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Leading items and editorialsThere was much activity around Linux in embedded systems this week, as a result of the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose. This conference looks to be a bit of a watershed event - the occasion where Linux takes the embedded systems stage. And this is a big stage - some 68,000 people are attending. It is time to see if all the rosy predictions for Linux in the embedded area start to come true. So, what happened this week?
LWN's Liz Coolbaugh is at the Embedded Systems Conference this week. As of press time, we have her first report from the floor there. It appears to be an exciting time for Linux in the embedded systems arena. Web 100, Linux, and high-performance networking. How can we get our systems to make better use of the high-bandwidth links used in the modern Internet? A project called "Web 100," currently in the early stages, is looking at making some TCP changes to allow systems to get the most out of the Internet - and they plan to do their work on Linux. Here is an LWN feature article about Web 100, what it is trying to achieve, and how it might help to keep Linux in the forefront of networking development. What kind of modem does the IBM Thinkpad 600E really have? We have gotten a wide variety of opinions, but the definitive word appears to be that it has a modem based on the IBM Mwave DSP. It does not run the Lucent DSP, though some of the other Thinkpad models do. Hopefully this is our last word on the subject... Red Hat's web site will cease carrying LWN in October. We have enjoyed working with Red Hat, and wish them the best of luck with their web site efforts. Meanwhile, we encourage all of you who may have been reading our content via redhat.com to come to the source at lwn.net. Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:
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September 30, 1999
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityNews and editorialsThe "Hack PC Week" Linux server was compromised, much to the delight of anti-Linux activists everywhere. But before one takes this episode as a condemnation of Linux security in general, it is worthwhile to have a look at how the system was broken into. The following information was posted by the crackers on the PC Week forums; it got split up so one needs to read the first and second parts separately.The crack happened in two distinct steps. The first was getting to where an arbitrary program could be run on the server. The cracker (identified as "jfs") achieved this by expoiting a vulnerability in the "photoads" CGI script which was being used by PC Week to run advertisements on the target site. Nothing inherent in Linux or Apache was exploited to get in; the door was opened by a third-party, commercial package. Once able to run programs on the target system, the cracker needed root access. It turns out that the (Red Hat) system being used in the challenge was lacking a number of security updates. In particular, the update to cron, issued by Red Hat on August 25, had not been applied. Jfs simply needed to run a canned exploit program from the net, and root access was his. End of story. One clear conclusion is that the Linux system used in this challenge was not properly secured. A system being put on the front lines of a security challenge should at least have the security updates installed. And the inclusion of vulnerable, third-party software should only have been done with a great amount of thought. It might also be said that Linux systems are too hard to secure. If nothing else, Red Hat 6.0 is overdue for an update. The official updates to that release now make up a substantial portion of the whole distribution, far more than most users will want to dig through. Updates will always go unapplied; it is better to eliminate the need. Security ReportsLinux TCP stack problem found A bug in the 2.2 (and 2.3) kernel TCP stack has been found and posted. A suitably clever attacker could use it to bypass a number of address-based access control mechanisms. The bug has been tracked down and a fix exists; chances are a new 2.2 stable kernel will be released shortly.Certicom challenge cracked. A group led by INRIA in France has announced the cracking of the code put forward in Certicom's "ECC Challenge." $4000 of their prize money will be going to the Free Software Foundation. (Thanks to Stéfane Fermigier). A denial of service problem in ssh 1.2.27 has been announced. It's another /tmp link problem that allows a bad guy to make life obnoxious for local users. UpdatesHere are the security updates we have seen this week:
ResourcesThe Linux Administrator's Security Guide has moved to a new location on SecurityPortal.com.EventsTooRcon 2000, a security-oriented conference, has been announced; it will be happening September 1-3, 2000 in San Diego, California.Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
September 30, 1999
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentLinus remains out of sight as of this writing; thus, no official kernel releases have been made in some time. Alan Cox continues to accumulate patches in both the stable and development trees. On the stable side, he is up to 2.2.13pre14. This patch contains an impressive number of patches at this point, and was considered to be a release candidate. Now, however, the kernel hackers have to figure out how they are going to fix the SMP IDE hanging bug that they recently tracked down first. On the development side, the patches are up to 2.3.18ac10. Should device drivers be part of the kernel source tree? This longstanding debate flared up as the result of a seemingly innocent query this week. Most device driver developers try to get their code distributed as part of the mainline kernel, but there are those who think that drivers should be kept - and distributed - separately. Arguments for this point of view include:
