Other LWN stuff:
 Daily Updates
 Calendar
 Linux Stocks Page
 Book reviews
 Penguin Gallery

 Archives/search
 Use LWN headlines
 Advertise here
 Donate to LWN
 LWN Supporters
 Contact us

Recent features:
- RMS Interview
- 2001 Timeline
- O'Reilly Open Source Conference
- OLS 2001
- Gaël Duval
- Kernel Summit
- Singapore Linux Conference
- djbdns

Here is the permanent site for this page.

Leading items and editorials

The case used to illustrate Mr. Lessig's point is the whole Y2K mess, which seemed rather more urgent when Code was published than it does now.

It is a lack of a certain kind of regulation that produced the Y2K problem, not too much regulation. An overemphasis on the private got us here, not an overly statist federal government. Were the tort system better at holding producers responsible for the harms they create, code writers and their employers would have been more concerned with the harm their code would create.

Interestingly, Mr. Lessig points out the advantages of open source software in other contexts - he likes its inherent resistence to governmental control and suppression. But he misses the fact that free software had relatively few Y2K issues from the beginning. The bug in the mission-critical nethack application notwithstanding, users of free systems lost little sleep during the date rollover. Very few things had to be fixed.

Might it be that the most effective regulation of code, that which has the best chance of preventing future Y2K's, is to have the code out there under a free license? Rather than the (admittedly strawman) code inspector and government standards mentioned above, free software can bring to bear many inspectors who carry with them a set of flexible, timely, and real-world rules. And, of course, they can fix the problems they find themselves. Rather than a vindictive system seeking to "hold producers responsible" for their code, we have a proactive system which takes responsibility for making the code better. Free software requires no regulations, no bureaucracy, and no courts. And it works.

If public safety is to be used as an excuse to regulate code, then public safety should demand that code be regulated in the safest and most democratic manner of all: by having the code be free.

Linux on handheld computers. The Linux system has turned up in a great number of places, from desktop systems and web servers through to top-500 supercomputers and cameras. So far, however, it has been mostly absent from the ubiquitous, handheld, "palmtop" systems seen in so many shirt pockets. If Linux is useful in all those other contexts, why not in handheld systems as well?

Linux got one step closer to the palmtop when Compaq (in the form of Jim Gettys) announced the creation of Handhelds.org. This site is intended to be the focal point for the development of free software operating systems on handheld computers. To that end, it holds code repositories, documentation, mailing lists, and other, related materials.

To be sure, Compaq would like to see people buying its iPAQ H3600 with Linux installed - it did, after all, announce the release of a Linux port to that system recently. But Handhelds.org goes beyond being a Compaq-specific site - it addresses handheld systems in general. Thus, for example, it includes the Phillips Nino port. This site goes beyond Linux as well - there is also work on a NetBSD port for the iPAQ.

Progress has been quick - there is already a 2.4.0-test1 kernel running on the iPAQ. Expect the pace to pick up once it's possible to actually buy one of these systems - it will be too much fun for developers to resist. Linux is coming to a shirt pocket near you shortly.

Software patents - the fun continues. The "Eurolinux Alliance of European software companies and Open Source associations" has announced (in English and in French) the creation of a petition against the implementation of software patents in Europe. The announcement includes quotes from a number of European free software business figures. Those who would like to avoid the creation of U.S.-style patent problems in Europe may want to have a look and consider adding their names to the petition.

Meanwhile, one almost wonders if British Telecom might be closet opponent of software patents. After all, what better way could there be to demonstrate and call attention to the problem than to claim a patent on linking and turn loose a lawyer squad to start shaking down U.S. ISPs? Patent number 4873662 was filed back in 1980, and claims to cover:

Informaton for display at a terminal apparatus of a computer is stored in blocks the first part of which contains the information which is actually displayed at the terminal and the second part of which contains information relating to the display and which may be used to influence the display at the time or in response to a keyboard entry signal....When a block is read from the store of the computer the second part is retained in another store which may be located in the terminal or in the computer itself or perhaps both.

If this patent is upheld, anybody making a link in the U.S. will need a license from BT to be fully legal - at least until 2006. Such an outcome may well be unlikely, given the degree of effort that is likely to be directed toward defeating this patent. But the patent demonstrates clearly the degree to which patents on software techniques threaten everything that we do.

The U.S. Patent Office, meanwhile, has scheduled the Intellectual Property Symposium of the Americas. The purpose of this fancy gathering is not to question the proper role of intellectual property law; instead, the agenda items include things like "Business Software and Business Methods Patent enforcement issues." The event is being held September 11 and 12 in Arlington, VA; registrations have to be in by July 31, but there is no registration mechanism in place yet. One can only hope that a few rational voices can manage to attend.

Feature: Interview with Carey Bunks. LWN has posted an interview with Carey Bunks, the author of Grokking the GIMP. A wide range of topics is covered, including the GIMP itself, the history behind the book, the pros and cons of writing under an open content license, and more. Check it out to get the scoop from one who has made a major contribution to the free documentation available for Linux.

One last note on Linux laptops. Last week's discussion of Linux laptops talked about how few vendors carry such devices. We neglected to mention a long-time vendor of laptop systems: ASL, Inc.. ASL has been in the laptop business for a long time; we regret the omission.

Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:

• Security: Big library troubles; another 2.2.x capability fix.
• Kernel: Linus returns; who can load keymaps?; dueling memory management algorithms.
• Distributions: Announcing AMIRIX Linux; Debian test cycle 3 begins
• Development: A look at Mozilla M16; Bonobo and KParts to merge?
• Commerce: Linux Training, Red Hat and Dell, and Corel.
• Back page: Linux links, this week in Linux history, 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.

News and Editorials

The trouble with big libraries. Chris Evans has turned up a number of security problems with libX11 - the low-level library that handles communication with the X window system server. The details can be found in this posting. Suffice to say that they are problematic.

But the real problem, as pointed out by Mr. Evans, is that libX11 is a very large body of code. The difficulty of securing large programs has been well known for some time. Even though libX11 is high-quality code that has had more than a decade of debugging, it's still not possible to have a high degree of confidence in its security.

So one of the keys to security is to write small, auditable programs. But even small programs can end up linking to very large libraries. Thus, in this case, any program that presents a graphical interface is a large program, whether it looks that way or not. The implication is that no graphical program, no matter how carefully written, can be secure if it is run in a privileged mode.

To an extent this problem can be worked around by separating out privileged operations into a separate program. That is what was done with xterm, for example; the "utempter" program handles the privileged operation of changing the utmp file, so that xterm itself can run unprivileged. But more complicated situations will not always lend themselves to this sort of easy separation of tasks. Just another reminder that security is a hard problem.

(Chris Evans has also posted on problems he found with the libICE library and xdm. Since the xdm source is used for many other display managers, including KDE's kdm, problems in that program could turn up in many other places.)

Another fix for the 2.2 capability bug. The proper way to fix the 2.2 capability bug, which has been much discussed over the last couple of weeks, is to upgrade to the 2.2.16 or 2.2.17pre kernel. However, a kernel upgrade is not an easy thing for every site to do, and the newer kernels have some difficulties of their own. Those not wanting to perform the upgrade may want to have a look at the "capcheck" module, announced by Lionel Cons at CERN.

