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Leading items and editorials

The FDL does preserve the "viral" nature of the GPL in a couple of ways. A work covered under the FDL can not have its redistribution restricted - there can never be proprietary works derived from an FDL-licensed document. The FDL also does not combine well with other licenses; a document licensed under the FDL can only be combined with other text under the same license.

Derived works can be made from documents covered under the FDL. However, the restrictions are stronger than those spelled out in the GPL. The FDL allows the specification of "cover text" (short bits of text which appear on the document covers) and "invariant sections," both of which must be carried forward unchanged into any modified version. The FDL specifies, however, that "invariant sections" must be "secondary sections," meaning that they do not directly address the subject of the document. The invariant section provisions, thus, are meant to cover author introductions, acknowledgements, rants against software patents, etc. without allowing restrictions on the modification of the technical meat of the document.

The baggage of invariant sections and cover texts will likely make it hard to incorporate small sections of documents into other works, even if the latter are also licensed under the FDL. If one document contains an outstanding tutorial on "using development kernels for nuclear power plant control," that tutorial can not be added to another document without pulling along all of the cover texts and invariant sections as well.

Interestingly, the FDL's requirements vary depending on the number of copies being distributed. The license calls for a "transparent" machine-readable copy (i.e. no Word or StarOffice files) to be made available on the net, but only if more than 100 copies are being made. The FDL also contains something the GPL has explicitly avoided: an attribution requirement. The authors' names must be carried along with copies.

Not everybody likes the GPL, but there is little doubt that it has been one of the defining forces behind the rise of Linux. The FDL attempts to fill a gap in the licensing of documentation. It may well be that the FDL will give a similar shape to the coming wave of free documentation.

XFree86 4.0 has been released, after a long wait. Since the X server provides the view that most users see of a Linux system, a major new release is interesting. Some of the highlights of this release include:

• The separate server binaries for different video cards are a thing of the past. The X server now comes as a single executable with a loadable module system to bring in pieces as need be, including video drivers, X extensions, font renderers, input device drivers, and so on.

  Interestingly, the X server does not use the loadable module mechanism provided by the underlying operating system. They have a separate implementation which is OS-independent. Thus, a loadable driver compiled for the i386 architecture will work on any operating system (Linux, *BSD, ...) which runs on that processor. This setup should greatly reduce the overhead of supporting drivers on the many systems that run XFree86.

• Multi-head support has been much improved. There is also a feature, called "Xinerama," which allows a single logical screen to stretch across multiple physical displays.

• DDC (Device Data Channel) support has been implemented, so the server can learn about your monitor's capabilities directly.

• The direct rendering infrastructure (DRI) and GLX code has been implemented, providing fast OpenGL support.

• There is new support for TrueType fonts.

• There is even an update to the venerable Xaw widget set which provides a long list of new capabilities and even the ability to do themes.

The above list is incomplete, see the release notes for the full list. But it should be clear that this is a major release. Congratulations are due to the XFree86 team, which worked long and hard to make this release happen.

The story of Linux-Mandrake. Gaël Duval, creator of the Linux-Mandrake distribution, has written a feature article describing how Linux-Mandrake (and MandrakeSoft) came to be. A distribution that started as one person's project has turned into one of the major Linux players with 70 employees, venture funding, and more. It's a classic Linux success story.

The Worldforge Project: A Gamer's Perspective We asked Douglas Sundseth, a dyed-in-the-wool gamer, to take a look at the Worldforge Project, an open source effort to develop a complete system for massively multiplayer online roleplaying. Here is is the result: The Worldforge Project: A Gamer's Perspective.

Colorado Linux Info Quest. Now only two weeks away, the Colorado Linux Info Quest has finalized the list of speakers and lined up some prominent names for leading Birds of a Feather sessions as well, including Paul Everitt, from Digital Creations, who will be presenting a Zope demo and leading the Zope BOF, Bdale Garbee, who will be leading the Debian BOF and Tom Christiansen and Nathan Nathan Torkington, who are coming to lead the Perl BOF. For more information, check out the latest press release.

Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:

• Security: Trustix, Linux, PGP duplicate key id update,.
• Kernel: The pre-2.4 series begins, fun with shmfs, kernel latency
• Distributions: ix86 Linux, Linpus Linux, FreeBSD and XLinux 3.0.
• Development: Progress on the desktop, new Apache release.
• Commerce: Closing in on Caldera's IPO, a bogus open source license, the latest on Amazon.com patents
• Back page: Linux links and letters to the editor

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 and editorials

Duplicate key IDs for PGP-signed mail. We've gotten lots of mail about this issue that we reported on last week. First of all, the problem actually reported turned out to be a case of a PGP server returning the wrong key, not one of a duplicate key, as Florian Weimer pointed out.

Second, followup on BugTraq that came out after we published covered the issue of duplicate keys in detail. The PGP FAQ describes the ability to generate a duplicate key as the "deadbeef attack". It is part of the PGP specification and the reason why key signatures and fingerprints are also important parts of the PGP verification process. Here is a pointer to the information on signing your key.

It was also pointed out that PGP servers should not assume that key ids are unique, according to the RFCs, and should therefore return all matches for a given keyid. For more information, check the relevant thread on BugTraq.

Preventing Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (O'Reilly). The O'Reilly Network talks about prevention of DDOS attacks. "If you want to prevent distributed denial of service attacks on your hosts, the best hope you have is to prevent your own hosts and networks from being used to cause denial of service attacks on others and to encourage other network and system administrators to do the same."

Security Reports

SuSE: IMAP update. SuSE has released an advisory covering a vulnerability in the IMAP server, along with an update to resolve the problem.

StarOffice StarScheduler vulnerabilities. Two vulnerabilities have been reported in StarOffice's groupware server, StarScheduler. These vulnerabilities can allow remote root access, a denial-of-service attack and improper read access to files. These problems were apparently reported to Sun on February 6th, but no fixes have been made available. Disabling StarScheduler or restricting access to the relevant port (801) is recommended.

mtr. Version 0.42 of mtr fixed vulnerabilities in its method of dealing with root privileges. This week, the first distribution update for mtr has become available.

