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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Senator wants limits on copy protection (News.com) News.com looks at a new legislative proposal in the U.S. "The bill, authored by Sen. Sam Brownback, would regulate digital rights management systems, granting consumers the right to resell copy-protected products and requiring manufacturers to prominently disclose when anti-copying technology is being used." The law would also make it harder for copyright holders to obtain the names of peer-to-peer users and forbid regulatory agencies from requiring hardware manufacturers to include copy protection technology in their products.
Brass tacks: SCO and your business (NewsForge) NewsForge advises businesses on how to respond to the SCO suit. For the most part, that advice is "don't worry." One statement of interest, though, is: "Thus even if there has been direct copying, which remains without a shred of publicly available evidence, trying to prove that IBM put the 'illegal' code in is impossible. It's like trying to decide the fate of a single strawberry after dozens have been thrown into the blender and you've turned it on puree." Determining the source of any infringing code is an interesting subject requiring further thought.
Killing Linux (PC Magazine) Here's a Dvorak column on the SCO suit. "The Linux community seems to have put its collective head in the sand. Nobody seems to realize that Linux and the entire open-source movement are at grave risk. Apparently the open-source idealists don't understand the quirks of the legal system."
Companies IBM unveils Linux desktop in India (ZDNet) ZDNet covers the IBM Linux PC in India, an offering aimed at small to medium-sized businesses and home offices in India's secondary cities. "Despite the use of the open-source Linux operating system, which is cheaper to buy than a Microsoft Windows license, the IBM Linux PC will still be priced on the high side, at about 39,000 rupees ($850) including taxes, said a report in the news daily The Times of India. IBM was unable to furnish more details about what sort of technical support would be given, the Linux distribution used or why the price was so high."
Lindows.com claims SCO immunity via Caldera deal (Register) In a never-ending quest for more press coverage, Lindows.com announced their immunity from SCO prosecution, covered in this Register article. "Applying some educated guesswork to this study in imprecision we can postulate that the agreements Lindows.com claims it has with SCO stem from discussions it engaged in with Caldera during its construction phase. These may or may not have resulted in some form of deal which covers Lindows against being busted by SCO for claimed infringements in the Linux kernel. But unless SCO now says, 'By George, Mr Robertson, you're right, you're entirely clean,' the matter can't be settled without lawyers at dawn."
SCO Rings Up First Quarterly Profit (TechWeb) TechWeb takes a look at SCO's latest financial results. Apparently lawsuits can be good for business. "For its second fiscal quarter, ended April 30, the company earned a profit of $4.5 million, or 33 cents a diluted share, on revenue of $21.4 million. That's a big turnaround from a year ago, when the company lost $6.6 million, or 47 cents per share, on revenue of $15.5 million."
Analysts to SCO: No thanks to code review offer (ComputerWorld) Here's a ComputerWorld article (from a few days ago) on the lack of enthusiasm for SCO's "sign an NDA to see the code" plan. "But Giga Information Group Inc. analyst Stacey Quandt said she has discussed SCO's offer with her legal counsel, and if she signs an NDA, it may hinder her ability to write about it. She could get subpoenaed as well. Quandt called the offer a PR stunt." Scroll down for a good Linus quote on the whole thing.
SCO actions prompt Linux warning (News.com) Here's some FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) from Gartner, on News.com. ""Although Gartner has reservations on the merits of (SCO's claims), don't take them lightly," Gartner analyst George Weiss advised in a May note. "Minimize Linux in complex, mission-critical systems until the merits of SCO's claims or any resulting judgments become clear.""
Business Linux Server Sales Soar As Overall Market Drops (TechWeb) TechWeb reports that Linux server sales are up, even though server sales in general are down. "Hewlett-Packard led in both Linux server volume and revenue, with 50,500 units sold and revenue of $185 million in the first quarter. Dell came in second, selling 38,000 servers worth $124 million. They were followed by IBM, which shipped 23,700 Linux servers worth $91 million."
Linux Adoption India leader advocates open source (News.com) News.com reports that the President of India is an open source advocate. "[President] Kalam said open-source software offers developing nations such as India the best opportunity to modernize."
Legal Court confirms DMCA 'good faith' web site shut down rights (Register) The Register reports on the latest DMCA fun in U.S. District Court. "InternetMovies.com had asked the District Court for the District of Hawaii to require that copyright holders investigate infringing Web sites before shutting them down. This rational request was rejected by the court, as its granted the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and any other DMCA zealot the right to put the clamp on Web sites at will."
MobiliX v. Asterix in plea to top German court (Register) The Register follows the continuing legal battles of MobiliX. "The mobile open source project formerly known as MobiliX has stepped up its fight to have its long-running trademark dispute with the firm behind Asterix and Obelix heard by Germany's highest civil court."
Court Puts Muzzle on SCO (eWeek) A German court granted a preliminary injunction against SCO, according to this eWeek article. "Ryan Tibbitts, SCO's in-house general counsel, on Friday said that the German court had just issued a temporary restraining order against the company. The legal action was brought against SCO by a number of Linux associations, including LinuxTag. This was also an ex parte proceeding, which meant the court has not heard any arguments from SCO's side, he said."
Interviews Boies' Take (Forbes) Forbes talks with David Boies - SCO's lawyer. "Somehow, everyone thinks SCO is in it for the money and out to thwart Linux. In Boies' eyes, it's hard to see how anyone could jump to that conclusion. The $1 billion in damages and future royalties SCO is seeking won't put a mere dent in the Linux movement: 'That's a cost that gets lost in the rounding,' says Boies, adding, 'The cost efficiency of Linux won't rise or fall.'"
