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

Linux in the news

• Nicholas Petreley promises to eat his column if Bob Metcalfe does not change his mind on Linux. "Linux will continue to erode Windows momentum for the same reason that Windows stole the limelight from Unix. And this is the same reason Unix stole momentum from minicomputers and mainframes: cold, hard cash."

• Here's a "state of Linux" article in Tech Week. "Just the fact that Raymond was invited to speak at Microsoft illustrates that the Linux movement is gaining momentum in the corporate world."

Open Source Business:

• Here's an article in Sm@rt Reseller which looks at Eric Raymond's new paper from a reseller's point of view. "Will these paths work for you? Read Raymond's article and think about it. If nothing else, his entertainingly written piece will give you food for thought, and those thoughts may just turn into actions that will lead to profitability."

• PC Week asks: is open source losing its innocence?. "But just as quickly as open source ascended, it may now be coming to an end. With the recent rapid success of open source generally--and Linux in particular--corporate interests have begun to loom over the movement, influencing standards, twisting licensing plans and generally co-opting many of the key principles of open source."

• This Internet Week article talks about the economics of free software, then wanders into support service. "I remain firm in the belief that altruism does not scale very effectively and that, in time, the market will discover mechanisms whereby producers and consumers can trade value for value using money as the medium of exchange. Once these mechanisms are discovered, only hard-core ideologues will resist the siren song, after which we will look back at the quaint beginnings of the open-source software movement as we do on the noncommercial origins of the Internet."

• The (Canadian) Globe and Mail reports on e-smith and their Linux distribution. "Although risky, there are many advantages to being an open-source company, not the least of which is that a truly mom-and-pop operation can get access to technical material and a sophisticated distribution system for free."

• From Source Magazine: this editorial on the future of free software. "The next wave of free software needs to be not about the programmer or the power user, but the average desktop user. It's that final mile that puts commercial software companies at a distinct advantage..." (Thanks to Alexander Voinov).

The Sale of Slashdot:

• News.com reports on the Slashdot acquisition. "The acquisition is another demonstration of the transformation in recent months of the upstart Linux operating system and of open source software from a serious hobby to a serious business proposition."

• Wired News interviews Rob Malda about the Slashdot sale. "We want to run a Web site, so we decided to find people, and we looked around and got contacted by a lot of people to basically offload that part of our responsibility and free us up to do things we cared about."

• Slashdot sells out says Salon Magazine. "Is Slashdot moving toward the lucrative realm of IPOs and stock options? If so, it would be surprising, considering Slashdot's fiercely independent voices and for-the-people community."

• Here's the Industry Standard's take on the Slashdot sale. "Everynerd's favorite Web site is no longer independent. Slashdot.org, a clearinghouse of daily news, views, rants and raves about practically everything that makes techies passionate, has been bought by Andover.net, a more buttoned-down collection of news, software downloads, Web-site tools and tips."

Mindcraft Benchmark Reruns:

• In Why Linux Will Win Dave Winer comes down on the Mindcraft benchmark rerun, and predicts a bright future for Linux. "If PC WEEK wanted to help its readers they'd design dream systems for each operating system. With a budget of $5,000, and a full-featured site to run, figure out what configuration of each system would make such a site run beautifully on today's hardware. That would be far more positive than declaring one system a winner and the other a loser."

• PC Week has published the results of the Mindcraft benchmark rematch. As expected, NT still won decisively. The article, however, is very positive toward Linux. "...Windows NT 4.0 still beat Linux using the Apache Web server and Samba in every performance category, although the margin of victory was smaller than in Mindcraft's tests. But far more interesting is that, in all the areas in which the Linux community cried foul, its assumptions were wrong. Where kernel problems were found, fixes are already under way."

• Penguin Computing has put out a press release challenging the Mindcraft benchmark rerun. "Imagine, for instance, that there was a test that proved that a Ford could corner better than a Chevy at 120 m.p.h. The result of such a study, while technically accurate, would not be relevant to many customers. That is just the sort of study that we have seen this week."

• Salon Magazone reports on the Mindcraft rerun. "Torvalds ... noted that in the past, Linux developers hadn't been motivated to hack Linux specifically in order to do well on benchmark tests. But now that Microsoft is directly engaging Linux, said Torvalds, they have become extremely motivated. NT may have won this round, but the fight looks far from over." (Found in NNL).

• Here's a ZDNet story about the Mindcraft rematch. This article focuses more on the complaints from the Linux participants, and less on fixing things for the future. (Thanks to John Hughes).

• Several people have written in telling us that c't magazine ran a set of Linux vs. NT benchmarks of their own. But Fred Mobach wins the prize for being the first one with an actual URL, and for the article in English as well. Their results match those of Mindcraft for multiple CPU's and network adaptors, but show Linux well ahead when tested in more "real world" situations.

  A Japanese translation of this article is also available thanks to ChangeLog.net.

• Here's another Linux vs. NT comparison; this one takes the form of an opinion piece in Information Week. "Linux/Unix has the architecturally sophisticated feature of being viewable (and manipulable) from any monitor on the network. In contrast, NT is hard-wired to a specific piece of glass. That 17-inch SVGA monitor is the one and only place from which the system can be accessed."

Business news:

• Performance Computing's Unix Riot column checks out Linux at PC Expo. "Linux system vendors also made an appearance. Rebel.com, a new company that has licensed the image of James Dean to match its PCExpo motto, 'rebel with a cause,' showed its Netwinder 275 Internet server appliance..." (Thanks to Alberto Schiavon).

