LWN Weekly Edition
Front pageSecurity
Kernel development
Distributions
Development
Linux in the news
Announcements
Letters to the editor
->One big page
This page
Previous weekFollowing week
| |||||||||||||
Linux in the newsRecommended Reading The two-edged sword: Legal computer forensics and open source (NewsForge)Bruce Byfield writes about Ryan Purita of Totally Connected Security, a computer forensic expert. "Although open source tools are not the only ones available for computer forensics, they are among the most widely used. A GNU/Linux enthusiast, Purita often prefers the open source tools. However, he frequently uses proprietary ones as well. The proprietary tools, he explains, are "pretty," with better developed GUIs that are easier for clients to understand. Moreover, the precedence for accepting their evidence in court is well established although, increasingly, their open source equivalents are not far behind."
Groklaw Reports on UK Patent WorkshopGroklaw has a couple of reports on the recent UK Patent Workshop. Simon G. Best writes: "My mention of Open Source prompted a familiar, though disappointing, response: Open Source is a problem. He said that it was a problem in the company where he worked, and mentioned the problem of "contamination", referring to the GPL in the process. His company was using Open-Source (more specifically, GPLed) software as parts of the software it was developing, which it wanted to distribute under its own terms as proprietary software. But, as we know, the use of GPLed software in this way meant that the company would have to make the source of it's own, derived work available under the same terms, too. This it did not want to do. It was a "problem"." Here's another report written by Groklaw reader Cinly.
Companies IBM calls for patent reform (ZDNet)ZDNet Australia reports that IBM would like to see the software patent mess fixed up - sort of. "'There are others who believe that no software patents are valid,' [Jim Stallings] added. 'We certainly don't believe in that, because we have many thousands of software patents and customers trust us to be the true owners of those, so we believe it is somewhere in the middle that is appropriate for laws to govern behaviour around patents.'"
Start-up wants to improve on Firefox (News.com)News.com reports on the corporate launch of Round Two, formerly known as MozSource. ""When we launch our own services, in about a month or so, we'll be looking to offer the must-have companion to Firefox," said Bart Decrem, Round Two CEO and a former staffer at the Mozilla Foundation. "We see tremendous room for innovating on top of the Mozilla and Firefox platform, and we see ourselves as the first company outside of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation that's fully dedicated to serving Firefox users."" MozillaZine offers additional links and information.
Linux Adoption Open-source approach finds financial backing (Denver Post)The Denver Post covers the growth of open source along the Front Range of Colorado. ""You're starting to see a local ecosystem built up around open source," said Brad Feld, managing director of the Mobius Venture Capital fund in Superior. Mobius is one of several venture funds investing in local companies that use open-source software as a key part of their business strategy." (Thanks to Brock Frazier)
U.K.-funded initiative to push open source (News.com)News.com looks at the Open Source Academy, a government sponsored open-source initiative in the UK. "The academy will include various projects, including a platform based on open-source technologies that will allow local authorities to collaborate on software projects. This project, which will be run by Shepway District Council, will be similar to Sourceforge.net, a Web site that catalogs thousands of open-source applications. "It will be a Sourceforge for councils," Taylor said."
Linux at Work Barcelona Boasts EU's Top Supercomputer (AP)Associated Press takes a look at a Linux-powered supercomputer in Barcelona. "Europe's fastest supercomputer -- an IBM that can make 40 trillion calculations per second -- booted up for the first time Tuesday at a research center in Barcelona. The so-called MareNostrum computer boasts 40 teraflops of speed, which in layman's terms means it can make more calculations than a human pecking at a calculator could make in 10 million years." (Thanks to Philip Webb)
Legal Some Notes on Capitol Records, Inc. v Naxos of America Inc. - by Brendan Scott (Groklaw)Groklaw is carrying a report on a strange New York appeals court decision which essentially concludes that the public domain does not exist. "Well, the main thing is, if you're looking for some music to include in your computer programs, don't even think about mining the public domain of pre-1972 sound recordings. Apparently, that public domain does not exist and, indeed, won't exist until 2067. Unless, of course, you're in the UK (or another of those handful of jurisdictions around the world which don't recognise New York common law), in which case, go for your life! Remember though, that the suckers in New York won't be able to use your software."