• Debian

• Debian (old)
• FreeBSD (old)
• SuSE (old)
• TurboLinux

MySQL. TurboLinux also put out an update for the security hole in MySQL covered in the March 2nd Security Summary.

• SuSE (old)
• Caldera(old)
• FreeBSD (old)
• TurboLinux

TurboLinux update for man. TurboLinux also put out an update for man, fixing a problem first reported in the November 2nd, 1999 LWN Security Summary.

Printtool. A vulnerability in printtool as installed on Red Hat Linux 6.1 has been reported. Debian is not vulnerable to this problem.

Resources

Mason mailing lists established. A set of mailing lists for the Mason automated Linux firewall builder has been announced. Mason is an interesting tool that seeks to ease the detailed process of setting up Linux firewall rules.

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

See also: last week's Kernel page.

Kernel development

The current stable kernel release is still 2.2.14. The 2.2.15 prepatch is up to 2.2.15pre14 - a large patch with a number of new fixes. It still looks like at least one more prepatch iteration will be required before the stable kernel release happens.

The pre-2.4 series is coming. 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 the current release is 2.3.99-pre1. At this point, presumably, a real feature freeze has taken effect, and only bug fixes will go into the kernel. Regarding what may still go in, Linus has said "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."

This announcement has, predictably, brought out a number of people who have "pending" patches that they would like to see included. The biggest discussion by far was about reiserfs, Hans Reiser's new filesystem that was discussed in the November 11, 1999 LWN. Quite a few people would like to see reiserfs go in, for two reasons: (1) they are actively, happily using it, and (2) if it goes in, the 2.4 kernel can claim to have a journaling filesystem. The kernel developers are trying not to be influenced by the second reason, but it is clear that many of them would like to be able to make that claim.

The inclusion of reiserfs has drawn some opposition, however, from those who do not like all of the changes that the patch makes. The leading opponent is probably Alexander Viro, who has been busy for a long time fixing up the VFS layer and fixing problems there; he sees reiserfs as being a new source of problems to fix.

The reiserfs folks are trying very hard to listen to the complaints and criticisms that have been going by, and seem to be bending over backward trying to address them. They really want to see their filesystem in the kernel. Linus has indicated that the inclusion of reiserfs is a possibility - for a later 2.4 release, if perhaps not for 2.4.0.

The latest 2.4 jobs list has been postedby Alan Cox. There's still a number of things to be fixed. Randy Dunlap has posted a separate 2.4 USB jobs list.

The great netfilter merge is happening, and should be essentially complete within another kernel release or two. Netfilter is the new implementation of the IP firewalling and masquerading subsystems. Firewalling and masquerading have been massively reworked, and now have a new set of utilities to work with them. ipchains is passé; things are now done with iptables and ipnatctl.

Netfilter actually contains a pair of compatibility modules that allow the old ipchains and ipfwadm utilities to work - so the transition should be relatively easy. But it is never too soon to think about heading over to the current way of doing things. Interested people may want to look at the iptables HOWTO and the ipnatctl HOWTO.

2.3.50 included the new shared memory filesystem. The shm filesystem cleans up the shared memory implementation, and helps in the provision of Posix shared memory segments. But its inclusion has broken a couple of things, and created some surprises for people.

First, SYSV shared memory is not available in the system until the shm filesystem has been mounted. It can be mounted directly with a command like:

mount -t shm shm /var/shm

none /var/shm shm defaults 0 0

The other surprise is that the new shared memory implementation breaks some applications. In particular, the Gimp as provided by some distributions dies an ugly death on startup. There are reports that recompiling the Gimp fixes the problem, though it is not entirely clear why. The real problem seems to be a change in shared memory semantics - one which makes Linux work more like other Unix systems.

The NT filesystem is unmaintained, and will likely be marked "obsolete" in the 2.4 kernel. It evidently still works, in at least some situations (not with W2K filesystems), but others report problems. It seems that not too many kernel developers see a great need for this filesystem. Unless somebody steps up and takes over its maintenance, the NT filesystem will eventually go away.

Preemptable kernel code? A continuing effort, led by Ingo Molnar, is underway to reduce the time it takes the kernel to respond to events. The low-latency work is inspired by the need to drive devices like sound cards and software modems without falling behind the data stream. The current Linux kernel, in some situations, is simply too slow to respond to do the job properly.

The approach being looked at currently is to change a longstanding assumption in the kernel: that kernel code does not get scheduled out unless it explicitly sleeps. This assumption only holds, of course, on uniprocessor systems, so its demise should not really cause too many problems. Except that there will always be problems that come out with this sort of change.

Linus has been pushing an approach that takes advantage of the existing SMP structure to make a preemptable kernel work. Essentially, it uses the spinlock primitives (which are currently no-ops on uniprocessor systems) to mark places where the kernel can not be preempted; any time that a spinlock is not held becomes fair game. Linus's approach explicitly changes nothing on SMP systems, on the theory that there is no need to preempt the kernel to get low latencies when there are multiple processors available. Not everybody agrees with that claim, however.

Thus far there has not been a patch proposed that Linus likes. In any case, a change of this scale may well have to wait until the 2.5 series. Making the kernel preemptable has enough potential to create strange bugs that it should have quite a bit of testing time to settle out before going into a stable kernel.

Other patches and updates released this week include:

• SUBTERFUGUE 0.1.2 was released by Mike Coleman.

• Werner Almesberger has posted version eight of his "bootimg" patch. This patch allows the kernel to boot an arbitrary kernel image. See this note for a description of some of the things enabled by this patch.

• OBDFS v0.004, an object-based filesystem, has been released.

• Jens Axboe has released a new version (0.0.1k) of his CD-RW packet writing module.

Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet

For other kernel news, see:

• Kernel traffic
• Kernel Newsflash
• Kernel Trap
• Linux 2.5.x Porting help

Other resources:

• Kernel Source Reference
• L-K mailing list FAQ
• Linux-MM
• Linux Scalability Effort
• Kernel Newbies
• Linux Device Drivers

See also: last week's Distributions page.

