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Leading items and editorialsFun with trademarks. It all started when a domain name scalper (er - "reseller") announced that it was putting on sale a "huge and rare portfolio of Linux domain names." The folks at SeriousDomains probably figured that their fortunes were made; after all, who could resist the opportunity to spend big bucks and buy "LinuxOnSteriods.com" or "ScreaminLinux.com"? Truly such an opportunity comes but once in a lifetime. Alas, it was not to be. A few days later, visitors to the SeriousDomains site were greeted with this sad message: The auction for the pick of 250 corporate consulting type Linux® domain names has been discontinued at the request of attorneys for Linus Torvalds, trademark owner of Linux®. Our understanding of their position is that we cannot have an outright auction of domain names that contain the word Linux, and that those legitimate Linux consultancies or programming shops that are interested in any of our domain names that incorporate Linux® must approach Mr. Torvalds et al to make sure that the domain name is worthy to be granted a license, with a customary "nominal fee."For those who are truly disappointed, the site still offers "OpenSourceProgramming.com" for sale. Since the "Open Source" trademark application was denied, they will probably get away with that one. Few people are overly concerned about the damage to SeriousDomains' business plan. But there is an important issue here. The ownership of the Linux trademark has just been used to stop a business from making use of the name. The world is full of businesses wanting to use "Linux" in one context or another. Need they fear being shut down by Linus and his roving squad of ruthless trademark lawyers? That could poke a big hole in those IPO plans. Linus Torvalds attempted to answer some of these concerns with this posting to the linux-kernel list. It's worth a read. The essential summary is that Linus will not attempt to shut down a use of the term "Linux" if its use is somehow Linux related. "George's Linux consulting and auto body shop" is not problematic - assuming that George really does Linux consulting. Trying to grab "LeapinLinux.com" as a domain name play is another story. It is worth remembering that trademarks must be defended to remain in force. So it should not be surprising when this sort of action happens again in the future. Linus is almost as free with his trademark as he is with his software. He deserves support when he asks for a halt in use of it that he believes is inappropriate. Linuxcare has filed for its initial public offering of stock. As always, the S-1 filing is a wealth of information on how the company works and what it is trying to do. For those who do not wish to plow through that document themselves, LWN has posted its summary as a feature article. Have a look to see what Linuxcare is up to, how much money it makes, who owns it, and so on. As a pure services company, Linuxcare comes across differently - and with a weaker revenue picture - than the other IPO filings we have seen recently. The Gartner Group on Linux positioning. Here is the Gartner Group's latest proclamation on Linux. Gartner has traditionally been quite hostile to Linux; it is interesting that they are starting to get a little bit more supportive now. Here's some of Gartner's predictions:
Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:
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January 20, 2000
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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 editorialsNSA Linux?. Here's a press release from Secure Computing Corporation stating that it has been awarded a contract from the National Security Agency to develop "a robust and secure Linux platform." Many people speculated that the results would not be openly released, given the nature of the NSA. However, this post from Mike Beede at Secure Computing indicates that the results will be released under the GPL. More details are promised in the near future. Mike closed with the comment, "Having a secure operating system available to the community will also benefit us, by giving us a non-proprietary platform for our security products." Linux vs Microsoft: Who solves security problems faster?. Security Portal has taken a look at response times to bug fixes, in an effort to determine whether the response time for open source software is truly shorter. The results: "Red Hat had the best score, with 348 recess days on 31 advisories, for an average of 11.23 days from bug to patch. Microsoft had 982 recess days on 61 advisories, averaging 16.10 days from bug to patch. Sun proved itself to be very slow, although having only 8 advisories it accumulated 716 recess days, a whopping three months to fix each bug on average." The results turned out well enough, this time, but given that patches for most open source security problems come out almost simultaneous to initial announcements, or within only a few days, it is unfortunate that an average of 11 days occurred before Red Hat updates followed. If the same tests were done on all Linux distributors, some might fare slightly better, but most would fare worse. The time is coming where more attention needs to be paid to getting security updates out in a timely manner for all Linux distributions. Responses flow in to new cryptographic rules. For good news, check out the Cracking DES book from the EFF, which has been put back online. A lot of press articles took a look at the issue as well:
