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Leading items and editorialsRMS on OpenMotif. Richard Stallman has, in classic form, posted this polemic against the use of Open Motif. His complaint, of course, is that Open Motif's license is not an open source license. According to RMS: Their announcement says they have released Motif to "the open source community", but this is true only in an unnatural interpretation of the words. They have not made Motif available within the free software community; instead, they have invited the people in the free software community to leave the community by using Motif.The point he makes is valid, and has been made by a number of other people as well. Open Motif has never claimed to have an open source license - though one occasionally sees hints that the license will become truly free at some (indeterminate) point in the future when the lawyers for all the involved parties can be convinced. Meanwhile, Mr. Stallman's latest has drawn a round of criticism from those who see him as a perpetually unsatisfied whiner. It is true that he complains a lot, and, in the process, has managed to offend a lot of people in the Linux community (and beyond). But he plays an important role: RMS is the free software conscience that has guided our community for almost twenty years. Freedom is important. While many of us may be more pragmatic in how we go about our daily lives, we are all well served by having an uncompromising, pro-freedom voice out there. And speaking of why freedom matters... Microsoft patents a file format. We first saw the news on Advogato that the VirtualDub program, a GPL'd video capture and processing program, had been forced by Microsoft to remove support for the Active Stream Format (ASF). It seems that Microsoft has a patent on that particular format, and wasn't pleased with the existence of a free implementation. Feeling that it lacks the resources to stand up to Microsoft on this issue, VirtualDub has removed support for ASF. This looks like yet another software patent issue. But there is a difference here: Microsoft is claiming patent protection on a file format. It is not at all hard to see what could happen with an extension of that claim. Any serious word processor in the commercial world has to be able to cope, somehow, with the numerous variations of Microsoft's Word format. If that format were to come under patent protection, programs like StarOffice, ApplixWare, and WordPerfect could lose the ability to work with Word files. That would not bode well for their future market share. Intellectual property laws increasingly look like the tool of choice for those who wish to fight against free software. The ability to patent file formats, if it stands up, adds greatly to the power of this weapon. This is a worrisome development indeed. Linux on bleeding-edge hardware. A common criticism aimed at Linux for years has been that it doesn't support newer hardware. In the past, that complaint has often been true. But it is less so all the time. Consider these developments from this week:
Linux is no longer slow to run on new hardware - indeed, it's often the first system available. We are no longer trying to catch up. Plan 9 has been released under an open source license. Plan 9 is a longstanding project by Rob Pike and others to develop a "beyond Unix" operating system. It is characterized by a simple, clean design, and the extension of the "everything is a file" concept to cover just about everything imaginable. Many have seen it as the "next great thing" from Bell Labs for years, but the system has been slow to develop (the third release has just come out, the second was in 1995) and hard to come by. Bell Labs clearly hopes that things will change with the announcement that the third Plan 9 release is under an open source license. The license itself is a longish read, but has a clearly GPLish flavor in that it requires that source to modifications be made available. In fact, this license appears to require that source be released even for private modifications that are not redistributed to anybody else. By releasing Plan 9 under this license, Bell Labs is trying to make a lively open source development community come together around the system. And that is certainly possible - Plan 9 has interested people for a long time. But it is, at this point, a rather late entrant into the open source operating system field. It lacks a number of capabilities and applications - such as a web browser. It remains to be seen whether this system will prove to be interesting and novel enough to attract a sufficient number of developers to assure its success. Bell Labs may have cause to wish it had adopted this license with the 1995 release. One last look at open source in embedded systems. We editorialized last week on the need for embedded systems to be open source. We'll add one bit this week, because we can't resist. Consider the embedded system discussed in this RISKS posting. Essentially, the OnStar system allows automobiles to communicate with a central system via cellular telephony. OnStar not only can communicate information about your car, it also includes a control channel back to the car - allowing a remote operator to do things like unlock the doors remotely. How comfortable do you feel about the security of such a system? From the RISKS posting: I asked the OnStar speaker what security mechanisms were in place to prevent your car being hacked. He assured me that the mechanisms in place were "very secure". I asked whether he could describe them, but he could not because they were also "very proprietary".In other words, nobody will ever know how secure the system is until it gets cracked. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to look at the code before trusting your car to this sort of system? Of course, then there is the issue of sharing the road with people who have been hacking on their cars' software... The Microsoft judgement is in. It offers no real surprises, stating that Microsoft is to be split into two companies. One company would concern itself with operating systems, the other with applications. Those who are interested can read the full text of the final judgement, but it is more fun to read the memorandum that accompanies it: Microsoft has proved untrustworthy in the past. In earlier proceedings in which a preliminary injunction was entered, Microsoft's purported compliance with that injunction while it was on appeal was illusory and its explanation disingenuous. Of course, it will still be a long time before anything really happens; this case is just moving on to its next phase (appeals). For early responses from the Linux business community, one can look at this press release from LinuxMall.com ("Without the support from Microsoft's other product lines, Windows will have to prove that it is as reliable and stable as Linux. In the long run, I believe computer professionals will choose Linux."), or this Reuters article with a quote from Ransom Love ("It will create tremendous innovation, in all alternatives, and open source and Linux in particular"). Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:
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June 8, 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 editorialsLinux 2.2.16 security release. Alan Cox has released Linux 2.2.16, a new version of the stable Linux tree, to fix several security issues, including a potentially remotely exploitable hole in the sunrpc code. An upgrade to 2.2.16 is recommended immediately for anyone with untrusted local users and/or publicly-accessible kernel sunrpc services. U.S. To Follow EU Crypto Lead (Wired). Wired reports that the US is watching upcoming decisions on cryptography in Europe and will respond to them. "Commerce Department Undersecretary William Reinsch said Monday that any change, designed to make sure American high-tech companies aren't disadvantaged, will have to wait until the Europeans reach a decision." A dramatic relaxation of cryptography regulations in Europe is currently expected. After its hard-nosed policy against relaxing cryptographic regulations, the U.S. government likely needs a good excuse before it makes an about-face in policy. However, they seem to know that their current regulations are ineffective, since cryptography is already widely available, sanctioned or not. Given the pressure from U.S. businesses to not be restricted from competition in the global market for encryption products, a European decision to relax regulations will pave the way for the U.S. to respond in kind. NetBSD developer password exposed (Fairfax I.T.). In the list of most annoying/embarrassing situations, having your password "acquired" has got to be near the top. The Fairfax I.T. in Australia reports on the exposure of Paul Vixie's password. Paul is a well-known developer, working on NetBSD, XFree86 and other projects. Warning, though, the article has no particularly