What does the kernel need in the way of a project management system? Here is the second version of a specification for a project management system for the kernel, which would handle source code management, bug tracking, and so on. It is an ambitious proposal, and calls for a lot of infrastructure which seems unlikely to ever get built. The kernel hackers, it seems, would rather be off hacking. The first version, for what it's worth, suggested the use of Aegis in this role. That touched off a small but intense flame war between Aegis supporters and those of BitKeeper, which is actually supposed to be the kernel source management system one of these days, real soon now. (It is evidently already being used by the Merced porting project). The details are not of much interest; until BitKeeper is released for general use there will be no resolution to this sort of battle. Other patches and updates released this week include:
Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
September 30, 1999
For other kernel news, see: |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Distributions page. |
DistributionsPlease note that security updates from the various distributions are covered in the security section. Caldera OpenLinuxCaldera's mailing lists are back in action as of September 25. Caldera switched the lists over to ezmlm as they were fixing their problems, and it appears that not all subscribers from the old lists got set up on the new ones. If you were a subscriber to a Caldera mailing list, and you are still not getting anything, it's time to head over to the "User to User Forums" page and resubscribe.Macmillan and Caldera Systems have teamed up to form "Caldera Press." This new publishing operation will concentrate on business-oriented titles. Conectiva LinuxThe Conectiva Road Show started off on September 23rd, in Caracas, Venezuela with the announcement of the release of the Spanish version of their CL-4.0 and CL- Server Edition packages. The road show will hit the US, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Chile and Argentina. Conectiva Linux is a Red Hat-derived and compatible distribution. "Sandro Henrique, Conectiva's commercial director, believes that the interest for Linux by Latin American countries denotes similar motives as the Brazilian consumers: 'Low purchase power, anti-fraud laws, and a strong desire to improve the platform, which is causing companies and users to migrate.' "Debian GNU/LinuxWhere are Debian developers? All over, according to the Debian developers location map. There are still many developers who remain unrepresented, however; if you hack on Debian you may want to consider adding your location to the list.Linux-MandrakeLinuxcare and Macmillan have announced a deal wherein Linuxcare will provide support for Macmillan's (Mandrake-based) Linux distribution.Mandrake's internationalization efforts continue as demonstrated by this announcement of support for Lithuanian and Estonian... Red Hat LinuxRed Hat 6.1 will be released on Monday, October 4, if this TechWeb article is to be believed. "Red Hat Linux 6.1... will feature a streamlined installation, online software updates, and enhancements for managing distributed computing architectures..."Red Hat certification in the UK. Red Hat has announced the establishment of a London training facility which is able to administer the Red Hat Certified Engineer exam. Courses begin in October. Slackware LinuxJoe Orton points out that the current Slackware change logs show a new addition - the whole set of GNOME libraries and utilities.SuSE LinuxSuSE has reworked its web sites on both www.suse.de and www.suse.com. The old world map is gone... Some pages have moved, so if you have a site with links into SuSE's pages, you may want to give them a quick check.Along those lines, the SuSE partner page has moved, and no longer can be found at the location we published in last week's LWN. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
September 30, 1999
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
Lists of Distributions |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development toolsJavaTYA 1.5 has been released, read the announcement for details. TYA is a just-in-time compiler meant to be added on to the Blackdown Java port.A preview release of JBuilder, Inprise's just-in-time compiler, has also been announced. This compiler is not free software, but is available for free download. PythonMore Python books are on the way. Guido ran a quick search on Amazon.com and came up with a surprisingly long list of books coming out over the next few months.The Python Snippets web site has moved to a new location. This site, maintained by Hans Nowak, contains little bits of working Python code for specific tasks. O'Reilly's "Learning Python" was reviewed by 32bitsonline in this article. The review is very strongly positive - even after the initial paragraph on lay-flat bindings. Here's this week's Python-URL by David Ascher. Tcl/tkHere's this week's Tcl-URL posted by Matt Newman.Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
September 30, 1999 |
