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Leading items and editorialsSoftware patents strike again. Last year, McDonnell Douglas was awarded a patent for a simple technique called "windowing" which is used almost universally for converting two-digit dates into y2k-compliant four-digit dates. It is a ridiculous patent, and deserves to die in court. Meanwhile, however, we have a problem: the Linux kernel contains code which implements the patented algorithm. Please see our feature article on the subject for more information on the latest threat posed to free software by software patents. Speaking of software patents: Are you ready for Burn All GIFs Day? asks Eric Raymond. The target date is November 5 to get all GIF files off of web sites to protest Unisys's obnoxious patent actions. Corel signs another deal. This time around, Corel has announced an arrangement with PC Chips wherein copies of Corel Linux and Word Perfect will be shipped with every motherboard that PC Chips sells. PC Chips turns over a fair number of motherboards: 15 million in 1998. They estimate that 20 million motherboards with the Corel "white box" distribution will ship in 2000. That translates into a tremendous number of copies of Corel Linux out there - Corel disks may become even more ubiquitous than those from AOL. This arrangement has an obvious value for Corel, in that it puts Corel Linux into the hands of millions of potential users. Some of them will certainly throw it on and give it a spin. That means more Corel Linux users. But the real value lies elsewhere. A growing part of the PC market is in the area of very cheap systems. PC's costing less than $500 have already created pressure on vendors to abandon Windows in favor of something cheaper; often Linux. Now these vendors - at least those using PC Chips motherboards - find themselves handed a slick Linux distribution as part of the hardware they build systems from. One might guess that these vendors will be very likely to install Corel's distribution on their Linux systems. The result should be Corel Linux appearing on a lot of preinstalled systems. As the commercial competition between the distributions heats up, we should expect to see more of this sort of deal. And it is in the making of these deals that the weight of bigger, established players in the computing market may be felt. Consider, for a moment, a comparison of two publicly traded Linux distributors, taken from their August quarterly reports (except for market capitalization, which is from November 2):
If you look past the market capitalization of the two companies, Corel looks to be an order of magnitude larger than Red Hat. The muscle that comes with that size, along with the contacts made over many years in the software business, will give companies like Corel (and those much larger than Corel) an edge when it comes to negotiating deals like the one with PC Chips. As a result, Corel now looks likely to ship far more copies of Linux - even counting knockoffs and downloads - than Red Hat in 2000. Such things are subject to change, of course, but it is an interesting sign of how the Linux distribution business could go. The Linux Business Expo is happening November 15-19, alongside the fall Comdex in Las Vegas. LWN will be present at this event; we'll even have a booth on the expo floor. Those who are planning at attending the LBE should be sure to drop by and say "hi." Expect quite a few announcements to come out of this event. Corel is planning to launch its distribution at that time, and Caldera evidently has a number of announcements up its sleeve as well. As a Linux technical event the LBE has little to offer; as a business event it should be a very busy place. Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:
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November 4, 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 DVD crack. To get support from major motion picture studios and other producers of video output, the creators of the DVD standard built into the DVD format encryption protections. Now it turns out that those encryption protections were pretty weak. NTKnow noted and followed the results when the source code for DeCSS, a package that can be used for copying DVD content to a harddrive, was made publicly available. This opened the encryption algorithm to public scrutiny, which resulted in it being quickly broken. The keys of over 170 DVD licensees were quickly extracted. NTKnow commented:"The CSS decryption system sucks. It works by storing a whole bunch of keys on each DVD. Industry overseers, the DVD Forum, hand out one matching decryption key to each manufacturer: if any of these company's equipment got cracked, future DVD disc's were to be pressed without this key, making the crack (and that company's hardware) unusable with new movies. Quite whether the Forum would ever dare to carry out this threat against its own licensees is unclear." The impact of this is yet to be seen. Will the Motion Picture Association withdraw its support for the technology? Will it just resort in more legal action to try and discourage piracy? No official comments out of the DVD community are available yet. Meanwhile, of course, the issue of keeping encryption algorithms secret has been raised again. Some will argue that the algorithm would not have been broken if it were not exposed. The rest of us will argue that a public-review process would have prevented the use of a weak algorithm and therefore prevented this fiasco for the DVD industry.
IPsec, a rising star? Netscape/CMPNet appear to think so.
This past week, they issued two feature articles focusing on
IPsec. The
first argues that IPsec's time as finally arrived.
Security Reportsuum and canuum. A recent posting to BugTraq reported several different vulnerabilities. Two of the vulnerabilities reported were Linux-related, dealing with two packages, umm and canuum, which are included with some Linux distributions for Japanese support. The vulnerabilities were specfically reported under TurboLinux, but may impact other distributions as well. No workaround is provided currently, so you may want to consider disabling or removing these packages until updates are provided. Both packages can be exploited to gain root privileges.Updatesam-utils. Remotely exploitable buffer overflows.
lpd: File permission problems with lpr and lpd can allow a user to print a file which they are not allowed to read.
ypserv: ypserv prior to 1.3.9 had a variety of security problems. An upgrade to 1.3.9 is recommended.
