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LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 19, 2004321 Studios and the free software communityIn the Bunner DVD case, the DVD Copy Control Association attempted to suppress the distribution (or even linking to) of the DeCSS code (which decrypts content from DVDs) with the claim that the code contained trade secrets. The court's rulings suggested that the trade secret claim was not going to hold up, and the Bunner case was dropped last year. The trade secret weapon had proved ineffective in this case.The DVDCCA has responded with a change of direction: the group is now suing 321 Studios, which makes a proprietary DVD copying program, for patent infringement. 321 and its DVD Copy program have been in and out of the courts for a while; the company started the litigation with a suit which attempted to obtain a ruling stating that its products do not violate the DMCA. The bringing of a patent suit changes the nature of this battle, however. It is a living demonstration of one of the free software community's deepest fears: that software patents will be used to prevent us from programming our computers to work the way we want them to. It is interesting to note that patents are incompatible with trade secrets. Patent applications require full disclosure of the technology for which protection is sought; any technology which has been publicly disclosed in this manner cannot, by definition, be a trade secret. Thus far, we have been unable to turn up a reference for the exact patent which is being claimed by the DVDCCA; if anybody has a pointer, we would appreciate hearing about it. Given the timing, however, the patent application must have been in the works while the trade secret case was pending. Filing trade secret suits while having already disclosed the relevant technology would be, at the least, an act of bad faith. 321 Studios is also being sued by Macrovision, which is also claiming patent infringement along with DMCA violations. 321 has just filed a response pointing out that, among other things, Macrovision's patents cover an analog copy-protection mechanism which is not relevant to a digital copying program. This company has been fighting many of the same digital rights battles as the free software community. But there has been no big outpouring of support for 321 studios; for the most part, its battles have been ignored. 321 Studios has not been able to obtain the same level of interest and support as, say, Elcomsoft has. One might point out that 321 Studios is a proprietary software company; that is true, but so is Elcomsoft. The real answer, perhaps, is that the community has sensed that 321 Studios does not really share its values; 321 appears to have little interest in any issues beyond immediate sales of DVD copying software. The difference in values has just become rather more apparent, however; see this triumphant press release from February 5. Therein, 321 notes that one of its customers was said to be using DVDXCopy for "piracy." The company responded by shutting down the software remotely. This program, it seems, puts a watermark into every disk it creates allowing the company to identify who performed the copy and, should it feel so inclined, to shut down the software altogether. This feature highlights one of the largest differences between free software and (at least some of) its proprietary relatives. The DeCSS code does not come with watermarking and remote shutdown capabilities. The Gimp will not attempt to prevent its users from creating an image that might look like some nations' currencies, and Ghostscript will not try to prevent that user from printing such images. Neither Freevo nor MythTV will phone home with details of just how often the user replayed the latest banal Superbowl publicity stunt. Nothing prevents anybody from coding any such features, but, equally, nothing prevents the rest of the world from taking them back out. Free software evolves toward one specific end: meeting the needs of its users. There is no room for conflicts of interest, no space for the agendas of industry consortia, advertisers, or governments. 321 Studios is not fighting for that view of the software universe; the company simply wants to be able to sell its product. We can certainly sympathize with the company as it deals with familiar problems like the DMCA and software patents. But, while 321 is fighting many of the same battles as the free software community, it is fighting them as part of a different war.
SCO Weekly NewsLet us start off this week's SCO update with some quotes:
SCO has since backed off the billing plan, but the company is
still serious about enforcing its copyrights, said Chris Sontag,
senior vice president in charge of SCO's legal efforts. He said
lawsuits targeting Linux users will be filed within 90 days, with
initial suits targeting 1,500 companies that have significant
Linux systems.
-- ZDNet, November 18, 2003. If someone says they want to see a court ruling before they pay, we'll say, "Fine, you're the lucky winner. We'll take you first.' I'd be surprised if we make it to the end of the year without filing a lawsuit. -- Darl McBride, November 24, 2003 So we have basically said within the next few weeks, by February 18th we are going to be in the courtroom with an end user to go through the copyright-related problems that we are having from an infringement standpoint. -- Darl McBride, February 2, 2004 There are many more quotes available on this theme, but certainly the idea is clear by now. Like so many other bits of SCO bluster, the threats of suits against end users have not been followed up by any sort of action. Yet. Whether such a suit will eventually come remains an open question, however. SCO is currently fighting IBM, Red Hat, and Novell in three separate cases, and none of the three appear to be going particularly well. At some point SCO's management should be forced to conclude that the company simply does not have the resources to open any more legal fronts. Dividing SCO's scarce cash and (possibly not so scarce) lawyers among even more courtrooms would not appear to be a wise strategy. On the other hand, few people have accused SCO of acting wisely in recent times. The company is due to post a quarterly earnings report that, by all estimates, will be dismal. SCO stock is well below the peak values it hit in September and October. The mainstream media is beginning to wake up, and its coverage is increasingly hostile. SCO's only hope for continued existence would appear to be to somehow shake money out of some easily-cowed Linux users, but those users are proving to have rather more backbone than SCO may have anticipated. The SCO Group may yet decide that its best interests lie in even more litigation. One view into how the shakedown effort is proceeding can be found in Red Hat's motion to supplement its filings in its suit against SCO. That case is (still!) waiting for the judge to come to a conclusion on SCO's motion to dismiss the case, which was filed in September. Since then, a few things have happened which have made it increasingly clear that SCO does, indeed, intend to go after Red Hat and its customers. Red Hat's motion is an attempt to bring SCO's more recent actions to the judge's attention. One of the things Red Hat is pointing out is a letter sent by SCO to Lehman Brothers Holdings. It is a variant on the standard SCO shakedown letter; the point here is that Lehman Brothers is a Red Hat customer. Happily, Lehman Brothers saw no point in giving in to SCO; its response is short and clear, and is best paraphrased as "go bug Red Hat." Part of the problem for SCO is that Novell's claims on the Unix copyrights make it easy for prospective SCO victims to ignore the letters. If SCO can't put forward a clear claim to the Unix copyrights, it will have a hard time collecting from anybody regardless of the validity of its statements about the provenance of Linux. For that reason, the company was compelled to file suit against Novell, in hopes of clearing that obstruction. Unfortunately for SCO, Novell has filed a compelling motion to dismiss the suit. Essentially, says Novell, the SCO suit is missing two things that are required in "slander of title" suits: proof that the defendant's statements are false, and a demonstration that actual damages have been suffered. As Novell points out, SCO's demand that the court force Novell to transfer the copyrights proves that Novell's claims are true; SCO's suit contradicts itself. See Groklaw for a far more detailed discussion of Novell's motion. Meanwhile, as of this writing, the Utah court still has not issued any rulings regarding the motions to compel in the IBM case. There is no way to know what this delay means until the court speaks. Chances are it will be something interesting, however.
The Grumpy Editor's browser review - a followupThe review of Gecko-based browsers we ran last week generated a great deal of feedback; this is evidently an area of great interest to many users. We have just a few things to add to that review this time around.Thanks primarily to reader comments, your editor was able to resolve almost all of his complaints with the Firefox browser. Image animation can be controlled via the user-hostile about:config screen, the prefs.js file found in a randomly-named directory under ~/.phoenix, or via plugin extensions. Antialiased fonts are to be had by downloading the correct version of the browser. And so on. The situation has improved to the point where your editor is now using Firefox as his preferred browser. The real key to the success of Firefox may well prove to be its extension architecture. History has shown many times that, if an application provides an easy mechanism for users to graft in additional or different functionality, those users will run with it. The lengthy list of extensions available for Firefox shows that this browser has reached a critical mass in this regard. Extensions are available to provide all kinds of navigation tools, to help with weblogging, to assist in web page authoring, and many other tasks including, inevitably, playing Tetris. It would be nice not to have to go find an extension to replace the missing "up" navigation button, but it's nice that you can. One can only hope that the security implications of encouraging users to download and install browser plugins have been thought through. If last week's review were to be written today, the conclusion might have been written a little differently. Firefox has a level of performance, reliability, and features that well exceeds the other Gecko-based browsers available. One might well wonder why Galeon and Epiphany continue to exist; they appear to be trying to do the same thing as Firefox but - at this moment in time, anyway - they do it less reliably and with fewer features. (Do see, however, this posting on why Red Hat is shipping Epiphany for a different view). As we noted last week, there could well be a place for multiple browser projects, but each should be looking for a unique way to extend the state of the art. Meanwhile, your editor also found the time to get Konqueror 3.2 working. Konqueror is everything its proponents claim it is: a fast, powerful and robust tool for navigating through information, be it on the local system or on the net. Your editor has never had much use for file managers, and so does not place much value on Konqueror's implementation. He can see, however, that Konqueror does look like a very nice file manager. The web browser is capable and fast, and highly configurable. Some features, such as the ability to change the identification string to get past certain difficult web site programmers, are unique. What Konqueror still seems to be lacking, however is a password manager. Security-conscious users may feel better off without this feature, but the simple fact is that it has gotten hard to keep track of the long list of usernames and passwords needed to access many useful sites on the web. A password manager can be most useful when trying to remember which login information was used to get into some obscure site with its own strange rules. It is surprising, really, that Konqueror has not picked up this capability yet. That notwithstanding, if Konqueror were the only browser available for Linux systems, we would be in good shape. Linux is second to no other system now in the quality of its web browsing support. It will be more than interesting to see where things go from here as the various projects look for new ways to extend the state of the art.
