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Leading items and editorialsPulling back from open source to intellectual property. The DMCA has stirred panic among some of our readers. While that bit of legislative muck isn't something to sneeze at, it isn't the cause of all changes to the open source world. This past week saw three different - and unrelated - events get attributed by some to the DMCA. In truth, none had anything to do with this. Last week, Broadcast 2000 was pulled from circulation. This application is one of the few open source projects designed for digital video editing. The tool has been used in Hollywood, so we've been told, though its popularity is probably limited to a more artistic user base. It is, essentially, a Linux version of Apple's iMovie package delivered on their new Macs - but not quite as evolved. In addition to its video functionality, Broadcast 2000 has one of the best audio editors currently available under Linux. In his announcement to pull the package, the developer of Broadcast 2000 cited liability issues associated with the package being used in real world environments, i.e. the movie industry. A number of readers suggested those liabilities were related to the DMCA. See last week's LWN development page for more information on the announcement. LWN.net wasn't able to contact the author, but we perused the discussion forum set up for the project at SourceForge. According to the author, Broadcast 2000 reached maintenance phase late in 2000 when the developer opened a Sourceforge site for Heroine Virtual. One note from Heroine (the developer) says that FTP servers were being pulled from under him too fast to keep up. But another complained about problems writing code for free while engineers were being laid off in Silicon Valley. In fact, many of his messages seem to reflect a disappointment in both employment, and the lessening use of PCs by users as a whole. In reality, he appears to be dropping Broadcast 2000 for Cinelerra, which is supposed to be the next generation of the program, but which also is expected to be a commercial package where source would always be available, but packaged solutions would be sold. He is, it appears, trying to deal with the issue that large scale open source projects require funding of some kind in order to pay for the developer's time - in this case his own. Like many open source developers, he seems to have realized that you can't develop complex software on your own time. Someone still needs to foot the bill for rent and food. The Enhydra project appeared to be having similar difficulties. The company which started the original Enhydra project, Lutris, was in the process of building an extended system known as Enterprise Enhydra, which was built around Sun's J2EE API specification. Now they only provide a commercial implementation and have dropped support for the open source option. What happened here is a case of trying to do right, but having to do what is required. Lutris, whose name comes from the scientific name for the California Sea Otter - Enhydra Lutris, started as a consulting company in late 1995 building custom Web applications for companies such as FedEx and Kinkos. As part of their consulting services they developed a toolkit written in Java. In 1999 they created Enhydra.org and contributed the Enhydra Java XML sever as an open source project. The response to that system was greater than they expected - with commercial alternatives running as much as $30,000 to $40,000 per CPU, other consultants who needed to build sites found they could use Enhydra as a more cost effective solution. Some companies built global environments on Enhydra, but like other open source contributors, Lutris gets no revenue from those products. And there are many other open source projects on Enhydra.org, such as EnhydraME for microedition J2ME servers, Zeus for creating Java bindings to XML documents, and Barracuda which adds a Motif like interface for Web pages. But Enhydra Enterprise is something more. While Enhydra is really just a Java servelet runner with additional features for building a full blown application, Enhydra Enterprise is the same system with support included for the Sun J2EE specification. This association with J2EE is where things got complex. J2EE is a set of API standards for building web applications in Java. Enhydra negotiated with Sun for rights to support J2EE, which is covered under SCSL, the Sun Community Source License, in their open source projects. According to David Young, Founder and current Linux Evangelist as Lutris, the SCSL license protects the J2EE API by preventing companies from changing it while keeping it available for general research. "We had been working with Sun for a year and half, inviting them to work a deal to create an open source clause in SCSL. But that didn't happen." When Lutris got to the point of releasing a commercial version of the J2EE support they realized they had to drop support for Enterprise Enhydra because it was in violation of SCSL. Young adds, "Sun has the right to do what they want with that license and companies like IBM and BEA are paying big bucks to be a SCSL signee - and we will too because we want to sell a commercial version of the J2EE platform. Sun has said publicly that SCSL is incompatible with open source. That's just the way it stands today." And customers were asking for that J2EE support. Lutris simply couldn't ignore those customer requirements. But Young adds that while Enterprise Enhydra is no more, the rest of the open source projects are still going strong. "Zeus, Barracuda, and the rest of Enhydra.org, including the original Enhydra lightweight applet server runner is still there. Only Enterprise Enhydra has been withdrawn." This has been the confusion he's encountered since the announcement. Some folks have thought that the entire site and associated projects were gone, and that just wasn't true. The last event that spurred concern from our readers was a note that Collabnet was pulling some of the Tigris code back into intellectual property. We attempted to set up a conversation with Brian Behlendorf, the Founder and CTO of Collabnet, but events last week distracted both ends and we were unable to interview him in time for this week's publication. In any event, the pullback appears to be based on the same needs at Lutris - to make sure that they maintain a guaranteed form of revenue generation while trying to keep in touch with open source ideals. That may be a fine line to walk, but it can be done. DRI team released by VA Linux. The members of the DRI team, including Brian Paul who authored the OpenGL-compliant library Mesa, have been laid off from VA Linux. While this won't stop development, it may slow it for a time while developers find their way into new employment. (Thanks to Guido Guenther.) Like the pullback issue, readers felt concerned for the future of their open source favorites. One reader wrote us: Since 3D acceleration is probably of crucial importance for the success of Linux on the desktop this is (IMHO) a serious issue (if we don't want to stick to the binary only nVidia drivers which is not really an option). Well, this depends on your definition of success. Remember that Xi Graphics continues to sell low priced commercial 3D hardware accelerated servers. Are these open source? No. But they are available, and range from $29 to $179, depending on the card you use, for the downloadable driver. That said, since when is 3D acceleration crucial to the desktop? Which set of office tools absolutely relies on 3D rendering facilities? None, actually. Games usually do, but games are not as crucial to the desktop as basic word processors, spreadsheets, presentation graphics and email interoperability. Chances are good that support for 2D in the card you just purchased is available. You just might not have 3D support. For the majority of the world, that's just fine. In any case, lack of jobs has never kept the XFree86 project from moving forward. It can slow it, but only long enough for developers like Brian Paul to find a new day job. Just as he points out in his note about the layoffs, Work will continue on XFree86 and DRI. Inside this LWN.net weekly edition:
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September 20, 2001
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityNews and EditorialsAttack on American Crypto?. Not surprisingly, the recent terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C. have had a number of effects on security administrators around the world. This week we saw a lot of activity in the area of cryptography software, with much scrambling in anticipation of possible changes to US laws. Here's a sampling of what we have received.