No privacy protection for e-mail or chat sessions. This New York Times article describes the decision in a recent case in Washington state, where the judge chose to allow as evidence e-mail and recordings of chat sessions. "After all, the judge said, Townsend chose to 'communicate via e-mail and/or ICQ . . . with the knowledge that the computer itself is a transmission and recording device.'" Others believe the judge has taken a first step down a slippery slope. Security ReportsMySQL. In last week's Security Page, we mentioned a security problem in MySQL. MySQL version 3.22.30 has been released and contains a fix for this problem. An upgrade is highly recommended. Yams 0.5.7 - Security Fix Release. Yams 0.5.7 has been released. It fixes a problem where the customer id was being stored as a hidden field in some of the order pages. It would have been possible for users to modify this id. sendmail concerns. Back in December, Michal Zalewski posted a list of procmail/sendmail bugs, at least one of which included a concern about a security issue with sendmail. Gregory Neil Shapiro posted an official reply this week. "We have run through the possible scenarios we could find and do not believe this to a threat." Updateslpr/lprold: problems with potential IP spoofing and the ability to specify an alternate configuration file.ResourcesBruce Schneier's CRYPTO-GRAM. The January 15th edition of CRYPTO-GRAM describes "publicity attacks". "I call this kind of thing a publicity attack. It's a blatant attempt by nCipher to get some free publicity for the hardware encryption accelerators, and to scare e-commerce vendors into purchasing them. And people fall for this, again and again." It also contains Bruce's comments on the new cryptography regulations and a great deal of fun links.ssh-proxy. Magosanyi Arpad has released the code to a partially-developed ssh-proxy. "A serious programmer does not give out such a code. I wouldn't either, but I have to abort this project of mine here and I hope someone will find it interesting enough to keep on." Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
January 20, 2000
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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 remains 2.3.39. The 2.3.40 pre-patch is at its sixth revision, so a new official release is likely before too long. The prepatch contains a number of documentation tweaks, many architecture-specific small changes, drivers for the amd7409 and cmd64x IDE chipsets, continuing block driver changes, PCMCIA work, PCI work, the addition of USB serial port support, and other USB work. Perhaps the biggest change in this prepatch, however, is the addition of IEEE 1394 ("firewire") support. The new driver is marked "experimental," of course, and may remain that way when 2.4 comes out. But, it is no longer true that Linux does not support firewire. More information on Linux IEEE 1394 development can be found on the project web page. The current stable kernel release remains 2.2.14. The prepatch series for 2.2.15 continues; it is currently up to 2.2.15pre3. The 2.4 kernel appears to be getting more distant. In theory kernel development is in a feature freeze, and Linus had said back in December that he wanted to get the pre-2.4 series going before the end of the year. 2.4.0 was supposed to happen in the first quarter of 2000. Since then much has happened. The block (disk) device layer has been strongly reworked, to the point that the driver API has changed and both Alan Cox and Linus have said that the expanding scope of the work is making them nervous. The PCMCIA code has been thrashed, Linus and PCMCIA developer David Hinds are getting grumpy with each other, and a lot of things never have worked in that subsystem. All of the work that is being done makes sense - but it is very late in the development cycle to be making fundamental changes. By the time all of the changes are completed and properly tested, it will be too late for a "Q1 2000" release. That particular time frame does not matter a whole lot, but this kernel does need to go out at some point. Cryptographic code in the kernel is coming - maybe. The advantages of including code for secure authentication and communications in the kernel have been known for years - but regulation of such code in several countries has blocked its inclusion. Now that the U.S. has evidently decriminalized the export of open source crypto code, the last roadblock appears to have been removed. People are starting to talk about what to put in. In particular, H. Peter Anvin is currently in the process of getting legal advice on the matter. If the lawyers say he can get away with it, the kernel.org site (and its mirror system) will begin to carry cryptographic code. Kernel.org, of course, is the home of the official kernel; once this site can carry cryptographic code, Linus seems inclined to start including it. The issue is not entirely resolved, however. Of particular concern is that the new U.S. law allows the export of open-source crypto source, but not binaries. As a result, the Linux distributions (which are the source of almost everybody's kernels) are still in a bit of a bind. One obvious solution would be to package up the crypto code in source form, then compile it as part of the installation process. Such silliness is not that hard to arrange, but the real point is that traps still abound. A more secure Linux (and Internet) may now be possible, but it will have to be approached with care. Now that we have 32-bit user ID values, how about 32-bit process ID's as well? Unix systems have limited PID values to 15 bits for a long time, but there is nothing magic about that size. Larger PIDs would allow for some nice things, starting with the ability to have a great many processes active on a single system. There is also a (very small) security advantage in having a large PID space, and thus avoiding the reuse of PID values. Finally, people working with clusters have wanted for a while to be able to make PIDs unique across an entire cluster; this could be accomplished by reserving part of the PID space for a host number. Given the advantages of larger PIDs, why not go ahead and increase the size of the PID field while the user ID field is being changed? Interestingly, it has already been done. According to Linus, the size of a PID has not only been 32 bits since Linux 0.01, but Linux for some time actually used all of those bits as well. It was a bug in bash that caused Linus to drop back to only using 15 bits, but it has always been stored in a 32-bit space. Thus, Linux could switch over to 32-bit PIDs tomorrow with very little pain. There's just a few things to be worked out. One is that SYSV IPC uses 16-bit PID values for a user-visible structure. Glibc as a whole uses 32-bit values, but the IPC interface would have to change in a way that would break existing programs (this change appears to already be in the works, at least at the kernel level). Then there is the issue of /proc, which could turn into a very large, crowded directory with that many PIDs active. And, finally, nobody has yet worked out how the wider space should really be used. Should the new bits just become more bits in the PID, or should some of them be set aside for some sort of host ID? Until these questions are worked out, Linus plans to leave PID values as they are: 15-bit quantities in a 32-bit space. Other patches and updates released this week include:
Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet |
January 20, 2000
For other kernel news, see: Other resources: |
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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. Gentoo Linux (formerly Enoch). Enoch Linux, a distribution that we've mentioned a couple of times in the past two years, has changed its name to "Gentoo Linux" and moved to a new location: http://proteinpak.com. (Thanks to F.Odenkirchen.) Loop Linux 4. A minor update to this small Linux distribution has been announced. Loop Linux can be installed and run from a Dos/Win95/98 system. Debian GNU/LinuxDebian 2.2 code freeze. The code freeze in preparation for the release of Debian 2.2 has been officially announced. It is expected to be about two months between the freeze and the release of Debian 2.2. A new "unstable" tree has also been started, code name "woody", to contain new software that won't make it into Debian 2.2. "Debian releases are code-named after characters from the movie Toy Story. Woody is the main character, the cowboy action figure."Bugfix procedures. Richard Braakman outlined the procedures for getting bugfixes into the source code now that the freeze is in place. Debian Leader Elections. Now that the holidays are over, nominations are being taken for the position of Debian Leader. Note, you can only nominate yourself and are duly warned that it is a "thankless position". Release-critical Bugreport. It appears that 199 release-critical bugs remain, according to the latest Bug Report. Debian Weekly News. This week's Debian Weekly News should be available by the time this edition goes to press, or shortly afterwards. Easy LinuxeasyLinux translation project. The easyLinux translation project is looking for volunteers.Linux-MandrakeLinux-Mandrake 7.0 released. Linux-Mandrake 7.0 has been announced. This looks like a very nice release of this distribution.Some of its new features: DrakConf, a new desktop configuration panel for easily configuring hardware devices such as video cards, keyboard, mouse (including USB keyboards and mice), support for over 50 languages, preconfigured security levels and MandrakeUpdate, a tool for automatically applying updates. Red Hat LinuxRed Hat 6.1 for Alpha shipping. Red Hat has announced that the Alpha (processor) version of its 6.1 distribution is now shipping. ShareTheNetShareTheNet 2.1 is now available. For those who don't remember this distribution, it is aimed primarily at Windows users, to provide a reasonably secure gateway system without requiring any knowledge of Linux. The new version also supports web, ftp, and mail services and an improved administrative interface.SuSE LinuxSuSE Linux - a vendor gets security conscious (Security Portal). SecurityPortal ran this article about SuSE's security features. "SuSE also has an advantage over American Linux vendors; in the US the export of strong crypto is heavily restricted (i.e. a Linux vendor would be out of luck currently), and the RSA algorithm is patented, making use of it difficult. SuSE is based in Germany, which is an increasingly crypto friendly country..."SuSE: Alpha version now available for download. The Alpha version (processor) of SuSE 6.3 is now available for download. XFree86 3.3.6 is now available for SuSE. Stale Distribution LinksThe following distribution links no longer appear to point to valid pages and will be removed from our distribution list, unless someone can provide us with updated links or information on the distribution.
Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
January 20, 2000
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development projectsSoftware Carpentry design competition. The Software Carpentry Project has announced its software design competition. They are looking to bring about the creation of a set of software tools (replacements for make, autoconf, and bugzilla, and a regression testing system), and have a substantial chunk of money to help that cause along. Details in the announcement. Yes, this is the same project we mentioned earlier this week; this time they have their new web site in place and are truly ready. "All of the project's work will be Open Source; all tools will be written in, or scriptable with, Python, and will be required to run on both Linux and Microsoft Windows NT." SourceForge code released. SourceForge has released the code for its operation. The code is available under the GPL. Ganymede 0.99.9 released. Version 0.99.9 of the Ganymede network directory system has been released. EducationSeul-EDU Linux in Education report. Here is the latest "Linux in Education" report from the Seul-EDU project.Linux Knowledge Base Weekly News. This week's Linux Knowledge Base Newsmentions that the project will be heading to LinuxWorld in February, courtesy of Mandrake. Request-for-Comment: an OpenSource style Image Database for Education. Mark Dalton sent us a copy of his RFC for the creation of an image database for education along the lines of Matthias Warkus' project for Gnome Icons. GamesOpen Game Source looks at Freeciv. Open Game Source takes a look at Freeciv, "a turn based strategy game designed after the Civilization games", in this new article. "The current stable version is playable and includes 'an AI which gives most people a run for their money.'"GimpThe Gimp Kernel-Cousin. Issue #9 of the Gimp Kernel-Cousin was released on January 14th. It covers the announcement of a new gimp plug-in, though the discussion quickly diverted to talking about how to prove the date your work is created, in case of "prior art" or patent issues.On the DesktopThis week's GNOME summary. Here's this week's GNOME summary, by Havoc Pennington. Among other things, this issue inaugurates a new "project of the week" feature. A "project of the week" (or POW) is a project small enough to be done in a week or less and is chosen because "it would be cool to have someone working on". A small Sawmill project and a Gnome System Administrator Guide (or at least the beginning of one) are listed as the first two projects.Using