Linux in the news

Recommended Reading

Spectrum For All (CIO Insight)

Lawrence Lessig writes about wireless spectrum on CIO Insight. "The issue here is spectrum -- that swath of electromagnetic radio frequencies that is used today for everything from AM radio to Wi-Fi networks. The FCC regulates this spectrum. How they do so is about to change. The command and control model of spectrum regulation that defined FCC policy for most of the 20th century will certainly crumble. The only question is what policy will take its place."

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Why Open Source Stifles Innovation (Strategy+Business)

Here's a delightful attack on free software in the Spring issue of Strategy+Business magazine (registration is required to read it). "The 'viral' quality of GPL software is intentional: Proponents happily acknowledge that the goal is to undermine incentives to create software that carries a price tag. But for those of us without ideological qualms about software as private property, the wall that GPL erects between open source and proprietary software seems unfortunate." They would, of course, be happier with a one-way wall. (Thanks to Anand Vaidya).

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The commoditization of software (ZDNet)

Here's a ZDNet column on the economic effects of free software. "A large component of America's economy is information technology, and free software undermines demand for such products, thus hampering recovery and increasing the attractiveness of outsourced development. Furthermore, given the general lowering of software price expectations initiated by the popularity of free alternatives, interest in outsourced development only rises."

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A study of Linux (The Boston Globe)

This Boston Globe Intelligence column visits with three members of the Boston Consulting Group's Strategy Practice Initiative, as they study a map showing most frequent contributors to Linux, with different colors indicating the number of contributions each has made. "Robert Wolf, Philip Evans, and Mark Blaxill have plenty to say on the topic of Linux. They've been studying it, and open source in general, for more than two years to see whether more general lessons can be learned from the phenomenon. When I stopped by Wednesday night, the three sounded optimistic that they were on to something."

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Trade Shows and Conferences

Linux conference to launch this summer (vnunet)

Vnunet looks forward to LinuxWorld UK 2003. "LinuxWorld 2003 Expo will take place on 3 to 4 September in Birmingham. Although other technology conferences have struggled, organisers are convinced that the subject matter will guarantee a wide audience."

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Companies

Michael Robertson: the Steve Case of Linux (NewsForge)

This NewsForge article compares Michael Robertson (Lindows) to Steve Case (AOL). "Lindows is to Linux as AOL is to the Internet: a cut-down, simplified version with a proprietary interface. Robertson, like Case, realizes that his market is not sophisticated users, but those who are just starting out -- in this case with Linux rather than the Internet." (Thanks to Ashwin N)

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MySQL: A threat to bigwigs? (CNN)

CNN takes a look at MySQL. "MySQL is used in four million installations around the world, Mickos estimates. The product gets downloaded for free off the company's site about 30,000 times a day."

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Linux Adoption

The Open Source Movement

Linda Wedemeyer, M.D. writes about The Open Source Movement from a medical point of view. "What I learned from the question that I posted to the AMIA list group is that open source for healthcare is a movement in its infancy (Shreeve, 2003). Products have been in the development stage for several years, and it is only recently that real world implementations are occurring."

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Legal

New Texas Bill Moves Software Acquisition Reform Forward (Linux Journal)

Doc Searls looks at possible software acquisition policy changes in Texas in the Linux Journal. "It seems there's a fundamental problem for many state governments that want to acquire and use free software: they can't buy it. Literally. That's because the state software acquisition process doesn't know what to do with software that nobody owns or sells."

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Interviews

Wrapped up in Crypto Bottles (Heise)

Heise Online interviews John Perry Barlow. "I fear that Digital Rights Management today is Political Rights Management tomorrow. That embedding these kinds of technological controls into the very architecture of computing has the capacity to become a form of political control in the not so distant future."

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Why Desktop Linux Should Give Microsoft Nightmares (MicrosoftWatch)

Here's an interview with Lindows.com CEO Michael Robertson in Mary Jo Foley's MicrosoftWatch column. "Robertson: We're about choice and lower costs. Microsoft is about locking their customers into longer contracts with higher costs to try and get more milk out of the same cow. Consumers aren't stupid. They know they're being extorted to sign up for these programs, but there's been little choice. Desktop Linux now gives them real choice."

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Linuxfr.org interviews Guido van Rossum

Linuxfr.org has an interview with Python creator Guido Van Rossum. "Whether you're currently programming in C, C++, Java or Perl, Python has certain advantages that you should at least be aware of: clarity of expression, readability, maintainability, all in an attractive open source package with a large standard library and an even larger supply of open source third party software." Scan down the page for the English version of the interview.

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Oracle's 'Mr. Linux' (News.com)

News.com talks with Wim Coekaerts about Oracle on Linux. "How many people do you have working on Linux at Oracle? If you talk about Linux kernel stuff, there are about 1,000 people that actually do development work. It's been that way for a long time, but we just have not been very public about it. Linux is Unix. When you have a lot of Unix competency in your company, it's really very easy to switch and doesn't take too long." (Thanks to Ashwin N)

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The Next Revolution: Smart Mobs (O'Reilly)

O'Reilly has an interview with Howard Rheingold on the topic of smart mobs. ""The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities. Their mobile devices connect them with other information devices in the environment as well as with other people's telephones," he says. The result is a third computing revolution, after the PC and the Net, in which individuals once again have the power to put themselves together in collectives of their own choosing."

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Reviews

The Definite Desktop Environment Comparison (OSNews)

OSNews has posted a lengthy comparison between the most popular desktop environments. "So many operating systems and so many graphical desktop environments... This article is a comparison of the UI and usability of several Desktop Environments (DEs), that have been widely used, admired and reviled: Windows XP Luna, BeOS 6 (Dano/Zeta), Mac OS X Aqua and Unix's KDE and Gnome. Read on which one got our best score on our long term test and usage."

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Hackers Meet Soldiers (O'Reilly)

This O'Reilly article looks at OpenBSD. "OpenBSD has focused on security, reliability, and quality since its launch over 7 years ago. The team follows such standards as POSIX, ANSI, and most of X/Open. Since 1996, formal audits [see sidebar on security and audits] of the base system's source code have further buttressed its reputation for security. Thousands of companies, including Adobe and Network Security Technologies, Inc., use OpenBSD, although many of them keep their choice private for security reasons."

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Egoboo: The Cute Way to Dungeon Role Play (O'Reilly)

Egoboo is an open source dungeon crawling game. This O'Reilly article examines the project, its history, and its future. "Aside from the OpenGL and SDL APIs, the rest of the codebase is original and was written in C by the Bishop brothers. They did borrow the Quake II model format for game characters, however, to avoid the work of writing their own modeling program from scratch. An extra, obvious benefit is that this decision makes customizing Egoboo much easier: the mod community is full of people who are familiar with creating Quake II models."

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Miscellaneous

It's a Cycle of Life Thing: Managing Linux Releases (O'ReillyNet)

The O'ReillyNet explores an old idea for improving enterprise Linux adoption by separating applications from the core OS. "The release of the 2.4 series kernel made a lot more functionality available to developers, and the Linux community has taken advantage of it with wild abandon. With the release of Red Hat 7.3 (and SuSE 8.0, and most other Linux distributions from about mid-2001), I noticed a sudden bump in the number of applications available and a radical change in the dependencies in any given distribution, release after release."

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