Capcheck is a loadable kernel module which replaces the "capset" system call with a much more restrictive version. It can be loaded into a running kernel, and immediately closes the capability hole. Those who are interested can get the source from the capcheck download site. There are also binary modules there, but loading random binary modules as a security fix is a bit of a self-contradictory action.

This fix is a clever use of loadable kernel modules. It also demonstrates the scope of what these modules can do. A module, once loaded into the system, can change its behavior in wide-ranging and subtle ways. Kernel modules have been little-used in attacks on systems thus far, but eventually some clever attacker will find a use for this mechanism. For this reason, many security-conscious sites disable module loading entirely, either via explicit kernel configuration or by using the capability bounding set. For those not wanting to go so far, a degree of caution is necessary. The capcheck module is short and easy to look over; paranoid administrators may want to do that before installing it.

Crypto-gram newsletter. Here is the latest Crypto-gram newsletter from Bruce Schneier. The main topic is the new SOAP protocol, which is being promoted as an open source standard. " Because no security is required in either HTTP, XML, or SOAP, it's a pretty simple bet that different people will bungle any embedded security in different ways, leading to different holes on different implementations. SOAP is going to open up a whole new avenue for security vulnerabilities."

Security Reports

Remote exploit in Zope 2.1.6. Digital Creations has issued an alert describing a remotely-exploitable security problem with Zope 2.1.6 and earlier. A new 2.1.7 release has been put out (along with a patch for those needing to stay at 2.1.6) that fixes the problem. Upgrades are strongly recommended. Note that the problem affects the 2.2 beta 1 release as well. (Thanks to Paul Hewitt and John Rowell).

A new Kerberos problem. A vulnerability in the Kerberos 1.1 (and later) gssftp daemon has been announced. The daemon allows remote users to perform certain FTP commands that shouldn't be allowed, leading to possible denial of service attacks and, in some cases, root compromise. A small patch is included with the announcement which fixes the problem. Note that the krb5-1.0.x distributions are not vulnerable.

PHP disclosure problems. PHP 3.0 can, when faced with certain illegal POST requests, disclose more information (including local file names) than is desirable. This information is not enough to compromise a system in itself, but it could prove useful to an attacker. This announcement from H.D. Moore describes the problem and gives a workaround.

Insecure communications in emacs. GNU emacs uses subprocesses to perform a great deal of work, including compilations, shell mode, and running debuggers. It turns out that it is easy for outsiders to listen in on the communications between emacs and these processes. The hole has been closed with the release of emacs 20.7.

This week's updates:

• Red Hat

Common Unix Print System. A remotely-exploitable denial of service problem exists with CUPS, a replacement for the old lpd print system. See this alert for details; it also contains pointers to fixed Debian "potato" and "woody" packages. (Debian 2.1 did not include CUPS). Users of the CUPS beta series should be at 1.1b3 or higher.

Red Hat setgid vulnerabilities. Michal Zalewski has posted the results of a survey he did looking for setgid executables with vulnerabilities on a Red Hat 6.2 system. The results are not encouraging. Since setgid programs run at a lower level of privilege, they have not necessarily received the same degree of attention as those that run setuid. If they are compromised, however, they can still bring about unpleasant consequences.

Updates

• Conectiva
• Debian

Kernel. A couple more distributors straggled in with updates to fill in the kernel capabilities hole. Red Hat, which is usually quick to get updates out, waited until June 21, a full two weeks after the problem and the fix were published.

• Caldera Systems (June 8)
• Conectiva (June 8)
• Red Hat
• Slackware (June 10)
• Trustix (June 9)
• TurboLinux

Kerberos. There's only one new update to kerberos, fixing a number of older problems and the new FTP problem described above as well:

• Red Hat

Resources

Linux Security Week newsletter. Here is the Linux Security Week Newsletter for June 19, from the folks at LinuxSecurity.com.

Events

Call for participation - RAID 2000. A call for participation has been issued for the Third International Workshop on the Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection, which will be held in Toulouse, France on October 2-4, 2000.

June/July security events.

Date	Event	Location
June 25-30, 2000.	12th Annual First Conference,	Chicago, Illinois, USA.
June 27-28, 2000.	CSCoRE 2000,"Computer Security in a Collaborative Research Environment"	Long Island, New York, USA.
July 3-5, 2000.	13th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Workshop	Cambridge, England.
July 10-12, 2000.	Fifth Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP 2000)	Brisbane, Australia.
July 14-16, 2000.	H2K / HOPE 2000	New York, New York, USA.
July 26-27, 2000.	The Black Hat Briefings	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
July 28-30, 2000.	DEF CON VIII	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

See also: last week's Kernel page.

Kernel development

The "ac" patches have stopped since Linus's return, of course. For the scoop on what's going on, there's no better place to go than Telsa Gwynne's diary:

It's rumoured that Linus is back. I am hoping this means I shall see Alan for more than a ten minute lunch break in the near future. Unfortunately, I caught him collecting the Linux 8086 code earlier today, with gleeful mutters. Oh dear.

The current stable kernel release is 2.2.16. The 2.2.17 prepatch is up to 2.2.17pre5; Alan is still working on stabilizing things and is thus not including much except obvious bugfixes.

One change that did slip through in 2.2.17pre3, however, has raised some questions. It seems that only root can load new keyboard maps now. This change blocks users from doing a number of things they might otherwise like to do, such as loading a Dvorak keyboard or putting useful stuff on the function keys. Or, of course, putting the control key back where Nature always intended it to be.

The problem, of course, is that somebody who can remap keys can bind them to perform some rather less useful functions. One could, for example, make the period actually send "rm -r /*", something the unsuspecting user will likely have cause to be unhappy about. The threat of this sort of obnoxiousness was enough to motivate the kernel developers to cut off the ability to change keymaps without privilege.

Requiring root privileges to load keymaps puts the issue into the area of administrative policy. Those who want to enable random keymap loading can set up a setuid program to do so; others might choose to limit the loadable keymaps to those found in a specific directory. Now the ability to impose that sort of control exists; in previous kernels it was not possible.

Dueling memory management algorithms. One of the more interesting aspects of the 2.4.0-test1-ac22 patch is that it came in two flavors. One incorporates Rik van Riel's latest memory management code; the other, instead, includes Andrea Arcangeli's "classzone" patch. The two have been in disagreement for some time over which approach was best; Alan was perhaps hoping to see some definitive results one way or the other as a result of people trying both out.

If so, the initial results look to be disappointing. A few people have posted comparisons, but there has been little that has clearly favored one approach over the other. There are some vague references to classzone providing better interactive performance, but with the van Riel patches yielding better throughput overall. The problem of coming up with a truly optimal Linux memory management algorithm appears to be still unsolved. This issue needs to be dealt with before 2.4.0 can come out; the memory management hackers appear to have some work ahead of them yet.

Reiserfs-3.6.9 has been announced. This version adds a new hashing scheme along with a port to a later 2.4.0-test1-ac kernel.

Meanwhile, Hans Reiser continues to complain about his treatment in linux-kernel, since his filesystem has not yet been merged into the kernel. Here's an example of what has been going on, complete with the "ReiserFS FUD list." The kernel developers are (mostly) trying to make a real show of deciding on reiserfs based solely on technical considerations, not on the behavior of its leader. He is, however, making that hard to do.

