Shortly after discussion began on the topic, however, Richard Henderson and others put together a patch which raises the limit to 2GB. That patch went out as part of 2.2.3ac2.

Anonymous CVS access to the kernel repository on vger.rutgers.edu has finally been restored - via a new system in the openproject.net domain. See the CVS repositories page for details on how to get your bleeding-edge kernels out of the repository. You can also have a look at David Miller's brief announcement of the new setup.

Participants in the USB mailing list may have gotten dropped off as the result of a server crash which happened last week. If you're one of those, see the explanation of what happened and resubscribe.

NFS at Connectathon '99. G. Allen Morris III (the current NFS maintainer) posted this summary of the NFS testing he, H. J. Lu, and Daniel Quinlan did at Connectathon '99. Unpatched Linux NFS did not do very well, but they came up with some tweaks that helped a lot.

Also in the NFS arena: H. J. Lu has released version 1.2 of the kernel NFS daemon. See his announcement for details. As he puts it: "The NFS servers in Linux 2.2 to 2.2.3 are not compatible with other NFS client implementations. If you plan to use Linux 2.2.x as an NFS server for non-Linux NFS clients, you should apply the patches enlosed here."

Various other patches and utilities released over the last week:

• Michael K. Johnson has released two new versions of the procps suite. One (1.2.10) is a set of minor fixes to the current procps release; the other (2.0) is much newer and more experimental. See Michael's announcement for more information.

• Ulrich Windl has put out PPSkit-0.3.9 for the 2.0.36 kernel. These are a bunch of time-related patches; see his announcement for details. He has also released PPSkit-0.5.1 for the 2.2 kernel series. And, as if that weren't enough, he has also released a pre-release of PPSkit-0.6 which contains his nanosecond time patches.

• /proc/.config v1.01 was released by Tigran Aivazian. This patch makes the current kernel configuration options available from the pseudo-file /proc/.config.

• Richard Gooch has released devfs v93 for the new RAID drivers.

• IPAcct 0.7d has been released by Zaheer Merali, the new maintainer of that package. IPAcct adds per-user IP accounting to the kernel; this release works with the 2.2 kernel series.

• Jakub Jelinek and David Miller have announced a new, much faster version of the XSun24 server for Sun Creator and Elite video systems.

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

For other kernel news, see:

• LinuxHQ
• Kernel traffic

See also: last week's Distributions page.

Distributions

Conectiva Linux 3.0is an RPM-based distribution for both x86 and Alpha platforms from Brazil.

Caldera

Some unofficial RPMS for OpenLinux 1.3 have been made available by Marc Christiansen, including RPMS for glibc-1.2.0, gtk+-1.2.0 and apache-1.3.4. He also noted some dependencies in the packages.

Caldera will be out in force at Brainshare, to be held March 21st through the 23rd in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Their press release indicates that they plan on premiering OpenLinux 2.2, demonstrated the Helius satellite router based on OpenLinux and more. Ransom Love and several of the Caldera V.P.'s will be attending as well.

Debian

This Week's Debian Weekly News is out.

MkLinux

Slackware

SuSE

Trinux

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.

See also: last week's Development page.

Development tools

Chad Netzer was kind enough to forward us the announcement made to comp.lang.python. He also mentioned that PSA is, as always, still looking for new members and for ideas on ways to provide incentives and benefits to their members. For more information on PSA, check out their website.

Java

Due to an error on this editor's part, we failed to mention last week that Sun licensed several of the Java standard extensions (Java 3D, Java Media Framework, Java Advanced Imaging, and Java Sound) to Steve Byrne on behalf of the Blackdown porting team. Steve demonstrated Java 3D at the LinuxWorld Expo and expects it to be generally available within a few weeks. Java 3D is implemented using Mesa 3.0.

Some Linux JDK1.2 font tips were posted by Kazuki Yasumatsu in response to complaints that the jdk1.2 fonts do not behave like the jdk1.1 fonts. Basically, he provides instructions on how to use your favorite TrueType and Postscript Type1 fonts instead of the TrueType fonts included in the JDK1.2.

JAnalyzeProfile is a performance analysis tool for JDK 1.2 recently published by Nathan Meyers. His note indicates that JAnalyzeProfile is a perl script that can help finger hotspots.

Perl

Wolf Busch has released Lisp 1.1, his version of Scheme implemented in Perl. The web-site and all related documentation are in German.

Python

The alpha release of PilGraph, a PIL-generation simple graphing/plotting module, was announced by Richard Jones.

Smalltalk

Tcl/tk

This week's Tcl-URL! is now available.

