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See also: last week's LWN.

Leading items and editorials

Loki cuts staff, but remains for the long haul  Rumors have flourished recently regarding the demise of popular Linux games maker Loki Entertainment Software. The problem seems to have started with posts to the LinuxGames web site from an ex-employee of Loki, who was just out looking for other work and out to let people know he was moving on. Discussion ran rampant on why so many developers were leaving Loki. Was the company in trouble? Is Tribes 2 the last gasp for the premiere Linux gaming company and all around favorite of the hacker crowd?

Not hardly. Like many companies in the high tech arena, Loki has to deal with the realities of a tight economy and, on top of that, a small market niche. While games on Linux seem to thrive and be one area the public is not overly concerned with paying cash for software, there really isn't a large enough market to support a large development team at Loki. The desktop world needs to evolve further to expand Loki's penetration.

"The Linux market is still very small--much smaller than the Mac market," said Loki co-founder and President Scott Draeker in an email interview with LWN.net. While the community as a whole has been very good to the company, and the press has offered high praise for their products and support, no one is making a fortune at the small California based company. "Some [people] have assumed that all the good news and good work we were doing meant that we had all become instant millionaires. Not a chance."

In fact, Draeker says they aren't even making money yet. Then again, that doesn't mean they're ready just yet to shut the doors to the business. "We're in this for the long haul. We want to build a Linux gaming industry. That takes time and plenty of sweat and cash. And no, we are not profitable. But we aren't going anywhere either."

Finding cash has been a high priority for Draeker since last year. He says the company knew back in December that funding wasn't becoming available and that employees were told about the situation. "We told them they were welcome to stay," noted Draeker, "or start to look for other jobs. A number of people left over a period of 3 months. At that point most had gone about as far they could with the ups and downs associated with being a start up in a down market." Now the company is running at break even levels. Says Draeker, "We've cut back to a size where we can sustain our operations exclusively from sales revenue. That said, we are still looking for funding partners."

Loki is in the midst of a releasing two new games for the Linux platform: Tribes 2 and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Tribes 2 is a first person shooter based on team tactics, where players work within teams to do battle with human and AI opponents. Alpha Centauri is a simulation and strategy game where players conquer entire planets or build their own utopian society on earth. They've also started a bonus program to offer discounts on multiple purchases from their Web site, as well as a program for LUGs (Linux User Groups) that can purchase products in quantity at a discount with Loki picking up the shipping charges.

While the release of two new games can likely help maintain revenue to keep the company going, Loki's software plans are not designed for porting games alone. "A great deal of the work we've done on projects like SDL and OpenAL lays the foundation for us to access larger markets for our products. Our open source projects aren't really designed for porting games, but for creating them."

At the recent Colorado Linux Info Quest conference, Draeker compared the gaming industry to Hollywood. "Lots of movies get made but just a few blockbusters make the profits. Loki is looking for a blockbuster." Although he alluded to the possibility of Loki working on games for console systems in the future, he said the recently canceled Linux-based game console Indrema was never more than vaporware. Loki hadn't been working on games for that system.

In the short term Loki remains focused on building revenue streams. In a tough economy that often requires cutting back, even for a Linux favorite like Loki. But it's not the end. Just a speedbump. World domination, at least for Loki, may still just be a point and click away.

Fun laws in Europe. The United States has taken a lot of grief in recent years for a number of laws that, shall we say, were not particularly well thought out. Every now and then, however, the world makes it clear that the U.S. has no monopoly on legal silliness. This has been one of those weeks.

Consider, for example, the new copyright directive issued by the European Council of Ministers. As good a summary of any, perhaps, can be found in this congratulatory message from the European Commission. The purpose of the directive is to "harmonize" European laws on copyright, and, incidentally, "bring European copyright rules into the digital age." That, of course, is code for adopting something that looks much like the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which has already caused more than its share of problems.

Consider, for example, the following:

Firstly, rightholders have complete control over the manufacture, distribution etc. of devices designed to circumvent anti-copying devices. A more flexible solution in this regard would have carried a greater risk of abuse and piracy.

This language is described as "a balanced compromise." This is exactly the sort of provision that got the DeCSS code in trouble in the U.S.; expect similar problems in Europe.

The directive has little interest in fair use in any form. Even time shifting of television programs is regarded as an actionable use for which compensation should be expected.

In general, the directive is fearful of digital copying:

However, as far as private copying is concerned, the quality and quantity of private copying and the growth of electronic commerce all mean that there should be greater protection for rightholders in digital recording media (whereby unlimited numbers of perfect copies may be made rapidly).

When a government is trying to restrict rights, it always helps to have an enemy. Copying is now that enemy, and any sort of means is justified in attacking it. But the free software world thrives on copying and freedom of information. The new European copyright directive reduces that freedom; it is only a matter of time until the free software community runs afoul of it.

Web site registration in Italy. Italy, it seems, has a new law which defines web sites, especially those which are periodically updated, as "editorial content," and makes them subject to the laws covering newspapers. What that means, essentially, is that Italian web sites must:

• Present the name and address of the publisher, as well as the location of the site's server.

• Be registered with the locality in which they are published, and pay all the associated fees.

• Register a "managing editor," who bears responsibility for what the site publishes. This editor must be a member of the "Order of Journalists," which is not a particularly easy thing to do: one must pass a state examination, and one must have completed eighteen months of study in the presence of at least four registered journalists.

Those interested in the details can see Come mettersi in regola con le norme sulla stampa ("How to comply with the press regulations") on the InterLex site. (The text, strangely enough, is in Italian).

The attitude behind this whole thing, perhaps, is best summarized by this quote from Paolo Serventi Longhi, the secretary of the Federazione nazionale della Stampa (the national journalists' union), as found in Punto Informatico:

Thus ends, at least in Italy, the absurd anarchy which allows anybody to put information online without regulation, controls, or guarantees of a minimal quality or standards to the user of information products...

(Translation by the editor).

The law places responsibility on Internet service providers as well; ISPs can find themselves responsible for the operation of a "clandestine press." It also applies to servers that are hosted outside of Italy - as long as the content originates in Italy or is transmitted into Italy. Violators are subject to fines and up to two years in jail.

We talked briefly with Michel Morelli, producer of the Italian Linux news site ZioBudda, who sees this law as "a threat to 3/4 of the Italian Internet," and who pointed out this online petition calling for the repeal of the law. The petition had almost 34,000 signatures as of this writing; certainly it could use more.

This sort of law is scary, even in Italy, which is full of weird laws that are widely ignored. Regularly-updated web sites are not uncommon - the other variety is generally called "dead." In particular, any site hosting free software certainly needs regular updates, or it is useless. Any kernel.org mirror could find itself in trouble. Even if it is not widely applied, this kind of law can be used to shut down sites that somebody in power finds inconvenient.

It also does not take a whole lot of paranoia to imagine this sort of reasoning leading to the conclusion that distribution of software, too, needs more "regulation, controls, and guarantees." Consider that Italy is about to elect a Prime Minister who controls half the television channels in the country (to a post that controls the other half), and who has stated his intent to create a new "ministry of information" under the control of an industry leader. And consider that these sorts of bad ideas have an unpleasant habit of spreading across borders.

Free software will not get very far without freedom, and threats to freedom come in many forms. We have a lot of battles to fight, still.

Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:

• Security: Red Hat mkpasswd password generator, new vulnerabilities in IPTables, Samba, cfingerd, bubblemon and more.
• Kernel: Zero-copy networking goes in; letting the child go first on fork().
• Distributions: Slackware faces hard times, but will continue, Red Hat Linux 7.1 is released, Ratatosk closes down.
• On the Desktop: Taxing software, KParts is not MICO, and more GUADEC summaries.
• Development: PostgreSQL 7.1.
• Commerce: Open source software in EU public administrations, ActiveState launches ASPN Initiative.
• History: Two years ago Caldera released OpenLinux 2.2, one year ago - backdoors.
• Letters: Paying for downloads; Wind River and the GPL; we are corrected on the topic of bonobos.

This Week's LWN was brought to you by:

• Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor
• Elizabeth O. Coolbaugh, Managing Editor
• Michael J. Hammel, Senior Editor

See also: last week's Security page.

Security

News and Editorials

Red Hat mkpasswd limitations. A limitation in the Red Hat mkpasswd command was discussed on BugTraq this week. Mkpasswd is an expect script that can be used to generate random passwords. Similar to a recently reported problem with a password generator for the Palm, it seems that mkpasswd uses an inadequate seed, based on the process ID, which results in a much smaller pool of passwords than is expected.

Of course, the smaller the pool of passwords, the easier it is to brute-force a password.

In addition to the importance of using a good random seed in the password generator, the need to reseed was also discussed. Using the Tcl 8 rand() function as an example, it was shown that seeding only once produce in the range of 22,000 passwords before duplicates began to occur. The Tcl 8 rand() function uses the system clock for a seed. Alternately using a weaker seed but reseeding with each invocation, more than 45,000 passwords were generated without a duplicate occurring.

We expect an update for the Red Hat mkpasswd command will be provided in the near future. Meanwhile, sites that use password generators to assign passwords may want to look more closely at the algorithms upon which they are depending.

Disabling Module Loading Caveat. A piece of information was accidentally left out of last week's lead-in editorial, which talked about using the capability bounding set to disable the loading of kernel modules. In June of 2000, Patrick Reynolds sent in a Letter to the Editor pointing out that "/proc/sys/kernel/cap-bound maps directly to the cap_bset variable in kernel memory". As a result, unless CAP_SYS_RAWIO is disabled (it controls access to /dev/mem), it is possible to use /dev/mem to load new code into the kernel (this will require access to a valid System.map file).

Unfortunately, disabling /dev/mem will break many things, including X and potentially many other user-space programs.

The use of capability bounding sets will still assist in protecting systems from many current rootkits that use loadable kernel modules, but, as common with most security issues, they only provide a partial solution. (Thanks to Neale Pickett for pointing out our error in omitting this information last week).

Carko distributed-denial-of-service tool. A new distributed denial-of-service tool, named Carko, was reported on various systems this week. Carko is a clone of stacheldraht+antigl+yps, with apparently as little as one source code line difference. However, it has been updated to leverage much newer vulnerabilities, in particular a buffer overflow in snmpXdmid under Solaris.

Although Carko is not currently targeting Linux vulnerabilities, it is a reminder that the problem of distributed denial-of-service attacks has not been resolved. For now, the best defense for all of us is not only to close all vulnerabilities on our own systems in a timely manner, but also to encourage and support everyone else we know to do likewise. Carko is spreading because the availability of hosts with open vulnerabilities is vast.

CRYPTO-GRAM newsletter. Bruce Schneier's CRYPTO-GRAM newsletter for April is out. It covers computer security from a military defensive point of view, the fake Microsoft certificates, and more.

Microsoft: Closed source is more secure (SecurityFocus). SecurityFocus has put up a report from Microsoft security head Steve Lipner's talk at the RSA Conference. "Lipner slammed the open source development process, suggesting that the often-voluntary nature of creating works like the Linux operating system make it less disciplined, and less secure. 'The open source model tends to emphasize design and development. Testing is boring and expensive.'"

