Linux in the news

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Bring on the WiFi Radios (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal looks at the future of internet radio. "Okay, so the record industry and the feds are committing industrial genocide on US-based internet radio (with a few exceptions that include popular public radio stations like WUNC and KUOW). But there are plenty of places in the world where webcasting is still legal, and nobody's keeping you from listening. So let's stop for a moment and ponder the opportunities here."

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UCITA drafters don't go far enough for Red Hat (Register)

The Register reports on the reaction of Red Hat lawyer Carol Kunze to recent changes to the UCITA. "A software contract may not prohibit reverse engineering that is done for the purposes of making a piece of software work with other software. Open Source software is exempt from UCITA when that software is not sold for a profit. But that last change doesn't go far enough, says Carol Kunze, a lawyer working for Red Hat on UCITA issues. Before the commission's meeting, Kunze wrote a letter asking the group to kill UCITA altogether. Red Hat and other Open Source companies have long objected to UCITA's requirement that Open Source software provide warranties to customers."

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Open source's new weapon: The law? (News.com)

News.com reports on a new legal proposal to be unveiled at LinuxWorld next week: "Open-source software advocates will unfurl a legislative proposal next week to prohibit the state of California from buying software from Microsoft or any other company that doesn't open its source code and licensing policies."

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White-Hat Hate Crimes on the Rise (Wired)

Wired reports that a group of black-hat hackers, in a campaign called "Project Mayhem," have declared war on white-hat hackers who've gone to work for security firms. "Why so much venom against white hats, the hackers who ostensibly break software in order to help make the Internet safer? The el8 zines don't clearly spell out the group's motivations, but Project Mayhem appears to be a violent incarnation of the "anti-sec" movement, a campaign to persuade hackers not to publish information about the security bugs they uncover."

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Companies

ActiveState loses CEO, enlists chairman (News.com)

News.com reports on changes at ActiveState. "Dick Hardt, the founder and chief executive of ActiveState, has resigned, the company said Thursday. At the same time, the provider of software and services for users of open-source programming languages such as Perl, PHP, Python and Tcl announced that it has named a new chairman in an effort to increase the 45-person company's size and revenue."

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Dell services tap Red Hat partnership (News.com)

News.com looks at Dell's LinuxWorld announcements. "Imax, the company behind the wraparound, vertigo-inducing movie screen, is a new customer of Dell's high-performance cluster. It's using a 60-server cluster with 120 Intel processors to transform ordinary movies, starting with Apollo 13, into the higher-resolution Imax format."

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Linux server specialist updates line (News.com)

Penguin Computing introduced new hardware. News.com reports: "Penguin Computing, which specializes in servers running the Linux operating system, will announce two new products and a new executive in charge of operations, Will Thomas, at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo on Tuesday. The Relion 130 and 240 both are rack-mountable machines that accommodate a pair of Intel's Xeon server processors by using Intel's E7500 chipset."

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Linuxcare returns with mainframe provisioning software (Register)

The Register covers news from Linuxcare, Inc. "Little has been heard of Linux services vendor Linuxcare Inc since its planned merger with Turbolinux Inc bit the dust in May 2001, but the company is now back with a new software product for the provisioning and configuration of the Linux operating system on mainframe systems." ZDNet has also posted an article about Linuxcare's new direction.

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Microsoft Puts On the Tux (Wired)

Wired takes a look at one of the new kids on the block at this year's LinuxWorld. "This year, one of the booths in the LinuxWorld "Rookery," section, billed as the event's headquarters for "new, up-and-coming companies -- a place where you can watch companies hatch and grow right before your eyes," belongs to Microsoft."

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MS 'Software Choice' scheme a clever fraud (Register)

Bruce Perens wrote this article about Microsoft's 'Software Choice' scheme. "Microsoft has responded with a clever Software Choice campaign that, read quickly, appears to fight discrimination and call for choice, while actually promoting policies that would lock out Free Software. For example, it promotes the embedding of royalty-bearing software patents into "open" standards. Of course Free Software producers don't charge copyright royalty fees, and thus can't afford to pay for patent royalties, so they would not be able to implement any standard that contains royalty-bearing patents."

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SAP DB: The Other Open-Source Database (TechWeb)

TechWeb covers the addition of another open source database, SAP DB 7.2. "SAP has donated SAP DB 7.2, the latest release of its database, to the open-source movement under the Gnu LGPL. Its motivation appears to be simple -- to paraphrase: This is not our core product, and both we and the open-source community can benefit from SAP DB."