FOSDEM 2004The 2004 edition of the Free and Open Source Developers Meeting will be happening on February 21 and 22 in Brussels.![[FOSDEM]](/images/ns/fosdem.png)
LWN editor Jonathan Corbet will be there. In a moment of weakness last
month (he blames Australian wine), he agreed to give two different talks at
the event. Happily, FOSDEM has three tracks this year, so it should be
possible to avoid those talks and see something interesting. The schedule has the
details. Keynote speakers include Tim O'Reilly, Richard Stallman, and, of
course, Jon 'maddog' Hall. FOSDEM looks to be an interesting event.
For the first time, LWN is happy to be sponsoring this event. With luck, this sponsorship will allow us to help a community event while simultaneously bringing in more subscribers. If things work out, we'll be sponsoring more events in the future. Meanwhile, we're looking forward to meeting some of our European readers; see you there.
Security Brief items A new mremap() vulnerabilityThe mremap() system call allows a process to change its virtual memory layout by adjusting the size and location of a virtual memory area. One of the things mremap() can do is move one virtual memory area (VMA) into the middle of another one. In that case, the target VMA will be split in two so that the space in the middle can be freed and reused for the VMA being moved. As long as the calling process knows what it is doing (it doesn't need the pages being replaced by the moved area, for example), all of this is fine.An interesting thing can happen in the 2.4.24 and 2.6.2 kernels, however. The kernel enforces a limit on the maximum number of VMAs that any one process can have. If the kernel attempts to split a VMA in response to the sort of mremap() call described above, it will check the process's VMA usage against the limit. Splitting requires the addition of a new VMA, so this check is necessary. If the limit has been reached, the internal call which splits the VMA (do_munmap()) will return a failure status. So far, so good. The problem is that mremap() did not check to see if do_munmap() succeeded or not. If the split failed, mremap() would continue anyway. The end result is that the old target VMA would remain, with its existing permissions, but some of its associated page table entries would be overwritten by entries from the VMA being moved. In other words, an attacker can exploit this bug to obtain access to a set of pages which the kernel would not otherwise have allowed. This vulnerability can be exploited by a local hacker to obtain root access on any Linux system running a vulnerable kernel. The solution is to upgrade to 2.4.25 or 2.6.3, or to apply the appropriate distributor security update. The LWN vulnerability entry tracks the available updates. For more information on the vulnerability, see this advisory from Paul Starzetz.
New vulnerabilities cgiemail vulnerability allows unauthorized mail relaying
elm: vulnerability in frm command
kernel: local root exploit
metamail: integer and buffer overflows
phpMyAdmin: directory traversal
PWLib: possible Denial of Service
samba: access to disabled accounts
Updated vulnerabilities apache: buffer overflows in mod_alias, mod_rewrite
apache2: Denial of Service vulnerability
bind: cache poisoning
CUPS: denial of service
cvs: possible root compromise
ethereal: protocol dissector and other vulnerabilities
Filename disclosure vulnerability in fam
fetchmail may crash on specially crafted message
fileutils/wu-ftpd: denial of service
gaim: remote overflows
gallery: code injection
GnuPG: ElGamal signing keys compromised
gtkhtml: malformed messages cause crash
iproute: local denial of service
kdepim: VCF file information reader vulnerability
kernel: privilege vulnerability on AMD64
kernel: local root exploit in 2.4.22
kernel-utils: setuid vulnerability
lftp buffer overflows
libpng, libpng3: buffer overflow
libtool - Insecure handling of temporary files
mailman: cross-site scripting vulnerabilities
mailman denial of service
mc: arbitrary code execution
mikmod: buffer overflow
mod_python: denial of service vulnerability
monkeyd: denial of service
mpg123: heap overflow
mpg321: format string vulnerability
mplayer: remotely exploitable buffer overflow vulnerability
mutt: buffer overflow
Nessus NASL scripting engine security issues
netpbm: insecure temporary files
Net-SNMP: security bugs in versions before 5.0.9
nfs-utils xlog() off-by-one bug
openssh: timing attack leads to information disclosure
perl information leak
PHP setting leaks from .htaccess files on virtual hosts
postfix: denial of service vulnerabilities
rsync - remotely exploitable heap overflow
Multiple-use vulnerability in Safe.pm
sane-backends: several vulnerabilities
screen: privilege escalation
slocate: buffer overflow
File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip
tcpdump: flaws in the ISAKMP decoding routines
Multiple vendor telnetd vulnerability
util-linux: information leak in the login program
XFree86: buffer overflow
Resources February CRYPTO-GRAM newsletterBruce Schneier's CRYPTO-GRAM newsletter for February is out; this issue looks at security policies, ID requirements, spam solutions, and the MyDoom worm. "I don't think the solution is to educate users. This is a case where overall security is determined by the stupidest user. If 1,000 people in your corporate network know enough not to click on the attachment and only one does not, you're still infected."
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Kernel development Brief items Kernel release statusThe current 2.6 kernel is 2.6.3, which was released on February 17. Only a handful of patches have gone in since the last release candidate. Overall, 2.6.3 includes a great deal of internal cleanup work, the removal of the USB scanner driver (in favor of the user-space libusb solution), the new generic DMA pool mechanism, "context mount" support for SELinux, a big ALSA update, a fix for the new mremap() vulnerability, and quite a few architecture updates. See the long-format changelog for the details.During the last week, we also saw 2.6.3-rc3 (changelog) and 2.6.3-rc4 (changelog). The current kernel tree from Andrew Morton is 2.6.3-mm1. Recent additions to the -mm tree include some more scheduler improvements, a new CPU hotplug implementation, journaled quotas for the ext3 filesystem, and numerous fixes. 2.6.3-mm1 also contains the new device mapper crypto target code. This target allows the creation of encrypted filesystems by way of the device mapper (LVM) subsystem. If things work out, this approach is likely to replace the (buggy) cryptoloop driver; if you have an interest in encrypted filesystems, testing out this patch might be a good idea. The current 2.4 kernel is 2.4.25, released by Marcelo on February 18. Among other things, this release includes the mremap() vulnerability fix. Marcelo has had a busy week, having previously released 2.4.25-rc2, -rc3, and -rc4.
Kernel development news Quote of the week
I suspect most samba developers are already technically
insane... Of course, since many of them are Australians, you can't
tell.
