Other stuff:
Contact us
Archives/search
Links
Calendar
Daily Updates

Recent features:
- The Mindcraft Report
- BitKeeper - not quite open source
- Alan Cox interview
- 1998 Timeline

Here is the permanent site for this page.

Leading items

The new, larger VA Research will be organized into three separate companies, "VA Linux Systems, which will build and sell machines and support them; VA Linux Labs, a facility dedicated to enhancing and growing the open source code operating system; and Linux.com, a soon-to-debut portal."

Linux beat Windows NT handily in an Oracle performance benchmark which was posted this week. The benchmark placed untuned "out of the box" systems on identical hardware and used the TPC benchmark suite. Unfortunately, the results can no longer be read on the net; instead, readers will find a notesaying that the benchmark results have been pulled and are no longer available.

The reason for this? It seems that neither Oracle nor TPC allow benchmark results involving their software to be published without prior permission. Thus, we see illustrated in the most graphic form one of the differences between free and proprietary software. Free software does not seek to restrict how it may be used, or what can be said about it. Proprietary software, instead, uses its licensing agreements to silence its users.

Now, of course, there are reasons for this behavior. One could say, for example, that these companies are simply trying to prevent the publication of something like the Mindcraft report that has drawn so much scorn over the last couple of weeks. There's probably some truth to that. Much bad behavior comes as the result of good intentions. But, in the end, freedom is more important.

The GCC/EGCS merger we mentioned last week got its official confirmation from Richard Stallman. This good news should signal the end of one of the more unfortunate code forks we have seen in recent times. It was unfortunate that a code fork was necessary to counteract the stagnation of gcc development and lucky for all of us that doing quality work and being patient paid off for the egcs team, allowing them to meet their original goal of re-integrating with the gcc tree.

It is also an interesting measure of the success of the "Bazaar" style of development versus the "Cathedral", as originally defined in Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar paper, which essentially predicted this end result. Whether commercial or free, software development progresses fastest and with the highest quality results when it is done in a process that is fully open to scrutiny and contributions from all sources.

The Atlanta Linux Showcase (ALS) has issued its Call-for-Papers. The ALS will happen October 12th through the 16th, 1999, in Atlanta, Georgia. This year, for the first time, the ALS is sponsored by Usenix as well as by the Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts, who founded it, and Linux International. This is the first entrance of Usenix, a well-reputed, volunteer-based non-profit organization that has been sponsoring Unix-related events for a very, very long time.

Usenix' choice to support ALS, already volunteer-driven, rather than to introduce yet another competing Linux conference, is very promising. A reasonable number of extremely well done large events scattered across the year and the country will serve all of us better than a too-crowded calendar of events all with the same speakers and topics. The Usenix folks should bring some good experience and ideas to support the ALE folks who've done such a good job of the event the last two years.

This Week's LWN was brought to you by:

• Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor
• Elizabeth O. Coolbaugh, Managing Editor

See also: last week's Security page.

Security

News

ComputerWorld covers the FreeS/Wan release. "...although IPSec is an effective security protocol, corporate information technology managers may want to wait until a vendor incorporates FreeS/WAN into a commercial release."

A report from the Security Research Alliance's Crystal Ball Symposium, held last week, was written by Jim Reavis from SecurityPortal.com. The purpose of the symposium was to take a look at security issues over the next two to five years. Some interesting points come up. In particular, the failure of the Firewall to solve all our security problems was addressed. "It is now recognized that strong firewalls, authentication and crypto systems are the Maginot line of Internet Security. Security holes exist, either in the products themselves, or in the gaps created by company policy or social engineering. No matter how hard we try, no single system can be made impervious to attack, therefore we can trust no "1". What are needed are layered defenses and a distributed model of trust. It also gives an interesting example of a distributed model of trust in the Costa Rican voting project case study. This is a recommended read.

Most of the recommendations from the Symposium are a ways off, but it will be interesting to see how the Linux community responds to the offered challenges. Will people agree that just fixing bugs and firewalling systems are not enough? What intrusion detection, quarantine and distributed models of trust are likely to come from within? It is soundly to be hoped that open source and free software solutions will be developed, so that we are not left dependent on commercial implementations.