Reading through the comments posted to SecurityFocus revealed little support for Lipner's words, but that could be expected from an audience that is both security-savvy and extremely familiar with Open Source software. The most relevant comment we found was from "Will" who pointed out that the majority of advisories from Microsoft credit people outside their own staff for finding the security holes. That indicates that a "dedicated, trained, full time and paid" staff isn't the answer either. Neither closed source nor Open Source software is as secure as it needs to become.

Security Reports

Linux Kernel 2.4 Netfilter/IPTables vulnerability. Under Linux 2.4, IPTables is used for building firewalls. It is implemented under the NetFilter framework, a raw framework for filtering and mangling packets. A vulnerability has been reported in the manner that the RELATED state is implemented which can be exploited to potentially bypass a firewall and access ports that are assumed to be protected.

The NetFilter team has provided a patch for Linux 2.4.3. Note that the patch may be subject to future revision; a URL is provided where the latest version can be found. Presumably the patch, or its future incarnation, will be provided in an upcoming version of 2.4. Meanwhile, the original posting provides details that network engineers will want to examine to improve and tighten the use of the RELATED state.

Samba 2.0.8 security issue. Andrew Tridgell posted a note to BugTraq that Samba 2.0.8 has been released to address a significant security vulnerability that allows local users to corrupt local devices (such as raw disks).

• Trustix
• Debian
• Immunix
• Caldera

cfingerd format string vulnerability. A format string vulnerability has been reported in cfingerd ("Configurable Finger Daemon") which can be used remotely to gain root privileges and execute arbitrary code. An exploit for this vulnerability has been published and a patch to fix the problem is available.

LWN Resources


Secured Distributions:
Astaro Security
Castle
Engarde Secure Linux
Immunix
Kaladix Linux
NSA Security Enhanced
Openwall GNU/Linux
Trustix

Security Projects
Bastille
Linux Security Audit Project
Linux Security Module
OpenSSH

Security List Archives
Bugtraq Archive
Firewall Wizards Archive
ISN Archive

Distribution-specific links
Caldera Advisories
Conectiva Updates
Debian Alerts
Kondara Advisories
Esware Alerts
LinuxPPC Security Updates
Mandrake Updates
Red Hat Errata
SuSE Announcements
Turbolinux
Yellow Dog Errata

BSD-specific links
BSDi
FreeBSD
NetBSD
OpenBSD

Security mailing lists
Caldera
Cobalt
Conectiva
Debian
Esware
FreeBSD
Kondara
LASER5
Linux From Scratch
Linux-Mandrake
NetBSD
OpenBSD
Red Hat
Slackware
Stampede
SuSE
Trustix
turboLinux
Yellow Dog

Security Software Archives
munitions
ZedZ.net (formerly replay.com)

Miscellaneous Resources
CERT
CIAC
Comp Sec News Daily
Crypto-GRAM
LinuxLock.org
LinuxSecurity.com
Security Focus
SecurityPortal

See also: last week's Kernel page.

Kernel development

Zero-copy networking will be in 2.4.4. This patch, by David Miller, Alexey Kuznetsov, and others, has been in development and testing for some time, and was incorporated into the "ac" kernel series back in 2.4.2ac4. In a way, it is a surprising change to see in a stable kernel series, since it makes fundamental changes deep in the networking code. From all reports, however, it is solid, and, in certain situations, it should produce significant performance benefits.

Zero-copy networking speeds things up by avoiding, whenever possible, copies of the data to be transferred. In an optimal case, a buffer full of data sent over the network by an application (an FTP server, say) will go directly to the network interface from the application's memory. Without zero-copy networking, however, that's not how things are done - at a minimum, the data is copied into kernel space and assembled into one or more packets before going to the wire. All that copying can slow things down and fill up the cache; it's not surprising that people want to eliminate it.

Making zero-copy work is not straightforward, and the patch is large. Various issues have to be dealt with, including:

• A fast and flexible method must exist for locating the user data array in physical memory, locking it down, and making it available to the hardware. As has been covered before on this page, the "kiobuf" mechanism was deemed too heavyweight for the networking code. So zero-copy networking passes around simple structures with direct pointers to the struct pages for the user buffer.

• A user buffer must be assembled into one or more packets, with headers, before transmission. Zero-copy requires that the separate pieces remain apart until joined by the hardware - the alternative is to copy the data into a kernel-space packet buffer. So the kernel must be able to keep track of packets that are stored in several distinct pieces, and the network drivers (and hardware) must be prepared to handle the "scatter/gather" operations that piece together the packets at transmission time.

• Most network protocols require checksums to be calculated for packets at transmission time. Normally the kernel calculates the checksums, but doing so requires, of course, a pass over the data. If you are going to iterate over the data to calculate the checksum, you might as well copy it while you're at it; the difference in cost is relatively small. If, instead, you want to do zero-copy networking, your hardware must be capable of supplying the checksum - and the driver must be able to tell it to do so.

• Systems where zero-copy networking makes sense are also likely to have tremendous amounts of memory - above the kernel "high memory" mark and perhaps more than can be addressed with 32 bits. If you're transferring data directly to and from user buffers, you must be prepared for them to be in high memory - and the device must be able to address that memory.

To handle all of this stuff, the zero-copy networking patch makes some fundamental changes to the networking core code. Traditionally, packets are passed around via a struct sk_buff structure, usually referred to as an "skb." The skb contains the entire packet, headers and all. With zero-copy, an skb can now be "paged," or "nonlinear," meaning that it consists of several pieces which are not contiguous in memory. Much of the code which handles skb structures must be changed to take this new structure into account.

The driver interface has also seen changes. There is a new "features" variable in the netdevice structure which is used to mark some of the capabilities of the device (and its driver); these include the ability to perform checksums, deal with high memory, and do scatter/gather I/O. This variable was actually added in 2.4.0-test12, just before the official 2.4.0 release, but it's only with the zero-copy patch that it is seeing some real use.

The change in the driver interface means that zero-copy I/O is only possible if the relevant network driver has been updated to support it. So far, only the AceNIC and Sun HME drivers have been fully converted. The work required appears not to be large, assuming that the hardware is reasonable, so more drivers will likely be updated in the future.

Zero-copy networking is not a win for everybody; it really only makes sense on high-end hardware and very fast networks. In that situation, though, it should be a real performance win; expect more amazing web server benchmark results in the near future.

Children first. Adam Richter posted a patch which makes a subtle change in the way the fork() system call works. It is interesting to look at as an example of how little tactical changes can affect operating system performance.

On Unix-like systems, the child of a process that forks gets a copy of the parent process's entire address space (normally). Actually copying everything, of course, would be most inefficient. Read-only memory (such as program code) can be simply shared, but writable memory requires a bit more cleverness. The technique used is to share the data space, but to mark it "copy on write" (or "COW"). Both processes see the same COW pages, until one of them tries to make a change. At that point, the kernel makes a copy of the relevant page, making it private to the process, which is unaware that anything has happened.

The 2.4.3 kernel, on a fork(), puts the child process into the run queue and resumes executing in the parent. The child will run sometime later as part of the normal timesharing of the processor. It turns out that this is not the best way of doing things from a performance point of view, though.

The parent process will likely go on modifying its private data, causing the system to make copies of the various COW pages shared with the child process. But the child, in most cases, is unlikely to ever look at those pages; instead, it will probably perform a few operations, then go and exec() some other program, which breaks its attachment to the shared pages. If the child were to run first, the parent would probably not need to copy all those pages, and performance would be improved.

And, in fact, according to Linus, the performance difference is visible. As a result, this patch went into 2.4.4pre4 (though it does not show up in the changelog).

Other patches and updates released this week include:

• Eric Raymond has released cml2-1.2.0. Testing activity has been high, resulting in a number of squashed bugs. The performance problems appear to be a thing of the past, and much of the recent discussion has moved to things like the proper colors to use in the X configuration interface. Eric has thanked everybody who has participated in the conversation, "even the most mossbacked grumbling conservatives."

• Alexander Viro has posted a patch which moves ext2 directories to the page cache.

• Bharata B. Rao has released a new version of his patch to arbitrate access to the debug registers in the kernel.

• Maneesh Soni has a fix for the longstanding module unload race problems that uses a two-phase cleanup scheme.

• Linus Torvalds sent out a design for a new fast user-space semaphore implementation. It would be blindingly fast, especially in the no-contention case, but would also abandon the SYSV semaphore API.

• Jari Ruusu has released a filesystem encryption mechanism which is implemented as a loadable kernel module. It's aimed at people who want encrypted files, but do not want to apply the full international kernel patch.

• A read-only Veritas filesystem implementation was released by Christoph Hellwig.

• Johan Verrept has released a USB host controller interface for user-mode Linux. This code will allow the debugging of USB drivers in a user-mode kernel, making development of those drivers a much more pleasant task.

Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet

For other kernel news, see:

• Kernel traffic
• Kernel Newsflash
• Kernel Trap
• 2.5 Status

Other resources:

• L-K mailing list FAQ
• Linux-MM
• Linux Scalability Effort
• Kernel Newbies
• Linux Device Drivers

See also: last week's Distributions page.

Lists of Distributions
distrowatch
ibiblio
Kernelnotes
Linux.com
LinuxLinks
Woven Goods

Embedded Distributions:
3ilinux
Bifrost

BluePoint Embedded
Compact Linux
Coollinux
DSPLinux
ELinOS
ELKS
Embedded Debian
Embedix
Etlinux
FlightLinux
Hard Hat Linux
Jailbait
Linux/Coldfire
LEM
Midori
NeoLinux
OnCore Systems
PeeWeeLinux
RedBlue Linux
RedIce-Linux
Royal Linux
RTLinux
Tynux
uClinux
White Dwarf Linux

Handhelds/PDAs
Agenda-VR
Familiar (iPAQ)
Intimate (iPAQ)
Linux DA
PocketLinux
PsiLinux

Secured Distributions:
Astaro Security
Castle
Engarde Secure Linux
Immunix
Kaladix Linux
NSA Security Enhanced
Openwall GNU/Linux
Trustix

Special Purpose/Mini
2-Disk Xwindow System
Mindi Linux
SmoothWall

Floppy-based
Brutalware
BYLD
Coyote Linux
DLX
Fd Linux
Fli4l (Floppy ISDN/DSL)
floppyfw
Floppix
FREESCO
Linux in a Pillbox (LIAP)
Linux Router Project
LOAF
muLinux
Nuclinux
Proxyfloppy
ShareTheNet
Small Linux
Tomsrtbt
Viralinux_II

CD-based
BasicLinux
BBLCD Toolkit
CDLinux
Crash Recovery Kit
DemoLinux
Devil-Linux
Finnix
Gibraltar
innominate Bootable Business Card
Linuxcare Bootable Business Card
LNX-BBC
MkCDrec
RunOnCD
Sentry Firewall
SuperRescue
Timo's Rescue CD
Ututo
Virtual Linux

Zip disk-based
NBROK
ZipSlack

Small Disk
hal91
MicroLinux
--> Peanut Linux
PKLinux
Relax Linux
TA-Linux
Tomukas
ttylinux
VectorLinux

Wireless
Bambi Linux
Flying Linux

Hardware-specific
(ARM)
ARM Linux
(Beowulf)
Scyld Beowulf
(IBM)
Think Blue Linux
(Oracle's NIC)
NIC Linux
(PA-RISC)
PA-RISC Linux
(Playstation)
Runix
(PowerPC)
Black Lab Linux
LinuxPPC
MkLinux
Yellow Dog
(Sparc)
Splack
UltraLinux
(Older Intel)
ClarkConnect
Monkey Linux
TINY

DOS/Windows install
Armed Linux
DragonLinux
Phat Linux

Diskless Terminal
GNU/Linux TerminalServer for Schools
K12LTSP
LTSP
Pygmy
Xdenu

Distributions

News and Editorials

Slackware faces new obstacles, challenges. LinuxToday broke the news this week that Wind River, having purchased BSDi and vocalized its displeasure with all things under GPL and particularly with Linux, has laid off the Slackware development staff. Patrick Volkerding later confirmed the news, indicating that he, too, would be laid off, but stating strongly that Slackware is not folding up shop. He has sufficient funds to publish the next edition of Slackware, which is nearing release, but not enough funds to pay Chris Lumens, David Cantrell, and Logan for their on-going work.

