Leading items and editorials

This represents the fourth consecutive quarter in which the company has delivered profitable or breakeven results.

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From:	 tet@accucard.com
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Kernel compile times
Date:	 Fri, 15 Mar 2002 17:40:12 +0000

On the LWN kernel page, you say:

>Compiling a kernel in 23 seconds isn't bad - it looks like a record.

You then explain how Anton Blanchard rose to the challenge and achieved
a 10.3 second kernel compile. What you didn't mention was that he'd
already broken the 23s mark some 18 months ago. On 26th September 2000,
he posted a message to the Linux Kernel mailing list showing Linux
booting on a 24 CPU Sun Ultra Entrprise E10000, and claiming a kernel
compile in 20 seconds. So, a 100% increase in 18 months? Sounds like
a perfect illustration of Moore's law to me :-)

Tet

From:	 Biju Chacko <biju@exocore.com>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Thinking with ones gonads
Date:	 14 Mar 2002 09:58:01 +0530

In lwn you wrote:

> It is worth pondering, however, on why so many of us insisted on using
> Linux systems in the early 90's, when it was still clearly inferior to
> the numerous proprietary Unix systems that were available at the time.
> Without a certain amount of "gonad thinking," Linux might not have 
> come so far so quickly.

It's fairly simple, really. In the early '90s, when I started working
with Linux, proprietary Unixes were just plain out of reach. Actually,
as a penniless student in a third-world country, DOS was out of reach! I
shudder to think of the sheer volume of piracy I commited at that time.

Why did I use Linux in '94? Not for any political reason. It was UNIX
and it was available.

Why do I use Linux in '02? Ditto. With the bonus that in many areas it
is superior to the competition.

Remember, this is a technical field we're in ... making decisions based
on politics/marketing/whatever is just asking for trouble. And *that* is
the same mistake being made by both RMS and MS.

-- Biju

PS: The .sig is a coincidence -- but appropriate nevertheless.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------
Biju Chacko        | biju@exocore.com (work)            
Exocore Consulting | biju_chacko@yahoo.com (play)
Bangalore, India   | http://www.exocore.com
-------------------------------------------------
Those who do things in a noble spirit of self-sacrifice are to be
avoided
at all costs.
		-- N. Alexander.

From:	 David Mackintosh <mackdav@rogers.com>
To:	 <letters@lwn.net>
Subject: "Gonads" vs practicality
Date:	 Thu, 14 Mar 2002 11:13:19 -0500 (EST)

Sir:

With respect to your comments on Linux's history, specifically:

> It is worth pondering, however, on why so many of us insisted on
> using Linux systems in the early '90s [...] without a certain amount
> of "gonad thinking", Linux might not have come so far so quickly.

I would doubt that any kind of religion plays a significant part of
selecting an operating system.  The vast majority of linux users have
different reasons for chosing to run this operating system.  In
general, before a user will consider selecting it for his needs, the
OS must have evolved into at least one of two states:

1.  The OS must be able to do something the user wants it to do; or

2.  The OS is in a state where the user is capable of modifying it
    to do something they want it to do.

For me, I needed a crash-resistant OS that I could afford.  Linux
fit "what I wanted it to do" and through perl, shell scripting, and
some awful awful C code, I could "make it do what I wanted it to
do" in a practical sense.

Yes, OSF/1 and SunOS were far more capable at the time, but Linux fit
my needs from an affordability perspective -- it cost $25 for a set
of CDs and ran on the less-than-state-of-the-art equiptment I owned.
I did not understand the GPL at the time, so "gonad thinking"
played absolutely no roll in the decision.

I think that the majority of the religious are involved with Linux
because using a "counter-culture" operating system is seen to be
against the mainline.  With the exception of the truely sincere (such
as Mr. Stallman) I think these people are useless as a core
constituency, because they will flee Linux and the GPL as soon as it
becomes mainstream in favor of something more "revolutionary".
Perhaps this is where the Hurd's userbase will come from?

-- 
 /\oo/\
/ /()\ \ David Mackintosh | mackdav@rogers.com

From:	 Joe Klemmer <klemmerj@webtrek.com>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: "gonad thinking"
Date:	 Thu, 14 Mar 2002 16:38:09 -0500 (EST)

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> It is worth pondering, however, on why so many of us insisted on using
> Linux systems in the early 90's, when it was still clearly inferior to
> the numerous proprietary Unix systems that were available at the time.  
> Without a certain amount of "gonad thinking," Linux might not have come
> so far so quickly.

	FWIW, I think there's a difference of scale and/or perspective.  
When Linux came out there was no expectation of it being or doing real
work.  It wasn't needed to, nor desired for, something that actually did
anything.  BitKeeper, OTOH, is expected to perform a function that has
some requirement for someone (specifically LKH'ers).

	But that's just my opinion.  What do I know... 

- ---
Using Linux since 11/91		|		http://www.linux.org
Linux user #29402		|		http://counter.li.org/
Red Hat Linux			|		http://www.redhat.com
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From:	 Zygo Blaxell <zblaxell@feedme.hungrycats.org>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Whoa there!  Linux inferior to _which_ Unix systems in the early 90's?
Date:	 Fri, 15 Mar 2002 23:22:04 -0500

>It is worth pondering, however, on why so many of us insisted on using
>Linux systems in the early 90's, when it was still clearly inferior
>to the numerous proprietary Unix systems that were available at the
>time. Without a certain amount of "gonad thinking," Linux might not have
>come so far so quickly.

