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Leading itemsThe Open Source trademark is no more. As communicated in this press release from the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the U.S. Government was unwilling to register "Open Source" as a trademark. Seems that the term was "too descriptive." So no more trademark; anybody who wants to use the term - even Al Gore - may now do so. Not everybody will lament the passing of this trademark. See, for example, this ZDNet article by Evan Liebovitch: "The term open source is now as free as the software it describes. Actually, it's always been free, but at least the attempt to kidnap it has failed." Indeed, the term is truly free. But what does "Open Source" mean if anybody can apply it to anything? Not everybody was happy with all of the licenses that got the "Open Source" stamp (see, for example, Bruce Perens's editorial on the topic), but the fact remains that the OSI's control over the term was used numerous times to gain improvements in corporate source licenses. It has been a force for good, but its power is now gone. The OSI is attempting to come back with a new "OSI Certified" certification mark. This mark, which should be defensible, will be awarded to vendors when their licenses meet the OSI's criteria. Let's hope this program works, and proves popular. There is a good chance that we will soon find ourselves buried in "open source" software that is nothing of the kind. Having a well-respected body setting some standards will help to sort out the real from the pretend, and will put pressure on vendors to come up with good (or at least better) licenses. Control of the linuxhq.com domain has been transferred to Michael McLagan, the sometimes controversial person behind linux.org and the ill-fated Linux Standards Association. Those who have been following the issue will remember that, until recently, LinuxHQ has been maintained by Jim Pick. Jim's site was abruptly detached from the domain last month; it has found a new home at Kernelnotes.org. Since these events took place, the status of LinuxHQ has been unclear. Meanwhile, Mr. McLagan had been looking for a way to beef up the kernel content at Linux.org. LinuxHQ thus becomes, for him, a way of adding on to his kernel coverage that brings not only content, but a massive set of links (AltaVista turns up more than 6000) and an established reader base. Picking up the site probably required little thought on his part. The terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed; Mr. McLagan will only say "I agreed to maintain the site and not to sell it." What will be done with LinuxHQ now? It will remain as a separate site, though closely tied to Linux.org. There will be a sharing of content that will, according to Mr. McLagan, benefit both sites. An "expansion of coverage of kernel development" is planned for LinuxHQ, with an emphasis on appealing to kernel and application developers. Thus ends, presumably, a period of significant ugliness. It will be interesting to see where LinuxHQ goes from here, and whether it will be able to hold on to its longstanding crowd of dedicated readers. VA Linux Systems has hired Jon "Maddog" Hall to work in its marketing group; see their press releasefor a few details. Like Red Hat, VA has, at this point, managed to hire quite a few important Linux players. This accumulation of important talent into a relatively small number of commercial hands may well be a cause for concern for many. The truth of the matter still seems to be, though, that it is a tremendously good thing that the people who have done a lot to insure the success of Linux are able to get jobs working on Linux. We wish Mr. Hall the greatest of success in his new position. We do hope, however, that the loss of such a strong internal Linux advocate at Compaq will not adversely affect their support for the system. The Linux Documentation Project has a new leader; it is Guylhem Aznar. Mr. Aznar is a medical student at Purpan University at Toulouse, maintainer of the UUCP, Mail, and French HOWTOs, and a former maintainer of the AfterStep window manager and the xiterm terminal emulator. Mr. Aznar has set out on an ambitious project to greatly improve the (already great) LDP through a number of initiatives:
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June 17, 1999
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityNewsThe theme of the week seems to be small problems, involving information leakage or general sloppiness. Nothing too big or earthshaking - at least for those of us not running Window systems.Bencsath Boldizsar reported a problem with sudo wherein it will inform a clever user about the existence and permissions of files in a protected directory. Files in the directory remain inaccessible, but it really would be better to not leak the information about them. Similarly, a problem exists with ssh 2 - its behavior is different depending on whether an account that an intruder attempts to log in to exists or not. Thus it is possible to find out whether a given account exists on a system or not. See the report from Alfonso Lazaro Tellez for details. Then, there is a logging problem with su on Red Hat systems, and probably any other system which uses PAM. If an su fails due to a bad password, the sequence of operations seems to be:
