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

Linux in the news

The Economist has run a lengthy article on patents and how they fit poorly into the current economy. "The Internet's early communalist enthusiasm for open-source software-which is free, unpatented and uncopyrighted-has now given way to a land-grab. Internet companies are rushing to patent their ideas. Ownership of a patent (or, since getting a patent takes a couple of years, a provisional patent application, which gives some rights) is a big help in raising finance."

Salon has put up a high-quality story about the troubles at Linuxcare. "...it is, instead, a warning signal of the weaknesses inherent in applying venture capital insta-company strategy to the world of free software. Just because you have the billions necessary to hire name-brand executives and PR firms and throw huge parties doesn't necessarily mean you know what Linux is all about. And from that perspective, the news that [founder Art] Tyde has been named a member of Linuxcare's new four-headed 'office of the CEO' monster is encouraging, because Tyde does understand Linux and the value of the open-source approach to software."

Tucows Acquires LWN

The Rocky Mountain News covers the acquisition of LWN by Tucows.com. "If consolidation signals an industry's arrival, an example of Linux's mainstream coming-of-age can be found in Boulder County."

Internet.com ran a brief article about the acquisition of LWN. "The acquisition firmly positions TUCOWS.com as a major industry resource and authority for Linux content to the open-source marketplace."

The Register ran this article about Tucows' acquisition of LWN. "Tucows has been knocking around for years as a destination site for free and paid-for downloads. The advent of Linux, and all the various distros, suits its business down to the ground - right now, Tucows it is probably the closest competitor to Freshmeat, the soon-to-be VA Linux-owned download site."

Events

LinuxMall.com reports from the Colorado Linux Info Quest, held in Denver on April 1. "[Jon 'Maddog'] Hall highlighted Linux applications in such areas as medicine, business, education, and supercomputing, giving a detailed history his own experienced and humorous perspective. His recurring theme? Whenever entering a new environment in an effort to support Linux, he was repeatedly told, 'there's no Linux here'--only to find that an almost underground group of users did, in fact, always exist."

Here's a Linux Advocate column by Scott Dowdle about his visit to the Colorado Linux Info Quest on April 1. "First off, I love Larry [McVoy]. He is cool. He is funny. He is blunt. He is honest. Did I mention he is funny? Ok, anyway... Mr. McVoy gave a speech (like the PHP guy) on what you would think would be a very dry topic... how to scale Linux to the Enterprise. Larry reminds me of Norm McDonald. Do you know who Norm McDonald is? If not, he was the 'Fake News Guy' on Saturday Night Live for a couple of years before he got fired and got his own sitcom."

This Reuters article looks at some of the announcements made at the Linux Expo in Montreal. "Canada's first Linux exhibit, follows on similar shows in New York and Paris, and has attracted a modest crowd of about 100 companies."

Here's another Reuters article about the Linux Expo event in Montreal. "A string of Linux heavyweights -- including Corel Corp., Red Hat Inc. and VA Linux Systems Inc. -- will highlight their achievements at Linux Expo 2000, which opens on Monday, wishing, no doubt, that Microsoft's pain will mean a gain for companies that sell Linux open-source software or services."

Legal/Political

This Linuxcare column makes the point that the free software community has to start taking more responsibility for preventing the creation of bad technology law. "It's time to stop reacting and become proactive. Our community is strong and united when things go astray, but we seemingly don't have the wherewithal to anticipate social and political entanglements until it's too late. We can design the best technological solutions on the planet, but we don't seem to be able to unite in the political sphere."

Here's a column in Scientific American about the DVD case. "Although it makes sense to prosecute wholesale piracy, it makes no sense whatsoever to refuse to produce software to allow people to play legally acquired discs on devices they own and then prosecute them if they write their own software. It makes even less sense to prosecute people for doing what the Web was built for: posting and linking to useful information."