Note that Slackware is one distribution that has always paid its own way, bringing in sufficient revenue to keep the project going, without making millionaires of anyone. As long as Patrick Volkerding continues to lead the project, it is probable that Slackware will continue. The major impact of these new money problems will be a temporary distraction from development (noticeable already in this week's Changelog entries, or lack thereof) and possibly a difficulty supporting the new Alpha and Sparc versions of Slackware.

In our experience, Slackware has possibly the most loyal following of all Linux distributions, even if that following is not large compared to the number of Red Hat Linux users. The next few months will demonstrate the worth of that loyalty.

For those Slackware users that would like something concrete they can do to show their support, Slackware now has a Paypal account. Simply donate money via Paypal to "paypal@slackware.com".

MandrakeSoft's Donations Page. On a similar note, though not accompanied by similar bad news, MandrakeSoft's Donations page is now on-line. In response to customer demand, MandrakeSoft has promised to provide a mechanism by which fans of the Linux distribution can donate money. In particular, many Linux-Mandrake fans that download the software for free have asked for a means by which they could also support the company.

The page accepts donations and allows the contributor to specify the Linux-Mandrake project they would like to support.

The Linux-Mandrake donations page and Slackware's Paypal account will be interesting tests to see how much, if any, money can be raised on a regular basis via voluntary donations. It is a particularly interesting way to support a commercial company and an interesting contrast, for example, to LinuxPPC's decision to become a non-profit organization, allowing such donations to become tax-deductible.

We will be watching the results with interest.

Red Hat Linux 7.1. Here is the announcement from Red Hat on the release of Red Hat Linux 7.1. It includes, of course (and among other things), a 2.4 kernel, tighter "out of the box" security, a new "customization guide," and the TUX web server.

Although the most impressive improvements have been made in the server arena, desktop users can also look forward to new versions of Gnome, KDE, XFree86 and Mozilla. A new graphical version of Kickstart is intended to improve unattended installations.

The security enhancement include such common-sense ideas as disabling network-based services by default and extend to configuring a firewall as part of the installation.

Also announced by Red Hat was its new "Software Manager," which makes more Red Hat Network services available.

Ratatosk closes down. The Ratatosk Project was an effort by Martin Skjoldebrand to provide a database of available distributions. Unfortunately, due to time commitments, Martin has closed the site down and moved on to work on the mhd helpdesk system. He has offered to make a copy of his distributions database available to people that ask.

Distribution News

SuSE News. Joshua Uziel pointed out a couple of weeks ago that the Sparc version of SuSE Linux was available for download. This week, SuSE Linux announced the release of the media-kit for SuSE Linux 7.1 for the Sparc architecture, containing a jewel case with the CDs. No printed documentation is included; the on-line documentation must be used.

Tomsrtbt News. Tomsrtbt comes out in favor of free beer. Seemingly in response to this week's LWN article on how some distributions are making it harder to download a CD image for free, Tomsrtbt has announced that the distribution will be "available as a downloadable media image forever". Incidentally, tomsrtbt-1.7.250 has been released. (Tomsrtbt is a floppy-based distribution).

Turbolinux News. Turbolinux, Inc. has announced the availability of BROKEN LINK Turbolinux Server (TLS) 6.5, its enterprise level Linux distribution. TLS 6.5 supports five languages, including English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (traditional and simplified). This version includes a journaling file system.

Debian News. Debian 2.2r3 has been released. This is a bugfix release, consisting mostly of security updates.

Debian has posted a press release noting how to go about adding the 2.4 kernel to a Debian 2.2 distribution.

Red Hat News. In addition to the release of Red Hat Linux 7.1 this week, Red Hat also put out a bugfix advisory for their Update Agent. This bugfix closes multiple bug reports and applies to Red Hat Linux 6.2 and 7.0. New packages are included for up2date, python-xmlrpc and rhn_register.

deepLinux News. A package manager has been added to deepLinux ExOp, at customer request. The DeepLinux package manager is based on the Slackware package manager, with minor cosmetic changes intended to make the package manager easier for people migrating from support Unix systems such as Solaris.

Slackware News. A new version of the Slackware Administrators Security Toolkit has been released, version 0.1.2.1. "This release fixes an installer issue and a potential race condition, includes more documentation, clarified XFree86 versions (not updated for X 4.0 yet), and removes shell limits".

Linux-Mandrake News. From the MandrakeForum website, here are some interesting headlines from the past week:

• HP Bulgaria now selling PCs with Linux-Mandrake pre-installed.
• Linux-Mandrake unofficial IRC channel information.

More Distribution updates

• Astaro Security Linux 1.806, minor security fixes.

• AtheOS 0.3.3, a non-Linux operating system released under the GPL, minor feature enhancements and bugfixes.

• SuperRescue CD 1.3.1, update to 2.4.3 kernel, minimum required memory reduced from 64MB to 24MB.

Distribution Reviews

SuSE Linux 7.0 Professional review. Bill Henning has resurfaced with a review of SuSE Linux 7.0 Professional, the version of SuSE Linux aimed at proficient technical users. Of course, SuSE Linux 7.1 is already out there, but the review of the documentation provided with SuSE Linux is worth a peek. "The documentation is nothing short of excellent - it is very comprehensive, and they have had much more success in removing "germanisms" from the documentation with this release".

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.

Leading
Caldera OpenLinux
Debian GNU/Linux
Linux-Mandrake
Red Hat
Slackware
SuSE
TurboLinux

Also well-known
ASPLinux
Best Linux
Conectiva Linux
e-smith

Progeny
Rock Linux

Non-technical desktop
easyLinux
Icepack Linux
Independence
LibraNet
Redmond Linux
WinSlack

Education
Boston University
kmLinux
LinuxFromScratch
OpenClassroom
Red Escolar

General Purpose
Alzza Linux
aXon Linux
Bad Penguin Linux
BearOps
Black Cat Linux
BluePoint Linux
BYO Linux
CAEN Linux
Cafe Linux
ChainSaw Linux
Circle MUDLinux
cLIeNUX
Complete Linux
Console Linux
Corel Linux
CRUX
Darkstar Linux
DLite
easyLinux
Elfstone Linux
ESware Linux
Eurielec Linux
eXecutive Linux
Fried Chicken
FTOSX
FullPliant
Gentoo
Go!Linux
HA Linux
Halloween Linux
HispaFuentes
IceLinux
Ivrix
ix86 Linux
J-LINUX
JBLinux
Jurix
KRUD
KSI-Linux
Lanthan Linux
Laonux
LASER5
Leetnux
Linpus Linux
Linux Cyrillic Edition
Linux MLD
LinuxOne OS
LinuxPPP
Linux Pro Plus
Linux-SIS
LNX System
LoopLinux
LSD
Lute Linux
MageNet
Mastodon
MaxOS
minilinux
MSC.Linux

NoMad Linux
Omoikane GNU/Linux
PingOO Linux
Plamo Linux
PLD
Project Ballantain
PROSA
Rabid Squirrel
Repairlix
Root Linux
Scrudgeware
Serial Terminal
Sorcerer
spyLinux
Stampede
Stataboware
TechLinux
TimeSys Linux/RT
Tom Linux
Trinux
Turkuaz
Ute-Linux
VA-enhanced Red Hat
Vine Linux
Virtual Linux
WholeLinux
WinLinux 2000
XTeamLinux
ZipSpeak

Country-specific
Argentina
GNU/Linux Ututo
Britain
Definite Linux
Eridani
China
COSIX
Red Flag
France
Linux/MNIS
Italy
LinuxEspresso
Madeinlinux
Vedova
Spain
Linux Esware
Thailand
Kaiwal Linux
Thai Linux Extension

Related Projects
Chinese Linux Extension

Historical (Non-active)
Dualix
Gentus
Giotto
MCC Interim Linux
OS2000
Storm Linux

See also: last week's On the Desktop page.

Note: An asterisk (*) denotes a proprietary product, (w) denotes WINE based tools.

Office Suites
Ability (*)(w)
Anywhere Desktop (*)
(formerly "Applixware")
GNOME Office
HancomOffice
KOffice
StarOffice / OpenOffice
Siag Office
WordPerfect Office 2000 (*)(w)

Java / Web Office Suites
ThinkFree Office (*)
Teamware Office (*)
Cybozu Office (*)

Desktop Publishing
AbiWord
iceSculptor (*)
Impress
Maxwell Word Processor
Mediascape Artstream (*)
Scribus

Web Browsers
Mozilla
Netscape (*)
Opera (*)
Konqueror
Galeon

Handheld Tools
KPilot
JPilot
Palm Pilot Resources
Pilot Link
SynCal

On The Desktop

First, there are plenty of financial packages around for Linux, starting with the very popular GNUCash. While a decent clone of Quicken (with quite a few features still to go, however) GNUCash does offer extensions for writing tax software. There just doesn't seem to be any written yet. While GNUCash is great for managing finances in general, you can't handle your taxes with it.

The problem isn't that projects don't exist to handle tax processing, there are plenty of those:

• gTaxEstimator
• GNUTaxes
• PTax98, which appears to have been capable of calculating a 1040EZ form, at least in 1998. It uses a Tk based interface running Perl.
• LeTax

The bigger problem is that writing tax software is a difficult proposition. An extended discussion on finding and writing tax software took place late last year on Slashdot. The gist of the story is that because tax laws change and can be interpreted very loosely it's difficult to write accurate software for helping to calculate taxes. We're talking about something more than just an online form that adds numbers. It needs to be something that understands tax law.

While tax software is difficult to write, it's not impossible. In fact, it's already been done - in Germany. Last week we reported on the release of Buhl Data Services' Tax2001, a tool for creating German tax forms that apparently runs on WINE. And this isn't the only country outside the US with projects for making Tax forms - a project is underway to help Canadian's handle their taxes, too.