The Direct Access File System (DAFS), an attempt to speed file serving in local area networks, was announced this week. DAFS appears to have its roots at Network Appliance, but is now being supported by an industry consortium that includes Red Hat and VA Linux Systems. The details are still scarce - the consortium plans to have a protocol proposal together later this year. But it has the look of a very simple protocol aimed at enabling fast transfers in a low-latency, low-loss situation. More information can be found on the DAFS Collaborative web site.

The presence of Red Hat and VA Linux, of course, implies that a Linux implementation of this protocol can be expected sooner rather than later.

IBM to release LVM technology. IBM has posted an announcement to some of the development lists stating that it will donate its logical volume management (LVM) technology to the Linux community. This donation currently seems to be limited to a white paper on the technology; there's no word on when more might be forthcoming. There has also been no word on what this implementation would offer above the existing LVM implementation in the current development kernel series.

Watch out for gcc 2.96. The latest versions of the gcc compiler - such as the one found in Red Hat's "rawhide" distribution, will not compile a working kernel. As often seems to happen with new versions of the compiler, new optimizations have been introduced which break assumptions in the kernel. Things will eventually be ironed out; until then, stick with an older compiler for kernel building.

Other patches and updates released this week include:

• VA Linux Systems has released cerberus 1.2.1. Cerberus is a test suite designed to stress hardware to its limit - the announcement warns "this system loader has been known to damage marginal hardware, including catching system power supplies *ON FIRE*." This is probably not a good one to run in an unattended mode...

• Eric Raymond, tanned and rested after his travels in Korea, has released version 0.4.0 of his new kernel configuration scheme.

• devfs v171 was released by Richard Gooch. Richard has also announced an impending change to the devfs API that driver writers will need to deal with.

• Jens Axboe has announced the release of pktcdvd 0.0.2a - his implementation of packet writing for CD-RW drives. (Note also the 0.0.2b release that followed quickly after - there were a couple of difficulties with the first try).

• usbview 0.8.0 was released by Greg K-H.

Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet

For other kernel news, see:

• Kernel traffic
• Kernel Newsflash
• Kernel Trap
• 2.5 Status

Other resources:

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

See also: last week's Distributions page.

Distributions

News and Editorials

A glance through the AMIRIX Linux web site will turn up some more information on the distribution. What's missing is any sort of information on how to actually get a copy of AMIRIX Linux. It turns out that their business model is to work with the manufacturers of embedded systems boards, and to provide a tailored version of the distribution to them. If and when the result is distributed, it is done by the board manufacturer, not by AMIRIX. So there's no straightforward way to just download and look at this distribution.

OpenBSD 2.7 released. The release of OpenBSD 2.7 has been announced. Most of the improvements seem to be cryptographic in nature, including a new version of OpenSSH and an encrypted swap area.

BlueCat Linux

Caldera OpenLinux

An update mirror for Caldera. The same Mr. Hunley has set up a mirror site which makes Caldera Systems' updates available. Getting through to the main site has evidently been difficult at times recently; using a mirror can make life easier for yourself and everybody else as well.

The latest FAQs from Caldera can be seen in this listing.

Debian

ReiserFS is not free enough for Debian? A note showed up on debian-legal this week after a ReiserFS package was rejected due to its licensing. The offending text is "If you wish to integrate it with any other software system which is not GPL'd, without integrating it into an operating system kernel, then you must obtain an additional license."

As it turns out, this license has raised discussion before, in other forums. What Hans Reiser is really trying to do here is to open the door for vendors to buy the right to distribute ReiserFS under a non-GPL license. The general consensus is that the license adds no restrictions that are not already found in the GPL; the kernel developers have, in the past, been satisfied with it.

Something will probably be worked out here, perhaps involving a rewrite of the ReiserFS license to be a little more clear in what it is trying to accomplish. Meanwhile, however, one developer pointed out that, sooner or later, ReiserFS will be integrated into the mainline kernel. Must the kernel, at that point, be moved to the non-free area?

More on the 'KDE in Debian' debate. Here is a column on Advogato proposing a different sort of solution to the Qt licensing problem. "Maybe we should just classify Qt as an OS on it's own instead? It has lots of the characteristics. You program for the Qt OS and it runs 'emulated' on UNIX/X11, Windows or the Linux framebuffer.... If we decided to re-classify Qt as an OS, what would then happen? All the licensing problems would immediately be solved. You are allowed to port GPL programs to any non-free OS like Windows, BeOS, MacOS etc, so why wouldn't you be allowed to port other peoples GPL programs to a FREE Virtual OS like Qt?"

For the reasoning behind Debian's refusal to include KDE, see Joseph Carter's editorial on Freshmeat. "Qt is not non-free software. But it's not GPL compatible either. Some KDE core developers admit this privately, but won't do so in public because of the implications: that much of KDE is not legally distributable until they contact some people that are damned scarce these days and make the necessary arrangements."

(Thanks to Scotty Orr).

For more Debian news, including an interesting discussion of the Debian project's voting system, check out the Debian Weekly News for June 21.

Immunix

Immunix 6.2 released. Immunix 6.2 has been released. Immunix is a version of the Red Hat 6.2 distribution which has been recompiled with the StackGuard compiler, which incorporates protection against some buffer overflow attacks. Other than the recompilation and the incorporation of some updated packages, there do not appear to be changes to the base Red Hat distribution.

MaxOS

Slackware Linux

SuSE

SuSE and ham radio have gone together for some time. Now SuSE has set up a separate ham radio page, currently available only in German (translation available via Babelfish). Not content with packaging up all the ham software it could find, SuSE has now set up its own ham station - DK0TUX. It is intended for use as a testbed for SuSE-based ham software. Look for them on the airwaves.

SuSE tries to press technical advantage (CBROnline). The Computer Business Review ran this look at SuSE, with an emphasis on its competition with Red Hat. "While its status as a private company means that SuSE reveals little about its financial figures, its executives claim the company made a modest loss last year, after a profitable 1998. This is attributed to the cost of growing the firm, which saw the appointment of four senior officers in January alone, and sales growth of 350% in the US market in 1999. But, to convert its technical prowess into global market share, SuSE desperately needs the cash generated by the IPO and the publicity that goes with it."

TurboLinux

TurboLinux releases operating system in six new languages. TurboLinux has announced the release of its operating system localized in six new languages: French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and U.K. English.

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

News and Editorials

This week, your LWN Development Page editor tried out the new browser in an operational context. The experience was somewhat variable.

Mozilla is getting very close to being a workable replacement for Netscape. The browser seems to be fairly stable and didn't crash on any of the web pages that were visited. The user interface has a nice clean look to it. Netscape users won't have to learn much to move to Mozilla since most of the same capabilities are present. One minor annoyance was that the alt-O "open URL" keyboard accelerator that Netscape uses seems to have been moved to alt-L "open Location" in Mozilla.

One similarity with Netscape that could go away is the function of the "File-Quit" menu item in subwindows such as the mail program. "Quit" causes the subwindow and the browser to go away instead of just the subwindow. A better font selection mechanism would also be welcomed; one has to go through a series of menu items to select a new font, and there is no font preview mechanism, so picking new fonts is a painful process. A useful addition is the "History" function under the "Tasks" menu, this shows a list of URLs visited in the current session.

As for installation, the installer program core-dumped on a fairly generic RedHat 6.2 system, fortunately, the binary tarball version worked fine.

While it still has a number of rough edges, Mozilla seems to be getting there and is well on its way to being a useful browser. We look forward to the upcoming releases and will continue to use the M16 version.