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

Development projects

Coda

Ganymede

GNOME

Updated GNOME packages

• gxTar-0.1.0, a front-end to common archive utilities
• Gnumeric-0.18, a spreadsheet
• Gnome Libs 1.0.3
• Midnight Commander 4.5.25, a file manager
• Gnome Core 1.0.3
• Gnome PIM 1.0.3

High Availability

ht://Dig

KDE

Updated KDE packages

• kwintv-0.6.14, Video4Linux, watch TV in a window
• keasycd-0.1.8, CD recording frontend
• kcmbind-0.5.0, a front-end for configuring bind
• kbootsel-0.2, for working with LILO
• kvidtune-0.4.1, configure XFree86 X server video mode settings
• kget-0.6.1, download manager

Linuxconf

Magicfilter

MagicPoint

Mozilla/Netscape

X

Wine

A contract between Corel and Cygnus was announced on March 9th, under which Cygnus will modify the GNUPro development environment to support programming conventions used in Corel's existing Windows development tools, essentially by enhancing support for the Wine environment. Some additional details on the arrangement were posted to the wine-devel mailing list. However, Bertho Stultiens posted this followup, with comments on why this arrangement may help Corel, but does not actually help the Wine project, which needs to work with current tools and not future Microsoft-specific compiler extensions.

Zope

The Zope Documentation Project can be found at http://zdp.zope.org.

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

See also: last week's Commerce page.

Linux and business

The folks who publish NTools E-NewsFlash (a newsletter for Windows NT users) have published the results of a survey of their readers which included some questions on adoption of Linux. The result: Linux has already worked its way deeply into NT shops. Worth a read. See also their writeup of the survey, which gives their impressions and talks a bit about their methodology. (Thanks to Scott Turton).

VA Research announces new systems. In keeping with their general strategy, this announcement describes some new high-end systems, these based on the new Pentium III Xeon processors. Now if only we had one of those...

Intershop has announced support for their electronic commerce products under Linux. "The company expects the Linux offering to especially benefit small and mid-tier Internet and Commerce Service Providers who already use Linux for their shared and dedicated hosting services." They will be working with Red Hat in particular.

Linux Canada has announced the release of their "LinuxPOS" point of sale and "LinuxRETAIL" inventory control systems in source form. Note this is not "open source" form - see the license for the details there. Nonetheless, this should prove to be a useful package for a lot of environments.

A new vendor of Linux-installed systems has popped up. Check out HotLinux Systems the next time the urge to shop hits...

Siemens has put up a Linux solutions page describing their "PRIMERGY" servers that will be displayed at CEBIT. These servers, of course, are Linux boxes set up to run SAP's R/3 ERP system. This is an important piece of corporate software. And the page even has a dancing penguin... (Just be sure to notice the little "next" link on the right once you've seen enough). (Found in LinuxToday).

The Indian company HCL Infosystems has decided to support Linux, according to this Times of India article. "...HCL's initiative, Linuxpertise, would extend a host of support services, including e-mail support, telesupport and on-site support. The telesupport service, to be launched shortly, will be offered in the four metros and other major cities like Bangalore, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad." (Thanks to Radha Krishna Pagadala).

Indelible Blue has jumped into the Linux support business. Their current offering appears to be 9-5 (U.S. eastern time) phone support on a per-incident or hourly basis. See their press release for more.

Press Releases:

• Lexmark, support for Markvision (printer manager software) under Linux.
• ALPNET, doing German localization work for Red Hat 6.0.
• NetGem, building Linux-based TV set-top boxes.
• Distributed Processing Technology, Linux support for their RAID products.
• Acer America Corp., new Pentium III Xeon systems, "...provide a solid platform for Linux..."
• Vista Technology, Linux support in their industry-specific packages.
• Brace, "Thinworks E51" Linux-based thin client system.
• AIIM, Linus Torvalds to speak at AIIM show and conference in April.
• Innosoft, IDS LDAP server.
• Collective Technologies, "regional discussion series" for IT managers about Linux.
• RPK Security, Encryptonite toolkit v3.1.
• O'Reilly, new edition of their Apache book.
• Xi Graphics, AcceleratedX version 5.

Section Editor: Jon Corbet.

See also: last week's Linux in the news page.

Linux in the news

• A Fairfax IT columnist who predicted that Linux would not go anywhere has put out a new column documenting his changing his mind. "I now believe that Linux will be very big, and that it constitutes the biggest threat to the established order since the Windows NT boom began about four years ago....We are witnessing a significant change in the centre of gravity in the IT industry. Commercial interests may not end up dominating the IT industry, and that is no bad thing. Rarely have I more happily admitted I was in error."

• Hotwired's "WebMonkey" has a lengthy article on The GIMP. "Even though GIMP has its own manual, it's almost unnecessary if you're familiar with Photoshop 3.0. But the GIMP does have some unique features that are big improvements over Photoshop."

• Here's an article in Forbes about embedded systems, and Cygnus's hopes for their open-source embedded operating system Ecos. "While Cygnus gives Ecos away, it has kept for itself the trademark and control over new releases. That means Cygnus will always know more about it than anyone else. Knowledge being power, the way the company plans to turn a buck is by selling programming tools for Ecos."