UCITA has gotten past another state legislature: this time it's Maryland. In case anybody wonders whether further education on this bill is necessary, consider this coverage in the Baltimore Sun: "Maryland lawmakers stepped bravely into the digital age yesterday, adopting pioneering legislation that will govern the sales and licensing of computer software in stores and over the Internet." (Thanks to Bob Kopp).

Gnutella

Multimedium reports (in French) on the resurrection of Gnutella. It's a concise and informative article, touching on the importance of the "unstoppable" nature of the Gnutella design and its open source nature. English text is available via Babelfish. (Found in Da Linux French Page).

News.com looks at the life-after-death of gnutella and other open source Napster clones. "Whatever the outcome of the Napster lawsuit, the open-source Gnutella movement may well prove to be the more dangerous branch of the file-swapping technology trend. Because Napster runs through only a few central servers, it is an easy target for lawyers seeking to shut down the service or for those looking for individuals swapping files through the Napster software. Gnutella has no central location. It's modeled after the way the Internet itself is connected:"

Netpliance

News.com has posted an article about Netpliance's change in terms for its "iOpener" appliance. "The Austin, Texas-based Internet appliance company.... said it now requires customers to sign up for at least 90 days of Internet service at $21.95 a month. Customers can return the unit within 30 days if dissatisfied but otherwise face a $499 cancellation fee if they drop service within the 90-day period."

Wired News also has an article about this change, which is aimed at preventing people from buying the system and converting it over to Linux. (Thanks to Jay R. Ashworth).

Freshmeat.net took a long look at the Netpliance i-opener. "It's not so simple. Netpliance received enormous amounts of free publicity from the whole affair, and many of the people who bought the i-opener with the intention of modifying it were so impressed with the device that they also bought second boxes as gifts for their friends and relatives to use as originally intended. That's saying nothing of the potential benefits of Open Source development. "

Resources

Here's a 'Duke of URL' review of the AOpen AX64 Pro motherboard. This review includes Linux benchmarks, happily.

LinuxMall.com has posted this look at XFree86 4.0. "The default window manager for XFree86 is twm. Unless you're pushing 20 years of UNIX usage with a penchant for the genuinely arcane, nobody likes this window manager. I actually found it disappointing that they are still shipping twm with Xfree86 at all."

The April issue of Troubleshooting Professional contains a report from ApacheCon and a lengthy tutorial on PHP and PostgreSQL.

LinuxPapers has put up a basic tutorial on the use of users and groups in Linux. "Managing users with different permissions that are able to access the system at the same time, is one of biggest advantages of Unix systems. The flexibility of the management system is made even better by the ability to have user groups."

The O'Reilly Network ran this How-To article on the new Netscape 6. It includes some install tips, like how to keep your old bookmarks. "The Mozilla project, on which Netscape 6 is based, has been an important test case for the Open Source methodology. While taking longer than some expected to produce a browser for the average desktop user, the Mozilla team should be proud of their accomplishment."

Linuxcare's latest 'Dear Lina' column looks at IPv6. "IPv6 is a next generation Internet Protocol that aims to correct the 'oops' of the Internet's popularity. IPv6 will give us loads and loads more IP addresses--you know, those things that look like 192.168.1.1 today but will look like 1080::8:800:200C:417A in the future."

C't ran this article comparing web server downtimes. "The most interesting test results were achieved when evaluating the downtime per operating system. Here, NT servers were clearly second to their Unix competitors. During our 32 days, servers running Microsoft's operating system were down for an average of nearly 15 hours, which is equivalent to about 1.9 percent of the overall time. For Linux, the average downtime per server was 4 hours, which is 0.5 percent. Solaris servers did even better and displayed an average of 2.5 hours, which equals a downtime of 0.3 percent." (Thanks to "Danny").

Linuxcare

CBS Marketwatch reports on events at Linuxcare. "Linuxcare said it will work with its IPO underwriters CS First Boston, Chase H&Q and Fleet Boston Robertson Stephens to weigh market conditions and decide when to move ahead with its stock offering."