Spam from the Anti-Spam? This article from the Denver Post, Denver, CO, covers the amusing, and unexpected, results from a poll to collect information to promote anti-spam efforts. "A Miami concern called the Internet Polling Committee is inviting Netizens to vent their frustration about unsolicited, commercial e-mail -- a.k.a. spam -- by participating in a survey whose results will be sent to Congress, America Online and the national media. But in an ironic twist, the group is soliciting votes by sending ... unsolicited, commercial e-mail. "

Security Reports

All versions of OpenLinux need an updated bash package, according to this Caldera advisory.

Privacy issues with ffingerd were reported on Bugtraq. You may want to check them out if you use this program.

Events

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

See also: last week's Kernel page.

Kernel development

Documentation of Linux kernel tuning parameters is the objective of a new project that is just getting underway. This effort, of course, is inspired by the fallout from the Mindcraft report, and the real realization that information on how to tune Linux systems is hard to come by. "Use the source" is not the right sort of answer for Mindcraft, or for a lot of other Linux users who simply want to get the best out of their systems. This documentation project is looking for people with writing skills to help out; according to the announcement sent out by Rik van Riel, they currently have more technical ability than time or writing skills. Please have a look if you think you can help out.

What is the status of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) project? Some curiosity on the subject led to the posting of pointers to The Linux USB web page. A quick perusal there reveals that this project seems to be proceeding nicely. A fair amount of functionality is in place now, with more on the way. The latest release, as of this writing, happened on April 25.

An audio CD filesystem. Senko Rasic came up with an interesting idea: make a new file system which presents an audio CD as a set of .WAV files. Access to audio CD data thus becomes an easy thing. See his posting for some details and a pointer to the software.

A new version of mount has been released; this version is intended for people using the NFSv3 beta patches on 2.2 kernels. See the announcement for more.

TCP networking flakes out after 48 days of uptime on 64-bit systems. Or, at least, it did until David "punk kid" Miller posted a patch for the problem. It seems there was a bit of confusion between the 64-bit system and the 32-bit timestamps that TCP uses. When it was pointed out that the patch was very quick in coming, David responded to the contrary: clearly, the bug is already more than 48 days old...

A new version of strace is out under the new maintainership of Debian leader Wichert Akkerman. See his announcement for more. There is also a new release of the PPSkit, the nanosecond timekeeping patches for the 2.2 kernel; details in the announcement.

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

For other kernel news, see:

• LinuxHQ
• Kernel traffic

See also: last week's Distributions page.

Distributions

Caldera

A minor install bug in Caldera OpenLinux 2.2, only affects systems with riva238 video cards.

Overall impressions of OpenLinux 2.2, both good and bad, came out in this user's report to caldera-users.

Debian

They also reported that the the long anticipated LDAP-enabled developer database was up and running and had been used to generate a list of accounts on master for people not on the Debian keyring. Check for your name, because these accounts are currently earmarked for removal.

The Y2K status of various Debian packages can be viewed at this website, maintained by Craig Small.

Dale Scheetz has resigned from his position as Secretary of the SPI board, citing his work for the LSB and other projects. Nils Lohner is expected to replace him.

easyLinux

G2 Linux

MkLinux

Red Hat

CDs of Red Hat 6.0 in Germany are already available here.

SuSE

UltraPenguin

XTeamLinux

Yellow Dog Linux

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.

Known Distributions:
Caldera OpenLinux
Debian GNU/Linux
Definite Linux
easyLinux
Easylinux-kr
Independence
LinuxGT
LinuxPPC
Mandrake
MkLinux
PROSA Debian GNU/Linux
Red Hat
Slackware
Stampede
SuSE
Trinux
TurboLinux
uClinux
UltraPenguin
XTeamLinux
Yellow Dog Linux

See also: last week's Development page.

Development tools

Java

Immediate reports on the new release indicate that it is working smoothly and doing a great job at speeding up code.

WebMacro Servlet Framework 0.85.2 is a Java servlet development framework released under the GPL.

An unofficial implementation of j3d has been released by Jean-Christophe Taveau.

Perl

Perl 5.004 is still being maintained, even though perl 5.005 has been released. Therefore, a new maintenance release for perl 5.004 has been announced on the Perl News page.

The O'Reilly perl tutorials in Boston were also spoken of on the Perl News page, with all indications that they are going well.