The kernel and character set encodingsIt all started as a JFS bug report. The JFS filesystem, it seems, gets upset when user space passes it file names encoded in the UTF-8 format. Rather than create or open a file with the name as given, it gives up and returns EINVAL. Patches which fix the problem have been posted, but the resulting discussion has taken rather longer to be resolved.JFS has an "iocharset" option which can be used to state explicitly, at mount time, which character encoding is being used. There were calls on linux-kernel for this option to be added to other filesystems as well. The idea was rather strongly shot down, however, for a few reasons. One of those is that multiple users could be simultaneously using different character encodings on the same filesystem; a global option for the whole filesystem clearly will not be able to address that case. The real reason, however, is that performing character set conversion requires the kernel to interpret the file name strings being passed to it from user space. The kernel hackers are very resistant to the imposition of any such policy; it would go against decades of Unix tradition. Officially, the kernel has no policy regarding which character set is being used for file names, content, or anything else. In each case, the kernel sees nothing more than a stream of bytes. That said, the kernel does have some policies regarding file names: they use "/" as a directory delimiter, and they are terminated by a NULL byte. This policy rules out the use of many encodings which are sometimes employed to represent non-ASCII characters; the fixed-width wide encodings all tend to use lots of bytes containing zero. In reality, the only practical choices for representing characters beyond the ASCII set are iso-8859-1 (which allows the representation of characters used in many continental European languages) and UTF-8, which can encode pretty much anything. UTF-8 is relatively easy to use; for US users it looks just like ASCII, but it can handle a far wider range of characters while not breaking (most) code which uses traditional C strings. Thus it is often said that UTF-8 is the encoding used by the Linux kernel. That statement is a mistake, however: Linux does not use any particular encoding. If user space uses UTF-8 to represent extended characters, everything will work. But nothing forces user space to work in that way. This approach keeps policy out of the kernel, but some developers are not entirely happy with it. The lack of policy can lead to user-space confusion in a number of ways. For example, if a user creates a file called WéîrdÑàmë, that name could be represented in the filesystem in more than one way. Depending on how user space is configured, it could choose either iso-8859-1 or UTF-8; the encoding of that name will be quite different depending on that choice. A different user space could interpret the file name differently in the future, resulting in unreadable filenames and confused users. The kernel, lacking a character encoding policy of its own, will do nothing to help prevent this situation. Confusion over character sets can also facilitate the creation of security holes; code which attempts to clean up file names can fail if evil characters are given in an unexpected encoding. Code which expects UTF-8 must also be careful when dealing with the Linux kernel because the kernel itself makes no effort to ensure that any string is, in fact, a legal UTF-8 encoding. To complicate the situation even more, Andrew Tridgell posted another reason why, he thinks, the kernel will have to adopt a specific character encoding: case insensitivity. Says Tridge:
The reason is that I think that eventually the Linux kernel will
need to efficiently support a userspace policy of
case-insensitivity and the only way to do case-insensitive filename
operations is to interpret those byte streams as a particular
encoding.
Needless to say, the idea of implementing case-insensitive filesystem operations in the kernel was not particularly popular. Not too many kernel hackers want to complicate the filesystem code to implement what they see as being a broken Windows feature to begin with. There are other difficulties as well: case-insensitive matching must be done differently in different languages. The end result is that case insensitive lookups are not very likely to make it into the kernel anytime soon. Linus is not averse to trying to help out Samba and other applications which wish to implement case-insensitive behavior, however. He has proposed a new "magic_open()" interface which would make it easier for user space to perform case-insensitive lookups without actually doing that work in the kernel. This interface would likely require quite a bit of work before it would do what the Samba developers need, but something derived from it could just make an appearance in the 2.7 development series. Meanwhile, the kernel does not seem likely to adopt any sort of official encoding anytime soon. The problems that result from the lack of an encoding policy are mostly seen as user space issues. Proper locale support is still relatively new in Linux, and many rough edges remain. Given the high level of interest in high-quality localization support in Linux, however, one might expect those edges to be smoothed down quickly. (For those who would like to learn more about UTF-8, see this FAQ or RFC 3629).
invalidate_page_range() for non-GPL modulesThe kernel function invalidate_page_range() is not something which has a lot of callers. Its job is to invalidate all memory mappings which cover a specific part of a file, presumably because the contents of the relevant pages have changed on disk. This function is currently exported only to GPL-licensed modules.Paul McKenney has requested that this function be exported to all modules. It seems that IBM's GPFS filesystem needs it, and that filesystem is not free software. The claim is that the filesystem is an entirely independent development, and is thus not derived from the kernel; it should not have to be licensed under the GPL to be loadable into the kernel. Andrew Morton says he is not opposed to the patch. One might think it would not be too controversial, especially since that function was first created and submitted by...Paul McKenney. There are developers, however, who believe that any module which is digging that deeply into the virtual memory subsystem cannot help but be derived, in some fashion, from the Linux kernel. There is also, perhaps, a certain desire to demonstrate that even IBM can't obtain arbitrary access to the kernel for proprietary modules. In general, the kernel hackers are more interested in seeing their work be useful and used, instead of fighting over licensing battles. So one might expect to see this patch eventually get incorporated. In more recent times, however, some developers have been adopting a firmer position with regard to proprietary modules. This patch may still get in, but it's likely to have a harder time than would have once been the case.
No more 24-bit atomic_tThe atomic_t type in the Linux kernel is a simple integer variable with a set of operations which are guaranteed to be atomic without the need for explicit locking. For years, atomic_t variables have operated under the constraint that they can be expected to hold no more than 24 bits; this limitation was forced by the Sparc32 architecture, which used the other eight bits to implement the atomic operations.As of 2.6.3, this limitation no longer holds. This patch by Keith M Wesolowski has changed the Sparc32 implementation to a version (taken from the PA-RISC architecture) which provides full 32-bit atomic variables. The new implementation works by creating a small array (four entries) of spinlocks. When an operation is to be performed on an atomic variable, one of those spinlocks is chosen by a hash function; the code holds the given lock while manipulating the variable. The result is proper locking for atomic operations without doubling the size of every atomic_t in the system. The patch was quickly picked up and merged, and kernel programmers have one less strange limitation to worry about.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Development tools
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Janitorial
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Benchmarks and bugs
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions News and Editorials An Early Look at Fedora Core 2The first beta version of Fedora Core 2 was released last week, after a 10-day delay from the original schedule. Also known as version 1.90 or FC2-test1, this is the earliest preview of what will in due time form the basis of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, and what will soon be making its way to desktops and servers of Fedora users. In many ways, this is the most significant product by Red Hat in years, with the brand new Linux kernel, substantially enhanced security, and new versions of the popular GNOME and KDE desktop environments. As such, it warrants a closer look, even in its present unfinished state.First the bad news. Those accustomed to high standards of past releases by Red Hat, even the beta ones, will be surprised at the apparent lack of attention to detail in this release. A glaring error while building the ISO images prevents the installation CD from booting on architectures other than i686. The usually comprehensive release notes were replaced by a quick overview listing a few known issues and a link to Red Hat's bugzilla. The two main desktop environments, GNOME and KDE are both beta versions - GNOME is a development release 2.5, while KDE is version 3.1.95 (also known as 3.2rc1). The version of GNOME included in this release is very buggy. Both Evolution and Nautilus are reportedly prone to crashes and Evolution is unable to import existing mail. Some users have complained about the new default way of browsing folders in Nautilus, the so-called "spatial mode", in which every click on a folder opens a new Nautilus window (without a menu or toolbar). The left panel with a tree structure is missing in spatial mode. Apparently, this is an intended behavior of Nautilus in GNOME 2.6, so those users who prefer the old way of doing things can restore the "browsing mode", either by launching the program with the "nautilus --browser" command, or by right-clicking within a Nautilus window and selecting "browser mode". Others have voiced their concerns about the newly overhauled "Open File..." dialog in GNOME, which in the words of one of the testers on the Fedora mailing list, is "poorly laid out, improperly sized and unnecessarily complex". Even the most faithful GNOME users are bound to be displeased with all the glitches and inconsistencies in this development version of GNOME. Surprising as it may sound for a distribution that has traditionally demonstrated a clear preference for GNOME, the KDE desktop seems in much better shape. It still uses the Bluecurve theme by default, but users can select a different one during KDE's initial configuration dialog. Apart from misplaced menu entries of certain system applications, accidentally placed under a "Lost and Found" (!) menu entry, there have been few reports of KDE applications crashing or behaving unexpectedly. Another surprise, and a rather pleasant one for users with older hardware, is the appearance of XFce (version 4.0.3) in the distribution. This is the first time that XFce was included in any Red Hat product and it comes at the expense of WindowMaker, which was dropped from Red Hat Linux after version 8.0. The inclusion of a light-weight desktop would seem to indicate that Red Hat has decided to lower the stringent hardware requirements and give users an option to run a less resource-hungry desktop on older hardware. Unfortunately, there is no mention of this in the release notes. XFce is not given as a choice during system installation; however, once installed directly from RPMs, it appears as an option on the login screen, alongside GNOME and KDE. Disappointingly, the much awaited SELinux functionality was pulled from this release due to "a couple of last minute problems". It is now expected to be ready for inclusion in Fedora Core 2 Test 2, scheduled for release on March 8. SELinux (or Security Enhanced Linux) is one of the two major new features planned for Fedora Core 2; it is designed to enhance security of the operating system by allowing users to define explicit rules for file and device access and by confining user programs to the minimum amount of privilege they need to perform their tasks. Unless you are an experienced user or intend to help with bug reporting, this first beta release of Fedora Core 2 is best left alone. Some of the many, many bugs in it are not necessarily Red Hat's fault, although one has to question the company's insistence to ship a highly experimental version of GNOME, which seems to have a long way to go before it becomes 2.6 final. Other frequently reported problems include issues with sound, printing, up2date and yum, which together with missing SELinux functionality and haphazard release notes make for a rather poor distribution. The Fedora developers have a lot of work on their hands before the product enters its second phase of testing. Luckily for them, the final release of Fedora Core 2 is only scheduled for April 19, so there is plenty of time. But as things stand now, Mandrake's own beta releases appear to be in a much better shape.