Distributions

ix86 Linux for the PC. Another distribution out of Germany, ix86 Linux is dubbed "the distribution for the interested private user" (Babelfish translation). This distribution appears, from the Babelfish translation of the site, to support either a minimal 486 install or a slightly larger Pentium install with XWindows support by default, with Gnome as an option. It uses qmail for the default mailer and does not use a package manager, working instead directly with the source tarballs.

Linux from Taiwan: Linpus Linux. Ambrose Li sent us a tip about another new Linux distribution, Linpus Linux, made by Linpus Technologies in Taiwan. The websites are, of course, all in Chinese, but from this picture, we were able to deduce that this is a Red Hat Linux compatible product.

Corel Linux

Debian GNU/Linux

Debian GNU/Hurd. The latest Hurd news is available via the Hurd Kernel-Cousin.

FreeBSD

Rock Linux

ROCK Linux 1.3.8 has been released. The Rock naming scheme follows that of the Linux kernel, so the 1.3.X tree is the development tree. It includes a new automated system setup. Check the CHANGELOG for more details. ROCK Linux is a distribution for skilled Linux/Unix Administrators who want to be able to compile all the packages for a system on the system itself at installation.

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.

Slackware Linux

BSDi/Walnut Creek press release. Here's the press release from BSDi describing the merger with Walnut Creek CDROM. It contains more information on the merger, and includes a mention that Yahoo will be taking an equity investment in the new company.

Walnut Creek is the parent company for Slackware, currently, which is why we mention this merger here. The 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, focuses more on the impact on FreeBSD, which will gain up to twenty new developers.

Slackware, though, will also be impacted. "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."

Slashdot has promised an interview with Patrick Volkerding in the near future.

SuSE Linux

SuSE road show. SuSE has announced a roadshow tour of Germany, starting on March 20, with stops in cities like Munich, Stuttgart, Bonn, Berlin, and numerous others. Details can be found on the roadshow schedule page, which, surprisingly enough, is in German.

SuSE and Enlighten Software partner for Linux management. SuSE and Enlighten Software have announced a deal that will see Enlighten's system monitoring code bundled with SuSE's 6.4 distribution.

SuSE joins up with SourceForge SuSE has announced that SourceForge will be a primary mirror for SuSE's FTP site. Seemingly in return, SuSE is also now represented on SourceForge's compile farm.

TurboLinux

Lutris Technologies Teams With TurboLinux to Offer Enhydra. Lutris Technologies Inc. and TurboLinux Inc. announced a joint effort to certify and distribute the Enhydra Java/XML application server for the TurboLinux operating system. Enhydra is an Open Source Java/XML application server.

TurboLinux opens offices in Latin America. TurboLinux has announced the opening of offices in Argentina and Brazil.

XTeamLinux

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.

Leading
Caldera OpenLinux
Debian GNU/Linux
Linux-Mandrake
Red Hat
Slackware
SuSE
TurboLinux

Also well-known
ASPLinux
Best Linux
Conectiva Linux
e-smith
Kondara MNU/Linux
Progeny
Rock Linux

Non-technical desktop
easyLinux
Icepack Linux
Independence
LibraNet
Redmond Linux
WinSlack

Education
Boston University
kmLinux
LinuxFromScratch
OpenClassroom
Red Escolar

General Purpose
Alzza Linux
aXon Linux
Bad Penguin Linux
BearOps
Black Cat Linux
BluePoint Linux
BYO Linux
CAEN Linux
Cafe Linux
ChainSaw Linux
Circle MUDLinux
cLIeNUX
Complete Linux
Console Linux
Corel Linux
CRUX
Darkstar Linux
DLite
easyLinux
Elfstone Linux
ESware Linux
Eurielec Linux
eXecutive Linux
Fried Chicken
FTOSX
FullPliant
Gentoo
Go!Linux
HA Linux
Halloween Linux
HispaFuentes
IceLinux
Ivrix
ix86 Linux
J-LINUX
JBLinux
Jurix
KRUD
KSI-Linux
Lanthan Linux
Laonux
LASER5
Leetnux
Linpus Linux
Linux Cyrillic Edition
Linux MLD
LinuxOne OS
LinuxPPP
Linux Pro Plus
Linux-SIS
LNX System
LoopLinux
LSD
Lute Linux
MageNet
Mastodon
MaxOS
minilinux
MSC.Linux
nmrcOS
NoMad Linux
Omoikane GNU/Linux
PingOO Linux
Plamo Linux
PLD
Project Ballantain
PROSA
Rabid Squirrel
Repairlix
Root Linux
Scrudgeware
Serial Terminal
Sorcerer
spyLinux
Stampede
Stataboware
TechLinux
TimeSys Linux/RT
Tom Linux
Trinux
Turkuaz
Ute-Linux
VA-enhanced Red Hat
Vine Linux
Virtual Linux
WholeLinux
WinLinux 2000
XTeamLinux
ZipSpeak

Country-specific
Argentina
GNU/Linux Ututo
Britain
Definite Linux
Eridani
China
COSIX
Red Flag
France
Linux/MNIS
Italy
LinuxEspresso
Madeinlinux
Vedova
Spain
Linux Esware
Thailand
Kaiwal Linux
Thai Linux Extension

Related Projects
Chinese Linux Extension

Historical (Non-active)
Dualix
Gentus
Giotto
MCC Interim Linux
OS2000
Storm Linux
Yggdrasil

See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

VA Linux Pumps Up Developer Resources (E-Commerce Times). Here's an E-Commerce Times article about VA Linux Systems' compile farm. "CompileFarm will initially allow testing on Linux distributions by Caldera, Debian, Red Hat Linux and Slackware, along with FreeBSD. The service allows developers to switch to any supported distribution, from a single command line, for the purpose of compiling and testing programs in multiple environments."

Application of the week: LavaPS (Linuxcare). LavaPS is Linuxcare's application of the week. LavaPS is described as a combination lava lamp and process listing utility. "For me, system administration has never been easier. Take a look at top next to LavaPS in the screen shot and decide for yourself which one you prefer..."

Browsers

O'Reilly Interviews Mozilla Leaders. The O'Reilly Network has published an interview with Mozilla manager, Mitchell Baker, and main archtect, Brendan Eich. "And one of the goals of Mozilla is to try to integrate the traditional Open Source community and methods and development styles, and the strength of that world with corporate, commercial involvement."