• Phil Agre discusses the success of Linux on his Red Rock Eater list (you'll have to scroll down several pages). "The peer-review institutions of open source software, long stereotyped as the territory of lonely geeks, should be seen in their proper historical light as another chapter in the march of human knowledge. And they should be supported publicly, just as we support the production of other kinds of public goods. Of course, public support might lead us to another big government boondoggle such as the Internet, but if the alternative is Windows 3000, perhaps it's a chance we can take."

• Last week's LWN contained a reference to this Italian article about efforts within the Italian National Research Council (CNR) to promote free software development in Italy. Now Kevin Reardon has sent us a translation of that article for those who do not read Italian. Worth a read. "Open source could be the key: a robust offering of italian freeware could help both to reduce our software trade deficit and to help the birth (in Italy) of new competitive initiatives that could produce significant returns..."

• Peter Link pointed out this article in CIO magazine that we somehow missed this week. It's actually a good article about how Linux appears to corporate CIO's. Worth a read. "IS personnel who have had firsthand experience with freeware at these and other companies say that while open source software is indeed passing the tests of corporate computing, it requires a change of mind-set and new procedures, particularly in the area of service and support."

Interviews were big this week. Here's a sampling:

• LinuxPower has put up an interview with Sam Ockman of Penguin Computing. "We have no fears about IBM, Dell, Compaq; in fact we welcome them to the market, and are glad to give them help when they ask us. We're going to sell more systems running Linux then any of these guys will."

• InfoWorld interviews Red Hat's Bob Young. "The problem with other, smaller commercial Linux vendors is they look at Linux and they see a broken economic model. Great technology, but a broken economic model. So what they do is, they take Linux and surround it with proprietary tools. The problem is, from a support and bug tracking issue, you've effectively just bought another proprietary binary-only OS."

• Inter@ctive Week also interviews Red Hat's Bob Young. "When we started shipping in 1995-96, Unix programmers represented 50 percent of our sales. Today, 90 percent of our users are coming to us from Windows."

• In contrast, PC World interviews Caldera's Ransom Love. "We've actually downsized Linux to where it can fit on a floppy, with a graphical browser. You'll see some announcements in that vein from us."

• LinuxWorld has put up another interview with Linus Torvalds.

• VAR Business looks at Red Hat's increasingly dominant role. "As large technology corporations line up to support Linux vendor Red Hat Software Inc., some VARs are worried the company will set de facto standards just as industry titan Microsoft Corp. did for the PC platform."

• The Deseret News covers Novell's investment in Red Hat. "From a competitive standpoint, Novell chose privately held Red Hat for its size when buying into a Linux developer, instead of putting its equity into Linux developer Caldera Systems in Orem. Caldera is a Novell spinoff backed financially by former Novell CEO Ray Noorda."

• Here's another article about Red Hat, this one in the Charlotte Observer. "Analysts said the big-name investors also could help extend Red Hat's market lead over Caldera Systems, based in Orem, Utah, Germany's SuSE and other private firms that sell Linux packages." (Thanks to Mike McLoughlin).

• Computer Shopper put out a positive introductory article. "...it's the commercial deals like those spearheaded by Red Hat that have done so much to elevate Linux's profile and make it a viable alternative to OSs like Windows NT. That may go against the free-spirited nature of Linux, but it does make a cool technology available to more people."

• The San Jose Mercury has put out a lengthy introductory article in two parts. The first is a not entirely accurate piece about Linux as a whole; then it delves into installation difficulties. "At this point, I wimped out. Although several people told me Red Hat and other Linux installation programs often automatically identify and configure hardware, I didn't have the fortitude to attempt the process. But I'm not going to be hard on myself, or Linux. No one buys a PC today without an operating system already installed. Putting Windows or the Mac OS onto a blank PC would probably be just about as difficult as installing Linux." (Thanks to Jay Ashworth).

• Here's an article which appeared in the National Law Journal. It serves as an introductory Linux piece with special attention to what may happen to the careers of intellectual property lawyers. "...lawyers who have spent the past 20 years struggling with the issues of intellectual property protection for software might in the future find themselves all dressed up with no place to go." (Found in Slashdot).

• The Village Voice has run a long, highly nontechnical article about Linux and GNOME. "Publicly released two weeks ago, Gnome is a conscientious objection to the greed, inefficiencies, and tyranny of the technology industry as we know it, packed into an executable file. From the heart of the capitalist technopoly, Gnome is a free software alternative to the Windows desktop- free to download from the Net, to copy, to alter." (Thanks to Jen Matson).

A few belated LinuxWorld reports:

• Here's a LinuxWorld piece from PC Week. "Although I'm certain that there were corporate IT decision-makers at LinuxWorld, they were few and far between--and that's what surprised me because I think corporations are talking the talk but not walking the Linux walk. Come on, corporate IT, where were you?"

