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Bringing you the latest news from the Linux World.
Dedicated to keeping Linux users up-to-date, with concise
news for all interests
 Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page
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Leading itemsSky-high shares. By Friday, August 13, shares in Red Hat Inc. had climbed well into the 80's - over five times the original selling price. Anybody who got their hands on Red Hat's stock before the beginning of public trading is now sitting on a substantial paper profit. It would seem that free software really can make money. Unfortunately, a number of people who thought they were going to end up with some pre-IPO stock ended up without. Those lucky enough to be a part of the community offering figured things were taken care of once they had finally passed through the difficult process of getting E*Trade to let them participate in the IPO. Only then, at the last minute, Red Hat raised the IPO price. This was a rational thing for Red Hat to do; if they could get the extra cash from the stock sale, they really should do exactly that. But E*Trade then required everybody who was participating in the IPO to "reconfirm" their offer, and within a very tight time window. Only people who were actively watching at the time had a chance of doing this. LinuxWorld attendees, far from their telephones and email, had no hope. E*Trade tried to straighten things out in its own confusing way, and, in the end, quite a few people were able to get their stock; often not before Friday, however. Meanwhile, the whole process has left quite a few people upset and discouraged. If the Red Hat Wealth Monitor is to be believed, the value of the community shares is now about $60 million. Some members of the free software community have certainly been able to share in that wealth, and that can only be a good thing. Will the next Linux company to go public make a similar offering? Red Hat has taken a lot of grief in the last few weeks as a result of the above troubles. Seeing this, other companies considering public offerings will likely think twice before stepping into the same tar pit. We hope they will go for it anyway. It is an effective - though imperfect - way to give something back to the community that made Linux companies possible in the first place. Meanwhile, why are Red Hat's shares so expensive? Red Hat is a good company that has come a long way. But it currently has a market capitalization of almost $5 billion. Remember that we are dealing with a company that had less than $11 million in revenues last year. Think about how long it would take you to make your money back if you were to break open your piggy bank and buy all $5 billion worth of shares. What can possibly justify such a valuation? Seemingly, Linux stocks will be treated like Internet stocks, where real world considerations apply weakly at best. But think for a moment: part of the valuation of Internet stocks comes from the idea that whoever gets to be the market leader in a certain field gets to set the standards and will make big pots of money someday. Microsoft did it; Netscape was expected to do it; RealNetworks, Amazon, MP3, eBay, etc. are all still thought to have a chance of doing it. Thus the all-out push for market share and the lack of concern for profits. And, partially, the high stock values. Red Hat has a share of the Linux OS market. But what will that buy them? Red Hat has very little standard-setting power in the Linux world, and that is not likely to change. That is, after all, one of the reasons we like Linux: no more proprietary standards owned by single, powerful companies. Market share could prove fleeting as well. When you can switch vendors and still run Linux, lock-in is a thing of the past. Thus, even by the reasoning, such as it is, that is normally applied to Internet stocks, Red Hat may currently be overvalued. If investors have run up the price of this stock because they think that Red Hat can own the Linux market the way Microsoft owns office suites, they are likely to be surprised. That is not how Linux works. If you are considering trading in this stock now, a quick look at Amazon.com's price history may be a worthwhile reminder of what can happen to expensive shares. Be careful out there. LWN introduces its new Linux Stocks Page. The above admonitions notwithstanding, LWN has jumped into the game with the LWN Linux Stocks page. This page, currently in alpha-test, provides near-real-time stock values of Linux-related companies, and includes our "Linux Stock Index," a magic number intended to track the performance of the sector as a whole. We are looking for comments on how to improve the page; please have a look and let us know what you think. One last look at LinuxWorld. According to IDG's press release, just over 14,000 people attended LinuxWorld this time around, up from around 10,000 last Spring. The event had a quieter feel than last Spring, however, and some of the vendors on the exhibit floor reported lower levels of activity this time around. LinuxWorld may be finding its place. As a technical conference, this one was clearly second rate. Those seeking technical content this time of year will be much better off at events like the O'Reilly Conferences which start on August 21. But for those who want to learn about or participate in the business of Linux, LinuxWorld is unparalleled. Their logo - a penguin with a necktie - seems to be well chosen. We have added some final touches to our LinuxWorld coverage, including a few new photos and a story on the best and the worst of the CD giveaways to be found on the exhibit floor. More LinuxWorld information can be found on Marc Merlin's LinuxWorld page as well. This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
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August 19, 1999
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityNewsA security audit of the entire Internet. The Internet Auditing Project set out almost a year ago to scan the entire Internet just to see how many systems with known vulnerabilities could be found. Their report makes for a long-winded but entertaining read as it describes how they were able to put together a scan of 36 million hosts and survive the process.Their results? Here's a table that appears at the end:
In other words, there are hundreds of thousands of vulnerable systems out there, just looking at a small set of well-known problems. The authors make the point that the Internet as a whole has a problem. It is sick, with lots of little wounds. Fixing up single hosts and networks is a good thing to do, but as long as the network as a whole remains so unhealthy, there are going to be problems. Lots of them. They have an interesting suggestion: the formation of an "International Digital Defense Network." The purpose of this network would be to perform routine scans to find problem systems early, then work to get the systems fixed. They would pattern it after some of the other network-wide processing initiatives, such as Seti@home. With enough systems, each could do a certain amount of watching without impacting its other uses. The document also includes a fair amount of "war story" material, and a scary description (under "third week") of a truly high-clue breakin of one of their systems. Many of us have seen "script kiddies" at work, but these were a different breed of folks. Among other things, the attack shows a real-world use of a loadable kernel module to perform evil acts. Their scanning system is also available for download. Definitely worth a read. Security ReportsSome beta versions of EFNet's IRC daemon have a serious problem that could allow root access to the server. Fortunately, very few sites should be running this software. If you have one of them, have a look at this advisory, and upgrade to a newer version.The telnet daemon has a problem in that it tries to verify the client side's terminal type. This verification happens prior to any type of authentication. By coming up with a cleverly crafted terminal type, a remote attacker can cause the telnet daemon to open an arbitrary file on the system, which can lead to denial of service attacks. No distributions have issued updates as yet; a source patchhas been made available by Kevin Vajk. UpdatesDebian updates. Debian has put out a couple of security advisories for the cfingerd and isdnutils packages.Red Hat updates. Red Hat put out two alerts for possible security problems. There is a libtermcap patch which fixes a buffer overrun problem which could be nasty - especially on pre-6.0 systems. There is also an update to pump (Red Hat's DHCP client) that DHCP users should apply. ResourcesWhat to do if you've been hacked is a brief ComputerWorld article with some advice on first steps to take when disaster strikes. It seems to be aimed more at managers than technical folks...Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
August 19, 1999
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentThe current development kernel release is 2.3.14 which was released just as LWN was going to "press." It is a large patch, containing a lot of ISDN updates, a number of driver changes, and lots of small tweaks. The current stable kernel release is 2.2.11, though likely not for long. This release, it turns out, has a bug that causes a massive kernel memory leak in certain networking situations. In some cases, it can bring down a system in a hurry, resulting in grumpy users. Thus, Alan Cox has released a series of 2.2.12 pre-patches which contain the fix (by David Miller) and a lot of other stuff. Perhaps the most controversial thing in 2.2.12pre is the inclusion of RAID 0.90. Serious RAID users have been waiting for this upgrade for a long time; now they can stop applying the patches separately. The update should also be welcome to Red Hat 6.0 users, since Red Hat slipped the newer RAID into their version of 2.2.5 for that distribution. Others, however, are not so pleased. RAID 0.90 is a major and incompatible upgrade from the earlier versions. New utilities are required, the configuration file is different, and the format of the RAID arrays themselves is different. In theory the distributors should have been shipping the newer raidtools (which can work with the older implementation) for some time; some posts seem to indicate that not all distributions have done this, however. The configuration file change is not that hard to do, and the RAID array conversion happens pretty easily as well. The real problem is this: once you have converted your RAID array to the new format, you are stuck with the new implementation. This, if 2.2.12 turns out not to work in a particular situation, moving back down to an older kernel becomes a hard and unpleasant task. That tends to scare people who are using the older RAID system, and understandably so. Alan intends to push forward with the new RAID anyway, though he leaves the final decision to Linus. RAID 0.90 is a vastly improved implementation which certainly needs to get into the mainline, stable kernel at some point. 2.4 is still some months away, perhaps it is better to work in this code now. Incompatible changes may happen again in 2.2.13, when the NFS patches are tentatively slated to be integrated. The new NFS code requires new versions of the NFS utilities which are not currently found in any of the distributions. There will likely be less complaining about this one, however. Any site which has been doing serious NFS service - especially in heterogeneous environments - has had to apply these patches anyway. The NFS update will give Linux a reasonable NFS server - for version 2 NFS, anyway. Along these lines, knfsd 1.4.7 has been released by H.J. Lu. H.J. also notes that he has put the slides for his LinuxWorld NFS talk (which was interesting) on his FTP site as 'nfs.doc.tar.gz'. Details in his announcement. Alex Buell has tracked down a strange 2.2 lockup problem that has been bothering him for some time. However, it is a difficult problem involving complex feline interactions; a patch may prove difficult to develop. Details in his note. Use of up to 4GB of physical memory on IA-32 (x86) systems is now possible, thanks to a patch posted by Andrea Arcangeli of SuSE and Gerhard Wichert of Siemens. This patch, which applies to 2.3 kernels, allows the use of up to 4GB of memory as "anonymous" pages. Anonymous memory belongs to a process, but is not associated with a file on disk. Thus, you can malloc() huge arrays, but memory-mapping large files can not take advantage of the extra memory. More information can be found in the announcement. The actual patch has been removed, because it is outdated at this point; a current version can be found on Andrea's FTP site. Linus has indicated that this patch will go into the 2.3 series, once he gets some changes he requested. What's coming with 2.4 Joseph Pranevich has sent us the latest version of his Wonderful World of Linux 2.4 paper. Therein you'll find a detailed discussion of the changes to be found in the upcoming (year-end) stable kernel release. Other patches and updates released this week include:
Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
August 19, 1999
For other kernel news, see: |
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Distributions page. |
DistributionsBrazilian Linux distribution wishlist poll. Linux in Brazil is running a poll (in Portuguese) asking what features users would like to see in upcoming Linux distributions. CalderaOpenLinux 2.3? Caldera hasn't said anything about it, but Micro Warehouse claims to be selling OpenLinux 2.3 anyway. Even the little picture of the box says 2.3 on it. Another poster claimed that 2.3 is in beta now. Thus, expect an announcement sometime soon...The 2.3 release will evidently include a bundled copy of ApplixWare. DebianAn interim Debian release prior to 'Potato' is looking likely. Joey Hess put out this message in which he proposes to coordinate a release based on 2.1, which would include well-tested updates to the release only. 2.1 has a number of packages (kernel, XFree86, ...) which are showing their age, and this sort of update would help to make the distribution more current in a shorter time frame.Joey's proposal is to assemble the new version, which may be called 2.2, by the end of this month. It would then be frozen for a month while people pound on it, and release would happen at the end of September. When Potato comes out, it will then be called 2.3 or 3.0. There seems to be little opposition to this idea, so it seems to have a high probability of happening. When will Potato be released? There is still no answer to that question, but Richard Braakman has proposed that the release be frozen on November 1. He also lists the things that have to happen between now and the freeze; a fair amount of work remains. The Herring Package Management Library (HPML) is the new name for DPKGv2 - the effort to build a new package manager for the Debian distribution. HPML is just now moving out of the specification stage into serious coding. The specification can now be found on the HPML web page. They are building everything around a central library with a well-defined API, hopefully making it easy to write programs that work with packages. Joey Hess's pictures from LinuxWorld can be found on his web site. LinuxPPCIBM demonstrated their new ATX PowerPC boards last week at LinuxWorld. These boards should help to populate the world with cheaper PPC systems in the near future. The folks at LinuxPPC have put out a press release stating that their distribution will work on these boards from the beginning. In fact, they worked with IBM during the development process to make sure that things would happen that way.An ATI Rage 128 video driver for LinuxPPC was also announced this week. The Rage 128 is the video card found in Apple's G3 systems, so having a proper video driver for that card is a nice thing. SuSESuSE 6.2 has been received by the U.S. office, finally. Shipments should commence shortly; subscription customers might have their copies by the time they read this.Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
August 19, 1999
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
Lists of Distributions |
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development toolsJavaWhat's up with Java development? People started asking after they realized that nobody has heard much from the Blackdown porting project for quite some time. The process seems to move very slowly, everybody is still waiting for Java 1.2. The 1.2 porting status page has not been updated since June.The answer seems to be that the Blackdown folks are still at work, and still enthused about getting the product out. They are hung up on some difficult issues, such as getting native threads to work and dealing with the large variety of X servers, display hardware, and window managers that one encounters in the Linux world. The Blackdown team could certainly use some more help; people who are looking for something to do might want to donate a little effort to this project. PerlWhat happened to the perl.org web site? Recent visitors to the site have encountered a login prompt, rather than the Perl information they were after. The answer is that perl.org is going through a major makeover. The old site, for the (now defunct) Perl Institute, is still available if you go instead to tpi.perl.org.The Perl vs. Python flame war on comp.lang.perl.misc is good reading for those who like incendiary text. Most of the rest of us will likely want to ignore it. The extent to which this exchange has dominated the newsgroup can be seen in the posting statistics for the newsgroup. Both languages would be much better off if that energy were to go into hacking up cool things instead... PythonA new version of python-mode for emacs is available, details in the announcement.. This major mode is most useful in editing Python programs; the indentation management is worthwhile by itself.Those of you who bought Mark Lutz's Python Pocket Reference have probably noticed that it is actually a very hard book to use. In response to "requests," O'Reilly has put up an index for the Pocket Reference up on their web site. Suitably printed, it should be a helpful addition to this book. The Python Sound Toolkit has been announced by the folks at PythonWare. The bad news: it currently only works on Windows and Solaris. Surely there's no end of Linux Python hackers out there who can help them to remedy this little defect... Python-URL! is back, here is this week's issue. Please note that some of the deja.com links appear not to work... Tcl/tkReminder: Paper submissions for the 7th USENIX Tcl/Tk Conference are due September 1. Details in this announcement.And here is this week's Tcl-URL. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