ResourcesStack Shield 0.6. A new beta release of Stack Shield is now out. Stack Shield is a tool that can be used to recompile code to protect against potentially exploitable buffer overflows. This release includes a new protection against "function pointer" attacks.EventsSection Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
November 4, 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 developmentThe current development kernel release is 2.3.25. As usual, this release came with no announcement; a look at the patch reveals a fair number of architecture-specific and driver changes. There has also been a reorganization of the procfs code, which has created some residual problems elsewhere in the kernel - especially with external add-on patches like netfilter or IPSEC. These problems are being ironed out quickly. The current stable kernel release remains 2.2.13. Alan Cox has been releasing 2.2.14 pre-patches, with the latest one being 2.2.14pre3. This patch contains a great many changes, including (at last) an updated Tulip ethernet driver and a lot of fixes. Knfsd 0.4.7 from H.J. Lu remains in this patch, and that looks like the version (with a fix or two) which will go into 2.2.14; the later knfsd patches are still a little too development quality for a stable kernel release. 64GB physical memory support on IA-32 is now a reality. Remember just a few months ago when the limit was 1GB? Things have progressed since then. The 64GB support was written by Ingo Molnar, and slipped into 2.3.23 (despite the current feature freeze). It expands page table entries to 64 bits using a special addressing mode supported on Pentium Pro (and beyond) CPUs. With 64 bits you can support an unbelievable amount of memory; the 64GB limit is there now because that is all the current processors can handle. The amount of virtual memory that any individual process can access remains 4GB; that will likely never change on 32-bit processors. Some challenges remain. Before anything else, there are still some residual problems left over from the page table changes; a number of people (including Christoph Roland from SAP) have been fixing those up. To effectively make use of large amounts of memory, the kernel page cache must be able to take advantage of high memory. Ingo claims to have that working now. Getting the device drivers to handle 64-bit DMA operations will require some effort as well. This is a crucial piece of work - a rather embarrassing Linux limit has now been completely removed. Congratulations are in order for Ingo and the others who have been doing this work. (For more information, please see Ingo's description of the 64GB work - that is the source of almost all of the above information). Bogus Bogomips? Anybody who has watched a Linux system boot has seen the "bogomips" calculation which happens toward the beginning of the process. Bogomips are a simplistic calculation of the speed of the processor; the bogomips value is used to calculate the length of short, busy-wait delay loops. Some people have noted that the bogomips calculation has a fundamental flaw: it assumes that the speed of the processor does not change. Variable-speed processors do exist, however, and are becoming more common. Perhaps the most obvious application for such processors is in laptop computers; when the battery runs low, the processor can be slowed down to save power. Some systems will also slow the processor when its temperature gets too high. When the processor speed changes, the bogomips value used by the kernel should also change. Otherwise delays will be too long or too short. In the former case, the system simply slows down, but in the latter the consequences could be more severe. There is a fair amount of hardware out there which, unfortunately, requires delays to operate correctly. If the system does not wait as long as is needed, the hardware could malfunction, crash the system, corrupt data, or invest your life savings in LinuxOne stock. These are not desirable outcomes. What to do? That is a good question. Recalculating bogomips on the fly is an expensive, time-consuming operation, and not all systems bother to inform the operating system when the clock speed changes. The hardware realtime clock is an accurate timebase at any clock speed, but lacks the resolution needed for short delays. There does not appear to be a good solution waiting in the wings at the moment. Other patches and updates released this week include:
Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
November 4, 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. ET-Linux 1.1.0 released. Prosa srl has announced the release of ET-Linux 1.1.0. ET-Linux is a very small distribution aimed at embedded systems. The LibraNet Linux Desktop. LibraNet is a Debian-based distribution that focuses on providing "a first class Linux Desktop". It was created and is supported by Libra Computer Systems Ltd. out of Vancouver, BC, Canada. It was also mentioned on Wednesday, November 3rd, on Slashdot, for people interested in general comments on the distribution. Best LinuxBest Linux beta programme. SOT has announced a beta programme for Best Linux, a distribution out of Finland that is now being made available for English-speakers as well. "We have the most popular Linux distribution in Finland and Sweden. Now it's time to share it with the international Linux community. Releasing a free-of-charge beta CD-ROM for international developers enables us to establish useful connections and get immediate feedback before releasing the final version."Caldera OpenLinuxWeb site revamp. The Caldera Systems web page has been totally revamped, as has the corporate logo. It looks nice and certainly the site update has been long overdue.LinuxWorld interviews Ransom Love. Nicholas Petreley interviews Caldera Systems CEO Ransom Love in this LinuxWorld article. "Linux isn't going to replace Windows, necessarily; the PC didn't replace the mainframe. But in this new paradigm, where the services are placed across the Internet, why pay exorbitant amounts of money on something that doesn't work?" Evaluating OpenLinux 2.3 (Performance Computing). Performance Computing reviews OpenLinux 2.3. "If you are looking for an OS that is sturdy, easy to use, and easy to support, then Caldera's OpenLinux is an excellent choice. And if you are looking for an OS that