DNS mega-hack hits thousands of sites (Register). The Register investigates a breach of security involving the domain name registrar NetNames. "Jonathan Robinson, chief executive at Net Benefit, which runs the NetNames registration and hosting service, told us that the "majority" of its 100,000 customers had their Web traffic re-routed in the hack. He said the firm was focused on restoring services, which were disrupted for more than an hour before being returned to normal between 10am and 10:30am today, [rather] than counting the number of people affected." Security ReportsMandrake advisory for Apache. Mandrake-Linux has issued an advisory for apache to address directory indexing and path discovery problems in all versions prior to 1.3.19 of the Apache Web server. Debian advisory for "most" package. Debian has issued a security advisory for their most package, addressing buffer overflows found in that programs tab expansion handlers. This was an unusual week, we received no new updates for the following packages:UpdatesApache-contrib command injection vulnerability. The Apache module mod_auth_mysql 1.4 was found vulnerable to possible bypass authentication by MySQL command injection. See last week's LWN security page for a discussion of the SQL injection problems with a number of Apache modules.Previous updates: Bugzilla unauthorized user access. There are security problems with bugzilla, in which valid users can obtain confidential data without authorization. A problem also exists where parameters are not checked properly. See the September 13, 2001 LWN security page for the initial report.Previous updates: Buffer overrun vulnerabilities in fetchmail. (Found by Salvatore Sanfilippo). Two buffer overrun vulnerabilities exist in the much-used fetchmail program. Given a hostile server, arbitrary code can be run on the system running fetchmail. The solution is to upgrade to fetchmail 5.8.17. See the August 16 Security page for the initial report. Previous updates:
Format string vulnerability in groff. A format string problem exists in groff; apparently it could be remotely exploited when it is configured to be used with the lpd printing system. (First LWN report: August 16, 2001). The stable release of Debian is not vulnerable. New updates:
Previous updates:
Previous updates:
Linux Kernel 2.4 Netfilter/IPTables vulnerability. Check the April 19 LWN Security Summary for the original report. The NetFilter team has provided a patch for Linux 2.4.3.Previous updates:
Previous updates: Denial of service vulnerability in OpenLDAP This problem was first identified in a CERT advisory issued in July, 2001. It was covered in the July 19, 2001 LWN security page.Previous updates:
Previous updates:
This week's updates: Previous updates: Input validation problem with sendmail. An input validation error exists in versions of sendmail prior to 8.11.6 (or 8.12.0Beta19) which may be exploited by local users to obtain root access. See the August 23 Security Page for the initial report.This week's updates:
Previous updates:
New updates: Previous updates:
This week's updates: Previous updates:
Multiple vendor telnetd vulnerability. This vulnerability, originally thought to be confined to BSD-derived systems, was first covered in the July 26th Security Summary. It is now known that Linux telnet daemons are vulnerable as well.
This week's updates: Previous updates:
New updates:
Buffer overruns in Window Maker A buffer overrun exists in Window Maker which could, conceivably, be exploited remotely if the user runs a hostile application. This problem initially appeared in the August 16, 2001 LWN security page. New updates: Previous updates:
This week's updates: Previous updates:
Previous updates:
EventsUpcoming Security Events.