August 19, 1999 |
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Development projectsGnomeHere is this week's GNOME summary, by Havoc Pennington.High availabilityAlan Robertson has released version 0.4.2 of his heartbeat code, which monitors a cluster and keeps things going in the presence of node failures. As he puts it, "it's getting dangerously close to being useful."KDELast week's KDE development news arrived too late for the weekly newsletter; here it is for those who did not see it on the daily updates page.A similar fate appears to have befallen this week's summary... MidgardHenri Bergius has, as usual, provided us with the Midgard weekly summary. Among other things, it looks like they plan to release Midgard 1.2 this Friday, August 20.OpenContentThe folks at WorldForge have announced the release of the first client and server for their "OpenContent" multiplayer online gaming system. They are looking for feedback and development help...WineHere's this week's Wine news, posted by Doug Ridgway.The Wine folks have also put out the 990815 Wine release. It is, of course, a developers-only release. Alexandre Julliard has a full-time job working on Wine. He has been hired by Codeweavers to hack on the system, more information can be found in their press release This is a great thing for Wine development. ZopeZope 2.0 beta 4 was released on Wednesday, August 11. Since then, a posting from Digital Creations has indicated that beta 5 should come out sometime this week, and, if there are no major problems, the true 2.0 release should happen sometime next week.2.0 has all kinds of good stuff, including multithreading in the server, a new version of the Zope object database, WebDAV support, XML-RPC support, and a whole lot of other improvements. It also has parts of the long-awaited "Portal Toolkit"; ZClasses (web-based development of new objects) and ZCatalog (fancy searching). More information can be found on the download page. Missing still from Zope 2.0 will be "Membership" - a controlled way of running "accounts" on a Zope server. They still plan to add it, but no word as to when. A beta version of the new zope.org site is available, see the announcement for details on how to get to it and a description of what's there. It's a bit of a tease, since it uses the membership functions that are not currently available... Perhaps the nicest immediately-visible feature, however, is the long-absent "search" box in the corner. The state of Zope documentation was the topic of much discussion this week, after a frustrated user sent an "I give up" message to the discussion list. It is true that Zope's documentation has never been great - they have been far too busy trying to make an always-better product available. In addition, the independent "Zope Documentation Project" appears to have bogged down for the time being. They, too, would rather work with Zope than write about it. The 2.0 release can only make this problem worse, as the software moves ahead of what documentation does exist. There is a clear need here for more effort to go into the documentation effort. Digital Creations is making some moves in that direction, but more effort - including from the user community - is clearly needed. The Zope Weekly News was sent in by Pam Crosby this week, since Amos Latteier is taking a well-deserved break. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh | |
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and businessA 1000-node Beowulf cluster is being used for commercial purposes by the folks at Genetic Programming, Inc. Genetic Programming is a massive "generate and try" technique for "evolving" useful programs for specific tasks. It is a problem that breaks apart very nicely into a massively parallel solution, and is thus well suited to Beowulf systems. Genetic Programming hopes to evolve programs which are competitive with (or even better than) programs created by humans. They mention the possibility of the creation of patentable inventions as well. There is clearly some real money which has high hopes for this approach: the creation of a 1000-node cluster is not an inexpensive thing to do. For details, see Genetic Programming Inc.'s home page, discusses their goals and includes a couple of pictures of the system. They also have a separate page describing how the 1000-node system was built. Cheap Linux PC's in Paris. GrosBill Micro is now offering a system with many of the usual lower-end PC amenities: Celeron processor, 64MB memory, modem, and even a monitor - and with Linux-Mandrake installed. Cost is 5,990 Francs, or about $960 as of this writing. Commercial support for Linux-Mandrake in the U.S. MandrakeSoft has entered an agreement with Bynari Systems Group wherein Bynari will provide commercial support services to Mandrake users in the U.S. Options go from per-incident through to hard-core on-site support. IDC has announced a new study which reveals that use of Linux is increasing. "In 1997, IDC conducted a similar survey but could not report any conclusive findings about Linux because it was used by such a statistically small percentage of survey respondents. However, 13% of respondents in IDC's current study said they now use Linux." Linux support is also growing judging from these announcements. This one from SCO describing their new "Linux Professional Services", and this one from Linux Press on the publication of a new book: The Best of Linux Distributions. From the description in the announcement, it looks like it could be a useful reference work with information on the differences between a few popular distributions.
LinuxWorld was a catalyst for a number of announcements and press releases:
SGI has a
video entitled 'Linux OS and Its Future. Reports from Linux World
Expo, San Jose, CA August 10-11'.