offers the simplest installation and administration of all of them, then look no further. This version of OpenLinux is simple enough for a child to configure and robust enough to be used as a Web server." Debian GNU/LinuxDebian Weekly News. This week's Debian Weekly News reports that the freeze of the distribution, in preparation for the next release, has been postponed until November 7th. Such postponements are not uncommon in the Debian release cycle. Meanwhile, 75 release-critical bugs were squashed at the bug-squashing party this past weekend.License concerns with Corel continue. The DWN mentions that, although the problem with lib-apt has been resolved, there are other examples of Corel combining Qt code and GPL code. Ian Jackson pointed out a possible violation involving dpkg and is contacting Corel to discuss the issue. To keep the issue murky, not everyone agrees with Ian that this specific case is actually a violation, as witnessed by this note from Bruce Perens. Corel has also had an opportunity to respond in the form of this note from Erich Forler, Product Development Manager for Corel Linux. "Richard Stallman has had some communication with one of our engineers and I've started a document outlining some of the areas that Corel's legal department was concerned with." Green Frog LinuxGreen Frog Linux 0.4a has been announced. It is a small Linux distribution intended as a good starting point for people who want to "roll their own" distribution. The new release has been restructured and new packages have been added.Linux-MandrakeMandrakeSoft at the Linux Business Expo. The Linux-Mandrake folks have announced that they will have a booth at the Linux Business Expo, being held alongside Comdex in Las Vegas, November 15-19.Red Hat LinuxRed Hat to expand support offerings (ZDNet). Red Hat will be announcing commercial support for sendmail and apache, according to this ZDNet article. "The announcement will serve as a launching point as well. Eventually Red Hat intends to support all applications that are committed to the open-source development model."Slackware LinuxSlackware 7.0 has been released. You can check out the news about it either via their official announcement or by going directly to the Slackware.com site.Slackware Linux 7.0 is out of beta and ready to roll! Now based on glibc-2.1.2 and the 2.2.13 (final) kernel, 7.0 is another impressive upgrade. The new features include (but are not limited to) XFree86 3.3.5, KDE 1.1.2, October Gnome, and a ton of new setup coolness. Curious about the jump from version 4.0 to 7.0? Patrick Volkerding contributed his comments on version number inflation. "I think it's clear that some other distributions inflated their version numbers for marketing purposes, and I've had to field (way too many times) the question "why isn't yours 6.x" or worse "when will you upgrade to Linux 6.0" which really drives home the effectiveness of this simple trick. " He did promise not to do it again as long as the other distributions avoided this tactic as well.
The main Slackware site
has also had an overhaul:
SuSE LinuxSuSE Linux on DVD. SuSE announces that SuSE 6.3, "expected in late November," will be available on DVD as well as CDROM.Linux Day in Bremen, Germany. Lenz Grimmer dropped us a note to mention that the local LUG in Bremen, Germany was sponsoring a Linux Day on November 28th. Alan Cox will be attending, Lenz (who was born there) will be giving an introduction to Samba and (of course) demonstrating the installation of SuSE 6.3 and there will be parallel tracks of talks as well. Sounds like fun! Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
November 4, 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 projectsEmbedded LinuxNew Embedded Linux Portal. LinuxDevices.com, a new portal for the embedded Linux community, has been announced. It was also the focus of this EETimes article. "The startup was founded by Rick Lehrbaum, known in embedded computing circles as a founder of Ampro Computers Inc., an embedded computing specialist that originated both the EBX motherboard form factor and the PC/104 and PC/104+ buses. Developers who've attended a PC/104 tutorial at a conference have likely seen Lehrbaum as the presenter. "Michael Tiemann from Cygnus submitted the inaugural article to LinuxDevices.com, talking about EL/IX and its role in the emerging embedded Linux field. "By meeting the technical requirements of the embedded developer, using internationally accepted standards, with an open-source implementation, Cygnus intends to make the adoption of EL/IX a "no-brainer". ... But the impact of adopting EL/IX in the embedded community will be profound: flexibility and freedom will prevail over fragmentation. " GnomeFeature articles have been added to the Gnome developer web site. This week's article is by Federico Mena Quintero and takes a look at "GdkPixbuf as a Replacement for Imlib".No Gnome Development Summary this week. Havoc Pennington spent the week in Tokyo instead, but promises to make it up with an extra exciting issue next week. KDEKDbg 1.0 released. Version 1.0 of KDbg, the KDE graphical front end to the gdb debugger, has been released.MidgardMidgard help now available. A group of volunteers is being organized to help people get through the process of correctly installing the Midgard web development suite. "This message is both a call for volunteers who have succesfully installed Midgard before and want to help others to get there, and an announcement that the installation help is now available."MozillaMozilla Status Update. The Mozilla Development Status report was updated this weekend and contains nitty gritty details about the current development progress. Meanwhile, on a less technical note, the Mozilla web site contains information on posting Mozilla-related job announcements, a contest to find design patterns in Mozilla and a mention that Mozilla's Bugzilla will now allow you to vote on the bug you find most annoying.ComputerWorld revisits Mozilla. ComputerWorld has published a partial retraction of its recent critical article about Mozilla. "The jury is still out, but the future looks brighter for Mozilla and open source than I had thought, although I remain skeptical regarding how much and when Netscape Navigator will benefit." (Thanks to David Brownell). Repeating a common theme, Joe Barr at LinuxWorld