Even though there is a lack of available native software, it's not impossible to do your taxes using Linux. You just need a Web browser. Sites like SecureTax.com or TurboTax for the Web offer online services for users of any platform, though it has been reported that this latter service may require your browser to be Netscape or IE or else it may not work.

Tax season is over for most Americans, and I'm not sure when taxes are due elsewhere, but managing your money using Linux is a year round process. While I use the Applix spreadsheet program to keep my budget, there are many other financial tools available. These include tools ranging from managing stock portfolios to balancing checkbooks to doing payrolls. Don't expect all of these to provide beautiful windowed interfaces just yet. Most tools are still primitive in form, but they are getting better. Expect to see a big advance in these tools over the next year since both of the major desktop environments - KDE and GNOME - now have very stable and extensible interfaces.

KDE's KParts is not MICO.  It was pointed out to me after last week's column on Bonobo's use of a CORBA implementation that my report on KDE using MICO was, well, just a little out of date. That was an understatement. The move from the CORBA-based MICO to the current KParts happened long before KDE2 was released. KParts is a non network transparent, shared library approach that was considered easier to develop with and provided better performance. The best clarification came from Daniel Burckhardt, who stated:

Bonobo uses ORBit as a CORBA implementation while KDE experimented with MICO long before KDE2 was out. KDE abandoned CORBA-based interprocess communication because there were performance and compilation issues with MICO and because they felt that they could still fill their needs with a simpler approach. So they based DCOP (KDE's alternative to Bonobo) on libICE, part of the X11 libraries.

KParts has an extension called XParts, which is how KDE embeds non KDE parts such as Gecko. Interestingly, searching for CORBA on KDE's web page didn't show anything about KParts. While this is understandable - KParts isn't CORBA - there was no information that said "KParts provides the equivalent to or similar functionality as CORBA". I just needed something that would point me to KParts when looking for KDE's counterpart to Bonobo. It was late and I really didn't know what exactly I was looking for anyway. Hopefully that's a problem I'll rectify as I get some test systems put together and can experiment more thoroughly with KDE and GNOME. Daniel also provided a note that KDE leader Matthias Ettrich is considering bringing CORBA back into the fold:

To everyone's surprise, KDE's founding father Matthias Ettrich recently started a discussion about maybe bringing CORBA back to KDE, this time based on ORBit instead of MICO. For a good summary about possible advantages and disadvantages of that approach, have a look at Kernel Cousin KDE #5

Monkey business.  Finally, it seems that while Ximian may be a barrel full of monkeys, the Bonobo project can't claim such a close heritage. Thanks to M Carling who pointed out the fact that Bonobos are not monkeys at all, but rather sit just off the branch that spawned humans. Carling also offered an update on the Bonobo's mating habits, but we'll leave that for a Discovery channel special.

Desktop Environments

Ximian hires new CEO. Co-founder Nat Friedman is stepping over to a VP role at Ximian to make room for a veteran CEO, David Patrick.

KOffice 1.1 approaching Beta 1. In a posting to the KOffice Development mailing list, David Faure notes that the 1.1 Beta 1 release of KOffice is scheduled for packaging on April 18th. He included a release plan for the KOffice 1.1 release as well.

Interoperability -- Progress at GUADEC. GNOME hacker David Mason wrote this GUADEC II coverage, reflecting on the progress made in ensuring GNOME/KDE interoperability. "We were graced by the presence of four or five KDE members. This was one of the more positive events to occur during the whole show. We had one formal meeting in the form of a BOF and many informal conversations throughout the show."

Trolltech announces Qt 3.0 preview. Trolltech has gotten around to announcing its preview of Qt 3.0. The announcement includes a list of the new features in this upcoming release.

GNUStep Weekly Update. The GNUStep project posted their weekly update. While GNUStep continues drive towards a desktop environment to rival GNOME and KDE, this update is probably of more interest to developers than users.

Enlightenment gets a facelift. Noted in passing - the Enlightenment web site got a major update this past week. While most of the site is still under development, the Goodies page does give a nice overview of how the 0.17 release will be breaking out components of the window manager into low level back end services that can be used by other projects.

FVWM2 update. FVWM2 also slipped in a little update on their web site back at the end of March - a new release candidate: 2.3.31.

Desktop Applications

It's Play Time: Linux Games Shipping Next Week. Loki has announced they are shipping two new games next week: Tribes 2 and Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack. They're offering both at a discount price when bought together.

On the go...

A developer's perspective on Agenda's VR3 Linux PDA (LInuxDevices.com). LinuxDevices presents a developers point of view on the new Agenda VR3. "It is encouraging to report that the VR3 is a fairly successful implementation of a Linux PDA, from both a user's and a developer's point of view."

Guadec Diaries. In one of the more amusing and thorough diaries covering the recent GNOME User and Developer European Conference (GUADEC), Telsa Gwynne tells of her travails following (and leading) Alan Cox and company around the conference.

Thanks to Havoc Pennington, who let us know about Dave's report and sent in one of his own.

More GUADEC summaries can be found here.

Section Editor: Michael J. Hammel

Note: An asterisk (*) denotes a proprietary product, (w) denotes WINE based tools.

Desktop Environments
GNOME
GNUstep
KDE
XFce

Window Managers (WM's)
Afterstep
Enlightenment
FVMW2
IceWM
Sawfish
WindowMaker

Minimalist Environments
Blackbox

Widget Sets
GTK+
Qt

Desktop Graphics
CorelDRAW (*)(w)
GIMP
Kontour
Photogenics (*)
Sketch

Windows on Linux
WINE
Win4Lin
VMWare

Kids S/W
Linux For Kids

Send link submissions to lwn@lwn.net

See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

• The addition of a "write-ahead log," which resembles the operation of a journaling filesystem. PostgreSQL need not wait until all the changes in a particular transaction make it to disk; instead, they need only be written to the log. As a result, commits will happen more quickly, and the performance of the system as a whole should be much improved.

• Anybody who has tried to store large items in a PostgreSQL database is likely to have run into the attribute length limitation. As of 7.1, that limitation is no more; a new technique called "The Oversized Attribute Storage Technique" ("TOAST") addresses the problem.

• Outer joins are now supported. In general, complex queries should work much better and more quickly.

The era of free software database management systems is getting closer, as the available software approaches the proprietary systems in power and performance. Given the current pace of development and the increasing level of commercial support behind free software databases, it would be surprising if corporate adoption did not begin to increase. Consider, for example, the success story related in this Linux Journal article by Great Bridge CEO Robert Gilbert:

Just Sports saved itself a boatload of money by using the Linux operating system and PostgreSQL, a powerful open-source database management system, all running on Apache-powered servers. The final product is fast and highly customized with functions not available to users of Microsoft, Oracle or other proprietary software.

Companies are understandably nervous about their relational database systems - if the database doesn't work, the rest of the system is guaranteed to have problems. As the performance, reliability, and features of the free alternatives become clearer, though, the economics of free databases are likely to inspire many more stories like the one related above.

Samba 2.2.0 released. The Samba Team has released samba-2.2.0, the first major Samba release in some time. The list of new features can be found in the announcement; it is long, and is oriented, of course, toward even tighter integration between Windows and Unix/Linux systems.

Audio

Browsers

Clusters

Documentation

LDP Weekly News for Apr. 17, 2001. The latest issue of the LDP Weekly News carries word of updates to the XML-RPC and Apache Overview HOWTO's, among others.

Education

Linux in education report #42 for April 16. The latest issue of the Linux in Education report has been published.

Embedded Systems

Building a Linux/RTAI based software radio (LinuxDevices). LinuxDevices.com describes a do-it-yourself demonstration of the capabilities of RTAI, a real-time Linux add-on. The demo consists of a floppy-booted Linux system that uses an RTAI task to create a radio carrier on which synthesized music is superimposed.

Financial

Games

Interoperability

Mail Software

Network Management

Office Systems

Science

Linux in Science report #9 for April 17. The latest issue of the Linux in Science report has been published.

Software Development

SourceForge more popular than beer? Here's a news item on the SourceForge site pointing out that a search on Google for "SourceForge" turns up 3,570,000 hits, while searching for "beer" only gets 3,120,000. This presumably means something...

Standards

Web-site Development

Zope 2.4 will require Python 2.1, to the evident disgruntlement of some Zope users. People who follow the bleeding-edge Zope code will need to get Python 2.1 installed fairly soon; everybody else can wait until they decide to install Zope 2.4, which, of course, does not exist yet. The 2.4 release will contain a number of internationalization improvements, and those require the better Unicode support that Python 2.1 provides.

PHP Networking (ONLamp). ONLamp has posted a tutorial article on PHP's networking functions. It gives particular attention to sending mail from PHP scripts, but it also gives an overview of the networking functions in general.

Window Systems

New developer releases of GTK+ libraries. Owen Taylor posted to various mailing lists yesterday the release of new libraries for the GTK+ family. Included here are GTK+-1.3.4, GLib-1.3.4 and Pango-0.15. Pango is the library for the layout and rendering of text being written for the upcoming 2.0 release of the GTK family of libraries. Note that these are all developer releases, not intended (just yet) for production applications.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

Application Links
GIMP
Mozilla
Galeon
High Availability
ht://Dig
mnoGoSearch
MagicPoint
Wine
Worldforge
Zope

Open Source Code Collections
Berlios
Freshmeat
OpenSourceDirectory
Savannah
Le Serveur Libre
SourceForge
Sweetcode

Programming Languages

C

Caml

Haskell

Glasgow Haskell Compiler version 5.0 released. A new version of the Glasgow Haskell compiler, which is a Haskell 98 implementation, has been released.

Java

Python

This week's Python-URL. Here is Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for April 16, with coverage of the 2.1 release, Python interfaces, and other news from the Python development world.

Python-dev summary. The Python-dev summary for April 11 is also out. It talks about the magic __debug__ variable, inverse string interpolation, and other topics relating to the development of the Python language.

Tcl/Tk

This week's Tcl-URL. Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for April 16 is out, with coverage of the Tcl/Tk 8.3.3 release and more.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

See also: last week's Commerce page.

Linux and Business

Open source software in EU public administrations. A European Commission initiative called IDA ("Interchange of Data between Administrations") ran a symposium on "Open source software in EU public administrations" back in February. The presentations from the symposium are now available online, in PDF format. The presentations are worth a look; they provide a view into how a number of European governments are looking at open source software.

For those who would rather not deal with PDF files, Stéfane Fermigier has kindly provided us with one of these documents, the conclusions, in plain text. In short, their conclusions are good news for the open source community.

ActiveState launches ASPN Initiative. ActiveState has announced the ActiveState Programmer Network (ASPN), which delivers tools and knowledge to enable programming with open source technologies. For example, the ASPN includes quality-assured binary distributions of Perl, Python and Tcl; multi-language and platform IDEs; technical references, sample code and other helpful information. Access to ASPN is not completely free and open, at least not for all resources that ActiveState has to offer. There are three levels at which developers can join. ASPN Open provides a free online resource for casual and new programmers. ASPN Komodo builds on ASPN Open and is designed for professional programmers. The Komodo IDE and updates for a year are included with ASPN Komodo, priced at $295 for an annual subscription. ASPN Perl includes access to all O'Reilly Perl texts and other Perl programming resources, on top of everything ASPN Komodo offers, and has an annual subscription fee of $495.