For additional security-related events, included training courses (which we don't list above) and events further in the future, check out Security Focus' calendar, one of the primary resources we use for building the above list. To submit an event directly to us, please send a plain-text message to lwn@lwn.net. Section Editor: Forrest Cook |
September 20, 2001
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentJon is taking a break this week. That, combined with a major power failure that took out his temporary replacement for a while makes for a light kernel page this week. We apologize for the inconvenience, but this is Jon's first real break in quite some time. He'll be back next week. The current kernel release is still 2.4.9. Despite warnings from Jon that Linus would likely ship 2.5 in his absence, it hasn't happened. Linus shipped a couple of prepatches instead. The latest is patch-2.4.10-pre11, which includes only a few minor updates, plus Andrea Arkangeli's major VM merge. Prior to that, Linux released patch-2.4.10-pre10. This patch included a continuing merge with Alan's releases, a USB init fix, and some NFS locking fixups. The only other update this past week was 2.4.10-pre9, which included the beginning of a migration to the new min/max solutions along with NTFS and IrDA updates. Alan had a pair of releases this past week, which for him seems like a slow week. His latest release is 2.4.9-ac12. It includes a 3c507 ring buffer fix that may affect other similar drivers, a number of reiserfs fixes and a Matrox driver update, among many others. His other update for the week was 2.4.9-ac11 which merged in 2.4.10pre9 and fixes the sign check error in death signal. Preemptible kernels. Robert Love sent in news of a patch to make the Linux kernel preemptible. He says this patch will make for better system response by making user space programs preemptible. The patch will work with XFS but only if another supplied patch is also applied. More importantly, preemption is no longer marked experimental with SMP. In addition to this patch, Love posted another patch, this one coming from MontaVista. This is a latency measurment patch for the preemption patch. According to Love, some users noticed latency even with preemption enabled, most notably with mp3 files. This patch will help with the examination of that problem. Other patches and updates released this week include:
Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet |
September 20, 2001 For other kernel news, see: Other resources: |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Distributions page.
Lists of Distributions |
DistributionsPlease note that security updates from the various distributions are covered in the security section. New DistributionsaXon Linux preview 1.0. aXon Linux is a new server distribution based on e-smith 4.1.2 and geared toward small and medium-sized businesses. It uses a 2.4 Linux kernel with extensions for SGI's XFS journaling file system and FreeSwan IPSEC VPN. Extensive firewalling allows Internet connection sharing via masquerading and improved security. aXon is capable of NT Domain controlling and support for Window 2000's roaming profiles, right out of the box. Also included are the HylaFax Fax Server, CUPS to share and monitor printers throughout the network, Qmail for high performance email serving with IMP acting as a secure Webmail interface. Web serving is provided by Apache and accelerated by mod_GZIP. Development support includes Python 2.1.1, Perl 5.6.0 with more than 25 modules pre-installed, Sun's Java SDK, and GNU's gcc 2.96. All of these features are manageable through a web interface or the console and all the code is released under the GNU GPL. You can find aXon Linux preview 1.0 at home or on Freshmeat. Distribution NewsCaldera. Caldera is not maintaining the openlinux.org site anymore. Attempts to reach that site are redirected to caldera.com. All is not lost, ftp://openlinux.org/pub/ is still available. Coyote Linux. Development and testing is underway to provide Coyote Linux solutions that are based on IDE flash devices. The actual version of Coyote to be used has yet to be decided (but will likely be Embedded Coyote). More information on Coyote Linux on CompactFlash here. Debian News. The Debian Weekly News for September 17th, 2001 includes notes on getting isdnlog into the Woody tree, a new builder for "personal packages", and a few new packages. There is also a Kernel Cousin Debian Hurd #107 available. This issue talks about update-rc.d, which was moved from dpkg to sysvinit and other topics. The Debian Project is looking for a secretary for the core Debian Security Team. If you are a Debian developer looking for a more active role, you might want to consider this job. FreeBSD News. The August 2001 Status Report is now available. Covered topics include progress in the development of the RELENG_4 line and the delay of 5.0. If you would like to help get 5.0 back on track see this list of outstanding projects and information on how to get involved. Linux Mandrake. Mandrake Linux 8.1 Release Candidate 1 has been released. Changes and improvements since the beta3 include: the new Mandrake Server Wizards which have been integrated to the Mandrake Control Center and XFS, the SGI journalized files system. Also SuperMount is back. The freshly released KDE 2.2.1 is in there too. HP is now offering PCs with Linux Mandrake pre-installed! Due to the merger of HP and Compaq, the Vectra models vl420 and vl800 and the e-pc40 come with the option of Mandrake 7.2 or 8.0 (according to the model). The Mandrake Cooker Weekly News for September 17, 2001 tells about the hot spots and package updates. Here's an unofficial HOWTO on installing Oracle8i release 2, version 8.1.6 on Mandrake 8.0. "Another problem is that Oracle attempts to link its libraries at install time using glibc version 2.1.x. Mandrake 8 uses glibc version 2.2.x. Oracle will not link with this version. Various methods were tried during my efforts to install Oracle, the method that worked for me is detailed in this HOWTO. " SmoothWall. SmoothWall is a small, dedicated firewall/router distribution. Version 0.9.9 was released on September 15, with a new English language installation guide. SmoothWall is available under the terms of the GNU GPL. Daniel James, News + Web Editor for LinuxUser magazine, told LWN, "I think it's the best firewall I've tried. Particularly useful is the support for old hardware, like ISA network card autodetection." Distribution ReviewsLinux-Mandrake Corporate Server 1.0 (ZDNet). The Linux-Mandrake Corporate Server 1.0 is reviewed by ZDNet. "The problem is that the bulk of Corporate Server's configuration facilities are aimed at putting your network on the Internet. In doing so, MandrakeSoft has minimalized the basic network configuration to the point of near obscurity. DrakeConf, Webmin, and WizDrake all have a hand in the total process, but there appear to be duplicate functions available within each of these facilities." Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
September 20, 2001
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's On the Desktop page.
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On The DesktopThe backup phoenix.