eats some of his former words about Mozilla in this week's Version Control. Page past the rants against AOL to find his current evaluation of Mozilla's M10 release. "I happily find myself in the position of bringing you good news followed by more good news. The first is that Mozilla is maturing nicely and looks like it will be a dandy when it's finally here. The second is that there is growing competition to be your Linux browser. Ain't it grand to be a Linux user these days?" WineWine Weekly News. The Wine Weekly News for November 1st reports "Wine 19991031 is out. Shall this version be dubbed Hallowine ? ", along with other Wine-related news.WorldforgeWorldForge celebrates first birthday. The WorldForge project, which is developing "massively multiplayer online role playing games," is celebrating its first birthday today. Here's a wish for many more and a wave of the +3 two-handed sword from LWN.ZopeThe Zope Weekly News. This week's edition comments, among other reports, that "Many folks who have submitted Zope bug reports will be happy to see lots of fixes appearing in CVS. These fixes mark early preparations for a Zope 2.1 release".Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
November 4, 1999
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Development toolsProgress for Ada on Linux. Ada 3.12p was released this week, promising better Linux support, Gtk bindings and more. JavaLinux JDK releases in mid-November. From the Blackdown site, we've found the first date for a possible JDK1.2.2 and JDK 1.1.8 release. "We've made significant progress with the problems plaguing the native threads implementation. Some core parts of the native threads library have been reimplemented to better utilize Linux threads. There is still one known problem with SMP systems but I hope we can do a 1.2.2 (and a 1.1.8) release in the second half of November. "This is extremely good news, that people have been waiting to hear for a long time. Of course, such initial date estimates should be taken with a grain of salt, but they are a clear indication that the releases should be happening in the relatively near future. Java Foundation Classes in a Nutshell is a new O'Reilly book by David Flanagan that was announced this week as a followup to his previous work, "Java In a Nutshell". PerlPerl goodies at Perl.com. From the Perl News, we garnered that Perl.com released several new goodies this week, including:
PythonDr. Dobbs' Python-URL!. We received two Python-URL! issues in one week this time around. October 29th's edition announced two new Python books, the release of JPython 1.1b4 and more.It was quickly followed by the November 2nd issue, with announcements of the upcoming Zope book and the Python Consortium, plus the usual links to interesting posts from the past week. For more information on the JPython release, check the JPython News. The Quick Python Book, by Daryl D. Harms, Kenneth McDonald, has been published. It is aimed at people already familiar with programming in other languages and delves immediately into Python's core features. Tcl/tkTcl Blend and Jacl 1.2.5. New versions of Tcl Blend and Jacl have been announced.Tcl + Java = A match made for scripting is the title of an article in Sunworld by Moses DeJong and Cameron Laird. It takes a look at how the latest releases of Tcl Blend and Jacl can be used to support Java development. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh | |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and businessCreative Labs has released a driver for the SB Live card, and, even better, it is licensed under the GPL. SB Live users have been a long-suffering group; Creative initially did not want to support Linux at all, then released a buggy, binary-only driver that was not updated for a long time. So it is nice to see that they have now come around and made source code available. Even if the new driver works no better than the old one did, fixes should be available in a short period of time. Alan Cox has already looked over the driver and sent back suggestions for improvements. He has also indicated that it will go off to Linus shortly for inclusion in the mainline kernel source. With luck, Creative will see the just results from releasing this driver: now that SB Live cards will be properly supported under Linux, Linux users will start buying them. Creative is a hardware company, it has everything to gain by having its hardware be properly supported under Linux. Congratulations and thanks are due to Creative - better late than never. (See Creative's open source page for (a little) more information and downloads). The Cobalt Networks initial public offering should happen on Friday, November 5. This IPO will be the first indication of how well the "Linux mania" carries over into the more hardware-oriented side of the business. Here's a press release about it. LinuxOne has a product, which was actually released ahead of LinuxOne's intended IPO. Here is the press release for "LinuxOne Lite," a UMSDOS-based distribution which runs under Windows. It is presented as an easy way for Windows users to try out and experiment with Linux without having to go through a full installation. LinuxOne Lite thus competes with other products, like WinLinux. It remains to be seen, however, whether there is really much of a market for "Linux over Windows" products. Meanwhile, this version of the operating system has certain limitations - such as the fact that it can not access the Internet - which will probably obstruct its widespread acceptance. It is not yet clear that LinuxOne has a compelling product to justify its IPO ambitions. Those wishing to try out the product can find it on this slow FTP site. One wonders if it is really necessary, however, to download a 60MB swap file... The Red Hat Center for Open Source. Red Hat has announced the creation of the "Red Hat Center for Open Source," a non-profit organization that "...will sponsor, support, promote and engage in a wide range of scientific and educational projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public." Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the announcement was the naming of John Seely Brown, a respected researcher and Xerox Chief Scientist, to the board of directors. Mr. Brown should bring an interesting voice to this center as it figures out what it is really doing. Press Releases:
Section Editor: Jon Corbet. |
November 4, 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: It must be that time of year again ... Eric Raymond has released Halloween VI, taking a look at the universe one year after his first round of Halloween documents and more recent Microsoft fiascos in the form of the Mindcraft and Gartner reports. "...Microsoft has been trying to sandbag Linux with supposedly `objective' studies by third parties that turn out to have been bought and paid for by the boys in Redmond. Fortunately, these tactics have been pursued with the same slap-happy level of incompetence that made Sheriff Ed's antics so amusing." Corel: InfoWorld ran a brief article on the Corel/PC Chips deal. "In an ongoing efforts [sic] to break into the top tier of Linux distributors, Corel has signed an OEM deal with hardware maker PC Chips, which will bundle Corel Linux with all of its motherboards." E-Commerce Times covers Corel's deal with PC Chips. "The Corel LINUX distribution is seen by some industry analysts as a serious challenge to mainstream Linux vendors. Based upon the Debian GNU distribution that has gained universal respect, Corel's OS package will carry some 1,440 open-source software programs and the collective creative support of an army of international volunteer developers that make up the Debian Project." PC World covers the Corel/PC Chips deal. "Corel's deal with PC Chips is also important because it gives PC manufacturers that buy the motherboards an easy, cost-efficient alternative to more expensive operating systems..." The Irish Times reviews the Corel Linux beta. "If the ease of use shown in this beta can be extended to the full release then Corel will have made Linux much more accessible to users." One we missed last week: this Forbes article about Corel's upcoming Linux launch. "But Corel's initiative in the Linux market is built on more than just hype. The company is poised to build a solid niche position in the desktop PC market by bundling its productivity software--some of which, like its WordPerfect 8 word processor, has already been tailored to Linux--with the operating system to pedal a complete solution." Linux Vendors (Distributions and Hardware): News.com ran this article about the steps the Linux distributors are taking to differentiate their products. "The changes come during a critical time for Linux, a product on which many companies have staked their businesses. The operating system has gained a foothold in the product lines in many of the world's biggest computing companies, several of which have taken equity investments in Linux companies. Meanwhile, Red Hat has gone public, and others likely will follow, bringing the advantage of funding to finance growth but also the pressure of expectant stockholders." ZDNet reports on the Linux thin server market. "There are only a handful of companies making Linux server appliances, but analysts believe this sort of device has the potential to become an entry-level Internet access, e-mail and file server for millions of small businesses -- that is, if the companies can remove some of the complexity of working with Linux..." Inter@ctive Week ran this article about low-cost, Linux-based server appliance systems. "Cobalt Networks carved out the segment two years ago and has gathered a faithful following among Internet service providers (ISPs). Now, other companies are marching into the thin Linux server space, including the just-launched Netmachines and another start-up, Network Engines." Open Source: News.com covers the forming of Red Hat's Center for Open Source. "The effort won't compete with other open-source efforts such as those from Linux International, the Free Software Foundation, or the Open Source Institute, because those groups are focused primarily on just software issues..." ZDNet looks at the study of open source developers released by the UNC Open Source Research Team. "...the vast majority of Linux developers only work on one or two programs. There are only four developers with more than 20 contributions and only 13 have more than 10. In other words, open-source development is broad based." How-To and Review: LinuxPower has put up a tutorial article on setting up IP masquerading. Here's a couple of reviews from Network Computing. The first reviews PHP4 beta 2. "...to me, the most important addition is the object-overloading support, which puts PHP4 on a par with Active Server Pages (ASP) and Java Server Pages (JSP), if not way ahead of them." The second reviews Rebel.com's NetWinder OfficeServer. "The rest of the setup was handled through the Web browser. I set up DNS, PPP dialup, routing, firewall and other services. I changed the server's IP address and name without having to reboot the server. The Windows NT system managers in my office were watching with their mouths hanging open." A bit more upbeat word on Red Hat 6.1 in this review over at open source IT. "The release's integration of RAID in the installer promises significant progress in targeting the professional workstation and server market. This is one of the last frontiers for Linux in the competition with the big Unix vendors." Statmarket reviews the numbers on Linux usage and asks what the fuss is all about. Then they focus on the numbers just in the commercial server market and pull out the reason: "According to IDC, Linux owns 17.2% of the commercial server OS market, up from 6.8% the year before. Microsoft NT, meanwhile, maintained approximately a 36% market share for both 1997 and 1998." (Thanks to Mark O 'Sullivan) Business: Linux at the BBC is an article that takes a look at how the BBC is using Linux and why. They mention several applications and many reasons, but one that they point out fairly succintly is one that businesses are just beginning to realize. "It uses standards. When you are working with broadcast media you must always have an eye for standards. The material we send out has to be received by millions of people so it has to be compatible with whatever equipment those people have. Because this is part of our core business we have a respect for standards in other areas and the transparency they bring to understanding the internal workings of the complex systems we run." The Boulder County Business Report ran this introductory article which includes conversations