Databases

E-commerce

Education

Embedded Linux

Games

The Nebula Device. Radon Labs, a developer of commercial games, is the driving force behind The Nebula Project, an SDK which they have licensed as free software. Their latest development release is 2000-03-14.

Networking

"Early in the second year of the project, Web100 will produce a complete CD-based Linux distribution ... the Web100 kernel patch set, libraries and tools will be added to the selected base distribution."

Interoperability

Wine. This week's Wine Weekly News talks about Windows API testing for Wine and support for non-Linux platforms while evolving Wine.

Office Applications

For a comparison of Linux wordprocessors, check out Linuxcare's product comparison chart, based on user contributed comments. They are missing feedback on LyX and currently show Corel's Wordperfect 8 at the top of the pack. It was interesting to note that the free software wordprocessors Abiword and Kword scored higher than Star Office 5.1 and Applixware 5. That is impressive, considering, for example, that Abiword is still pre-alpha software.

AbiWord Weekly News. The AbiWord Weekly News for March 8 is out. Support for Hungarian has been added and Joaquin Abela's patch to dd command-line file format conversion support has been integrated, along with many other contributions.

For March 15th, the AbiWord Weekly News takes a look at rulers, and Gnome integration, along with "many diverse and significant design issue".

LyX Development News. News from the Lyx project is getting more detailed. Check out this week's issue for discussions of Rbook, a REBOL dialect for writing documents, and its implications for Lyx, along with other development topics.

On the Desktop

Magellan available for download. The first public release of the Magellan personal information manager application is now available for download. Magellan, a KDE application, looks to have some nice features; see the screenshots page for some examples.

Adding shortcuts to your Gnome desktop. Linuxmonth has put out a short article demonstrating how to add a shortcut to the Gimp onto your desktop.

KDE Development News. This week's KDE Development Newsindicates that KDE 1.9, a full beta of KDE 2.0, is scheduled for release in May. If that isn't enough KDE news to satisfy you, check out Mosfet's page for updates on Pixie, Konqueror, and XML based toolbar editing.

The Gimp Development News. Check out this week's Gimp Kernel-Cousin for the latest Gimp news.

If you're German, you may want to check out Gottfried Mueller's GIMP pages. [From the Gimp News.]

GConf. Havoc Pennington writes about GConf, the new configuration data storage mechanism for GNOME 2.0 in this week's Gnome developer feature article.

Science

Systems Administration

Website Development

Midgard Weekly Summary. This week's Midgard Weekly Summaryreports on the Repligard replication system, extensible record support for Midgard 1.2.X, a patch to support PHP 3.0.15 and other development news for this web application development platform.

Zope Weekly News (March 15th). This week's Zope Weekly News is now available, with the latest development news for this web application server.

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

Project Links
Gnome
High Availability
ht://Dig
KDE
MagicPoint
Midgard
Mozilla
YAMS
Wine
Worldforge
Zope

More Information
AppWatch
Freshmeat
LinuxDev

Development tools

Java

Sun Microsystems to release Forte for Java source. Sun has announced the release of the source for the "Forte for Java Community edition 1.0" Java development environment. The code will be released under the "Mozilla public licensing model," which presumably means a modified version of the MPL. Code should be available "within the next 90 days."

Perl

Perl 5.6 Release Candidate 1. The first release candidate for the upcoming perl 5.6 has been announced.

Perl Certification. A mailing list has been started to discuss Perl Certification, apparently on the theory that enough people want Perl certification that it is likely to come about eventually, therefore it would be better to step to the plate now and keep control of such certification in the Perl community.

perl5-porters is back. The perl5-porters report on perl development is back, after a two month hiatus. As might be expected, it catches up on a lot of activity and discussions.

Python

Tcl/tk

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

See also: last week's Commerce page.

Linux and business

Caldera has filed an updated S-1 describing the IPO. There's not much new in the amended S-1, they have mostly just updated some of the financial numbers and added a couple of forms. There is an interesting note, however, about an increase in their reserves due to slower sales of OpenLinux 2.3 than they had been expecting.

In a separate filing Caldera disclosed much of its corporate documentation, including its articles of incorporation and bylaws. There is also the interesting tidbit that the IPO will cost Caldera $2 million beyond the underwriting fees. The largest line item is $600,000 for insurance premiums.

Caldera has also announced a partnership with SCO to sell SCO's professional services to Caldera's customers.

STFB's bogus open source license. Bernhard Reiter noticed this announcement from STFB, Inc. that was mentioned in last week's LWN commerce page. They claim: "STFB Inc. plans to change the open source market for Windows application software by offering open source licensing on all of its current and on all of its future accounting and ERP products." Mr. Reiter went through, however, and actually read STFB's licence agreement, which includes phrases like: "There are no limitations on the number of times the package may be customized and resold. The only restriction is that only the executable program and documentation, and not the source code itself, may be distributed."

In other words, the "open source" claim is bogus. Since the term is not trademarked (or trademarkable), there is nothing stopping STFB from making this claim, other than public pressure. Concerned folks may want to drop a polite note to the given contact address for STFB: erricoe@stfb.com.

Amazon.com calls for patent law reform Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos has put up this page with a call for reform of software and business model patents. His suggestions include a review period prior to the issuance of patents, and a much shorter period of protection (3-5 years). Not perfect, but a step in the right direction.

Tim O'Reilly has put up a response to Bezos' latest. "While Jeff hasn't done what I originally asked for--to rescind his patent claims--he has most definitely engaged with the problems I was raising, thought seriously about them, and proposed an answer that works for him and his business. That being said, I don't want to let Jeff entirely off the hook. One thing about a call for action in Washington is that it could be seen as just a way of shifting the focus away from Amazon and onto the PTO."

Industry leaders launch Embedded Linux Consortium. The Embedded Linux Consortium has announced 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.

Italy's Prime Minister on Linux. We just got a pointer to a contribution by Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema to the "The action plan for the development of the information society: a project for Italy" conference which was held in January. Linux is held out as an example of how things can be done. "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" (Editor's translation). The full text (in Italian) is available from the Prime Minister's web site; Babelfish translations are available for the full text as well. (Grazie a Roberto Bagnara).