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Development projectsNew internationalization site unveiled. The folks at Linux-Mandrake have set up a new site at linuxi18n.org which is intended to be a central focus point for the various Linux internationalization projects. There is also a mailing list. Dump and restore have a maintainer at last. The long-neglected backup and restore programs have been adopted by Stelian Pop; he has made a new release available with a number of patches integrated. GnomeGNOME 1.0.40, a beta version leading up to the next major release, has been announced.The first public release of Bonobo, the GNOME component / compound document system, has been announced. It is still considered an alpha release, but Miguel wants to get more people playing with the code at this point. And here is this week's GNOME summary by Havoc Pennington. High AvailabilityRed Hat has announced Piranha, its answer to the "Linux virtual server" problem. Details can be found in Red Hat's announcement of the product. It contains a set of utilities for heartbeat monitoring, load sharing, and failure management; it can currently handle a two-node server setup.This announcement came as a bit of a surprise to some members of the high availability community, who had been expecting the Linux-HA code developed by Alan Robertson and company to be used instead. Indeed, the Linux-HA folks had been working away trying to address issues at Red Hat's request; they had not been told that a replacement project was under way. Red Hat's Mike Wangsmo tells us that the decision was made mostly in order to meet development deadlines. He states that the existing code is too complex and not sufficiently integrated for Red Hat's immediate needs. Evidently it was easier to simply start over than to address the difficulties. Whatever the reasons, the end result is that a development project with well over a year of work and testing behind it has been pushed aside, and there are now two high-availability projects going. It is hard to believe that is a good result for anybody involved. The Piranha work is being released under the GPL, as is all Red Hat code; hopefully at some point these efforts can be brought back together. ZDNet UK breaks the news on the "Linux Cluster Cabal," a group which wants to make 1000-node high-availability clusters a reality. "The project's team -- including Larry McVoy... Stephen Tweedie... and Peter Braam ... -- first met in secret in August to devise a clustering architecture that satisfies both commercial data processing and HPC (high performance computing) requirements." With names like that involved, interesting things can be expected to happen. KDEThe KDE Development News for September 6th through September 19th covers the announcement of KDE 1.1.2, as well as the upcoming release process for Krash, also known as KDE 1.89, the current developers release.KDE-Two, the Second KDE Developer Meeting has been scheduled for 7th to 10th of October 1999 at the University of Erlangen, Germany. Both SuSE and Caldera are sponsorsing this workshop, which is expected to bring together around 50 of the KDE developers. For more information, check out the KDE-Two website. MidgardVersion 1.2.3 of the Midgard web application server has been released.Here, also, is the Midgard Weekly Summary from Henri Bergius. MozillaThe Mozilla jargon file has been posted by Dawn Endico.YamsYams (Yet Another Merchant System) 0.50 has been released. Yams is a GPL-licensed electronic commerce system with a lot of nice features, including persistent shopping carts, credit card authorization, inventory control, sales tax calculation, and more. It is all done with Perl and MySql. Details and downloads can be found on the Yams web page.WineHere's the Wine Weekly News for this week. Among other things, it talks about Wine release 990923.ZopeThe Zope weekly news for this week was provided, as usual, by Amos Latteier.Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
Project Links Gnome High Availability ht://Dig KDE MagicPoint Midgard Mozilla PHP Wine Zope More Information Freshmeat LinuxDev |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and businessCorel starts linking up. In the modern world, it is no longer sufficient just to have a distribution for sale - you also need agreements with other companies to help develop, promote, and distribute the system. Corel made a number of strides in that direction this week with announcements like:
IBM's DeveloperWorks launches. IBM has moved its DeveloperWorks page out of beta. The new, improved site includes an "Open Source Zone" where Jikes and other goodies live, and a Linux Zone with tutorial information on subjects like the GNOME libraries and Python. Magic software penguins fired. Magic Software has belatedly responded to complaints about their use of live penguins at LinuxWorld. It seems they will no longer use live penguins, and are making a donation to the Wildlife Conservation Society as well. "[The penguins] are, in fact, trained actors used to appearing before hot lights and cameras. Some of their commercial credits include Batman (the movie), as well as several frozen food ads. However, it would now appear that their career as the Magic penguin (nicknamed 'MeL' by the Company) is at an end." Microsoft's investment in Akamai drew some interest in Linux circles. The reason, of course, is that Akamai's distributed web server network is based on Linux. Might Microsoft's presence bring about a change in technology? The truth of the matter is that Microsoft's share of the company will only be 1%, meaning that its influence will not be that great. Chances are that it will be business as usual at Akamai. Press Releases:
Section Editor: Jon Corbet. |
September 30, 1999
