See also: last week's Letters page.

Letters to the editor

From:	 Michael Robertson <michael@lindows.com>
To:	 lwn@lwn.net
Subject: Your lwn piece on Lindows.com
Date:	 Thu, 31 Jan 2002 15:13:43 -0800
Cc:	 john@lindows.com,cheryl@lindows.com

Jonathan,

I read your LWN.net piece referencing Lindows.com.

I concur that "it's about the software, and sustainable ways to ensure its 
continued development." which was a reference to the entire software 
business, not Lindows.com.

I do think you unfairly criticized Lindows.com and misled your readers with 
your comment, "Lindows is trying to present itself as part of the free 
software community. So, for example, we now have the 'LindowsBuzz'". 
Lindows.com did not create, commission or have any affiliation with 
LindowsBuzz or any of the sites you mentioned. Your suggestion otherwise is 
in error and it would have been simple for you to verify by contacting us 
with a simple email message.

Your entitled to your opinion that "Lindows is seemingly unaware of how the 
Linux community works; it would like to wear the trappings of the community 
without actually being a part of it". But perhaps your readers would be 
interested in some actual facts. Lindows.com has contributed code to open 
source projects. Lindows.com has given financial support to several open 
source initiatives. Lindows.com has made significant investments in linux 
companies, and we have hired open source companies to help us reach our 
goals. In addition, we've recently released an early version of our 
product. We have accomplished this in just 5 months.

I am constantly surprised at the harsh treatment many young companies 
receive in linux focus publications based solely on a writers conjecture 
and opinion rather than any attempt at a balanced presentation of the 
facts. I hope you'll keep an open mind in the future about Lindows.com and 
give us some realistic time to achieve the big goals we have set.

-- MR

Lindows.com
michael@lindows.com
858-410-5941

Bring choice to computers: Become a Lindows.com Insider 
http://www.lindows.com/signup 

From:	 Robert Davies <rob_davies@ntlworld.com>
To:	 lwn@lwn.net
Subject: LSB and Distributions - SuSE box claims support of LSB standard
Date:	 Fri, 1 Feb 2002 22:12:58 +0000

> The time has come for the Linux distributors to either announce their plans 
> for standards compliance, or to explain why they feel this compliance is no 
> longer necessary. The time for waiting is over

I cannot agree more.  From outside of SuSE 7.3 Update box :

    All software packages in RPM format; source code in SRPM format.
   This version was compiled with gcc 2.95.3.  SuSE supports the LSB standard.

Unfortunately in reviews I've seen there is little mention of this.  They 
altered their filesystem hierarchy and have included innserv(8) which 
implements the LSB init.d stuff, and the script '/usr/lib/lsb/install_initd' 
has existed since SuSE 7.1.

I switched from Red Hat after looking at RH 7.0, and realising 
the iplications of gcc 2.96, and it's C++ linking incopatabilities with 2.95 
and earlier, and gcc 3.0. 

Without some positive publicity for Distributions which have taken steps for 
LSB compliance, I fear the momentum behind LSB will be lost.  It may become 
an ignored lost standard, in the face of more exciting 'cool' stuff.  Few of 
the enthusiasts on the net are bothered by it, as of course they prefer a 
"./configure; make; su -c 'make install'"  cycle anyway.

Rob

From:	 Adam Wosotowsky <adam@trellisinc.com>
To:	 lwn@lwn.net
Subject: Linux Standarc Base commment
Date:	 Mon, 4 Feb 2002 12:13:29 -0500

I just wanted to make a comment that you may or may not have heard
before and perhaps you can factor into your comments on the LSB.

The LSB has a great chance to be counter-productive.  I have a friend
who began a little movement to replace the GNU utils with linux-specific
ones.  This can greatly increase the speed of an ls, or mv, or cp
because it only has to work on linux.  Unfortunatley this little quest
for effective linux-only replacement has been somewhat sidelined because
the LSB was written by looking at GNU manpages, which are going to
include a lot of stuff that most linux users never ever use.  For
example, why require an "exclude this pattern" option in command XXX
when a simple little use of grep could accomplish the same thing?

Anyhow, I agree that the vision of the LSB is a good one, but am wary of
its effects on the development of new versions of the same "old" tools.
I don't require a response, I just wanted to give some food for thought.

I really enjoy LWN, BTW.  <smile>

--adam

From:	 Pete Flugstad <pete_flugstad@icon-labs.com>
To:	 tina@newsforge.com
Subject: Re: Out of the box, Linux is 'dreadfully insecure'
Date:	 Thu, 31 Jan 2002 17:44:34 -0600
Cc:	 letters@lwn.net

Ms Gasperson,

   I agree with almost everything you say in your article:

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/29/1635245&mode=thread

except the title.  I don't know who picked it, but lets be
objective here: "dreadfully insecure".  As compared to say,
Windows XP.  While some Linux distro's may have problems with
defualt configurations that rather insecure, it's a darn sight
better than ANY OS Microsoft has EVER shipped.

In addition, many distros (I know Red Hat and Mandrake in
particular) are well aware of what their default settings
are, and over the last 2 years have taken great strides in
tightening their default security settings.  Go install
Red Hat 6.1 or 6.2, and compare it's default settings to
Red Hat 7.2.  You'll see a world of difference in the number
of services that are enabled by default (very few actually),
firewall settings, setuid settings, etc.

Now compare this to XP again - Microsoft yet again ships
an OS with everything and the kitchen sink (can you say
UPnP) enabled.  This on a *consumer* os.  IMO, that's
_dreadfully_ insecure.

As I noted above, the article itself is quite good.

