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Linux in the news


Recommended Reading

Here's a Washington Post article on Gnutella. "At a time when the general assumption is that the World Wide Web's destiny will be guided by international conglomerates such as AOL, Amazon.com Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., Gnutella is the unexpected variable. Its very existence is a statement about the wild nature of the Web and how difficult it will be for anyone to tame it. It is also a dramatic display of how easily the Internet can be transformed or at least shaken by smart computer programmers who are barely old enough to drink or drive."

Just for contrast, it's worth including a second quote from later in the article: "As Gnutella's popularity grows, its corporate parent has taken notice. In a recent interview, Time Warner's Levin and AOL President Bob Pittman suggested the technology could be harnessed, given time. Pittman said the interest in the project simply represents 'consumer demand before the launch of a product,' meaning a controlled system for distributing copyrighted information." No comment.

GNULinux.com posted this interview with Richard Stallman. "You see, companies could engage in kinds of business that respect our freedom and promote our freedom. And they could also engage in kinds of business that take away our freedom. It's the people who might be their customers who control which direction the companies actually choose. This means it's all the more important for the software users, in their millions, to be thinking about issues of freedom and not just of short term convenience."

LinuxMall/EBIZ Merger

Forbes reports on the LinuxMall/EBIZ merger. "Jeffrey Rassas, founder and CEO of eBiz, will become president of the combined company. He says the merger came together after investment banker Chase Hambrecht & Quist, convinced that LinuxMall could not mount an IPO anytime soon, suggested the companies talk to each other. In other words, the lousy market drove LinuxMall into the waiting arms of eBiz."

The Rocky Mountain News also covered the LinuxMall/EBIZ merger. "The deal combines two companies that own some of the most visited Linux sites on the World Wide Web. LinuxMall.com records about 20 million page visits per month at its online shopping site and affiliated sites. eBiz, out of Scottsdale, Ariz., owns TheLinuxStore.com and LinuxLabs.com, among others."

Lineo

Here's a lengthy Upside article about Lineo's IPO filing. "Still, the parallels between Linuxcare and Lineo are there. While some might consider it bad luck to bring up the comparison, investors who still buy into the notion that Linux and the open source development model are changing the software world forever should feel comfortable with the similarities."

Of probable interest to any of you following the Lineo IPO, Rick Lehrbaum has published an interview with Lineo CEO, Bryan Sparks. "Bryan: We believe a royalty-based business model is the Linux model that will have the greatest long term revenue potential, while still respecting and supporting open-source and the rules of GPL."

The Salt Lake Tribune reports on Lineo's IPO filing. "Lineo, based in Lindon, has hired more than 140 people since September and now employs about 160. It also has been on a bit of a buying spree, acquiring six Linux companies so far this year. Including those acquisitions, the company would have lost $9.9 million on sales of $4.6 million in its last fiscal year."

VA Linux

Here's a News.com article about the latest from VA Linux Systems. "The company today will introduce model 2130, a single-processor, 3.5-inch thick rack-mounted machine with starting prices less than $1,400, said Brian Biles, director of marketing at VA. In the longer term, VA has ambitions to steal market share for more expensive systems away from Sun Microsystems. 'I don't think (Sun) can sell effectively anymore' to companies setting up large numbers of computers for high-traffic Web sites, said Biles, who in his last job plugged Sun network software. 'They're turning into a mainframe company.'"

Upside looks at VA's latest quarterly results. "After weeks of serving as the poster child for disappointing market performance, VA Linux (LNUX), the same company that epitomized last year's Linux frenzy, finally had some financial numbers to throw back in critics' faces Tuesday."

Here's a brief article about VA Linux hosting the Victoria's Secret online fashion show. "In the world of Open Source software and Linux, these two do not have to be restricted to the back of the enterprise. Linux can be as sexy as the next pretty girl walking down the catwalk."

Business

According to this News.com article, Alpha Processor Inc. plans to move into the Linux systems business, with an emphasis on clusters. "Alpha Processor's new machine will consist of a collection of smaller, two-processor Alpha computers, each running its own copy of Linux but the whole system acting essentially as a single large server, [Alpha CTO Gerry] Talbot said. The machines will have from 16 to 30 two-processor systems, though the design will work for machines with hundreds, he said."

News.com reports on the IA-64-related announcements from HP, SGI, and Red Hat. "The three announcements illustrate the cooperative nature of the Linux movement: All the companies involved, as well as others, can take advantage of the software its competitors are releasing. By comparison, Microsoft and Sun are working separately to develop Itanium versions of their own operating systems."

ZDNet has put up a lengthy report on the trouble at Linuxcare. "What went wrong at Linuxcare? Just about everything, as this exhaustive investigative report by Sm@rt Reseller reveals. Interviews with more than one dozen current and former Linuxcare employees--most of whom spoke under the condition of anonymity--paint a dramatic picture of a company that was doomed from the moment it left port."

Here's a ZDNet article on IBM's support of Linux on the S/390. "IBM said it was providing more input to the open-source development effort than its rivals. UK senior consultant Clive Druett said IBM has already had several enhancements -- to performance tools, file system journaling and file serving -- accepted by the committee that controls Linux."

Upside looks at Linux for the S/390. "Linux on mainframes? Crazier things have happened. Still, for an operating system that has built its reputation in the low-cost server market, the jump to big iron offers interesting evidence of market forces at play." The same article also has reports on the Slashdot/Microsoft confrontation and the death of the Corel/Inprise merger.

Here's a story in the Montreal Gazette about Corel's problems. "Of course, the desktop Linux market might come alive, at which point Corel will be exceptionally well positioned. The question is, will it be too late?"