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the newsRecommended Reading: The Fall issue of Crossroads, ACM's student magazine is out. The subject is Linux; there are articles on topics like parallel computing, the Linux DSP shell, and an interview with Victor Yodaiken. Salon Magazine compares Apple and free software. "Today Apple is a niche player making a successful comeback. The free-software hackers have taken Apple's place -- they are the new brash guerrilla warriors lining up to swing their sledgehammers into the icon of the new Big Brother, now played by Microsoft." (Thanks to Paul Hewitt). Red Hat: Red Hat 6.1 will be released on Monday, according to this TechWeb article. "Red Hat Linux 6.1... will feature a streamlined installation, online software updates, and enhancements for managing distributed computing architectures..." Information Week looks at Red Hat's second quarter results. "Red Hat Inc. reported sharply higher second-quarter revenue, but still reported a loss as its cost of sales kept pace with growth." More IPOs: TechWeb ran this article about Caldera's IPO plans. "Caldera Systems likely will file for an initial public offering after Jan. 1, 2000, rather than next month as originally planned..." News.com looks at the Andover.net IPO. "Using the OpenIPO method is another twist on the sometimes awkward interactions between the largely volunteer open-source programming movement and the companies who hope to profit from it. The OpenIPO process, by including more than just big-name investors, lets Andover.net avoid being perceived as a parasite that doesn't give anything back to the community." Also in News.com: this uncritical article about LinuxOne's IPO filing. "With almost 9.2 million shares to be outstanding after a planned IPO, the company would sell about a 33 percent stake and have a market value of $73.3 million if shares sell for $8 each." Corel: The Montreal Gazette looks at Corel. "Some computer experts are calling Linux the single most serious threat to Microsoft's hegemony over the server software market. Corel is counting on getting a share of the market. Some analysts said Corel's decision to develop software that runs on Linux offers the best chance to get the stock back on track." Here's a fairly nasty article in the National Post about Corel. "With Corel's share price now rebounding, you might think things are on the mend at the edge-of-disaster software company. They're not. Instead, Ottawa-based Corel is up to its usual tricks, with chairman Mike Cowpland bobbing, weaving and generally doing whatever he can to convince shareholders that the moribund software company is anything but. And he has found new fools to separate from their money at Slashdot." The article also describes Linus Torvalds as "a pompous Finn." This CBS MarketWatch article has a few paragraphs on Corel, and their partnership with Ebiz. "Ebiz plans to pre-load Corel WordPerfect 8 for Linux Personal Edition onto some of its desktop computers and hand-held Internet access machines." Business: E-Commerce Times ran this article about the new set-top box by Lineo and MeterNet. "The Lineo product was chosen, according to MeterNet, because it will lend OEM customers a greater degree of flexibility over other platform-based solutions. The first Linux-based devices -- which will utilize a Cyrix processor and broadband Ethernet connection for access via cable, DSL or satellite -- is set to ship in the first quarter of 2000." Andover News ran a Newsbytes story about the Lineo/MeterNet set-top box. "The non-proprietary, open standard Linux operating system (OS) is destined for America's homes." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann). EE Times looks at Cygnus Software's EL/IX release. "A veteran company of the open-source movement will unveil this week what it hopes will become a unifying application programming interface for using the GNU-Linux operating system in the embedded world." InfoWorld covers Inprise's announcements of upcoming development tools for Linux. "The full embrace of Linux by Inprise across its tools and middleware offerings shows a strategic shift based on the assumption that Linux will ultimately become a major enterprise platform. Linux will also grow quickly as a preferred workstation development platform, Inprise officials said." Computer Currents tells how to build an intranet for less. "...developers love Linux because it's flexible, which makes it easily scalable. NT may provide a friendlier environment for adding users and devices, but Linux isn't as picky about things such as configuration and drivers. Nor will Linux give up when it encounters roadblocks while trying to serve certain users, as NT has been known to do." Here's an E-Commerce Times story about the release of OpenMerchant. "Free 'out of the box' OpenMerchant features include management modules for content, customer service, inventory, and merchandise along with a search terms manager. 'The days of creating closed and proprietary systems are over,' commented Michelle Kraus, president and CEO of OpenSales." Upside has this article about BeOpen.com, another open source portal site attempt. "'The way I see it, the nucleus has finally come together,' says [BeOpen founder] Weiner, pointing to both the Linux operating system and the Internet infrastructure that shaped it. 'All that's missing is a way to take the remaining porridge of open source technologies, just like that porridge of organic material that originally covered the earth and shape them into some sort of living entity.'" IT-Director.com looks at the future of software pricing. "Fair to say, then, that the cost of certain kinds of software will plummet. However, do not be taken in by vendor ploys: even likeable Linus has a vested interest. Vendors don't do anything without a reason, for example, they hope to damage their competition or attract you to other elements of their product line. Make the most of the opportunities as they present themselves, then, but remember TANSTAAFL: there ain't no such thing as a free license." (Found in NNL). Here's an Internet Week article that says Sun won't go very far with StarOffice. "Like everything else in life, you get what you pay for. There may be plenty of users who will take advantage of a free office suite. But serious users who rely on these tools for business are far less likely to consider StarOffice a viable alternative." Nicholas Petreley looks at