In fact, there is. And not just one. Last week we looked briefly at HancomLinux, which recently merged with KDE developer theKompany. Their business is booming in Asia and they're expanding to the U.S. Here in the U.S., we found another example of success: The Tolis Group. This company is nearly unknown to the Linux world as it is now, but many know it from its past. The Tolis Group is the phoenix which rose from the ashes of the EST/Atipa merger, and who continues to bring the BRU backup and restore utility to the Linux world. The current economy has helped flush Linux startups faster than anyone would have liked. Tim Jones, President and CTO of the Tolis Group, says the problems with those companies which are failing is obvious. "They got funding, spent it fast and furious without concern on how they would produce revenue, and simply weren't cautious enough with how quickly they burned through the funding. You can't exist that way." This, he says, was the problem with the EST/Atipa merger. EST, makers of an archival system called BRU, was founded in 1985. In 1999, Atipa bought EST as part of a plan to build a number of Internet appliances in which BRU would provide backup services. Those plans never fully developed. A number of management changes at EST, via Atipa, caused some friction with the original EST group, including Tim Jones. "Atipa allowed EST's new management team to spend too fast. They ramped up the staffing, paying some employees ludicrous salaries. Some of them were making up to $200,000 a year and did almost nothing for the company." Atipa had been called the next VA Linux at one point, focusing on hardware solutions ranging from PCs to network appliances to server systems. But they never quite got on track. Jones added, "When your burn rate is 3 times your monthly revenue rate, there's only one thing that's going to happen." The EST/Atipa management team, which replaced EST's team after the merger, lost money every month of the combined operations. For Jones and the other original EST management, this was the most difficult part of the merger. "There had never been a red month at EST. We had been in the black since day one. Then you turn that into a company that is 3 times in the red each month, we just had to say ``enough''." Jones and the other EST originals left the company. At one point Atipa attempted to sell off EST to EBIZ (now in chapter 11). Finally, Atipa closed EST down, offering to let the new management team buy back the company, a deal they couldn't put together. Jones and his group, however, could. Jones' group pulled back the core players which brought EST and BRU to their original success, including Bob Christ as Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Paige Christ as Director of Marketing. They took the company, which had grown to 27 people under Atipa, back down to a core group of 7 individuals. The financiers for the Tolis Group offered the new company a couple of million dollars up front to get a building, to hire people to handle finances and so forth. But the team didn't want to do that. "Before the Atipa merger, we got along on $1.2 million a year in revenue with 6 or 7 staff members. There was no reason to go down the pre-IPO trail." Jones says a perfect example of this problem was with the EST/Atipa product support staff. At that time they had 5 support staff members in addition to the product development staff. "They weren't in the kernel or the code so if you called with an esoteric problem they would just say it's a hardware problem." The alternative was to go up the support chain to the developers which may or may not get those esoteric problems described accurately. "Now, when you call in, you go right to my desk, or to any developer. There is no one else who knows the product better." But that raises the question of how to survive expansion, as every successful company must eventually face. Jones says this isn't as difficult as it might sound because BRU is a very mature product. "We've got in the multiple millions of licensed packages out there since inception. The product just does what its supposed to do, so the phone don't ring as much as you might expect." Because of this, he says, he has no reason to stop answering support questions himself, and neither does the rest of the team. Another aspect of support that they addressed was the "dumbing down of Linux," where Linux was now in the hands of people who weren't typical systems administrators. Jones says they decided to build their X11 interface using Tk and Tcl. Having a simple graphical interface allowed them to address customer requirements for less technical users. As Jones says, "We stopped developing BRU in 1995. Since then, customers have been designing it by requesting new features." BRU can backup to devices as small as Zip disks and has handled systems as large as American Express' petabyte systems. This means they can handle devices as large as Hitachi and Fujitsu Silos. "We have no device dependencies. BRU can scale from floppy tapes up to systems like Silos". BRU is actually a mid-level package that is designed to work on its own or as an intermediary between higher level interfaces (X or Web based, for example) and the low level offline storage systems. Jones says that many NAS (network attached storage) vendors are using single board computers running Linux and BRU as the backup engine. "These vendors OEM the BRU engine because the reliability of recovery of those backups is paramount to their customers." The Linux Tape Certification program was started by Tolis to help vendors certify their drives and equipment with Linux. Vendors that are participating here include HP, Ecrix/Exabyte, and Tandberg Data, and others. This program helps make sure that reported problems get to the vendors and driver developers as quickly as possible, which helps to get the problems fixed quickly. Jones is directly involved with verifying that the fixes are integrated into the appropriate kernels. They even came up with a Tux based logo for hardware manufacturers to use as a branding element. That use still requires more organizational work in the Open Hardware Group but Jones hopes to see the logo in use in the near term. Tim Jones is obviously enthusiastic and adamant about his reborn company's success. Interestingly, Jones suggests