The Ottawa Citizen looks at Corel's problems. "The latest Corel silver bullet is Linux, the alternative open-source computer language that is finding markets in products ranging from the big server computers that run corporate Web pages and electronic commerce operations to a promising new generation of cheap hand-held and table-top computer appliances."

Newsbytes reports that Corel could run out of money within days. "A report in the Toronto-based Financial Post newspaper today said Corel employees are flooding local technology companies with resumes as the financial prospects of their employer appear to be worsening."

Napster and other Intellectual Property issues

Alan Cox has added his voice to the ongoing debate about napster. He points out that the same technology could be used to legally distribute free software. "Cox is not impressed by the way Napster is being targeted by the music industry. 'Those attacking Napster are trying to set a very dangerous precedent. Instead of attacking pirates they are attacking the technology. Imagine if it had been five years earlier, they would have been trying to shut down the Internet.'"

The New Republic looks at the Microsoft vs. Slashdot affair and the freedom issues behind it. "If a website somewhere on the Internet is violating Microsoft's copyright by handing out free copies of Microsoft Word, Gates's team of natty attorneys would be justified in suing to pull the plug. But claiming that hyperlinks to potentially illegal materials are themselves illegal? That's contrary to the openness upon which the World Wide Web was built."

Microsoft's claim to trademark status for their Kerberos extensions is under fire by Clifford Neuman, the principal author of the original MIT version of Kerberos. "Far from regarding Microsoft's protected code as a "trade secret," Neuman, who is also a senior research scientist at the University of Southern California, considers it to be wholly derivative. Neuman said he personally described its essentials in a 1993 scientific paper. "

Here's a BBC article looking at the security ramifications of the UCITA "remote shutdown" provision. "Thomas Olafson, chief technology officer for ethical hacking group Defcom, said hackers would take it as a challenge if they knew that programs had backdoors built in. 'What hackers do best is spend time finding security weaknesses and a backdoor is a weakness,' he said." (Thanks to Dan York).

Scotty Orr wrote in about this Advogato discussion on free software and business. Worth a read. "Free software is best done on a personal scale. It's really an artistic, literary pursuit, done person to person. It isn't easily formulized and it definitely isn't easy to scale it to an industrial size. Big companies don't do 'art'. Real musicians have day jobs."

Here is an osOpinion article on intellectual property. "Open Source advocates are usually careful to make a distinction between the types of freedom ("free speech" or "free beer"), but they are less careful with the concepts of ownership, and it is here that the fulcrum of our future rests. Free and open code is not of interest only to programmers and engineers; it is vital to everyone, from middle-class Americans to struggling families in Africa and China. When I proclaim that a piece of software I have created is "Open Source", I am not saying that I own it; I am proclaiming that *all of us* own it."

Reviews and other Resources

GNULinux.com has run a review of Corel Linux 1.1. "Where Corel Linux really shines is the KDE desktop. Corel has taken KDE and extended it with their own enhancements. If you work in an environment with lots of windows machines Corel may be your distribution of choice."

LinuxPapers talks about Linux command documentation. "Most commands come with online help, manual pages or documentation files in various formats. In this article, we will learn how to read manual pages using the man command."

O'Reilly is taking an interesting approach to marketing some of their Windows books (Windows 95 in a Nutshell and Windows 98 in a Nutshell). They took a look at their statistics and realized how many Linux people also have to use Windows and figured that this was the audience that would care about what they are offering in their books. "I was recently looking over the shoulder of a very well-known perl hacker as he picked his way through the cascading Windows Start Menu to find a program he wanted to run. He didn't realize that if you have an Address Toolbar running as part of your Taskbar, and know the name of the program, it's as quick to run a program as it is from a UNIX shell."

Stepping back to look again at the Red Hat piranha security report of a few weeks ago, ZDnet UK reports on the process that produced the problem. "Lead developer Philip Copeland complained in an online diary that 'the Piranha package was literally nailed together a day before the CD had to be finalised, so there was less than 24 hours for other people to review the code.'"

This interview with Joachim Kempin, a Microsoft Senior Vice President in their OEM Division, is primarily about Microsoft's plans but includes some interesting tidbits on their view of Linux, including this quote, likely to become a favorite: "And naturally, we know it's [Linux] there on the server."

Finally

Take a look at the success of Linux, from a lot of angles. This article builds an impressive list. Nonetheless, the final comment in the article summed it up for us: "...in the end, fun may well be what ensures Linux's success, precisely because fun, the ultimate carrot on a stick for hard-core programmers, cannot be bought and sold." (From WideOpenNews).

Here's an article on LinuxPlanet about the Marblehead Inn in Marblehead, Ohio. "I know what she was thinking too. She thought to herself, 'Here's a place at least, where this guy can relax and forget about Linux and work for a while.' Little did she realize that I would get a hardware review out of the deal. You see it turns out that unknown to her, and to my incredible delight--the Marblehead Inn runs Linux." (Thanks to Jay R. Ashworth)

Fred Mobach wrote and told us about another Linux Hotel. This one is in Germany.

LinuxMall.com has this article about a Detroit area law firm that switched to Linux. "Unique Systems, Inc., a programming and network design firm based in Holland, Ohio, installed a thin-client system running on a Linux server for the law practice of Cummings, McClorey, Davis and Acho (CMDA). CMDA latched onto the Linux scheme, afraid that proprietary software would keep them locked into an unsupported platform and the need for an on-site IT staff. "

The Irish Times ran this article raising the familiar "fragmentation" fears. "Will success spoil Linux? After a spectacular rise from a little known, hobbyist operating system to the fastest growing operating system in the computing market, Linux is at the centre of some collective soul-searching."

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol


May 25, 2000

 

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