Another early look at Fedora Core 2The first Fedora Core 2 test release was pushed out last week, so we thought we'd take a look to see what Fedora users can look forward to with the second Fedora Core release. Fedora Core has grown since the first release, literally. Fedora has grown from three installation ISO images to four, which I downloaded using BitTorrent.I installed FC2 on two machines, a dual Pentium III Xeon machine with 1 GB of RAM and a Pentium III 500MHz machine with 384 MB of RAM. The install hasn't changed significantly since Fedora Core 1, though the install procedure no longer automatically ejects CDs -- something that has been widely discussed on the Fedora-test mailing list. The first install, on the dual Xeon machine, went flawlessly. The second install failed on the first attempt when I jiggled the mouse while Anaconda was in the process of trying to detect it. The second attempt at installation went fine. Unfortunately, test1 does not include the much-anticipated SELinux functionality, at least not by default. The packages are included in the distribution, but the user will have to install and configure them manually. There is precious little documentation for the user to do so. The package "selinux-doc" contains only a brief README with a list of necessary components, a file with instructions for porting SELinux-aware applications to the new policy and API, and a brief Changelog. According to this post from Jeremy Katz, SELinux should be available in test2. Users who are looking forward to trying SELinux without having to get deeply involved in the actual mechanics of SELinux will have to wait a while. Fedora still sports the familiar "Bluecurve" theme for GNOME and KDE, so there are no real surprises for users of Fedora Core 1 when GNOME starts up. FC2 uses GNOME 2.5 by default, though KDE and XFce are also available. The GNOME panel froze on me a few times during testing, which required a restart of GNOME. Evolution 1.5.3 is also a bit buggy. I wanted to import a mailbox file from an older version of Evolution, but it simply refused to open the Import dialog from the menu. Nautilus, or at least its default behavior, has changed in FC2 -- and not necessarily for the better. The familiar "browser" interface for Nautilus is no longer the default, though the user can return to the old behavior by launching Nautilus with the "--browser" option, or by right-clicking on an object and selecting "Browse Folder." Annoyingly, the default for Nautilus is now to open a new window for each object, rather than opening the object in the same window. Users who prefer to point-and-click their way through the directory structure will find their desktop filling up with Nautilus windows in short order. This is, of course, not specific to Fedora Core, but a reflection of upstream changes in GNOME. A number of users have reported having problems with sound in test1. Some users have noted that their sound card is detected, but sound is muted by default -- leaving the user to think that sound is completely broken. Other users have noted that their sound card, which was previously supported, simply isn't detected. Neither of my test systems has a sound card, so I was unable to verify the sound-related problems. Another interesting feature for FC2, of course, is the inclusion of the 2.6 kernel by default. From a user perspective, however, I didn't notice any real difference in using the 2.6 kernel versus using a system with a 2.4 kernel. Other than aforementioned glitches, the user experience for FC2 is pretty much the same as FC1. Most, if not all, of the packages in Fedora Core 1 have been upgraded -- but it feels more like a minor version upgrade than a major version release. This isn't a bad thing, Fedora users are likely to appreciate the fact that FC2 is largely familiar and full of gradual improvements rather than jarring changes. If all goes as scheduled, the second test release should be out around March 8, followed by a third test release by the end of March. The final Fedora Core 2 release is slated for April 16, if all goes well. However, if the first test release is any indication, it may take longer for the Fedora project to fully integrate SELinux and iron out all of the various bugs present in FC2.
Distribution News Debian GNU/LinuxThe Debian Weekly News for February 17, 2004 is out. This week's topics include a debian-desktop IRC meeting, Debian ranking according to Google, the new ftp-master, Project Leader nominations, and more.Debian Project Leader Martin Michlmayr lists the conferences that he will be attending in February.
FedoraTest release number one of the Fedora Core 2 distribution has been released. "Yes, it's time for the first test release of Fedora Core 2. This release is the first Fedora Core release to include the 2.6 kernel, GNOME 2.5, KDE 3.2, and XFCE. Testing of all of these areas would be appreciated, above and beyond any other testing."Fedora Core 1 updates:
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter - Volume 3, Issue 7The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of February 16, 2004 is out; with a look at Gentoo's growing popularity, using 2.6 kernels, and several other topics.
Mandrake LinuxThe Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for February 13, 2004 is out. This issue covers Mandrake Linux 10.0 Beta 2, MandrakeSoft's first profitable quarter since 1999, and several other topics.A bug was discovered in Nautilus where if the last file is deleted in the list view, Nautilus continues to display the file and if clicked on to open, Nautilus will crash. This bug has been fixed for Mandrake Linux 9.2.
New support for Netwosix UsersLinux Netwosix has announced that the official Linux Netwosix Mailing Lists are available. Three lists have been created to help Netwosix users. Click below for more information.
Slackware LinuxSlackware Linux has lots of recompiled, rebuilt and upgraded packages, and some unsupported packages were purged from -current See the slackware-current changelog for complete details.
Who's The Fastest Growing Linux Distro? (internetnews.com)internetnews.com uses Netcraft numbers and other factors in this discussion of popular Linux distributions. "Which Linux distribution is the most popular? For many players in the open source realm, that answer depends on which part of the globe is counting, and how. It could also depend on where the major Linux distributors stand with their product release cycles with the latest 2.6 Linux kernel."
New Distributions bioknoppix: A Live-CD Linux distribution for bioinformaticsBioinformatics.Org covers a new live CD distribution. BIOKNOPPIX comes from the University of Puerto Rico High Performance Computing facility (HPCf) and the Puerto Rico Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN-PR). It's a Live-CD Linux distribution, based on KNOPPIX, specialized to include tools for bioinformatics. Bio-Knoppix beta version 0.2 was released February 13, 2004. The 0.3 release mentioned in the Bioinformatics article was recalled due to errors in the master.
MandowsMandows is a live CD project based in France. The Mandrake 9.2 fivestar distribution was chosen as the base because of its ease of use. A package list is available here. Version 1.4 was released under the GPL on February 3, 2004. The current version is 1.5, released February 15, 2004.
MedialinuxMedialinux is a live CD based on Knoppix. It includes all audio, graphics and video software included in Debian. Version 1.0 was released February 17, 2004 - based on KNOPPIX 3.3 with extra packages from Debian experimental and unstable trees.
Minor distribution updates Astaro Security LinuxAstaro Security Linux has released beta v4.702 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This release has intrusion detection and prevention, content filtering that now includes HTTP virus protection and POP 3 spam protection, IPSec VPN client features, Microsoft Windows native IPSec VPN Client, L2TP over IPSec, centralized and unified logging, local as well as remote archiving, increased support for system reliability and performance with high memory support for up to 4 GB RAM, and symmetric multi-processor support. There are a lot more enhancements and improvements under the hood."