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Dishin' the Dirt at LinuxWorld (Wired)

Wired reports from LinuxWorld. "In typical McNealy fashion, Sun's CEO peppered his keynote with frequent barbs aimed at virtually everyone in the tech industry from Microsoft ("Office is not the answer") to Dell ("Don't buy computers from Dell, go to Wal-Mart and buy them. You'll get just as much technical support"). Few escaped the infamous McNealy mouth."

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Sun casts shadow before Linux gathering (ZDNet)

Here's a Reuters article on ZDNet, covering Sun's particpation in LinuxWorld. "The wolf potentially lurking just outside the door, some Linux-boosters say, is Sun Microsystems, the high-end computer maker, which is expected to unveil its first general-purpose, low-end Linux machine, and its own version of Linux, on the eve of a major convention for the cooperatively developed software."

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Sun to fund open-source Java efforts (News.com)

Sun's new scholarship program will help fund open-source Java efforts. "The new scholarship stems from a spat Sun had earlier this year with key a open-source group called the Apache Software Foundation, which accused Sun of making it difficult for open-source groups to participate in the Java Community Process by which Sun and others govern the future of Java. "Open source" means every software developer can view the source code for software, modify it, and use it for free."

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Worlds collide in IBM-VA Software deal (News.com)

News.com reports on the deal (to be announced today) between IBM and VA Software. "VA Software will move its SourceForge repository of open-source software projects to a foundation of proprietary IBM software, the companies plan to announce at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo here. At the same time, VA will promote use of IBM's DB2 and WebSphere software for those employing a commercial version of the SourceForge collaborative programming software."

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Business

Server sellers bang Linux drum (News.com)

News.com looks at the increasing adoption of Linux by corporations. "Big Blue will announce that two major customers, Deutsche Telekom and Air New Zealand, are using the Linux operating system on IBM mainframes, while an HP customer, L-3 Communications, is using Linux to run airport baggage scanning systems. The new customers augment others that server makers have trotted out to convince computer buyers that Linux is ready for prime time."

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The Desktop Dilemma (Open for Business)

This Open for Business article warns that Linux distributors that concentrate on the server to the exclusion of the desktop will lose out in the long run. "I believe this is the critical flaw with most of today's Linux companies' narrow focus on the server. What they fail to understand is that their strength in the server market will never be secure so long as they ignore the client market. By conceding the desktop market to Microsoft, or anyone else for that matter, in essence they cede the server market as well."

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Linux, at your service (Info World)

Info World looks at Linux as an application server platform (ASP). "Eric Packman, CTO and cofounder of Boston-based Coradient, a provider of monitoring and management services for ASPs, agreed that Linux is popular among service providers. "The vast majority [of ASPs] I know use Linux up front [as a Web server] because [it's] really cheap and really fast," he said. "So any time you want to handle a larger load of customers and more people that turn up [at a Web site], you can turn on a bunch of Linux machines." Officials at Oracle, which uses Linux in its application outsourcing, see Linux becoming a deployment platform for applications."

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Air NZ cuts costs with Linux (NZ Herald)

The New Zealand Herald looks at another IBM mainframe Linux deployment. "The penguin may be flightless, but the Linux mascot has become the bird of choice at Air New Zealand, leaving Microsoft grounded." (Thanks to Kanchana Wickremasinghe).

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Interviews

gobeProductive to be Released under the GPL (OS News)

OS News reports news from Gobe Software. "The news from the Gobe Software front seem to be slightly sad, but only at first glance. Sad because, Gobe as we know it is no more, as it sold the gobeProductive source code and rights to FreeRadicalSoftware, Inc. However, FreeRadicalSoftware's business plan requires them to GPL the popular office suite, allowing everyone to access gobeProductive's source for Windows, Linux and even BeOS. The official announcement is expected next week. FreeRadicalSoftware was created recently by the ex-boss of Gobe Software, Bruce Hammond, and some other ex-Gobe and non-Gobe people. Read more for our exclusive interview with Bruce regarding the open sourcing of GP3 under the GPL."

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Quicken and QuickBooks and Visio, oh my! (on Linux, that is) (DesktopLinux)

DesktopLinux.com previews a beta version of CodeWeavers CrossOver Office 1.2, and interviews CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White to learn what else is coming. "White: Actually, that's the whole point behind WINE being open source. There is an enormous amount of work being done by developers all over the world on WINE, all of it flowing through www.winehqorg. That's why it has always been so very important to us that we help the WINE community, and not harm it -- we find those contributions invaluable to our own efforts." (Thanks to Jay R. Ashworth)

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OEone's Peter Bojanic on HomeBase, Mozilla (Open for Business)

OfB talks with OEone's Peter Bojanic about the new HomeBase DESKTOP and SUITE software. "OEone started active development using Mozilla milestone releases in February, 2001. Initially we were working in relative isolation from mozilla.org and its development community. Gradually, we became better acquainted with Mozilla developers and eventually made connections with staff at mozilla.org. Our Penzilla project pushed the limits of the Mozilla technology, and was one of the most ambitious XUL-based projects under development."