Whoa there...I have a few problems with that statement!

Last time I checked, I was a Linux and proprietary Unix user in the
early 90's.  I was doing a fair amount of "gonad thinking" at that time
in my life, but I certainly wasn't thinking about _software_ with those
organs.  Uhhh...  maybe that's more than my fellow readers want
to know.  Anyway...

First of all, the world is not all Unix--by 1993, there were many
non-Unix operating systems for 386-class machines that were clearly
inferior to Linux.

Even if we compare Linux only to proprietary Unixes, I'm having difficulty
recalling which proprietary Unix vendor had a product that Linux was
"clearly inferior" to at the time.  Each proprietary Unix vendor optimized
their product for one (usually vertically integrated) niche market,
and utterly ignored anyone else, so each proprietary Unix was good
at one particular kind of application and bad at most others.  

Linux was not "clearly inferior" to contemporary Sun, HP, IBM, SGI,
or SCO systems of the early 90's--I used a bit of all of those at
the time, as well as Linux, and they all sucked more or less equally,
especially if you wanted to run a mixture of many different applications.
This lack of generality was part of the very reason why there were so
many proprietary Unix vendors in the first place!

People who were serious about working on a Unix system (as opposed to
merely running a single application on it) in the early 90's routinely
replaced as many of the bundled system components with third-party
replacements as possible, using proprietary software if you had money, or
GNU and other free (beer) software if you didn't.  The major motivation
for this was to have a layer of portable runtime to insulate you from
the vendor's Unix taste, so you could develop software for multiple
vendor platforms without going insane.

By the mid 90's, there was very little practical difference between
a proprietary Unix system that had been mostly hidden under a thick
layer of third-party components, and a Linux system that didn't have
any vendor-supplied components to start with.

Oh, and a lot of this third-party software was free (speech) too.
Wasn't that nice!

-- 
Zygo Blaxell (Laptop) <zblaxell@feedme.hungrycats.org>
GPG = D13D 6651 F446 9787 600B AD1E CCF3 6F93 2823 44AD

From:	 Eric Smith <eric@brouhaha.com>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: nore GPL confusion
Date:	 20 Mar 2002 22:20:45 -0000

Gentlemen,

In your 20-Mar-2002 daily updates, you quote a Financial Times article
as saying "the GPL can 'convert' proprietary software into open source
software - since any company incorporating licensed code into its own
software products is obliged to open up its code too."  You do state
that this worry is "overblown", and I agree.

Developers should remember that using GPL'd code is a choice that is
available to them, not a burden.  If the terms of the GPL are not
consistent with their intention to keep their software proprietary,
they should not use the GPL'd code.  No one is forcing them to do so.
The have the OPTION of using GPL'd code IF they desire to AND they
are willing to comply with the license.

The way the Financial Times article was worded, it almost sounds like
they think GPL'd code can somehow mysteriously sneak into another software
package when the developers aren't looking.  Unless the software developers
are grossly incompetent, that's not going to happen.  It is a legitimate
concern that software developers must be aware of the licensing on any
software that they merge into a product, but this is in no way specific
to the GPL.

Sincerely,
Eric Smith

From:    Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra <leandrod@mac.com>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: The GNU HURD will be ready by the end of the year
Date:	 Thu, 14 Mar 2002 14:30:04 +0100

	First, you've taken RMS words off a much edited interview... not good 
for acuracy.

	Second, you got it all right about keeping proprietary software off 
the GNU system.  Obviously RMS isn't talking about applications 
being able or not to run.  He's talking about "Distributions of 
GNU/Linux", and obviously FSF's distribution of GNU, being based on 
Debian, won't include any proprietary software.

	About licensing, obviously GNU GPL libraries won't allow proprietary 
software.  This is already the case with GNU libraries like readline 
and some Gnome ones, as well as with Troll Tech's Qt -- you have to 
get a different license to be able to distribute your application 
with Qt.

	On the other hand, applications usually don't talk to the kernel, 
they talk to libraries such as GNU libc, and most of these have been 
licensed under LGPL specifically to allow for proprietary applications.

-- 
 _
/ \ Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra        +41 (21) 216 15 93
\ / http://homepage.mac.com./leandrod/        fax +41 (21) 216 19 04
 X  http://tutoriald.sf.net./               Orange Communications CH
/ \ Campanha fita ASCII, contra correio HTML      +41 (21) 644 23 01

From:	 Jeroen Dekkers <jeroen@dekkers.cx>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: The GNU Hurd
Date:	 Tue, 19 Mar 2002 17:52:33 +0100

It's nice that you write something about the Hurd, but it would be
better if you would have looked at the Hurd homepage,
http://hurd.gnu.org, a bit better. To start with, you write it as "the
Hurd", not capitalized like "HURD". See
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq.en.html#q1-2 for more
information.

Second, the Hurd isn't a kernel. It's a multi-server system running on
a microkernel, Mach at the moment. In the future the Hurd will
probably run on L4 (http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/L4/ and
http://www.l4ka.org) and other microkernels.