Here's News.com's take on the events at Linuxcare. "'We are confident that Linuxcare's business plan, management strength, technology infrastructure, employee base and technical expertise will enable us to work through this event and pursue our path toward an initial public offering and a long-term leading position in the Linux industry,' [new CEO Pat] Lambs said in a statement."

Corel

Here's a News.com article about Corel's push to bring more applications to Linux. "Corel believes its effort to bring mature software to Linux will help quickly boost the operating system to become a viable competitor to Windows, a situation that would let Corel compete more effectively against Microsoft. Despite the efforts by Corel and others, though, that vision is still a ways off."

Here's an Ottawa Citizen article looking at how Corel might benefit from Microsoft's problems. "[Microsoft] cannot, for example, refuse to deal with Corel because Corel is putting out Linux products. There's a honeymoon period for competitors where they'll be able to feel free of Microsoft retaliation, and that's beneficial to Canadian firms."

Business

Here's an Upside article about the sad state of Linux stocks. "Now, a couple of bad months erases neither the huge returns Linux stocks have run up since their IPOs in 1999, nor the operating system's genuine technological merit. But Linux's winter of discontent may serve as a reminder that its market power is finite."

News.com reports on Atipa's acquisition of DCG Computer Group. "The Alpha connection distinguishes Atipa from VA, which doesn't currently offer Alpha chip support."

Newsweek looks at the use of Linux in Europe. "Sometimes it pays to be late. Corporate Europe switched from mainframes to PC-based networks only in the mid-1990s. When Americans made that leap half a decade earlier, there weren't any alternatives to Microsoft. But by 1995, Linux was ready to compete with Windows. As a result, companies like Siemens, Volkswagen and Deutsche Bank have been using Linux for years."

This ZDNet article looks at the new Amiga. "Amiga claims it has more than 117 applications -- many of them games -- from a variety of partners that are ready to roll out in conjunction with new Amiga systems. [Amiga CEO]McEwen said the first Amiga-on-Linux developer platforms will be available soon, but declined to say when commercial systems might become available from OEMs. Sources said the new Amiga systems could hit the streets as early as this summer." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann).

TechRepublic has put up an article on the latest move from AOL and Gateway. "In what could be the biggest challenge yet to Microsoft's domination of the home computing market, America Online and PC maker Gateway unveiled a trio of sub-$500 Internet-access devices Wednesday based on the Linux operating system instead of Windows." Note that TechRepublic requires registration. (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann).

Here's a News.com article about the equity investments taken in Lynx Realtime Systems by Motorola and TurboLinux. "The TurboLinux investment is curious in light of TurboLinux's own embedded Linux research, a small programming team in China. TurboLinux vice president Lonn Johnston declined to offer specifics beyond saying Lynx's work won't overlap with TurboLinux's efforts."

Interviews

The E-Commerce Times interviews TurboLinux president Cliff Miller. "We put something on there that people will pay for, not necessarily because they have to, but because they want these things and they're willing to pay for them. And it's anything from bundling and integrating third-party software, to developing our own software that goes beyond the infrastructure and it really gives certain features that users are looking for and willing to pay for. But they may not necessarily need them to be open-source software."

Olinux.com.br interviews Miguel de Icaza. "Evolution is a pretty ambitious project for providing a uniform, and powerful interface to the information a user has to handle. The idea is to provide ways for users to find, and keep track of all their information sources: mail, contacts, chats, instant messaging, paging services and more. With a pluggable architecture based on Bonobo, the system can be extended to handle all sorts of information that needs to be managed."

Finally

ZDNet posts an interesting observation about Apple supporters. "A thought though, have you ever seen a Linux fan in the same room at the same time as a Macintosh fan? No you haven't have you, that's cos they are the same people."

TechMailings reviews the linux-msdos mailing list. "Honestly, who would create a list like this and expect anything less than full-time fire? With the adamant militancy of most Linux enthusiasts, a peaceful co-existence between the open source upstart and the monopolistic giant is about as likely as snowfall at the equator." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann).

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol

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