Security ReportsCERT recently issued a security advisory for rpc.statd. Please note that Linux systems generally do not run rpc.statd (and those that do run a newer version), so they should not be impacted by this advisory.A KMail security problem is addressed by this Caldera advisory, which contains pointers to updated rpms. [Recommended upgrade if you use KMail] The Debian man-db package is vulnerable to a symlink attack and therefore an updated package has been made available. [Recommended upgrade] UpdatesRed Hat has put out updated versions of wu-ftpd and imap. Upgrades are recommended, though the imap patch only fixes a POP-2 problem on Red Hat 4.x and 5.x systems, and thus will not apply unless you are running the older POP-2 server.Red Hat has also issued updates for the dev, rxvt, and screen packages, fixing a vulnerability there. ResourcesMatthew Franz asked us to remind people about his OpenSEC web page. OpenSEC contains a well-organized set of links to open-source-based security tools and a moderated announcement list. A moderated discussion list is also in the works.EventsSANS Linux security workshop. SANS has issued a call for papers for their "Workshop On Securing Linux," which will be held in San Francisco on December 15 and 16, 1999. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
June 17, 1999
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentThe current development kernel release is 2.3.6. This version includes a lot of hardware stuff - I2O support, a new Adaptec driver, SCSI generic changes, USB stuff, IRDA, etc. 2.3.6 seems to be reasonably stable, there have not been too many complaints. If code that actually works is too boring, you can always get the 2.3.7 patch from the testing directory. But do take note of the "dangerous" in the file name. This patch includes some serious reworking of the page cache writing scheme, with the result that a lot of file systems are broken. 2.3.7 pre1 is known to cause filesystem corruption in some cases; pre2 is out but should be approached with caution. While the real 2.3.7 will not be released until the developers are reasonably convinced that it will not trash filesystems, even hard core bleeding-edge kernel folks may want to approach that release with caution and a good backup in hand. On the stable side, 2.2.10 has been released, finally. It contains lots of small tweaks, including the patch for the denial of service hole; it also has the new Adaptec driver and a few other larger changes. Alan Cox has immediately started adding on to this release with 2.2.10ac2. For really stable people, 2.0.37 has been released as well. This should be the last ever 2.0 release, unless some sort of horrific security problem turns up. Version 0.3 of the USB HOWTO has been released. Anybody who wants to play with the new USB support should have a look at this document. It is also a good overview of the state of USB support at this point. ACPI support for Linux. ACPI (the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is a new power management scheme being put together by Intel, Microsoft, and Toshiba; it is supposed to be the successor to the older APM interface. More about ACPI can be found on the ACPI web page. Linux does not yet support ACPI out of the box; there is, however, an active Linux ACPI development projectout there. Their current release can handle powering down the system, and not a whole lot more, but they have a lot of the framework in place. They have a list of projects in need of developers; this could be a good place for aspiring kernel hackers to jump in and help out. Knfsd 1.4 has been released by H.J. Lu. H.J. (and others) continue the steady process of ironing out problems and creating a stable NFS implementation for Linux 2.2. The eternal devfs battle. Richard Gooch has announced version 111 of his devfs patch, along with an accompanying devfsd release. Meanwhile, the fight in linux-kernel over whether devfs should be incorporated into the kernel has surfaced yet again. The arguments are mostly the same (is it needed, does it belong in kernel space, ...) and have been reported here before. Certainly anybody less persistent than Mr. Gooch would have given up some time ago. The real issue is how Linux will deal with a world where devices are far more dynamic, and there are many more of them. Devfs is one approach to this problem. But, given the strength and sources of the objections, it seems unlikely to make it into the kernel in its current form. The ideas worked out there, however, may well eventually become part of a bigger scheme for managing large, changing device pools. QLinux. Something we missed last week: the QLinux project has released a version of the Linux kernel with a number of quality of service (QOS) enhancements. QLinux can not only provide QOS guarantees for network traffic (a capability the Linux kernel already has), it can apply them to CPU usage and disk scheduling as well. Their current release is based on 2.2.0; they will have one based on 2.2.9 later this summer. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