There are plenty of reasons for producing the GNU system. One of the
reasons is to give attention to the GNU project. GNU/Linux never did
(at least not before RMS started with his GNU/Linux campaign) give
much credit to GNU. (Just name LWN for example. Your article about the
Hurd perfectly shows that it's misnamed). The GNU system will do. It
also generates money if the FSF is going to sell cds with the GNU
system. Money which will be spend to advocate and develop free
software.

You really misinterpretted RMS his reasons for creating the GNU
system. He only says that he's looking forward to see the GNU system
available because it will only contain free software. He didn't say
anything about forbidding the user to install non-free software on it
if that user doesn't care about his freedom.

The following sentence doesn't make much sense to me either: "Thus, it
seems unlikely that the HURD will mount a substantial challenge to the
established free kernels anytime soon." And that's not only because it
doesn't make much sense seeing it stand-alone, the potential of the
Hurd is very big, but because the arguments before it. 

Why shouldn't it be able to challenge the existing free kernels
because the GNU distribution doesn't contain non-free software? I'm
not sure if you know that one of the most populair distributions,
Debian, doesn't have non-free software in its main
distribution. Debian works perfect without the non-free section and a
lot of people I know have are running it without it. Proprietary
software isn't necessary any longer. Debian also has a Hurd 'port',
BTW.

But what is actually the biggest reason? It's because of its technical
superiority. Although the current implementation doesn't show it, the
design of the Hurd and the ideas behind it really rock. And of course
I get flamed about this by people who think microkernels suck. I'll
just say that research proved that it's possible to make a good system
based on a microkernel. It can be fast, for example. That there isn't
a good system at the moment doesn't make it impossible. All flames
based on FUD will go directly to /dev/null.

The Hurd has many nice features. To give an example, you can run
servers implementing file systems, network protocols, file access
control, etc just as a normal user and debug it as a normal
program. Any user can add things to the filesystem, for example
mounting a directory on a ftp server in its home directory. All this
is possible without special permissions.

And all those things and more are possible because the Hurd is a
multi-server system running on a microkernel. This is the reason why
the Hurd is still developed and why the number of Hurd developers and
users is increasing.

It's nice that the Hurd is getting more usable. You would probably ask
why the Hurd taked so long. The answer is simple: manpower. The Hurd
only has a few developers and never had much in the past. The Hurd is
a redesign of Unix, a redesign takes much more time than a
reimplemention. That's why Linux was much easier to develop, they
didn't have to think about the interfaces and the design.

But one thing is sure: The Hurd isn't dead and the GNU system has a
lot of potential to beat a lot of operating systems, even those much
used proprietary ones.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers@jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen@openprojects

From:	 "Robert A. Knop Jr." <rknop@pobox.com>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: reverse FUD
Date:	 Fri, 15 Mar 2002 13:13:11 -0600

It's striking that as the news of the zlib flaw gets out, what we're
seeing is lots of patches from Linux and FreeBSD distributors, and at
the same time realization by Microsoft that maybe this is their problem
too.  Yes, this flaw is a bit of a PR black mark for open source, but it
is interesting to note the speed of response of the two different
communities.

There's another take on this too.  Assuredly this security flaw is going
to be a giant pain for Microsoft, if they have to patch all sorts of
applications as a result.  BUT, if zlib had been released under the GPL,
Microsoft wouldn't have used it, and they wouldn't have this problem!
So... Microsoft likes to go around saying that GPL "breaks the cycle"
that they think ought to be present in the computer industry.  But,
really-- when somebody releases something under the GPL, they're just
trying to protect you, Microsoft, so you won't be succeptible to its
flaws!  It's all done for your own good.  Really.

-Rob

-- 
-=-=-= Rob Knop =-= rknop@pobox.com =-= http://www.pobox.com/~rknop =-=-=-
     Help the EFF protect basic freedoms online: http://www.eff.org
 Playwrights & theatre types, see The Dramatic Exchange: http://www.dramex.org

From:	 "David L. Craig" <dlc@radix.net>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: On Overstatement
Date:	 Fri, 15 Mar 2002 16:37:18 -0500

In "Cal Senator: Hollywood Over Tech (Wired)," the abstract
ends with "Yes, it's true: the U.S. government really wants
to outlaw free software."  Now, honestly, don't you think
that is retractable nonsense?  It is proper to attribute
this to some members of Congress, but to the whole kit and
kaboodle?  These new bills are still in committee, after
all.  If you remember the U.S. electorate IS the U.S.
government, you will see how overstated this was.  In fact,
I perceive it to be inflamatory and beneath the journalistic
standards I have come to expect from your Web site.  I beg
you, fix this pronto.

-- 

May the LORD God bless you abundantly!

Dave Craig

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
"So the universe is not quite as you thought it was.
 You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then.
 Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe."