Microsoft's purchase of Softway Systems and other topics in this InfoWorld column. "...some ... speculate that Microsoft bought Softway in order to deliver Linux for Windows, as a way to derail the increasing popularity of Linux. I can't adequately describe my first reaction to this notion. I simply don't know how to represent uncontrollable laughter in text. The idea of Linux for Windows sounded too much like the last resort of a company that can't find any other way to get Linux applications to crash." Dave Winer calls on Microsoft to port its applications to Linux. "The smart thing to do, IMHO, is to fully embrace Linux. Let's work together to make Windows apps run beautifully on Linux. It'll be good for Microsoft. The only other choice is to be at odds with developers because the pull to Linux is economic and inexorable." The Economist looks at the prospects for Windows 2000. "The wild card is Linux, the fast-growing (and free) Unix-based operating system. According to IDC, a research firm, Linux is taking about 17% of the server market and growing at the expense of both NT and other Unix systems. It may lack the features of Windows 2000, but because its source code is open it can be easily fixed or modified. And free is free." Is Linux a legitimate network OS? asks ZDNet. "You might want to think twice, however, with applications that demand the best performance or the best reliability; Linux offers no clustering support and has immature SMP support and limited file-system support and RAID functionality." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann). Here's a PC Magazine article about Linux's continuing progress. "In response to the growing popularity of Unix and Linux, computer companies are scrambling to provide more Linux and Unix systems while software companies are promising more applications and customer support." Information Week ran this look at Linux on the desktop. "Critics of Linux come in all shapes and sizes, but proponents seem to be a remarkably homogeneous group. Companies that have embraced Linux are typically either those that have been Unix shops for some time or those that employ IT staffers who champion the operating system." Linus: Reuters talks with Linus. "Computer software prices will crash when the need for constant upgrades disappears, and this is only a matter of time, leading computer and software expert Linus Torvalds said on Thursday." Linus Torvalds himself wouldn't have told us, but now we see what he's up to on his vacation: according to this article (in Swedish) in Aftonbladet, he is getting an honorary doctorate at the University of Stockholm. Sven Wallman, who pointed this out, translates a quote from Linus: "I dont want to be called a rebel. I'm not against anything and rebel sounds a bit negative. I've had my own view of how I want to work with computers. And genius? I've been successful and that is because I'm competent, but I've also had lots of luck" Here's a brief Reuters article saying that Transmeta may start talking about what they are doing this November at Comdex. And it's Linus who let that information slip... Other: The Linux server in PC Week's hack this box contest appears to have been broken into. More details are available on the security page. Channel One's attempt to trademark "Linux" in Germany is being withdrawn, according to this CNN article. "Hamburg-based Channel One GmbH is in the process of having its claim to the name Linux in Germany deleted, according to Achim Cloer, the chairman of Germany's Linux Association, a user group." The Seattle Times looks at the Linux Journal. "But while Linux Journal is laced with the vocabulary of class struggle, its mission also is to help foster the success of the Linux operating system in a capitalist world." This OS Opinion article looks at the GNU GPL and how copyleft applies to non-software information. "The GNU GPL originated for the specific goal of sharing software among computer programmers. However, looking closely at the GPL, it appears that the same License can be easily applied to non-software information." The latest installation nightmare story comes from CNN. This time the author has a hard time with Caldera OpenLinux 1.3. No explanation of why they had to install such an old version of the distribution... "My daylong effort to install Caldera's Linux 1.3 on a PC gave me chilling flashbacks to my bewilderment in certain physics classes. I was told I had succeeded but I wasn't sure at what. For now, I'm glad I have my 'real' PC with Windows to rely on rather than the Linux PC." A while back we got a few pointers to the Jesux distribution page, but chose not to run them. But now, MSNBC has run an article which appears to take "the distribution that will not lead you into temptation" seriously. "No one who knows Unix and the sensibilities of some Christians will be surprised to see that Jesux Developers is seriously considering replacing such common Unix names as 'kill,' 'abort,' and 'daemon.'" Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