June 17, 1999
For other kernel news, see: |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Distributions page. |
DistributionsA couple of additional Linux-based router mini-Linux projects (other than the Linux Router Project) were brought to our attention over the past two weeks, including ShareTheNet, Project Ballantain and the planned replacement for Project Ballantain, currently only in screen-shots, Project Freesco. ShareTheNet, from author John Lombardo, is designed to run on a single floppy and is targeted for the home office market. It is, in fact, a for-sale product intended to be downloaded and used without requiring any knowledge of Linux (just a computer to run it on). It provides basic gateway functionality in a reasonably secure manner. A free version of the product is also downloadable and can be set up easily by anyone already running Linux. Project Ballantain is concisely described on its web site as a "Single floppy router modem-ethernet, IPmasquerad + diald + dhcpd". Although bug-fix support is still available, it is a closed project, with no on-going development work. Instead, Project Freesco, from the same author, appears to be in the planning stages. Many thanks to all the people who've been sending me pointers to Linux distributions I was missing on our comprehensive list! Mea culpa that I got behind and didn't get appropriate credit out for entries for the last few weeks. Meanwhile, many thanks to Neal Richter who wins the prize this week for the largest number of reported "new" distributions. DebianQuake issues with Debian can now be discussed on a new mailing list created just for that purpose.Green FrogDescribed by the developer as a "a small compact Linux Distribution that is made by a Japanese/American High School student with way too much time on his hands", Green Frog Linux is a small, compact distribution intended to be a starting point for people who want to "home-brew" most or all of their Linux distribution. It weighs in at 36MB and comes with Linux 2.2.8+devfs v99, egcs 1.1.2, glibc 2.1, ncurses 4.2 and Perl 5.005.LinuxGTThe first release of LinuxGT server edition has been announced. This is a beta release of this new distribution - nobody should be putting it into production environments at this point. The developers are looking for bug reports and comments, of course.Note that the download site listed in the announcement has been shutdown in favor of mirror sites. Check nj.greysite.com or metalab instead. LinuxPPCLinuxPPC 5.0 has been released. The new version, now known as LinuxPPC 1999, features a new installer designed for maximum ease of installation (Red Hat's installer is also available), special theme support to let you choose to make your machine look like a MacIntosh, etc., plus glibc2 and more.Reports cropped up about an AutoStart virus on the R5 CDs. Although confirmed, it seems that the virus is inert, not actually transmissible. For more information, check out the original report and followups at MacInTouch. It was also mention in this article in MacWeek.com about the new release. MandrakeThe Mandrake 6.0 PowerPack has been announced. It should be in the hands of distributors as we speak. It comes with 5 CDs, the 2.2.9 kernel and more .MkLinuxNews from the MkLinux community was provided to us for the first time in this report from Larry Kollar. Top of the list was a mention of the new mklinux.org website, a community-based alternative to Apple's MkLinux page, which is no longer updated regularly.QuadLinuxThe Quad Xeon server now has its own, customized Linux distribution, QuadLinux, based on Red Hat, but with all RPMs compiled for the Xeon processor and SMP utilities and applications included. At $299, it may also be the most expensive Linux distribution out there currently. Of course, compared to the actual price of a Quad Xeon server ...Red HatA collection of bug reports on Red Hat's bugzilla have been wrapped up as a result of their release of a new utempter package. It seems that a bug in utempter caused a number of programs to fail to exit properly when a user logged out, including xterm, rxvt and screen. If you're interested in the details, check out the full Bugzilla report.Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
June 17, 1999
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
Known Distributions:
Apokalypse |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development toolsJavaThe Linux Java 2 prerelease version 2 was made available on June 4th. Information on this latest prerelease can be found on the JDK 1.2 Status Page. Diffs from the Solaris sources are also available. Rpms for Red Hat users have been created by Sorin Lingureanu. Check his note for more details.IBM has released a port of Sun's Java Development Kit (JDK 1.1.6) for Linux. It includes IBM's just-in-time compiler technology. From comments on the mailing lists, this port performs better than the blackdown port for some applications. They have also recently begun releasing a trickle of "AlphaBeans" - Java beans which perform various useful tasks. Java for Industrial and Embedded Automation is the fullname for the JISA '99 conference, scheduled next week, June 20-23, 1999, in Santa Clara, CA. The press release promises that it will present the "cutting edge of Industrial Java Technology". PerlEight new articles are available in the latest edition of Perlmonth, along with two new columns, "When Perl Met Apache" by Stas Bekman and "Perl/TKed Out" by Slaven Rezic.A quiz for Perl Professionals turned into mirth once Uri Guttman got a hold of it. Here are his answers ... followed by Tom Christianson's correct solution to the problem. PythonStackless Python 0.2, a plug-in replacement for the Python core that does not use the C stack, has been announced by Christian Tismer as the best way to prove that it was possible without a major rewrite to the core. Neel Krishnaswami commented to Christian, "This is very neat, and you are completely deranged".Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
June 17, 1999 |
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Development projectsGimpThis month's issue of TheGimp.com is now available. The feature article for this month is entitled "Uncasting The Shadows" and talks about how to dodge shadows from underexposed images. Three new quickie tutorials are included as well, along with the regular features. Jason Murray has been chosen Artist of the Month and more information about Jason, plus a shot of his Fractal Dream, are provided in this month's issue.For more in-depth Gimp development information, you may want to check out the inaugural issue of the Gimp-devel Kernel Cousin. It contains a report from the gimp-devel mailing list for the past week with links to specific messages in the archive. GnomeHavoc Pennington got to us this week's Gnome Summary. It covers a large amount of information, so we'll just mention that they are even looking for a Visual Basic hacker to help and let you dig through the summary to find out why ...GNUTo make administration of large numbers of nodes as easy as that of a single node is the goal of the GNU Administration Project (GAP). It is planned as a CORBA-based, event-trigger system. The web site contains the planned architecture for the system and some basic details, but it is still in the early stage, so no code appears to be available for download and the latest status of the project is not available.KDEHere is this week's KDE summary sent to us, as usual, by Navindra Umanee.The KDevelop Team has announced version 0.4 of their KDevelop IDE for Unix Systems. The next time one of your friends moving from that other operating system to Linux asks for a GUI development environment, you can point them this way, at least as long as they want to develop in C++. MidgardThe fourth edition of the Midgard Weekly Summary has been released. Key points include the first release of the Midgard FAQ and the latest stable release of Midgard, version 1.0.3. Although called stable, note that it is only available in CVS form because "it contains many troublesome modifications to Midgard's database tables (and so could break many older sites without proper installation)".PostgreSQLPostgreSQL v6.5 has been released. There's lots of new features, including top-quality concurrency control and hot backups.WineDevelopment release 990613 has been announced.ZopeComing up in August, the O'Reilly Open Source Conference will be featuring a couple of Zope-based talks, including "Introduction to the Zope Web Application" on Saturday, August 21st, and "Community: Funding the Perfect Beast ... Venture Capitalism, IP and Open Source", on Monday, August 23rd.And, with thanks again to Amos Latteier, here is this week's Zope Weekly News. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh | |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and businessA new Kaffe - sponsored by Microsoft. Transvirtual has finally announced a new version of the Kaffe Java virtual machine. The work on Kaffe was partially funded by Microsoft, with the interesting result that Kaffe can run Java code that uses Microsoft's extensions - even on other platforms. (It is not the case, as reported in this confused News.com article, that Kaffe now only runs on Windows). Their licensing claims to be GPL for desktop systems, while use in embedded applications will cost money. It will be interesting to see how the licensing shakes out. Since there is a GPL version out there, there is little to stop a company from using it - without payment - in their embedded applications. One assumes that the embedded version has some extra goodies that make it work in that environment. That raises the obvious question: how long until somebody releases an embeddable port of the GPL version? The future of Transvirtual's cash flow - and their continued support of Kaffe - could depend on the answer. Corel claimsthat the first Linux Advisory Council meeting was a great success. "Members discussed a variety of issues, including: the possibility of developing a centralized depository for Linux, giving users one online site for bug fixes, patches, etc.; making Linux