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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading The IT industry is shifting away from Microsoft (Inquirer) The Inquirer has posted a lengthy article claiming that Linux is truly beginning to push Microsoft aside. "High profile defections like cities, governments, and, gasp, IBM, are just the tip of the iceberg, and almost everyone is looking at the pioneers to see if the trail they are blazing is worth following. If it turns out that these first few companies can make it, expect the floodgates to open, and everyone to follow."
The Free Software Community After 20 Years: With great but incomplete success, what now? (NewsForge) NewsForge looks at the 20th anniversary of GNU in an article written by Richard Stallman. "It was twenty years ago today that I quit my job at MIT to begin developing a free software operating system, GNU. While we have never released a complete GNU system suitable for production use, a variant of the GNU system is now used by tens of millions of people who mostly are not aware it is such. Free software does not mean "gratis"; it means that users are free to run the program, study the source code, change it, and redistribute it either with or without changes, either gratis or for a fee."
Clark Campaign Going Open Source (Wired) Wired reports that Wesley Clark's U.S. presidential campaign is trying to bring in free software developers to write (and release) code. "Among the projects slated for development are a Friendster-style social-networking application and a tool for campaign field workers to track mailings, donations and door-to-door visits. The Clark technology staff also expects to release the code for several of its internal applications, including a set of tools for managing campaign data and the software used to run Clark's community website. Developers initially will distribute software under the BSD license, which would allow other campaigns to use the code freely."
Trade Shows and Conferences Australia government open source conference attracts politicos (AustralianIT) AustralianIT reports on the first Linux and Open Source in Government conference to be held as part of this year's Linux.conf.au conference. "The government conference is being organised by AUUG in association which Linux Australia, which runs the main conference. AUUG treasurer Gordon Hubbard said the level of political interest in open source issues had risen considerably since AUUG's last conference in September." (Found on Open Sector)
XML 2003 Conference Diary (O'Reilly) Eric van der Vlist covers the XML 2003 conference on O'Reilly. "I am on my way back from XML 2003 and it's time for me to draw the conclusions from this event which, year after year, remains the major conference of the markup community. For this year's conference has been dominated by schema languages, but I am so biased that this probably doesn't prove anything. Schema languages have become my main focus and I see them everywhere!"
The SCO Problem IBM's Unpublished Cases (Groklaw) Groklaw continues to follow the back-and-forth filings in the SCO v. IBM case. In this article, the focus is on IBM's attempts to get some of SCO's affirmative defenses thrown out. "If SCO wishes to admit that it has no specifics to prove fraud and inequitable conduct and wishes to drop those affirmative defenses to that extent, that is fine with IBM. That's what their motion is asking for in the first place. I am guessing they were laughing out loud when they typed that part up."
Companies Red Hat bond sales reach $500 million (News-Observer) Red Hat's home town newspaper has an article on the company's bond sale. "'We believe the time for us as a company to take control of the market is now,' said chief financial officer Kevin Thompson. 'What we've done is capitalize ourselves so that we can react very quickly to opportunities that come up in the marketplace.' Customers are demanding products that Red Hat can't offer, Thompson said. It likely will have to buy other companies to add new products and services."
Sun hands Cobalt an open-source lifeline (ZDNet) ZDNet reports that Sun, as it shuts down the Cobalt server line, is doing the right thing with the code. "The release means that all the custom user interface and back-end code for the Qube 3 and RaQ 550 server appliances is now available under a BSD-style licence. Also, the custom BIOS for all x86-based RaQ/Qube products -- which, among other things, let an administrator tap in the device's network settings without having to plug in a keyboard and monitor -- have been released under the GNU Public License." (Thanks to Alastair Stevens)
Business Investing in open source companies: Nobody's getting rich -- yet (IT Manager's Journal) IT Manager's Journal reports on a panel discussion at the SD Forum Open Source Summit. "A panel of people who know about such things agree that if commercial open source software and services companies are to remain profitable, some current business models are going to have to be revisited and/or fine-tuned. Experts at the recent SD Forum Open Source Summit took on this very topic and came up with some cogent advice for would-be investors."