Browsers

WebLock for Mozilla. Doug Turner is working on a Mozilla add-on called WebLock that restricts the browser to a single web page, this is useful for keeping child-users from straying too far on the web.

Databases

MySQL 3.23.18 released. A new version of MySQL has been released. This is a development version that has support for big files and binary portable tables.

Education

SEUL/edu Linux in Education Report. Here's the latest SEUL/edu Linux in Education Report. It includes an update on the Red Escolar project and more.

Organization for Free Software in Education and Teaching. A new project, called the Organization for Free Software in Education and Teaching or OFSET, has been announced. "This organization will try to raise funds for development of free educational software, promote development of free educational software and coordinate the development of specific projects." They have put a manifesto online with more information on what they stand for.

Embedded Systems

RTLinux v3.0beta released. Here is the announcement for the beta release of RTLinux 3.0. It includes a number of new features; see the announcement for details.

Jemini embedded Java class library (LinuxDevices). You can now get a free, GPL licensed java compiler known as Jemini. "JEMIni is Websprocket's open source Java class library (.lang, .io, .util, .net) distribution. As a set of essential libraries supporting the Java language, JEMIni contains all of the current libraries from open source Java. JEMIni also includes Websprocket-developed packages for device, device driver, system resource management, device management, file management, real-time threads, and messaging."

Universal Plug and Play for Linux (Linuxdevices). Intel has released an open-source development kit for Universal Plug and Play on the Linux platform. "On Thursday, Intel said it will release as open source a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) development kit for the Linux operating system. UPnP, originally developed by Microsoft Corp., is a technology that allows a number of different kinds of devices to communicate via a network using standard protocols, such as TCP/IP." The development kit is being released under a fairly restrictive Single Copy License

Interoperability

June 19 Wine Weekly News. The June 19 edition of the Wine Weekly News is out. Read about Wine 20000614, bug fixes, and unfixed bugs.

Network Management

OpenNMS weekly updates. Here are two new weekly summaries for the OpenNMS project. The June 14 edition discusses the JSNMP 0.2 release and licensing strategies. The June 20 June 20. edition discusses the JSNMP 0.2.1 release, and talks about the startup of a Bugzilla installation.

Office Applications

Gnucash 1.4 announcement. Here is the announcement for Gnucash 1.4. The program has undergone many changes. Among other things, this is the first stable release based on GNOME, and is probably the first that is suitable for a wide range of users.

Interview of the Gimp's Sven Neumann (LinuxPower). LinuxPower interviews Sven Neumann, one of the main developers of The Gimp. Gimp-2.0 will be a total rewrite. This doesn't mean that we will not reuse any code from the current codebase, but we want to change the basic architecture and build the most advanced image processing system out there.

Review of Gimp Developer's Conference. Read about the results from the recent Gimp Developer's Conference that was held in Berlin on June 2-4 this year. There you can find out the status of the current Gimp development and plans for Gimp version 2.

AbiWord 0.1.10 avaliable. A New Version of AbiWord has been released. Improvements include bug fixes and improved RTF imports.

Review of Balsa mail program (LinuxWorld). Joe Barr reviews the Gnome mail program Balsa in this LinuxWorld article. "Might I change my preference for GUI environment based solely on my choice of email? Absolutely. Mail is probably the most important application on my desktop machine these days."

On the Desktop

Possible KDE/GNOME interoperability?. Here's an article on Rivyn's KDE and GNOME News describing a possible merger of the KParts and Bonobo component architectures. Such a merger, if it happened, would allow for a great deal of interoperability between the two desktop environments. There is a lot that would have to happen to make such a merger work, and the article's suggestion that it could happen for KDE 2.0 seems hopelessly optimistic. But it is a good thing that the two groups are exploring the idea. "A merger between KParts and Bonobo, or KDE using Bonobo, will mean complete interoperability between KDE and Gnome. Nautilus could embed the Konqueror HTML engine, for instance. It basically would erase the blocks between KDE and Gnome, and allow limitless interoperability." (Thanks to Tim Hanson).

Gnumeric 0.56 Spreadsheet. A new release of the Gnumeric Spreadsheet has been announced. The release includes bug fixes, keyboard accelerators, and tearoff menus.

KDE 1.91 Kleopatra article (LinuxMall). Linux Mall's Greta Durr reviews the Kleopatra release of the KDE desktop. " For developers, KDE 1.91 provides a stable application program interface (API) which allows application developmennt, so they may plan their software releases to coincide with the release of KDE 2.0, scheduled for September of this year."

Science

Linux helps British scientists decode human DNA (ZDNet). British Scientists at Cambridge are using Linux to map the human DNA sequence. "Over three hundred Alpha-based Compaq TRU64 Unix systems as well as 60 Intel-powered Linux machines contributed to the huge number-crunching effort required to interpret the chemical make-up of a chromosome."

Web-site Development

Zope 2.1.6 Security Bulletin. See this week's LWN Security Page for information on a recent remotely exploitable Zope security hole in Zope 2.1.6 that is fixed by upgrading to Zope 2.1.7.

Zope Enterprise Objects (ZEO 0.2) released. ZEO 0.2, the first public release of the Zope Enterprise Objects package, is available here. ZEO is a wide-scale clustering package for Zope, allowing Zope sites to be distributed across a cluster of servers. See the ZEO Fact Sheet for an introduction to the technology.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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

More Information
AppWatch
Freshmeat
LinuxDev

Development tools

Perl

June 18 Perl5 Porters digest. The June 18 issue of the Perl5 Porters digest is out. Speed improvements for method calls and bytecode operations are discussed.

New Perl Modules. The latest Perl modules may be found at this site. Numerous HTML modules are included, among other things.

YAPC Conference Updates. Find out what is currently happening at the "Yet Another Perl Conference" which is being held at CMU in Pittsburgh, PA. An IRC chat line is available for those who want to participate.

Python

Two new Python-URLs. Here is the June 19 Dr. Dobb's Python-URL . Check it out for the latest in Python news, including a summary of what ActiveState is up to. Also, here is the June 15 Python-URL with discussions on Zope, and Python IDEs.

Python modules for XML (IBM). David Mertz has written This article on using the latest Python tools to work with XML.

Augmented Operators for Python. For those of you who miss the += forms of operators from C and C++, check out this patch from Thomas Wouters. Examples of the operators are given as they relate to the various Python data types.

O'Reilly Open Source Conference/Python. Here is a list of the Python Sessions at the upcoming O'Reilly Open Source Converence on July 17-20 in Monterey, CA.

Tcl/tk

Papers from the European TCL/TK Meeting. Carsten Zerbst submitted the following:

" The 1st European Tcl/Tk User Meeting is over now. About 70 participants from all over Europe came to Hamburg to discuss recent developments and present their work. Even Ajuba (ex Scriptics) sent the Tcl ambassador Jeffrey Hobbs to the user meeting.

Additionally several companies, mostly from the area of e-business presented themselves and tried to hire Tcl programmers. Most participants said that this event was a success. The papers presented at the meeting are available from this site. "

See also: this report from the user meeting posted by Jeffrey Hobbs.

Tcl-URL. Here is Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for June 19, with coverage of the Tcl 8.4 roadmap and other development issues.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

See also: last week's Commerce page.