• InfoWorld ran another article about the cluster system that IBM demonstrated at LinuxWorld. "Using a subset of the Beowulf clustering technology, 17 of IBM's Netfinity servers containing 36 Pentium II chips and running an off-the-shelf copy of Linux matched the scalability and performance of a Cray supercomputer."

• The Irish Times covers LinuxWorld. "...while the large software corporations' stands stood half-empty, programmers flocked to a small corridor at the back of the hall known as The Ghetto. There, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, awed fans with insightful witticisms and Rob Malda, the 22-year-old founder of www.Slashdot.com 'news for nerds' website, sold T-shirts and baseball caps. It was the only money changing hands at the show." (Thanks to Mark O'Sullivan).

Here's a few pieces in the non-English press:

• For those of you who read Norwegian, here's a couple of articles that got sent our way. This one in Aftenposten appears to be of an introductory nature. And this other in PC World Norge is "about why Linux will win on the Internet." Too bad Babelfish doesn't do Norwegian. (Thanks to Ole Kristian, Hans Peter Verne, and Pål Larsson).

• If instead you read Danish: here's a Linux article put up by DR, the major Danish TV and Radio network. (Thanks to Morten Welinder).

• Here's an article (in French) in Libération about Linux in the French schools and how it competes with Windows in that environment. It even includes a relatively conciliatory quote from a person at Microsoft France. English translation available via Babelfish. (Found in NNL).

There were a couple of GNOME reviews:

• PC Week reviews GNOME 1.0. "Initial tests of the GNOME 1.0 Desktop Interface for Linux show that the operating system doesn't necessarily have to be a tool for geeks. However, you might need a geek to set GNOME up."

• There's no place like GNOME says Information Week. It's a high-level overview of the 1.0 release. "Some Gnome developers I talked to complained of a lack of focus, and that current development was going off in every direction. That could change, however, if the vendors now supporting Linux start throwing some of their development talent (and money) at the project. And based on the reaction that the interface is already getting, they're bound to."

And the rest is kind of hard to categorize, so here it all is...

• MSNBC is running the Associated Press article about Apple's moves. "The so-called 'open source' method also is used for Netscape's browser software and the Linux operating system for business computers. In contrast, companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. jealously guard blueprints to their software to surprise rivals with improved features."

• Here's a story in InternetNews.com about the growing use of Linux in India. "According to sources, petrochemical giant Reliance Industries is working on implementing certain mission-critical applications on Linux-based solutions. Besides web-based applications and intranet, the company is also planning to install Linux-based networks for its internal communication and messaging needs."

• Here's a ComputerWorld article which says that non-Intel ports of Linux are not necessarily all that interesting to corporations. "Information technology managers and consultants are concerned about the availability of drivers, the ability of commercial vendors to cooperate with the open-source community that develops Linux, the preference of many Linux users for low-cost Intel-based hardware and the potential that Linux could fragment as it expands to proprietary platforms."

• This Wired News article is about PC Free and their plans to ship some of their systems with Linux installed. "Beginning in April, the company will roll out 500 Linux-based PCs in a New Hampshire test market."

• Here's a long article in PC Week about the slow nature of Linux's drift into corporate networks. "How close is Linux, really, to being ready to run mission-critical applications? The answer, according to many IT managers and experts, is that Linux is close, but it's not there yet. It still needs a strong support infrastructure, the backing of enterprise application vendors and an easy-to-use GUI at the desktop before it's ready to either compete with Unix and Windows NT on the server or appeal to the typical end user."

• An Information Week editor writes about the Linux bandwagon. "Nearly one-third of IT managers surveyed by InformationWeek Research earlier this month say they're either using or planning to use Linux."

• Computer Reseller News ponders the question of how to make money from Linux. The answer: services. "For now, distributors ought to keep a vigilant eye on the progress of Linux applications and a finger on the pulse of their VAR customers to gauge interest in the operating system and related products. Service opportunities soon should become part of Linux's appeal, considering the service-intensive environments where the operating system fits."

• This Wired News article is supposedly about Apple's decision to open up the low-level part of MacOS X, but the bulk of the text is spent talking about Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, and problems with various large companies. The article is also marked by a "free beer" interpretation of free software. "The effect of the disagreements is pooh-poohed by many open source software developers. As a large, opinionated community, most aren't willing to designate an omniscient spokesmen."

• PC Week has an article about Caldera's upcoming release, which, according to the article, will be called OpenLinux 2.2. Even though they have skipped over a "dot-zero" version, this release looks surprisingly bleeding-edge for Caldera. "This flagship program will include the new 2.2x Linux kernel, the glibc2.1 libraries and the latest version of the popular KDE (K Desktop Environment) 1.1 graphical user interface."