--Athor 77, formulator of the       from _Nightfall_
  Universal Theory of Gravitation   by Asimov/Silverberg

Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Letters See also: last week's Development page.	Development projects News and Editorials The Knoda Database Frontend for KDE Knoda, ("Knorr's Datenbank"), is a database front end for the K Desktop Environment (KDE). It is based on the hk_classes C++ database library. Knoda works with the Mysql database and the documentation indicates that it can be installed under the Mandrake and SuSE distributions. Knoda was written by Horst Knorr. "Knoda is a GUI for accessing relational databases in KDE. It comprises a Form generator, a Table and Query generator and a Report Designer." The general information page further details what Knoda can do. The screenshots page shows some examples of Knoda's capabilities. Version 0.5.1 of Knoda has just been released, new features include support for KDE2 and KDE3 as well as an XML export filter and bug fixes. See the changelog for the complete list and project history. These pages also have some useful information: The Knoda documentation page, which has the API documentation and several tutorials. The Knoda FAQ which has some useful installation tips. Knoda can be downloaded here. It is licensed under the GPL and the LGPL. Audio Projects MPEG audio analysis tools. We have received an announcement from CSIRO for a set of frequency domain audio analysis tools. Maaate is a framework for doing work with MPEG compressed files, and Bewdy allows one to work with MP3 files. (Thanks to Silvia Pfeiffer.) Education SEUL/edu report for March 18, 2002. The March 18, 2002 SEUL/edu report features discussions on GNU license issues in Canada, teaching Linux to high school students, the Free Assessment Summary Tool (FAST), multi-language support for Tux Typing, data formats for educational use, and more. Embedded Systems Embedded Linux Newsletter for March 14, 2002. The March 14, 2002 edition of the LinuxDevices Embedded Linux Newsletter is out with the latest embedded Linux news. Tracking Down Killer Bugs (Dr. Dobbs'). Eric McRae discusses embedded system debugging techniques on Dr. Dobbs'. "In the field of embedded system development, there occasionally arises a bug that defies all normal techniques for discovery. These "killer" bugs are characterized by unpredictability, an unclear hardware/software basis, and their proximity to a major project deadline." Network Management iptables-1.2.6 released. Version 1.2.6 of the iptables firewall software has been released. It features a bunch of bug fixes. (Thanks to Harald Welte.) Science Tk Family Practice Version 50 Released (LinuxMedNews). LinuxMedNews reports on the latest version of the Tk_familypractice medical record system. Features include an improved install script, better progress note templates, a file chooser dialog, improved internationalization, and more. BioPerl 1.0 Release (Bioinformatics). Bioinformatics has an announcement for the 1.0 release of BioPerl, a set of Perl extensions for handling biological data. "Bioperl has been used worldwide since 1998 but the project has always used conservative release numbering - for example, for the last 2 years, the stable release series was 0.7. By moving to 1.0, Bioperl is declaring that it is 'feature complete' for sequence handling, the most common task in bioinformatics. " Web-site Development Liferay Enterprise Portal v1.0. Liferay, a new J2EE open source portal server has been released for Linux and Windows. The portal is built on Oracle9i. Liferay is licensed under the MIT Open Source License. Bricolage 1.2.2 Released (use Perl). Version 1.2.2 of the Bricolage content management and publishing system has been announced. "This is a maintenance release with many bug fixes." This week on Zope Members' News. New items on the Zope Members' News site include a new PHParser, FunctionalTests 0.2, and a note on a Zope talk at the Open Source Content Management Summit in Zurich, Switzerland on Mar 21-22 2002. Asp2php news. A few updates have been added to the Asp2php project. "Fixed some bugs in the 'function' conversion. I also totally updated the GUI. It should work A LOT better now. " Apache AxKit 1.5.1 Released (use Perl). A new version of AxKit, a mod_perl mime encoding sniffer for XML files, has been announced. This release features bug fixes, it is also the first release to be included as part of Apache. Introducing AxKit (O'Reilly). Barrie Slaymaker takes a look at AxKit on O'Reilly's perl.com. "Starting from the basics, this series explains how to install a basic AxKit server and then explores AxKit's more powerful capabilities. " Documentation LDP Weekly News. The March 12, 2002 LDP Weekly News features a new Latvian HOWTO as well as numerous updated documents. The March 19, 2002 LDP Weekly News mentions that Joy Goodreau will be replacing David Merrill as the collection editor. Thanks go to Dave for all of his hard work, and welcome to Joy. New documents include a Compaq T1500 Linux HOWTO, and an English-language GNU/Linux distributions HOWTO.	March 21, 2002 Application Links GIMP Mozilla Galeon High Availability ht://Dig mnoGoSearch MagicPoint Wine Worldforge Zope Open Source Code Collections Berlios Freshmeat OpenSourceDirectory Savannah Le Serveur Libre SourceForge Sweetcode

