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March, 2000

There's some NFSv3 and other stuff pending, but those who have pending stuff should all know who they are, and for the rest it's just time to say nice try, see you in 2.5.x. -- Linus Torvalds in his announcement of the pre-2.4 series

The pre-2.4 series begins. Linus sent out this announcement with the 2.3.51 release announcing that he is getting ready to start the pre-2.4 series - which is why this month's current release is 2.3.99-pre1.

A new version of LILO is posted which is able to get past the 1024-cylinder boot limit that has plagued PC systems for years.

I find it amazing that an operating system ... has been developed by young volunteers - not tied by a contract or monetary remuneration, outside of a business organization - and that this system is able to compete with that elaborate system from a large multinational corporation, which is the richest company in the world. -- Italy's Prime Minister on Linux (Editor's translation from the Italian)

The Timpanogas Research Group announces the release of its NWFS 2.2 NetWare file system under the GPL.

Helix Code makes its first desktop release (announcement here). This is not only the beginning of Helix GNOME, but of Helix as a (visible) company as well.

Amazon.com is awarded yet another patent. This time around, it claims patent rights for its affiliate program - which is much like many other such programs on the net. Advanced technology like "referral links" may now be proprietary. Tim O'Reilly comes out strongly against the Amazon patents. The O'Reilly Network also creates a software patents page with resources and news on this subject.

Netcraft: Apache now at 60%. The latest Netcraft survey one shows Apache running on just over 60% of the web for the first time.

Version 1.1 of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL) is published by the Free Software Foundation, the FDL is an extensively thought-out attempt to codify user freedoms; this time with regard to documentation. It recognizes, however, that documents raise different issues than source code; thus many of the provisions of the FDL differ from those of the GPL and LGPL.

Naturally, you can write poor programs in any language. C++ is a powerful tool and in the wrong hands it can generate code that is *obviously* contorted and bloated. That may be preferable to the traditional spaghetti that poor programmers produce in C. Note that someone who is a good C programmer isn't automatically a good C++ programmer. Many problems have been caused by good C programmers assuming that they could adopt a semi-random collection of C++ language features and then magically become a good C++ programmer in a week. -- C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup in this Slashdot interview

XFree86 4.0 is released. This is a major release of the X server that provides the view that most users see of a Linux system. Some of the highlights of this release include OS-independent loadable modules for video drivers, X extensions, font renderers, input device drivers, and so on. See the release notes for the full feature list.

Grokking the Gimp is available online. New Riders' new book Grokking the Gimp (by Carey Bunks), happily, is also available online.

An updated version of Using Samba is also online. Jay Ts has set up a web site with a version of Using Samba by Robert Eckstein, David Collier-Brown, and Peter Kelly that has been repackaged for easier download, has better internal linking, and has a number of errors fixed.

Salon's Free Software Project web site launches. It's an online book in progress on the open source movement being authored by Salon writer Andrew Leonard, who has been responsible for much high-quality coverage of the free software world.

Caldera Systems goes public, after a short delay, on March 21. The stock, which was offered at $14/share began trading at $26 and closed at $29.44. It thus registered a 110% gain on its first day.

Caldera announces a partnership with SCO to sell SCO's professional services to Caldera's customers foreshadowing Caldera's acquisition of most of SCO later in 2000.

A cooperative group has been formed to develop open source customer relationship management (CRM) applications. This group (OpenSourceCRM.org) is sponsored by a handful of companies, including VA Linux Systems.

The secret is straightforward. de Raadt and his peers assume that every single bug found in the code occurs elsewhere. de Raadt admits it sounds simple, but just rooting security bugs out of the entire source tree took 10 full-time developers one and a half years to complete. -- OpenBSD developer and recognized security guru Theo de Raadt, from A Secure and Open Society in ComputerWorld Canada

Trustix 1.0, a "secure Linux" distribution out of Norway, is released. It is aimed at server tasks in particular, and includes strong encryption support.

LinuxPPC developer Jason Haas is hit by a drunk driver and badly injured in a car accident. By August Jason was out of rehabilitation, and generally doing OK.

Macmillan announces the shipment of Linux-Mandrake Secure Server 7.0.

Donovan Software announces its own 64-bit Chinese Linux Distribution, covered in this (Singapore) Business Times article. The new distribution is the Chinese Penguin64 . for software developers, hobbyists and even students to port and develop applications for the 64-bit SparcLinux machines.

So will Linux ever make any sort of dent into Microsoft's formidable 90 percent market share on the desktop? Hohndel [sic] reckons the current trend toward the open source model has only one conclusion: that Linux will become as prevalent as Windows on the desktop within the next two to three years. -- SuSE's Dirk Hohndel talking with ZDNet

MandrakeSoft announces its purchase of the Bochs x86 emulator and its subsequent release under the LGPL. In addition, Kevin Lawton, lead developer for both Bochs and the Plex86 project, a free alternative to VMWare, has joined the MandrakeSoft team. He will be continuing to move forward with the development of Plex86, now with access to the code base for Bochs to speed his team's implementation. "MandrakeSoft recognizes the value brought to our Linux users, by offering them an open source way to concurrently run Windows or other PC operating systems", commented Jacques Le Marois, President of MandrakeSoft.