Python

Tcl/tk

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

Development projects

Gimp

Gnome

KDE

Programming with Qt is a new book recently announced by O'Reilly and written by Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, a contract programmer who specializes in cross-platform software development and uses Qt to allow him to write an application once and compile it for Unix and Windows systems. "This is about what Java promises, but without the slowness of the application and the horrible development tools that still hamper Java application development."

A KDE mirror in China is now available from Pacific HiTech's TurboLinux site.

Linuxconf

Wine

Zope

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

See also: last week's Commerce page.

Linux and business

How should VAR's treat Linux? Just like any other operating system, according to this VAR Business article. "[Jon Hall] says there's no reason why VARs can't charge NT-like prices for product packages made of commercial software or hardware integrated with Linux. Customers aren't afraid of Linux, they just want their money's worth..."

Another Linux IPO in the works. Watchguard Technologies, makers of cute, fire-engine red, Linux-based firewall boxes has announced that it is filing for an initial stock offering. (Thanks to Kirk Petersen).

A couple of new Linux system announcements out there: The Computer Underground has rolled out a $996 Linux/Windows dual-boot system. And EIS has announced a rack-mount UltraSPARC Linux system aimed at ISP's; one assumes it costs rather more.

SGI's Linux strategy is coming soon, according to this InfoWorld article. "SGI ... will focus its Linux server offerings on machines for telecommunications and Internet service providers, where the operating system is particularly popular."

Linux administrator demographics. The Linux Professional Institute has published some results from the Linux system administrator survey they ran a few weeks ago, and which drew over 1400 responses. "The study found that the typical Linux administrator is a 27 year old male with 2 years of [ college. He uses 2 Linux distributions, one of them being Red Hat. He runs Linux at home and at work, and has been a Linux user for about 4 years. He also administers Microsoft and non-Linux unix servers and workstations."

German-based Infoconnect announced on April 27th that they are now offering internet gateways based on Linux for SOHO (small office, home office) networks.

A new online Linux store. QLITech Linux Computers has announced their new on-line store. Located at http://www.qlitech.net, they offer "pre-configured, and custom built linux workstations as well as servers".

Linux certification testing. Sylvan Prometric will be doing the testing for Linux Certification from Sair, one of the commerically-based entries into the Linux certification business.

Press Releases:

• Dell, now pre-installing Red Hat 6.0
• Penguin Computing has announced that it will join Dell in shipping only Red Hat Linux 6.0 on its systems.
• RedCreek, supporting Red Hat 6.0 for its IPSec VPN card
• Proven Software, general account software written specifically for Linux.
• Compatible Systems Corporation, sponsoring the High-Speed Remote Access Hot Spot at Networld+Interop.
• MKS, MKS Source Integrity, an SCM tool, now supported on Linux
• Microlite, RecoverEDGE fully integrated, configurable crash recovery solution for Linux
• Red Hat and Ariel Corp, Ariel to provide Linux-based PCI remote access solutions for Red Hat customers
• Cybernet, NetMAX for Linux beta, integrated network server software
• WebTrends announced enterprise reporting server for Linux
• South Pole, new Swedish company selling Linux products and services (in Swedish)

Section Editor: Jon Corbet.

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

Linux in the news

Nicholas Petreley's latest piece has hit CNN and he's ready to teach the uninitiated how to appreciate Linux. "I recommend you deploy Linux according to the following principle: Don't use Linux as if it were Windows. In other words, make your personal computers a little less personal and centralize whenever possible. This allows you to realize the promise of network computing." (Thanks to John Caulfei\ ld).

This article in Computer Reseller News is about the advantages of open source software in general. "...whether or not you care about Linux, you should care about the open-source movement in general. Customers clearly are looking for more control over their information-technology solutions. Now, more than ever, this choice will extend to software."

This week's OpenLine column in Fairfax IT claims that Microsoft and the free software community are good for each other. "Whether you are an advocate or a company hoping to surf the OpenSource/Free Software wave, Microsoft is your best ally."

Performance Computing has set up a new Linux-IT area containing pointers to their Linux articles. Some old stuff can be found there, along with this lengthy piece on corporate adoption of Linux. "The value of Linux is underscored among IT managers who already have overseen open-source projects using Intel 386, 486, and Pentium machines no longer able run the latest Windows releases at acceptable performance levels. These systems were turned into corporate Web sites, database servers, departmental file and print servers, and intranet firewalls-reliably, securely, and cheaply."