Alan Cox on a Chip. For those of you looking for the latest in processing technology, check out Alan Cox on a Chip. It has many interesting features, including an "optional 5C00B1 D00 multimedia coprocessor." (Thanks to Lenz Grimmer)

VA Linux Systems to acquire TruSolutions and NetAttach. VA Linux Systems has announced the acquisition of two more companies. The first is TruSolutions, a maker of rack-mount server systems; the second is NetAttach, which 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.

Applix Announces growth strategy. Applix has put out an announcement describing its future growth strategy. Among other things, this strategy includes spinning off its Linux division as a separate company.

Lineo gets new director, investments. Lineo has announced that John Egan has joined its board of directors, and that it has received equity investments (amounts undisclosed) from Egan Managed Capital and Motorola.

Lineo to acquire USE, Inc. Lineo has announced the acquisition of United System Engineers, a Japanese engineering firm. The main purpose of this acquisition seems to be to allow Lineo to support its Embeddix distribution on a new set of hardware platforms.

SAS comes to Linux. SAS Institute has pre-announced a port of SAS to Linux, scheduled to become available later this year. "Based on positive customer feedback, as well as the increasing number of Fortune 1000 companies looking seriously at Linux as a viable operating-system choice for their enterprise-wide business applications, we felt that the time was right for us to offer a Linux version of SAS software."

Inprise/Borland announces JBuilder 3.5. Inprise has announced JBuilder 3.5 - the latest version of its Java development environment.

VA Linux Systems quarterly report. VA Linux Systems has filed an SEC report for the quarter ending in January, 2000. In that quarter they had just over $20 million in revenues, and lost $11.5 million. There is also a copy of the consent letter signed by Linus Torvalds allowing the use of "Linux" in the company name.

RealPlayer 7 beta for Linux. RealPlayer 7 beta for Linux is available for download, all you have to do is fill out the forms. (Thanks to Robert Taylor).

Open content encyclopedia launched. A project (called "Nupedia") to create an open content encyclopedia has announced its existence. The Nupedia web site is up, but there does not yet appear to be much in the way of content there. Some people have expressed concerns that Nupedia's license agreement, which includes a strong attribution requirement, may make it hard to use Nupedia's content in other settings.

InterBase 6 for Linux beta available. InterBase has put up the first beta release of Interbase 6 for Linux. No source code as yet - they hope to have something "real soon now"... (Thanks to Daniel Work).

Section Editor: Jon Corbet.

Press Releases:

Open Souce Products:
• Intel has announced the release of an open source driver for its ethernet adapter family.

  Commercial Products for Linux:

• Alias|Wavefront announced shipment of its Maya Batch Renderer for the Linux platform.

• Chili!Soft has announced the availability of its Active Server Pages implementation for Linux. Linux users in general may not have much interest in ASP, but it could well prove to be an indispensible transition tool for those moving to Linux from other environments.

• Connectix Corporation announced shipment of Connectix Virtual PC with Red Hat Linux. Connectix Virtual PC gives you a hassle-free way to run Linux on a Mac.

• Corel has announced that Photo-Paint for Linux will be available for free download. Nobody can accuse them of announcing too late, anyway - it won't actually be downloadable until "early summer."

• DataLight has announced that its "FlashFX" media manager, which makes flash memory devices look like disk drives, will be supported for embedded Linux applications.

• ILOG has announced that its Parallel Solver system now is supported on Linux.

• Intelligent Computer Solutions, Inc. unveiled ICMail 4.2.

• Lynx Real-Time Systems has announced that BlueCat Linux 1.0 will sell for $299.

• Novell has announced the availability of NDS eDirectory and NDS Corporate Edition for Linux.

• Rebel.com, vendors of the Linux-based Netwinder series, has announced its shop.rebel.com site.

• Sendmail, Inc. announced Sendmail Secure Switch, a next generation Internet Mail routing solution.

• VA Linux Systems, Inc. announced the availability of the VA Linux Systems 1000 server, a high-performance, very high density rackmount server in a 1U (1.75") format.

  Products Using Linux:

• Last week our commerce page had an article about a Swedish talking clock, apparently made by a company called Framfab. A couple of readers wrote in to tell us that Framfab was only responsible for about 10% of the system. The rest, we are told, was made by Cendio Systems AB, Telia and Swedish National Testing and Research Institute. Here is Cendio's press release in Swedish. (Thanks to Jan Smith and Jerker Nyberg)

• Neoware and Csoft have announced a partnership to develop and market Linux-based point of sale and kiosk systems.

• Red Hat, Inc. announced that its eCos (embedded configurable operating system) is powering Brother International Corp.'s HL-2400CeN & HL-3400CN laser printers.

• VillageWorld.Com announced that it is in trial testing of its Linux-based Set-top system.

• Worldwide Online Corp. announced the launch of Phase I of the application development for RegisterOnNet Technologies Inc., of Mississauga, Ontario. RegisterOnNet has developed a Linux based system, supported by an Oracle database application, providing a dynamic, business to business, e-commerce application.

  Products with Linux Versions:

• Advantech Co., Ltd. announced the SPC-200, a compact thin server.

• Aestiva LLC announced Aestiva HTML/OS, which allows anyone to design advanced Web sites without CGI programming or the need for complex integration tools.

• Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI), producer of the Satellite Tool Kit (STK) software suite, announced that the next release, STK 4.1.1 and its add-on modules will run on any Linux release compatible with Red Hat Linux version 6.0.

• BulletProof Corporation released version 4.0 of JDesignerPro, its Java Development and Deployment system.

• Chronology Corporation announced the shipment of several new advancements to its QuickBench Verification Suite. Linux support is new with this version.

• Compaq Computer Corporation announced SANworks Storage Resource Manager, an Open SAN management tool.

• Data Connection Limited announced that DC-Share for Linux has entered external beta testing with full release scheduled for 2nd quarter 2000. DC-Share is a NetMeeting-interoperable, standards-based, H.323- and T.120-compliant VoIP conferencing endpoint.