Samsung, Lineo form Lineo Korea. Samsung and embedded Linux maker Lineo have formed a joint venture called Lineo Korea.

National Semiconductor, Samurai announce Brazilian Linux system. National Semiconductor and Samurai have announced that, in response to a challenge from the Brazilian government, they have designed an inexpensive, Linux-based computer intended to provide affordable Internet access. It uses a flash drive, and has no moving parts.

BSDi to Become iXsystems, Inc.. The sale of the BSD operating system units to Wind River haven't closed down BSDi. They apparently will be changing their name to iXsystems, licensing BSD/OS from Wind River and concentrating on rack mounted systems, server appliances and advanced systems.

New IBM Chips to Drive Innovative, Lower-Power Internet Appliances. While mostly just hype for new IBM chips, this press release states a fairly obvious point of view for the future of computing. "In the PC environment, one proprietary operating system and one standard chip type defined how the products would look and perform. Internet appliances, however, are expected to take many forms, made possible by software like Linux and IBM WebSphere, as well as adaptable chip technology like PowerPC IAP."

Linux Stock Index for April 12 to April 18, 2001

LSI at closing on April 12, 2001 ... 29.47
LSI at closing on April 18, 2001 ... 31.83

The high for the week was 31.83
The low for the week was 29.21

Press Releases:

Open source

• Open-Source Directory (Moncton, Canada): Open-Source Directory Helps Find Missing Open-Source License. Missing "Sleepycat License" found & added to list of certified open-source licenses.

Proprietary Products for Linux

• NeTraverse Inc. (AUSTIN, Texas): NeTraverse Announces The Release of NeTraverse Server Standard Edition Version 1.0. The NeTraverse Server Standard Edition enables users to run Windows programs on the Linux platform at native speeds.

Servers and bundled products

• Rainfinity (SAN JOSE, Calif.): Compaq and Rainfinity Team to Ensure Continuous Network Security. Rainfinity's RainWall firewall high availability software is being bundled with the Compaq/Check Point SolutionPaq, a turn-key Linux-based security solution for medium to large-sized enterprises and service providers.

Products and Services Using Linux

• Enerdyne (SAN DIEGO): Enerdyne to Launch Multimedia Compression Network Appliance at NetWorld + Interop Trade Show in Las Vegas. Enerlinx is a new Linux(TM)-based multimedia digital network appliance for compression and multiplexing of high quality video, audio, and data.

• Oracom (NORTH ANDOVER, Mass.): Oracom's New Device Management Solution and Software Upgrade Furthers Its Ability to Enable Service Providers to Manage IP and Non-IP Devices Via Standard Web Tools.

• Telemate.Net Software (ATLANTA): Telemate.Net Software On Schedule to Ship Two New Products. The NetSpective WebFilter operates as a separate and independent plug-and-play network device, employing proprietary software built on the Linux operating system.

Products With Linux Versions

• AXS Technologies (ANNAPOLIS, Md.): AXS Technologies Launches EyeSpy 2.0(TM), Grows Staff; EyeSpy 2.0 Supports Multiple Platforms with Increased Functionality.

• iMimic Networking Inc. (HOUSTON): iMimic Networking Inc. and Web Cache Solutions Announce Caching Software License Agreement. iMimic DataReactor(TM) Core runs on Intel x86 and Compaq Alpha architectures with the Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris operating systems.

• Interphase Corporation (DALLAS): Interphase Announces New Fibre Channel Software Drivers.

• Jungo (Jungo, Israel): Jungo Announces WinDriver / KernelDriver Version 5.0. Jungo WinDriver / KernelDriver Version 5.0 includes a multi-platform Wizard, bringing a graphical driver development environment to Linux and Solaris driver developers.

• Progressive Software Solutions (ALEXANDRIA, Va.): Progressive Software Solutions Offers Web-Based Recruiting Software.

• Quantum|ATL (IRVINE, Calif. & SANTA CLARA, Calif.): Quantum|ATL Certifies Quadratec's Time Navigator Enterprise Backup Application With the Company's GbE-Based P-Series DLTtape Libraries.

• SPSS Inc. (CHICAGO): SPSS Ships SPSS Data Entry 3.0 for Linux and Sun Solaris Systems; New Version of Survey Design and Data Collection Software Delivers Faster, More Secure Web-Based Surveys.

• The MathWorks, Inc. (NATICK, Mass.): The MathWorks Announces Major Upgrade to MATLAB Image Processing Toolbox.

• Tripwire Inc. (PORTLAND, Ore.): Tripwire Ships Latest Version of Award Winning Data and Network Integrity Software. Tripwire Manager 2.4 and Tripwire for Servers 2.4 operate on multiple platforms including Linux.

• VA Linux Systems (FREMONT, Calif.): VA Linux Unleashes 9450 NAS Appliance; Delivering Leading Interoperability, Manageability and Price/Performance with Open Source NAS.

Java Products

• ParaSoft (MONROVIA, Calif.): A Major Development in Java Testing Achieved With the Introduction of ParaSoft's Jcontract and Jtest 4.0.

Books & Training

• LinuxCertified.com (Cupertino, CA): LinuxCertified bootcamp with free laptop.

Partnerships

• Teamware Group (Sweden and Denmark): Coresys AB to sell Teamware Office for Linux in Sweden and Denmark.

Personnel

• Sleepycat Software, Inc (LINCOLN, Mass.): Sleepycat Software Announces Two New Board Appointments.

• VA Linux Systems (FREMONT, Calif.): Samba Leaders Join VA Linux NAS Team; Andrew Tridgell, Jeremy Allison and Others Bring Expertise in Open Source NAS for Heterogeneous Environments.

Financial Results

• GraphOn Corporation (MORGAN HILL, Calif.): GraphOn Corporation to Host First Quarter Earnings Conference Call On Tuesday, April 24, 2001.

Linux At Work

• 1mage Software, Inc. (ENGLEWOOD, Colo.): Vermont Judicial Bureau Selects 1mage Software to Streamline Case Filing System; 1mage Makes Case For Judicial Document Management. The digitized images, maintained on a server using the Red Hat Linux operating system, will provide an integrated electronic case file. The 1MAGE(R) system will allow the VJB to efficiently capture, index, view, and archive associated documents.

• Integrated Computer Solutions (Cambridge, MA): BART selects Linux for Electrification Display System. Thanks to Mark Hatch.

• Retalix Ltd. (RA`ANANA, Israel): Retalix Signs Agreement with New Clicks Holdings Ltd. of South Africa; Retalix Solutions to be Implemented Across the Clicks Group's Six Retail Chains. Retalix StoreLine (POSware) Linux software will serve the Clicks Diskom discount stores.

Other

• Evans Data Corporation (SANTA CRUZ, Calif.): VB Users Migrating to Newer Languages Latest EDC Study Shows. Java and XML usage continues to grow.

• Global Knowledge, Inc. (SINGAPORE): Global Knowledge Announces $40 Million Worldwide Corporate Re-Branding Campaign. Global Knowledge claims to be the world's leading provider of Cisco, Nortel and Linux certification training.

• WebEvent (): WebEvent News - Investment, New Release, Additional Support. The WebEvent calendar is a commercial Web calendar and scheduling program written in Perl.

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol.

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

Linux in the news

Recommended Reading

The beast of complexity (Economist). The Economist has put together a lengthy survey of the software industry, which includes, among much other stuff, a look at open source. "Open-source communities, for example, are fascinating social structures. Similar communities could one day produce more than just good code. Thomas Malone, professor of information systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sees great opportunities ahead: 'The Linux community is a model for a new kind of business organisation that could form the basis for a new kind of economy.'"

Battle for the Unseen Computer (Technology Review). According to this article, LynuxWorks questions the suitability of Linux to the embedded world. "It is just such real-time operation that skeptics say eludes Linux. Linux is built to run a given command from start to finish. That's why the embedded systems that run on Linux to date are ones where real time is not critical, such as the Kerbango radio. Disagreement about the best way to make Linux real-time-and whether it's possible to make Linux real-time at all-are splintering the embedded-Linux movement into less-than-friendly factions."

Companies

In an instant (Denver Rocky Mountain News). Jabber.com's business model and technology from the open source Jabber project may make it the de facto standard for instant messaging, says this article from the Denver Rocky Mountain News. "Instant messaging is seen as having great potential in a number of areas, including employee collaboration... That could help speed up the way business is conducted and projects are completed. [Unfortunately,] the big players, trying to protect their own markets, have been reluctant to embrace an industry standard."

iomojo creates open camera server project (LinuxDevices). LinuxDevices.com writes about Silicon Valley startup iomojo, an embedded Linux company that is designing a media-centric server appliance. "Basically, all that's required to implement iomojo's camera server is an appropriately configured computer running Linux, equipped with an inexpensive video camera and video capture card. The latter two items are available for a few hundred dollars."

Freenet developer to create commercial apps (InfoWorld). Here's an InfoWorld article on Uprizer. "The outstanding difference in the software Uprizer develops compared with that for Freenet will be absence of those capabilities that shield users' identities. Clarke said the goal is to retain the positive qualities of the Freenet architecture but deliver software that is palatable to corporate users."

Ian Clarke's Uprizer Gets $4 Million (NewsBytes). NewsBytes reports on Uprizer, the company created by Freenet founder Ian Clarke. Uprizer has evidently scored $4 million in venture funding, from Intel no less. "Uprizer can save businesses money in the distribution of software, games, video and other content, he said. 'We feel we can streamline that process and help people save money on bandwidth cost.'"

HP Backs Open Source Server (ZDNet). HP thinks the Enhydra server software is becoming another important piece of the open source world. "Part of the reason HP is backing Enhydra is its ability to deal with eXtensible Markup Language messaging and wireless applications based on I-mode and Java 2 Micro Edition cellular phones. Netservers are often used to host wireless applications, and the availability of Enhydra helps "companies looking for ways to use mobile technologies," said Nigel Ball, general manager at HP's e-Services Partner Division."

Game Over for Video Console Firm Indrema (San Francisco Chronicle). The SF Chronicle covers the demise of the Linux-based Indrema game console project. "Indrema said it amassed an active community of 50 to 100 developers, and that "potentially hundreds" of projects were in the works. Most of those titles will be redirected to personal computers running Linux, Gildred said. He denied that a lack of big-name developers contributed to Indrema's flameout."

Plans for Linux game console fizzle (News.com). News.com looks at the demise of Indrema. "[Indrema CEO John] Gildred said there were close to 200 Indrema games in development, including 30 or 40 far enough along that the company hoped to have them available when the console launched. The fate of those games and the Indrema format will likely hinge on current negotiations to sell Indrema's intellectual property. If the Indrema standards and other technology are released as open-source software, the format may live on."

Products

Low-cost Indian PC to hit market soon (News.com). C|Net reports that India is getting ready to launch its inexpensive Linux-based Simputer. "Vinay Deshpande, president of the Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (MAIT), said the low-cost was due partly to the use of the Linux operating system and other open-source software."