Press Releases:
Section Editor: Jon Corbet. |
August 19, 1999 |
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the newsRecommended reading: Upside Magazine interviews (at length) Linus Torvalds. It is a very positive piece from a publication which has been quite critical of Linux in the past. "Legend may have it that [Bill] Gates was a brilliant programmer, but Torvalds is the real thing, having spun out a tightly written operating system while still in college. And while a young Gates labeled fellow programmers 'thieves' for copying his mediocre code, the generous Torvalds freely shared his epiphany with the world. Which man and movement wins may decide technology's future." Why doesn't Windows NT have a community like Linux does? asks Windows TechEdge. The author has recognized something good about Linux, and would like to import it into the NT world. "Many Unix sysadmins have a somewhat more personalized interest in their networks, because often they have patched together the code that makes things work. Sharing that work is a thing of pride. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why the Unix community is so strong. The complexity of the Win32 API acts a deterrent for those who would seek to learn it as a hobby." (Thanks to Art Cancro). CBS Marketwatch looks at the Red Hat IPO and the difficulties that people had participating in it. "One would hope that the SEC would take time to re-think its minimum requirements to participate in a company's public offering. The open source developers who wrote the code which constitutes the product that Red Hat sells may not have a lot of experience trading stocks, but they understand, more than anyone else, what makes up Red Hat's business. They deserve access to early ownership of the company if Red Hat wants to give it to them." NTKnow has an article on Red Hat's IPO and other Linux activity. "It wasn't the end of the world, but for those who take their miracles seriously, the start of LinuxWorld was damn close enough. Robert Young, CEO of RED HAT, became the first open software advocate to hit 750 million dollars net worth. Accordingly, the skies went dark over Europe." LinuxWorld: ZDNet had this article about Linus Torvalds' keynote at LinuxWorld. "Torvalds did take a moment to thank the open-source community before he started with his development update." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann) Here's another article about Linus Torvalds' keynote at LinuxWorld. This one is from PC World. "The Linux chief followed his remarks with a question-and-answer period. In the laid-back spirit of the open-source community, Torvalds conducted the Q&A with his young daughter draped across one shoulder, and his other toddler propped against his legs." ZDNet UK has put up a LinuxWorld coverage page of their own. It's a collection of the various ZD articles that came out from the event. Here's a Reuters article about LinuxWorld. "Unlike the LinuxWorld show in March, which was more of a coming out party for the software, this week's show was focused on business and consumer possibilities. Executives dressed in suits mingled with the T-shirt attired Linux programmers." Is Linux becoming too corporate? This ZDNet Australia looks at the 'suits' at LinuxWorld, and also finds .. "For show attendees nostalgic for the days before the corporate boom, the solution is simple. Duck around the giant Corel booth and peek behind Dell's Linux kingdom to the back left-hand corner of the show floor to a tiny space emblematic of where it all began: the .org Pavilion, home to organizations dedicated to ensuring Linux's free future." Silicon Valley buzzes with Linux says VAR Business. "One IBM Corp. executive candidly remarked that he absolutely loves attending Linux conferences such as LinuxWorld. 'The market is really maturing,' he commented over lunch just one day before Linux operating system vendor Red Hat Inc. would storm onto the Nasdaq exchange to become the first publicly-traded pure Linux company." The Industry Standard found the real controversy at LinuxWorld. "It seems that one vendor at the show, Magic Software Enterprises (MGIC), passed on the usual lure that exhibitors put in their booths (comely women who are willing to talk to middle-aged nerds) and opted instead for live penguins - penguins, of course, being the Linux totem. Animal activists, naturally, hated this idea." Here's a slightly confused article in PC World about LinuxWorld. "Although Linux vendor Red Hat won't ship its Linux 6.0 distribution with the GNOME desktop environment until later this year, some LinuxWorld attendees may have snagged sneak previews of GNOME in the form of CD-ROM discs with version 5.2 of the Red Hat Linux operating system." Red Hat IPO: Mike Gerdts informed us that the Wall Street Journal had a front-page article on Wednesday about the Red Hat IPO and all the difficulties with the community offering. Jim Turley provided us with a url for the same article at the Dow Jones site. The Industry Standard had this article about Red Hat's IPO. "For the umpteenth time, someone paved paradise, put up a parking lot. For the thousands of Linux coders who've build the utopian open-source movement - offering free help to create a free operating system - the IPO of Red Hat Software was a sure sign of Wall Street cutting the ribbon on the new Linux mall." This Red Hat IPO article was found in ComputerWorld. "Analysts feel that Red Hat -- which almost broke even in 1998 -- is well positioned to be very profitable because it is able to sell an operating system with hardly any investments in engineering or even product support. Both are largely taken care of by the open-source community." Linux lovefest on Wall Street in Computer Reseller News looks at Red Hat's IPO and related issues. "So could the commercialization of Linux result in bad blood, spoiling a good thing? Wall Street sure doesn't think so. Ultimately, the answer doesn't matter. What does matter is that an entrepreneurial group of developers has infused the software world with excitement and innovation, something that Microsoft has failed to do." The San Francisco Chronicle ran this article about Red Hat's stock. "But no one really thinks that software sales alone justify Red Hat's enormous valuation. The key to its future, as it explained in the prospectus and ``road show'' meetings with analysts and institutional investors that preceded its IPO, is a plan to parlay its position in software into several derivative businesses." A Salon author writes about the