• Egan Systems, Inc. introduced an enhanced COBOL runtime environment. Available for an Apache HTTP Server running on Red Hat Linux.

• GoAhead Software announced the release of GoAhead FieldUpgrader 2.2, the latest version of the company's remote upgrading software.

• Inference Corporation announced the availability of k-Commerce Sales v2.0.

• Intergraph Corporation announced availability of the new version of DiskAccess, the Network File System (NFS) interoperability client software. This version has improved connectivity with Linux NFS servers.

• IONA Technologies announced Orbix 2000, an e-business middleware product.

• JNI Corporation announced it has released the PC Server DriverSuite, the "world's first" integrated suite of software drivers for Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs).

• JNI also announced 'Novell Yes' Certification for the Fibre Channel HBAs.

• Network TeleSystems (NTS) announced the release of the EnterNet Software Developers Kit (SDK), a product designed to assist broadband service providers, chipset vendors, and CPE suppliers who are developing, testing, and demonstrating subscriber-oriented software and related system-level applications. The Linux version of this product comes with source code.

• PentaSafe Security Technologies, Inc. announced VigilEnt Security Management Solution for e- business.

• PowerCerv Corporation released ERP Plus version 9.0. ERP Plus is an integrated suite of Customer Relationship Management and Enterprise Resource Planning solutions, and version 9.0 is the first version to support Linux.

• Rave Computer Association introduced the Rave Systems RackMount-1UAXe, for Solaris or Linux.

• SoftBase Systems, Inc. announced the availability of NetLert 2.0 software in a version optimized for the corporate call center environment.

• SolutionsIQ announced the launch of CONNX 8.2, its latest version of data access middleware, which will add support for IBM's recent and current versions of DB2 database on several platforms, including Linux.

• Sonica Software Corporation announced the availability of Sonictrack-ifs, a Warehouse Management System.

• One has to wonder what the DVDCC thinks of this announcement from Ultera Systems and NewWave Technologies. It's a hardware solution (supported under Linux) which allows up to twelve copies of a DVD to be made at once - no DeCSS software required.

  Partnerships, Investments and Acquisitions:

• Here's the press release from BSDi describing the merger with Walnut Creek CDROM. It contains more information on the merger, and includes a mention that Yahoo will be taking an equity investment in the new company.

• Corel Corporation announced it has signed a Department Individual Standing Offer, with Public Works and Government Services Canada, for Corel business and graphics applications.

• Eagle Wireless International, Inc. and etoolz, Inc. announced the signing of a letter-of-intent for the acquisition of etoolz by Eagle.

• Hewlett-Packard Company announced that its WebQoS technology is available for sale anywhere HP OpenView products are sold, and HP WebQoS will be fully integrated into the OpenView Authorized Partner Program.

• IBM formed a string of strategic partnerships with top wireless and Internet names in Europe and the United States. IBM said it and its partners aim to foster an "open source" community in wireless.

• The Linux Journal has announced that it will be cosponsoring the "Linux University" events being run by SGI.

• Merlin Software Technologies announced that IBM has awarded Merlin's PerfectBACKUP+ network backup and crash recovery tool as an IBM Netfinity Partner.

• Microtest, Inc. announced an alliance with Enhanced Software Technologies. Microtest will bundle EST's Backup and Restore Utility (BRU) with FileZerver allowing users to schedule unsupervised backups.

• Platform Computing announced support for LSF 4.0, its new application resource management suite, from Compaq Computer Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Co., SGI and Synopsys.

• Rogue Wave Software announced that the Intel 64 Fund has made an investment in the company, for the development of optimized versions of its cross platform and Stingray product lines for Intel's upcoming IA-64 product family.

• Sealcorp Computer Products announced that it is the sole distributor of Silicon Graphics products in New Zealand.

• Silicon Valley Research, Inc. announced the completion of a $1 million funding. The Company is also continuing to focus on the sale of Linux versions of its software that run on Red Hat Linux 6.1.

• SteelEye Technology, Inc. announced that it has completed the strategic acquisition of LifeKeeper. "LifeKeeper will become the centerpiece of SteelEye's strategic offering for the Linux community".

• Technauts announced that it has entered into a joint development arrangement with Tata Consultancy Services, a large global consulting company, to open an engineering center in India. Technauts makes a Linux-based eServer information appliance.

  Personnel:

• Covalent Technologies has announced the makeup of its Apache "dream team", which includes a number of well-known Apache developers.

• EBIZ Enterprises Inc. announced that Bill Blair has joined their management team as vice president, marketing and vendor services.

• iBIZ Technology Corporation announced that they have completed employment agreements for new members of their Internet services group. Brad Senff, Phil Senff and Mike Phillips will be managing all technical aspects of equipment implementation, facilities specification and operations. Brad's background indicates significant expertise developing and maintaining Linux, BSD and Unix-based systems.

• IDC announced Matthew Eastwood has joined the program as research manager.

• Resonate, Inc. announced the appointment of Alan Button as vice president of sales.

  Other:

• 1mage Software, Inc. announced the installation of its first Linux-based imaging system to Plastic Dress-Up Co., a manufacturer of awards and recognition components.

• Centromine, Inc. announced plans to upgrade to the Linux Operating System with Allaire's ColdFusion 4.5 release.

• Computone Corporation has issued this press release about Linux. "'Last year, we took part in more than a dozen Linux industry events with Caldera as part of our ongoing commitment to the Linux industry,' [Computone president Pickerign] said, noting that drivers for Computone's Gold Card RS-232 serial PCI controllers and its IntelliPort II family of high-speed serial communications products, are incorporated in the Linux kernel source code base."

• Cybernet Systems, provider of Linux-based software for Internet appliances, posted this corporate profile.

• EBIZ Enterprises Inc. announced an increase of 268% in unique visitors to its Linux web sites, www.TheLinuxStore.com; www.Linuxwired.net; and www.TheLinuxLab.com.

• Another company trying to broker Linux support services is eLance, which has put up this page where projects can be posted and consultants found. They currently have several projects listed.

• This press release compares the web-sites of 5 presidential hopefuls. Al Gore is listed as having the 2nd fastest site, and he is running Apache/1.3.9 on Red Hat Linux.