	Desktop Development Audio Applications AlsaPlayer 0.99.57. Version 0.99.57 of the AlsaPlayer PCM player is available. This version features bug fixes, added scopes, and more preferences. Web Browsers Have You Seen These Hackers? (Mozilla). The Mozilla project is searching for a number of former developers, they need to find them and ask their permission for the relicensing of Mozilla. Switching from IE to Gecko (NewsForge). NewsForge has an encouraging article about a web browser developer making the switch to Gecko. "Howard Ryan is CEO of Custom Browser, Inc. , a company that codes (you'd never guess from the name) custom Web browsers. He's a Windows guy, and most of his work has been based on Microsoft Explorer's rendering engine. But Howard is starting to use Mozilla's Gecko in his own custom and embedded browsers, and says moving to Gecko from Explorer is not only a good idea, but is amazingly simple for browser developers because, he says, 'the Gecko API is identical to the IE API.'" Desktop Environments Kernel Cousin KDE #35. Issue #35 of Kernel Cousin KDE covers recent release candidates for KDE3, Krayon, KOffice file thumbnails, CVS documentation accidents, and more. People of KDE: Andy Fawcett. One of the more recent endeavours in the KDE world is the KDEduware project. This week dot.kde.org speaks with team member Andy Fawcett. "I help out with the KDE Edu project, doing testing, giving advice (I have some teaching experience), and maintaining some of the website . When we 'went public' with the project, I somehow managed to coordinate getting the text in seven different languages, all in the space of a day, and for which I am very grateful to the poor fools people on IRC who volunteered to translate." The KDE Three Meeting. Cristian Tibirna has compiled a summary of the recent KDE Three Meeting, which covered various KDE 3.0 development issues. KDE Worldwide Goes Live. Chris Howells has announced a new project, KDE Worldwide, which aims to promote KDE around the world by assisting with the localization of KDE. GNOME-2.0 Installation Guide Online (Gnotices). A new GNOME-2.0 Installation Guide has been announced. "This GIG2 explains not only how to compile and install the GNOME 2.0 Desktop Environment itself but also how to compile and install the GNOME 1.4.1 applications into the new GNOME-2.0 Desktop Environment." New GNOME themes site (Gnotices). Sunshine In A Bag is a new GNOME themes site that has been announced. Its purpose is to be a resource site for all GNOME related themes. GNOME Summary for March 16, 2002. The March 16, 2002 GNOME Summary looks at Rhythmbox 0.1, GStreamer 0.3.3, GnuCash 1.6.6, Ada bindings for GTK+ 2.0, the GNOME 2.0 desktop Beta 2, and more. GUI Packages Python/C# Mania: New Bindings Expand KDE Languages. A number of new bindings have been released for KDE and Qt, adding C# and Python to the list of supported languages. Interoperability Xfsamba 0.44 Samba navigator. Version 0.44 of Xfsamba, a GUI-based Samba navigator, has been released. (Thanks to Joe Klemmer.) Multimedia KWinTV: Future Vision (KDE.News). KDE.News reports on Richard Moore's latest version of KWinTV, a television card interface for KDE. Office Applications AbiWord 0.99.3 Released (Gnotices). In the move towards the AbiWord 1.0 release, the AbiWord team has announced version 0.99.3. "The AbiWord team continues to make great progress towards 1.0. In the 4 weeks since 0.99.2 was released we've closed tons of bugs, completed RTF import/export, added great new image handling facilities and have made AbiWord significantly faster."	Desktop Environments GNOME GNUstep KDE XFce XFree86 Window Managers Afterstep Enlightenment FVMW2 IceWM Sawfish WindowMaker Widget Sets GTK+ Qt

	Programming Languages C++ Implementing C++ Servlet Containers (Dr. Dobbs'). John Hinke introduces C++ servelet containers on Dr. Dobb's. "What if the full power of the Java servlet API could be harnessed in C++ to create a pure C++ web application by using the same techniques used when creating Java web applications? C++ developers would then be able to create C++ web applications without needing to use multiple languages, or using a slower technology such as Java or CGI." Caml Caml Weekly News. The March 19, 2002 Caml Weekl News is available. Topics include profiling, PXP-1.1.4, a lablgtk interface for Gecko, caml-info-look, and a Text Mode Kit. The Caml Hump. This week, the Caml Hump looks at the TextMode Kit OCaml text mode widget system and caml-info-look, an automatic OCaml info file browser. Java JSP Standard Tag Libraries, Part 1 (O'Reilly). Sue Spielman introduces JSP Standard Tag Libraries on O'Reilly's OnJava site. "If a custom tag has been created, tested, and debugged, then it only is logical that, as a developer, you want to grab the golden ring of OOD: reusable components. Working with custom tags is one avenue to explore in the world of reuse. But wouldn't it be better, more efficient, and easier if there was a set of standard tags that solved common problems? Do we really need ten different ways to iterate, or to do conditional processing?" A taste of 'Bitter Java' (IBM developerWorks). Bruce A. Tate explores Java antipatterns on IBM's developerWorks. "In this article, antipatterns expert and noted author of Bitter Java, Bruce Tate, demonstrates how and why antipatterns are a necessary and complementary companion to design patterns." Lisp CL-BibTeX alpha available. An alpha release of CL-BibTeX, a Common Lisp replacement of the BibTeX bibliograpy database tool, has been announced. PHP PHP Weekly Summary. The March 17, 2002 PHP Weekly Summary covers streams support, SapDB and PHP, a FastCGI update, fixes for the PHP audit project, interface extension, and Unix Mail, and more. PHP Documentation Team Meeting. The notes from the PHP Documentation Team Meeting are available online. Python Python 2.2.1c1 released. A new candidate for the bugfix release of Python has been announced. No major new features are included, just bug fixes. Testers are being recruited. This week's Python-URL!. This week's Python-URL! covers Enhanced Generators, NormalDate 1.2, a Python 2.2 bug encounter, an English thesaurus and dictionary thread, a proposed standard logging module, PIL v1.1.3, and more. This week on the Daily Python-URL. New items on the Daily Python-URL include a list-comprehension syntax discussion, Python 2.2.1 RC 1, a Python Logging System, Python Imaging Library, version 1.1.3, Korean Codecs 2.0.2, and more. Ruby Ruby: Productive Programming Language (Linux Journal). The Linux Journal looks at Ruby. "Ruby has some distinct advantages over Python. It is a far cleaner OOP language with excellent features, and it supports Perl's regex type terse notation. It also scores high in enabling one to write short concise and maintainable code." The Ruby Garden. This week, the Ruby Garden discusses programmer personalities, Dir.mkdirhier and Dir.rmdirhier, message parameters for abort, the Mutex object, dir methods, and more. The Ruby Weekly News. The March 18, 2002 Ruby Weekly News features announcements for Ruby Dataquery Shell 0.3.3, rpkg 0.3.1, Ruby-Gnome 0.27, Ruby/SMB beta 2, Ruby/zlib 0.5.1, the Locana GUI and GUI builder 0.81, and more. Tcl/Tk Tcl-URL! for March 18, 2002. This week's Tcl-URL! covers try/catch exception handling, garbage collection, embedded TCL legalities, Tcl history, animated GIFs, the Tgdb debugger, and more. XML Processing Model Considered Essential (O'Reilly). Leigh Dodds looks at XML processing model issues on xml.com. "This week's XML-Deviant takes a step backwards in an attempt to foreground an issue that has been behind several recent debates in the XML community, namely, the lack of a processing model for XML." Integrated Development Environments GNUstep Weekly Editorial. The March 15, 2002 GNUstep Weekly Editorial covers testing on different Objective-C window managers, compatibility between Apple Objective-C++ and gcc, Chinese language support, converting a NeXTSTEP text to speech program to Linux, and GNUstep progress. 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

Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Letters See also: last week's Letters page.	Letters to the editor Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@lwn.net. Preference will be given to letters which are short, to the point, and well written. If you want your email address "anti-spammed" in some way please be sure to let us know. We do not have a policy against anonymous letters, but we will be reluctant to include them.	March 21, 2002

From: tet@accucard.com To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Kernel compile times Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 17:40:12 +0000 On the LWN kernel page, you say: >Compiling a kernel in 23 seconds isn't bad - it looks like a record. You then explain how Anton Blanchard rose to the challenge and achieved a 10.3 second kernel compile. What you didn't mention was that he'd already broken the 23s mark some 18 months ago. On 26th September 2000, he posted a message to the Linux Kernel mailing list showing Linux booting on a 24 CPU Sun Ultra Entrprise E10000, and claiming a kernel compile in 20 seconds. So, a 100% increase in 18 months? Sounds like a perfect illustration of Moore's law to me :-) Tet

From: Biju Chacko <biju@exocore.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Thinking with ones gonads Date: 14 Mar 2002 09:58:01 +0530 In lwn you wrote: > It is worth pondering, however, on why so many of us insisted on using > Linux systems in the early 90's, when it was still clearly inferior to > the numerous proprietary Unix systems that were available at the time. > Without a certain amount of "gonad thinking," Linux might not have > come so far so quickly. It's fairly simple, really. In the early '90s, when I started working with Linux, proprietary Unixes were just plain out of reach. Actually, as a penniless student in a third-world country, DOS was out of reach! I shudder to think of the sheer volume of piracy I commited at that time. Why did I use Linux in '94? Not for any political reason. It was UNIX and it was available. Why do I use Linux in '02? Ditto. With the bonus that in many areas it is superior to the competition. Remember, this is a technical field we're in ... making decisions based on politics/marketing/whatever is just asking for trouble. And that is the same mistake being made by both RMS and MS. -- Biju PS: The .sig is a coincidence -- but appropriate nevertheless. -- ------------------------------------------------- Biju Chacko \| biju@exocore.com (work) Exocore Consulting \| biju_chacko@yahoo.com (play) Bangalore, India \| http://www.exocore.com ------------------------------------------------- Those who do things in a noble spirit of self-sacrifice are to be avoided at all costs. -- N. Alexander.

From: David Mackintosh <mackdav@rogers.com> To: <letters@lwn.net> Subject: "Gonads" vs practicality Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 11:13:19 -0500 (EST) Sir: With respect to your comments on Linux's history, specifically: > It is worth pondering, however, on why so many of us insisted on > using Linux systems in the early '90s [...] without a certain amount > of "gonad thinking", Linux might not have come so far so quickly. I would doubt that any kind of religion plays a significant part of selecting an operating system. The vast majority of linux users have different reasons for chosing to run this operating system. In general, before a user will consider selecting it for his needs, the OS must have evolved into at least one of two states: 1. The OS must be able to do something the user wants it to do; or 2. The OS is in a state where the user is capable of modifying it to do something they want it to do. For me, I needed a crash-resistant OS that I could afford. Linux fit "what I wanted it to do" and through perl, shell scripting, and some awful awful C code, I could "make it do what I wanted it to do" in a practical sense. Yes, OSF/1 and SunOS were far more capable at the time, but Linux fit my needs from an affordability perspective -- it cost $25 for a set of CDs and ran on the less-than-state-of-the-art equiptment I owned. I did not understand the GPL at the time, so "gonad thinking" played absolutely no roll in the decision. I think that the majority of the religious are involved with Linux because using a "counter-culture" operating system is seen to be against the mainline. With the exception of the truely sincere (such as Mr. Stallman) I think these people are useless as a core constituency, because they will flee Linux and the GPL as soon as it becomes mainstream in favor of something more "revolutionary". Perhaps this is where the Hurd's userbase will come from? -- /\oo/\ / /()\ \ David Mackintosh \| mackdav@rogers.com