Web Review reviews a set of thin server systems, including a number which run Linux.

TechWeb reported on the VA Research acquisitions in this article. "VA Research Linux Systems, which made itsname selling Linux boxes, has bought two of itscompetitors: Linux Hardware Solutions, in Wilmington, N.C., and Enlightened Solutions, in Atlanta. "

What's your Linux strategy? asks Web Review. "In other news, Al Gore has nearly finished putting together the platform for his Presidential bid. Sources close to the Vice President say he will release it as soon as he wraps up the last details of his Linux strategy."

This brief article (in German) in Heise Online is about a lottery system in Germany. Demand on the system forced a higher-performance upgrade, so they went with Oracle's application server and Linux. English translation available via Babelfish. (Thanks to Johannes Gritsch).

An advice column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram received a question: "should I use Linux?" Here's their answer: "I'd recommend you using it, but not installing it. That's what your good buddy at work is for. You know who I'm talking about: the four-eyed geek in Information Systems who gives 'socially dysfunctional' a whole new spin."

Linux on laptops will get easier to find, according to this Computer Reseller News article. "Within 30 days, IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., plans to increase its support of Linux by shipping a base model ThinkPad notebook for use with the operating system, said Phil Hester, chief technology officer for IBM's Personal Systems Group. 'We plan to ship a base machine without any operating system on it so you could load any form of Linux you want,' he said."

An interview with Grady Booch, one of the proclaimed "fathers of object-oriented programming", touched upon free and open source software. Clearly, it is a concept he is not yet ready to embrace. "``It's a great example of capitalism at play. Red Hat, which has probably not added anything to the semantic nature of Linux, has made a lot of money out of repackaging it. I don't know how long that slave labor will continue.'' He said that giving software away for free couldn't last long and he was ``yet to see any Fortune 1000 company bet a major part of their strategy on Linux''." (Thanks to Stefane Fermigier).

The Raleigh-Durham Triangle Business Journal shows a level of knowledge of Linux probably not always found in the investment world, answering an often-seen question nowadays, how can I invest in Linux? After touching on Corel and Applix, they end up with a tip to watch for a Red Hat IPO in the near future. 'In the meantime, however, the best advice is to find a job at Red Hat or marry someone there. The "friends and family" allocation of the IPO is about the only way that the average investor will get shares of this hot little number.'

SCO's CEO Doug Michels sneers at Linux in this ComputerWorld interview. "Linux is a religion. It's like considering the Catholic Church a competitor. I'm not a religion; I'm a commercial operating system. Companies like Red Hat ... take Linux technology with a lot less value added, and they package it up and say, 'Hey, this is better than SCO.' Well, it isn't. And very few customers are buying that story."

Business week has run a whole set of articles on Linux. Linux takes off, but where is it really going? is a mostly introductory article about the rise of Linux. It is amusing that they point out the fact that Linux "has only half the market share of NT" as a negative - imagine reading those words a year ago. They have interviews with Eric Raymond, and, to get the other side, Microsoft's Ed Muth. Finally, this article discusses the GPL and raises questions about its viability in court.

Red Hat 6.0 Release Coverage:

TechWeb has an article on the new Red Hat Linux 6.0 release, along with some comments on the Caldera OpenLinux release. Nothing particularly new. Built on top of the newly-minted Linux 2.2 kernel, the release should fuel the growing momentum behind Durham, N.C.-based Red Hat.

News.com's article on Red Hat Linux 6.0 includes some better details. It mentions rpm 3.0 is included, which promises to do better compatibility checking to make sure installed packages will work and the availability of Kickstart, for automated, customized installations. Erik Troan seems to be the source for the more technical details. Troan said the new kernel improves Linux multiprocessor performance during tasks such as executing scripts to deliver custom Web pages, compiling software, or accessing databases. He said the company sees linear performance improvements going up to four processors, but doesn't have data on eight-processor machines.

Comdex Reports

Information Week has run a general article about events in the Linux world, evidently inspired by Comdex. "The battle of the operating systems took center stage last week."

Byte.com interviews Linus is a nice, chatty piece, with some nostalgia thrown in and overall a good impression of someone who got a taste of what it can be like in the Linux community from the Linux reception at Comdex. "The camaraderie was there. The technical largess was there. What was delightfully missing was hype, marketing mavens, and over-testosteroned sales guys. How refreshing." (Thanks to Andreas Sikkema).