training available on the Web; creating a centralized training model for recognized Linux certification; the importance of making Linux available in universities and in elementary and high schools; and the importance of supporting local user groups." A mobile database for Linux. Sybase has announced the availability of its "SQL Anywhere Studio" mobile database product on Linux. Dual processors for cheap. The Computer Underground has announced a sub-$1000 dual-CPU Linux system. It is built using overclocked Celeron processors, so it is probably not for everybody. But folks seeking inexpensive SMP may want to check it out. Applix creates Linux division. Applix has announced the creation of a new Linux division within the company. The division will concentrate on selling products to Linux users; it will also operate a web site that "...will provide an on-line knowledge base for users to search for information associated with Linux and Open Source Software vendors" Free testing and certification for open source ORB vendors. The Open Group has announced that they will donate up to $1 million in testing and certification services to selected vendors of open source CORBA object request brokers (ORBs). The idea is to get open source products out there in the mainstream with some sort of guaranteed interoperability. The offer does little for most open source ORB projects, though - the Open Group is only interested in vendor-supported products with "legitimate technical support" and other such trappings. Cheapest distribution CDs? The Linux Mall has sent out an announcement claiming that their distribution CDs, at $1.89 each, are the cheapest available. Press Releases:
Section Editor: Jon Corbet. |
June 17, 1999 |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the newsOut of this week's recommended reading, two of the articles are about the Mindcraft benchmark rerun. Both brought out interesting things about the Linux community and how it is perceived.
Linus Torvalds gave a talk in San Francisco that drew a few articles:
Lots of business-related articles, as usual:
There were just a couple of introductory pieces this week:
And here's the rest of what we came up with:
Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
June 17, 1999 |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesExtreme Linux papers online Last week's Usenix conference included an Extreme Linux (Beowulf clusters and such) workshop. Now, most of the papers and presentations from the workshop are available on the Extreme Linux web site. Check it out for a good view of what is going on in this, well, extreme branch of the Linux community.EventsLooking for another Linux event this summer? The Ottawa Linux Symposium will be held July 22-24th. Alan Cox will be the primary speaker and Corel and Rebel.com have announced their sponsorship of the event.Winter Linux World Expo moved. Here is the press release from IDG announcing the change of venue and date for next winter's Linux World Expo. The new event will be held in New York, on February 1-4, 2000. The reason, evidently, is that the event grew too large for the previous venue. SANS Linux security workshop SANS has issued a call for papers for their "Workshop On Securing Linux," which will be held in San Francisco on December 15 and 16, 1999. UKUUG Linux conference registration deadline The advance registration deadline for the UKUUG Linux Conference (June 25-26, Birmingham) is this Friday, June 18. Alan Cox has been recently confirmed as a speaker at this event. Web sitesUser Group News"Serving the community" takes on a new meaning on Bainbridge, Island, a community outside Seattle, Washington where computer equipment donated for auction in order to raise money for charity will now be pre-installed with Linux. For an excellent idea to help charities in your area, check out description of the work being done to support the 38th annual Bainbridge Island Rotary Club Auction/Garage Sale by the Kitsap Peninsula Linux User Group (KPLUG).A mailing list for discussion of UK LUG organizational issues has been created. According to this note from Kevin Taylor, the list is open to anyone involved in the organization of a UK based user group. For more information, check the Lugmasters Homepage. |
June 17, 1999
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Software Announcements
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekYet another portal site may be found at IndexOS. They look at alternative operating systems in general, and Linux in particular. Here, is their Linux page. Other aspiring portal builders may want to check out the Linux portal mini-HOWTO on Humorix. The Linux hardware database maintains a list of available hardware, along with ratings of how well each item works with Linux. It seems a bit thin at the moment, but if more people head on over and contribute their experience, it should easily develop into a highly useful resource. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
June 17, 1999 |
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Letters to the editorLetters to the editor should be sent to letters@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. | |