useful information about how the password was acquired, how they became aware of its exposure, etc. No damage appears to have been done. Kondara MNU/Linux Advisories. Security advisories for Kondara MNU/Linux are now available at http://www.kondara.org/errata/k11-security.html. Currently, the web-site contains updates for dump, kernel, gpm, emacs, imwheel, openldap, cdrecord and xlockmore. Security ReportsLinux-Mandrake bind update. Linux-Mandrake announced a security update for bind. By default in Linux-Mandrake, bind is launched as user and group root. This setting makes it possible to easily exploit vulnerabilities in bind. cdrecord. The Linux cdrecord binary is vulnerable to a locally exploitable buffer overflow attack. Check BugTraq ID 1265 for more details. Linux Mandrake 6.1 and 7.0 have been verified as vulnerable. cdrecord 1.9a02 has just been announced and is reported to contain a fix for this overflow. kdelibs. Kdelibs 1.2.2 has a problem which can allow the exploitation of any setuid root KDE application. Buffer overflow in inn. A buffer overflow in inn 2.2.2 has been reported that can be an issue if the option "verifycancels" in /etc/news/inn.conf is set to "true". Setting this option to "false" should fix the problem. Debian: mailx buffer overflow. Debian has put out a security advisory and updates for mailx to fix an exploitable buffer overflow. This is the first report of this problem, so updates from other distributions have not yet been seen. Debian: splitvt local root vulnerability. Debian has also put out an advisory for splitvt, which contains a buffer overflow that can be exploited to gain access to root on a local system. An upgrade is recommended for all versions of Debian. This problem has been fixed in splitvt 1.6.4. Xterm Denial-of-Service vulnerability. An exploit has been made available that can cause an xterm window to crash and, in some instances, consume all memory on the system. For more information, check out the BugTraq discussion or BugTraq ID 1298. XFree86 4.0 xterm, rxvt and eterm have been confirmed to be vulnerable. Gnome-terminal, KDE konsole, OpenWindows xterm and Secure CRT are reported not vulnerable. BRU. The BRU backup and restore facility has an exploitable vulnerability which can be easily fixed by modifying the permission bits to remove the setuid root. Commercial products. The following commercial products were reported to contain vulnerabilities:
Updatesgdm. A buffer overflow vulnerability was reported in gdm, the Gnome display manager. An upgrade to gdm 2.0beta4-25 is recommended. An exploit for this has been published. (From June 1st). mailman. An upgrade to mailman-2.0beta2 is recommended to close several security holes. (From June 1st).
Majordomo wrapper vulnerability. (From June 1st). xlockmore. (From June 1st).
ResourcesSSH Secure Shell 2.2. SSH Communications Security has announced the release of SSH Secure Shell 2.2, an update to this proprietary product. Hardening Linux Machines For Web Services (themestream). Here is an article from themestream specifically targeted at people placing their webservers at a co-location facility. It provides a checklist of security issues to consider. EventsCall-For-Papers.
June/July security events. June 12-14, 2000. NetSec 2000, San Francisco, California, USA. June 19-23, 2000. 12th Annual Canadian Information Technology Security Symposium, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. June 25-30, 2000. 12th Annual First Conference, Chicago, Illinois, USA. June 26-28, 2000. SSS2000 Strategic Security Summit, Helsinki, Finland. June 27-28, 2000. CSCoRE 2000, "Computer Security in a Collaborative Research Environment", Long Island, New York, USA. July 3-5, 2000. 13th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Workshop, Cambridge, England. July 10-12, 2000. Fifth Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP 2000), Brisbane, Australia. July 14-16, 2000. H2K / HOPE 2000, New York, New York, USA. July 26-27, 2000. The Black Hat Briefings, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. July 28-30, 2000. DEF CON VIII, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
June 8, 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 is 2.4.0-test1, and will remain so for at least a couple more weeks. Meanwhile, Real Developers are running 2.4.0-test1-ac10, a large patch with over 200 listed updates. The changes are almost entirely bug fixes, but there is a new Microtek USB scanner driver in there as well. Recent "ac" releases have been more "development" than some; a lot of the problems have been ironed out, but the aic7xxx SCSI driver is still not working. The current stable kernel release is 2.2.16. The 2.2.16 release came out just before LWN went to "press," and no release notes are yet available. What we do have, however, is a list of 2.2.16 security fixes that most people running 2.2 kernels should probably read (and then consider upgrading). Meanwhile, for a more complete list, the notes from the last prepatch release (2.2.16pre8), cover most of the patches that have been included. Wishlist for 2.5. A common exercise somewhere around this stage of the kernel development cycle is the compilation of a wishlist for the next development stage. After all, when there is a code freeze in effect and new goodies can't be added, it's nice to at least be able to think about the things that could be done. This time around, Kenneth Arnold has been putting together a a 2.5 wishlist with input from a number of people. This list includes some fairly high-profile things, such as merging the various journaling filesystems (see below). Some items are quite general, such as "documentation;" others are rather more specific ("Enable writes to concurrent devices in single commit_write()"). Merging of crypto code is on a lot of people's lists as well. Of course, all this stuff will remain just a wishlist for quite some time. Linus typically doesn't start a new development series until the stable kernel has truly stabilized for a while. If 2.4.0 really comes out in August, say, then 2.5.0 isn't likely until almost the end of the year. ReiserFS and the 2.4 kernel. ReiserFS is an alternative filesystem which has been under development by Hans Reiser and company for some time; it was covered in this space back in November. This filesystem has a number of things going for it, including better performance numbers in some situations, and the fact that it has a working journaling implementation. ReiserFS has been widely tested, and even incorporated by a few distributions (such as SuSE), but has still been considered experimental to this point. That is, until last week, when Mr. Reiser posted a note saying that ReiserFS had stabilized and was ready for inclusion into the 2.3 development series. Unfortunately for the ReiserFS folks, Linus, who had perhaps sensed the fight that was to come, had skipped out of town for three weeks. In Linus's absence, decisions about what goes into the "ac" series are being made by Alan Cox. Alan has declined to include ReiserFS, for reasons that we will get to shortly. But it is interesting to look at Hans Reiser's reaction to this decision; he did not, shall we say, take it well. In fact, Alan's concerns were characterized as "just a RedHat bureaucratic excuse to delay reiserfs." Those are fighting words, and, to those who have seen Alan's nonstop efforts to produce the best possible system, completely unwarranted. This is very likely not the last time that we will see this sort of allegation raised. Quite a few kernel developers are employed by various Linux distributors; people may well see conflicts of interest even if none really exist. In the future, if Linus decides he's had enough and goes off to sell Amway products, his replacement may will find himself having to shed any ties to Linux companies before being accepted by the community as a whole. But back to ReiserFS. What are the real reasons that ReiserFS is not going into the 2.4.0-test1 series at this time? They are:
There is no telling what Linus will decide at this point. He has hinted in the past that ReiserFS might get in. And ReiserFS does have happy users; see, for example, this posting from Drew Streib at VA Linux Systems. It seems that ReiserFS is used for half of the SourceForge archive, and for the Mozilla CVS server as well. And it works well. If the 2.4 kernel is going to have a journaling filesystem, it will have to be ReiserFS - none of the others are ready. Given its track record, it should be considered seriously for inclusion. The 2.5 development series is the earliest possible time to create a common journaling layer; in the meantime people could be using a journaling system that works. Other patches and updates released this week include:
Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet |
