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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Open Source Everywhere (Wired)Wired examines the open source model as it spreads from software into other industries. "A decade ago, Michael Eisen slogged through swamps in Costa Rica studying the mating behavior of frogs. That's what biologists did, he figured - and if he had to fight off a few leeches along the way, so be it. Now he's all about coding, crafting blocks of genetic data and churning them through his computer. "It's a great time to be a biologist," says Eisen, a computational scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Origin of Species is the best thing ever written in biology. But you just wish Darwin knew about genomics." Yet if biology is in a renaissance, there are still relics of a medieval age." (Thanks to Andrew Willson)
Linux not accountable for security, Ballmer says (SearchWin2000)SearchWin2000 reports from a talk by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. "What sets Windows apart from Linux in terms of development, security and patching, Ballmer said, is that Microsoft has an infrastructure that takes responsibility for Windows. 'There's no roadmap for Linux. Nobody is held accountable for security problems with Linux.'" Hey Steve, who can we hold accountable for all that worm mail clogging our lines and mailboxes?
Business Technology: About Linux: An Open Letter to Microsoft (TechWeb)CMP's Editor in Chief has posted an open letter to Microsoft. "First, customers will deploy both Windows and Linux. Second, they will ideally want all of their systems to be able to work together without requiring 5,000 man-years of workarounds. Third, your value to those customers will decline if you continue to give them reason to believe that you are intentionally refusing to take the steps necessary to help them run their businesses, including their heterogeneous systems, more effectively."
Trade Shows and Conferences A Historic Moment in Boston (Linux Journal)Linux Journal looks forward to the Desktop Linux Conference, coming to Boston next month. "The Desktop Linux Conference aims to drive home the message that for the first time in computing history, a legitimate desktop alternative is available that is better, faster and cheaper. As an extension of the newly formed Desktop Linux Consortium's mission of providing "wide scale understanding and adoption of the Linux operating system and its applications for use on the desktop", the program offers key champions of Linux: Bruce Perens, Nat Friedman, Jeremy White, Sam Greenblatt, Mark Hinkle, Mark Westerman, Havoc Pennington, Amy D. Wohl, Shuji Sado and many more."
KDE at Linux Expo UK 2003 Report (KDE.News)KDE.News reports on the KDE activities at the Linux Expo UK 2003. "Almost everyone wanted to know if/when their distribution would be shipping KDE 3.2, how they could upgrade and whether we had the code available on CD. It's clear that many users do not know how to upgrade to the latest release and some are still running KDE 2. The difficulty of software upgrades and installation was one of the general GNU/Linux grumbles people kept mentioning. The others were drivers for some hardware (caused by manufacturers who do not work with the open source development process) and the integration issues which HAL aims to fix."
University students in Mexico promote free software (NewsForge)NewsForge covers the Congreso Software Libre y Nuevas Tecnologias, which was held last week in Villahermosa, Mexico. "Windows is nearly universal in Villahermosa. There is hardly any sign of Mac life. And there is little publically visible Linux action, although there are obviously enough people interested in free software -- particularly Linux -- to put on a free software conference. There is also a local Linux Users Group that gets between 20 and 30 people at most meetings and tutorial session and claims a total membership of about 400."
The SCO Problem SCO backs off Linux invoice plan (News.com)According to this News.com story, the SCO Group has, once again, decided that the time is not right to start sending out invoices to Linux users. "'The executives have said we haven't had to do it yet,' SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said of the invoice plan. 'They're happy with progress in the licensing program.'" Procrastinators will be happy to know that the "half price introductory period" has been extended through the end of the month.
SCO Backs Down on Invoicing and SGI (Computer Business Review)Computer Business Review reports on the latest climbdowns by SCO. Apparently SCO said there was never any threat of action against Linux users. "Meanwhile, SCO has also extended indefinitely Silicon Graphics Inc's deadline of October 14 to remedy alleged contractual violations also affecting its Unix IP. The deadline was extended following 'discussions'." How much fun it would have been to hear those "discussions"...