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 22:57:01 -0400 From: William Hoffman <whoffman@nospam.erols.com> To: lwn@lwn.net Subject: Sadly, you are wrong about RedHat's $80 price tag. For new users such as myself--sick of MS's buggy bloatware, actively seeking a _productive_ alternative, ambivalent in the face of a bewildering variety of near-commodity type Linux distributions lining MicroCenter store shelves--the issue breaks down like this: Slackware: $20; too bad there's no manual Debian: $30; yeah, right SuSE: $40; intriguing... but I don't read German Caldera: $40; boasts an easy install (and with MicroCenter's 30-day money back guarantee, I can experiment) Red Hat: $80; compared to the others... pricey It's immaterial that these impressions are flawed (SuSE's fully English-language manual is one of the best, though the hard-to-pronounce name gives newbies a fit). Only propellerheads will appreciate the support Red Hat has given the Linux community, or care about the controversies the company's strategies have provoked. To paraphrase an early 20th-century president of these United States, "What this country needs is a good $50 operating system." In other words, the future belongs to Corel, if they know how to take it. William Hoffman whoffman@nospam.erols.com | ||
From: "Greg Mader" <gmader@geoanalytics.com> To: <letters@lwn.net> Subject: smbmount woes. Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 09:24:30 -0500 Editor, For way too long, smbmount has performed poorly. The Samba team has washed its hands of it, saying "We are working on smbsh," and "SMBmount is part of smbfs, not samba." Well, the corruption problem in today's Linux Weekly News is the last straw. The Samba team has done a marvelous job creating a one way server system. Linux does not have high quality SMB clients now, and Linux probably will not have any for some time. I strongly urge the Samba team to "put up or shut up" on smbsh, or start working on smbfs to become stable, safe, and full featured. In the mean time, I will suggest Sharity to people who ask for connectivity from Linux to NT servers, and warn them that in my experience, SMBmount is a dud. Greg Mader | ||
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 18:28:26 +0200 From: Alessandro Muzzetta <muzzetta@geocities.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Danger of software patents in Europe Hello, I'd like to bring to your attention an article by Richard Stallman warning on the danger of software patents in Europe: http://features.linuxtoday.com/stories/5960.html The article may be copied and redistributed verbatim. Stallman has been notifying European users of the imminent introduction of software patents in Europe by the European Parliament, before Summer 1999. As you probably know already, software patents are considered a Bad Thing, especially for the Free/Open Source software community. The European Union intends to emulate the flawed US patent system. Thus, software patents that are making life hard for US programmers today (consider the GIF patent, the RSA patent restricting PGP, etc..) may find their way into Europe. There is already a group in France (www.freepatents.org) that is involved in the fight against software patents. Similar initiatives have been instituted in Germany (swpat.ffii.org) and Italy (no-patents.prosa.it). It seems people are uninformed. We are desparately trying to raise awareness on the issue and would appreciate your help in doing so. Thanks for your cooperation. Alessandro Muzzetta | ||
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 18:26:47 +0100 From: Richard Kay <Rich_Kay@ect.uce.ac.uk> To: jp@ncfocus.com, letters@lwn.net Subject: Look before you leap Dear Mr Morgenthal, Concerning your article in Internet Week online this gives the impression that the silly season has started in earnest this year. Have you actually used a recent version of Linux ? Much of the positive press this development has been getting has until recently been due to the very rapid pace of development of this system, based as it is on open collaboration and peer review - something the scientific community has found more effective than the alternatives for many years in other areas. However more recently this system has been able to stand up to more serious comparison. This is not to say that Linux is best in all areas yet. But Sun and IBM know well enough how to read the writing on the wall and which side their bread is buttered as they receive somewhat more revenue from services than sale of their own proprietary operating software. You state: >Linux is an open-source project; therefore, all changes to the kernel >are subject to review and approval by a small team that controls >this portion of the operating system. Companies that add features >they need, but that are not accepted into the core distribution, may >find themselves in a redevelopment and retesting cycle every time >a new version of Linux is released. Firstly only a few users need changes to the kernel and those who do are less dependent on the core kernel team if they use Linux than if