Stephen Adler has put up an extensive writeup of Linus's visit to FNAL and the Comdex experience.

Here's a report on LinuxPower from Comdex in Chicago.

The Edmonton Journal ran a brief article about Comdex. "Microsoft takes up the single largest chunk of floor space at Comdex for its Windows 2000 system. But the densest crowds have flocked to a cluster of booths that feature Linux..."

This Cox News service article demonstrated the reaction of one person to the presence of Linux at Comdex, someone who clearly doesn't know what is different about Linux and free software ..."What I am here to tell you is that other, more powerful companies have made the same boast of crushing Microsoft . . . and have done it with at least as much logic."

Introductory Linux Articles

C|Net has put up Ten Questions About Linux. It's a sort of FAQ for people who know nothing about the system.

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

See also: last week's Announcements page.

Announcements

Resources

Events

The Challenges of the Network Society is a conference being sponsored by UC Berkeley that will focus on "the questions and anxieties raised by rapid developments in such digital technology as the Internet". Linus Torvalds is one of the featured guest speakers and will be talking on "the danger of big companies controlling the Internet, stifling new technological innovations." The conference is being held Friday, April 30th at UC Berkeley.

Web sites

The Open Source Who's Who is now more modem-friendly. Michael Ball sent us this note with updated information on the site, including a mention that their contest has been updated to make it easier to win ...

Another Linux portal site has hit the web, this one can be found at vaxxine.com and claims to be "the start page for Linux professionals."

User Group News

Software Announcements

Our software announcements are provided courtesy of FreshMeat

See also: last week's Back page page.

Linux links of the week

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

Letters to the editor

Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 15:15:23 +0100 (GMT)
From: dev@cegelecproj.co.uk
Subject: Possible RedHat IPO
To: lwn@lwn.net

Amidst talk about a possible RedHat IPO, and hints on how to get a
slice of the action, I hate to sound a note of caution, but ...

It is almost inevitable that RedHat stock would almost immediately
become seriously overvalued, as happened when Netscape floated. There
will be high tech stock dealers out there who want to get a slice of
this new market sector while it's still small, expecting massive
growth over the next few years. This is looking at a free software
based company in completely the wrong way.

Those of the older ones of us will remember that a few months ago Bob
Young's stated ambition was not for RedHat to grow to the size of
Microsoft, rather for Microsoft to shrink to the size of RedHat. This,
he asserted, was desirable so that the software business could never
again be dominated by a single corporation, and he further said that
it was a Very Good Thing for there to be multiple GNU/Linux
distributions so that all the players had to stay honest.

RedHat is not, and should never become, a high margin business. The
high margins which drive Microsoft's revenues, and whose anticipation
drove Netscape's stock to such high levels, are pure anathema to the
principle of Free Software. The whole point of using GNU/linux is that
you *don't* have to shell out further money when you add more machines
to your network. This absence of a RedHat tax, and the absence of the
possibility of a RedHat tax means that business growth for RedHat will
come from elsewhere.

RedHat will continue to grow by offering support, training,
handholding and other labour and skills intensive services to its
customers. RedHat Labs will probably also be contracted by hardware
makers to ensure that Free Software runs on their hardware. While
these are excellent business areas to be in they will generate normal
and decent profit margins rather than excessive and indecent profit
margins. Further, with the likes of HP and IBM competing in these some
of these areas there won't be a particular opportunity for RedHat to
charge much of a premium over small startup companies.

#include <disclaimer>
// The following is my personal opinion. I am not qualified to give
// advice on stocks and shares. You are entirely responsible for your
// own buying and selling decisions, etc ...

I would steer well clear of early stock offerings in companies based
in the free software business. It is likely that Men in Suits who
don't understand Free Software will go on a mad buying frenzy wanting
to get in at the ground floor of the latest new high technology
sector. There are already Internet based stocks which, IMHO, are
massively overvalued, and early offerings of Free Software based
stocks are likely to go the same way.



Dunstan Vavasour
dvavasour@iee.org

Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 11:54:47 -0400 (EDT)
To: flux@microsoft.com, kragen-tol@kragen.dnaco.net, editor@lwn.net,
Subject: Re: Is Free Software Worth the Cost?
From: kragen@pobox.com (Kragen Sitaker)

(This is in response to your article at
http://www.microsoft.com/mind/0599/flux/flux0599.htm.)