Linux and Business

Linux Training. Linux training is turning into big business. This week we see announcements of more classes, web-based training, expanded curriculums all available in more locations than ever. Many of these courses are aimed at getting students ready for Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certification exams. The latest round of announcements shows LPI as a front runner in Linux certification.

For example CyberStateU.com has announced its web-based training course and Linuxcare, Inc. has announced an expansion of Linuxcare University's course offerings, along with a new training partner program. Both are geared towards helping students pass LPI exams.

One of Linuxcare's partners is the Motorola Computer Group. They are working with Linuxcare on an initiative to deliver a set of Linux training courses, also aimed at LPI certification. Locations where these courses will be offered include Beijing, Munich, New York, Osaka, Shanghai, Tokyo, and, of course, Tempe,  AZ.

TurboLinux is also getting into the training arena. They have announced a partnership with Wave Tech to develop a complete Linux education curriculum that will track to the LPI certification standards, and they also announced a partnership with SmartForce to provide Linux seminars via SmartForce's web site.

Red Hat and Dell, and Corel. The Red Hat Linux distribution will be installed on servers used at the Medical Center of Boston International, Inc. and on servers at every Toyota and Lexus dealer in the U.S.. The later announcement also says Dell will supply the computers.

By the way, Dell is backing Linux in a big way, shown in announcement that Linux is its third "strategic, global operating system," along with Windows and NetWare.

And the distribution of Linux that Dell will install will be Red Hat according to this announcement about the Dell/Red Hat "One Source Alliance." Red Hat will buy computers from Dell for internal use, and Dell will be running Red Hat internally. Red Hat will also be the default support vendor for Dell's customers. Linuxcare support will be available on request.

Look for a careers page on Red Hat's web site. Red Hat announced a deal with techies.com to get that set up.

Red Hat has announced its first quarter results. They brought in $16 million in this quarter, with a loss of $2.5 million.

For Corel the second fiscal quarter has ended. Preliminary results were announced late last week, and final results announced earlier this week. They reported revenues of $36.6  million, producing a net loss of $23.6 million.

Inferno source released - sort of. Lucent and Vita Nuova have announced that Vita Nuova will be distributing the Inferno operating system from Lucent. The code will go out under "a subscription license that is similar to the type used by open source software." The dissimilarity, however, is that one must pay $300 ($1000 for corporations) for a license, and further source redistribution can only happen to others who have purchased licenses.

Vita Nuova seems to be hoping to create some sort of gated pseudo open-source community. This scheme is actually somewhat reminiscent of how Minix worked ten years ago - but Minix lost much of its community once Linux hit the net. Inferno is said to have some interesting things to show as an operating system, and getting the source out there is a step in the right direction. It is, however, still not free software.

Caldera. Better late than never: Caldera Systems has put out an announcement on the preinstallation of OpenLinux on IBM ThinkPad laptops.

Helius has announced a new satellite Internet gateway - which is based on Caldera OpenLinux.

Announcements from LynuxWorks. LynuxWorks (once Lynx Real-time Systems) has put out a series of announcements. They include this one about the company's receipt of $35 million in private financing, and this one about a partnership with ZF Linux Devices to bundle BlueCat Linux with ZF's "MachZ" development system.

Storm Linux 2000 bundles X-Win32. Stormix Technology has announced that it will bundle StarNet's X-Win32 PC X server with the deluxe edition of Storm Linux 2000.

StarOffice 5.2 released. Sun Microsystems has announced the release of StarOffice 5.2, which has "over 200 new and enhanced features."

Press Releases:

Open Source Products.
Unless specified, license is unverified.

• Intel has announced the release of its "Universal Plug and Play" (UPnP) software under an open source license. "UPnP is an industry specification that allows networked devices to automatically identify and configure themselves for instant communication with each other or the Internet, while hiding the complexities of setup from the users."

• IPHighway, Inc. (FRAMINGHAM, Mass.) announced an initiative to make the COPS (Common Open Policy Service) technology freely available to networking companies and equipment providers.

• Kaivo, Inc. (DENVER) performed the initial launch of a vendor-neutral marketplace for Open Source products and services.

• OnCore Systems Corporation (HALF MOON BAY, Calif.) released Certifiable MicroC/OS-IIa, an open source operating system product to meet the needs of digital avionics manufacturers requiring RTCA / EUROCAE DO-178B certification.

• Websprocket (SUNNYVALE, Calif.) released JEMIni, a free, open-source Java programming language for embedded networked systems.

Commercial Products for Linux.

• AccountiX, Inc. (SAN ANTONIO, TX) announce the availability of AccountiX for LINUX, based on SBT VisionPoint 2000.

• Advanced Computer & Network Corporation (PITTSBURGH) announced that it has received Red Hat Linux 6.2 certification and is now included on Red Hat's Hardware Compatibility List for RAID storage systems.

• Algorithmics Incorporated (TORONTO/NEW YORK) announced the availability of RiskWatch on platforms based on the Intel architecture running Red Hat Linux. Algorithmics is working with Intel Corporation to optimize products for IA-64.

• Elastic Networks Inc. (ALPHARETTA, Ga.) announced its YesWare 3.0, the latest version of its visitor-based networking (VBN) software applications. YesWare 3.0 runs on Elastic Networks' Linux-based BitStorm Server.

• Informix has announced that version 9.21 of its Foundation 2000 "data and content management platform" and version 3.5 of the Cloudscape embeddable Java database are available for Linux.

• Loki Software has announced an agreement to port the game "MindRover: The Europa Project" to Linux; availability will be in the (northern hemisphere) fall of 2000.

• Macadamian Technologies Inc. (OTTAWA, ON), a provider of eBusiness and Linux solutions, announced that the Syndeo Collaboration Suite 2.1 fully supports IBM's WebSphere Application Server and DB2 Universal Database.

• Oracle Corporation (REDWOOD SHORES, CA) announced the availability of Linux versions of its Internet application development tools Oracle Business Components for Java and Oracle Forms Developer6i.

• Titan Computer, distributors of the new Linux titles being ported by Hyperion Software, announced the expected release dates for Shogo: Mobile Armor Division and Sin will be August and September respectively. Tux Games has announced availability of pre-order facilities for both.

• Xi Graphics Inc. (DENVER) announced 3D Accelerated-X graphics support software package for a Matrox graphics card.

Products Using Linux.

• Axis Communications (CHELMSFORD, Mass.) announced the availability of integrated systems-on-a-chip and embedded Linux solutions to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

• ei Corporation (MILPITAS, Calif.) unveiled Thumbdrive, a portable USB digital storage device that is about the size of a stick of chewing gum.

• NetMaster (CHILLIWACK, British Columbia) introduced the Gateway Guardian, a Linux-based firewall with a Java interface.

• Rackspace (SAN ANTONIO) announced the opening of its data center in London.

Products with Linux Versions.

• Adobe Systems Incorporated (SAN JOSE, Calif.) announced the immediate availability of Adobe Acrobat Distiller Server software, which provides users with a server-based mechanism for creating Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

• AFP Technology announced the release of FormScape v2.3, with expanded support for e-commerce and B2B business communications.

• Alliance Systems, Inc. (PLANO, Texas) introduced the I-Series Communications Solutions Family of platforms.

• Ariel Corp. (CRANBURY, N.J.) announced a PCI-based T1/E1/PRI network interface card for designers of high-density network access equipment.