they use a system to which they have no direct access to read and modify the source code. Secondly those who want to add features are free to decide their own upgrade cycle and branch the kernel development if they so wish. I don't imagine for example that those using Linux for embedded systems will ever want to incorporate all of the mainstream kernel into their subset/branch of it. Forthly the reason there has been so little branching (attested by Microsoft's Halloween documents) is testimony to the success of the core development team in incorporating features needed by the development/user community. The few who create and use dependencies through binary-only patches without providing access to source code have only themselves to blame if kernel changes make life slightly more difficult for them. The fact that desktop Windows users still outnumber desktop Linux users is somewhat irrelevant to those considering applications for which Linux is better suited, e.g. web servers where Linux servers have more web client users now than NT does. For large SMP systems Solaris and AIX will not dissapear overnight - but as has been said before IBM and SUN are not supporting Linux for reasons contrary to their own commercial interests. On the complexity front, yes there is still a problem with Linux as it is a fast growing one with NT. But it is better to build a complex system upon a sound design than a shaky one. Also an increasing range of Linux system administration facilities are being implemented using simple web front ends and Windows-style GUIs and Wizards etc. The fact of Linux's low cost is partly instrumental in its fast growth of use within my own field of higher education. The inevitable effect of this will be to ensure a very rapidly growing stream of people coming out of education with the skills needed to administrate, manage and configure this system. In light of its success as an Internet/Intranet server platform and development in other areas and the recognition of their need to support this system by IBM, HP, SUN, Oracle, Informix, Dell and Compaq etc, your calling it a "a college student's project gone astray" is just plain daft. Hence my question about whether you are writing about something which you have ever used ? Yours Sincerely, Richard Kay School of Electronic and Software Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Central England Perry Barr, Birmingham B42 2SU UK Email: Richard.Kay@uce.ac.uk | ||
To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Justin King on osOpinion... Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 16:50:15 +0100 From: kevin lyda <kevin@suberic.net> Just read Justin King's piece on osOpinion. I hope no one mailed him to enlighten him; it would be like sending an interior designer into a black hole to "brighten up the place." I'd love it if the "Linux is just a craze" crowd would also let us know what they thought about the net five years ago. These people wouldn't get a clue if they were caught in some freak clue blizzard, never mind a few emails. Unrelated to Mr. King's article, I'd also like the "Linux thing is just a new version of ABM" to explain just when they first heard of unix, and if they're aware that 1969 came just a few years before 1980. Opinion pieces are nice, but without any meaningful facts they should be more accurately labeled as ravings. Thanks, Kevin | ||
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 16:32:11 -0700 (PDT) To: letters@lwn.net Subject: *code wars* [Qt reserved words] From: Leo Razoumov <lrazoumov@qualcomm.com> Nathan Myers brought a very valid point of a library design emphasizing the fact that Qt claims several general-purpose tokens for Qt library. I do digital signal processing and telecommunications software development where 'signal' and 'slot' have their natural roots and meanings. This is why I do *NOT* use Qt. By now C++ has been around for a decade or so and people already worked out simple rules how to avoid global namespace pollution by prefixing the keywords: String => RWCString (Rogue Wave Class String) Display => XtDisplay (Xt Intrinsics library function) signal => QTsignal (proposed for Qt library) !!!! I think it is just a good taste in library design to either use namespaces as defined in C++ ISO standard or to stick with library prefixes for a while. I personally would not complain to type extra QT in front of everything which comes from their library. On the other hand the Nathan's appeal to deliberately break Qt based applications sounds strange (to put it mildly). So far Troll Tech has been receptive enough to address the needs of Open Source Community. Also they do not want a negative publicity for their flagship commercial product when people start questioning the quality of their library design. I sincerely beleive that the issue could be solved in timely manner and without drastic measures like *code-wars*. thanks, -- Leo Razoumov, Ph.D. DISCLAIMER: Statements and opinions expressed in this message are the private optinions of its author and do not represent or reflect explicitly or implicitly opinions and positions of the author's employer. | ||