June 8, 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. News and EditorialsConectiva hires Andrew Clausen. Conectiva has announced the addition of Andrew Clausen to the Conectiva payroll. Andrew is an Australian developer, currently also a student at University of Melbourne, who is working on the GNU Parted project (partition editor). The hiring was done, therefore, in order to show support for free software development. Of course, in choosing to support GNU Parted, as opposed to the Mandrake DiskDrake facility or other such projects, Conectiva is also making a choice in how they wish to distinguish their distribution from others. Conectiva also currently employs Rik van Riel, one of the Linux kernel hackers. In hiring free software developers solely for the purpose of supporting their ongoing work, Conectiva is following in the footsteps of Red Hat, SuSE and other major Linux distributors. Linux-Mandrake to be bundled with AZZA motherboards. The announcement that Pro Team Computer Corporation will now be bundling a copy of Linux-Mandrake with each Pro Team "AZZA" motherboard that is sold caught our eye this week. Something like 720,000 motherboards with Linux-Mandrake are expected to be shipped over the coming year. If this seems unusual to you, remember the announcement of the Gentus Linux distribution, covered in the February 24th, 2000 Distributions Summary. Gentus is a Linux distribution from ABIT Computer Corporation, a hardware manufacturer and retailer of "mainboards and video cards". Given this trend, perhaps all hardware purchases will eventually come with their own Linux distribution -- though it isn't really clear what benefit this would give to the customer! Bastille LinuxProgress on Bastille Linux 1.1.0 continues with the latest release of prepatch 10, containing small fixes to the IPCHAINS module.Build Your Linux DiskA CVS repository for BYLD is now available, along with bug tracking, a mailing list and a patch manager, as of the announcement for the latest version, 1.0alpha3.Caldera OpenLinuxCaldera extends free support to Europe. Caldera has announced free phone and email support in German, French, Italian and English for its customers in Europe. This is the limited, 30-day phone and 90-day email support provided with the purchase of Caldera OpenLinux. cLIeNUXRick Hohensee has got http://www.clienux.com/, the new web-site for cLIeNUX, on-line. Check our March 2nd Distributions Summary for more information on cLIeNUX.ConectivaReprise of Conectiva Linux 5.0 Review (Linux in Brazil). Augusto Campos has kindly pointed out that the review (in Portuguese) of Conectiva Linux 5.0 that appeared in the June 1 LWN has been translated to English by Claudio Matsuoka. Coyote LinuxThe first release candidate for Coyote Linux 1.20 has been announced. Coyote Linux is a single-floppy, firewall/router. It is planned as the operating system for the Coyote Firewall Appliance. A new company, Prairie Wolf Software, has been spun off and is the new owner of Coyote Linux (originally owned by Vortech.net).DebianNew Debian maintainers. James Troup fired off lists of information on new Debian maintainers on both June 1 and June 7th. In total, seventeen new maintainers were introduced. LSB conference. Dale Scheetz will be representing Debian at the upcoming Linux Standards Base conference, June 14th through the 16th, He sounds optimistic about the results. "I'm really looking forward to this conference. Much good progress has been made and I look forward to more success at this meeting." Linux-MandrakeLinux-Mandrake 7.1 released. MandrakeSoft has announced the release of Linux-Mandrake 7.1. It's now available for download from the various mirror sites worldwide. See the new features list to see what goodies have gone into this release. Linux-Mandrake 7.1 for Sparc beta released. MandrakeSoft has announced the release of the beta version of Linux-Mandrake 7.1 for the Sparc and UltraSparc architectures. LuteLinuxLuteLinux 1.0.2 has been announced.Slackware LinuxSlackware is quickly moving towards a new beta release. As part of that process, large updates have been merged into the current tree. To quote from the Slackware web-site:mmm... GUI Packages!If you check out the ChangeLog, you'll also get the benefits of Patrick's comments on Gnome 1.2 and KDE 1.90. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
June 8, 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 projectsNews and EditorialsTo Sun, regarding Java: let the developers lead.
Check out our Development tools section below
or this week's Commerce page and you'll see a flood
of Java-related announcements, all associated with the ongoing
JavaOne 2000 conference
this week. One particular item that caught our attention was
this
ZDnet article, which talks about the concerns of Java developers.
Sun, think carefully about what you are doing. An unreliable Java platform is every bit as much of a problem as an unreliable operating system. If Java proves untrustworthy, there are other alternatives out there already -- and they are already open source. BrowsersTotal Recall V.01. Alphanumerica has released version .01 of Total Recall, a Mozilla crash recovery tool which allows the recovery of all browser windows as they were prior to the crash. DatabasesPostgreSQL 7.0.2 Released. PostgreSQL 7.0.2 is now available. This version fixes some bugs from version 7.0 and includes some missing documentation. EducationLinux in Education Report #21. The Linux in Education Report #21 has been published. Topics include a new release of Red Escolar, the initiative to put Linux into Mexican schools, plus a report on Linux in South African schools and more links to Linux educational software projects. LinuxForKids revamped and refurbished. After a hiatus of about a month (timed to the arrival of a beautiful new daughter), LinuxForKids has returned with a new site design, support for both English and French and the ability for readers to rate and post comments about the games. Chris is also looking for people interested in supporting Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese translations of the site. ElectronicsOpenEDA web-site announced. OpenEDA.org is a new web-site from Silicon Integration Initiative, Inc. Here is the announcement. OpenEDA is promised to be a vendor-neutral, Open Source web site for the EDA user community. "'There is a change occurring in the EDA standards arena - a move from specifications developed by committee to open source code maintained by a community,' said Andrew Graham, president of Si2. 'OpenEDA is a neutral web site to host the EDA open source community. This will accelerate interoperability through faster adoption of these open source standards.'" GamesLoki to port Descent 3 to Linux. Loki Entertainment Software has announced that it will be porting "Descent 3" from Interplay to Linux, with the product to be available by July. Embedded SystemsEmbedded Linux Article (Open Source IT). This Article from Open Source IT discusses the emergence of Linux as a dominant player in the embedded systems world. "But it may actually be Linux that ascends to the top of the heap in the $3.5 billion-per-year market for embedded system development tools. Enthusiasm for embedded Linux systems has grown dramatically over the past two years--even Linus Torvalds has gone on the record to say that it should be a priority for the open source OS." InteroperabilityThis week's Wine Weekly News. The June 6 edition of the Wine Weekly News is out. A Wine Status page has been created, which provides a table of current aspects or components under development, estimated development and documentation status and the name of recent primary workers. A feature article this week focuses on DLL overrides. Network ManagementOpenNMS Development News Update v1.11. This week's OpenNMS update indicates that their Java SNMP libraries are just about ready for release. "Just like it says, our home grown Java SNMP libraries are slowly nearing production grade. Later this week, they will be bundled and available for download from the web site as well as via CVS. As a practice, we will not release components outside of CVS, but as this is a significant piece of work which can benefit a number of projects outside our own, we'll make an exception." Office ApplicationsAbiWord Weekly News (May 31). The latest edition of the AbiWord Weekly News is now available, with the freshest development report. It contains a link to a discussion on modeless dialogs, if you've been curious about those. A few new features and many fixes have gone in this week. On the DesktopKDE 2.0 review (Duke of URL). KDE 2.0 is reviewed in this article from the Duke of URL site. "What can KDE do to improve over an already brilliant operating environment? Add tons of new features and support for the latest QT libraries. Combine that with a slick, new file manager and full support for XFree86 4.0 and you've got yourself gold-that is, if they play their cards right." KDE 2.0 Screenshots. Mosfet.org has put together a new KDE2 in action screenshot page. If you want to see what's new with KDE2, this is