with people from eSoft and Eklektix. "eSoft is so high on Linux that early this year President and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Finn made the decision to only use Linux for the entire eSoft product line." AsiaBizTech looks at Linux business activity in Japan. "Fujitsu has adopted an aggressive strategy. It announced that it will offer customers a guarantee, limited to two of its low-end PC server models, that promises Linux will run without problems. Fujitsu's definition of 'guarantee' doesn't just mean that it will offer user support when customers encounter problems with their Linux systems. It also means that it will take full responsibility for its products and be proactive in solving problems." This article in E-Commerce Times notes that a number of industry players - AOL, Compaq, and Dell, are all working toward the creation of Windows-free systems that can be sold cheaply. The author does not speculate on which operating system might be used instead, but LWN readers can certainly come up with a possiblity or two. "...I predict that e-commerce -- along with the strategic moves of Microsoft's competitors -- will soon catapult us into a Windows-less world." EE Times ran this brief article about the availability of Model Technologies' simulator systems on Linux. "The Linux port resulted from a strong user demand, said John Lenyo, director of marketing at Model Technology. 'To gauge general demand, we mentioned it casually in our quarterly newsletter,' he said. 'You would have thought we were giving away free money. About two days after that newsletter went out we were bombarded with requests from customers.'" Here's an Ottawa Citizen article about a company called Newlix, which plans to get into the server appliance market. "...they offer an interesting departure from the tactics of competitors like Rebel.com and Cobalt Networks Inc. of Mountain View, California, which recently filed for an $86 million U.S. initial public offering. Newlix has decided to focus on developing the software, then bundling it with hardware from partners such as IPC Direct. Rebel.com and Cobalt Networks have each opted to build products that include software and hardware in an integrated package." Here's a News.com article about SGI's possible deployment of a Linux-based cluster for Los Alamos National Laboratory. "If Linux gets the job, it will be a key component in the effort to keep U.S. nuclear weapons working as designed, the main function of this new supercomputer." ComputerWorld writes about the TurboLinux cluster solution with a heavy emphasis on the fact that TurboLinux wrote some of its own code. "Joel Sloan, a systems administrator at Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. in Torrance, Calif., said TurboLinux has dim prospects. 'I would hesitate to jump on board the TurboLinux bandwagon, since we know that (Red Hat Software Inc.) will have the same sort of clustering solution in a few months' time and the community at large will gravitate toward the more open, more mainstream solution.'" The Electronic Telegraph ran this introductory article. "None of that makes Linux a real threat to Microsoft; everyone agrees it's harder to install, and that the documentation is typically written by geeks for the edification of other geeks. But everyone also agrees that it's more reliable, and, because it's a lot cheaper, Linux is finding a niche in small businesses, particularly those that rely on Net connections." (Thanks to Jimmy Aitken). GIS: LinuxPower ran an article about the release of the GRASS Geographical Information System under the GPL. "With its release under the GPL, GRASS will surely benefit from the pace and size of the Linux community as well as the momentum of Linux in general. And it gives you yet another reason to choose Linux." Other: This article mentioned that Microsoft Austria borrowed mailing addresses from the databases at the Linux Counter and used them to spam people with questionnaires. "This was in breach of the Linux Counter's copyright and terms of use, which specifically bar use of the data for mass mailings. It's also, as the Linux Counter is hosted in Norway, a crime under Norwegian privacy legislation. The execs from Microsoft Austria don't seem to have been extradited by vengeful nordics, but after an outcry they were forced to destroy the data they'd gathered. " It also garnered them an Austrian Big Brother Award. (Thanks to Sven Wallman.) Here's an Irish Times article about the upcoming Linux Awareness in Ireland Day, happening November 6 in Cork. "Aimed at anyone with an interest in Linux, it will feature beginners' sessions, talks on business issues surrounding Linux, technical discussions and a keynote talk by Linux developer Alan Cox. Participants will see this radical computing environment take one more step into the mainstream." Linux Planet looks at Linux and the year 2000 problem. "The good news is that by and large, Linux and all other members of the Unix family tree are immune to the Y2K problem..." Performance Computing has announced its 1999 "Outstanding Product Awards" - two months before the end of the year. The "Editor's Award" (scroll to the bottom) goes to "the legion of Linux contributors." "With Richard, Linus, and others leading the charge, Linux contributors have made the movement appear more like a Hollywood epic, at a scale not equalled since Ben Hur." Network Computing ran an opinion piece on open source software. "Sun, Netscape, Apple, Microsoft: Forget about opening up your source code. No one gives a damn about seeing how your applications were built. You won't even offer any assurances that modifications made to any particular version or source code will even be possible in the next version, so why bother? Instead, take the time to talk to the people who love Open Source and figure out why they do." Upside prints a bunch of comments about the Sun Community Source License (SCSL). "Sun's license is unacceptable simply because it places a tax on the infrastructure. The size of the tax is not the issue. Any tax is detrimental to the entire business process. They can mince words any way they want, but their actions prove they are just trying to place themselves into a position where everyone must pay them in order to enter the game. We should throw their software into the Boston harbor."