that the overall success of the Linux market is not in questions, based on upcoming projects or announcements, but he says he couldn't discuss those projects due to NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). Says Jones, "These are projects that will keep Linux going for many years to come." We think he's right. KDE 2.2.1 released. Earlier this week SuSE posted binaries for KDE 2.2.1 in their 7.2 packages list, which suggested 2.2.1 announcements would be just around the corner. That was on Monday, September 17th, which was the scheduled due date for 2.2.1's official release, according to the last schedule posted on September 9th. Discussions on the KDE-Devel list suggested that distributors tend to either get the source tar ball from the release manager (Waldo Bastian for 2.2) or grab it directly from the CVS source, which would have explained how SuSE might have had a little jump on distributors. Interestingly, the source tarball from Bastian wasn't available prior to SuSE's packaging listing for the 2.2.1. version. The official announcement for the 2.2 series came from the KDE development team on Wednesday. The release was described as having been focused on documentation and translations for its 42 different language versions, though quite a few bugs were addressed as well. KDE 3.0, which should be based on the new Qt3, is expected to ship in beta form by the end of the year. KWord not for the business market?. We caught a short note posted to the KOffice mailing list from the leader of the GUI translation project for KDE regarding KWord, KDE's word processor. Apparently, he doesn't think KWord should have high end DTP features. As to DTP: I think it's great that KWord follows a frame paradigm like most programs in this area and I also think that quite a lot of ideas could be borrowed from a well-designed DTP program like Ventura Publisher. But I'm not after heavy-weight DTP functionality in KWord, ie all the professional typesetting features, high precision output, color calibration and separation etc. This would probably best be reserved to a specialized app like the KVentura project we were talking about the other day. For KWord, most of this would be a waste of ressources which only a few users would appreciate. Perhaps he underestimates the size of the DTP market. KWord probably has enough features to be usable to any business that doesn't require extensive MSWord document support. Import filters are still a concern, with RTF having been added only recently by developers. But most formatting features seem to be available if you are creating new documents. It is unclear if revision marks are available though, since we have not yet installed KOffice 1.1 and KOffice 1.0 didn't have them. In any case, the KVentura project, which will surely address the same name-change problem that faced KIllustrator (now known as Kontour), is just getting off the ground. Which means KDE might not be ready for high end markets any time soon, if "heavy weight DTP functionality" is a necessity for that market. Desktop EnvironmentsMinutes of the GNOME Board meeting 4 September 2001. At the GNOME Board meeting this past week, discussions included concerns with making sure the 2.0 release is made in a reasonable time frame and there was a lot of talk about the roles of members of the 2.0 coordinating team. Havoc Pennington and GConf. Havoc Pennington, one of the primary developers for GTK+ and GNOME and the chair of the GNOME Foundation, talks about GNOME 2.0 progress and GConf, the application configuration mechanism to be shipped with GNOME 2.0. "GConf makes preferences code much more manageable, since it eliminates the issue of synchronization between apps and processes and even various portions of the same process. Also, something like George's PonG - automatically generating a prefs dialog tied to GConf keys - is pretty nice. It needs to be integrated into Glade somehow to be really useful." Noatun-Interview with KDE Developer Charles Samuels (KDE Dot News). Noautun author Charles Samuels is interviewed in an article posted by KDE Dot News. Noautun is the audio/video multimedia player for KDE. "We're working on making Noatun itself much more powerful and extensible via plugins. It's designed bottom-up to make a huge amount of features in the form of plugins, and KDE 3.0 will make this hold even more true. Multimedia-wise, support for more formats, more features, different effects." Gdkxft 1.2 released. Gdkxft is a library which transparently adds anti-aliased font support to gtk+-1.2 in existing applications. XFree86 4.x is required (4.1 is recommended, but not required). Note that A botched install of gdkxft has the potential to make your X configuration unworkable, so be sure to read the documentation closely to avoid serious problems. KPart demonstration. A tutorial on KParts and embedding KDE components describes the code required to get items such as an HTML browser or text editor in as part of an application. Office ApplicationsKOffice 1.1 Rolls Out (KDE.News). KDE.News carried another review of KOffice 1.1 this past week. Their conclusion is that the interface is slick, but KOffice still has distance to cover. "But, with all due respect to the diligent work of the filter developers, the biggest obstacle to KOffice right now is the filters for MS Office documents. So while I will make KOffice my primary office suite, someone who (1) has a repository of .doc files; and/or (2) receives many .doc files by email; and/or (3) needs to collaborate on document production with someone tied to non-KOffice formats, and/or (4) has unusually demanding office needs, will likely not be happy with KOffice as their exclusive Office Suite (yet -- things are improving quickly!). " KOffice falls short of Microsoft Office standard (ZDNet). ZDNet says KOffice 1.1 doesn't quite meet MSOffice users' needs, though KPresenter does seem to be very useful. "KOffice is the result of a volunteer effort, many features found in other office productivity suites are either not functional or are missing entirely from KOffice. For that reason, while KOffice 1.1 represents a significant step in the right direction for the future of Linux, its usability in corporate or other environments with serious information-processing needs is, at best, problematic." Desktop ApplicationsMentalix