Interviews Interview with Ladislav Bodnar - distrowatch.com (Linuxsoft.cz)Linuxsoft.cz interviews DistroWatch founder Ladislav Bodnar. "FH: What distribution, programs you use? LB: The primary operating system on my main workstation (an AMD64 box with 2 GB of RAM) is Debian Sid. My second computer is for testing and, naturally, it has about 20 different distributions installed on it at any time. As for the desktop environment, I use KDE with KMail and Kate always opened. I browse the web with Firefox and Opera, and use Konsole for command line tasks, Liferea for aggregating RSS feeds, gFTP for uploading files to the web server, and GIMP for editing graphics."
The Bacula Philosophy (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet has an interview with Kern Sibbald, lead developer of Bacula. "An often overlooked but essential ingredient of any smooth-running IT environment is reliable data backup and restore capabilities. Thankfully, the free software/open source community has provided several centralized over-the-network backup and restore solutions. Dan Langille covered the technical details of one such solution, Bacula, in Bacula: Cross-Platform Client-Server Backups. Those just discovering Bacula will find that its features are very competitive with those of other proprietary and FLOSS backup solutions. Bacula is particularly capable in multiple-platform environments where flexibility and custom scripting are essential."
'Tridge' on joining OSDL, Samba4, patents, and bad predictions (NewsForge)NewsForge interviews Andrew Tridgell. "From my point of view, the biggest [Samba4] improvement is in the code structure. Over half the code in Samba4 is now auto-generated using a new compiler we wrote for the task. That change alone would be worth the effort for me. The code that isn't auto-generated is structured in a modular and very efficient manner. That point of view isn't what users care about, of course, but it does lead to lots and lots of user-visible improvements due to the ease of programming with the new structure." The interview does not include any discussion of source code management systems.
Guido van Rossum Interview (Nuxeo Blogs)Nuxeo Blogs has published an interview of Python creator Guido van Rossum. "Q: Which python open source projects are the most do you think are the most interesting at this time ? A: Twisted, Zope. I'm probably missing the really important ones because I'm not using much 3rd party Python code myself (I live in my own self-contained "Not Invented Here world")."
Resources Ten Mysteries of about:config (Linux Journal)Linux Journal tweaks Firefox with about:config. "The Firefox Web browser, built by the Mozilla Foundation and friends is a complicated piece of technology-if you care to look under the hood. It's not obvious where the hood catch is, because the surface of Firefox (its user interface) is polished up to appeal to ordinary, nontechnical end users. This article gives you a glimpse of the engine. It explains how the Mozilla about:config URL opens up a world of obscure preferences that can be used to tweak the default setup. They're an improbable collection and therein lies the beauty of Firefox if you're a grease monkey or otherwise technical. At the end you'll know a little more about Firefox, but only enough to be dangerous."
djbdns: An alternative to BIND (NewsForge)NewsForge presents a book excerpt that covers djbdns. "Those who have been concerned with the number of security vulnerabilities found in the BIND server through the years, or who prefer an easier DNS solution, may wish to investigate an alternative, djbdns. This software, written from scratch by D.J. Bernstein, provides a much more robust, simplified and secure framework for DNS. djbdns is easy to install and configure, and is much less complex than BIND, essentially the same functionality."
The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin - by Peter H. Salus - Part 1 (Groklaw)Groklaw has published the first chapter of an online book by Peter Salus. Some history from 1969: "In August, humans landed on the moon. Summer saw the invention of UNIX. In the autumn, those first four nodes of the ARPAnet went up. And, in December, Linus Torvalds was born. Had anyone asked, I would have thought the first of these events was the most important. Outside of his immediate family, I seriously doubt whether anyone even knew about the last of these. As of the outset of the Twenty-First Century, the moon landing has taken us nowhere. The other items in this list though are the stuff of revolution."
OOo Off the Wall: Fielding Questions, Part 4 - Mail Merges (Linux Journal)The Linux Journal explores mail merging with OpenOffice.org 2.0. "In the version 2.0 beta, merges theoretically became simpler with the addition of the Mail Merge Wizard to the Tools menu. In practice, however, the wizard's usefulness is limited. It's designed specifically for merges that address letters or, assuming that you have Java Mail installed on your system, e-mails. Other merges still have to be done manually or with the older wizards for faxes, labels or business cards."