September 30, 1999 |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesLinux kiosks. Chris Martin has written a document on how he put together a Linux-based kiosk for the Sheffield University Library.The October 1999 Linux Gazette is out. EventsThe first internal Real Time Linux Workshop will be held in December, 1999, in Vienna, Austria. There is currently a call for contributions out there. The possiblity of sponsorship exists for speakers who are unable to fund a trip to Vienna themselves.The Asia-Pacific Symposium on Cluster Computing will be held in Beijing on May 14-17, 2000. They, too, have a call for papers outstanding, with a deadline of October 25. European seminar series. Linux@Work is a one-day traveling road show currently making its way through Europe; it's aimed at informing management types about just what Linux can do for them. Stops include Frankfurt, Zurich, London, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Amsterdam. Bob Young talk writeup. Stephen Adler has posted a lengthy writeup (with pictures) of Bob Young's talk to the New York Linux users group. Web sitesUser Group NewsInstallation in Boston: the Boston Linux Installfest will be happening on October 9. See the web page for details.A new user group in Ticino, Switzerland has been announced. Linux seminars in Cleveland. The Case Western Reserve University Linux User's Group has launched a seminar series covering a number of topics of interest to Linux users. All interested parties are invited to attend. Help wantedThe folks at MandrakeSoft have a number of jobs open, including a kernel hacker position based in either California or France. |
September 30, 1999
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekLinux-driver.com aims to be a complete resource for people trying to get Linux running on particular hardware. There's the usual collection of HOWTOs and such; they are also aiming to get a collection of actual drivers together. If you are looking for commercial Linux software, consider having a look at the Linux Product Guide. They have put together a nice database of commercial alternatives, including pricing information. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
September 30, 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. A number of this week's letters refer to this unpleasant article in the National Post. | |
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 12:45:10 -0700 From: Pascal Martin <pascal.martin@iname.com> To: letters@lwn.net, wchiou@linuxone.net Subject: About LinuxOne I have been through the LinuxOne web site. A very interesting walk ! LinuxOne is founded and managed by a military industry and NASA executive veteran, a venture capital representative acting as CFO, a physicist & philosopher with MBAs in marketing and "high technology management", and a salesperson. The marketing VP is listed as the one with technology insight. The LinuxOne CEO expects to "rival Microsoft in its formative years", based on his own business plan. There seems to be no VP of engineering; the web site never talk about software developers, except in the "employment" page. They announce a "strategic relationship" with MandrakeSoft, to open a development center in China and release a Chinese version of Mandrake. It might be possible that their developers are in China. Why don't they talk about them ? They announce they will "place carefully selected software modules in the public domain [...] to encourage other companies to port their applications [...]", maybe confusing free software with public domain. They announce on September 9 that a beta release will be available for free download. Well.. "download" is either UPS or FedEx 8-}, and free is down to $9.95, from a listed standard price of $29.95. Could one be more excited with free software than that ? LinuxOne "plans to distribute the Apache server software to its customers", adding that the "Apache Group has [...] captured a significant portion of the server market". Sounds like they believe Apache is a commercial product, which will be ported to Linux and help them differentiate their products ? They announce high quality support, but there is no support organization to be found. They announce seminars, but there is no speaker's name listed. They will offer consulting services from "recognized experts in the Linux arena", but their employment page don't list any consultant position. They intend to develop and port application software. This may be a way to get out of the Linux distribution traffic jam. Which applications ? None of the managers claims to have experience in the application software arena. They seems to be interested with high availability, which make me think they are looking for big account business, a fit for their corporate background. This is a very Corporate America startup. Make me feel good about Red Hat. -- Pascal F. Martin. | ||
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 19:19:25 -0700 To: lwn@lwn.net From: jeff@alum.mit.edu Subject: mail-archive.com I implemented and run The Mail Archive (http://www.mail-archive.com) and want to share my experiences. The service was originally started to fulfill a personal need ("I waste too much time sorting my mail") about two years ago, and then evolved into a Internet service. Mail-archive.com runs on Linux and makes use of lots and lots of free software. The best engineering aspect was not having to re-invent the wheel. Because *nix software is programmer friendly, it was quite easy to tie things together. (And there were a lot of things! htdig, MHonArc, nmh, the system logging daemon, apache, cron, make, rpm, the GNU file utilities, and maybe more that I'm forgetting.) I was able to concentrate on the unique aspects of the service and not have to re-invent every little (or big) thing. Keeping the work simple and small was an enormous win. Also, the underlying software proved robust at all levels. I ended up putting millions of files on an ext2 partition, and processing an enormous number of emails (with varying degrees of compliance to IETF standards) through MHonArc. Everything has held up great, and I've seen my feedback incorporated into several pieces of software. Things run automatically and don't crash. In summary, it was possible to produce a quality service, on a hobbyist sized budget, with a hobbyist amount of development time. It wasn't dead trivial -- I have had to learn, from necessity, some things about performance tuning and system security. But I'm very happy to have avoided the all too common morass of complexity, expense, time, and poor reliability (I could easily see this service implemented with some expensive proprietary database and going downhill from there!) Thus far the service has supported hundreds of free software projects, including some that are well known. Blackdown's java-linux project, xmame, and the Linux-Mandrake distribution use our service for primary list archives. Both the arabic-linux and the linux-il mailing lists use the service; while it may be a bit much to expect peace in the Middle East through Linux, I take it as a good sign. Anyone involved with a free software project is welcome to help themselves to the archiving service. Also, anyone interested in creating similar services (like a quality online bug tracking service, hint, hint), consider yourself encouraged. Cheers, Jeff Breidenbach jeff@alum.mit.edu | ||