Red Hat 6.2 is officially released to the web.

Rick Collette announces the launch of his new venture, deepLinux. Rick Collette, used to be the guy behind the SPIRO-Linux distribution. DeepLinux will be primarily focusing on the OEM market, but will include embedded projects involving game systems and network appliances.

The law in open code means that no actor can gain ultimate control over open-source code. Even the kings can't get ultimate control over the code. For example, if Linus Torvalds, father of the Linux kernel, tried to steer GNU/Linux in a way that others in the community rejected, then others in the community could always have removed the offending part and gone on in a different way. This threat constrains the kings; they can only lead where they know the people will follow. -- Innovation, Regulation, and the Internet by Lawrence Lessig for The American Prospect.

ZipSpeak, an "Easy-to-Use, Talking Linux Distribution", is announced. "ZipSpeak is a talking mini-distribution of Linux for blind and visually impaired people, based on version 7.0 of the ZipSlack distribution and version 0.08 of the Speakup screen reader. ZipSpeak is designed to be easily installed on an existing MS-DOS or Windows system, so that the user can start using a talking Linux system with a minimum of difficulty."

The Debian Project receives a donation from Sun of an UltraSparc 60 dual-CPU system, accompanied by a large storage array.

FreeBSD 4.0 is released. . Learning, apparently, from its sibling OpenBSD, a much heavier emphasis on security shows up in this version, including support for OpenSSL, OpenSSH, encrypted telnet and IPsec support.

ROCK in the news. This European Unix Platform (EUP) article describes how to configure a ROCK Linux System as an ISDN Dial-on-Demand Router.

Walnut Creek (the parent company for Slackware) and BSDi announce their merger. Yahoo will be taking an equity investment in the new company. This Slashdot interview with Bob Bruce, president of Walnut Creek, Jordan Hubbard, FreeBSD core team member and release co-ordinator, and Gary Johnson, CEO of the new company, mentions the impact on Slackware. "Our Slackware division will be spun off as an independent company: Slackware Linux, Inc. But our Linux and BSD developers will continue to work closely together. Patrick Volkerding has moved out here from Minnesota and is now managing Slackware development on a day-to-day basis. We will be releasing Slackware 7.1 by summer."

As far as development goes, currently one of the biggest security problems are buffer overflows. Thus, from a security point of view I'd suggest using a programming language that prevents buffer overflows; Python, Perl, Java, Ada, Eiffel, LISP, and lots of others fit that bill. [Otherwise] be sure to use libraries that defend you against buffer overflows and be especially careful with every line of code. -- David A. Wheeler, author of the Secure Programming for Linux HOWTO, in this interview with LinuxSecurity.com

The Think Blue Linux distribution for the IBM S/390 from Thinking Objects Software, GmbH. is available. The website itself runs on Linux for S/390, which is based on Red Hat 6.1. Both rpms and srpms for the distribution are available.

Motorola Computer Group announces the release of its HA Linux distribution. This distribution is aimed at telecommunications applications that require very high amounts of uptime; it includes hot-swap capability, and is available for the I386 and PowerPC architectures. News.com covers this new high-availability distribution. "Telecommunications companies, disdainful of computers that crash, would be a powerful new segment of customers for Linux."

The Open Network Management Software project announces its existence and starts its bi-weekly development reports. . "In three weeks since OpenNMS.org went on-line, more than 275 contributors have joined the consortium, more than 350 people have downloaded the source code, the website has received 5,000 page hits a day..." OpenNMS is building an open source network management package. (The company that created OpenNMS.org is subsequently acquired by Atipa in September, 2000.)

The SEUL project announces the SEUL/sci project, to foster the development of useful open source scientific software for Linux. It issues its first weekly Linux in Science report.

Lutris Technologies announces the release of Enhydra 3.0. Enhydra is an Open Source Java/XML application server.

Perl v5.6.0 is released. The details were posted to the perl5-porters list. "After almost two years of intense deliberation, patching, troubleshooting, and testing, the Perl Porters are proud to bring you the newest major release of Perl. Welcome to Perl v5.6.0!"

ActiveState announces the release of ActivePerl 5.6. ActivePerl is a value added, binary distribution of Perl that can be downloaded for free (but which is not open source). ActiveState provides commercial support for ActivePerl under Linux, Windows and Solaris.

It was at the closing plenary of ApacheCon 2000, in Orlando FL, that a long-anticipated release of software was announced: an alpha release of Apache 2.0. With a few short keystrokes, the Apache Software Foundation announced to the crowd of developers at AC2K that Apache 2.0a was available for download. -- Apache developer Jim Jagielski in this Freshmeat editorial

NEdit 5.1 is released under the GPL. NEdit, is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System used by people working in the scientific community.