Linux Adoption Courts office leaps onto Linux (FCW) Here's a brief Federal Computer Week article on the adoption of Linux within the U.S. Federal court system. "According to officials, the Linux systems will back several critical applications supported at court locations throughout the United States, including court and probation/pretrial services case management, finance and accounting."
Israel Suspends Acquisitions Of Microsoft Software (TechWeb) TechWeb reports on Israel's decision to not upgrade to the latest versions of Microsoft Office. "The Israeli government also will encourage the development of lower-priced alternatives to Microsoft software in an effort to help expand computer use by the public. To that end, the Finance Ministry has cooperated with Sun Microsystems and IBM in designing the Hebrew language version of OpenOffice software, a freely distributed open-source alternative to Microsoft Office."
Asia Loves Linux -- And Microsoft Scrambles (Business Week) Business Week looks at increasing Linux use in Asia. "Discontent with Windows -- and enthusiasm for Linux -- are increasingly common in Asia these days. Although Microsoft still rules the desktop and racks up healthy server operating-system sales, open-source software is winning fans across the region. Government officials see Linux as a means of cutting costs -- systems using it run as much as 70% cheaper than Windows -- and priming their local software industries."
London council ditches Linux plans (ZDNet) ZDNet UK covers the London Newham Borough Council's decision not to use Linux. "The council had been involved in its own Linux trials last year with the Net Project group but council officers decided such a major migration would pose "unacceptable levels of risk" to council services."
Open Source Database Development Closes In On Microsoft (EDC) Evans Data Corporation has announced the results of a survey on database usage. "The latest Database Development Survey from Evans Data Corporation has found that Microsoft SQL Server and Access continue to dominate database development but open source databases are gaining strength. Microsoft SQL Server and Access usage has grown by six percent while MySQL usage has increased by more than 30% in the last year."
Legal Prosecutors let DVD-Jon's victory stand (Aftenposten) Aftenposten reports that Jon Lech Johansen has finally been acquitted of all charges. "It was widely expected that Norway's white-collar crime unit would appeal the case to the country's supreme court (Hoeyesterett), but prosecutors clearly changed their minds. There was no immediate reason given as to why they dropped the case." (Thanks to haraldt)
Interviews Interview: KDE meets Lindows CEO Michael Robertson (KDE.News) KDE.News interviews Lindows.com CEO Michael Robertson. "How are we going to help KDE? We will look at sponsoring projects on a case by case basis. We bring marketing to the KDE community, often overlooked by technical people. By building marketing channels, building resellers, this will make KDE stronger."
Two new FOSDEM interviews The continuing series of interviews with FOSDEM speakers adds two more interviews to the list. Today's interviews are with LWN executive editor Jonathan Corbet who will give a talk on the new features in the 2.6 kernel, and Denis Oliver Kropp, one of the main developers for the DirectFB project, who will speak about DirectFB.
FOSDEM interviews: Henning Brauer and Keith Packard FOSDEM has published two more interviews with upcoming speakers: Henning Brauer and Keith Packard.
Interview with Nat, Miguel and Chris Stone of Novell/Ximian (Always-on) Always-on has an interview with Nat Friedman, Miguel de Icaza and Novell VP Chris Stone. "Friedman: Over time, I think more and more parts of Novell will understand how to interact with Linux and open source. It is already happening. There's incredible interest in establishing this as an overall technology direction and strategy for Novell--moving into the open-source world and becoming the number-one Linux player. We've definitely seen over the last two months both changes and a lot of enthusiasm." (Found on Footnotes)
Interview with the MAASK Team (Linux Journal) Linux Journal intervies the five college students who wrote the MigShm patch for openMosix. "Several barriers exist in the world of clustering, and they need clever solutions. One of them concerns expanding memory allocation throughout the nodes of a cluster, also called distributed shared memory (DSM). Using this method, any process that uses memory sharing for interprocess communications (IPC) no longer is limited and is free to roam (read: migrate). Such a solution, MigShm, now exists in openMosix."
Resources Putting Linux reliability to the test (IBM developerWorks) IBM developerWorks covers a study of Linux reliability done by the IBM Linux Technology Center. "The Linux kernel and other core OS components -- including libraries, device drivers, file systems, networking, IPC, and memory management -- operated consistently and completed all the expected durations of runs with zero critical system failures."