KDE in Japanese. Takumi Asaki posted a list of tips for people wanting to use KDE2-current with Japanese. KDE news from mosfet.org. Items covered over at mosfet.org this past week include a reference to Linux.com's look at KDE, the release of the PerlQt version 2.100 perl bindings and progress moving towards Unicode support. Web BrowsersMozilla M13 tree is closed. Mozillazine reports that the M13 tree has been closed, priming expectations for an M13 build and release. Jazilla release 2. The second "stable" release of Jazilla, the 100% pure Java web browser, has been announced. Key developer leaves Mozilla (ZDNet). ZDNet UK covers the departure of Mozilla hacker Mike Shaver. "Shaver is quick to quash any speculation that his leaving Netscape/AOL has anything to do with the company's recent mega-merger with Time Warner and its transformation into an all-powerful corporate media titan." More information on Mike's departure can also be found on Mozillazine. Public Key Infrastructure released to Mozilla.org. PKI Library source code associated with Netscape Security Services (NSS) and Personal Security Manager (PSM) has been contributed to Mozilla.org by the Sun-Netscape Alliance. For more information, check out the Mozillazine coverage, which includes links to the original press release, plus additional updates. Linux Web Browsers. WebReview has taken a look at some Linux web browsers, including Netscape, Moilla, Opera, Amaya and Lynx. "Once Opera and Mozilla reach production level, I suspect Netscape will be left for either (or both) of these browsers. Mozilla is looking particularly exciting, although it has a foot-print that may be simply too large for some users." (Thanks to Robert Taylor). Web DevelopmentMidgard Weekly Summary. This week's Midgard Weekly Summary covers the release plans for version 1.2.26 of this web application development platform, as well as other news items.WineWine Weekly News. The Wine Weekly News for January 17th speaks of continuing problems on the Wine servers, more Odin license news and read-only PCI board support.Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
January 20, 2000
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Development toolsGuileJim Blandy has stepped down as guile maintainer and will now be focusing on gdb while working for Cygnus. Maciej Stachowiak has stepped in as the new maintainer.JavaJava, threads, and scheduling in Linux. Ray Bryant and Bill Hartner have put out a white paper (and patches) discussing how to patch the Linux kernel scheduler for better Java performance. "While the VolanoMark benchmark studied here is an example of a specific workload that places high demands on the scheduler of the underlying operating system kernel, we believe that the effects described here can be present to some extent in other important workloads as well. We look forward to working with the members of Linux community to design, develop, and measure prototypes of Linux code to support the changes described above". Tritonus: the Linux JavaSound implementation. Peter Pilgrim dropped us a note mentioning that he is working on the beta version of Tritonus with Matthias Pfisterer, porting Tritonus to the JDK 1.1.7. Good progress is being made: "At home I got Tritonus to work and play wave files with Enlightment Sound Daemon and Blackdown 's JDK 1.1.7 v1a release." For others that would like to play as well, Tritonus 0.1.82 is now available. PerlPerlMonth: Bonus Article. PerlMonth has added a bonus article this month, "Installing Modules into ActivePerl", by Jenda Krynicky. "When you install ActivePerl you get a lot of modules. But sooner or later you'll find out you need some more."PHPPHP DevCon Meeting. The PHP Core Development team is meetingfor the first time from January 20 to January 24, in Tel Aviv at the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel. The focus of the meeting will be to organize the team effort for developing and generating interest in the popular PHP scripting language.PythonThis week's Python-URL. Here is this week's Dr. Dobb's Python-URL, written by Fredrik Lundh.Tcl/tkThis week's Tcl-URL. Here is this week's Dr. Dobbs' Tcl-URL!. It mentions the second beta release for Tcl 8.3, a new version of Snack (support for file-based and stream audio) and the the first Silicon Valley Tcl Users Group meeting.Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh | |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and businessTransmeta comes out. As planned, Transmeta broke its long silence this week, and told the world what it has been up to. Details can be found in Transmeta's press release. In summary, Transmeta's product line consists of two processor chips:
Transmeta sees a future where small, mobile computers take over. A lot of these will run Linux; evidently at least part of Linus Torvalds' job there has been to put together a special version of the system that will run well on the new chips. More details about this version of the system - and the products (which are said to be already in the pipeline) that will make use of it. Caldera directed share program. In last week's LWN we stated that we were unable to get an answer from Caldera on whether they were doing a community stock offering as part of their IPO. A sharp-eyed reader has pointed out to us that the information we needed is in the S-1 filing; we had simply missed it. "Up to" 10% of the shared will be reserved for the "directed share program." Of those shares, about half will go to Caldera directors, employees, etc. The other half will be offered to "... open source software developers and other persons that we believe have contributed to the success of the open source software community and to the growth of Caldera Systems." The offering will be handled through Wit Capital, and it appears that opening an account there will be necessary. Lineo's Embeddix in hotel set-top boxes. Lineo has announced an agreement with Elitegroup Computing and Bast to build a line of set-top boxes using Embeddix (Lineo's embedded version of OpenLinux). The boxes are aimed at hotel and apartment building use. TurboLinux Completes $57 Million Funding Round. TurboLinux announced it has closed $57 million in a second round of funding, which included a significant investment by Dell, Compaq, Intel and others. Danish government to use Linux? Here is an article (in