frustrations of getting into Red Hat's IPO. "Red Hat's original offer was intended to be a community-solidifying gesture. If you're cynical, it was intended to strengthen community support in order to improve Red Hat's bottom line. It did neither. The initial windfall quickly became a huge hassle. The developers who didn't make each successive hurdle erected by E-Trade became more and more embittered." Red Herring writes about Red Hat's IPO without completely understanding things. "Although the Linux operating system kernel will remain open, developers are not required to give away Linux application code. This means that as the system is upgraded, Red Hat ... will first have to go to the open-source community for enhanced codes. That fact alone is reason enough for shareholders to exert pressure on Red Hat management to distinguish themselves from the competition by creating and selling proprietary Linux applications." Trillian: Here's an EE Times article about the Trillian project. "Trillian's charter is to prep Linux for the Merced age, making the necessary changes to the kernel so that it will run properly on IA-64 hardware. In theory, when the first Merced computer comes off the assembly line, Trillian's people should be able to pop in a CD-ROM, load their kernel and boot up." IT-Analysis.com looks at the Trillian project to port Linux to the Merced architecture. "IBM however is obviously very keen to increase its presence in the Linux movement and, if it does anywhere near the good that it has done for Java, it too will provide Linux with an all important boost. The only potential problem that is likely to bother IBM is how Linux for IA-64 will sit alongside the Monterey Unix, which should also be available next year for IA-64." (Found in NNL). Products and Services: ComputerWorld looks at FreeS/Wan. "When IT security consultants attend hacker conferences, they have high expectations for finding open-source security tools tested in hostile environments. One that meets the standard for hacker information technology consultants is the FreeS/WAN project's free, open-source Linux-based server software that uses strong encryption to create secure data tunnels between any two points on the Internet..." Also from ComputerWorld, this article on Linux clustering. "Clustering will make Linux Web servers more reliable, but even vendors acknowledged that Linux might need years to achieve the full clustering capabilities of its big Unix brothers. Linux lacks a journaling file system, which would help it recover from crashes. Also, it has no capability yet to allow midstream data transactions to survive a crash of a machine in a cluster." Here's an Upside Magazine story about LinuxCare. "A more personal challenge is maintaining the marketing intensity that has characterized Linuxcare over the last six months. That's no easy task when you consider that, unlike Red Hat and VA Linux Systems, the company has no sparkling widgets or software upgrades to dangle in front of potential clients, partners or hype-friendly members of the technology press." SCO is getting into Linux services, according to this News.com article. This is not an entirely surprising move; SCO, which is in the proprietary x86 Unix business, must have been feeling the pressure from Linux for a while. "SCO will support the four major for-profit Linux distributions: Red Hat, TurboLinux, SuSE, and Caldera Systems. The company will provide round-the-clock support, customization for a specific network environment, and other offerings designed for corporate customers..." (Thanks to Mike Gerdts). Dell in Belgium only sells systems with Windows installed, and Linux supporters are asking why, according to this ZDNet UK article. "...Microsoft and Dell have a European arrangement ensuring the PC maker cannot supply machines without an operating system and confirmed Dell's inability to supply any operating system other than Windows because of technical problems." Oracle is delaying the release of some of its ERP products on Linux, according to this InfoWorld article. "The company is postponing plans to deliver its enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications for the Linux platform until the end of this year and early 2000. A year ago, the company said it would ship its Oracle Applications suite for Linux in the first quarter of 1999, the same time frame as its databases and Web tools." The Salt Lake Tribune looks at Caldera and Lineo. "The affiliated companies, both based in Provo, sell software and services based on the Linux operating system. Linux is hot. And in recent weeks, seemingly everyone wants to be Caldera Systems' and Lineo's friend." This ZDNet Australia article is about Linux desktops. "And then there are the big-name companies looking at Linux desktop. At the show, Corel showed off a new Linux-compatible version of WordPerfect for Office, to be released early next year. Others, such as Dell, had already said they would ship Linux on some desktop computers." Also from ZDNet Australia is this article about Oracle and Sybase on Linux. "Oracle and Sybase said Linux was emerging as an additional platform for their traditional database product lines at LinuxWorld in San Jose, California, this week." From the Andover News Network comes this news about XESS, a spreadsheet for Linux. (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann) Information Week writes about the proliferation of Linux training options. "These offerings are a far cry from the informal classes and user-group information-sharing sessions that have traditionally marked the Linux learning curve." Other Business: VAR Business tells us How to pitch a Linux sale. "4. Make your formal presentation. Linux provides five strong solutions: Web and ISP services; print, file and application services; e-commerce solutions; firewalls and network security; and desktop solutions. Determine what's best for the customer and propose a solution." News.com looks at the latest IDC study. "Companies are increasing their use of the upstart operating system while delaying deployment of Microsoft's latest operating system for businesses, according to International Data Corporation (IDC)." Here's a Linux Journal article which claims that free software is a safer choice for business - because you don't have to worry about being sued for license violations. (Very true, but there's more to the story than that). "Out of the blue, you get a nice little visit from the SPA's legal team. They're asking for an audit of all your systems--now. If you