imaging software gets the picture for Linux users (ZDNet). Mentalix's proprietary Pixel!FX integrated graphics package is reviewed briefly by ZDNet. "The database segment of the package, Pixel!FX Image Album, uses thumbnails to display existing images. It can also manage non-image objects and launch third-party software to handle them if you've previously defined them." And in other news...Linux as a Replacement for Windows 2000. This very detailed description of one consultant's work to migrate a client from Windows 2000 to a mixed Windows/Linux/KDE environment says that Linux is a viable alternative and shows that by migrating to Linux a savings of $10,000 was possible for the client. "When it become clear that Linux could provide most of my clients requirements, especially the intranet database application and almost US$10,000 could be trimmed off the IT budget, it was an easy business decision to implement Linux Red Hat as a replacement for Windows 2000. Linux would be deployed on the server for file, print, database and Web services, and on 20 workstations, it would replace Windows NT as the desktop OS." The work includes detailed charts showing which Linux applications match up to which Windows applications, costs associated with migration, hardware compatibility comparisons and a long list of good and bad points about Red Hat Linux. This may be one of the most detailed analyses of a real world migration we've seen. It also raises some important design considerations for future desktop features. "When copying files under Linux, original timestamps are replaced with the current date. So the "date last modified" file attribute becomes "date last copied". This becomes a nightmare for anyone dealing with many files - how can you keep track of when a file was last modified. You can force the original timestamps using cp -p., but this means not using the GUI file manager. Very poor Linux design feature!" Linux Invades Hollywood (Computer Graphics World). Computer Graphics World reports on the wholesale conversion to Linux by the visual effects industry. "For flipbook playback of high-resolution movies, ILM [Industrial Light and Magic] has ported its Irix Quicktime-compatible player to Linux. Generally speaking, the players that are available for for Real, Quicktime, MPEG-1, and AVI don't do well above 320-by-240 pixels. But with Linux, says Hendrickson, "we've got flipbook playback of movies working at 1280-by-700 pixels and 24 frames per second-as wide as the typical monitor. We're hoping to bring that to full 2K-by-1K soon." ILM plans to release its flipbook movie player, internal file formats, and batch job scheduler as open source." Dreamworks, Pixar, ILM - just about the entire industry is moving to Linux. And they're doing it on both the server side and the desktop side. (Thanks to Anand Rangarajan) Xi Graphics releases Beta 3D Graphics Drivers. Xi Graphics has announced the Beta release of Version 2.0 of their Accelerated-X 3D Linux Graphics Drivers (LGDs). Trolltech releases Qt PalmTop 1.4. The new release of QT provides basic palm-top applications along with a complete graphical interface that can run on handhelds running a version of embedded Linux. IBM developerWorks Announces Theme Contest Winners. IBM developerWorks announced the winners of KDE theme contest. Section Editor: Michael J. Hammel |
September 20, 2001
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Development page. |
Development projectsNews and EditorialsGPL Licensing Turmoil Last Friday, the Free Software Foundation issued a press release, claiming that Victor Yodaiken, CEO of FSMLabs was violating the GPL by imposing restricted distribution on the Linux component of RTLinux, a real-time Linux implementation.Fortunately, as of this Tuesday, the FSF and FSMLabs managed to resolve the issue quickly with the FSMLabs RTLinux Open Patent License being modified to be fully GPL compliant as a result. In the Linux Devices coverage of the issue, Victor Yodaiken said that they: "were happy to have this settled and go back to our business. There seems to have been some miscommunication, and it's good to see that we can get past it." The quick resolution was very fortunate, the GPL software world can do without a nasty court battle right now. For a good view of the Free Software Foundation's stance on GPL, see GPL counsel Eben Moglen's paper on Enforcing the GPL, Part One and Part Two. Software developers who are mixing proprietary and GPL software should make it their business to be informed on the issues here. AudioNew RPMs available for Ogg Vorbis. The Ogg Vorbis site lists some updated RC2 RPMs that replace broken RPMs which were built with a funky version of GCC. DatabasesNew SapDB available. A new release of SapDB is available. From the release notes, this appears to be version 7.3.00.15, which includes numerous bug fixes. EducationSEUL/edu report for September 17, 2001. The September 17, 2001 edition of the SEUL/edu Linux in education report is out, with stories about Linux in Greek and Australian schools, Guatemalan and Belize school systems who are looking at Linux. The long list of software projects listed this week include some utilities for tracking student enrollment and accounting information, schedule planning, and much more. Embedded SystemsEmbedded Linux Newsletter. A new issue of the Embedded Linux Newsletter is out, this edition includes a review of leading Embedded Linux toolkits, news of Lineo's downsizing, and Red Hat's choice of RTLinux. Robots marching into open source (IBM developerWorks). Darrick Addison gives an overview of robot technology in an IBM developerWorks article. "The word "robot" originates from the Czech word for forced labor, or serf. It was introduced by playwright Karel Capek, whose fictional robotic inventions were much like Dr. Frankenstein's monster -- creatures created by chemical and biological, rather than mechanical, methods. But the current mechanical robots of popular culture are not much different from these fictional biological creations." FilesystemsAdvanced filesystem implementor's guide, Part 3 (developerWorks).
In part 3 of this series from developerWorks, titled " Using the virtual memory (VM) filesystem and bind mounts", the
author looks at the advantages of tmpfs and bind mounts now available
with kernel 2.4.