the place. The XFree86 4.0 (Duke of URL). For an in-depth look at XFree86 4.0, check out this review from the Duke of URL. "Since the new drivers use direct hardware access, no need to be root to play games anymore. This is sure handy because it integrates more functions into a standard user, making the unprivileged user much more practical." This week's GNOME summary. Here is this week's GNOME summary by Havoc Pennington. It covers the GNOME 1.2 release and a number of other topics. Gnome Office Review (Linux Planet). Linux Planet has done this review of Gnome Office. "Unlike just about anything else identifying itself as an office suite, GNOME Office is cheerfully formless at this point. The project Web site prefers to refer to GNOME Office as a 'meta project' oriented towards coordinating the development of the disparate elements of an office suite." ScienceKalamaris for KDE. Kalamaris is a new program for the KDE environment that can be used for plotting mathematical formulas. Kalamaris was modeled after Mathematica and has been licensed under Gnu GPL version 2. Web-site DevelopmentMidgard Weekly Summary (May 7). This week's Midgard Weekly Summary reports on documentation improvements for Midgard and goals for Midgard 1.4, which is being targeted for a September release frame. "We have concluded that Midgard 1.4 is a powerful content management system and a good publishing tool. However, in our opinion, its primary weakness is a lack of modularity that would allow other OSS projects to use Midgard as the core for their applications." Apache 2.0 alpha 4 released. The fourth alpha version of Apache 2.0 has been released. It includes 45 bug fixes since the third alpha; things are moving along. This week's Zope Weekly News. Here is this week's Zope Weekly News, with coverage of Zope's presence at upcoming conferences and various other topics of interest to the Zope community. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
June 8, 2000
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Development toolsC/C++Cilk 5.3 available. The 5.3 version of Cilk has been announced. Cilk is licensed under the GPL. "Cilk is a language for multi-threaded parallel programming based on ANSI C. Cilk is designed for general-purpose parallel programming, but it is especially effective for exploiting dynamic, highly asynchronous parallelism, which can be difficult to write in data-parallel or message-passing style." CORBAOpen Object Directory Services Group. The Linux Knowledge Base Organization has announced the formation of the Open Object Directory Services Group. "The OODS Group will function as a separate open source project with the goal of creating a scaleable, modular, distributed directory service built upon CORBA which will then power the next generation Linux Knowledge Base Org. web site." JavaBlackdown Java Platform 2 SDK Version 1.3. The Blackdown team has updated their Status Page for their port of Sun's JDK 1.3, promising the availability of the first Blackdown build in June. The updated page indicates a slight shift in the working relationship between Sun and the Blackdown team, now that Sun is officially supporting the Linux platform (on Intel x86). "The Blackdown team has been licensed to have access to the Java2 v1.3.0 and the HotSpot source code. The differences to Sun's version will be very small as we are working on the same code base. The most noticeable difference is that we will continue to support non-ix86 platforms too." Blackdown JCK progress. From modifications made this week to the Blackdown JCK Status page for the Java 2 port, it appears that some substantial progress has been made on getting the Blackdown x86 port past the Runtime API Interactive tests in the Java Compatibility Kit (JCK), both with green threads and classic threads. Only the Runtime VM portions of the JCK still show ongoing problems. Passing all of the 17,000 tests in the JCK is required before Blackdown can release a final version of their Java 2 port. Enhydra Enterprise source code release. Lutris.com has announced the release of the Enhydra Enterprise source code to the Open Source community. Lutris.com previously released the base Enhydra server code under a FreeBSD-style license. Enhydra Enterprise is being released under the EPL, derived from Mozilla Public License. Enhydra is a Java/XML application server. Lutris has also announced that it will be distributing an open source wireless developer kit at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. PerlYet another Perl Conference. The Yet another Perl Conference is going on June 21 through 23 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Perl-rpm 0.25 Released. A new version of Perl-RPM has been released. This package gives perl access to Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) databases. PHPPHP. The latest PHP update is now available. Included is a case study of how PHP is being used on Lycos's MP3 search engine. PythonInterview: Guido Van Rossum (Be Open). Be Open interviews Guido Van Rossum and discusses open source development. "Actually, languages have had something like an open source development for a very long time. Starting, I think, in the Sixties, there have been standardization committees involving all sorts of languages. Languages that were not developed in an open fashion would only succeed if they were aimed at a very narrow application domain" This week's Python-URL. Here is this week's Dr. Dobb's Python-URL by Andrew Kuchling. It includes brief coverage of Guido's move to BeOpen, the release of PythonWorks 1.0, and more. Snake Charming (Borland). In the article Snake Charming, Juancarlo Anez gives a good overview of writing and optimizing a Python program that is suitable for people who are learning the language. Tcl/tkTcl/Java 1.2.6 available. The Tcl/Java 1.2.6 release is now online. Stable releases of Jacl and Tcl Blend are available from Scriptics. 6 months worth of back-ported bug fixes from the 1.3 development version are included. Mo Dejong reports, "If you have ever wanted to use scripting with Java, Tcl/Java is the way to go. You can use it to extend an existing Java application or regression test a Java application without having to write Java code". Dr. Dobbs' Tcl-URL. Check this week's Tcl-URL for more Tcl/Tk news. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
Language Links Guile Haskell Blackdown.org IBM Java Zone Perl News PHP Daily Python-URL Python.org JPython Smalltalk |
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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 businessJavaOne and Collab.net. Sun Microsystems Inc. has been hosting the fifth annual JavaOne developer conference this week (June 6 to June 9, 2000). This has led to a large number of Java related announcements this week, and probably next week as well. A sample of these announcements can be found below under Press Releases - Java Products. Java is a Sun product, released under Sun's Community Source License. It's not an Open Source license, but its not strictly proprietary either. Enter Collab.Net. Here's an excerpt from Collab's web site, "Collab.Net is distilling the essential process and values of the Open Source community into tools and services that facilitate predictable, well-organized, high value open source development." This week, Collab.Net has announced that it will be hosting Sun Microsystems' netbeans.org site - the source repository for Sun's open source Java development projects. We look forward to seeing some truly open-source products come out of this collaboration. Collab.Net has also announced the receipt of $35 million in funding. The venture capital firm Bowman Capital led this round, but Collab.Net also got investments from Dell, HP, Novell, Oracle, Sun, and TurboLinux. Marc Andreessen (who joined Collab.Net's board of directors last March) also made a personal investment in the company. More Open Source News. BASCOM Global Internet Services has announced the launch of its Open Source Equipment Exchange. Essentially, this exchange exists to link up those who seek to donate equipment with open source projects in need of the same. Global Software Consultants has put out a press release on its open source strategy, centered around PostgreSQL and Apache. Franz, Inc., longtime providers of LISP implementations, has announced the release of its AllegroServe web server under the LGPL. "AllegroServe Uses Common Lisp technology to make it more powerful and scalable than other webservers, opening up new areas of opportunity for website developers." Note that the URL for the AllegroServe open source page in the press release is incorrect; here is a working link. Here is IBM's announcement of its donation of its SOAP implementation to the Apache Software Project. The Openlaw project has filed a friend of the court brief in the 2600 DVD case. "A purchased DVD is a mixture of programs and encrypted data formats. The formats have been reverse engineered to