SCO license currently for biggest users only (IDG)According to IDG, SCO has decided that it will only be selling "Linux licenses" to big companies for now. "SCO may be proceeding cautiously with licensing sales for fear of litigation from an entity like the Free Software Foundation which has intellectual property claims to Linux, said IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky. 'As soon as they sell the first one, litigation will be started from all quarters,' he predicted. 'I think the people from The SCO Group realized that if they opened that box, they'd never be able to close it again.'"
Linux Adoption China urged to join Asian Linux push (AustralianIT)AustralianIT covers Asian efforts to promote Linux. "In China, programmers developed a homegrown Linux version called Red Flag Linux a few years ago. That software has been touted by Beijing as a secure alternative to Windows. But the latest multi-government attempt to promote Linux is unprecedented in its scope, although some remain sceptical about its prospects."
Open Source: The Whole Product (O'Reilly)Bernard Golden examines the processes behind the adoption of open-source technology. "In Geoffrey Moore's book on technology strategy, Crossing the Chasm, he describes a similar process in the life cycle of technology adoption: a first wave of adventurers and a later wave of settlers, whom he calls Early Adopters and Pragmatists. Each type has different product requirements that they demand when adopting a technology. The Early Adopter seeks advantage in new technologies. The Pragmatist seeks stability with established technologies. Moore's book is a classic technology strategy book but does it make sense in a world of open source?"
Interviews Interview: Jon 'maddog' Hall (NewsForge)NewsForge talks with Jon 'maddog' Hall. "NewsForge: What about patent and other infringement threats a la SCO? Are you hearing about any potential corporate Linux users pulling back because of this problem?maddog: I heard about one or two. But then other companies who are in the multi-operating system business, so have no real ax to grind with respect to Linux, tell me that more and more companies are now moving. I think that the SCO thing caught people off guard. But the more people think about it, the more that SCO fails to deliver "the smoking gun", the more that people apply business and legal logic to it, the less they fear it."
Resources An Easy Way to Avoid Spam (Linux Journal)The Linux Journal has found another spam filter. "Testmail, the filter discussed in this article, is a Perl filter of average size and moderate complexity. It checks e-mail messages available at the POP3 server, filters them according to defined rules and, depending on the selected method, sends messages to the local mailbox or removes them from the server."
Writing Audio Applications With JACK - A tutorial/journalJames Shuttleworth has written a tutorial on developing audio applications for JACK, the JACK Audio Connection Kit. "The first thing I did when I decided to bite the bullet and have a crack at this was to look for a nice introductory tutorial - something that would cover the basics and give me an idea of how all of this fit together. I couldn't find exactly what I wanted, and saw lots of posts suggesting that the way to learn was to look at the source code or the example clients and other JACK apps. And I did. And then I realised that if I just documented my exploration, I'd end up with exactly the document that I was looking for. That's what you have here."
Reviews NeL: The Software Behind the Next Great MMORPG? (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet takes a look at NeL, an open source gaming engine for massive multi-player online role-playing games. "NeL (for Nevrax Library) is a toolkit for the creating 3D-graphic MMORPGs or similar online game-play environments that require both client and server code. It runs on the Linux and Windows OSes, using OpenGL as its 3D graphics renderer."
MySQL Breaks Into the Data Center (COMPUTERWORLD)COMPUTERWORLD examines the adoption of MySQL by database users. "NASA's Clark compared MySQL's performance against Oracle's for his application, and it averaged 28% faster during the battery of tests he hammered it with. He adds that unlike competing products, 'MySQL was not a machine resources hog.'"
Miscellaneous Researchers take debugging to the masses (News.com)News.com covers researchers at the University of California and Stanford University who have released versions of several open-source software packages modified to send debugging information to a central site. "One key part of the project is ensuring the sampler software doesn't bog down the program; the project's goal was to slow performance only by as much as 5 percent, Liblit said. To avoid this degradation, the sampler software records information only occasionally, based on a randomization scheme. One thing that's recorded every time, though, is whether the program exited properly or crashed."
Remembering Multics (OSViews)Here's one for the history buffs: OSViews looks at the Multics OS. "Multics is an acronym for "Multiplexed Information and Computing Service." It was a timesharing operating system which began its life as far back as 1965. Although the OS is relatively unknown today, many might be surprised that the OS has several direct influences on many operating systems commonly used today."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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