Danish) in the Danish newspaper Politiken. Therein, a politician from the Socialist People's Party is quoted as saying: "We want to secure a European knowledge- and network society based on open technology, which will create a more fruitful milieu for technological development, including the possibility that the many smaller Danish and European software companies will be able to develop products for the Linux operating system, without constantly having to fight against Microsoft and their lawyers." The Socialist People's Party is not currently in the governing coalition, but is the fourth biggest party overall and evidently is relatively influential. (Thanks to Anders S. Buch for pointer and translation). Linux portals on the move. Just in case there weren't enough Linux portal sites out there...M & A West has announced its "Links2Linux" site, which will be launched during LinuxWorld. Meanwhile, the Global Reaction Network has announced the acquisition of the LinuxFool.com portal site. NVIDIA, SGI and VA Linux announce OpenGL initiative NVIDIA, SGI and VA Linux have announced a joint initiative to produce "the industry's first professional-level OpenGL(R) graphics sub-system for workstations running Linux." Corel is looking for beta testers for CorelDraw. Details can be found on Corel's beta program page. A lot of people are looking forward to the availability of this particular utility; it is still Corel's flagship product, in some ways. Corel expects to get a lot of beta applications. Corel also published its fourth quarter numbers. Here's the press release from Corel with the results. Contrary to last month's predictions, Corel actually shows a profit - by virtue of a one-time tax accounting move. Also: "Corel enjoyed strong inaugural sales of the new Corel(r) LINUX(r) OS, totaling $3.2 million for the quarter." $3.2 million is not a bad start, considering that the distribution hit the market at the end of November. And to finish with Corel: Corel continues to buy into Linux firms. This time it has announced the acquisition of a minority stake in OE/ONE.com, a maker of Linux-based "internet appliance" systems Linux on Royal DaVinci PDAs? PDA Buzz is carrying a brief story saying that Royal is developing a version of its DaVinci organizer that runs Linux; it should hit the shelves by summertime. (Thanks to Gordy Perkins). Section Editor: Jon Corbet.
Press Releases:
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol. |
January 20, 2000
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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 newsTransmeta: The Red Herring reports on the Transmeta announcement. "The 3120 chip will power Linux-based web pads and devices that are expected to sell between $500 and $1000..." Here's a Reuters article about Transmeta and the soon to be unveiled Crusoe chip. "'Everything will be revealed on January 19 both at the product announcement and on the Web site,' said Ditzel, adding that he cannot comment on any of the rumors or speculation. Still in stealth mode, Ditzel will not even disclose the number of employees at Transmeta, which one semiconductor industry executive said is close to 200. " Linux and the Stock Market: News.com looks at Linux from an investor's point of view. "But can investors take a movement seriously that claims a portly penguin as its mascot? They should. For one, Linux as an operating system is growing faster than are any of its competitors. It is also is an ideal operating system for appliance computing, a high-growth segment that I've commented on the past. Most impressive is that Linux systems are the operating infrastructure behind an astounding 31 percent of all Internet servers--giving it the No. 1 unit market share for this important segment" Computer Reseller News takes this look at Linux companies and Wall Street. "Like the little engine that could, Linux is speeding ahead as a locomotive force on Wall Street. But it is still huffing and puffing up a steep hill to reach resellers and corporations." Red Hat, along with some of its inside shareholders, will sell 4 million shares according to this Reuters article. Bob Young and Matthew Szulik were listed as selling part of their stakes. CBS Marketwatch took this look at the VA Linux IPO. "Notable: VA Linux Systems made history as the highest first-day gain of all IPOs with a run-up of 733 percent to 250 over its $30 offering price." TurboLinux: TurboLinux has received $50 million in investments, according to this News.com article. Investors include Dell, Compaq, BEA Systems, and others. "The reason for the investments are simple, said D.H. Brown Associates analyst Tony Iams. Established hardware and software companies see a new market opening up with the arrival of Linux, and they want to ensure themselves a foothold, he said." News.com looks at TurboLinux's latest funding round. "Historically, there has been a delay between corporate rounds of investment and an IPO. Linux seller Caldera Systems broke that pattern last week by filing to go public on the same day it announced $30 million in corporate investments." Corel: After telling the world last month that it would be losing money, Corel has come out with a small profit after all, according to this Reuters article. "The Ottawa-based firm, which recently added hot Linux technology to its stable of CorelDraw and WordPerfect software, said it was able to recognize the tax value of some losses and use tax credits that had been deferred pending a Revenue Canada review of Corel's 1993 to 1995 taxation years." The Ottawa Citizen reports on Corel's investment in Newlix. "For Corel, the cash-and-services holding is the latest of several investments in new Linux technology that has lifted its stock despite weak sales of traditional Corel products. And for Newlix, founded only a year ago, the investment lets it quickly ramp up expansion plans." News.com also covers Corel's investment in Newlix. "Newlix makes networking server software dubbed Omega, based on Linux, designed for small to medium-sized businesses. It can connect up to 50 PCs and 'handles Internet connections and email, sends files to printers and personal computers and can incorporate a security firewall,' according to the Ottawa-based company." Red Herring looks at Corel's recent Linux related investments. "What kind of organization Corel is, is up for debate. In recent months, Corel has come under fire for chasing Linux as a fad. After all, skeptics say, Corel's Windows products are where it makes most of its money, yet the company seems to spend more effort publicizing its Linux-related efforts." Business: News.com covers Tripwire's plans. "Linux is another growth opportunity for Tripwire, [Tripwire CEO Wyatt Starnes] said. Sellers of Linux software are sensitive about the perception that Linux is a good target for computer intrusions. 