Small-business forms using Scribus and PDF (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at Scribus for use in small business desktop publishing. "PDF is one of the few document formats where Linux stands on completely equal footing with Mac OS X and Windows. I have cut through a lot of the document exchange traps by relying on the PDF format's universality. It is an open, documented format that is completely platform-neutral -- even my mobile phone comes with a PDF reader."Linux may be moving a bit closer to the all data can be executable model that has made other systems vulnerable to virus infection: "That's right, PDFs are scriptable. In fact, Adobe seems to be making a play for the presentation software market with its newest suite of Acrobat tools. I'm not sure how successful that will be, but it has put a lot of effort into adding JavaScript support to PDF." See this article for more information about that topic.
Adventures in Migrating to New Linux Distributions (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet takes a look at installing Linux from the perspective of someone who lacks *nix experience. "If you run Linux on hardware that is your own, or over which you have administrative responsibilities, it is inevitable that at some point you will need to migrate or upgrade your operating system. While my migration involved Red Hat and Debian, the lessons presented here apply generally, because you'll need to address most of the problem areas encountered in my migration regardless of which Linux system you are migrating to or installing."
Build a minimal embedded Web interface (developerWorks)developerWorks shows how to create a simple embedded Web interface on PowerPC. "In this episode of "Migrating from x86 to PowerPC," you develop a very simple embedded Web interface, which you'll build on in the next couple of articles once you start communicating real-world data from the Kuro Box. If you've been following along with this series, by this stage you already have a Kuro Box with a completely functioning GCC build environment. However, if you're just browsing these articles rather than carrying out all the steps, please note that you don't actually need any special hardware components to test out most of the code discussed in this article. All you really need is a functional C compiler and linker, and some kind of machine running a CGI-compliant Web server."
Reviews instinctive-blender: A tasty 3D fork (NewsForge)NewsForge reviews instinctive-blender. "instinctive-blender drops the concept of panels, and instead uses a simple buttons window. To accommodate all the new buttons for the new functionality since 2.3, the tabs have been replaced with switchable contexts, which users can choose by clicking on the names in the upper part of the buttons window. While this is a slightly hackish solution, it wastes less space and is less visually cluttered than official Blender's tabs approach."
"Linux Desktop Hacks": One Hundred Ways to Customize Your OS (eBCVG)eBCVG reviews Linux Desktop Hacks by Nicholas Petreley and Jono Bacon. "Linux Desktop Hacks shows readers how they can customize and configure Linux to make it easier, more powerful, and more fun to use. The authors include hacks to spiff up the boot experience with graphical startup screens, creative ways to log, and various ways for multiple users to access the same machine at the same time, each one using the graphical desktop they like best. They also show how to extend the capabilities of the graphical desktop and offer tips for those who prefer to do most of their work at the text-mode console."
Miscellaneous Yankee Group slams 'Linux extremists' (ZDNet)ZDNet covers the fallout from a recent Yankee Group survey that compared Microsoft Windows Server 2003 to Linux. "Laura DiDio, an analyst at the Yankee Group who has been at the receiving end of much of the criticism from Linux advocates, claimed the radical elements of the community could damage the reputation of open source software. "There's an extremist fringe of Linux loonies who hang out on forums and are disrespectful and threatening because you disagree with them," DiDio told ZDNet UK on Wednesday. "That can hurt the Linux community.""
Protect Your Source Code: Obfuscation 101 (O'ReillyNet)For those who aren't into open source: O'Reilly gives an introduction to code obfuscation. "Generic variable names, some annoying loops, and a couple of conditionals sure can make a difference! For the cost of determining what this simple piece of code does, are you even willing to paste it in and run it? Would you be willing to pull out a calculator and do the arithmetic? What if you could only use your brain and no additional tools? Somewhere along the line, you'd reach a point where the benefit wouldn't be worth the reward anymore and give up."
Gartner: Linux Process, Not Tech, Biggest Hurdle (Internet.com)Internet.com covers a Gartner Group pronouncement stating that all will be well with Linux if it can overcome a few little issues. "They include: the potential for multiple source code distribution to cause fragmentation; higher support costs that increase total cost of ownership (TCO) with demanding workloads; OSS licenses that could proliferate beyond users' abilities to manage them; frequent open source software releases that create potential compatibility dependency issues, and potential patent and copyright issue exposure that could raise risk management concerns."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
|||||||||||||