GamesSDL Game Contest. No Starch Press is running another Linux game developer's contest. Entries should be submitted by December 1, 2001. InteroperabilityWine Weekly News for September 12, 2001. The September 12, 2001 edition of the Wine Weekly News is out. Topics include a discussion on implementing the advapi32.dll crypto api, dealing with bugs in Specmaker and with keyboards, and more. Printing SystemsOmni version 0.4.3 released. A new version of the Omni printer driver was recently released. Version 0.4.3 adds patches for ghostscript 6.51 and 5.50, and brings with it the latest Foomatic enablement code. ScienceIntroduction to Quantum Computing (IBM developerWorks). Brad Huntting and David Mertz discuss quantum computing as a way to solve a certain class of difficult computational problems. "In the next few decades, quantum computers are likely to move out of science fiction and research labs (largely at IBM) and into practical applications. A class of problems surrounding complex combinatorics that plague deterministic computers can be solved efficiently on Quantum Computers (QCs). This article, which builds on a basic knowledge of the mathematics of vectors, gives an introduction to quantum computing." Web-site DevelopmentThe MEMS Exchange Architecture. Andrew Kuchling has written a paper describing the web architecture used in the design of the MEMS Exchange, a project in distributed microfabrication. The latest Zope News. The latest news from the Zope project includes news of release 0.9.2. of My Media Manager, release 4.2.0 of ZStyleSheet, with support for Konqueror and MS IE6, and more. Convergence of Peer and Web Services (O'Reilly). Jeff Schneider looks at similarities between Peer and Web Services in an O'Reilly article. "Two of the hottest topics in computing in the new millennium have been peer services and Web services. Although these concepts have a significant amount of overlap, their current manifestations remain very different. In reviewing the types of problems that these systems solve and their method for solving them, it is very possible that the two will converge, producing a single hybrid solution." Window SystemsXFree86 DRI team released by VA Linux. The members of the DRI team, including Brian Paul who authored the Mesa OpenGL-clone library, have been laid off from VA Linux. While this won't stop development, it may slow it for a time while developers find their way into new employment. (Thanks to Guido Guenther.) MiscellaneousSoftware Carpentry Spin Offs (O'Reilly). Even though The Software Carpentry project seems to have fallen by the wayside, some of the projects that were inspired by it live on. Stephen Figgins examines several of the successful software engineering tools that resulted from the project. Section Editor: Forrest Cook |
September 20, 2001
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Programming LanguagesCamlCaml Weekly News. The September 12 through 19 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out. Topics include the Ensemble distributed communication system, a tutorial on phantom types, and a new FORT mailing list. FORTRANProgress continues on G95. The G95 FORTRAN compiler project continues to make progress towards a working compiler. A binary parser for Linux X86 is currently available for download. JavaJava-GNOME 0.7.0 Released. Java-GNOME 0.7.0 has been released. "The Java-GNOME team is pleased to announce the next release of the bindings. This release delivers native compilation using gcj 3.0 or higher." Clustering with JBoss/Jetty (O'Reilly). Bill Burke looks at JBoss/Jetty for the development of a scalable e-commerce site and discusses workarounds for some missing features. LispOpenMCL 0.7 has been released. Version 0.7 of OpenMCL has been released. This release features a BSD sockets interface, primitives for manipulating shared libraries and doing multiple i/o, and bug fixes. OpenMCL runs under LinuxPPC. PerlPerl 6 Porters for September 8, 2001. The September 8, 2001 edition of Perl 6 Porters is out. This issue covers the new %MY:: interface, runtime prototype checking, new documentation, and progress on the Parrot interpreter. PythonDr. Dobb's Python-URL!. This week's Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! includes the first discussion on the Python language newsgroup on what .Net means to Python. The Architecture of Python. Jim Jackson and Kar-Han Tan have written The Architecture of Python, an online overview of the Python language. Python 101 (part 8): An Exceptionally Clever Snake (Developer Shed). Vikram Vaswani Melonfire examines Python exceptions in part 8 of his series on Python. "Normally, when a Python program encounters an error, be it syntactical or logical, it exits the program at that stage itself with a message indicating the cause of the error. Now, while this behaviour is acceptable during the development phase, it cannot continue once a Python program has been released to actual users. In these "live" situations, it is unprofessional to display cryptic error messages (which are usually incomprehensible to non-technical users); rather, it is more professional to intercept these errors and either resolve them (if resolution is possible), or notify the user with a clear error message (if not)." RubyRuby Garden News. The latest news from the Ruby Garden includes an announcement for Ruby 1.6.5, Jruby, a pure Java implementation of Ruby, discussions of various Ruby language features, and a new Visual Tk interface for Ruby. Tcl/TkDr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!. Tcl-URL! this week covers topics such as the use of canvases and scaling, Tk fonts under Windows, and more license questions. Section Editor: Forrest Cook |
Language Links Caml Caml Hump Tiny COBOL Erlang g95 Fortran Gnu Compiler Collection (GCC) Gnu Compiler for the Java Language (GCJ) Guile Haskell IBM Java Zone Jython Free the X3J Thirteen (Lisp) Use Perl O'Reilly's perl.com Dr. Dobbs' Perl PHP PHP Weekly Summary Daily Python-URL Python.org Python.faqts Python Eggs Ruby Ruby Garden MIT Scheme Schemers Squeak Smalltalk Why Smalltalk Tcl Developer Xchange Tcl-tk.net O'Reilly's XML.com Regular Expressions |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and BusinessRed Hat stock repurchase program; financial results. Red Hat, Inc. announced a stock repurchase program. The board of directors has authorized up to 10% of outstanding common shares to be repurchased over the next twelve months. The buy back was triggered last Monday in an effort to buoy stock prices after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it would allow companies to repurchase stock without meeting the usual volume and timing restrictions. Red Hat currently lists approximately 170 million shares outstanding. Later this week Red Hat reported its fiscal second quarter results. Red Hat's net loss, including some one-time only items, was $55.3 million, or 33 cents per share, compared with a loss of $20 million, or 12 cents per share, reported one year ago. Without the one-time items the loss was called "slim". Caldera Announces Restructuring and Consolidation. Caldera International announced details of its recent reduction in force (51 people or 8 percent of the workforce). The company is consolidating unused facilities in Orem, Utah and Santa Cruz, California, streamlining product lines and reducing budgets to allow the company to immediately reduce its overall expenses. Nortel switches to Red Hat. Nortel Networks has switched their Meridian MAX call center to Red Hat Linux. Motorola Selects Lineo Embedix Digital Media Core for DCT5000 Family of Advanced Interactive Set-Top Terminals. Lineo, Inc. announced that Motorola Broadband Communications Sector has selected Lineo Embedix(TM) Digital Media core as the initial Linux operating system software for its DCT5000 family of advanced interactive digital set-top terminals. Trolltech releases Qt PalmTop 1.4. The new release of QT provides basic palm-top applications along with a complete graphical interface that can run on handhelds running a version of embedded Linux. Xi Graphics releases Beta 3D Graphics Drivers. Xi Graphics has announced the Beta release of Version 2.0 of their Accelerated-X 3D Linux Graphics Drivers (LGDs). EU IDA study on the use of open source software in the European public sector. The European Commission Interchange of Data between Administration (EU IDA) program has posted a study into the use of open source software in the public sector. LWN Linux stock page change. Danaher has replaced Microtest in the tier two companies on the LWN stocks page. Fluke Networks announced its completion of the acquisition of Microtest, Inc. on Aug 9, 2001. Fluke Networks, Inc., is part of the Danaher family of companies (NYSE: DHR). Linux Stock Index for September 17 to September 19, 2001.