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 22:32:38 +0200 From: Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: GPL and "internal projects" (Corel beta) Lawyers should be able to read the GPL. It says especially in point 6 "6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ [...]" This also covers "internal projects", which usually restrict rights of recipients of informations by NDAs or other contracts. These contracts are null and void if the information given to them is a GPL'd program - or the license to use the GPL'd program terminates immediately. Note that the GPL is an individual license (it talks about "the recipient"), thus the program isn't licensed to a company, but to persons. Moving a disk from cubicle 318 to cubicle 319 is a distribution in the terms of the license, and henceforth any restriction or limitations are null and void *and* cause the license to terminate. In other words: IMHO the current treatment of "internal projects" with modified GPL'd software are based on the goodwill of the participants, as nothing prevents them to redistribute the software they get under GPL. More so for less internal projects like a public beta test, where nobody risks getting fired. Note that there's a sort of "death penalty" in the GPL, point 4: "4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License." This means if you don't comply to the GPL, you don't have the right to use/modify/distribute any other GPL'd program. The attempt is sufficient, it doesn't need to be successful. I'm not for drastic measures, but Corel's lawyers should know that they did sort of "chop their own head off" by violating the GPL. -- Bernd Paysan "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/ | ||
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 11:21:13 -0700 To: editor@lwn.net, raph@acm.org From: Seth Cohn <sethcohn@yahoo.com> Subject: Mwave nonsense Corrections from a former MWave user... > First, a small factual clarification. The modem in the tp600 may be > considered a WinModem, but the processing is done by an on-board DSP > chip (the MWave), not by the host processor. Further, your statement > that the lack of interface specs is what's holding back WinModem > compatiblity is also not true. In fact, IBM has refused to release specs for quite a while, except under NDAs, and Linux being what is it, developers refused to play that game, since it was a very proprietary system. Under Windows, Mwave caused nothing but problems, and was poorly supported by IBM and IBM licensees (most of who blamed IBM for the problems) > All important specs on the MWave are in > fact public (Linux driver writers have worked with a lot less). Untrue. Untrue for Windows drivers, Untrue for Linux. Raph's web site points to http://watson.mbb.sfu.ca/ as an Mwave site. This site's been down for a year or more, and it was always unofficial, but still much better support than anyone else ever gave. IBM refusal to release drivers was talked about in the Mwave support lists, over and over. 56K drivers existed, but weren't released for ages and ages (if ever) > From what I can tell, it would be fairly easy for IBM to make the > modem work under Linux. This is based on both familiarity with the > technical issues and some informal conversations with IBM'ers. The > software is already written and ships with Windows 9x. Agreed. They have the Mwave specs. They have the source. > If IBM were > unwilling to release it as free software, I don't think anyone would > fault them for releasing it as binary-only. Yes, we would. Binaries would suck, just as they did under Windows. Mwave was a good idea, and if you bought one early, you could upgrade from a 14.4 modem, all the way to a 33.6 or even 56K modem, just thru software. Voice features, Faxing, and other stuff was just a software package away. But IBM didn't understand Open Source yet, and they cut the throat of Mwave, even to the point where the _authors_ of the code couldn't send us copies of working code, because of fear someone 'higher' at IBM would discover they'd 'leaked' it, even though IBM never intended to distribute it at all. Searching for 'Mwave' and 'Linux', you'll find lots of warnings to stay away from Mwave. The only answers were workarounds like loading dos drivers for soundblaster clone usage, then warm rebooting into Linux. Seth Cohn | ||
From: "Bermingham, Charles E." <berminghamc@ada.org> To: "'letters@lwn.net'" <letters@lwn.net> Subject: National Post article Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 09:45:56 -0500 I just read the National Post article you pointed me at in your "daily" section. I have two comments: (1) Does this guy hold stock in Microsoft? Or is he simply a conservative business-man who has taken on the notion that the whole Linux world is a Communist plot? Ehter way, I found his commentary insulting and arrogant. Since it would not be effective or appropriate to respond to his commentary with this opinion, I'm just venting. I have no idea how one would even attempt to get anything across to a boor like this. (2) If the above isn't true, this guy is an eminently superb troll. And if that's the case, a pox on him. I guess I could make one more comment: I remember that in the early 1970's, a lot of conservative business-types and artist-types thought Woodstock was the funniest and stupidest thing imaginable, in public. Sometimes I wonder if, in private, these same people were making deals for the residuals in the back rooms? And if *that* is the type of person this is, I can only say: rats are shrewd, but people get tired of rats. That's why we create rat traps like anti-trust laws. | ||