Visiting the New World of Linux Sound and Music Software (Linux Journal) Dave Phillips offers a couple of suggestions in the Linux Journal for people wanting to get started with Linux audio. "Although certain folks might grumble about how much better things were in the Old Days, I must admit that I've become quite happy about easier installation routines, the apt system and colorful work environments. Performance is what really counts, and tuning a system for peak audio performance is a non-trivial task. Planet CCRMA and AGNULA do indeed remove most of the aches and pain suffered while trying to untangle the complexities of kernel latency, JACK, ALSA, the LADSPA plugins and so forth."
Secure programmer: Keep an eye on inputs (IBM developerWorks) David A. Wheeler continues his series on secure programming with a look at inputs. "This article discusses various ways data gets into your program, emphasizing how to deal appropriately with them; you might not even know about them all! It first discusses how to design your program to limit the ways data can get into your program, and how your design influences what is an input. It then discusses various input channels and what to do about them, including environment variables, files, file descriptors, the command line, the graphical user interface (GUI), network data, and miscellaneous inputs."
Reviews Professional Video Editing on Linux with Cinelerra (O'ReillyNet) Howard Wen reviews Cinelerra, a video editing application. "Cinelerra includes many of the features of the pricey professional editors and some extras: real-time visual effects, FireWire input/output, render-farm capability, and even support for HDTV formats and Ogg Vorbis. The downside is that its hardware demands are quite unforgiving; the recommended configuration has a dual 2GHz Athlon system, with 1GB RAM and a 200GB hard drive."
'Robot Tarzan' helps forest work (BBC News) The BBC News looks at a Linux-powered 'Treebot'. "The Treebot, which in scientific terms is a node in a Networked Infomechanical System (Nims), helps [to study interaction between the environment and atmospheric conditions] by being stealthy enough to travel through the forest canopy along specially-constructed cabling, night and day." (Thanks to Paul Sladen)
Open source under the microscope (News.com) News.com covers an academic study of the open source model. "Scacchi and fellow researchers have found a significant failure rate among open-source projects. But among those that get off the ground, research has shown not only that the open-source approach can yield better software more quickly and for less money than traditional methods but also that volunteering for an open-source project can be an effective way to get a job."
Miscellaneous 2004 Predictions (San Jose Mercury News) Dan Gillmor mentions Linux and open-source software in his predictions for 2004 article in the San Jose Mercury News. "Ardent proponents of Linux and other open-source software will (a) stave off insidious legal and political moves designed to kill the genre; (b) make dramatic inroads on desktop computers, not just servers and embedded devices; (c) inspire people in other kinds of endeavors to use community-building projects to advance larger goals; (d) proclaim that their way is the only way."
Predictions for 2004 (IT-Director) IT-Director looks forward to 2004. The first prediction is that desktop Linux will succeed, but that's not all. "Finally, I believe that 2004 will be the year of the MySQL database. Unlike Linux and Apache, MySQL has not been a publicity magnet, but its use is growing and it stands on the verge of being taken seriously as a database to compete with Oracle, DB2 and SQLServer. It is already eating into their market share through the word-of-mouth marketing that turned Linux and Apache into formidable forces in their own right."
The Best of ONLamp 2003 (O'Reilly) O'Reilly has published the Best of ONLamp 2003, which lists the most popular articles in the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, [Perl, Python, PHP]) category. "Without further ado, here are the 25 most popular articles we published in the past year, in approximate order of popularity. I'm ranking them based on our internal statistics of page views, not any inherent goodness, controversy, or number of people who agreed with the views in the articles."
Protecting Against Open Source Legal Risks (TechWeb) TechWeb is running a lengthy piece on how companies should manage the risks said to come with free software. The idea seems to be to make free software as obnoxious and difficult to deal with as the proprietary alternatives. "Even after you've instituted rigorous controls and policies to limit and manage the risks of open-source software, you're not out of the woods. You face a second thorny problem: how to identify and deal with open-source software embedded in commercial software."
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