Bluewall GNU/LinuxBluewall GNU/Linux has released v1.1 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This release includes Linux 2.4.24 and 2.6.2 with ext2, ext3, Reiserfs, and XFS (only 2.6) support, Bluewall Perl installer scripts (bw-config/bw-post/bw-install) for making the installation easier and faster by only running three commands, 95 new Debian packages, and a preconfigured initrd to load modules at boot-time. The reboot command/scripts have been fixed and included in the ramdisk. The NetBSD package system (pkgsrc) has also been included."
Damn Small LinuxDamn Small Linux has released v0.6 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: A new kernel and modules were added, supporting more hardware. busybox is used to save space. Space was saved by having dpkg-restore restore not only package structure, but also related programs. Backup or restore to a specific device (such as a hard drive) was improved. The PPP dial scripts were improved, so manual editing is no longer required. The hard drive install script was improved to pass the fb800x600 screen size. The speed of installation was also improved. The menu was reorganized for easier navigation. The /opt/bootlocal.sh was added to allow the user to specify miscellaneous system startup commands."
Feather LinuxFeather Linux has released v0.3.5 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This version adds ntfstools, dosfstools, e2undel, iftop, gtkrecover, bbpager, utelnetd, picocom, bridge-utils, index, and various dockapps to show the system status. It includes BusyBox versions of dc and fbset, and changes the Firebird script to download Firefox instead. It adds menu options to play CDs and DVDs, and a documentation menu. There are small changes to HD install script, and adds a script to save the config to HD (use knoppix hdrestore=hda1)."
INside SEcurity Rescue ToolkitINSERT has released v1.2.2 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: The latest virus database for ClamAV has been added, making the virus scan functionality independent from a working network connection. The floppy boot image has been removed; instead, a small script and syslinux provide the functionality to generate the boot disk from the files already on the CD. Some minor corrections in the captive documents page have been made. wmnet has been removed."
KnoppiXMAMEKnoppiXMAME has released v1.2.1 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: This is a small point release which fixes a bug where the new addroms utility would not save configuration changes if remastering from an already remastered CD. Type "addroms" at the boot prompt to try the new utility which adds your ROMs to the CD and makes you a new .iso. All filesystems are supported, but writing to NTFS (although possible) is still experimental."
LGIS GNU/LinuxGnomeDesktop provides an update on LGIS GNU/Linux. "The ISO images contains many more updates than in the first announcement, and I've added the mono packages to the installation."
Linux Embedded Appliance FirewallLEAF has released Bering-uClibc v2.1-rc2 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: This release fixes bugs reported for the first 2.1 release candidate, such as problems loading the airo module, saving packages smaller than the original one, and some more minor changes."
MoviXMoviX has released v0.8.1rc3 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: MPlayer menu functions have been greatly improved. The menu is now available in Italian and German. Subtitle information is also displayed for CDs and playlists. Net booting through TFTP has been improved. Many small bugs have been fixed."
Pingwinek GNU/LinuxPingwinek GNU/Linux has released v1.0rc1 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This release has a new XML-based package management tool (BOX). It features many new software packages like OpenOffice.org and XFCE4. The main desktop is now GNOME 2.4.2. The release contains the stable kernel 2.6.2."
Sentry FirewallSentry Firewall has released v1.5.0-rc9 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This release updates the kernel to 2.4.24-ow1, upgrades Snort and net-snmp, and adds radvd and OpenVPN. It also adds support for pulling the sentry.conf and other configuration files from a USB thumb drive."
Source Mage GNU/LinuxSource Mage GNU/Linux has released the v0.9.1 ISO image.
Trustix Secure LinuxTrustix Secure Linux has released 2.1 Beta 1, also known as Snow. Click below for more details.
White Box LinuxWhite Box Linux has rebuilt Red Hat Update1 SRPMs and has these packages available for download. Click below for a package list.
Distribution reviews The Linux desktop is here (SMH)The Sydney Morning Herald reviews Xandros 2.0. "There is very little about Xandros which will raise the ire of a user - though one can complain that there are limited applications. But then, when all common tasks are looked after, why does one have to look any further? Those of an adventurous turn of mind can add new packages and play around as their knowledge of the system increases. About the only thing which I could fault was the absence of the best-known graphics program for Linux, the GIMP."
Red Hat Professional Workstation: More expensive, fewer features (NewsForge)NewsForge reviews Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation. "By contrast, small businesses that ran Red Hat Linux 9 on their servers certainly will notice what they're missing. A lot of the functionality that was available in Red Hat Linux 9 has been stripped out of Enterprise Linux WS, undoubtedly to force subscribers to the Enterprise Linux product line to move to the more expensive ES and AS platforms. This has naturally filtered down to Professional Workstation, which is missing server components such as BIND, OpenLDAP, DHCP, inews, and Kerberos 5."
Newbies take on LiveCDs; everybody wins (linux.com)In this linux.com article newbies take on three LiveCD distributions; Knoppix, MandrakeMove, and Slax. "Slax, the most unlikely finalist, is based on Slackware Linux. Slackware is often perceived as the no-nonsense, geeks-only distribution, and Slax remains true to its roots, providing the same no-nonsense approach that purists will appreciate. In spite of invoking a little culture shock, Slax was surprisingly well received by my team of novices."
XandrosOS: User-friendly to a fault (Register)The Register says XandrosOS is friendly, but not secure enough. "There's a serious lack of attention to encryption and data hygiene. It's very easy to integrate GnuPG with KMail; unfortunately, GnuPG and KGpg are not included. It's also easy to integrate GnuPG with Mozilla Mail using a recent feature called Enigmail, though the Mozilla version (1.4) packaged with Xandros lacks it. The Shred utility is included, but it's not integrated with the file browser. The right-click menu and menu bar offer only to delete a file, not remove it securely. Shred must be run from the shell, which, again, is a bit much for novices."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development KBarcode - the open-source barcode solutionThe KBarcode project is a GUI-based barcode creation application for KDE 3:
KBarcode is a barcode and label printing application for Linux and KDE 3. It can be used to print everything from simple business cards up to complex labels with several barcodes (e.g. article descriptions).
KBarcode comes with an easy to use WYSIWYG label designer, a setup wizard, batch import of labels (directly from the delivery note), thousands of predefined labels, database managment tools and translations in many languages.
![[kbarcode]](/images/ns/kbarcode.jpg)
Some of the KBarcode features include:
KBarcode supports a lengthy list of barcode types by acting as a front end to several barcode back ends including GNU Barcode, PDF417 Encode, and the commercial TBarcode. The complete documentation for KBarcode is available in PDF formatted files. For a better understanding of the capabilities of KBarcode, see the screen shots of the GUI and some online examples of the software's output. KBarcode version 1.6.2 (stable) was recently released. "This release fixes a major bug, which prevented correct creation of UPC-A barcodes. Also a Greek translation was added." KBarcode dependencies include KDE 3.x, GNU Barcode, ImageMagick, and if SQL support is needed, QT SQL Tools and mysql or PostgreSQL. KBarcode is available for download here. Some user feedback shows what people are doing with the software. If you have access to the hardware, the Linux CueCat driver may be a useful resource for reading back your new barcode labels.
System Applications CORBA CLORB 0.5 releasedVersion 0.5 of CLORB, a Common Lisp CORBA 2 Object Request Broker, is out. "This version provides Valuetype, a new IDL parser, improved ports, and a new stub and skeleton implementation."
Database Software Firebird 1.5 Release Candidate 9Version 1.5 RC 9 of the Firebird Database is available. "The 1.5 release is the first version based on new, cleaned and improved C++ source code tree with many new features and bugs fixed."
MySQL 4.0.18 has been releasedVersion 4.0.18 of the MySQL database is out. "This is a bugfix release for the current production version."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe February 16, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is available with the latest PostgreSQL database information. "Another exciting, action-packed week of PostgreSQL development has come and gone. Work included a number of cleanup improvements to recent changes, some work on new features, and bug fixing at a minimum; but enough generalizing, let's get to it."
ZODB 3.2.1 and 3.1.5 releasedTwo new releases of ZODB, the Zope Object DataBase, came out this week. "These releases correspond to the Zope 2.7 and 2.6.4 releases made yesterday. They are bug fix releases, and users of earlier versions are encouraged to upgrade. There are no significant changes since the release candidates of three weeks ago."