• VAR Business has a brief article on Caldera's road tour. "IBM Corp. and Oracle Corp. are joining Caldera in the 15-city tour, which began this month, demonstrating such solutions as Oracle 8i and IBM DB2, running under Linux on IBM Netfinity servers."

• Inter@ctive Week has an article about the new funding received by VA Linux Systems. "The added capital will help the rapidly expanding VA Linux Systems 'to meet the expectations of the growing market for Linux-based solutions,' said Larry Augustin, VA Linux Systems president."

• InfoWorld reports on the deal between TurboLinux and Sendmail, Inc. "Besides buttressing their respective open-source initiatives, Sendmail officials think the deal helps both companies furthers the reach of their existing distribution channels in the United States and overseas."

• Business Week interviews Robert F. Young, the chief executive of Red Hat Software Inc., in an article titled 'The Linux Missionary Who's Taking on Microsoft'. "Given Microsoft's virtual lock on the operating system market, Young felt Red Hat had no choice but to break the mold. "You have to change the rules under which the game is played," he says. And, he argues, the Internet may help Red Hat make inroads against Microsoft just as the interstate highway system enabled truckers to overtake the railroad companies."

• Can Red Hat stay red hot? asks Business Week. They aren't convinced. "For now, all this market share isn't producing much in the way of revenue. Indeed, that may be because Linux' biggest selling point--its reliability--leads corporate users to believe they can run it without paying for support. Red Hat's largest corporate user, Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp. (BCF), bought 1,250 Linux-based PCs for its 250 retail stores but didn't buy tech support." (Thanks to Lenz Grimmer).

• Linux-related IPO's are the subject of this USA Today article. "Analyst Bob Austrian of Banc of America Securities cautions investors about rushing into Linux-related stocks. 'It is difficult to ferret out the difference between a great technology and a great investment,' says Austrian, who would not comment on any specific Linux-related companies."

• Here's a Reuters article on Linux IPO's. "One of the risks these companies face in going public is the potential impact that an IPO boom could have on the Linux community, which is a group of eccentric developers, some of whom work on Linux in their spare time, for free."

• Denver joins Linux bandwagon discovers the Denver Business Journal. The article is mostly about ESoft and Ecrix, to the exclusion of a number of other Linux-oriented businesses in the Denver area. "Esoft is just one of many high-tech firms in the metro area aligning themselves with Linux technology and the company believes it's a strategy that will soon pay off as this operating system is fast approaching a critical mass."

• Sm@rt Reseller ran an article on how IBM sees Linux. "Even as IBM promises to support every major version of Linux, the vendor downplays the possibility of Linux becoming a true alternative to Windows." For some reason, they thought this article was so important they even put out a press release announcing its existence.

• The E-Commerce Times reports on possible Microsoft plans to battle Linux. "Suppose that instead of fighting Linux, Microsoft decides to embrace it? What if Microsoft suddenly develops its own free brand of Linux and distributes it throughout its monster network? What if Bill Gates and company also decide to develop Linux desktop applications and flood the market with Microsoft-branded Linux software?"

and finally:

• Alexander Voinov pointed out this table on Deja.com summarizing the results of their recent network operating system poll. Few people will be surprised to see which system came out on top (or which came out on the bottom, for that matter). Alexander also pointed out that, interestingly, the GNU HURD fared reasonably well, beating systems like Digital Unix and MacOS.

• Free software really is communistic, claims this osOpinion article. "It should not be assumed that because governmental communism failed to effectively compete with capitalism while allowing the freedom of workers as envisioned by Marx, that it could not be created in the new digital economy in spite of government."

• Performance Computing looks at Linux security tools. "It's wise to view all open-source software downloaded from public domain sites with suspicion. It is important to ensure that the downloaded software is the intended product. After all, what good does it do to download tainted security software?"

• Robin Miller's Andover News Network Column contemplates how the operating system tends to disappear behind the applications it is running. "So, aside from the fact that StarOffice is free for personal use and Microsoft Office 2000 costs a bundle, does it really make any difference which operating system or which software package I use? Of course not. And a whole lot of people are starting to figure this out."

• Here's an introductory article in Source Magazine. "A third benefit is stability. Linux machines typically stay up for months before needing to be rebooted, and application failures almost never crash the entire system. General Protection Faults become a thing of the past on Linux; it sure is nice not having to babysit a server!"

• Wired News trashes Linus's talk at the Lotus Developers Conference. "Following a rapturous reception, people were soon staring at the floor, looking at their watches, and closing their eyes. In an otherwise silent auditorium, the sounds of coughing, fidgeting, stifled yawns, and whispered conversations were disproportionately amplified. Instead of a string of clever wisecracks and laughs at the expense of Microsoft, as most expected, the audience was subjected to 40 minutes of platitudes."

• The Detroit Free Press has concluded that Linux is too hard to install and doesn't have enough applications. "But I'm not going to be hard on myself, or Linux. No one buys a PC today without an operating system already installed. Putting Windows or the Mac OS onto a blank PC would probably be just about as difficult as installing Linux."

• We normally avoid Microsoft trial articles - they aren't Linux, after all. But this InfoWorld article about difficulties between Microsoft and Intel has a fun Bill Gates quote: "In our world, software has to be small, has to be debugged, has to ship as part of a major initiative, has to avoid compatibility problems, has to avoid end user calls."

• Here's a strange Byte column allegedly about the culture of Linux. "There are at least six distributions of Linux worth getting excited about. This doesn't bifurcate the market for Linux; rather, it's a great deal like boxers, briefs, thongs, and assorted foundationware."

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

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