You write:
> While free distribution is a great marketing tool (think about all
> those samples you get in the mail), what does it say about the product
> itself? Frankly, it says that the product (or the effort that went into
> making the product) has no value. Is that what you software engineers
> out there want?

I suppose that means your article has no value, because I got it for
free.  And books I borrow from the library.  And movies my friends lend
me.  Right?  Maybe if my friends want me to appreciate how valuable
their movies are, they should start charging me for borrowing them.  ;)

> If, however, you gave away all software, how would you pay the
> creators of that software? You destroy the subtle motives that only
> cash can motives such as food on the table, a warm place to sleep, and
> so forth.

I'm sure this is news to the folks who work at Cygnus; they might be
surprised to discover that their lucrative support contracts for the
free software they write don't pay them anything, according to you.  ;)

> Ironically, these folks are sowing the seeds of their own
> destruction. If they actually succeed in making software free, no one
> will be willing to employ them to create a product with no value.

Most software development is bespoke, and always has been.  Bespoke
software can be free (to make copies and modifications) without
making its production more financially difficult.

> Soon, students will stop studying software development in college
> since there won't be a way to make a career out of it. All those young,
> eager students will have to turn to something less respectable, like
> studying law.

The job market for programmers might shrink, but there's nothing wrong
with that.  But professional programmers won't have to spend all their
time reinventing the wheel, only to have their work discarded in a year
or two.  (How many different word processors have been written?  How
many are in use today?)  They'll have to spend their time creating
things that are actually useful to society.  

I suspect there will be plenty of jobs to go around. Indeed, since the
large body of free software greatly enhances every programmer's
productivity, it is likely that projects that are currently
economically infeasible will become feasible, greatly expanding the job
market for programmers.

The whole shrink-wrapped software swindle has been a great thing for a
few programmers -- while it lasted.  But it's not going to last much
longer.

> A product that is copylefted is copyrighted, but can be modified by
> anyone as long as they don't charge for their contributions. The source
> code for the new changes must be made available for others to see and
> learn from.

This is factually incorrect.  You are certainly allowed to charge for
your contributions; indeed, the GNAT project is supported by doing just
that.  You are just not allowed to prohibit other people from making
and giving away copies of those contributions.

The source code for the new changes need only be made available to
those people you give the changes themselves to.  If you don't make the
changes available, you don't need to make the source code available
either.

> If intellectual property isn't property, then just what is property? 

As anyone who has taken an IP course in law school knows, intellectual
property has not been property for centuries.  The last time
intellectual property was property in England was in the 1700s, when it
was used to support publishers and censorship.

> I'm not saying that Stallman is anticapitalist, I'm saying the whole
> free software movement is.

That's absurd.  What about Cygnus, Digital, HP, Intel, Crynwr, WebTV,
Red Hat, SuSe, Sun, Cisco, and IBM?  They all give significant support
to the free software movement -- indeed, many of them are supported
entirely by free software.  Are you saying they are anticapitalist?

> Giving away software is a great marketing tool. It's hard to compete
> if your competition is free. That's something that a number of
> companies have discovered. Now it's Microsoft's turn with Windows NT
> versus Linux.

Microsoft has been losing to Linux with Windows NT for years.  Now it's
Microsoft's turn with Windows 98 versus Linux and KDE, and Office
versus KOffice and friends.

> I just want the folks who write that software to be and paid for
> writing it. That is the proper model for the industry.  So the next
> time you think about using some free software, consider its cost to the
> software industry.

If the software industry can be outcompeted by students in their spare
time, what good is it?  Let it die.  People will keep writing software
for sure.

I suspect that a new software industry will be created, though -- one
that actually performs useful work and innovation instead of rehashing
the same 1960s OS architecture and networked hypertext, 1970s
user-interface work and word processor, and 1980s spreadsheet over and
over again.