Mail Software Three new miltersA bunch of new email filters are available on milter.org. The new filters include milter-sender 0.50, milter-spamc 0.14, milter-date 0.7, milter-ahead 0.2, and milter-7bit 0.1.
Web Site Development KimDaBa version 1.1 released.Version 1.1 of KimDaBa, the KDE Image Database, is out. "KimDaBa version 1.0 was announce early December last year. Lots of users started using KimDaBa back then, and lots of feature requested came in. This version tries to honor the most wanted features, and thus makes it an even more attractive application."
Two new versions of ZopeVersions 2.6.4 and 2.7.0 of the Zope content management system are available.
Web Services Tip: Passing files to a Web service (IBM developerWorks)Benoît Marchal works with binary data and SOAP on IBM's developerWorks. "In this tip, Benoît discusses the different solutions available for passing binary data (typically files) to a Web service."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications jackEQ 0.4.0 releasedVersion 0.4.0 of jackEQ, an equalizer application for the JACK Audio Connection Kit, has been released. The changes are summarized as: "Fixed the rc file so the io menu displays the checks properly. General tidyups which I have forgotten."
Zinf 2.2.5 released (GnomeDesktop)Version 2.2.5 of the Zinf audio player has been announced. "This is the first version of zinf to use GTK2 for it's interface. This is good news for those of us who don't really get on with RB, but want to rid the world of GTK1. As always I'm sure the Zinf developers would appreciate user feedback (and of course more people willing to help)."
Desktop Environments GNOME Development Release 2.5.4 (GnomeDesktop)Development Release 2.5.4 of the GNOME desktop environment has been announced. "This release is a snapshot of development code. Although it is buildable and usable, it is primarily intended for testing and hacking purposes."
GNOME Development Release 2.5.5 (GnomeDesktop)The GNOME developers have been busy this week, development version 2.5.5 of GNOME was announced. "The latest GNOME Development Release is ready for your bug-busting and testing pleasure!"
The latest Gnome SummaryThe GNOME Summary covering developments through February 14 is available. This issue looks at the 2.5.4 development release, Gcalctool, and several other topics.
Bag of Software (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org has a multiple announcement for several utilities. "New releases of a GTK partitioning tool, USB Storage device manager and pppoe configurator...."
Quickies: Kuake, Scribus, GTK-Qt, KDE Web Dev, KimDaba (KDE.News)KDE.News has a multiple announcement for a bunch of new KDE software and information. Read about Kuake, Scribus, GTK-Qt, KDE Web Dev, and KimDaba.
KDE-CVS-Digest (KDE.News)The February 13, 2004 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest is online, here's the summary: "The LDAP kio-slave is improved with TSL and SSL for secure connections and SASL for authentication. KDEPIM has a new certificate manager. Work proceeds apace on the khtml XML parser and xpath libraries. Plus a large number of bug fixes in Kopete. Whenever someone does any changes in the name of Usability, it seems to generate much discussion."
XFree86 4.4.0 Release Candidate #3Release Candidate #3 of XFree86 version 4.4.0 has been announced. "In what is hoped to be the final showing of our Release Candidate Series, RC3 is finally tagged! Well, this certainly took long enough, but there were a lot of bugs, even some security ones, trapped during this delay of the Great Licence Debate, so it was well worth it."
Electronics gEDA NewsThe latest releases from the gEDA project include new versions of the Covered Verilog code coverage analysis tool, and the Icarus Verilog compiler.
PCB 20040215 releasedThe Open Collector site mentions the availability of a new snapshot of PCB, a printed circuit board CAD program. This version features new library additions, lots of bug fixes, and more.
Financial Applications SQL-Ledger 2.2.4Version 2.2.4 of SQL-Ledger, a Perl-based accounting system, has been announced. Changes include updated translations, a new customer and vendor history report, a patchlevel check for Apache 2.0, and more.
Games New Pygame ReleasesNew Python-based games on the Pygame site include Solarwolf 1.5, Pycadia 0.5.1, and Pydance 0.9.1.
wftk version 0.7.0 releasedVersion 0.7.0 of the WorldForge game project's wftk library has been announced. Change information is in the source code.
Graphics Inkscape 0.37 Officially released (GnomeDesktop)Version 0.37 of Inkscape, a drawing package, has been announced. "Inkscape 0.37 includes many major new features, numerous bug fixes, and extensive codebase cleanup." Also, boolean operations can be applied to graphics.
Sodipodi 0.34 releasedVersion 0.34 of Sodipodi, a drawing package, has been announced. "This release incorporates for the first time path composition operations (union, intersection and subtraction) and new, calligraphic pen based freehand drawing. Plus many bugfixes and smaller features, as usual."
GUI Packages New software for FLTKThe latest releases for FLTK, the Fast Light Toolkit include version 2.9.1 of FLU, small collection of FLTK Widgets, and version 0.3 of FL_Signal, a callback and signal/slot library.
Interoperability Samba 3.0.2a Available for DownloadSamba version 3.0.2a has been released. "Samba 3.0.2a is a minor patch release for the 3.0.2 code base to address, in particular, a problem when using pdbedit to sanitize (--force-initialized-passwords) Samba's tdbsam backend. This is the latest stable release of Samba. This is the version that all production Samba servers should be running for all current bug-fixes."
Wine 20040213 releasedRelease 20040213 of Wine has been announced. Changes include screen resolution change improvements, shell32 improvements, Winelib compatibility fixes, bug fixes, and more.
Wine TrafficIssue #210 of Wine Traffic is out with the latest Wine news.
Music Applications BEAST/BSE 0.6.0 is released (GnomeDesktop)Version 0.6.0 of BEAST/BSE, a music composition and modular synthesis application, has been announced. "Outstanding new features include support for skins, many sample file formats, MIDI file import abilities, an improved piano roll widget, the track editor which allows for easy selection of synthesisers or samples as track sources, loop support in songs and unlimited Undo/Redo capabilities."
Horgand 1.06 releasedVersion 1.06 of Horgand, an organ synthesizer, is available with lots of new changes.
wigwamjam proof of conceptWigwamjam is a proof-of-concept implementation of a genetic programming synthesizer. "The idea behind genetic interfaces is to grow complex functions merely by choosing from a range of options (or a population of genomes). each genome represents a function to create a sound, each iteration of the process of growing a sound, you choose the best one from the population which is then reseeded with mutants of that sound."
Office Suites OpenOffice.org NewsletterVolume 1, Issue 8 of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter is available with the latest OpenOffice.org office suite news.
Digital Photography Digikam 0.6 Released (KDE.News)Version 0.6 of Digikam has been announced. "After nearly one and half years of development Digikam 0.6 and its plugin package have been released. Digikam is a simple digital photo management application which makes importing and organizing digital photos a "snap". The photos can be organized in albums which are automatically sorted chronologically. An easy to use interface is provided to connect to your camera and preview images and download and/or delete them."
Science GRAMPS 1.0.0 ''Stable as a Tombstone'' released (GnomeDesktop)Version 1.0.0 of GRAMPS, the Genealogical Research And Management Programming System, has been announced. "The GRAMPS project is pleased to announce the 1.0.0 ("Stable as a Tombstone") release of GRAMPS, the Genealogical Research And Management Programming System. After more that 2 1/2 years of development, GRAMPS is leaving the "beta" stage with its first "stable" release."
Web Browsers Galeon 1.3.13a releasedVersion 1.3.13a of Galeon, a minimalist web browser, has been announced on the heels of version 1.3.13. The earlier release was dubbed "Lets try that again". "I suppose you can say we were asking for it with a release name like that... I used the shiny new automake 1.8.2 when building the tarballs and that was obviously a mistake. It fails to include a helper script needed to make installation succeed. I've readded this file and pushed out 1.3.13a tarballs."
Mozilla Links NewsletterThe Mozilla Links Newsletter for February 17, 2004 is available. "Along with the new name and version, a definitive logo for Mozilla Firefox was released. A new image featuring an agile firefox (red panda) surrounding a globe, a product slogan ("The browser, reloaded") and a marketing slogan ("Take back the web") were unveiled, as well as buttons you can use to let your web visitors know about this terrific product."