enable the licensed data contained therein to be passed between programs, allowing a purchaser to play the program he licensed by his purchase on the operating system of his choice. The distribution of DeCSS fits well under the law, when the legislative history is taken into account." Openlaw briefs are developed in an "open source" mode, taking input from all who are interested - see the Openlaw DVD page for more information. People with new jobs. VA Linux announced the appointment of Kyle Spencer, formerly of EDS, as general manager of worldwide professional services. Penguin Computing has announced the hiring of Brett Person, one of the co-founders of the Slackware distribution, as a senior member of the technical support team. The Linux Journal has announced the appointment of Don Marti as the magazine's senior technical editor. TurboLinux has announced that Paul Thomas is now the CEO of the company, replacing founder Cliff Miller. LinuxMall.com has announced that Chuck Mead, of Moongroup Consulting and the Linux Professional Institute, has been brought in as chief technical officer. Conectiva (Curitiba) hired Australian Andrew Clausen with the objective of aiding in the development of the GNU Parted project. The project can be seen at the site: http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/parted.html Atipa Linux Solutions announced that Jeffrey Keenan, currently President of the company, has been appointed Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Atipa. C2Net announces new Stronghold 3 secure web server. C2Net has announced a new version of its "Stronghold" web server. Stronghold is a version of Apache with SSL encryption and support added. API collaborates with Quadrics on Linux supercomputers. Alpha Processor Inc. has announced a deal with Quadrics to build a new line of high-end Linux clusters. API has also announced the new "UP1100" motherboard, "a complete, cost-efficient, entry-level Alpha board for Beowulf clusters, Web servers, development systems and rendering solutions." Lineo ships Embedix SDK. Lineo has announced the first customer shipments of its "Embedix Software Development Kit." Helius to develop Lineo-based satellite routers. Helius has announced that it will develop a line of satellite routers based on Lineo's Embedix distribution. Microsoft judgement. For those who are interested, here is the text of the final judgement from the Microsoft antitrust case. As expected, it involves splitting the company into two businesses. (Thanks to William Stearns). Press Releases:
Open Source Products.
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol. |
June 8, 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 newsRecommended Reading. Here's a lengthy article on LinuxDevices.com which predicts the eventual victory of both Linux and Java. "The poor performance of Linux stocks in recent times is not an indicator of poor prospects for the Linux OS, but an index of its extremely high value to consumers as opposed to vendors." Licensing. Evan Leibovitch blames the BSD license for the difficulties with Microsoft "embracing and extending" the Kerberos protocol. "Unless I'm badly misreading something -- and in the quagmire of legalese surrounding such issues, that's always possible -- this episode indicates a specific example of real harm to the free software community that occurred because a BSD license was used. Furthermore, the problem would have been prevented had the code in question been licensed under the GPL. If this is the case, then I'd have to say this event goes a long way in tipping the balance of the two licensing models' respective merits." Here's a column on Andover.Net suggesting that businesses should stop messing around with new licenses and simply adopt the GPL. "Go ahead, call me a radical, but I'm really looking out for your best interests here, Mister CEO. I'm trying to let you know that the best way to be recognized as a Linux-friendly, forward-thinking company is to jump into that ideological pool with both feet, and do a cannonball. Toe-dipping is just that, and we can all see you doing it." (Thanks to Cesar Augusto Kant Grossmann). The EDA community struggles with issues of trust, in their efforts to develop standards for interoperability. Using a vendor-based standard licensed under an Open Source license is one direction being considered. "'If you take the United Nations approach, you will find it has glacial evolution,' warned Kevin Kranen, director of strategic programs at Synopsys. The best solution, he said, is a widely-adopted proprietary standard made available through open-source or community-source licensing." Here's an article in Technocrat describing a "trivial, easily remedied GPL violation" on the part of Softway Systems, which is owned by Microsoft. Says Bruce Perens: "One of these examples comes up at least once a month, and I'm going to keep running these stories until the situation improves. Maybe that means forever." Interviews. Time interviews Neal Stephenson. "The single most useful thing about the Internet is that it facilitates using Linux. To use Linux, you need so much goddamn technical information that if you don't have a really good source of technical support, you're just screwed." ZDNet talks with Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann about proprietary document formats. "While Red Hat has achieved a high degree of independence from Microsoft products, Tiemann said he's aware of how hard it can be for other parties to make the transition. He served recently on a federal government panel to investigate the value and uses of open source code. When the agenda for the first meeting came out, it was distributed in Microsoft Word format." TurboLinux. The first word on the TurboLinux layoffs appears to have come from this Slashdot article. It includes a brief interview with TurboLinux VP Lonn Johnston. "The main thing is that there were some layoffs today, and some expenses cut. Little impact on our developer teams, and no future layoffs are planned. The basic gist of this is getting our bottom line in line with our expenses, and on target with our revenue and profit growth. We're fortunate that we're sitting on a large pile of cash, because we raised a record round for a Linux company in January." Here's a News.com article about the layoffs at TurboLinux. "The TurboLinux layoffs affected the whole company but were deepest among administrative staff and marketing and lightest in development and services..." And here is ZDNet's take on the layoffs at TurboLinux. "Citing TurboLinux's status as a private corporation, company officials declined to provide a count of the total number of employees let go. But Lonn Johnston, the company's vice president of marketing, confirmed that sales and marketing were hit hardest, and development lost a total of two employees, worldwide." News.com looks at the leadership change at TurboLinux. "The CEO shuffle and the layoffs are 'completely unrelated,' [new CEO Paul] Thomas said. He and Miller had planned the CEO change for weeks, and the board approved the move this week after Miller's suggestion, Thomas said. 'We knew from the start this is what we'd like to do', he said." Upside also looks at the events at TurboLinux. "TurboLinux, the San Francisco-based Linux distributor, offered explicit evidence this week as to how much and how quickly the rules have changed for pre-IPO companies when it announced Wednesday the layoffs of approximately 70 employees." The article also contains comments from Alan Cox on software patents and reporting from Larry Augustin's London keynote. Products. News.com covers IBM's donation of its SOAP implementation to the Apache project. "The software, called Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) for Java, is based on a Web standard for exchanging data called XML (Extensible Markup Language). The product is a working version of a communications technology developed by Microsoft, IBM, Lotus Development and others that could potentially become an Internet standard for linking Web-based software." Here's an article in The Register about Linux support for Ultra ATA/100. (Thanks to Dan York). Compaq announced a new line of servers aimed at the ISP market. "Compaq expects 75 percent of Photons to run Windows NT or 2000, 20 percent Linux and the rest Novell NetWare." Rick Lehrbaum reports from this year's Applied Computing Conference, held in San Jose, CA. "Thing 2: the TEENY WEENY WEBSERVER -- as if to balance the image of the GIANT PENGUIN, and practically sitting in its shadow, was the most amazingly small single-board webserver." Upside looks at a Linux Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) project. "Recently rechristened as the Puffin PLC project, an avian homage to the Linux penguin mascot, LinuxPLC also hopes to take advantage of a few other characteristics of the Linux operating system, namely seamless Internet integration via built-in TCP/IP controls."