Python and the Programmer (artima.com) artima.com interviews Bruce Eckel, the author of Thinking in Java, about Python. "I feel Python was designed for the person who is actually doing the programming, to maximize their productivity. And that just makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over. I feel nobody is going to be telling me, 'Oh yeah, you have to jump through all these hoops for one reason or another.' When you have the experience of really being able to be as productive as possible, then you start to get pissed off at other languages."
Interview with Ximian's Nat Friedman (OSNews) OSNews interviews Nat Friedman, co-founder and vice-president of product development at Ximian. "Which version of GNOME is Ximian Desktop 2.0 based on exactly, and what changes have you applied when compared to the vanilla Gnome? Nat Friedman: XD2, as we like to call it, is based on GNOME 2.2, Mozilla 1.3 and OpenOffice.org 1.0.3."
Free Software Carnival: Latin America Takes to FLOSS in a Big Way (Linux Journal) Linux Journal talks with Cesar Brod about the spread of free software in Latin America. "Latin America, specifically Peru, also has challenged the role of proprietary software and Microsoft. In addition, Brazil has come up with interesting university-based software solutions. For instance, the Brazilian UNIVATES says it has saved about $130,000 USD by not acquiring copies of proprietary software for servers and desktops. It saves $70,000 USD each year on software upgrades and maintenance--enough to pay the salaries of the development group. Therefore, UNIVATES can produce effective technology for its own use, which others also can make use of, at virtually no cost."
Q&A: SCO's Chris Sontag on Linux, Unix and brewing legal fights (ComputerWorld) ComputerWorld's Patrick Thibodeau interviews Chris Sontag, a senior vice president and general manager of SCOsource Division. "How many lines of code in the Linux kernel are a direct copyright violation? It's very extensive. It is many different sections of code ranging from five to 10 to 15 lines of code in multiple places that are of issue, up to large blocks of code that have been inappropriately copied into Linux in violation of our source-code licensing contract. That's in the kernel itself, so it is significant. It is not a line or two here or there. It was quite a surprise for us." (Thanks to Sharon Machlis)
EuroPython interview with Moshe Zadka The EuroPython and Zope Conference is coming up later this month and to help people get ready, there will be a series of interviews with some of the speakers. First up is this interview with Moshe Zadka. "EuroPython: On which Python projects are you working at the moment? I'm most active on "Twisted", the asynchronous networking framework. I'm involved in design and documentation, but what interests me most from a research point of view is how to deploy Twisted-based applications in a flexible manner. That ties in with my biggest role in the Twisted project as the Debian maintainer. I make sure Twisted integrates with the Debian tools, so that I can give users of the Debian operating system a system which is powerful, easy and flexible."
Resources Top Five Open Source Packages for System Administrators (O'ReillyNet) O'ReillyNet picks the top five most useful and widely applicable open source administrative tools. "The top honor in my top five tools list goes to Cfengine, written by Mark Burgess. Cfengine is a wonderful tool for configuring and maintaining Unix computer systems. Cfengine is a stand-alone tool (set of tools), which administers and configures computers according to the instructions in its configuration files."
Saving Our Bacon: Snort Security Holes and Strategies for Safe Network Monitoring (O'ReillyNet) O'ReillyNet covers recent vulnerabilities in Snort along with strategies to minimize risks. "Since the main purpose of Snort is detection, a primary goal of attackers is evasion. If attacks can be structured so that they are overlooked by Snort, then system administrators will be left with a false sense of security -- arguably a worse situation than if Snort had not been used at all."
Netcat and Reverse Telnet (O'Reilly) Kivilcim Hindistan examines Netcat on O'Reilly. "As a basic point of view, Netcat is a telnet program. But that's like calling the Swiss Army Knife just a knife. Netcat was written in 1996 by a hacker called Hobbit to meet all kinds of telnet needs. Today you can easily find a version of Netcat for your flavor of Unix or even Windows. There are also some variants, such as cryptcat which adds vital encryption features, which we will also use later in this article."
Reviews Open source moves to deskless email market (vnunet) Vnunet looks at 2 new 'deskless' email products. "Hewlett Packard (HP) and Intel recently partnered with open source provider Sendmail to launch Workforce Mail running on Linux, while IBM Lotus has brought out Lotus Workplace Messaging."
A First Look at Ximian Desktop 2 (LinuxWorld) Joe Barr reviews Ximian Desktop 2 in this LinuxWorld article. "A month or two ago Ximian asked if I would like to participate in a beta for its new desktop offering. I said yes, but only if it supported Red Hat 9. Ximian marketing folk said it would and swore me to secrecy. The following is what I found in the last two weeks: Ximian 2 is drop-dead gorgeous. It is much more powerful than it was before, and many tweaks are now in the interface. A couple of the tweaks I didn't like, but most I did. I'll get into those specifics a little later in the story. Let's start at the beginning."
Building a TiVo, a Step at a Time (Wired) Wired looks at free digital video recording software. "The MythTV software offers all the basic DVR features -- it can pause and rewind live TV, and fast-forward through shows and ads. It supports multiple tuner cards (and multiple simultaneous recordings) and boasts picture-in-picture capability if there's more than one tuner card installed. It also offers basic video-editing capabilities and allows shows to be archived to video CD."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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