• Quicknet Technologies, Inc. reported the success of the IP Telephony Demo Center at the Computer Telephony Expo Spring 2000. It seems Linux was big hit.

• TurboLinux, Inc. announced that judges at the IT 2000 Sydney computer show had named TurboCluster Server as the Corporate IT Best Product winner for enterprise-class customers and Finalist Best Product honor at the Linux Open Source Expo & Conference.

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol.

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

Linux in the news

The Linux Expo held in North Carolina for several years in a row isn't happening this year.Evan Leibovitch got confirmation that the show was officially cancelled and provided his reaction.

"Innocence lost. With the Linux Expo fades yet another icon of Linux's innocent early years. While my first Expo experience wasn't until the third show in 1997, even then the atmosphere was one of a small family. I found the event to be quite extraordinary: echoing the nature of Linux's openness, attendance at the conference was free of charge. If you bought admission you could sit in the theater where the presentations were given, but it cost nothing to sit in one of a number of lounges and watch it on closed-circuit screens. Given that one of the lounges was outdoors, it was a pleasant way to hear the newest Linux developments ..."

Products

ZDNet UK reports on the release of Novell NDS for Linux. "What ZDNet US did find out was that although Novell has said at least part of the NDS for Linux code would be open source, none of it -- under any open-source licence -- is currently available. Despite years of open source lip service, the Novell Community licence remains more of a mock-up than a working model."

Here's a News.com story about the announcement of Corel Photo-Paint for Linux. "But Corel has a lead when it comes to graphics software for Linux. The biggest competitor is the Gimp, an open-source program that's distributed along with several versions of Linux. On the horizon, though, is software from graphics powerhouse Adobe, which has begun translating some of its software for Linux."

AboutLinux reviews Corel Linux Deluxe 1.0. "Corel Linux Deluxe is the first distribution (that I am aware of) that ships with a penguin!"

Development

LinuxMall.com has put up an article about resources for blind Linux users. "The innovative and cooperative spirit of Open Source is illustrated best by a group like BLinux (or Blind + Linux). BLinux and its related pages, BLinux-list and BLinux-announce runneth over with questions, comments and tips from all kinds of users and specialists."

Forbes has chimed in with an article about Eazel which is cast in the light of the Gnome/KDE rivalry. "Eazel intends to stay true to the open source spirit by making its interface freely available, just as Linux is. But startups don't get $13 million in funding--Eazel's total so far--just so they can give stuff away. Eazel also has a business plan, which is to make money by using the Internet to remotely install, configure and manage Linux desktops for consumers and businesses."

Simson Garfinkel sounds the alarm in this Security Focus article; according to him, a flood of Linux-based viruses is just around the corner. "No, what's stopped the spread of viruses on the Linux platform isn't technology, but the lack of interest from the virus writers. Why write a Linux virus when the same skills will let you bring up a new web-site and become a millionaire in just a few weeks? But if the economy goes south, we're likely to see a suddenly bloom of viruses from out-of-work overachievers."

Wired News covers the latest in the DVD case. "With scant time to erect a defense, lawyers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation were handed a crushing defeat when a New York city judge on 20 January ordered DeCSS be yanked from the defendants' Web sites. This time, they're better prepared. The letter invokes a slew of procedural reasons arguing why the case should be dismissed -- points that likely will be raised in the New York case as well."

First Monday has run a long, academic article looking at free software as an evolutionary process. "Considering the quality of human resources in corporate realms, however, neither foresight nor individual experience by itself is an adequate account for the superior quality of Linux to its rivals on the market. Nor is it a sufficient explanation that the Linux project has produced an operating system of such complexity and coherence without central planning." (Thanks to Karl Vogel).

Open source software in the schools is the subject of this Wired News article. "Computer science teachers believe that open source encourages creativity and innovation among their students. Students can modify and improve on current software and they learn to be 'empowered programmers.'"

Interviews

ZDNet interviews Richard Stallman about UCITA. "UCITA would make it harder for us to avoid liability for bugs that turn up in the free software we develop -- while giving proprietary software developers a very easy way to avoid all liability for their products, even for faults that they know about in advance. This is grossly unfair."

Infoworld has published an interview with Steve DeWitt, Cobalt's CEO, about internet server appliances. "Open source is the real value here, and the reason why you see Linux with 25-plus percent share in terms of the server side of the equation is not because people are pissed off. It's because it works. It's highly reliable."

Olinux.com.br interviews Ian Clarke, creator of the FreeNet project. "A friend of mine recently asked me a similar question: 'Don't you think that making Freenet available is like giving a knife to a room full of people when you know that one of them is a murderer?'. I replied 'No, I think it is like giving some fire to a room full of freezing people even when you know that one of them is an arsonist'".

The Washington Post asks what Marc Ewing is doing with all his money. Apparently being rich isn't as easy as it seems. "He has cashed out a portion worth $31.5 million and splashed out on new digs. He paid about $8 million for a 12-room apartment on the Upper East Side here. He spent nearly $7 million for the historic Pabst mansion on Chicago's North Shore. It has nine bedrooms and a five-car garage. Plenty of space for himself, his wife and young son."

Business:

Wired News reports on the upcoming Caldera Systems IPO. "Although Caldera only reported revenue of $500,000 for its quarter ended 31 January, analysts expect its stock will do quite well on opening day."

Inter@ctive Week chimes in on Caldera's upcoming IPO. " Despite this illustrious lineage, Caldera doesn't seem to know what it wants to be when it grows up. The company started out as a distributor of Linux. Then it veered in the direction of a professional services company, such as Linuxcare. Now the prospectus says Caldera is concentrating on providing the fully buzzword-compliant 'Linux for e-business.'"

The Red Herring takes a critical look at the Caldera Systems IPO. "Despite their struggles, the other four publicly-held Linux vendors have a big leg up on Caldera. Although the company has been operating since 1994, sales have been pathetically sluggish. Caldera lost $5.5 million in its recent quarter on sales of $553,000, which are up 3 percent from the period a year ago. What's even worse are gross profit margins of less than 1 percent."