Here is an
article on Hypercosm's release of its next-generation 3-D
authoring technology for Linux. It is available for free download
(see the
license for restrictions), though it is not an open source
product. "Hypercosm 3D applets store geometric information and
coded instructions that power interaction by the end user. Because
Hypercosm employs a modern general purpose programming language,
Hypercosm Studio users can create sophisticated animation and
simulation applications."
Companies. The Industry Standard looks at the round of investments in Collab.Net. "If Collab.Net succeeds, it will mark a dissonance between investors skittish about the open-source model and major software companies that don't want to be left behind by a growing movement." Here's an Upside profile of Eazel. "Mammon has subtle ways of converting the righteous, and someone has just ponied up $11 million. 'I came out of retirement to make Linux more usable,' says Hertzfeld. 'Until now the wealth of programmers contributing to Linux has made it the most sophisticated operating system in the world. All available, all open. Now we're going to make it usable.'" ZDNet also looks at Eazel. "Eazel also faces tension in the open source community, where there is some resentment of the mainstream press attention bestowed on the former Apple stars while far less credit is given to the longstanding and continuing volunteer efforts that have led to advancements in Linux and Gnome. Younger Linux fans may be more familiar with the accomplishments of Linus Torvalds, inventor of Linux, and Miguel de Icaza, a guiding force behind the Gnome project and chief technology officer at Helix Code. Indeed, many were toddlers when the Macintosh was unveiled." The Los Angeles Times examines the consequences of Gateway's alliance with Transmeta. "Analysts called the announcement a breakthrough for Transmeta, a privately held Santa Clara, Calif.-based company whose chips are reasonably powerful and compatible with Intel's products, but give off less heat and require a fraction of the power--key considerations for the battery-operated hand-held devices expected to dominate the Internet appliance industry. " LinuxDevices.com looks at a company called Adomo. "What Adomo wants, is to fill your home with a network of low-cost, easy-to-use information appliances. All over the place. And they will all have Linux inside." Jesse Berst takes aim at Sun's stance on Java. "Promises about Java pour out of Sun CEO Scott McNealy almost as freely as his venom for Bill Gates: by the bucketful. That's because McNealy wanted Java to become the next Windows, namely, a proprietary platform that could turn into a monopoly." Business. Miguel de Icaza is the primary focus of this article, which, nonetheless, looks at open source software from a variety of angles. "'I wouldn't want to say that everyone is going to be using open source software in two years,' said de Icaza. 'But in five years, it's going to become obvious that using any other kind of software is like flushing your money down the toilet.'" Internet Week takes on the operating system wars. "Enough. There are indeed very real differences among OSes in terms of price, reliability, scalability and manageability. But those differences must be discussed rationally, not religiously. The zealots forget--or never understood--that computers are a means to a business end. They're tools, not tabernacles." PC World attended Larry Augustin's keynote at the European Linux Conference in London. "'The wrong way is to open a Linux company that acts as a wall between the developer and the user,' Augustin said. 'The right way is to help users and developers communicate, he added." News.com reports on stocks coming out of their lockup periods. "Meanwhile, VA Linux--which posted the largest first-day gain ever for an IPO with a 697 percent jump--will have nearly 23 million shares available for sale on June 7. That represents a 5-to-1 ratio, based on the 4.4 million shares offered in the IPO." (LWN covered the lockup expiration in its May 18 issue). ZDNet UK looks at layoffs and declining stock values. "Regardless of the rhetoric, I believe there is enough promise in the basic concept that software is best developed via a cooperative, rather than a competitive model, to continue to propel Linux and other open software forward. As one Linux enthusiast pointed out recently, as operating systems get increasingly bigger and more complex, where will companies find enough programmers to hire to develop and test them? The concept of cooperative programming would seem to be a novel way to circumvent this limitation." This osOpinion piece calls for resistance to corporate pressure and intimidation. "...it bothers me to see so many Open Source advocates speaking bravely but then capitulating under the threat of legal action. I've read the comments of some such people (I won't mention names), and it boils down to this: they're afraid. Afraid of losing their jobs, their homes, their cars. Afraid of hardship and loss. Afraid of *pressure*. Afraid of being wrong. The corporations and individuals applying legal pressure know all this, and count on it." Resources. Linuxcare has posted this white paper on migrating to a Linux environment. "Most IT managers already understand the 'why' of Linux and Open Source, and many are considering adopting Linux. Microsoft Windows NT network administrators are now facing a forced migration to Windows 2000. For many, however, a migration to Linux makes more sense." LinuxPlanet looks at the GNOME office suite, as much of it as exists currently, anyway. "GNOME Office is an interesting challenge for anyone who plans on a simple stroll down a list of features and failings. Unlike just about anything else identifying itself as an office suite, GNOME Office is cheerfully formless at this point. The project Web site prefers to refer to GNOME Office as a 'meta project' oriented towards coordinating the development of the disparate elements of an office suite." Here is the June Embedded Linux Monthly Newsletter from LinuxDevices.com. It consists of a large number of pointers to coverage of events in the embedded arena over the last month. FirstLinux has made a number of new additions to its I've installed Linux: What Next? series of articles. New pieces cover playing MP3s, writing CDs, scientific applications, and more. ZDNet has some helpful hints on getting the most from your Linux system. "Linux is getting easier to install, but it can be a long road from getting Linux running to making it run like deer." Here's an introductory piece in Signal Ground which explains just what distributions are and how to choose between them. "You're probably not going to want to build your operating system from scratch. Instead, you would hope that somebody could bundle all of these things up into a neat package for you. Put another way, it'd be nice if somebody could provide Linux systems that you could drive off the lot today." Kernel. News.com chimes in on the 2.4.0-test1 kernel with what seems to be an increasingly common theme. "While the new version is a step closer to the real thing, Torvalds says the '2.4.0-test1' kernel still is a prototype. The nomenclature is reminiscent of the methods of Microsoft, famed for coming up with a variety of different definitions to describe the pre-release state of its software." ZDNet writes about the 2.4.0-test1 kernel. "Like Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), the Linux camp claims to be aspiring toward less all-encompassing, more timely upgrades to its core operating system. But, again, as is true with Microsoft, that goal seems to be more of a dream than reality, at least at this point." Finally. ZDNet takes a look at FreeNet. "Unlike Napster, FreeNet has no central server, but moves information around from node to node without identifying source