• Also in PC Week: this article about SAP's upcoming release of R/3 for Linux. It dedicates most of its space to corporate nay-sayers. "But ERP customers are not sure whether they are ready to take that step. One SAP user said he was committed to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT platform, adding that Linux is only making news as the trend of the moment."

• CNN has an article about Sun's approach to Linux. "While IBM and HP have been working to place themselves in the front seat as Linux's popularity soars, Sun has yet to commit to a comprehensive service or development agreement with any of the major Linux vendors."

• LinuxWorld has an article about the recent TCP Wrappers trojan attack and the implications thereof.

• ZDNet reviews Samba on an SGI Origin server. They were pretty well impressed. "In fact, after putting a Wandel & Goltermann Inc. Domino protocol analyzer on the wire to decode some of the CIFS traffic, we found that Samba supports some aspects of Microsoft Corp.'s CIFS protocol better than Microsoft does" (Thanks to Jeremy Allison).

• This Microsoft article in the Australian Financial Review wanders off into the speculations that Office may be ported to Linux. "According to stories appearing on the internet, many Microsoft software engineers are keen Linux users in their spare time, and are determined to get Windows software working on it."

• News.com has a brief article about the Empeg MP3 player. "Empeg has started production on Empeg Car, according to the company's Web site. Empeg Car, which runs on the Linux operating system, is powered by a 200-MHz StrongARM processor." (Thanks to Conrad Sanderson).

• This (UK) Computing article is a lengthy piece about the 2.2 kernel. "By making the kernel so scalable, it is possible to compile a version suitable for tasks as simplistic as controlling a thermostat to running a network the size of, say, the National Grid."

• Also in Computing: the Gartner Group once again tries to lower Linux expectations. "Announcements of support from IBM and Hewlett-Packard have not changed Gartner's view that real commercial support for Linux will not appear before 2000..."

• Also also in Computing: Is Linux worth the leap? which is mostly a set of case studies. "Companies that opt for Linux could in a few years time be building enterprise computing systems for a lot less money. And for those that don't make the switch, Linux has at least begun to change the way software vendors think about licensing and pricing." (Thanks to David Killick for all three of the above links).

• Will they still love Linux tomorrow? worried Web Review. "With all the hype about Linux I worry that the wrong people will be led to choose the Linux option and be disappointed with its ease of use and the application software currently available."

• MSNBC speculatesthat Microsoft may be porting its Office suite to Linux. "Last week, Unix expert and technical author Simson Garfinkel mentioned on a radio talk show broadcast in the Boston area that he had corresponded with developers with inside knowledge of Microsoft's Office Linux porting efforts." (Thanks to Bryan Wright).

• Next Generation Online claims to have confirmed that Sony will be using Linux as the development environment for their Playstation 2 game console. "The announcement that the company will make its development tools run in a Linux environment does not necessarily mean that the machine itself will use any sort of Linux implementation... However, Harrison's comments during last week's press conference do not rule out the possibility of a modified Linux kernel being used for the PlayStation 2's OS."

• Here's an article in OS/2 E-Zine which argues the point that OS/2 software developers should switch to an open source model. "...I do think that the only chance for OS/2 to survive is that at least the freeware developers who are writing software today must switch to using an OpenSource license, no matter how ugly the sources are." (Thanks to Rob Landley).

• Here's a confusing article in the San Jose Mercury (seemingly republished from SiliconValley.com) which appears to claim that Linux is pushing out Windows because Linux is smaller... "...many of us were a bit surprised that tiny, free Linux made such a sudden and heady inroad into today's personal computer marketplace"

• Wired News reports on Dell's offering of Linux-installed systems. "Despite the fact that Dell didn't even issue its own press release announcing Red Hat Linux installation and support for its servers and workstations, response was tremendous."

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

See also: last week's Announcements page.

Announcements

Resources

A new version of the Samba Step by Step Guide is available.

Events

Well, another "Linux Expo" has been announced. This one, though, is being held next November in London. It would be nice if they had picked a different name...

LinuxWorld has put up a page which contains, among other things, writeups from "over 35" of the sessions from the LinuxWorld Conference.

More LinuxWorld reports: Marc Merlin has put together an extensive set of pages with detailed reports and pictures (350!) from the conference.

Here's a press release put out by O'Reilly about the "Open Source Summit" that was held the day after the LinuxWorld conference. Not much in the way of specifics, but at least you can see who was there. "Long the favorite software development model of the programming elite, Open Source(TM) is now a credible technology option for any business."

User Group News

The Pikes Peak Linux User's Group, also known as PPLUG, has formed in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Their web-site provides information on getting signed up for their mailing list and a location to watch for information on upcoming events.

The Malaysian Linux Festival, held March 12th was apparently a terrific success. A write-up of the event from Hasbullah Pit was translated by Beh H L into English and made available.

Software Announcements

Our software announcements are provided courtesy of FreshMeat

See also: last week's Back page page.