Please, try to be a little more objective in chosing titles,
and try and choose a title that actually has something to
do with the information in the article, which I found
quite informative.

Thanks,
Pete Flugstad

From:	 "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Maddog on DVD's
Date:	 Tue, 5 Feb 2002 22:13:29 -0500

I must admit, I'm a little surprised at Jon.

He asserts, in a CNet News story to which LWN linked this week, that
the movie industry "cite[s] illegal pirating" of movies to justfiy
region coding.

This is not only not the reason that they do this, it's not even -- I
don't believe -- the reason that they admit to in public.

What's really at issue here, you see, is that they can make more
*money* if they restrict when things are issued in different
territories.  So they put a region locking code on the disc, and code
in the players to prevent discs from more than one region from being
playable at a time.

You *can* reprogram the region code to deal with "I moved to England",
(though as maddog notes, you would still have to deal power issues --
though maybe not with signal standards; *my* $80 player does both NTSC
and PAL).

But you can only do it some small, finite number of times (like, maybe,
5 or 10) before the player locks up on you.

But avoiding *this* is a red herring anyway; since region coding
doesn't involve encryption, it has nothing to do with DMCA.

What you become a federal felon for doing is unlocking CSS -- the
Content Scrambling System, which encrypts the data used to play back
the DVD in the first place.

Now, we're probably mostly familiar with the DeCSS case -- Norwegian
Johansen has been arrested by his local police at the behest of the
MPAA (yeah, that's right), and that's not to mention the fiasco with
Eric Corley of 2600 Magazine, enjoined from *linking* to other sites
which publish DeCSS source code.

In fashions ranging from Perl source through English to Haiku.

Corporate America continues to behave in the amoral fashion we have
designed it to -- trying to maximize profit at the expense of anything
we'd call reasonable behavior.  It continues to buy off legislators to
modify laws in such a fashion as to deprive American citizens of more
and more of their rights.  I see no reason it won't continue to do
this, and the more unreasonable commercial laws which are passed, and
the more frequently we're forced to break the law in the course of what
*used to be* normal living...

the less we will, as a citizenry, respect the law in general. 

I used to think it was just a joke, when I saw the words "Second
American Revolution" in science fiction novels.

Not anymore.  I'm figuring on the War of 2012, at the very latest.

Unless we fix it.

Unless we take back our government.

"When they came for me, there was no one left to speak up."

"Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."

And most importantly, these days:

"They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary security,
deserve neither liberty, nor security."

(This sounds off topic maybe... but if you haven't been following SSSCA
v Linux, or can't make the connection, then I feel sorry for you.  I
think it's perfectly on topic, myself.  Freedom is the point here, no?)

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink                             RFC 2100
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

   "If you don't have a dream; how're you gonna have a dream come true?"
     -- Captain Sensible, The Damned (from South Pacific's "Happy Talk")

From:	 Martin C.Atkins <mcatkins@giasbg01.vsnl.net.in>
To:	 lwn@lwn.net
Subject: PDA and Telephone Convergence: The Death of Linux on the PDA?
Date:	 Sat, 2 Feb 2002 11:28:38 +0530

PDA and Telephone Convergence: The Death of Linux on the PDA?

Everyone seems to be saying that PDAs and mobile phones are going to
converge, and we are beginning to see the first effective devices
coming out now. I'm worried that this is going to lock Linux
out of the PDA marketplace.

The crux of the problem is that these devices seem to share much of the
non-DSP-type phone functionality with the PDA functionality, and
on the same processor. Thus it will not be easy to do what was
done for the iPAQ, and replace the PDA operating system - that
will leave a complex interface to the DSP part of the phone to
be replaced, and even if it can be worked out what to do (which
will probably be different for each phone model), what
regularatory issues might have to be resolved before the result
can be used? (I don't know the answer, but I suspect the situation
might be like that of dumb ISDN adaptors, where some of the driver
code has had to go through type-approval mechanisms before the
device can legally - at least in some countries - be attached to
the phone line.)

This issue seems to affect both types of device:
1) Phones with added PDA functionality, and
2) PDAs with GSM/GPRS/etc interfaces added.

How can we hope to get Linux on either of these (without effectively
throwing away the phone functionality!)? Talking the phone manufacturers
into using Linux themselves doesn't seem likely, given the alliances
they have made with Symbian, etc. (See the receent article about
huge cash investments from phone company investors into Symbian)
Equally, it seems unlikely that Palm, for example, would embrace
Linux (Unfortunately :-) !

The only place where this does not seem to be a problem is the
two-box scenario: phone + PDA connected by Bluetooth (probably),
since Linux is already on PDAs, and Bluetooth stacks already exist.
But, although I think I personally favour this arrangement for other
reasons, I can't see it being the popular one! (At least, not once
someone gets their act together and produces a half-decent Bluetooth
headset! Aside: that, for example, does stereo, so that the PDA/phone
can also be an MP3 player, without using *another* headset!)

The recently reported growing popularity of Nokia's 9210, only
confirms my worries. Handspring are also now saying that they do not
believe there is a future in unconnected PDAs. The only hope is
that some of the current rash of Linux-based PDAs can buck this trend
by providing the phone functionality themselves (not easy to do!). 

I don't really mind (too much) phones being closed devices, but I *would*
*like* my organiser to be open, and it's looking more and more as if PDAs
without phone functionality are dead products in the medium to long term,
and if Linux can't move onto these products, it will die in this arena
with the unconnected PDA.

Oh dear!
Can anyone point out what I'm missing?

Martin
-- 
Martin C. Atkins	martin@mca-ltd.com
Mission Critical Applications Ltd, U.K.