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Linux in the news

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Court Orders DVD-Copying Defendant To Trial In California. A California appeals court has ruled that DeCSS defendant and LiViD developer Matthew Pavlovich must stand trial in California. C|Net reports that this ruling means that California has jurisdiction over anyone on the Internet who violates California law, even if they don't live in California. "Because of the ruling, others involved in the case living outside California will remain under the state's jurisdiction. The ruling could show that the Internet is not immune to California's long-arm statutes even when the publisher of the site is located outside the state."

Data Underdogs (ZDNet). Open source databases have some catching up to do, according to this Interactive Week article. ``Open source database vendors concede that they have some work to do on these fronts. The online backup feature of NuSphere's $299 MySQL Advantage "is not quite as transparent as it needs to be," [NuSphere chief technology officer Britt] Johnston says. What he means is that a database user sees a pause in the system when it performs a backup operation, a shortcoming that will be eliminated "in the next month or so," he says.''

Hidden Pitfalls in .Net Open Source? (ZDNet). ZDNet says many open source advocates are skeptical that Mono won't include hidden patent limitations. "... as part of the transfer protocol, it is a potential dependency for all developers who have to mimic the Windows file system and seek to interoperate with it. For example, successful interoperation with Samba might make the Samba project subject to Microsoft demands for patent licenses and royalties."

Microsoft's bait and switch. Here is the second half of Nicholas Petreley's critique of Mono, in InfoWorld. "Unless some entrepreneur creates a company to kill off Passport with a cheaper, better service, Mono will be a covenant with death. If Ximian encourages open-source developers to write e-commerce applications that access Passport, it actually hands Microsoft the key to killing off open-source e-commerce once and for all."

Civil Rights or Copyrights? (SFGate). Here's a strongly-written piece about Dmitry Sklyarov on the SFGate site. "At best, the United States must look fairly foolish to the international community. At worst, our detainment of a foreign national under a dubious commercial code must seem a reprehensible violation of civil liberties and a thumbing of our noses at international law."

The Other Open Source Conference of July 2001 (O'Reilly). Andy Oram covers the Ottawa Linux Symposium on the O'Reilly web site. "Four hundred and fifty people crammed into a basement of the Ottawa Congress Center makes for a high-pressure atmosphere. You certainly wouldn't be able to fit a single dancer in a penguin suit. I found the setting claustrophobic after a couple hours, but there's no doubt that the restricted setting facilitated intense personal interaction."

Companies

Cooltown tour shows HP's commitment to Linux (LinuxWorld). The revamped LinuxWorld site covers HP's new Cooltown project. "The hardware portion of Cooltown consists of the taggy, the beacon, and a Linux powered computing device called a baseboard. The design and reference documents for all three are GPL'd, so anyone wanting to build the devices is able to do so."

Update: The hardware for the baseboard is an EBX form-factor embedded-PC, a proprietary product manufactured by Jumptec-Adastra. (Thanks to Rick Lehrbaum.)

Linux slips off Dell's PCs (News.com). C|Net is reporting that Dell has stopped shipping desktop Linux pre-installed on their systems, but will continue to pre-install Red Hat 7.1 server systems. " Despite an initial splash last year, and efforts by groups such as Gnome to build graphical user interfaces to run on top of Linux, it has been difficult for the operating system to get a foot in the door of the desktop market, said RedHat spokesperson Melissa London."

Deal Boosts IBM's Grid Computing Push (TechWeb). IBM will provide hardware and software to the British government according to this TechWeb article. It's part of "a $50 million effort to link high-powered computers used in scientific research to a national British computing grid that will act as a single virtual supercomputer. At the same time, IBM is aggressively looking for ways to push grid technology for use in business computing environments."

LynuxWorks cuts headcount 15 percent (LinuxDevices). LinuxDevices covers the layoffs at embedded Linux seller LynuxWorks. ``LynuxWorks has experienced much more of a decline in services income than in product revenue this year. "Customers have been moving to in-house development and away from outside services due to the economic slowdown," said [LynuxWorks Chairman Inder] Singh.''

On2's video codec to go open-source (News.com). C|Net reports on the open source release of On2's video codec VP3.2. "On2 is betting that the open-source version of its code will be a way for the company to market its technologies and appeal to developers, especially because the main alternatives, including RealNetworks and Microsoft's codec, still remain proprietary."

Heads Still High at Red Hat Software Company (News & Observer). The Raleigh "News & Observer" reports on Red Hat's most recent stock holders' meeting. "Right now, [Chief Marketing Officer James J.] Neiser's focus is recruiting more software vendors to make versions of their programs -- customer-relationship management, retail systems, financial programs and the like -- to run on Linux."

Resources

Lineo launches 'anti-FUD' campaign with license ID tool (LinuxDevices). LinuxDevices carries Lineo's announcement of a tool to check licenses on open source software. "Lineo has developed the Lineo Embedix SDK GPL Compliance Toolset that helps developers identify and comply with open source and proprietary licenses while decreasing overall development time. When initiated against the developer's software project, this toolset identifies source code pulled from more than 40 common licenses, such as GPL, LGPL, BSD, Artistic, and Lineo..."

Introducing the Mac Open Source Software Directory (OReilly). O'Reilly has integrated the Mac Open Source Software Directory into their own Mac DevCenter. The site now contains over 100 entries of open source software for Mac systems.

Reviews

The Ultimate Cluster (TechWeb). TechWeb reviews the The Ultimate Cluster, Scalant Systems Inc. S600 series: "four distinct hot-swappable servers inside a 1U chassis, each with its own power, processor, drives and network interfaces.

Each server in the S600 is preloaded with Red Hat Linux 7.1, along with the usual crowd of open-source server utilities and applications provided by Red Hat, including the Apache Web server."

Miscellaneous

Revenge of the Nerds' Stereotype (Linux Journal). Linux Journal takes a look at how geek culture has evolved, now that grandma can use instant messaging. "More horrifying to me is, when relieved in a social setting of a barrage of computer-related topics and questions, a loose acquaintance actually expresses surprise that I'm talking about something other than computers. This must surely relate a gross breakdown of my ability to break out of my IT stereotype. It seems that if I manage a new introduction without mention of my profession, I can happily avoid the topic of computers indefinitely, without lack of conversational material."

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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