or destination. Users request information by sending keywords to a node, which then passes them along to adjacent nodes. This carries on until one reports it has a matching file, at which point a copy of the file is passed back along the chain of nodes until it reaches the requester." Nick Petreley takes a look in this LinuxWorld column at how using Linux has changed his computing attitude -- without him even being aware of it. "Linux (and Unix in general) has not only taught me to think modularly; it has taught me to think in terms of simplicity and efficiency. ... And if a power user like me can get off the bloatware feature wagon, perhaps most other users could benefit from a trimmed-down environment." Here's an article on CNN about Linux certification. It looks at the two principal distribution-neutral certification options: LPI and SAIR. "Will SAIR and LPI ever merge? I don't believe it would be a bad thing if they did, but I personally don't see how it can happen. A founding principle of LPI was the separation of training and testing, and SAIR is owned by a training firm. So in certification, just like so many other aspects of Linux and the open source community, we are blessed with choice." CNN has run this report from Linux Expo 2000 from IDG. "Although the operating system has become a real alternative for the server market, with vendors offering it on a range of higher-end machines, the consensus here on the show floor was that there are still interface and application issues that keep it off the desktop." Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
June 8, 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. |
AnnouncementsResourceswannabees e-mail list. There's a new email list called 'wannabees' (see wannabees.org.) Its a place for present and aspiring Free Software/Open Source Software developers to discuss related logistical and personal issues, e.g.: How do I work on Free Software and make a living doing it? Dutch Linux & Open Source book reviews. Overzichtspagina NL Linux Recensie is a book review page provided by NL.Linux.org, the "Netherlands Linux Home Page". On it, you'll find a categorized, searchable list of over 40 Linux and Open Source book reviews in Dutch. Readers are also invited to add their own book reviews. EventsCINA Entrepreneur Day 2000. Open Country, Inc., publishers of Linux and other Open Source desktop software packages, has been selected as one of three Silicon Valley start-ups to speak at the annual Entrepreneur Day conference at the Santa Clara Convention Center on June 10, 2000. LinuxFest2000 announces more participants. LinuxFest2000, June 20 through 24, 2000 in Overland Park, Kansas has announced some new participants. Red Hat, Inc., JBSi, Vovida Networks and Rational Solutions. AUUG Annual Conference. The Australian National University, Canberra presents the AUUG annual conference - Enterprise Security, Enterprise Linux - June 28 to 30, 2000. Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum. The Inaugural meeting of the Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum will be on June 27/28 in Austin Texas. Several Linux Real-time companies will be participating. Embedded Systems Conference Summer. Here's a reminder about the Embedded Systems Conference Summer, running from July 10-12, 2000 in Boston. Schedule for 2001 U.S. Embedded Systems Conferences. CMP Media's Electronics Group announced the 2001 schedule for the US Embedded Systems Conferences; San Francisco: April 9-13, 2001; Chicago: July 9-11, 2001; and Boston: September 4-7, 2001. Businesses Embrace Linux At Industry Conference. Here's a wrapup of last week's European Linux Conference in London hosted by SuSE Linux. Web sitesSpanish and Portuguese portal for Linux. Linux Alianza.com (LA) is a Spanish and Portuguese portal for Linux information and ecommerce in Latin America. Real-Time Search Engine Prototype. InfraSearch.com a technology prototype search engine that lets online content providers respond to search queries in real-time and with dynamic data, was announced by key contributors of the Gnutella movement. User Group NewsAZSAGE Meeting. The topic will be IBM and Open Source & Building a Firewall with Linux 2.2.x, presented by Der Hans, at the Arizona System Administrators Users Group (AZSAGE) meeting. June 13, 2000 at 6:30 in Phoenix. SCLUG - LUGFest III. The Simi-Conejo Linux Users Group will be holding LUGFest III on October 28th, 2000, in Simi Valley, California. If you have a special skill with Linux or a Linux application, or if you're a Linux vendor who would like to show off his products, SCLUG would love to have you participate in the October LUGFest. |
June 8, 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 Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekThose of you who are interested in software licensing may want to have a look at The Software Market, by Jordan Pollack. This lengthy proposal calls for a new form of licensing, called "Permanent Use and Resell Licenses", or PURLs. They would be issued on a limited basis, and traded on the markets like securities. Finally, this proposal works for the Open Source movement as well, which suffers from the fact that commercial software pays much better. Some see the OSS as a communist movement to deny creative people of the value of their labor and destroy the market for software. PURLS can be used as a solution to the joint tenancy problem for software. Imagine the next project after Linux, in which talented and hardworking volunteers receive (initially worthless) securities for their efforts...The author can not be accused of having too deep an understanding of how free software is developed, but the idea is an interesting thought exercise anyway. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
June 8, 2000 |
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This week in historyTwo years ago this week, the Open Group held out the possibility that Linux might be awarded "Unix98" certification. It seems that Linux was starting to look competitive in the low-end server market, which the proprietary Unix vendors had already written off to NT. Very little has been heard about Unix98 certification since, however - now the Unix vendors are working on Linux compatibility. Stable kernel 2.0.34 was released, as was development kernel 2.1.101. Cobalt Microserver (now Cobalt Networks) announced that it supports the open source development model. Ralph Nader sent Dell a note suggesting that some people want to buy computers without Windows installed. Gimp 1.0 was released - finally, as was GNOME 0.20. ZDNet sounded off this week with this column by an author who admits at the beginning that he has never tried Linux: Yes, the Linux camp, like a fat, speedy penguin, is making noise. However, some of the 25 letters I've gotten on Linux simply refer to it as a Windows alternative, not something they worship or even use. Still, it's easy to like the idea of it.... Linux has a snowball's chance in hell of making perceptible inroads against Windows. One year ago this week saw the return of an old nasty proposed law called UCC2b under the new name "UCITA." UCITA continues to make the rounds at present, and it still threatens the rights of software users throughout the U.S. The development kernel was 2.3.4; the stable kernel release remained at 2.2.9. Conectiva Linux announced its Spanish-language version. Linux-Mandrake 6.0 was released. Rasterman resigned from Red Hat after disagreements with his supervisor. ActiveState contracts with Microsoft to port Perl. And News.com worried about the Linux IPOs which were just rumors at that point: If a company such as VA or Red Hat went public and made a lot of money off Linux, "What does that mean for all those people who've done a lot of work and don't necessarily" make money out of it? Will they still want to contribute to Linux? "That's one of the issues we're struggling with," [VA Linux CEO Larry] Augustin said. | |