The GNOME Users and Developers Conference (GUADEC) in Paris is declared much fun and a great success. Havoc Pennington covered the event in this Gnome Summary. It appears that a lot of important decisions were made at the event: a nine-person Gnome steering committee was appointed and a Gnome Foundation is being created. " All decisions will still be discussed on gnome-hackers or gnome-devel-list as appropriate. That is, the committee will basically just gather information and maybe come up with proposals, it won't be actually making decisions."

Digital Creations announces that its Zope Enterprise Option package will be released as open source. ZEO was formerly a proprietary add-on to Zope that enables the creation of distributed servers. Thus, ZEO allows Zope-based servers to scale across both processors and continents. It's another great contribution from DC, and can only help encourage the continued success of the Zope platform.

The first crypto-enabled builds of Mozilla are now available on-line, including support for SSL, the Security Advisor, and IMAPS.

'Without rivalry -- at least the potential for rivalry -- you don't get anything done,' Torvalds says. `So we've often had cases where there's been two people maintaining very similar kinds of things, and what ends up happening is that I often accept both of them . . . and see which one ends up getting used.' -- Linus Torvalds from this article in the San Jose Mercury

Loki Entertainment Software announces a multi-company project to create and distribute OpenAL, an open-source, cross-platform 3D-Audio library, licensed under the LGPL. "Until now, games running on Linux have not had access to the advanced 3D-Audio features available on other platforms. OpenAL provides those advanced features with an open-source, nonproprietary implementation which is available not just for Linux, but for Windows and MacOS games as well. What SGI's OpenGL has done for 3D-Video, OpenAL will do for 3D-Audio."

Cobalt Networks announces a deal to acquire Chili!Soft, a vendor of active server pages (ASP) software for Linux. The deal is for 1.15 million shares of Cobalt stock.

Linuxcare submits a new S-1 (IPO) filing ending a period of silence from that direction. There is little exciting to be found therein - the price range remains $11-13. Linuxcare also announces the opening of its Japanese office (Linuxcare Kabushuki Kaisha) in Tokyo.

The Embedded Linux Consortium announces its existence. Its goal is "to amplify the depth, breadth, and speed of Linux adoption in the enormous embedded computer market;" the initial leader will be Rick Lehrbaum, the guy behind LinuxDevices.com, among other things.

VA Linux Systems announces the acquisition of TruSolutions and NetAttach. TruSolutions is a maker of rack-mount server systems. NetAttach is in the network storage appliance business. TruSolutions went for 1.8M shares of VA stock plus $10 million in cash; NetAttach got 286,000 shares plus $10 million.

A project (called "Nupedia") to create an open content encyclopedia is announced. For more information see the Nupedia web site

Bluepoint Linux stock quietly began trading in the over-the-counter market under the symbol BLPT. Bluepoint is a vendor of Chinese-localized Linux distributions, based in the city of Shenzen.

LinuxMall.com and Frank Kasper & Associates announces the completion of their merger. The new company retains the name LinuxMall.com.

MontaVista Software, the company behind the "Hard Hat Linux" real-time and embedded distribution, announces that it has received $9 million in investments and the appointment of David Warner as chief financial officer.

Inprise Corporation announces that C. Robert Coates, CEO of Management Insights, Inc., has resigned from the Board of Directors in protest of the merger with Corel. Mr. Coates does not seem to disagree with the merger itself; it mostly seems to be an issue of how much compensation Inprise stockholders (he is a big one) get out of the deal.

Red Hat announces the appointment of Harold Covert, Adobe's ex-CFO, as Chief Financial Officer.

Ericsson announces its "Screen Phone HS210" product - a Linux-based telephone with a touchscreen that can be used for email, web browsing, etc. Ericsson and Opera Software also announce that Ericsson's (Linux-based) HS210 "Screen Phone" will incorporate the Opera web browser.

TurboLinux appoints T. Paul Thomas as the new President and Chief Operating Officer of the company, replacing founder Cliff Miller (who remains CEO). Thomas was previously the President and CEO of Artisoft.

Centura Software Corp.went live with its open source database for Information Appliances on OpenAvenue's hosting site at http://www.openavenue.com/db.linux.

...without bootlegs, the Grateful Dead and Phish would be playing the blues in some dumpy bar in South San Francisco. Indeed, with the band's official support of sharing performances, it could be argued that the real source of everything Open Source is the Grateful Dead. -- "Napster on Linux: From a Whisper to a Scream Why Music Fans Should Embrace Napster" by Kevin Reichard for LinuxPlanet

Jean L. Francois becomes chief technology officer for EBIZ Enterprises.

O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. announces that Jon Orwant is the new Chief Technology Officer.

TwoMobile.com comes up with a new analogy for Linux. "Just like Linux, rap music was something that scared corporations until it was big enough to be profitable, and suddenly everyone wanted a piece of the action."

Linux Expo merged with the Atlanta Linux Showcase . The Linux Expo that was held in North Carolina for several years in a row.

Donnie Barnes posts the story of Linux Expo on the web. It covers the history of the event, and why it isn't happening this year.

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