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
November 4, 1999 |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesNovember LinuxFoxus released. The November issue of Linux Focus is now out, with a couple of graphics-related articles, part II of a perl tutorial, a summary of the state of gaming under Linux, a review of FreeCiv and more.Linux Gazette #47 available. Issue #47, the latest issue of the Linux Gazette, is now available. Linux writers and publishers list Dan York and LinuxCare have set up a mailing list for people writing or publishing in the Linux community. Tutorial: routing NetBIOS on a Linux box. Matt Clements at LinuxPlanet has written a tutorial on how to route NetBIOS traffic with your Linux box, so your NT/95 Workstations can see the Network Neighborhood across different Masqueraded TCP Networks. A new Linux magazine in the UK. Linux Answers has published its first issue in the UK. This issue looks at UK Linux user groups, Corel Linux, and has the obligatory Linus interview. EventsIBM sponsors The Bazaar. EarthWeb announces that IBM has become a "platinum sponsor" of The Bazaar, happening in December. The addition of Ralph Nader as a keynote speaker was also announced.Linux day in Bremen. Lenz Grimmer dropped us a note to mention that the local LUG in Bremen, Germany was sponsoring a Linux Day on November 28th. Alan Cox will be attending, Lenz (who was born there) will be giving an introduction to Samba, and (of course) demonstrating the installation of SuSE 6.3. There will be parallel tracks of talks as well. SGI Linux University Road Tour. Jason G. Fleming forwarded a copy of DevEdge, the monthly e-newsletter from the SGI Developer Program which talks about SGI's current Linux University Road Tour. "Following the tremendous success of the Linux University recently held at the Ronald Reagan Center in Washington D.C. We are extending the Linux University campus to nine cities across the nation." Report from Open Source/Open Science 1999. Stephen Adler posted posted a report from the Open Source/Open Science 1999 conference, held on October 2nd, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. (Thanks to Jay R. Ashworth) O'Reilly Java Enterprise Computing Conference. O'Reilly has announced the Java Conference 2000, to be held March 27th through the 30th, 2000 in Santa Clara, CA, USA. Pictures from the Linux Pavilion at Bangalore IT.COM. The Linux India site is providing coverage of the Linux Pavilion at Bangalore IT.COM. Pictures are available, so you can see it being built, literally, from the ground up. Web sitesFreeGIS web site. Intevation GmbH, a new free software company in Germany, has announced a FreeGIS website (German version) to "promote free GIS software and data". GIS, of course, stands for Geographical Information Systems.User Group NewsJoseph Arruda at UCLALUG Joseph Arruda of VA Linux Systems will be speaking on November 6, 1999 at an event jointly sponsored by UCLALUG and CSUA. Check the UCLALUG website for more details.Linux.com LUG Database Updated. The Linux.com LUG Database has been updated, according to this note from Kara Pritchard at Linux.com. "No more spam email farming!" The updated site is automated to allow people to add, edit and update their LUG entries. |
November 4, 1999
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Software Announcements
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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 weekThe LinSpin Pages are "an amateur effort at providing market analysis and spin doctoring for the Linux OS" Have a look and you will find a number of essays looking at how Linux works with the marketplace in several areas. The FUD Counter site is a work in progress which is intended to be a definitive resource for those wishing to debunk groundless attacks against Linux. There is already a well-developed FUD FAQ in place, and a lively mailing list to support the effort. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
November 4, 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: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 09:36:12 +0200 From: Marko Samastur <markos@elite.org> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Proliferation of licenses Hello, There seems to be an ongoing argument, that increasing number of licenses is somehow bad. The arguments for this are basically that it makes harder to understand the interactions between different licenses when a product is build on top of existing ones. I disagree with you on this one. I don't think that proliferation of licenses in itself is a good thing, but it is important to keep in view what a license really is. It's an agreement between two parties, the producer of the product and the customer (or licensee). This agreement explains conditions on which the producer is willing to sell, give etc. its product to the customer and rights that are granted to the customer with it. It should also describe things like how (usually where) conflicts should be resolved and other similar things that to most are just legal babble. In terms, it defines the relationship between them. From this, at least to me, follow at least two conclusions. As with any other agreement (legal or not) and relationships, all involving parties should treat computer licenses seriously. That means you should read it and understand what you are about to agree to. If you don't, don't agree to it. There's enough software out there that you should be able to find something that meets your needs and is given on enough liberal terms for you. If it doesn't, then I guess you have to weigh what's more important to you, the benefits of particular software or particular license. The other point is the view of the producer. Just as a customer should have the right to choose, so should the producer and this reflects (among other things) also in license which it chooses. Why should it use a different license, which doesn't meet all its needs, just to support unforgivable laziness of the other party? We (well, most of us do) live in countries which are regulated by laws. This should be reason enough to pay more attention to legal things in our lives. A call "don't roll your own", which might have a positive effect of not complicating things more than they should be, also might have a side effect of giving further support to the general ignorance. After all, how many people have read at least one of the licenses you've mentioned? I'd be willing to bet most haven't. Reading license agreements might not be the most fun thing to do, but if you intend to seriously use or rely on something, being a software, hardware or mortgage for a house, you should do it. It's time well spent. Best regards, Marko P.S: I'm not a lawyer & I don't like reading legal texts. But I do it anyway. | ||