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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, 1 Jun 2000 18:12:37 -0400 From: "Bill Rugolsky Jr." <rugolsky@ead.dsa.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Free Software and Embedded Systems I strongly agree that freedom is an issue with embedded systems, particularly as those systems become "ubiquitous," and we have little choice but to use them. There are hazards ahead, though. Certification requirements present a potential roadblock to the distribution of free software with embedded systems. This has already become an issue for the ISDN drivers for Linux -- many countries place restrictions on what can be connected to the public telephone system. In the past, when most device functionality was implemented in hardware, it was simpler for implementations to be certified as legal, safe, and interoperable. Today we have software modems; soon we will have software-controlled radio (see http://www.sdrforum.org/mmits.html). How should the FCC classify a handheld communications device that is capable of morphing into a transmitter or receiver across a significant portion of the spectrum, or switching between various signalling standards? How will it enforce restrictions, such as the the frequency range restrictions that were implemented in consumer-grade frequency scanners to prevent eavesdropping on (analog) phone calls? The issues of security, privacy, and reliability that the digital revolution has forced us to address will soon touch the remote corners of engineering. Ironically, the adoption of software monocultures built on standards (whether it is TCP/IP, Java, etc.) may increase systemic risks in the short-run. With freedom must come a heightened sense of individual responsibility, as the digital world offers an individual unprecedented leverage for achieving good or ill. If we, the engineers and the coders, do not address these issues adequately, the time will quickly arrive when the politicians, lawyers, and bureaucrats address it for us. I doubt we will be happy with the outcome. Regards, Bill Rugolsky | ||
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 17:39:23 -0500 From: Bret Indrelee <breti@ancor.com> To: lwn@lwn.net Subject: Embedded source code In your editorial about access to the source code for embedded systems, you failed to mention some of the problems with providing open access to the code. Some devices have design requirements and operating ranges that they depend on software to enforce. If it is open source, what are the legal issues? If someone changes the embedded code in a device and it causes a fault, whom is at fault? Do you really want someone hacking their car's engine control or ABS system? These are embedded systems. An embedded system isn't supposed to be a computer. It is supposed to be a widget that performs a specialized task. The manufacturer of a DVD player doesn't provide a complete schematic to the buyer, why should they be expected to provide source code? -Bret -- Bret Indrelee Ancor Communications, Inc. breti@ancor.com 6321 Bury Driver, St 13, Eden Prairie, MN 55346 | ||
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2000 02:45:32 +0000 From: Oliver White <ojw@iinet.net.au> To: lwn@lwn.net Subject: Possibilities for free CASE tools Whilst the likes of Linus and other veterans of the linux coding camp have done an impressive job with the tools at hand - gcc, gdb, vi, emacs and so forth, I really do enjoy using CASE tools to develop software. That is not to say that I don't enjoy sitting down with vi and hacking up some raw code, but tools like UML (the object oriented modeling tool) are very useful in visualising code in early stages. Some people are fond of other tools, but UML is first on my wishlist. The most popular UML modeling tool around is Rational's Rose. Whilst certainly full of useful features, it is far from easily customisable, and with a price tag of around $2500 it's not something a team of hackers can use to share and distribute easily modifiable models. There are a couple of Free alternatives for developing UML models. The most popular would be the gtk based 'Dia'. Whilst great at diagrams, it is lacking in a number of ways. The first and foremost is that it is a diagramming tool, not an object modeling tool. The development team don't seem focused on pushing development this way. Perhaps they shouldn't, and continue making it a great diagramming program. This is all well and good. The only other product I've seen is ArgoUML. This Java based product is actually quite good, being able to produce code from diagrams and vice versa. However, as a Java tool it has many disadvantages. Rather than list flaws in the platform itself, I'll simply make the point that one has to install non-free software on one's computer in order to use the program. This defies the point of having a free product in the first place, in my opinion. More to the point, linux developers are far more interested in making their software interoperable with systems written in C++ than in Java. Interoperability is one of the main requirements for any UML tool I'm willing to use. This is the principle of linux development that really appeals to me - I can tie in any number of components to make my life easier as a programmer. Indeed, should the dia team create a module simply for rendering UML diagrams to the screen, this would be quite a reasonable component for any modeling tool, perhaps using components from my tool, perhaps not. What I'm saying here is that as we mature into a massive, distributed development team, tools like UML and other CASE products we can conceive of will be necessary for some kinds of systems development. No one would argue against the usefulness of combining various tools to develop software, and with free software interoperability is a cherished goal, rather than something an industry has to have forced upon it by customers unwilling to standardise on one vendor. Big companies must spend millions of dollars on CASE tools. If they would pool their resources they could begin development of free software CASE tools for a fraction of that cost. It seems like a good investment to me, anyway. I'd like to hear from companies and distributed internet development teams on how we could get the ball rolling. Once it starts it will beget it's own future. Yours truely, Oliver White | ||
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 05:33:26 +0530 From: Anand Srivastava <anand@aplion.stpn.soft.net> To: evan@starnix.com, letters@lwn.net Subject: RE: Fatal Flaw in BSD Hi, BSD License has a big loophole and we have witnessed the consequences for as long as we can see. If BSD Unix was licensed under something like GPL, it would have developed like it has always developed, even more so, because the major modifications would not have gone proprietory. Sun would be a hardware company. IBM would still be a service company. HP wouldn't have to go into Software at all. The academic community would have had a voice when we had those horrible GUI wars. Linux would not have been required. Of course companies may not have used BSD at all instead they may have preffered SVR4. But some companies (IBM ??) would have discovered the benefits of software that is developed in an open environment. And the conditions that we have today would have been then. Maybe Microsoft wouldn't have developed Windows at all, and would have just done what it does best ie making Software to run on whatever GUI unix had. OK this is all surmises, but I expect the software world to have been a much better place if only BSD was released under GPL. Just imagine that you had a unix just when those microprocessor kits where coming out. -anand | ||
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