• Cohesion Systems, Inc. (WOODSIDE, Calif.) announced that Cohesion's Hierarchy Design System (HDS) products are now available for monthly subscription through EDAconnect.com's new EDAstore.

• Equinox Systems Inc. (SUNRISE, Fla.) announced the introduction of low priced SuperSerial 4- and 8-port PCI MultiModem products.

• HELIOS Software GmbH (HANNOVER, Germany) announced it is now shipping EtherShare 2.6, which is available for Linux Pentium based servers.

• LSI Logic Corporation (MILPITAS, Calif.) announced the SYM53C1010R PCI, Dual Channel Ultra160 SCSI controller which provides pin compatibility with LSI Logic's next generation of PCI-X Ultra320 SCSI controllers.

• Matrox Graphics Inc. (MONTREAL, CANADA) announced the Matrox Millennium G450 Series of graphics cards.

• ParaSoft (MONROVIA, Calif.) announced the availability of WebKing Lite, a free version of their Web site development and testing solution.

• Piranha, Inc. (DALLAS) announced the first sales of Piranha Byte 1.0, a data compression tool for the imaging, publishing and printing industries.

• Rave Computer Association (Sterling Heights, Michigan) announced a new 6U Rackmount chassis for the Ultra AXmp. Linux is offered as an optional OS.

• RightNow Technologies (BOZEMAN, Mont.) announced RightNow Web 3.2, a major upgrade to the company's Web customer service suite.

• RSA Security Inc. (BEDFORD, Mass.) announced it has begun shipping RSA BSAFE WTLS-C software, a complete WTLS protocol-compliant security component.

• SERENA Software, Inc. (BURLINGAME, Calif.) announced an IBM TeamConnection to SERENA eChange Man migration program.

• Sun Microsystems, Inc. introduced the Sun StorEdge T3 family of network storage arrays. Linux on Intel is supported.

• VERITAS Software Corporation (MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.) introduced version 3.4 of VERITAS NetBackup DataCenter.

Java Products.

• Data Broadcasting Corporation (HAYWARD, Calif.) announced the official launch of My eSignal, a customizable Java-based quote service in a browser-based format.

• KL Group Inc. (TORONTO) announced that the next generation of JProbe ServerSide Suite now supports the Linux operating system.

• KL Group Inc. (TORONTO) announced that JProbe Profiler and Memory Debugger received two Java Pro Reader's Choice Awards.

• TimeSys Corp. (PITTSBURGH) announced that its implementation of the Java virtual machine with real-time capability will soon be available for the Timesys Linux/RT platform.

• sangoma.com (TORONTO) announced that Zereau Limited of Yorkshire, England, has selected sangoma.com's WANPIPE solution as the internal router that enables its all-in-one Internet access kit. Six out of every 10 Zereau installations of the WANPIPE card are in Linux servers.

Training.

• OmniLinux (FREMONT, CA) and Linux Central are joining forces to market Linux 1-2-3 Fundamentals, a training CD-Rom.

Partnerships.

• Century Software, Inc. (SAN JOSE, Calif.) has completed Ethernet support for Applied Data Systems (ADS)' Graphics Client embedded Linux single board computer systems on a StrongARM platform.

• Dirig Software, Inc. (ORLANDO, Fla.) announced a technology alliance with Hewlett-Packard Company that will allow HP OpenView customers to manage mission critical eBusiness applications in the emerging Linux marketplace.

• EnterLinux (EMERYVILLE, Calif. and SAN FRANCISCO) inked a deal with Application Park, Inc. to provide private label highly customizable browser-based business automation tools and integrated applications to EnterLinux on its Linux Vortal site.

• GraphOn and RedFlag Software have announced a deal to "jointly develop business and marketing opportunities in China." It seems to primarily consist of bundling GraphOn's Bridges with RedFlag's distribution.

• Integrated Software & Devices Corporation (ISDCorp) (SAN JOSE, Calif.) announced a strategic relationship with LinkUp Systems Corporation, to provide VxWorks support to LinkUp Systems.

• LinuxMall.com Inc. (DENVER) and 1mage Software Inc. announced a strategic marketing partnership between the two companies.

• LinuxWizardry Systems, Inc. (BOCA RATON, Fla.) announced that it has been awarded a contract from the Personal Communication Sector of Motorola to develop a Global Knowledge Base for internally developed software.

• OmniLinux (FREMONT, CA) is teaming up with 3ware Inc. in Palo Alto to support the growing Linux community. OmniLinux supports a variety of Linux web sites such as DestinationLinux, and 3ware supports the Open Source community with its line of Escalade RAID controller cards.

• Reasoning, Inc. (MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.) became a founding member of the Embedded Linux Consortium (ELC).

• Sendmail, Inc. (EMERYVILLE, Calif.) announced a new joint technology agreement with SEEK Systems, Inc. of Bothell, Washington.

• SolutionInc Limited (HALIFAX, Canada) announced strategic business relationships with 3Com Corporation as well as a number of service providers. The SolutionIP suite of Linux-based, server software applications provides a solution for connecting and managing mobile users of broadband and wireless networks.

• VA Linux Systems, Inc. and SiteSmith, Inc. (SUNNYVALE and SANTA CLARA, Calif.) announced that SiteSmith has joined the VA Linux Service Provider Program.

• VistaSource, Inc. (WESTBORO, Mass.) announced a new partnership agreement with ACA Pacific Technology to distribute its Applixware Office 5.0 for Linux in Asia.

Investments and Acquisitions.

• Akopia Inc. (RESTON, Va.) announced its acquisition of MiniVend, an "open source" e-commerce application.

Personnel.

• Lineo, Inc. (LINDON, Utah) announced the appointments of Michael Angelo and Dave Peters to strengthen Lineo in the areas of technical services and product marketing.

• Lineo, Inc. (LONDON) announced the opening of its London-based European sales office and the appointment of Hamid Mirab as the company's new vice president, European Sales and Services.

• TurboLinux, Inc. (SAN FRANCISCO) announced the appointments of Ly-Huong Pham as executive vice president of worldwide development and of Michael Duffy as vice president global enterprise services.

Linux At Work.

• PCTEL, Inc. (MILPITAS, Calif.) announced that its software-based Linux-compatible modem solution has been selected for The New Internet Computer Company's first Internet appliance.

• weather.com has put out this announcement proclaiming its use of IBM Netfinity servers running Linux to serve up its weather maps. They carefully do not mention which distribution is being used.

Other.

• Sendmail, Inc. (EMERYVILLE, Calif.) announced the opening of a French subsidiary to be based in Paris, France.

• SuSE (NUREMBERG, GERMANY and CARACAS, VENEZUELA) announced the opening of their new Latin America headquarters office in Caracas, Venezuela.

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol.

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

Linux in the News

Recommended Reading.

The O'Reilly Network has put up this history of the PostgreSQL project written by core developer Bruce Momjian. "We were never tempted to follow a more aggressive schedule with more releases. A database server is not like a word processor or a game, where you can easily restart it if there is a problem. Databases are multiuser, and they lock user data inside the database, so we had to make our software as reliable as possible."

Linux Companies and a few others.

This News.com article looks at Red Hat's quarterly results. "The stronger-than-expected numbers will likely buoy optimism that there are profits to be mined in the Linux industry."

Here's Upside's take on Red Hat's financial results. "Given International Data Corp.'s latest predicted growth rates for Linux servers and embedded devices, it's only a matter of time before Linux-related businesses start spinning open source code into gold, he says."