Date: 3 Nov 1999 06:14:21 -0000 From: kenengel <kenengel@linuxstart.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: The Experts say... I have read about Linux almost every day for over two years now - hundreds of news items articles, anecdotes and reports about its flexibility, reliability, and even usability. So nowadays, whenever I read some pundit spewing FUD, or simply advising caution - "Linux is not ready for the enterprise or the home user's desktop, but they're working on it; it might be ready in 2 or 3 or 50 years..." - I think of the movie "Airplane!" Long after Striker has brought the plane safely to a dead halt, and all passengers are on safe ground, the air traffic control officer McCroskey is still advising, supporting and guiding, steadily, steadily, through grave danger and stormy conditions to an empty cockpit. | ||
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 12:55:36 +0100 (MET) From: Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Bogus patents IMHO the biggest problem of the US PTO isn't that they approve bogus patents (even the most careful examiner can oversee previous art), but that they don't have a period of public review of the patent. The only way to let such a patent die is in court, and we all know that's not cheap; and you can do so only defensive (when asked for money). The German patent law allows public caveats in the first 6 months after approval and publication of a patent. It costs nothing but the stamp on the letter you write to the German PTO (e-mail not yet). If you write to the US PTO or to your senator, don't request that they should prohibit bogus patents - bogus patents are already prohibited. Tell them that a public review is the only way to find out in a timely and efficient way whether a patent is bogus or not. And it is much cheaper than hiring competent examiners. BTW Linux time.c code: I suggest removing that code, in two months. We can keep it around as example for previous art, but we won't need it any more (same with the same sort of code that should be in date). -- Bernd Paysan "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/ | ||
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 12:46:18 +0000 From: James Durie <jdurie@anvil.co.uk> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: "windowing" patent I just read your article about the windowing patent and thought you might like to knoe about this page here. http://www.UNIX-systems.org/version2/whatsnew/year2000.html It is part of the Open groups recommendations about unix and the Year 2000 problem. They recommend doing windowing with a year border of 69. I wonder how many companies have followed their recommendations, I know my company has and although we are not directly affected by this in Europe, we do have clients in North America. James -- James Durie Phone: +44 171 749 7908 Anvil Software Limited Fax: +44 171 749 7916 46-48 Rivington Street e-mail: jdurie@anvil.co.uk London EC2A 3QP | ||
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 05:16:32 -0500 (EST) From: Kristofer Coward <kris@melon.org> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: McDonnell Douglas patent nonsense You mention in your article that "McDonnell Douglas is actively trying to shake down companies using the windowing technique" Is there any mention of which companies anywhere, and has anyone tried to present the Linux prior art to these companies before MD goes after a linux company? If the free software community can tip the off to the prior art, and possibly co-ordinate some funding for legal aid, it would provide yet another chunk of good open source publicity. Kris Coward | ||
From: "Bermingham, Charles E." <berminghamc@ada.org> To: "'letters@lwn.net'" <letters@lwn.net> Subject: Software patents: Idiotic and greedy Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 10:04:32 -0600 The windowing-technique patent mantioned in this week's Linux Weekly News is a good example of how people have learned to use ignorance and greed to achieve their objective, maybe even to "earn" a living. I saw code like this in COBOL prgrams at Chicago's Cook County Hospital as early as 1980. I saw some when I was working on a COBOL project in 1984 or 1985 here at my current job. These were examples of windowing to fix century problems in the opposite direction: IF BIRTH YEAR > CURRENT-YEAR SUBTRACT 1 FROM CENTURY etc. This kind of thing goes on and on in code all over the place. I don't suppose any government official will ever ask me, but if they did, I would tell them that software patenting is ultimately doomed. If not because of the philosophical problems involved, then at least because such exclusivism is an insult to programmers everywhere. I must admit, I reluctantly applaud those companies which use patenting *against itself* by patenting simple ideas and then not charging any royalties. I'd be happier if those organizations would help nail the coffin. I don't even know if such comments would do any good; it's been long since I've lost any trust of politicians. Remeber the "AT" patent that Hayes got for their modems? When that company went out of business, I laughed and laughed. They deserved what they got. They made things unnessarily miserable for not only their competitors, but for thousands upon thousands of system administrators all over the world. On top of that, most of us programmers knew that the use of a timing algorithm to make control decisions was just another basic principle of software. And for those of you who support software patents, it comes down to this: when you take ideas that others are willing to share with you and use them as your "property", and then you try to shake people down for their hard-earned living, you are the lowest of the low. Alexander Bell's followers did this very thing with A T & T, to garner control of telephone service the world over; because of this, and since the U.S. government broke up their monopoly, I am now hard-pressed to choose AT&T for *anything*, no matter how hard they compete. I hope those of you who are in Europe watch this situation carefully, and do whatever you can to remove this scourge from your continent. No widows or orphans are going to go hungry if you do. If you don't, some very greedy people are going to be hated instead. | ||