O'Reilly's look at Napster alternatives. O'Reilly's P2P site does a rundown of the available alternatives to Napster for searching for programs, images, video, documents, and, of course, MP3 files. Most of the options make use of Gnutella.

Business

Opinion: Inder Singh on The ELC Platform Specification (LinuxDevices). Dr. Inder Singh has written this opinion piece on why he believes the ELC Platform Specification will succeed where the POSIX effort failed. "Now, there is a real opportunity for Linux to fulfill the promise of UNIX and POSIX. Linux is already available from many vendors, and since all the different versions start with the same kernel, there is a high degree of compatibility and interoperability between different embedded Linux distributions. At the same time, Moore's law has largely eliminated the resource constraint issue. In fact, with the falling prices and increasing power of system-on-chip (SOC) devices and memory, and the growing software complexity of embedded applications, a Linux style of operating system with its process model is an excellent fit for today's high volume embedded devices compared to the legacy flat address space real-time operating systems that can work with MMU-less CPUs."

Here's a copy of Singh's slide presentation given at the ELC's annual membership meeting on April 9, 2001. Singh is the Chairman of the Embedded Linux Consortium (ELC) and is also CEO of LynuxWorks.

Linux gets embedded (ZDNet). In a short summary of who's who in the Linux Embedded marketplace, ZDNet says that the little guys are taking on the big players with high hopes. "Linux, a clone of the Unix operating system that competes with Windows, got its start in servers. A number of companies, such as TimeSys, Red Hat, Lineo, LynuxWorks and MontaVista Software have been working to squeeze it into smaller embedded devices such as network routers, handheld computers and set-top boxes."

Microsoft's campaign to help Linux on the desktop (ZDNet). According to this ZDNet article, Microsoft is doing the Linux desktop a favor by releasing XP - because XP uses XML as its file format. "Office's use of XML could help the Linux desktop as much as Microsoft's opening of SMB allowed Samba to help Linux become such a competitive server. To be sure, there are still usability issues with current Linux GUIs, and Windows still runs many more applications than the Linux desktop."

Leave everything to me... not! (ZDNet). Evan Leibovitch says in this ZDNet op-ed piece that while Microsoft offers too little choice, Linux offers too much. "It's a feature, not a bug, that Linux is about choice. Recently I wrote about the increasing progress being made by the Linux Standard Base, a group that seeks to make life easier for software developers while encouraging diversity among Linux distributions. And I've been happy to hear reports coming from this month's GNOME developer's conference, GUADEC II, where interoperability was a major concern."

Reviews

Red Hat Unveils Latest Linux Distribution (InternetNews). InternetNews reviews Red Hat Linux 7.1. "The latest release also includes updated versions of the GNOME and KDE GUIs, as well as Mozilla. And, for the international audience, 7.1 has increased internalization that supports the global user community with fully translated GNOME interfaces in Japanese, Spanish, French, German and Italian."

Moving up to the big time (ZDNet). ZDNet examines Red Hat's jump into the 2.4 kernel with their just released 7.1 distribution. "Perhaps the most important news is that Red Hat's distribution comes with improved security built in. For example, in almost all Linux distributions, the default setting is to automatically set up Internet programs like Sendmail and Apache with their open network ports, even if you don't plan to use either program. In Red Hat 7.1, these default to keep the ports closed and thus prevent would be raiders from exploiting programs that you might not even have known were running."

NuSphere MySQL: Free Beer in a Tall Glass (LinuxPlanet). LinuxPlanet reviews NuSphere MySQL. "The folks at NuSphere have a good idea, and they have in effect done for the middleware tier what Linux distributions have done for the operating system tier. It would be nice to see an integrated Open Source search engine tool, and perhaps a WebDAV-aware HTML editing tool, in a future release. Even without these items, though, NuSphere is useful enough to be worth considering for business oriented server deployments."

Apache 2.0 scales to Windows (ZDNet). ZDNet takes a look at the Apache 2.0 beta. "Unfortunately, this build still lacks any official administration tools, our biggest complaint with the earlier versions."

The life and times of Linus Torvalds (ZDNet). ZDNet reviews Linus Torvalds biography, "Just for Fun, The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary". "He uses the Red Hat IPO, when he realized that he was actually worth something financially, as an example. ''Regardless of the image that has caught on in the press, of me as a selfless geek-for-the-masses living under a vow of poverty,'' says Torvalds, ''I was, frankly, delirious.''"

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol

See also: last week's Announcements page.

Announcements

Resources

Bynari publishes series of white papers. Bynari has published a series of white papers in PDF format covering subjects from systems administration to cost analysis of using Linux for messaging platforms to setting up Outlook for use with Linux servers.

Iptables Basics (Linuxnewbie.org). An introduction to IPTables has been made available over at Linuxnewbie.org. "First you need to know how the firewall treats packets leaving, entering, or passing through your computer. Basically there is a chain for each of these. Any packet entering your computer goes through the INPUT chain. Any packet that your computer sends out to the network goes through the OUTPUT chain."

Linus biography. In what looks like a sort of unauthorized biography, the Softpanorama Open Source Educational Society has posted a biography of Linus and the evolution of Linux. While it carries a lot of interesting material, it could use a little editing. "After graduation Linux stayed with university for some time and as he admitted himself he actually spent most of his time working on Linux." Note: That's not a typo on our part. (Thanks to Ben De Rydt)

Tip Of The Week: Shell Looping (LinuxLookup). This week's tip is on shell looping. "Linux shells offer loop constructs that allow you to iterate over some specified values. In the shell, these values are frequently generated from the output of some other command."

LinuxUser issue 8. Articles from LinuxUser #8 are now available for download in PDF format.

Camelot Communications to Launch Camelot Media. The 'Threads' newsletter will focus on XML, Java, Web Services, Wireless and Open Source Software. Ken North will be the Editor-in-Chief.

Events

IST programme actions on free / open source software development. On May 18, 2001 IST will present a conference on free/open source software development in Brussels. David Faure, KDE developer and official representative, will give the keynote.

Projeto Software Livre RS. II Forum Internacional do Software Livre presents Projeto Software Livre RS May 29 - May 31, 2001 in Brazil. Confirmed participants include Timothy Ney - president of the Free Software Foundation, Rasmus Lerdorf - creator of PHP, Kenneth Avery Coar - member of the Apache consortium, Bruce Perens and LinuxChix.

Linuxdays 2001. Linuxdays 2001 takes place in St. Pölten, Austria, June 20 - June 21, 2001.

Events: April 19 - June 14, 2001.

Date	Event	Location
April 20, 2001.	2nd Annual Symposium on Pliant Implementation and Concepts (ASPIC 2001)	Paris, France.
April 23 - April 27, 2001.	Linux Expo Road Show	Eastern Europe.
April 24 - April 26, 2001.	Linux Africa	Kyalami Exhibition & Conference Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa
April 25, 2001.	Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum Conference	Berlin, Germany
May 8 - May 10, 2001.	LinuxWorld	Auckland, NZ.
May 9, 2001.	Linux@work	Oslo, Norway.
May 9 - May 10, 2001.	Linux Expo Brazil	São Paulo - Anhembi - Palácio das Convenções.
May 10, 2001.	Linux@work	Stockholm, Sweden.
May 10 - May 12, 2001	LinuxWorld	Taipei, Taiwan
May 11, 2001.	Linux@work	Helsinki, Finland.
May 13 - May 17, 2001.	Spring 2001 Enterprise Linux Implementation Conference	Doubletree Hotel, San Jose, CA.
May 14 - May 17, 2001.	The 2001 Applied Computing Conference	Santa Clara, CA.
May 15, 2001.	Linux@work	Frankfurt, Germany.
May 15 - May 18, 2001.	Linux Expo China	Shanghai Mart, Shanghai, China.
May 16, 2001.	Linux@work	Zurich, Switzerland.
May 17, 2001.	Linux@work	Milan, Italy.
May 18 - May 19, 2001.	2nd Magdeburger Linuxtag	Magdeburg, Germany.
May 20 - May 23, 2001.	eXtreme Programming - XP2001	Villasimius, Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy.
May 24 - May 26, 2001.	LinuxWorld	Korea.
June 6 - June 7, 2001.	Linux Expo	Crowne Plaza, Milan, Italy
June 7 - June 8, 2001.	Second European Tcl/Tk User Meeting	Hamburg-Harburg, Germany
June 12, 2001.	Linux@work	London.
June 13, 2001.	Linux@work	Paris.
June 14, 2001.	Linux@work	Brussels.

Additional events can be found in the LWN Event Calendar. Event submissions should be sent to lwn@lwn.net in a plain text format.

User Group News

FRPythoneers Meeting Notes 2001-04-16. The meeting notes for the April Front Range Pythoneers meeting are available. There is quite a bit of detail which should be of interest to Python programmers everywhere.

2nd Magdeburger Linuxtag. On May 18 and May 19, 2001 the Magdeburger Linux User Group and their partners present the 2nd Magdeburger Linuxtag in Magdeburg, Germany.

Hot Springs Educational Technology Institute conference. The Hot Springs lug will be presenting 6 formal workshops over the 4 days of the conference, June 11 - June 14, 2001. You must be signed up in advance for the workshops, and space is going fast.

LUG Events: April 19 - May 3, 2001.

Date	Event	Location
April 19, 2001.	Linux User Support Team, Taegu (LUST-T)	Taegu, Korea.
April 19, 2001.	St. Louis LUG (SLLUG)	St. Louis County Library, Indian Trails Branch, St. Louis, Missouri.
April 19, 2001.	South Mississippi Linux Users Group (SMLUG)	Barnes & Noble, Gulfport, Mississippi.
April 19, 2001.	Rice Linux User Group (RLUG)	Rice University, Houston, TX
April 20, 2001.	Rock River Linux Users Group (RRLUG)	Rockford College, Rockford, Illinois.
April 21, 2001.	LUGOD Demonstration	Borders Books and Music, Davis, CA.
April 21, 2001.	Eugene Unix and GNU/Linux User Group	Eugene, Oregon.
April 21, 2001.	Silicon Valley Linux Users Group Installfest	Computer Literacy Bookshop, San Jose, CA.
April 21, 2001.	North Texas Linux Users Group (NTLUG)	Nokia Centre, Irving, Texas.
April 24, 2001.	Hazelwood LUG	Prairie Commons Branch Library, Hazelwood, Missouri.
April 24, 2001.	West Side Phoenix Linux Users Group (PLUG)	Glendale Community College, Glendale, AZ.
April 25, 2001	The Nashua Chapter of the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group	Martha's Exchange, Nashua, NH.
April 25, 2000.	Central Ohio Linux User Group (COLUG)	Columbus, Ohio.
April 25, 2001.	Linux User Group of Assen	Assen, Netherlands.
April 26, 2001.	Bergen Linux User Group (BLUG)	Bergen, Norway.
April 28, 2001.	Consortium of All Bay Area Linux (CABAL)	Menlo Park, California.
May 1, 2001.	Missouri Open Source LUG (MOSLUG)	Culpeppers Restaurant, Kirkwood, Missouri.
May 1, 2001.	Linux Users' Group of Davis (LUGOD)	Z-World, Davis, CA.
May 1, 2001.	NorthWest Chicagoland Linux User Group (NWCLUG)	Harper College, Palatine, Illinois.
May 2, 2001.	Kansas City LUG Installfest	Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, MO.
May 2, 2001.	Southeastern Indiana Linux Users Group (SEILUG)	Madison/Jefferson County Public Library, Madison, IN.
May 2, 2001.	Silicon Valley Linux Users Group (SVLUG)	Cisco Building 9, San Jose, CA.
May 3, 2001.	Edinburgh Linux Users Group (EDLUG)	Holyrood Tavern, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Additional events can be found in the LWN Event Calendar. Event submissions should be sent to lwn@lwn.net in a plain text format.