Linux links of the week

And once you get good at the GIMP, you can try to put together something for themes.org...

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

Letters to the editor

Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 11:56:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Conrad Sanderson <conrad@hive.me.gu.edu.au>
To: lwn@lwn.net, editor@lwn.net
Subject: clearer definitions of "free software"


It's about time we should, as a community, have clearer definitions
of what free software is.  We know what it is, but there is a lot of
confusion to the outsiders and newcomers, as well as the millions 
of clue-less article writers, who for some strange reason use the term
"shareware", or only get the "free beer" aspect.

I propose we start using the clearer French (?) versions of free 
(no wonder it's the preferred diplomatic language) :

Libre = "liberated" -> free to modify source code
Gratis = "free beer"

---
Conrad Sanderson - Microelectronic Signal Processing Laboratory
Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
http://hive.me.gu.edu.au/~cam/

Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 10:14:55 +1000
From: geishan <geishan@ozemail.com.au>
To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: Free software.

I'm an small independent software developer. The company consists of
me.  That's all just me.  My work provides for my family. I create
proprietary software.  I am therefore the enemy in some peoples eyes.

I like Linux. I like the open source. Hell I'll proberly even
contribute to Linux.  But to have all software free?? That sucks.

The whole problem is one of levels. and degree.  At the bottom layer
is the OS, the kernel, then libraries and shells that make use of it,
then tools that in turn use the libraries. Now at this level there is
a really thick black line.  Because above this are applications.  I'll
contribute below the line, after all I, and my applications, can
benefit from this by improving stability and so on.  Above the line is
my eating and beer money. My livelihood.  Opening this up will stop
the beer, and food.

In short. The free and proprietary models are NOT exclusive, they
complement each other.  The free/open source just occupies a level
below the not free.

human nature: nothing for nothing - something for something.  I can
gain via contributions to open source at the low level and lose at the
high level.

Food for thought

Sean Hennessy
Australia

Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 22:58:36 -0500
From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>
To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: Who's hand is on the tiller?

In this weeks' LWN, you point to two Larry McVoy pieces from the kernel
mailing list on the topic of what should be done about architectural
debates concerning the Linux kernel, and whether or not such things
should merely be left to Linus, or also debated in public.

The consensus appears to be both, and this ought not to be much of a
surprise to anyone who follows that list.

However, there's a subtle point that I think is being missed here.

Probably _the_ fundamental reason that Linux has lasted as long as it
has, works as well as it does, is as popular as it is... and is in only
release 2.2 after _ten years_ is because there is _one_ hand on the
tiller: Linus'.

Yeah, he gets lots of help from hundreds of people, and I'm not remotely
trying to downplay their contributions -- especially since I'm not one
of them.  But in the end, the person who decides what does _not_ go in
the kernel (as Larry does note) is Linus. 

No one else.

Fred Brooks, author of the seminal work in programming project
management, _The_Mythical_Man_Month_ (which you really should read if
you haven't already) makes this point very clearly in his book: any
given system, if it is expected to work well and survive for a long
time, can tolerate one, or _maybe_ two, hands actively exercising
control over it's architecture.  No more.

One is best, for a job one can do -- and apparently this is such a job.
:-)

Of course, things will get interesting when Linus decides to retire.  I
can't see any way to avoid a fork at that point, but then, I don't
follow the kernel list.  Perhaps the architect apparent is already
apparent and I simply don't realize it.

In any event, while it's not necessarily a pleasant thing to think
about, The Linux Community<tm> would do well to give some consideration
to the thing that kills most family business by it's lack: succession
planning.  (Read: "Hey, Linus! You figure out who gets the reins, yet?"

Architecture isn't easy.  If it was, architects wouldn't get paid so
much.

Cheers,
-- jr 'will stir up firestorms for food' a
Jay R. Ashworth
Designer
Ashworth & Associates

Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 17:50:12 -0500 (EST)
From: "Ben 'The Con Man' Kahn" <xkahn@cybersites.com>
To: Craig Goodrich <craig@airnet.net>, John Kodis <kodis@jagunet.com>,
Subject: Who can you sue?


	The latest attack on Linux is the "Who do you sue?" question.
Taking the question at face value misses the point.  I don't believe that
the people asking this question actually imagine that they can sue other
software companies.  They are asking a different question.

	They want to know who is responsible -- who they can lean on when
things go wrong.  You see, large corporations like to have a process they
can reliably follow when things go wrong.  

	When they buy software from a large company, they know who they
can lean on -- that large software company.  They don't really believe
that they can effectively sue this software company, but they like to know
they can put pressure on the company to fix the problem.  (By refusing to
buy their products in the future, causing bad publicity, etc.)

	Because of this, businesses would rather deal with other
businesses.  The system, for the most part, works.  And looked at from
this perspective, free software (err...  Open Source(tm), sorry!) is
scary. It isn't always clear who can be blamed.