-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
TurboLinux is outselling NT in Japan's retail software market 10 to 1,
so I hear. 
-- http://www.performancecomputing.com/opinions/unixriot/981218.shtml

From: Brian Hurt <brianh@bit3.com>
To: "'editor@lwn.net'" <editor@lwn.net>
Subject: In defense of the benchmark people
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 10:04:09 -0500

The MindCraft survey is a wonderful argument as to _why_ Oracle and
TPC set up the rules as they did.  Even a legitimate, known benchmark,
like TPC-D or SpecMark, can be skewed in favor of one or the other
participant.  Oracle want's to make sure that if it's DB is benchmarked,
that you don't "pull a MindCraft".  TPC wants to make sure that it's
benchmarks are done fairly, allowing people to have some confidence
in TPC numbers when they're seen.

I don't speak for Bit 3.

Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 11:50:50 -0400
From: "Ambrose Li [EDP]" <acli@mingpaoxpress.com>
To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: smbfs idle timeout

Hello,

this weeks' news reported a "new" smbfs idle timeout problem that
has "cropped up recently". This is not true.

This idle timeout problem has existed since 2.0, but under 2.2,
the kernel's behaviour w.r.t. idle timeouts has changed.

Under 2.0, after the idle timeout has happened, the mounted share
dies, and we can use smbumount to unmount the share, use smbmount
to remount it, and all is A-OK. Most of the time, at least, anyway.
Sometimes that doesn't work and we eventually hang the kernel,
requiring a reboot.

Under 2.2, after the idle timeout has happened, the mounted share
dies, and smbumount generates an I/O error when one attempts to
unmount. The umount fails, and we are stuck because we can't
remount the thing. Even though the kernel didn't hang, we have to
reboot the machine.

The moral is, never use smbfs on a live, production server :)

(I remember working on a problem two years ago involving the use
of both smbfs and ncpfs, around the time when 2.0 comes out. Both
smbfs and ncpfs were not very stable; they still aren't.)

Regards,
-- 
Ambrose C. Li / +1 416 321 0088 / Ming Pao Newspapers (Canada) Ltd.
EDP department / All views expressed here are my own; they may or
may not represent the views of my employer or my colleagues.

Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 13:24:05 -0700
From: Kirk Petersen <kirk@speakeasy.org>
To: pr@rational.com
Subject: booch's comments on free software/opensource
X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i

Hi,

I just read an article
(http://www.it.fairfax.com.au/990427/software/software1.html) with
some comments by Grady Booch regarding free and opensource software.
I was hoping that someone with as much knowledge about designing
software as he has would be able to talk more effectively about free
software.

In the article, he is quoted as saying that Red Hat adds nothing to
Linux and that they are essentially using "slave labor."  This
indicates that he doesn't know how much work Red Hat is paying for in
the areas of desktop environments (both GNOME and KDE), installation,
and high-end kernel development (David S. Miller, Alan Cox, Stephen
Tweedie, Ingo Molnar - essentially all the big name kernel programmers
outside Linus Torvalds - are all working for Red Hat).

It also indicates that he doesn't understand that Red Hat charges
nothing for the software they ship - they charge for the media (both
CDs and books) and technical support.  When I used Red Hat, I
generally bought it from a place called CheapBytes, who charges $1.99
for the CD.  This is the flexibility of the free software world -
manuals, media, support, etc. are all separate and custom ordered.

He also asks "Where are the tools?"  If he means that Linux doesn't
have a visual modelling software package, then the best people to fix
that problem is Grady Booch and Rational Software.  As far as I'm
concerned (I currently do Java GUI and database programming, moving to
a Linux programming job) Linux development tools are generally
superior to Windows development tools.

Finally, I have an issue with the statement that he has "yet to see
any Fortune 1000 company bet a major part of their strategy on Linux."
I'd just like to ask what should be considered major?

Since I couldn't find Grady Booch's email address, I'm sending this to
the PR department, hoping that it will reach him or that the PR
department will realize that he doesn't help Rational Software by
speaking incorrectly of essentially non-competitive products.

-- 
Kirk Petersen
www.speakeasy.org/~kirk/

----- End forwarded message -----


-- 
Kirk Petersen
www.speakeasy.org/~kirk/

Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 07:46:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Bill Bond <wmbond@yahoo.com>
Subject: Cool Idea!
To: lwn@lwn.net

Given the recent flak surrounding linux.de's
"Where Do You Want To Go Tommorrow" I request
you post the following idea for use within
the Linux community (royalty free of course):

"No gates, no windows ... it open!"

Bill Bond
elusive@adisfwb.com