From: Joe Klemmer <klemmerj@webtrek.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: "gonad thinking" Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 16:38:09 -0500 (EST) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > It is worth pondering, however, on why so many of us insisted on using > Linux systems in the early 90's, when it was still clearly inferior to > the numerous proprietary Unix systems that were available at the time. > Without a certain amount of "gonad thinking," Linux might not have come > so far so quickly. FWIW, I think there's a difference of scale and/or perspective. When Linux came out there was no expectation of it being or doing real work. It wasn't needed to, nor desired for, something that actually did anything. BitKeeper, OTOH, is expected to perform a function that has some requirement for someone (specifically LKH'ers). But that's just my opinion. What do I know... - --- Using Linux since 11/91 \| http://www.linux.org Linux user #29402 \| http://counter.li.org/ Red Hat Linux \| http://www.redhat.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE8kRhGHeWRPx8OIHARAn2WAJ9ACa8cWyd5Kh6XQb0fUnKW2REDhgCdHF+x 6Vuw/7xOvXAwwD6Ps1HXZ94= =+tra -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

From: Zygo Blaxell <zblaxell@feedme.hungrycats.org> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Whoa there! Linux inferior to _which_ Unix systems in the early 90's? Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 23:22:04 -0500 >It is worth pondering, however, on why so many of us insisted on using >Linux systems in the early 90's, when it was still clearly inferior >to the numerous proprietary Unix systems that were available at the >time. Without a certain amount of "gonad thinking," Linux might not have >come so far so quickly. Whoa there...I have a few problems with that statement! Last time I checked, I was a Linux and proprietary Unix user in the early 90's. I was doing a fair amount of "gonad thinking" at that time in my life, but I certainly wasn't thinking about _software_ with those organs. Uhhh... maybe that's more than my fellow readers want to know. Anyway... First of all, the world is not all Unix--by 1993, there were many non-Unix operating systems for 386-class machines that were clearly inferior to Linux. Even if we compare Linux only to proprietary Unixes, I'm having difficulty recalling which proprietary Unix vendor had a product that Linux was "clearly inferior" to at the time. Each proprietary Unix vendor optimized their product for one (usually vertically integrated) niche market, and utterly ignored anyone else, so each proprietary Unix was good at one particular kind of application and bad at most others. Linux was not "clearly inferior" to contemporary Sun, HP, IBM, SGI, or SCO systems of the early 90's--I used a bit of all of those at the time, as well as Linux, and they all sucked more or less equally, especially if you wanted to run a mixture of many different applications. This lack of generality was part of the very reason why there were so many proprietary Unix vendors in the first place! People who were serious about working on a Unix system (as opposed to merely running a single application on it) in the early 90's routinely replaced as many of the bundled system components with third-party replacements as possible, using proprietary software if you had money, or GNU and other free (beer) software if you didn't. The major motivation for this was to have a layer of portable runtime to insulate you from the vendor's Unix taste, so you could develop software for multiple vendor platforms without going insane. By the mid 90's, there was very little practical difference between a proprietary Unix system that had been mostly hidden under a thick layer of third-party components, and a Linux system that didn't have any vendor-supplied components to start with. Oh, and a lot of this third-party software was free (speech) too. Wasn't that nice! -- Zygo Blaxell (Laptop) <zblaxell@feedme.hungrycats.org> GPG = D13D 6651 F446 9787 600B AD1E CCF3 6F93 2823 44AD

From: Eric Smith <eric@brouhaha.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: nore GPL confusion Date: 20 Mar 2002 22:20:45 -0000 Gentlemen, In your 20-Mar-2002 daily updates, you quote a Financial Times article as saying "the GPL can 'convert' proprietary software into open source software - since any company incorporating licensed code into its own software products is obliged to open up its code too." You do state that this worry is "overblown", and I agree. Developers should remember that using GPL'd code is a choice that is available to them, not a burden. If the terms of the GPL are not consistent with their intention to keep their software proprietary, they should not use the GPL'd code. No one is forcing them to do so. The have the OPTION of using GPL'd code IF they desire to AND they are willing to comply with the license. The way the Financial Times article was worded, it almost sounds like they think GPL'd code can somehow mysteriously sneak into another software package when the developers aren't looking. Unless the software developers are grossly incompetent, that's not going to happen. It is a legitimate concern that software developers must be aware of the licensing on any software that they merge into a product, but this is in no way specific to the GPL. Sincerely, Eric Smith

From: Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra <leandrod@mac.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: The GNU HURD will be ready by the end of the year Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 14:30:04 +0100 First, you've taken RMS words off a much edited interview... not good for acuracy. Second, you got it all right about keeping proprietary software off the GNU system. Obviously RMS isn't talking about applications being able or not to run. He's talking about "Distributions of GNU/Linux", and obviously FSF's distribution of GNU, being based on Debian, won't include any proprietary software. About licensing, obviously GNU GPL libraries won't allow proprietary software. This is already the case with GNU libraries like readline and some Gnome ones, as well as with Troll Tech's Qt -- you have to get a different license to be able to distribute your application with Qt. On the other hand, applications usually don't talk to the kernel, they talk to libraries such as GNU libc, and most of these have been licensed under LGPL specifically to allow for proprietary applications. -- _ / \ Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra +41 (21) 216 15 93 \ / http://homepage.mac.com./leandrod/ fax +41 (21) 216 19 04 X http://tutoriald.sf.net./ Orange Communications CH / \ Campanha fita ASCII, contra correio HTML +41 (21) 644 23 01