ZDNet looks at Red Hat's acquisition of WireSpeed. "The WireSpeed acquisition offers further evidence of Red Hat's intention to be a major player in the Internet appliance and embedded device markets. Earlier this year, Red Hat completed its acquisition of Cygnus Solutions, a prominent open source embedded technology and development tool company."

Upside chimes in on Red Hat's acquisition of WireSpeed. "With only 28 employees, WireSpeed offers little in the way of unique software tools or brand value. In essence, Red Hat will be paying more than $1 million per new employee -- or closer to $1.5 million once all the extraneous marketing types have been dealt with in the usual post-merger fashion."

Forbes ran this article on Dell's increased commitment to Linux. "Declaring his company 'the Robin Hood for the Unix marketplace,' Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik claims that the Dell deal 'sounds a bell for the declining opportunity for Unix.' Perhaps, but it's tough to count out Sun, which has grown sales and profits of its Unix servers consistently every quarter for the last two years."

Here's ZDNet's take on the Dell/Red Hat deal. "Why is Dell doing this? Simple. It's where the money is. Dell's senior VP of the Enterprise Systems Group, Michael Lambert, explains that Dell is already the No. 2 provider of servers, behind market leader Compaq, and that 9 percent of all Dell servers are now going out the door with Linux."

News.com looks at the new deal between Dell and Red Hat. "Though Dell and Red Hat called today's initiative the 'one-source alliance,' Red Hat is hardly the sole source for Linux products and services at Dell. Dell executives said the company will in fact maintain its relationships with TurboLinux and Linuxcare, two Red Hat competitors."

The Computer Business Review ran this look at SuSE, with an emphasis on its competition with Red Hat. "While its status as a private company means that SuSE reveals little about its financial figures, its executives claim the company made a modest loss last year, after a profitable 1998. This is attributed to the cost of growing the firm, which saw the appointment of four senior officers in January alone, and sales growth of 350% in the US market in 1999. But, to convert its technical prowess into global market share, SuSE desperately needs the cash generated by the IPO and the publicity that goes with it."

Here's an upbeat article about Linuxcare on ZDNet. "You might have thought that Linuxcare's partners--given its recent tumulus history--might be wary of doing more business with the San Francisco based Linux technical-support firm. IBM disagrees. Indeed, IBM, far from downplaying its Linuxcare support relationship, is expanding it."

News.com covers the investments in Mission Critical Linux. "Unlike several other Linux start-ups, Mission Critical Linux doesn't plan to use the cash to fund aggressive expansion efforts. 'We believe we have critical mass at the moment' with about 80 employees, said chief executive Moiz Kohari."

Upside talks briefly about TiVo. "TiVo's digital video recorder allows on-demand viewing of previously aired TV shows and actually runs its own version of the Linux operating system. TiVo inked a deal with AOL (AOL) Wednesday for $200 million to specially configure its devices for AOL-TV and to develop a special co-branded version of TiVo."

The Ottawa Citizen examines ways in which Corel might stay afloat. "All of this points to the need for Mr. Cowpland to consider a more dramatic remedy -- such as breaking up his own Corel into more focused units, perhaps by selling some of them off. One telltale sign: insiders say Mr. Cowpland has even joked recently about his own lack of focus."

LinuxPlanet examines potential conflicts of interest when corporations start participating in free software products. Corel and KDE is held up as a case in point. "There is another area of potential conflict: KOffice. As the purveyor of a commercial office suite for Linux, it is hard to imagine that Corel wishes KOffice well."

PC World looks at Compaq's support for Linux on handheld computers. "Compaq's release of Linux for the IPaq will allow researchers and developers to write new applications for handheld computers and other intelligent appliances, says Nora Hahn, a Compaq spokesperson. The idea is to try to encourage use of Linux as a common operating system and development tool for handheld computers."

ZDNet covers the release of Intel's vision library. "While the open-source library is intended to encourage research, some of the coding could have immediate value in current applications, according to Intel. For example, the camera calibration functions in the software library will allow the use of a wide angle lens to capture a large field of view and correct for the lens distortion that produces unflattering large noses in video conferencing."

Here's News.com's take on Intel's Software Development Kit for its Universal Plug and Play. "The development kit, called the Intel Universal Plug and Play Software Development Kit V1.0 for Linux, includes an application programming interface (API) and Linux source code. The API helps hide the complexity of the interface and simplifies development. "

Business.

BeOpen looks at the demise of Linsight and the difficulties of the Linux media business in general. "Still, in the Linux business community, where commodity software costs have forced even well-established companies to look for advertising-based content to shore up revenue streams, LinDeveloper strikes many as a miner's canary -- an ominous prelude to the mother of all shake outs." The story also suggests that SourceForge is about to start running banner ads.

TechWeb takes a long look at Linux in the Enterprise. "But other questions remain. How well does Linux fit the enterprise? How successful have Computer Associates International, Novell, Oracle and other companies been at deploying their products on this new platform? How feasible is running Linux as a core operating system in your organization, and how well will it work?"

AsiaBizTech reports on how Japanese computer makers are adopting Linux. "All of the makers are striving to improve and expand their Linux-related services. What they all have in common is a desire to see corporate users starting to adopt Linux in earnest. This means that the makers themselves will then be called upon to undertake the task of building new systems for core business operations and e-commerce services."

Here's a ZDNet column arguing that software should not be looked at as a static product; it also offers some suggestions to the Linux business community. "Suggestion: All Linux vendors should get together and package 'pure Linux' as one CD that is included in all of their distros. The add-ons and customizations making up their proprietary package should come on a separate CD that augments the first. The name 'Linux' should be reserved for the 'common' part shared between all vendors."

This osOpinion piece looks at the issue of forking from the opposite perspective - that Linux is instead unifying many things across the computing landscape. "On the protocol front, Linux works to unify various methods of sharing files so that a gaggle of Macs, a murder of Windows pc's, a herd of Novell clients, and a parliament of Unix boxes can access the same file system (possibly using the same accounts but with different auth schemes). Suddenly you can have one fileserver for the office and the right tools for each employee."

Here's Jesse Berst's latest column telling us that Linux has potential, but not on the desktop. "Linux stands a chance to become a major force in modern computing. But it won't be on the desktop, where consumers have already made their choice. But Linux can succeed in business, where its reliability is well known, and in small devices, where the OS is invisible to consumers."

Signal Ground has run this editorial rebutting an editorial from Windows 2000 Magazine. "No, Mr. Thurrott, the numbers that you supply do not represent a loss for Windows in the server space. Rather, they show a market stagnation for Windows, which gained nothing in 1999."

Here's a ZDNet column expressing some wishes for the future of the software industry. "Sun, at last acknowledging what everyone else knows -- that it's a far better hardware company than a software company -- really and truly turned Java over to an independent standards body. Sun also would cease immediately its self-imposed Linux ban and start offering it preloaded on its servers."

Jakob Nielson's UseIt.com trashes Gnutella from a usability point of view. "The entire open software movement is run by programmers who are motivated to bring out advanced code and not motivated to simplify the user interface to make it approachable by less-technically inclined mainstream users. If they want hundreds of millions of users (as opposed to a few million), it will be necessary to fix the user interface and bring it up to the standards of usability expected of professional software." (Thanks to Bernhard Reiter).