'There is a fear that the perception of this vulnerability could impede their marketplace.'" E-Commerce Times looks at Allaire's deal with MERANT. "Under the terms of the agreement, Allaire will add MERANT's DataDirect technology to versions of ColdFusion for Linux. According to MERANT, the deal will bring scalable, transaction-based connectivity between ColdFusion and databases such as Microsoft SQL, Oracle and Sybase to developers who work with Allaire e-commerce solutions." Here's an article in the Industry Standard about Red Hat's future. "If 1999 was the year of Red Hat's honeymoon, then watch for flying pots and pans in 2000. Led by the ever-grinning visage of Chairman Bob Young, Linux distributor Red Hat had a yearlong free ride in the press, and investors responded in kind." Here's a News.com article about Michael Tiemann's appointment as Red Hat's CTO. "The shuffle can be seen as a positive sign for Cygnus as it gets integrated into Red Hat. Because Linux is such a technology-focused product, chief technology officers at Linux companies typically wield a great deal of influence over product direction and strategy." Forbes looks at Be's plans to give away its operating system for personal use. "Be seems to be trying to emulate Linux, the open source operating system that has taken the computing world and Wall Street by storm, as evidenced by the overwhelming success of recent IPOs like Red Hat and VA Linux Systems. But Linux may have benefited from being at the right place at the right time." ZDNet UK reports on the adoption of Linux by some "local authority" in the U.K. "The government authority, which cannot be named yet, is currently testing out Linux for a broader rollout once evaluation of the OS, and native applications running on it, are complete." Arne W. Flones takes a look at efforts to take ownership of the Internet through the use of proprietary protocols. "The major players in the greedy grab are Microsoft, AOL, Real Networks, and Apple. None of their protocols are open and none of them are fully supported by any operating systems other than Windows and possibly Apple Mac. If you have another OS, like UNIX or OS/2, too bad, so sad. " This Upside column says that Microsoft should forget about the operating system market. "Once Linux's graphical user interface matures and stabilizes, it will become exponentially more attractive to users. If Microsoft is smart, it will have Linux-enabled copies of Office on hand to sell..." Finally: ZDNet ran this article on on Deepok Saxena's Linux Demo Day Y2K page. "'We're not trying to say Microsoft/Bad; Linux/Good,' says Saxena. 'This is more about showing that there's an alternative. Especially for small businesses -- we want to show them they have a choice. Many people have heard about Linux but haven't seen it in action.'" Le Monde features (in French) the web site of AFUL ("l'Association francophone des utilisateurs de Linux et des logiciels libres" - "The French association of Linux and free software users") in a story about French doctors fighting for the right to use Linux in their practice. There is evidently a security system in place that only works with Windows... Here is the Babelfish link, but Babelfish seems increasingly unreliable these days. (Found in Portalux News). CNN talks with Jon 'maddog' Hall about Linux in China. "As for security, he said military and intelligence agencies around the world have adopted Linux for sensitive systems. 'The fact that they don't have to tell some U.S. company what they're doing is reason enough for them to use Linux,' Hall said." AboutLinux ran this article on the DVD fight. "I am really curious why they did not name the major search engines as codefendants; after all, by doing a search for them you can get a plethora of links to DeCSS code..." Linux in Brazil interviews Panasync, the developer of the BitchX IRC client. "I'm a big fan of free software/free source. I enjoy browsing other's well-written code. I also believe in the concept of shareware. I have thought about making BitchX shareware with source. But, it's based on others work, so I don't feel it's fair." Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
January 20, 2000 |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesThe Linux Certification FAQ has been posted by Anne Martinez. It covers all aspects of Linux professional certification, from the "whys" to the "hows." Evidently much of it is excerpted from her book on Linux certification (Amazon link) published by McGraw Hill.Linuxcare's "Dear Lina" column looks at masquerading. "What you do need is a private network, but a way to invisibly transform the private addresses to an allowed external address whenever they try to reach outside. That, my dears, is called IP masquerading, and it is very, very popular these days." Rob Slade, master of tech book reviews, has sent us a review of 'Running Linux', by Matt Welsh, Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, and Lar Kaufman. "You don't have to be an MS-DOS wizard or a technical support guru to follow this book. If you've installed a few programs and ever added any hardware to your computer, that is probably background enough." Thestuff.net is a loose confederation of volunteers, dedicated to promoting Linux, specifically, and espousing open source ideals, generally. Currently on the lookout for new volunteers, we desperately need like-minded enthusiasts to assist the development of our web site! If you have talent or interest in the following skills: Writing, Editing, Programming, Graphic Art, please contact, jobs@thestuff.net, or visit http://www.thestuff.net/about. EventsThe Netproject folks have announced a workshop entitled Linux, Open Source & E-Business - Management Briefing. It will be held in London on February 24; admission is 460 pounds Plus VAT. See the announcement for a detailed agenda.