Independent Status Reports (MozillaZine)The Mozilla Independent Status Reports for February 15, 2004 are out. "The latest set of status reports includes updates from MSDbar, DownloadWith, the Mozilla-Delphi Project, MozManual, mozCC, Launchy, Reload Every and Dictionary Search."
mozilla.org Status Update (MozillaZine)The mozilla.org Status Update for February 16, 2004 has been announced. "It includes news on Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, junk mail detection, browser data migration, popup blocking, SVG, new mail notification, permissions and more."
Miscellaneous BloGTK 0.9 Released (GnomeDesktop)Version 0.9 of the BloGTK web logging client is out. "This version has been thoroughly injected with Botox so that unnecessary lines no longer uglify the interface. Also character handling has been improved so that Unicode characters can be properly escaped for non-Unicode blogs."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe February 10-17, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with the latest Caml language news.
Java Approaches to MockingSimon Stewart writes about mock objects on O'Reilly. "Everyone knows what a mock is, just from the name, but as with many seemingly simple ideas, there is more to them than first meets the eye. This article explores the two types of mocks that exist and covers some of the problems inherent in their use. Finally, it considers the reason why a developer might chose to use mocks. After all, common understanding holds that mocks are used for unit testing, a key part of Test Driven Design, but that isn't necessarily about testing at all."
JSP Six Cool New JSP and Servlet FeaturesBruce W. Perry introduces new JSP and Servlet Features on O'Reilly. "If you use a web container such as Tomcat 5.x, which supports Servlet API 2.4 and JSP 2.0, then you can use a number of useful new features. These include: 1. Using a servlet as a welcome file. 2. Mapping filters to RequestDispatchers. 3. The new ServletRequestListener and ServletRequestAttributeListener interfaces. 4. Using Expression Language (EL) code within template text, not just as tag attribute values. 5. Writing tag files. 6. Writing Expression Language qualified functions."
Lisp OpenMCL 0.14.1 releasedVersion 0.14.1 OpenMCL, a Common Lisp implementation, is out. "This version provides better integration of Objective-C objects into CLOS, bundles some popular system building tools, makes REQUIRE more flexible, and more."
Maintaining Portable Lisp Programs - new paperPaolo Amoroso has sent us a link to a new paper on writing portable Lisp. "Christophe Rhodes has written the paper "Maintaining Portable Lisp Programs - It's a bug, not a feature". It examines "the use of read-time feature conditionals, with particular emphasis on writing portable Common Lisp code which aspires to both forwards- and backwards-compatibility"."
Performance and Evaluation of Lisp Systems released in PDF formatRichard Gabriel's book Performance and Evaluation of Lisp Systems is available in PDF format for download.
Perl This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)February 9-15, 2004 edition of This Week on perl5-porters has been published. "Another quiet week on perl5-porters; but big patches were proposed, demonstrating that the porters are not dead yet. Read about a revamp of the parser, an in-depth modification of the internals, and other bugs and associated fixes."
This week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)This week on Perl 6 for February 8, 2004 is out, here's the summary: "Lots of little clean-ups done to Parrot this week, while the Perl 6 language design focuses on vector operations and Unicode operators."
PHP PHP 4.3.5RC3 released!Version 4.3.5RC3 of PHP is available. "This will be the last release candidate prior to the final release, so please test it as much as possible." PHP 5.0 Beta 4 is also out.
PHP Weekly Summary for February 16, 2004The PHP Weekly Summary for February 16, 2004 is out. Topics include: Deprecate dl(), PHP beta 4, Exceptions change.
Python DrPython 2.2.3 releasedVersion 2.2.3 (stable) of DrPython, a Python language editing environment, is out. See the Change Log for details.
Stackless 3.0 for Python 2.3.3 is readyVersion 3.0 of Stackless Python for Python 2.3.3 is out. Stackless Python does not use the C Stack. "After a longer search for some final bug which applied to both Stackless for Python 2.2 and 2.3, I am releasing a so far final version of Stackless 3.0. There are a couple fo enhancements planned, of course. Some of them will be the theme of the upcoming Sprint on Stackless Python in March 2004".
What's New in Python 2.4A.M. Kuchling has released an early version (version 0.0) of the document What's New in Python 2.4. "This article explains the new features in Python 2.4. No release date for Python 2.4 has been set; expect that this will happen mid-2004. While Python 2.3 was primarily a library development release, Python 2.4 may extend the core language and interpreter in as-yet-undetermined ways."
PyZine Issue #5Issue #5 of PyZine, an online Python magazine is out with several interesting Python articles.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The February 17, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is available with links to many Python language articles.
Ruby Why's (Poignant) Guide to RubyThe Ruby Garden mentions a new online Ruby book, Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby. "The (Poignant) Guide is a new approach to teahcing Ruby, emphasizing the lingual traits of Ruby and illustrating its uniqueness with comics, visual imagery, and songs with accompanying hand gestures. This date marks the release of the first three chapters."
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! for February 16, 2004 is available with the week's Tcl/Tk article links.
XML A survey of XML standards: Part 3 (IBM developerWorks)Uche Ogbuji continues his series on XML standards with part three. "The world of XML is vast and growing, with a huge variety of standards and technologies that interact in complex ways. It can be difficult for beginners to navigate the most important aspects of XML, and for users to keep track of new entries and changes in the space. XML is a basic syntax upon which you develop local and global vocabularies. The key to its success is that several very important data formats are defined as XML vocabularies. In this article, Uche Ogbuji presents the most important of these."
Miscellaneous dejaGnu 1.4.4 (stable) releasedVersion 1.4.4 (stable) of the dejaGnu software testing framework has been announced. The What's new document says: "This release has a number of substantial changes over version 1.3. The most visible change is that the version of Expect and Tcl included in the release are up-to-date with the current stable net releases. The biggest change is years of modifications to the target configuration system, used for cross testing. While this greatly improved cross testing, is has made that subsystem very complicated. The goal is to have this entirely rewritten using iTcl by the next release."
Rapid application development tools, part 3: More RAD tools (OSDN DevChannel)Michael Stibane covers several more rapid application development tools in part 3 of an OSDN DevChannel series. "In parts 1 and 2 of this series I discussed database front end development tools and RAD environments for the BASIC language on Linux. I'll conclude by looking at tools for smaller programming languages (I won't talk about C++/KDevelop/Anjuta or Java/Eclipse) and little-known or independently developed languages."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in the news Recommended Reading Pandora's box for open source (News.com)News.com examines the increasing acceptance of open-source software by large companies. "Open source has become something like the invisible hand of the software economy, driving prices down and pinpointing those areas ripe for commodity status. While Microsoft continues to fight it, other companies have no choice but to embrace the technology, even though its long-term profitability remains largely unproven."
A Proposal of Truce (LinuxWorld)LinuxWorld is running an open letter to Darl McBride which purports to be a set of conditions for a truce between SCO and the Linux community. "We fully recognize your right to defend your IP. We ask that you recognize our right to defend our IP. This means obeying the terms of our licenses. You must stop distributing Linux, Samba and GCC unless you are willing to agree to the terms of our General Public License (GPL)." Of course, this begs the question of just how many people in the community want a truce with SCO at this point.
Trade Shows and Conferences Emerging Technology Conference Coverage (O'Reilly)O'Reilly has published extensive coverage of the ongoing Emerging Technology Conference Coverage and Digital Democracy Teach-In.
Report: KDE at Paris Solutions Linux 2004 (KDE.News)KDE.News has a report on KDE activity at the Solutions Linux trade show in France. "Solutions Linux ran for three days and welcomed around 9600 visitors this year. After speaking with our (prospective) users, my impression is that there is no big migration plan to Linux on desktop happening now in France. The boldest move is being done by the Homeland Ministry (Ministère de l'intérieur) which is migrating to OpenOffice.org on Windows."
The SCO Problem Weirder & Weirder (ComputerWorld)ComputerWorld looks at SCO's suit against Novell. "If SCO's lawyers could make a good case with a contract lawsuit, they would. Apparently, they can't. It turns out that SCO's lawyers aren't likely to have much luck with a slander-of-title suit either. It won't pry loose the Unix copyrights from Novell, since that's a contract issue that's not affected by any of Novell's public statements. And a slander-of-title lawsuit is likely to be tossed out by a judge, whose first question will be, 'Why didn't you file a contract suit?'" (The article is a couple of weeks old, but worth a mention).