Evan Leibovitch continues to write about software licenses on ZDNet. "While BSD folk write code just to 'get it out there,' and the open source movement (at least as expressed by Eric Raymond) advocates that its use makes economic sense, the GNU rationale is based mainly on righteousness. While others seem to value the merits of free software on practical merits or even pure self-interest, the people behind GNU say, when it comes down to it, this is a simple matter of right and wrong."

Now here's a fun one...according to this BBC article British Telecom claims to own a patent on hyperlinks. "BT rediscovered the Hidden Page patent three years ago during a routine trawl of its 15,000 patents. The growing popularity of the internet has spurred it to capitalise on the patent. 'It is only now that the world wide web has become commercially significant,' said a BT spokesman. He added that BT has spent the time preparing its licensing programme for companies that want to use hyperlinks. 'It takes a long time to prepare a licensing programme of this magnitude,' said the spokesman."

Our old friend John Taschek at ZDNet has figured out why Linux stocks are down. "These companies are trying to salvage dead or dying products by recasting them as Linux essentials. They're going so far as to tweak Linux and make parts of it proprietary. This clearly is not the way of Linux life. Linux developers, meanwhile, resent this. They've seen the profit motive destroy good technology. True Linux types hate companies that push a Linux agenda because they cast a bad glow across the entire Linux base. Investors then pick up on this bad karma and dump their entire Linux portfolios."

Here's an Internet Week column looking at the possible consequences of a Microsoft split. "The prospect that Windows might become an excellent product should give Linux supporters pause. Because Microsoft (the OS company) will now have to compete on its own merits, there's no question that the product will become stronger and more stable. Until now, the companies that make Unix and those that distribute Linux have had those qualities pretty much sewn up."

Resources.

Rick Lehrbaum has provided the latest Embedded Linux Newsletter. It's a comprehensive summary of announcements and press coverage in the embedded Linux area.

LinuxNewbie.org has put up this help file on using a Diamond Rio with Linux. "Believe it or not, getting the Rio to work in Linux is easier then the same process in Windows. I'm serious. If you don't believe me then just follow along."

Here's a detailed, step-by-step article in LinuxDev.Net on how to integrate the Python interpreter into the Apache web server. "To build a Python module for Apache, there are three steps you need to take: installing the Python libraries, recompiling Apache with the PyApache module, and finally telling Apache about PyApache in the httpd.conf file."

Interviews.

News.com interviews Irving Wladawsky-Berger, the VP of technology and strategy at IBM. "We see Linux as being as much of a fad as the Internet was in 1995. Linux is more like the Internet in being an industrywide initiative that all vendors can support. That makes it very different from supporting Windows or other technology that's very good but that one vendor has all the control over."

LinuxPower interviews GIMP developer Sven Neumann. "I'm sure end-users will like the more consistent user interface of Gimp-1.2 and will love to discover the new features we've built into it. Among the new tools that were added, the much improved support for paths is probably the most worthwhile. The thing I like most about the new Gimp is that it feels much more responsive due to the introduction of the idle-renderer. While Gimp-1.0 used to block the user interface while rendering a new composition of the image, Gimp-1.2 allows you to interrupt that process and combines consecutive changes."

BeOpen interviews Randy Terbush, founder of Covalent. "Any work that happens in the [Apache] core continues to go back in the core and is public domain, meaning any other competitive company or end-user has the benefit of those resources. At the same time, using the module API to create some proprietary add-ons that in a lot of cases have to be proprietary because the third party code that we have to license is often proprietary -- there's really no other way if we want to bring Apache to the same level as Netscape and IIS server."

News.com talks with Simon Lin of Acer about embedded systems. "Linux is still far from establishing itself as a mainstay, Lin said, but the open-source operating system is helped to a certain degree by timing. Linux is gaining momentum among developers at a time when the device market is taking off."

GnuLinux is running an interview with Eazel's Andy Hertzfeld. "People forget how innovative that was. To have all these different companies making hardware that ran the same software, that was the real essence of the PC revolution. Well, it's 20 years later and it's time to commoditize that next level up, the operating system. At the system level, there literally has been no innovation for 20 years. Look at Linux. It's an up and coming contender for a leading edge operating system, yet it's essentially a 30 year old architecture."

Finally.

This LinuxMall article looks at a medical program called REALTIQ. "Practice striking your poses now--a new medical scanning alignment program that runs exclusively on Linux is scheduled for release late this summer. "

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol

See also: last week's Announcements page.

Announcements

Events

A couple of upcoming conferences. The first Swiss Linux Conference will be happening in Zurich on June 27 and 28 in Zurich. Speakers include Alexandre Julliard and Frank Hecker. (Thanks to Joe Ammann).

The Linux 2000 UK Linux Developers' Conference is set for July 7-9 in London. Speakers include Hans Reiser, Rik van Riel, Stephen Tweedie, Miguel de Icaza, Wichert Akkerman, and many others.

Training at LinuxWorld. LinuxWorld Conference and Expo has selected Sair Linux and GNU Certification to deliver on-site Linux training and certification at its upcoming convention Aug. 14-17 in San Jose, Calif.

Second annual Linux Storage Management Workshop. The second annual Linux Storage Management Workshop has been announced for October 15-19 in Miami, Florida. A number of Linux filesystem hackers will be there, and topics will include "journaled and cluster file systems, logical volume managers, RAID software and hardware, backup and recovery utilities, tape archiving and HSM, high availability, SCSI and Fibre Channel, devfs, page cache and buffer cache issues, software RAID via MD, and storage networking infrastructure."

Open Source Retreat, Eildon (AU). Netizen has announced an "Open Source Retreat," to be held in the rural town of Eildon in Victoria, Australia, on October 20-22. Details can be found on the retreat web page.

Report from Linux Fest 2000. Here is a report from Linux Fest 2000 in Kansas City; it was posted to the Boulder LUG mailing list by Sean Reifschneider of Tummy.com. It's the first in a series, expect more as the conference gets going.

GlobalLinux2000 in Korea. Here's a followup report on GlobalLinux2000 which took place in Korea last week.

There's also this account on Slashdot. "Proctors dropped us the following note after jetting home from the Global Linux 2000 meeting in Seoul, Korea. His account is brief, but it conveys a spirit of adventure and fun which only the thought of an RMS / ESR sing-along can."

More notes from JavaOne. Juergen Kreileder has sent out an addendum to the JavaOne notes by Nelson Minar. Among other things, he notes that the Blackdown team won the "Outstanding Team Contribution" award there for the Linux JVM port.

Web sites

LinuxLinks announces Web Calendar. LinuxLinks.com announced a new multi-lingual web calendar.

NUWAVE launches LinuxNuwave.com. NUWAVE Technologies, Inc. announced the launching of its new Linux website www.linuxnuwave.com.

User Group News

Central Ohio Linux Users Group Meeting. COLUG will meet on Saturday, June 24th. The main presentation is a carry-over from last month on setting up DNS. The second half will be a 'Stump the Guru' Q and A session.

Report on SSLUG's trip to the Oresund Bridge. Hans Schou sent us this report on SSLUG's recent trip to celebrate the opening of the Oresund Bridge. "We celebrated the opening by walking on the bridge - the Danes from Copenhagen and the Swedes from Malmoe - and by meeting at the middle of the bridge and setting up a network of four PC's connected together as a symbol for the fixed link."

Software Announcements