Software Announcements

The Alphabetical List and Sorted by license

Our software announcements are provided courtesy of FreshMeat

See also: last week's Linux History page.

This week in Linux history

Netscape, Sun, Oracle, and others formed a group called "ProComp" to "promote" competition in the computer business - by bringing down Microsoft. Those famous high-tech figures Robert Bork and Bob Dole were brought in to help.

But before Bork sits down in an attempt to rewrite the law, he will need to brush up on his knowledge of the Internet. "I am going to have to analyze something about this technology," he said at Monday's news conference. "My wife gets on the Internet, but she'll have to teach me about it."
-- Wired News.

Three years ago, LWN editorialized that the best thing to do about Microsoft was to ignore it and build the best free system we could. In the year 2001, it's easy to believe that Linux has done more for competition in the software world than Bork and Dole ever did.

Two years ago (April 22, 1999 LWN): Caldera released OpenLinux 2.2, becoming the first major distribution to come out with the 2.2 kernel. Nicholas Petreley raved about it in InfoWorld. He predicted that this version would challenge Linux on the desktop, mostly by making it easier for Windows users to install Caldera OpenLinux without losing Windows.

Caldera isn't the perfect answer to Linux on the desktop. But even with a minor flaw or two, Caldera OpenLinux is at least 51 weeks closer to being perfect than I ever would have imagined. In short, Bill had better get out of the way. Because it looks like an 18-wheeler is unexpectedly barreling down the road in his direction.

In spite of Mr. Petreley's predictions, Linux remains under-utilized on the desktop.

Corel announced that its upcoming distribution would be based on Debian and KDE.

The gcc and egcs projects agreed to merge, bringing an end to a long and sometimes destructive fork in one of the more important free software projects. The end result is called "gcc," but was based mainly on the egcs code base.

The birth of Evolution? Miguel de Icaza posted this note exploring the need for a truly powerful mail client.

The Mindcraft benchmark (mentioned in last week's history page) spawned a flurry of articles, mostly defending Linux. Mindcraft admitted that its Linux system was not tuned at all, while its NT system was tuned very well for the test. In this ZDNet article looked at some of the reasons that NT was able to beat Linux in this test and what Linux needed to do to improve in the future.

For one thing, there's a useful lesson here for Linux resellers and integrators. Linux tuning information is hard to gather up. Yes, it's there. But, it really requires an expert Linux user to find it. If Linux is to win commercially, information known only to Linux gurus and hidden away in a dozen Web sites needs to be gathered together and made more readable and approachable. For new users, learning advanced Linux is still much too difficult.

Tuning information may be no easier to find two years later, but one important thing has changed: far less tuning is required, in many cases, to get Linux to perform well.

Jesse Berst wrote this ZDNet article. He accuses Linus Torvalds of taunting Microsoft during a Spring Comdex keynote in which Linus predicted Linux would crush Microsoft. Later on Jesse writes:

Peer past the posturing and PR boasting on both sides, and here's what's really going on: Linux is making steady progress on the server side, especially for must-stay-up installations. But it's making no dent in Windows NT's growth as the standard OS for departmental servers. And it is light years away from being a threat to anybody on the desktop.

Well Linux has made a serious dent into server market now, and while not quite "there" on the desktop, "light years away" seems like quite an exaggeration.

Tim O'Reilly had a somewhat different point of view. During an interview he said,

If the open-source community doesn't get it, they are going to end up fighting the old battle trying to win on the desktop. But you know, who cares about the desktop? The web is the platform. What you want to be is like 'Intel inside' - you want to be like 'open source inside' for the next generation.

These days we do see 'open source inside' for a large segment of the web, and in many other spaces as well.

One year ago (April 20, 2000 LWN): A back door was found in Microsoft's FrontPage server software. It was apparently deliberately inserted by a Microsoft engineer and had been there for years. Eric Raymond had some things to say about it.

Webmasters all over the world are going to be pulling all-nighters and tearing their hair out over this one. That is, webmasters who are unlucky enough to work for bosses who bought Microsoft. At the over 60% of sites running the open-source Apache webserver, webmasters will be kicking back and smiling -- because they know that Apache will *never* have a back door like this one.

"Never" was, perhaps, a bit strong. There have been a couple of "back door" issues with free software recently, but they tend to be the sort of exception that provies the rule. Consider, for example, the back door found in InterBase shortly after the code was released.

Brendan Shea became the first new Debian maintainer in a long time, showing that the new maintainer process was finally working again.

The ugly stock market hit in force when several Linux stocks, including VA Linux Systems, Caldera, and Andover.Net, fell below their initial offering prices for the first time. Of course, people holding those stocks now would see the prices of a year ago as a very nice thing...

VA Linux, which traded at $320 a share following its IPO in December, went into a freefall almost immediately and hit a low of $26.88 last week. Thats below its IPO asking price of $30. Larry Augustin, chief executive of VA Linux, which makes Linux-based computers, has seen his personal wealth plummet from a post-IPO $2 billion to just over $200 million. That doesn't even get you a table near the kitchen in Silicon Valley.
-- Forbes.

Corel's Linux distribution was selling well. The company had just released Corel Linux with German, French and Dutch support. The press release claimed that this was the "First Multilingual Linux O.S.", which was not true. In a ZDNet story about Corel's chances of survival a variety of factors from plunging stock prices to allegetions of insider trading by then CEO Michael Cowpland.

[CTO Derek] Burney says Corel pretty much owns the Linux desktop market, though there is competition. Both Caldera Systems and Macmillan USA, for example, sell Linux for the desktop on retail shelves for $10 to $20 less than Corel's Linux.

Mentioned too, is the expected merger between Corel and Inprise, which never happened. The general conclusion was that Corel would survive if it could make Linux work for them. While Corel still supports Linux for some software, the company (with funding from Microsoft), has headed back to its Microsoft roots, sans the beleaguered Cowpland.

The Linux Standard Base project announced the release of version 2.1 of the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

See also: last week's Letters page.

Letters to the editor

From:	 Charlie Stross 
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Free downloads of CD images
Date:	 Thu, 12 Apr 2001 12:17:13 +0100

Apropos the lack of a SuSE 7.1 downloadable CD image ...

Here in the UK, I rent a colocated server. Bandwidth costs between £7
and £15 (i.e. $10-$22) per gigabyte per month. Thus, if I were to provide
an FTP service, downloadable CD images would cost roughly $5-$10 a pop.

Of course, by buying bandwidth in bulk (my very own OC3 line!) I could
probably cut the cost by an order of magnitude. And bandwidth costs
in Europe are higher than in the US; again, it's an order of magnitude
cheaper where you're standing.

Nevertheless, the key fact is that those distributors who provide FTP-able
CD images are providing a service which costs them money to run. In the
beginning, when they were poor, they sold CD's. Then they floated or
otherwise became cash rich, and could afford to run FTP servers with
enormous bandwidth. Now that the economy is looking gloomy, is it any
surprise that they're seeking to transfer the burden of costs back onto
the shoulders of the consumers (who are, after all, the people who used
to pay them by purchasing CD's)?

There's a lot to be said for Tannenbaum's Law: "never underestimate the
bandwidth of a pick-up truck travelling cross-country with a trunk full
of magnetic tapes" -- or, in its contemporary incarnation, the bandwidth
of a FedEx parcel full of DVD-ROMs.

NB: I just did the following:

  dd if=/dev/cdrom of=suse-7.1.1.iso
  bzip2 -9 suse-7.1.1.iso

This compressed the image file from 601,997,312 bytes to 507,265,922.
Which suggests to me that there's still a bit of slack space in those
filesystems full of oh-so-compressed RPMs. Given that enhanced
compression would cut the cost (to the distributors!) of running a
download service by up to 15%, maybe it's about time someone looked
into the best way of providing a CDROM image. Maybe a tiny bootable
Rock Ridge partition followed by a highly compressed filesystem?



-- Charlie Stross

I are sigfile disease!!
All your quote are belong to us.
Copy us every "sig"!

From:	 "Lou Grinzo" 
To:	 
Subject: "End of free beer"
Date:	 Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:05:08 -0400

I think your coverage in the "end of free beer" piece was very fair and
enlightening.  But I do want to add one comment: Companies blaming bandwidth
for the need to charge are being disingenuous, to say the least.  There's a
perfectly good way for them to distribute ISO images with very little
bandwidth requirement on their part: They can break them up into pieces and
distribute them via newsgroups.

There are already tools available for doing this, including the
closed-source RAR and my own open-source BitBox, and the process has been
very well worked out a long time ago by the people who exchange things like
CD-size anime movies and other binaries in newsgroups.  All SuSE or anyone
else has to do is upload their ISO image once every two weeks (a very
simple, automated process), and the download burden would be spread across
hundreds or thousands of newsgroup servers around the world.  It also makes
it easier for the user to grab really huge packages, like entire distros, in
pieces, without the hassle of trying to connect to a swamped ftp server,
etc.

I'm amazed that no one in the open source community is routinely doing this,
and I've been trying to convince people to give this approach a chance.
(See my web page for BitBox at
http://home.stny.rr.com/gizmodrome/bitbox.html, for example.)

In fact, I think it might be a good idea to get a few broadband users (like
myself) to band together (The Broadband Band? <g>) and take turns uploading
packages like various distros, the binaries for the latest KDE, GNOME,
Ximian, or whatever.  This should be restricted to just those packages that
can be uploaded legally, of course, but that would clearly help a lot of
people gain better access to free software.



Take care,
Lou Grinzo

From:	 Nathan Myers 
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Wind River Systems' liability
Date:	 Thu, 12 Apr 2001 02:15:19 -0700 (PDT)

From: Nathan Myers <ncm@nospam.cantrip.org>
Re: WRS (alleged) perfidy, and what to do about it

To the editors,

Last week LWN published a letter hinting that Wind River Systems may 
have deliberately violated the GPL.  Readers may wonder, suppose that 
happened to me, what could I do about it?  (Disclaimer: I'm not a 
lawyer, but this is my understanding.  Further, I am only using WRS 
as an example here; I have no personal knowledge of any violations.)

First, if Wind River didn't give you the binaries, they don't owe you
the changed sources.  They are only obliged to offer the sources to 
somebody who got the code from them.