	Of course, Open Source(tm) software works in a different way.
Because the code is available, blame isn't an issue.  Instead of focusing
on who to blame, you get to concentrate on who can fix it.  And the answer
to that question is: anyone can fix it!

	Once companies grasp this concept, Open Source becomes far more
accepted.  I've seen it happen.

						-Ben

------------------------------------ |\      _,,,--,,_  ,) ----------
Benjamin Kahn                        /,`.-'`'   -,  ;-;;'
(212) 924 - 2220                    |,4-  ) )-,_ ) /\
ben@cybersites.com --------------- '---''(_/--' (_/-' ---------------
	Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

From: "F.Baube(tm)" <fred@rodan.moremagic.com>
Subject: RMS 2020
To: editor@lwn.net
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 14:42:52 +0200 (EET)

At this point in time, when licensing models are in a state
of flux, the role of RM Stallman is absolutely essential.

Right now, the Internet is transitioning from being merely 
huge to being stupefyingly all-pervasive, and this creates 
ever more pressure for the commercialisation of software.
But contemporaneous with this, licensing models are being 
devised and settled upon that will live on into the future.  

An absolutist is required to press home the point that no 
quarter can be yielded on the fundamental issue of citizen 
access to essential tools.  The programmers of ten and 
twenty years in the future must continue to have basic GPL 
tools available, lest the craft of programming be relegated 
to those who can pony up the price, whatever that future 
price might be.  Society's cashless and cash-shy must not 
be denied tools.  Let RMS remind the community of this.

I speak from experience.  I upgraded my skills during 
a bout of unemployment using GNU/Linux.  (And also the 
Java SDK, but that's a whole 'nother dispute ...  :-)

Best regards,

Fred Baube

Helsinki

-- 
F.Baube(tm)        * "The record labels are middlemen.
G'town U. MSFS '88 *  In the age of the Net, middlemen 
fred@moremagic.com *  are roadkill.  Let's kick out the jams ..."
+358 (40) 737 6934 *    -- music attorney Ashwood Kavanna
#include <std_disclaimer.h> 

Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 12:16:06 +0100 (MET)
From: David Kastrup <dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: Commercial support of Linux


In the last few years, corporateinterest in Linux is all the rage.  I
want to point out a few things in connection with that.

Linux is constituted of free software.  Only what has been released as
free software (redistributable with source) can find its way into
every distribution and become a part of Linux.  The rest can stay an
optional add-on at most.  If a corporation loses interest, this add-on
will no longer be available for newer kernel/library/processor.  It is
not a value added to Linux, as it can be taken away again.  It is
lustre, not substance.  Of course, lustre can be important too, and
sometimes needed, but it's the bones that count.

Some people think that proprietary software is good enough.  If this
stance would have been prevalent always, there would be no Linux.
There would be no GNU software, either.  This software is available
precisely because some people cared about free software, and it will
stay available beceuase of that.  Since no good free software gets
lost or buried, the free software pool can only improve.  This is what
has made Linux great mainly from the work of private contributors.

Now companies start getting involved with Linux because it is a good
platform, and on the rise.  They don't care about freedom of software
per se, they are trying to ride the waves.  What is in it for them?
Money.  What is in it for us?  Depends on what the company does.  We
have several forms of involvements.

One is the offer of proprietary software under Linux, like the Oracle
database.  This buys Linux nothing except more employment and a bit of
advertising.  It adds nothing to the value of Linux, it makes use of
the value of Linux.  It can be used for pointing out that Linux is a
viable platform for proprietary software too, but that's about it.

We have companies like Creative that start developing drivers for
their hardware without wanting to release them in the source.  They
are strictly adding value to their products, not to Linux.  You can
use such stuff only at their whim on platforms they choose to support,
on products they choose to support.  Once they think their interest
insupporting a certain board is over, you might no longer be able to
get it working with newer systems.  Limited lifetime.

Then we have contributors like Compaq/Digital/Sun, IBM, SGI and Intel
that support or do porting and development work on basic free Linux
code for hardware they are producing.  The results of that efforts are
available freely, thus they add to Linux (and potentially other free
systems) permanently.  If they chose to discontinue their support of
certain hardware, whoever wants to can take this up.  The fate of this
software is not at the absolute whim of the contributing companies
anymore.  This is a true and permanent contribution and thus is of an
entirely different quality, even though it is primarily intended for
pushing certain hardware.  This still makes excellent business sense.

And then we have contributors like SGI with the contribution of its
GLX code, IBM with contributions in Apache development, RedHat with
the contribution of GNOME development.  This is code that can be made
to benefit *every* Linux system even from competitors.  It is code
that advances the state of art of Linux for everyone.  It helps
everyone, establishing the contributor as a technology spearhead
instead of merely a small claims technology dealer.  It is
contributions like that that *really* advance Linux significantly and
permanently.  Since a widely accepted standard operating system freely
available is very desirable for companies, this again makes business
sense, but it makes long-term business sense and benefits even those
that do not play by the rules.