cooperate, a settlement might be possible. And if you don't? You're looking at a lawsuit." ZDNet UK ran this article which anticipates consolidation in the Linux business arena. "The changes, for the most part, are likely to be good news for enterprise customers deploying Linux. An expected consolidation in the market, for example, will result in fewer distributors of the operating system." (Thanks to Alberto Schiavon). (Cesar A. K. Grossmann also pointed out the same article on the U.S. ZDNet site). EE Times ran this article on SGI's moves. "The emergence of Linux as an industry standard, and the fact that Linux is better than any proprietary version of Unix, led SGI to reassess its position in the Windows NT market, [SGI VP] Vrolyk said." (Thanks to Arne Varholm). According to CNN, Corporate doubts about Linux still linger. "In addition to corporate misgivings about Linux, the operating system's advocates have eyed big business warily, concerned that the open-source model might be co-opted, with important features bundled into proprietary systems..." News.com has this article about how Linux and Java are drawing software developers away from Microsoft. "The Linux operating system and the Java language appear to be the chief competitors. Programmers interviewed this week said they are moving away from Windows development for three reasons: the need to build Web-based e-commerce applications that span more than just Windows-based systems, the lure of greater financial rewards for Java programming skills, and a deep distrust of Microsoft's overall motives." (Thanks to Mike Gerdts) The rest: ZDNet interviews Eric Raymond. "I see part of my job as instigating a state of permanent terror at Waggener-Edstrom [Microsoft's PR agency]. I actually want them to fear the consequences of coming up against the community. I want them to know they can't get away with telling lies about what we're doing in public - that it'll just come back and hurt them." Here are 3 articles from Computing: this one about Dell's new Linux machines, this one about Linus Torvalds' keynote at LinuxWorld, and this one on Intel chairman Andy Grove, talking about the IA-64 at LinuxWorld. (Thanks to David Killick) C't magazine ran this interview (in German) with Jonathan Prial, IBM's "Director of integrated solutions and Linux marketing." He talks about where he sees Linux going, and why IBM still supports the Monterey project. English translation available via Babelfish. Also in C't: this article about the Microsoft and LinuxPPC "hack this box" episodes. Again, for those who are not German-capable, Babelfish is your friend. (Thanks to Fred Mobach for both). News.com ran this article about Andover's acquisition of Freshmeat. "The acquisitions, coupled with the rush to hire Linux programmers, provide further evidence of the growing monetary worth of those who have built up Linux expertise." Here's a review of Caldera OpenLinux 2.2 on LinuxPower. "Since I don't believe proprietary software is inherently evil, Caldera is a more than acceptable choice for me. I think Caldera is a good 'newbie' Linux, as far as installation goes and basic setup. It includes more than enough features out of the box to compete head on with any OS out there." Don't fear the penguin says Fox News in this LinuxWorld article. "Many computer users are betting that Linux will be the one to knock Microsoft off its throne of total platform domination. As more companies jump on board to support Linux and more applications are written for the OS, that goal may not seem so far-fetched." Wired News reports from the Linux Beer Hike. "Opinions ran stronger on beer than they did on Linux, whose virtues were universally celebrated. Marco Homann of Hamburg did not actually assert that all beer brewed in Southern Germany should be used to wash laundry, but he curled up his face in a pained way at the taste of it." From The Atlantic comes this story about Linux and Open Source Model as art. "This past June the jury of the Prix Ars Electronica added yet another dimension to open source by awarding Linux a Golden Nica for first prize in the ".net" category." (Thanks to Phil Austin) Computer Reseller News put out one of those "Linux could fragment" articles. "Certainly with Linux, which has been picked up and modified by major vendors such as Red Hat Software Inc., Durham, N.C., and Caldera Systems Inc., Orem, Utah, the potential for fragmentation is there, analysts said. And, at LinuxWorld Expo here last week, TurboLinux, San Francisco; German Linux vendor SuSE; and Corel Corp., Ottawa, all touted their own versions of the OS." Forbes has run a strange article about the talks given by Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates at Comdex way back in last April. "Gates' canny hour-long appearance could have stood on its own but, mirabile dictu, was only the first part of a show that could be said to have had its origins in Greek tragedy. In a stunning coup de theatre, the Gates hour was followed--after a brief intermission and a circuitous march through the convention site--by a second act featuring Linus Torvalds. If the Gates segment were to be dubbed a strophe (roughly, choral speech--here's where the homage to the Greeks comes in), then the Torvalds segment could be called an antistrophe (roughly, choral answer)." Evan Liebovitch takes a look at the Microsoft and LinuxPPC "crack this box" challenges in this ZDNet column. "...one must wonder if the Linux world didn't go just a smidgen overboard this time. There are so many legitimate ways to favorably compare Linux to Microsoft operating systems, I don't see the need to take the low road like this." Here are a few articles from osOpinion. This one from Scott Billings about "... a new UI for Linux, but a little different from the last one ...", in this one author Mark Stanford advocates the use of the X windowing system on Linux, then Jim Reavis talks about Microsoft security problems. Kevin Lyda talks about LinuxWorld and new Linux products. Finally, in this one author Antonio D'souza talks about the new embedded NT and the potential dangers of using it in critical applications such as medical technology. Here's a ZDNet UK article from last week, wherein Microsoft claims that Linux won't live up to the high Windows standards for reliability: "At Microsoft we spend about $3bn on development, so our operating system is tested in all environments. My concern is that if there are so many people developing Linux, customers will not have confidence that it will work so well."