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Resources

Embedded Linux Newsletter for August 8, 2002

The August 8, 2002 edition of the Linux Devices Embedded Linux Newsletter is out with the latest embedded Linux developments.

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Getting started with freeVSD (IBM DeveloperWorks)

IBM DeveloperWorks has an article on beefing up your development environment with freeVSD. "If you're working in a Linux environment, however, there's a way to set up a machine so that several developers can have administrative access without interfering with the environment that the other developers work in. It's called freeVSD (Virtual Server Daemon), and it allows one Linux server to have several "virtual" servers. Using freeVSD allows a company to stretch their resources a little farther and still allow each developer or group of developers to have their own environment. While freeVSD was developed primarily with hosting companies in mind, you'll find that it can also be a boon to your production environment."

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Reviews

High-class, low-bloat office suite goes open source (Register)

The Register reports on the potential open-sourcing of the Gobe Productive office suite. "But this is very good news, because Gobe Productive is a lean, nimble, and highly functional package that already has enough good taste built-in to survive even the most ideologically insane faction fighting. It's everything that OpenOffice isn't - and has matured without adding cruft."

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IMHO: Why Lindows Ultimately Won't Matter (ExtremeTech)

In this opinion piece on Lindows, from ExtremeTech, the author doesn't see a large market for the upcoming OS. "Well I'm sorry to be the one that has to do it but, in the end, Lindows isn't going to matter. It's a flash in the pan that will ultimately be proven irrelevant. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not "anti-Lindows." I admire the efforts of Michael Robertson's company to bring an easy-to-use Linux distro to market. But over time there just isn't enough there to sustain the product." (Thanks to Jay R. Ashworth)

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Is Windows or Linux easier to install? (LinuxWorld.com)

Joe Barr writes about his experience installing both Red Hat 7.3 and Windows 2000 on a laptop. "My goal was to install each OS, get Internet connectivity via a Netgear PCMCIA NIC working, make each OS recognize a USB IBM PC Camera, and apply the latest security and bug fixes to the OS and default applications. Since Microsoft has been in the operating system business for exactly 21 years (DOS 1 debuted August 12, 1981), and employs 50,000 souls, I expected Windows 2000's installation would be seamless, fast, and lightyears ahead of upstart Red Hat's by any measure I could concoct. It turns out the Windows 2000 Pro installation is superior to Linux, but in two dubious categories."

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Professional Audio Closer to Linux (OSNews)

OS News looks at audio tools for Linux. "Browsing Freshmeat tonight, the premier online Linux software repository, I came across to these two great (and brand new) applications, ReBorn and ReZound. Reborn, a Rebirth clone that will soon become open source according to the developer, provides a software emulation of three of Roland's most famous electronic musical instruments. It got me thinking as to how much more viable Linux is today as a professional (or semi-professional) audio platform than it used to be two years ago."

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Miscellaneous

UnitedLinux prepares first beta (ZDNet)

ZDNet reports that the first open UnitedLinux beta will come out sometime in September. "The first version of UnitedLinux will essentially be the next version of SuSE's advanced server edition augmented with other companies' features. Those improvements include better support for Asian language characters from Turbolinux and basic 'failover' software from Conectiva, which lets one server take over when another fails."

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Linux kernel makes Xbox appearance (ZDNet)

ZDNet provides an update on progress made by the Xbox Linux Project. "The Xbox Linux Project, a volunteer effort aimed at running the Linux operating system on Microsoft's Xbox gaming console, said it has succeeded in booting the Linux kernel--a small but important step forward."

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Open-source cosmic clockwork (StarStuff)

Here's an article at StarStuff.org about open source code in astronomy. "... a group of astronomers recently announced that they will release their white dwarf evolution code and begin developing it into a state-of-the-art computer model to be called OpenWD." OpenWD will be released under the terms of the GPL. (Thanks to Nick LeRoy)

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Annual Linux Operating-System Expo Has Come A Long Way

The San Jose Mercury News says LinuxWorld Expo is not for hackers anymore. "The show's evolution from geek fest to conservative trade show is simply mirroring the progression of Linux, which has evolved from a grass-roots phenomenon on the Internet to the back room of corporate data centers."

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