Involvements like that are of the highest quality and value for the
advance of Linux.  I find it pretty sad that corporate involvement
with Linux gets all-hailed currently without much differentiation.
All people, please take care to pinpoint always which class a Linux
involvement of business is in when reporting about it.  The true
contributors deserve your respect, your acknowledgments, your public
support and your praise in proportion to their contribution.

If we indiscriminately applaud everyone regardless of their true
accomplishments, we discourage real contributions, real investments,
real dedication.  So please grade the amount of enthusiasm you show
for various achievements.  We currently have enough to start getting
a bit less indiscriminate.

David Kastrup                                     Phone: +49-234-700-5570
Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de       Fax: +49-234-709-4209
Institut für Neuroinformatik, Universitätsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany

Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 21:41:15 +0800
From: Tom Atkinson <tom@tyco.net.au>
To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: What Linux needs next

It seems that the world is crying out for an escape 
from Microsoft but Bill Gates knows that he will 
continue to dominate the desktop while Linux/Unix
configuration can be done only by the highly skilled.

It is generally agreed that for Linux to make inroads
"on the desktop", it needs a unified and consistent
configuration/administration system, which can be
accessed via either a graphical or text-based frontend.

If ALL the system and application configuration could 
be done through this system, then Linux would be as 
"useable" as Windows95 for 100% of the world's computer
users.  At present, only about 5% of users would 
consider Linux to be as useable as Win95.

By "useable", I am talking about the ease with which 
the user can configure, or reconfigure, the way
applications work, be they "system" apps such as CRON,
or "user" apps such as KBIFF.

With useability equal to Win95, ports (fully supported
ones at that) of commercial software such as Photoshop
become a considerably more worthwhile business
proposition.

If the configuration system I am proposing is the
missing ingredient to desktop success, then why hasn't
it been done?

As you are probably aware, there have been a number of
attempts at "configuration/administration suites" for 
Unix and Linux over the years.

Most of the proprietary unixes have their own, 
graphical administration tools.  Works in progress for
Linux are COAS and Linuxconf, plus, I presume, a tool 
for each of the distributions.  (A RedHat distribution
I once used had a tool called "Glint").

None of these attempts have been terribly successful,
which is not surprising, given that they keep making
the same mistake, over and over!

In Linux Journal issue 58, Olaf Kirch, talking about
COAS, ruefully admits that "updating and maintaining
configuration software for Sendmail is almost a full 
time job for a programmer".  Clearly, the wrong
approach is being followed here.

COAS and the others are a step in the right direction
but are doomed to failure because they simply are not
"doing it right".  As each of the current crop of
suites dies through lack of adoption, sadly, others
will spring up, in their place, repeating the same
mistake.  Forgive my pessimism, but this has been the
pattern over the last several years.  Remember the 
"dotfile generator"?

THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO DO IT RIGHT AND THAT IS TO
DO AWAY WITH THE HUNDREDS OF "FLAT" ASCII FILES THAT
ARE CURRENTLY BEING USED.

You make big problems for yourself when you create an
admin system which operates on the ASCII config files.
The programming required, in order to support each 
different config file, is significant.  This is 
because the programming needs to be very "defensive", 
so as to allow sysadmins to continue to use vi on
the file.  The programming work required, considering
the number of different applications you wish to
support, is simply too large.  This is the simple 
reason why ALL attempts in this area have thus far 
been failures.

In place of the hundreds of existing config files 
needs to be one database that holds all of the 
configuration info.  (Or should the system consist of
system-wide, and per-user databases?).

DO IT RIGHT OR DON'T DO IT AT ALL.

This means that all the applications have to be 
modified but this is the only realistic way!  It may 
seem like hard work at first glance, but just think 
of how much work has already gone into those failed 
admin tool attempts.  Think also of how the internet 
and the open source ideal make the job much more 
possible today than 5-10 years ago.

Hopefully, it should only be necessary to get the 
major application authors onside (Sendmail, Samba, 
Apache, etc), then the ball would be rolling.  
Ironically, life would actually be a little easier for
these authors, because less code would be required in
their application to read and write config data.

I do not wish to get into the technicalities of the
database layout and interface - that is a task for 
those more expert at this subject than I.

If the major apps went to such a system, it would also
cause a force for further unification of all unixes,
because they would have to adopt the system too.

Eventually, this dream of all unixes would be realised
- the graphical, bulletproof, configuration suite that
configures ALL software, not just /etc/passwd and 
/etc/fstab.

A distribution of Linux that is as useable to the "mums
and dads" as Windows 95 would suddenly be possible.

Tom Atkinson
(tom AT tyco.net.au)