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
August 19, 1999 |
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesSystem admin class slides available. Eklektix has put online the slides from the LinuxWorld tutorial on "Linux system administration in large network environments" that was presented by LWN editors Liz Coolbaugh and Jonathan Corbet.AboutLinux.com launched. Bill Henning, the person behind CPUReview, has launced a new site called AboutLinux.com. Check it out for articles and reviews about our favorite OS. The Linux Documentation Project has a new home. All the goodies you have come to expect from LDP can now be found at www.linuxdoc.org. All of the LDP mailing lists will be moving to lists.linuxdoc.org as well. Funding free software development. The The Uber Collective is being set up as a nonprofit organization which intends to help fund the work of free software developers. We wish them luck. Web sitesIBM's has established a Linux Developer's resource page. It contains links to news, development information, etc. related to Linux. (Thanks to Mike Gerdts) |
August 19, 1999
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekThe Epeios Project has set out to make a large set of programming libraries available under the GPL. They have an initial set now, and are actively working to create more (and to recruit helpers, of course). It is nice to see that the GNU echo command has finally gotten some proper documentation. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
August 19, 1999 |
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Letters to the editorLetters to the editor should be sent to letters@lwn.net. Preference will be given to letters which are short, to the point, and well written. If you want your email address "anti-spammed" in some way please be sure to let us know. We do not have a policy against anonymous letters, but we will be reluctant to include them. | |
From: "Tery Hamer" <tery.hamer@virgin.net> To: <letters@lwn.net> Subject: Dedication Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 22:26:33 +0100 I've just received my Oracle Technology Network Evaluation copy of Oracle8i CD via DHL. (Thankyou! Thankyou! Thankyou!) Now for the joys of trying to install it, configure it, figure it out, etc on Red Hat and SuSe. But I noticed that the Oracle CD label is "Release 8.1.5 for Linus" Aw. Isn't that sweet! tery | ||
From: "Matt.Wilkie" <Matt.Wilkie@gov.yk.ca> To: esr@snark.thyrsus.com Cc: letters@lwn.net Subject: ESR's 'Will You Be Cracked Next?' Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 16:46:00 -0700 Hi Eric, I normally await with interest your next piece. Usually they are thought provoking and promote content over hype. However in "Will you be cracked next?" I feel you have begun to blur the line and are slipping into marketspeak. The phrase which raised my hackles was: "Non-Microsoft operating systems such as Linux are invulnerable to macro attacks, immune to viruses, and can laugh at Back Orifice." This statement while factually accurate, is misleading (according to my understanding anyway - I am not a security expert). Yes Linux is immune to viruses; I have no idea about macro attacks. Although Linux can laugh at Back Orifice itself, Linux is -not- immune to a BO style of attack: a trojan wrapped inside an innocuous program which the recipient/user does want to run. (rootkits anyone?) Not to take away from the main point of the piece: monocultures are by their very nature more suceptible to (epidemic) disease. I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly. I just wish your writing was less hyped. In this world of mucho over hypedness, even the smallest application makes me dig for my salt cubes. ;-) cheers, -matt | ||
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 19:32:02 +0100 (BST) From: Richard Simpson <rs@rcsimpson.CutThisOut.demon.co.uk> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Intellectual property Sir, We read much these days of the threat posed to the open source community by software patents. I realise that patent law is fiendishly complicated and that there are critical differences between the rules here in Europe and those in the USA, but we really need an authoritative legal opinion on some of the questions which relate specifically to open-source software and particularly that which is non-commercial. For example: + I thought (possibly naively) that patents give exclusive rights to the commercial exploitation of an idea. If I give software away for free then I am not commercially exploiting it and therefore not infringing the patent. Right? Wrong? Only true in some countries? + If software has been developed by 50 different people spread all over the world then who do you sue? Questions of this nature tend to produce numerous responses which begin "I'm not a patent lawyer, but it seems to me...". Well, frankly, these are not a lot of use. I guess most patent experts are far too busy making loads of money to bother with Linux, but surely there is a LWN reader who is related to a suitable expert. If we do have a problem with intellectual property then perhaps we need to start creating a counter strategy. Fortunately, we have one extremely powerful weapon in our armory - The Internet. Can I propose that we create some software which will allow developers to establish a virtual presence in a legally untouchable country and communicate via a secure channel. Patent owners will then not be able to find out who developed the software - so they won't be able to sue and if we choose the host county correctly (somewhere like Nigeria or China) then they won't be able to get the site shut down. Obviously, such a system would make it easier for US developers to cooperate in international cryptography work, but due to the same laws it would initialy have to be developed outside the USA. Thank you, Richard Simpson --- Richard Simpson @ home Linux - Where do you want to go tomorrow? www.linux.org | ||
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 14:46:28 -0400 (EDT) From: Clemmitt Sigler <siglercm@alphamb2.phys.vt.edu> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Trillian versus Monterey. Hi, I've been reading the same web pages as most everybody else about Trillian (Linux on IA-64) and Monterey (new commercial Unix flavor designed for IA-64 and supported by IBM, Compaq, and SCO). I guess it's confusing for Linux users to understand at first why someone like IBM would pour resources into both projects. Lots of us would expect Linux to displace a closed source OS like Monterey in short order. But it makes business sense if you look at it another way. There are any number of companies that shy away from Linux because of its Open Source nature. As a result, the Monterey devleopers see the ability to sell and/or support *more* Unix by backing both Trillian and Monterey. Companies looking for "traditional" solutions can go for Monterey. Those who recognize the power and utility of Linux will have Trillian there for them, and they can buy support from a mainstream hardware/OS vendor if they want to. More Unix is used, and everybody wins. It's a case of "A rising tide raises all boats in the harbor." It looks like the only real loser if this scenario plays out will be Microsoft because the penetration of NT won't be as high as they originally hoped for, and even at that NT penetration will probably increase somewhat from current levels as time goes on. But even if upcoming versions of NT are better than the present, the crack that was opened in the door allowed Linux and Unix to step in, push it open, and gain market share. Clemmitt Sigler | ||
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