From: Jeroen Dekkers <jeroen@dekkers.cx> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: The GNU Hurd Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 17:52:33 +0100 It's nice that you write something about the Hurd, but it would be better if you would have looked at the Hurd homepage, http://hurd.gnu.org, a bit better. To start with, you write it as "the Hurd", not capitalized like "HURD". See http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq.en.html#q1-2 for more information. Second, the Hurd isn't a kernel. It's a multi-server system running on a microkernel, Mach at the moment. In the future the Hurd will probably run on L4 (http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/L4/ and http://www.l4ka.org) and other microkernels. There are plenty of reasons for producing the GNU system. One of the reasons is to give attention to the GNU project. GNU/Linux never did (at least not before RMS started with his GNU/Linux campaign) give much credit to GNU. (Just name LWN for example. Your article about the Hurd perfectly shows that it's misnamed). The GNU system will do. It also generates money if the FSF is going to sell cds with the GNU system. Money which will be spend to advocate and develop free software. You really misinterpretted RMS his reasons for creating the GNU system. He only says that he's looking forward to see the GNU system available because it will only contain free software. He didn't say anything about forbidding the user to install non-free software on it if that user doesn't care about his freedom. The following sentence doesn't make much sense to me either: "Thus, it seems unlikely that the HURD will mount a substantial challenge to the established free kernels anytime soon." And that's not only because it doesn't make much sense seeing it stand-alone, the potential of the Hurd is very big, but because the arguments before it. Why shouldn't it be able to challenge the existing free kernels because the GNU distribution doesn't contain non-free software? I'm not sure if you know that one of the most populair distributions, Debian, doesn't have non-free software in its main distribution. Debian works perfect without the non-free section and a lot of people I know have are running it without it. Proprietary software isn't necessary any longer. Debian also has a Hurd 'port', BTW. But what is actually the biggest reason? It's because of its technical superiority. Although the current implementation doesn't show it, the design of the Hurd and the ideas behind it really rock. And of course I get flamed about this by people who think microkernels suck. I'll just say that research proved that it's possible to make a good system based on a microkernel. It can be fast, for example. That there isn't a good system at the moment doesn't make it impossible. All flames based on FUD will go directly to /dev/null. The Hurd has many nice features. To give an example, you can run servers implementing file systems, network protocols, file access control, etc just as a normal user and debug it as a normal program. Any user can add things to the filesystem, for example mounting a directory on a ftp server in its home directory. All this is possible without special permissions. And all those things and more are possible because the Hurd is a multi-server system running on a microkernel. This is the reason why the Hurd is still developed and why the number of Hurd developers and users is increasing. It's nice that the Hurd is getting more usable. You would probably ask why the Hurd taked so long. The answer is simple: manpower. The Hurd only has a few developers and never had much in the past. The Hurd is a redesign of Unix, a redesign takes much more time than a reimplemention. That's why Linux was much easier to develop, they didn't have to think about the interfaces and the design. But one thing is sure: The Hurd isn't dead and the GNU system has a lot of potential to beat a lot of operating systems, even those much used proprietary ones. Jeroen Dekkers -- Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers@jabber.org Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org IRC: jeroen@openprojects

From: "Robert A. Knop Jr." <rknop@pobox.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: reverse FUD Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 13:13:11 -0600 It's striking that as the news of the zlib flaw gets out, what we're seeing is lots of patches from Linux and FreeBSD distributors, and at the same time realization by Microsoft that maybe this is their problem too. Yes, this flaw is a bit of a PR black mark for open source, but it is interesting to note the speed of response of the two different communities. There's another take on this too. Assuredly this security flaw is going to be a giant pain for Microsoft, if they have to patch all sorts of applications as a result. BUT, if zlib had been released under the GPL, Microsoft wouldn't have used it, and they wouldn't have this problem! So... Microsoft likes to go around saying that GPL "breaks the cycle" that they think ought to be present in the computer industry. But, really-- when somebody releases something under the GPL, they're just trying to protect you, Microsoft, so you won't be succeptible to its flaws! It's all done for your own good. Really. -Rob -- -=-=-= Rob Knop =-= rknop@pobox.com =-= http://www.pobox.com/~rknop =-=-=- Help the EFF protect basic freedoms online: http://www.eff.org Playwrights & theatre types, see The Dramatic Exchange: http://www.dramex.org

From: "David L. Craig" <dlc@radix.net> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: On Overstatement Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 16:37:18 -0500 In "Cal Senator: Hollywood Over Tech (Wired)," the abstract ends with "Yes, it's true: the U.S. government really wants to outlaw free software." Now, honestly, don't you think that is retractable nonsense? It is proper to attribute this to some members of Congress, but to the whole kit and kaboodle? These new bills are still in committee, after all. If you remember the U.S. electorate IS the U.S. government, you will see how overstated this was. In fact, I perceive it to be inflamatory and beneath the journalistic standards I have come to expect from your Web site. I beg you, fix this pronto. -- May the LORD God bless you abundantly! Dave Craig - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe." --Athor 77, formulator of the from _Nightfall_ Universal Theory of Gravitation by Asimov/Silverberg

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