Second, if you're not the copyright holder, you don't have "standing"
to enforce it.  Only the copyright holder and whoever they empower has 
the right to sue.  (In the case of Gdb, I believe this is the FSF.)  
If the FSF decides not to enforce it, they are effectively extending 
additional rights to Wind River Systems beyond what is in the GPL.  
They may choose to demand money from WRS in exchange for that 
extension, e.g. as part of an out-of-court settlement.

Third, if you are the copyright owner of code accepted into Gdb, you 
assigned rights to that code to the FSF, so you still depend on them 
to enforce it.  However, you may have standing to file a suit if the 
FSF just can't be bothered, but will testify that they haven't offered 
WRS any additional rights.  FSF could, in principle, undermine your 
case any time by settling separately with WRS.  Similarly, WRS might 
pay their customer(s) not to testify on your side, making it harder 
to prove your case.  These risks might make it hard to find a lawyer
to take the case "on spec".

Fourth, if WRS does this with a product in which you own code and for
which you *haven't* assigned rights to the FSF, you can sue.  (The Linux 
kernel is an example of a GPL'd work for which copyright assignments 
are not collected.)  Besides forcing WRS to release the code, you might 
collect substantial damages for past violations.  Or, something might go 
wrong (e.g. you miss filing some paper, or you draw a crooked judge) in 
which case you could end up owing various people lots of money.

In summary, it can be pretty hard, and can be dangerous, to enforce 
the GPL.  

Nathan Myers
ncm@nospam.cantrip.org

From:	 Richard Stallman 
To:	 eric@brouhaha.com
Subject: Wind River violating the GPL
Date:	 Sat, 14 Apr 2001 22:12:54 -0600 (MDT)
Cc:	 letters@lwn.net

    I left that company before I could pursue the matter any further.  But
    others have told me that they've had the same experiences with Wind
    River since then.

If anyone has had this experience, he should inform the FSF.  We can
enforce the GPL, if we have people who can swear to the particulars of
a violation.  In general, when you know of a violation of the GPL, you
should always inform the copyright holders of the program in question,
because they are the ones who have "standing to sue" if the license
is violated.

From:	 Havoc Pennington 
To:	 editor@lwn.net
Subject: guadec interoperability progress
Date:	 14 Apr 2001 12:03:35 -0400


Hi,

People might want to read Dave Mason's report from GUADEC here:
  http://people.redhat.com/dcm/guadec.html

Two notable things, first we had a group of KDE hackers at GUADEC and
a keynote by Matthias Ettrich, and a lot of good interaction/planning
went on; second the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors adopted the
following statement:

  We believe that for GNOME to be successful, it needs to interoperate
  with other computing environments and services platforms. Thus we
  are in favor of increased collabration with KDE to insure end users
  will be able to seamlesly mix KDE and GNOME applications.

The fact is that one primary virtue of open source software, and our
big selling point vis-a-vis the proprietary world, is that we put the
needs of the user first - we put the customer in
control. Interoperability is a specific customer need that's
underserved by the proprietary world. So we are making
interoperability - not just with KDE, but with Windows, Java, etc. - a
primary concern of the GNOME project.
 
A second motivation for our statement is the observation that ISVs are
often scared off by press reports of the GNOME/KDE conflict, and they
fear that they will select the wrong desktop to support with their
applications. Thus we are joining with the KDE project to commit to
interoperability, and to ensure that selecting a development platform
for an application will not mean selecting one or another group of
users. That is, ideally, users using GNOME or KDE should not care what
toolkit was used to develop an application. This will be our goal, and
already the GTK+ and Qt teams have been working together on various
initiatives. And of course it's already true that apps written with
GTK+ or Qt will work fine on either desktop; the remaining challenges
are primarily cosmetic.

This is not to say there can't be friendly competition between GNOME
and KDE. But it should be comparable to the competition between
various window managers; they all work with all apps, and the choice
is up to users. Users should even be able to choose some of the
lower-profile desktops such as XFCE or GNUStep if they
like. It's just a harmless user preference. 

Competition on this level is beneficial, a good way to ensure progress
continues - witness the stagnation in Motif/CDE once the "desktop
wars" were over, and compare it to the constant advances made by GNOME
and KDE. But competition must be accompanied by a firm commitment to
interoperability. So we are making that commitment and following
through by working closely with the KDE team.

This isn't all new at GUADEC; see http://www.freedesktop.org where
work has been going on for some time. But progress at GUADEC I hope
makes our seriousness of purpose very clear.  We are firmly committed
to the view that the real war is between free software and proprietary
software. The war between GNOME and KDE is decidedly over, with users
and free software as the victors.

Havoc

From:	 Jim Dennis 
To:	 lwn@lwn.net
Subject: MMU-less CPUs: ucLinux
Date:	 Sun, 15 Apr 2001 15:51:40 -0700

 Regarding:

> Opinion: Inder Singh on The ELC Platform Specification (LinuxDevices)
>  Press, April 14 (Saturday)

> Dr. Inder Singh has written this opinion piece on why he believes
> the ELC Platform Specification will succeed where the POSIX effort
> failed. "Now, there is a real opportunity for Linux to fulfill the
> promise of UNIX and POSIX. Linux is already available from many
> vendors, and since all the different versions start with the same
> kernel, there is a high degree of compatibility and interoperability
> between different embedded Linux distributions. At the same time,
> Moore's law has largely eliminated the resource constraint issue. In
> fact, with the falling prices and increasing power of system-on-chip
> (SOC) devices and memory, and the growing software complexity of
> embedded applications, a Linux style of operating system with its
> process model is an excellent fit for today's high volume embedded
> devices compared to the legacy flat address space real-time
> operating systems that can work with MMU-less CPUs."

 I feel the need to point out that Linux (uCLinux) can run on 
 CPUs which lack MMUs (paging and virtual memory support).

 Naturally more info on uCLinux can be found at http://www.uclinux.org

 It concerns me that Dr. Singh would express such ignorance of
 such an important segment of his own field.  uCLinux is one of the
 major forces in embedded systems.  He re-iterates his lack of 
 interest in non-MMU CPUs in this white paper at
 http://www.lynuxworks.com/products/linuxinitiative.html

 Anyway. That's a nitpick I suppose.  Hopefully Lineo (the company
 with the greatest commercial interest in uCLinux) will use their 
 position on the ELC to ensure that uCLinux is not slighted in 
 drafts of this ELC Platform Spec.


 On another note, here are some of my personal comments on 
 Linux and embedded systems.

 In discussing Linux and embedded systems I think it's useful to 
 distinguish between systems that use the Linux kernel in their
 target hardware, and though that use a tool chain hosted on Linux 
 to support other kernels on the target platform.  

 I'm sure Dr. Singh is familiar with this issue since BlueCat Linux
 is used as a development host for both the LynxOS kernel and for 
 the BlueCat Embedded target.  Perhaps the oversight is deliberate
 since it appears that LynxOS has no support for systems with no MMU.
 (Though one might infer that the BlueCat embedded target might, 
 considering its references to the ARM7 *with MMU*, and other references 
 to other ARM7 and ARM9 systems which don't specify their MMU support).
    (*) http://www.lynuxworks.com/bluecat/index.html

 Once upon a time I perceived a distinction between "turnkey" and 
 "embedded" systems which seems to have been lost.  Perhaps it was
 a misperception on my part.  

 Traditionallly it seemed that the term embedded system referred to
 software/firmware which was incorporated into devices which served
 some primary function that was *not* related to computing or information
 processing.  For example, devices which are "embedded" into a microwave
 oven, or the many MCUs and CPUs that are built into a typical modern
 automobile.  Often these devices have been designed under significant 
 constraints on memory, storage, power consumption, heat dissipation,
 RF emissions and or sensitivity, tolerance to physical vibration and
 G-forces, heat and other hostile environmental factors.

 The term "turnkey" seemed to be applied to dedicated computing 
 devices that were primarily intended to manage data.  Thus POS
 (point-of-sale), and telephony switchgear were traditionally referred
 to as "turnkey" systems rather than embedded systems.  This distinction
 was additionally useful since "turnkey" systems generally were less
 constrained (relative to common desktop and laptop computing equipment).
 In other words the design contraints placed on a telephone switch or
 a POS terminal (cache register) aren't significantly more onerous than
 those placed on a quality server or desktop.  (Oddly enough there are
 somewhat tighter constraints placed on telco equipment regarding RF and
 sound emissions; but they aren't much different).

 By my reckoning a PDA would be a turnkey system.  Like a laptop, it
 is primarily a data/information management device (although it does
 have significant power consumption, heat dissipation, and physical
 size/weight and computing (RAM/storage) footprint constraints.

 However, a cell phone fits into an interest gray area.  It's primary
 function is communications but many ancillary computing functions
 (such as WAP/WML browsers) have been incorporated into new cell 
 phones (with more on the way).
 
 Perhaps this blurring of terminology has occurred because of a 
 blurring and blending of requirements and applications.

From:	 "John D. Rowell" 
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: You would think they would know better by now
Date:	 Fri, 13 Apr 2001 21:43:18 -0700
Cc:	 Henry Kingman ,
	 Rick Lehrbaum 

In the "Linux gets embedded (ZDNet)" story on LWN today ("Press, 
April 13 (Friday the 13th)"), you reserved a paragraph to mock the use of
"clone" as the relationship between Linux and Unix, as a display of
how theoretically incompetent the source of the article was.

May I recommend that the LWN Editors take a moment to check out the 
following quite authoritative link:

	http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/README

or simply open up the README file in the root directory of _any_
Linux kernel (2.4.3-ac5 for instance, if the above link doesn't
seem to be up to date enough), and pay special attention to the
paragraph under "WHAT IS LINUX?".

I guess the old saying _is_ true, nobody reads the documentation
anymore. sigh.

_jd_

-- 
John D. Rowell      <me@jdrowell.com>        <jdrowell@appwatch.com>
[irc: jdrowell]     http://jdrowell.com      http://appwatch.com
[icq: 6273503 ]     my GPL'd apps            Free Software / Open Source
[pgp: http://jdrowell.com/pgpkey] "I see fat people!"

From:	 M Carling 
To:	 lwn@lwn.net
Subject: Correction
Date:	 Thu, 12 Apr 2001 13:58:25 -0700 (PDT)
Cc:	 michael@helixcode.com

Bonobos are not monkeys.  They are apes.  BTW, "very good at coupling" is
a great euphemism.  Bonobos mate about 20 times per day.  Also, Bonobos
and humans are the only mammals that can mate face to face.

The family tree looks like this:


                             Primates
                               /  \
                              /    \
                             /      \
                            /        \
                           /          \
                         Apes        Monkeys
                         /  \          /|\
                        /    \        / | \
                       /      \
                      /        \
                     /          \
                    /            \
                 Lesser         Great
                  Apes           Apes
             (e.g. Baboons)      /  \
                  /|\           /    \
                 / | \         /      \
                              /        \
                             /          \
                        Orangatang      /\
                                       /  \
                                      /    \
                                     /      \
                                    /        \
                                   /       Gorilla
                                  /
                                 /\
                                /  \
                               /    \
                              /      \
                             Man     /\
                                    /  \
                                   /    \
                                  /      \
                                 /        \
                              Bonobo    Chimpanzee