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 21:29:09 +0100 From: "Dirk A. Niggemann" <dirk.niggemann@peri.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Anti-Corel Article in National Post Hi, I think I've noticed a disturbing tendency in editorials in some of the online computing press- I would like to hear what the editors of this publication think. One of your major roles, like many 'linux in the news' sites is to provide links to articles that may be of interest to the linux community. Unfortunately, I feel that this practice reveals of the great weakness of 'news portal' sites (Slashdot, I think being even more vuilnerable, due to the 'informal' nature of the reader population, and the fact that its links are largely reader-submitted.) - The slashdot effect can be very easily exploited by online publishers seeking to up their hitcount. I think that some online publications are placing an overly great emphasis on 'hit-count' as a measure of the 'success' of articles, and journalists and editors are exploiting the tendency of the linux community to keep a close eye on its representation in the media by publishing the equivalent of usenet 'trolls'. I think the authors of some articles are hoping to draw hits simply by publishing an inflammatory 'hey lets bash Linux/Unix/Free Software/Macs/etc....' article because they know: a) There is a core of linux advocates and fans who spend a lot of time looking through online news sites for linux articles, who will react strongly to any anti-linux article. b) These people will provide these llnks to linux-specific news sites. c) The linux news site will quickly publish the link, making it widely visible to the community. d) This will cause a 'slashdot effect' like stampede to their article, upping the hitcount before the article has even been read (and potentially discarded as time-wasting by the more astute of the community). e) Reader talkback will first be dominated by the 'L1NuX R00lZ' style of flamage. f) Any intelligent critiques of the of the article will be drowned out in the stream of random invective, effectively relieving the article's writer of posting and intelligent riposte/repy. g) The hitcount and amount of mail regarding the article make the article's writer look good witb their editor, independently of the article's quality. I think the National Post article you linked to, containing a bitter (and not very fact-filled) critique of Corel, with a few rather sharp digs aimed at Slashdot, Linus Torvalds, the Open Source Movement, and Mac users (Mac Users? hmmm.. this appears to be getting rather- scattergun) has all the needed characteristics of such a troll article- It is short on facts, long on biased opinions, and written in a tone precisely tuned to incite foam at the mouth of the less calm members of the linux community. I can easily accept that there are many people with strong opinions on this subject either way, but I do find it deplorable that some online publications are exploiting this to increase their visibility. Admittedly, the community is somewhat gullible on this, but it is a natural vulenrability that publishers are learning to exploit (increasing their 'ratings'- think banner ads here). I cannot suggest realistically that you should not publish links to such articles- (since they are a valuable source of 'how not to do PR for Linux') but at the same time I wish someone would take a closer look at this phenomenon (link-trolling?). Would the responsible publishers release their hit stats under some circumstances?. Are there 'pay-per-hit' or 'clickthrough-indpendent advertising-revenue' deals with publishers out there? How could you find out? I also suggest categorising certain articles as 'flamebait'. The main issue here is not with, say, the equivalent of the Mindcraft report or some of the critical 'installation nightmare' articles. I am looking more at the editorial side of the spectrum (such as Metcalfe's 'Open Sores' article) where there is a good chance the article's author is presenting their opininons to deliberately incite people (and atract them as a consequence). It seems, in cyberspace, you need to insult your audience to get good ratings. Scary. (The really odd thing is- the article actually mentions the slashdot effect. It's as if the author is _daring_ somebody to realize they're trolling.) Thanks, Dirk. | ||
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 13:38:21 +1000 From: Matt Atterbury <matterbury@qantas.com.au> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Anti-Linux pages Hi backpagers, I couldn't reach the anti-linux page http://members.home.com/drestinblack/linux (typo) maybe, but I could reach http://come.to/consortium. I really wouldn't know how to counter the arguments of Sawman, as there are no arguments, just a bunch of rabid anti-linux claims. If this is strongest "argument" s/he can put, I don't think pro-linux'ers have to worry about this person. Basically, this site is not even worth visiting to check out what s/he has to say (IMO), but that will probably only make you do just that! :-) m. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- matt@qbd.com.au "klaatu barada nikto" | ||