The high for the week was 21.54 Press Releases:Open source products
Proprietary Products for Linux
Hardware and bundled products
Products and Services Using Linux
Products With Linux Versions
Java Products
Books & Training
Personnel & New Offices
Linux At Work
Other
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol. |
September 20, 2001
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the newsRecommended ReadingComputing Made Good, Easy (Wired). Users seldom use computers efficiently, opting instead to stick with the method that first worked even if another method improves speed, according to this Wired article describing how the "Good Easy" environment uses concepts Unix users have known for years. "This system is tied together by a culture that, like Unix, keeps technology simple and understands how to use programs together. You either delete an e-mail or pipe it through the text editor to strip out the line breaks and save it as plain text on the hard disk. In fact, anything that can be kept in plain text is -- so no more Excel address books with long lists of phone numbers. Keeping all your data, including e-mail messages, in plain text makes searching quicker and easier because users don't need to run searches in multiple locations. If users find themselves repeating an action, it can be easily automated." (Thanks to Robert George Mayer) Geeks Gather to Back Crypto (Wired). Wired reports on one groups efforts to help keep congress from enacting legislation in response to last week's attacks that they feel may threaten civil liberties. "Carlson plans to post details, including a draft don't-ban-crypto-letter, to a newly created Working Group on Privacy and Civil Rights website." Hollywood Loves Hollings' Bill (Wired). Wired quotes a Disney VP saying that the proposed SSSCA bill is a reasonable compromise that will spur high-speed Internet access and boost hardware sales. "A person close to the Senate Commerce committee said that discussions with industry groups over the past few weeks will continue and that the final bill could change. The source said, however, that "not much" has been rewritten since the Aug. 6 draft obtained by Wired News." Open Letter to Michael Eisner, Chairman and CEO, Walt Disney Company (Linux Journal). This editorial looks at the SSSCA and how passing a law like that would effect the usefulness of the Internet during times of crisis. "The SSSCA is all the more dangerous because we're a big country. I would love to be able to say that even without the Internet, our independent radio stations, local newspapers and town meetings would get our communicating done. I would love to be able to say that many voices in all media brought us news, personal appeals, debate." Virtual talk (San Diego Union-Tribue). The use of artificial intelligence as chatting `bots', according to a San Diego Union-Tribune report, is creating for some lonesome souls an unsettling feeling of false comfort. "The program merely simulates conversation by identifying key words and searching its database for an appropriate response. Alice can string together several sentences, refer to something discussed previously and even personalize the reply with the user's name, giving the illusion of a heartfelt response. Still, Alice tends to repeat comments, a trait that Wallace said is not unlike humans." Enforcing the GNU GPL (LinuxDevices). Eben Moglen, General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation, describes why the GPL is legally sound in an editorial posted to LinuxDevices.com. "This right to exclude implies an equally large power to license -- that is, to grant permission to do what would otherwise be forbidden. Licenses are not contracts: the work's user is obliged to remain within the bounds of the license not because she voluntarily promised, but because she doesn't have any right to act at all except as the license permits." It's a Dirty Job, but Does Anyone Have to Do It? (Linux Journal). Napster may be dead, but Napster clones are very popular. This Linux Journal article examines the issues between the recording industry and open source Napster clones. "But it does seem that the fantasy view of unlimited free music, and both listeners and artists getting everything they want, may be a little naive (for alternative "fantasies" see Doc Searl's Linux for Suits in the October 2000 issue of Linux Journal). Perhaps not unlike the view prevalent among the Open Source community before reality set in--that open-source software would save the world, and the artists could still make money. " CompaniesHard times for Linux biz (Register). The Register covers Caldera's and Lineo's recent woes. "Last week Caldera announced in a SEC filing a consolidation of their stock, in other words a reverse split with a 1:6 ratio. Caldera's hand has been forced by the stock trading well below the $1 required t |