LinuxTag 2000 will be held on June 29 through July 2, 2000 in Stuttgart, Germany. Some details can be found in the announcement, or, for those who don't read German, via Babelfish. New this year will be the "Businesskongress," which will add a more commercial orientation to the event.
Web sitesLinuxLinks announced some new features, including a featured site of the day and a Java chatroom.User Group NewsThe Central Ohio Linux Users Group will meet Wed., 26 January 2000, 19:00 to 21:00 local. Ed Helwig will detail his effort down the learning curve, from a MS Visual Basic environment, to a TK/TCL replacement.This article looks at the reasons for (and the ways to) create special interest groups within a Linux Users Group. "Just a few years ago, it was common to find several people within an existing Users Group, such as a Unix Users Group, who were interested in Linux and thus started a special interest group (SIG) within the group to discuss Linux. Today, Linux Users Groups have grown to become their own Users Groups focusing entirely on Linux. Has Linux become popular enough to start spawning SIGs of their own? Yes. I say they have." |
January 20, 2000
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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 weekPenguinApps is a Linux download site put together by the 32bitsonline folks. It looks an awful lot like an attempt to recreate what Tucows has done - complete with penguin ratings. Creative Linux is a site aimed at those wishing to create multimedia content with Linux. Applications like the Gimp are obviously of interest to these folks, but they look at a lot more obscure stuff as well. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
January 20, 2000 |
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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, 13 Jan 2000 06:10:55 -0600 From: Paul Hawkins <paul.hawkins@tivoli.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: IBM moves toward Linux I work for a company owned by IBM (so I work for IBM), and I have been to seminars by IBM on Linux, and read their internal Web pages on Linux. IBM is a big company, so they move slow. Also, everyone involved in Linux at IBM is making the point that the OSS movement is different than anything IBM is use to. And that IBM needs to move slowly to ensure we work with the community, and not appear as if we are giving it a big Blue bear hug. IBM would like nothing better then to make the OS a commodity. IBM has earned more on its services then its' hardware & OS for awhile now. Linux will only help them. This is a good thing for all. These opinions are my own, and not IBM's. -- Paul Hawkins - Software Engineer - Tivoli Systems, Inc. email: paul.hawkins@tivoli.com "Chase the dream, not the competition" | ||
From: davep@uk.ibm.com To: lwn@lwn.net Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 11:03:10 +0000 Subject: IBMs presence in the Linux community. Hi all, Just a few comments... Since IBMs big announcement of getting more behind Linux, they have been slated as touting/talking more than actually doing, indeed your article dated 13/01/2000 had a slight negative tone regarding substance from IBM. I feel this is unfair, IBM released DB2 for Linux long ago, and numerous other projects. Most recently of course, they have ported Linux to the S/390 mainframe! How many other companies can claim that they have "single handedly" (for want of a better expression) ported the kernel to a major piece of hardware, and then released it OSS/GPL back to the community? The community needs to back off from slating IBM, and appreciate what they have done. Dave Peacock - davep@uk.ibm.com | ||
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 10:12:35 GMT From: kevinmcd@linuxsolutions.demon.co.uk Subject: Shrink Wrap Licenses in the EU > You might like to know that under UK law, accoridng to various > genuine lawyers, all the "by openning this envelope oyu > agree to the licence" stuff is illegal and therefore void. I suspect > the sales of goods and services act (and similar legislation elsewhere) > makes many of the disclamimers illegal as well. The EU gives me an > inalienable right to reverse-engineer for any purpose other than cloning > a product, which would make a successful procession for this hard work > (can you *prove* I was intending to cloen your product?). > It would be interesting to know how much of these contracts is actually > valid under various different juristictions. The UCITA is something > that is unlikely to apply anyware outside the US (and would contravene > EU law even if anyone was sufficiently bribed to propose it) This is not true, the genuine Lawyers you have consulted obviously haven't read their case law... The Case of Beta Computers vs. Adobe Systems, proved very interesting, rightly or wrongly, the Sheriff has ruled the the Shrink Wrap license is enforceable, curiously in this case, the benefit was in favour of the defendant, since under the provision of the license the software was returnable. An interesting view of this is presented here...http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/JILT/cases/98_2rob/robertsn.htm. This applies to Scots Law, a very different animal to English Law, and of course obviously quite different to the mythical UK Law that our learned correspondent quotes. This case is a very interesting read... Kevin McDermott | ||