Nonetheless, the Red Herring lists Caldera as "Red Hot" on its IPO calendar.

News.com looks at the upcoming IPO round. "'Linux companies have been getting huge pops, then the stocks settle back,' said Jeff Hirschkorn, senior analyst with IPO.com. 'Even though Caldera raised their range today, I expect to see another increase before they go out. And no matter what price they set, these companies always seem to go higher (when they debut).'"

ZDNet ran this article about the declines in Linux stock prices. "What bears watching is how Linux partners handle the cooling-off period. Major enterprise vendors such as IBM and Dell Computer Corp. have bear-hugged Linux and launched major initiatives around the platform. If such large vendors believe they got caught up in the hype, they could easily recoil and scale down investment, further affecting Linux penetration in the enterprise."

The Montreal Gazette reports on the snags in the Corel/Inprise merger. "Based on share prices before the announcement, Corel was to pay $1.1 billion U.S. in shares to acquire Inprise. The value of those shares has now fallen below $800 million U.S. Dale Fuller, Inprise's interim chief executive, told Corel's shareholders that this decline should be seen in the context of a weakness in the over-all market for Linux technology - especially considering that the Corel-Inprise merger is being billed as the making of a Linux powerhouse. 'I would be worried if the whole Linux community was going in the opposite direction to us,' he said."

The Ottawa Citizen looks at the problems with the Corel/Inprise merger. "Originally designed to create a powerhouse in the developing field for Linux-based products, the deal has suffered because Linux-based stocks have fallen out of favor with investors."

Here's a News.com article about Lineo's acquisition of United System Engineers. "The 15-year-old firm will help Lineo explain to prospective customers why they might want to switch from existing operating systems to Lineo's version of Linux for set-top boxes, factory robots and other 'embedded' devices..."

Rick Lehrbaum has written a Dr. Dobb's article on why embedded Linux is interesting. "But is Linux, like Windows, too large and demanding of system resources to fit the constraints of embedded systems? Well, unlike Windows, Linux is inherently modular and can be easily scaled into compact configurations - barely larger than DOS - that can even fit on a single floppy. What's more, since Linux source code is freely available, it's possible to customize the OS according to unique embedded system requirements."

The Australian Financial Review has posted an article about IBM's Linux team. "It is a team that is growing in line with a tenfold increase in IBM's commitment to Linux this year. IBM last month announced top-to-bottom support for the free software right across its hardware, software and services businesses."

LinuxMall.com has run a column by Mark Bolzern looking at Microsoft's position on Linux. "Microsoft's contradictory position on Linux as a viable competitor seems indicative of the difference between the marketplace and the court. It also indicates that Microsoft senses a paradigm shift similar to the shift that allowed Microsoft to replace IBM as the dominant force in the computer industry."

USA Today ran this introductory article about our favorite OS. "Linux was relatively unknown just two years ago. Today it powers 31% of all Web servers -- the machines that run Web sites -- and is used in cutting-edge devices such as pocket-size computers and set-top boxes. IBM, Sun Microsystems, Dell Computer and Intel are embracing Linux, creating products to support the operating system and investing in Linux-based businesses."

Finally

The latest Linuxcare 'Dear Lina' column is about PPP connections and converting over to Debian. "Now, wouldn't it be easier to put in another drive? Maybe. Possibly you were hoping it was easier than this. And just possibly, someone will put together a conversion kit for RedHat users, one rpm and boom, you're on Debian now. Or vice versa - it's just as hard the other way, you know."

Fairfax IT talks with an IBM executive about how almost all college graduates have Linux experience these days. "We talked to a CIO (chief information officer) of one of the top 20 websites in the world and he said he was considering moving to Linux because he couldn't get enough people with skills for his current proprietary OS."

Walter Effross reviews Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning...Was the Command Line", calling it a new generation's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." "In [Stephenson's] analysis, Windows 95 becomes a 'colossal station wagon,' Windows NT a 'hulking off-road vehicle,' Apple's operating system 'sleek Euro-styled sedans' and competitor BeOS 'fully operational Batmobiles.' Best of all, though, is Linux, an indestructible, maneuverable and fuel-efficient armored vehicle that, astonishingly, is available free."

Here's an introductory article in The Hindu. "You can recognise them at twenty paces, and not just by the unwashed jeans, the unkempt hair and the thick glasses. They stand apart from other programming freaks by the sheer intensity of their commitment to their favourite operating system. For them, Linux can do no wrong."

This osOpinion column takes Linux to task for its multilingual support, or lack thereof. "For all Linux lovers, I'm sorry to say this: Linux is useless for me as a work platform. I installed it out of curiosity, a desire to learn a new way of operating the machine. There are many applications - the 'No Applications' FUD cannot be waved - but for my line of work, multilingual work, Linux lacks what I need - full Unicode support."

This OSOpinion piece looks at the dangers of over-commercialization in Linux education. "While I should have been grateful that Linux is mentioned as often as it is, There is a danger here... if you promote Linux as some simplified item, then the student will quickly be disillusioned and frustrated when he or she faces Linux' raw power (and sometimes in its raw fury, especially if you screw up a command as root.) A disillusioned Linux student stands a very good chance of becoming a hardened anti-Linux decision-maker further on down the road."

Andover.Net has run this installation nightmare story. "I think I need a nap and a few hours to let the caffeine wear off. That's not to say that I'm having a bad time -- quite the contrary. This reminds me of the time more than a decade ago when I was first becoming familiar with DOS. It was fascinating, and learning my way around Linux is no less so." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann).

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol

See also: last week's Announcements page.

Announcements

Resources

LinuxLinks.com presents its checklist for newbies - a page of information on how to get started with Linux. It's in FAQ format, with questions like "what is the best Linux distribution?" and "how do I download Linux?"

The tenth issue of PerlMonth is now available.

Linuxer is a new magazine, in Chinese which covers Linux and BSD. (Thanks to Ambrose Li)

Events

Here's a press release hyping the upcoming Linux Business Expo in Chicago. "On April 19, John A. Johnson, Director of Information Services for Papa John's International, Inc., will discuss the pizza restaurant's migration to the Linux environment."

Web sites

User Group News

Jobs

Software Announcements