From: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: UCITA Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 10:28:56 +0000 I was quite surprised at your claim on the front page of this week's LWN: > One needs look no further than the current DVD case for a graphic > example of what could happen here. The DeCSS code was not written to > make illegal copies of DVDs (it's not needed for that); it was written > so that people could play DVDs on Linux systems. UCITA would criminalize > this sort of activity. I think you partly miss the point. The DVD code was reverse-engineered in the Free World, not in the United States. The situation in the USA was already too bad for residents to risk persecution. Cryptography code, and the DVD code, was written outside the USA because the USA _already_ has insane laws on such matters. I agree that UCITA would make matters even worse, but it wouldn't have made the DVD reverse-engineering illegal, because the DVD reverse-engineering wasn't done under US jurisdiction. -- dwmw2 | ||
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 03:42:50 -0800 (PST) From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=E9r=F4me_Loisel?= <jloisel@excite.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Nikolai Bezroukov's "papers" Dear LWN editors, I have a rather long comment on Nikolai Bezroukov and his articles which I would like to share with you. But first, some (related) personal thoughts. Many of us do not have the chance to encounter true intellectuals. By intellectuals, I do not mean "highly intelligent people," -- as the word is often used --, but "highly cultured, aware and articulate people," which is a competing, IMHO preferable definition. I have personnally met very few in person, and certainly do not claim to be one. (Much as most coder do not claim to be a Richard Stallman.) But I now tend to know one when I read one's texts... More than that, I think I have grown to recognize the arrogant and untalented wannabes. And it is my belief that Mr. Bezroukov is one such. I have tried to read Mr. Bezroukov's texts... But they are not mind-expanding, simply mind-numbing. The man believes that peppering his text with quotes from George Orwell, Mark Twain and Albert Einstein will make him look intelligent, whether or not the quotes have any relevance (most of them don't). The most painful part is the fact he uses the most oft-heard ones, those very ones we are all deathly tired of reading in sigs. Nikolai Bezroukov also cannot understand plain English. He quotes Eric Raymond as having written: "[...] if Brooks's Law were the whole picture, Linux would be impossible," yet his *first* *main* point resumes itself to: "One of the most indefensible ideas of CatB is that Brooks' Law is non-applicable in the Internet-based distributed development environment [...]" Can't he see that this precisely the opposite of what Raymond is contending? One would think that the word "truism" would give him a clue. In the end, Mr. Bezroukov simply does not have the elementary finesse to understand the distinction between "is true but is only one of many factors," (which Raymond is saying) and "is false in such case" (which he is certainly not in the quote!). His "paper" (hey, at least he did not call it a "research paper") is chock-full of inane comments that he does not even try to establish on firm factual or logical ground. A few gems: "To be fair, 'the average quality of software' for the Windows community [...] is also exceptionally high despite weaknesses of the underlying OS." Of course! Whenever I am forced to use a Windows machine, I am thrilled as well by the overall quality of the applications. "Even superficial analysis of the Bugtrack archive confirms that most developers prefer making their own bugs, not fixing bugs of others." Whatever that means... But he goes on: "For accidental contributions to the kernel, the situation can be even worse." Yes... don't you just hate it when people accidentally contributes to the kernel? Some flaws which I will not elaborate further on: the only facts appearing in this "paper" belong to the "anecdotal evidence" category; Mr. Bezroukov demonstrates very little respect for standard practices such as providing references for quotes; large portions of his "paper" simply elaborate on his opinions (as though we deeply care) without attempting to establish anything; and finally, my dog writes better prose. Proving all of those statements is left as an exercice for the extremely bored reader. What can I say? Arrogance from the untalented and uninsightful drives me nuts. Link to him if you must, but please do not try to be more complimentary than needed: that text is bottom-of-the-barrel quality, intellectually speaking, and deserves no praise. Jerome Loisel | ||
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 14:04:01 -0600 From: "Chris Browne" <Chris_Browne@amrcorp.com> To: <letters@lwn.net> Subject: Kermit The January 13th issue indicates the "freer Kermit license," and comments that due to it not going quite far enough, "As a result, C-Kermit is not likely to meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines anytime soon." It is true that the license may not qualify C-Kermit to be considered "free" software by Debian rules. Nonetheless, the licensing changes permit its inclusion in things like the Debian nonfree tree, which was previously forbidden. The license changes permit Kermit's inclusion with Linux distributions in general, which was previously forbidden by the documentation inclusion requirements. (In brief, in order to redistribute Kermit, you used to be required to include the full Kermit book.) This is extremely encouraging; Kermit has a long history of being an exceptionally good data transfer system. It used to be the one of the best interoperability systems to transfer data between UNIX, DOS, VMS, and mainframe systems. The popularity of TCP/IP and decline of widespread mainframe use has diminished the value somewhat (who uses non-TCP/IP networking anymore?), but I'm pleased to see it able to be used with Linux. -- "It is the user who should parameterize procedures, not their creators." -- Alan Perlis cbbrowne@hex.net - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html> | ||
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