Novell Notifies SCO (Groklaw)Groklaw looks at Novell's latest letter to SCO. "It seems SCO did not obey Novell's instructions by the deadline. Consequently, Novell in a new letter, dated February 11, takes the following action:"""Accordingly, pursuant to Section 4.16(b) of the Asset Purchase Agreement, Novell, on behalf of The SCO Group, hereby waives any purported right SCO may claim to require Sequent (or IBM as its successor) to treat Sequent Code as subject to the confidentiality obligations or use restrictions of Sequent's SVRX license.""
Novell's Motion to Dismiss and Memorandum in Support (Groklaw)Groklaw has posted Novell's motion to dismiss the SCO lawsuit, along with the associated memorandum of support. "SCO admits, they point out, that they are not the copyright owners in the very relief they ask the court to grant them: namely, they ask that the Court issue an injunction 'requiring Novell to assign to SCO any and all copyrights Novell has registered in UNIX and UnixWare.' You can't ask for copyrights to be assigned to you if you already have them, can you? If you don't already have them, you can't scream slander of title if the person you want to assign them to you says they own them."
Followup Letters to Lehman - Exh. B & C to Red Hat's Motion to Supplement (Groklaw)Groklaw has posted the SCO followup letter to Lehman Brothers' CEO. "I wish I could have seen the look on the CEO Mr. Fuld's face when he received this letter."
An analysis of SCO Group (IT Manager's Journal)IT Manager's Journal (an OSDN site, it seems) has unwittingly given us a view into the bizarre mindset of investment analysts with this long-winded "analysis" of the SCO Group. "In addition, if SCO Group's various lawsuits were to result in reduced demand for Linux, from both current and potentially new large enterprise customers, then that could be negative for Linux-related stocks such as SCOX."
AT&T trips up SCO (ComputerWorld)ComputerWorld has discovered AT&T's old communications on the meaning of the Unix licenses, as dug up by Novell. "Of the million lines of Linux code that SCO claims IBM hijacked from Unix, SCO hasn't identified a single line that came from the original Unix source code. It was all created by IBM. According to AT&T in 1985, that means it's IBM's to keep -- or give away. And SCO's theory that it owns Linux code appears to be kaput."
Companies Developer offers Linux-based RFID (Computerworld)Computerworld covers the use of a Linux-based RFID system from Magellan Technologies. "Magellan Technologies has developed what it claims to be a world-first in RFID technology that allows many closely bunched tags to be uniquely identified without interference. The developer has taken the open source route using Linux-based readers and an open source application interface. Magellan's software manager Jeff Gray said the decision to adopt Linux was due to cost and interoperability. "
Intel to speed lagging Linux support (ZDNet)ZDNet has an article on Intel's plan to improve its Linux support. "Theo de Raadt, head of another open-source operating system, OpenBSD, steers people away from Intel and toward the Prism wireless networking chips from GlobespanVirata. 'Everyone in the open-source community is buying Prism chip based (wireless network) cards,' de Raadt said. 'The chipset is fully documented, and open-source drivers exist on all operating systems.'"
Microsoft grapples with leak of source code (CNN)CNN reports on the apparent leak of some Windows code. "The leak could potentially put more Windows users at risk because it opens the door to more people finding vulnerabilities in Microsoft's code -- and using them in malicious ways.... That could, in turn, wreak havoc on Microsoft's ability to respond with fixes in a controlled manner."
Linux Adoption Australian users back desktop Linux (ZDNet)ZDNet Australia covers a study of tech users in Australian and New Zealand. "More than two-thirds of the survey respondents had used Linux personally, with the greatest single percentage of respondents (29.4 per cent) having used it for more than three years. New users (those who have used Linux for under twelve months) amounted to a relatively small percentage of total respondents, indicating that Linux is well-established within its user base."
Survey: More data centers will use Linux in '04 (SearchEnterpriseLinux)SearchEnterpriseLinux reports on a survey that indicates substantial growth of Linux in the data center market. "In an online spending survey of 130 IT managers and decision makers, 30% said that, among Linux-related projects planned for 2004, a data center migration to Linux would receive the greatest monetary commitment. Of that percentage, 52.7% indicated they'd be spending up to $99,000 on the migration, and 13% expect to spend between $100,000 and $499,000."
Paris eyes open-source switch (News.com)News.com reports on a study concerning Linux deployment in Paris, France. "Systems integrator Unilog is set to carry out a feasibility study on the installation of open-source software systems for the city of Paris, the company has said. On the strength of an earlier Unilog study, Munich agreed to migrate thousands of desktops from Windows to the open-source operating system Linux."
Linux Finishes Second Among Oracle Developers (CXOtoday)CXOtoday reports on the rising popularity among India's Oracle developers. "Oracle India announced that Linux has emerged the second most popular OS platform among its developers in India, and that seven of its new customers have recently chosen to run its technology and applications software on the OS."
A Computer Lab with No Windows, Part I (Linux Journal)The Linux Journal reports from Sisler High School (in Manitoba) on the use of the Linux Terminal Server Project distribution to equip student labs. "Public school systems always are underfunded, and because we are using taxpayers' money, we have the responsibility to get the most for our money. By using a Linux terminal server with cheap, 'obsolete' thin clients, I have been able to deliver many computer courses that are fully compatible with if not better than what teachers using Microsoft Windows are offering. With the money saved on a Linux terminal server lab, the school can fund other subject areas."
Interviews FOSDEM 2004: Interview with Gunnar Schmi Dt of KDE Accessibility ProjectThe FOSDEM team talks with Gunnar Schmi Dt of the KDE Accessibility Project. "Gunnar Schmi Dt - In my talk on Saturday afternoon I will talk about the Qt Accessibility Framework and the bridge to ATK. Part of that talk will be an overview of the architecture around ATK and AT-SPI, but I will also show the impact of the accessibility architectures when writing KDE applications. During the tutorial on Sunday afternoon I will show which accessibility features are currently available on the current KDE 3.2."
The final FOSDEM interviewsThe final set of FOSDEM interviews has been posted; they are with Gunnar Schmi Dt (KDE accessibility), Ian Formanek (NetBeans), and Tim O'Reilly: "My fundamental premise is that the world we all grew up in -- the world of both Microsoft and the Free Software Foundation -- is fundamentally challenged by the internet. The internet (not linux) is the greatest triumph to date of the open source approach, yet it has changed the rules of software deployment so fundamentally that many of the techniques embraced by the open source community as first principles don't necessarily give the desired results. We need to reinvent open source in the age of the internet. My talk gives some suggestions for what we need to think about."
Resources Power Upgrades with apt4rpm (Linux Journal)Mike McCallister writes about apt4rpm in the Linux Journal. "If you've ever had experience with a Debian-based system, you know that keeping a system updated is little more than a command away. The Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) simplifies things immensely. Simply type apt-get update to see what's new and apt-get install package to get it. Is a new version of your distribution out? Type apt-get dist-upgrade, and you're on your way. What many folks don't know is it is indeed possible to have the best of both worlds. Thanks to the magic of free software and a terrific team of Brazilian developers, you can use APT with your RPM-based distribution."
Building PHP Web services with PEAR (devchannel)DevChannel.org looks at PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository). "Once you have installed the PEAR Package Manager you can proceed to installing the necessary PEAR modules for using SOAP in PHP by using the pear install [Module_Name] command. If you execute this command while you have an active connection to the Internet, it will automatically download and install the module in your local environment. If you don't have an active connection, you will need to download the SOAP package for PEAR as well as some prerequisite PEAR modules from http://pear.php.net/packages.php in order to install the SOAP package, including Mail_Mime, Net_URL, HTTP_Request, and Net_DIME."
SpamAssassin Quickstart (Linux Productivity Magazine)Linux Productivity Magazine is running a set of articles on SpamAssassin in their latest edition. "This issue of Linux Productivity Magazine details Spamassassin: how to install it, how to configure it, and how to use it. No two SpamAssassin installations are alike because of how differently email is handled in different situations. But this issue will guide you through a few of the most common scenarios."
Zope SuperGuide for NewbiesZopeMag has published a new Zope SuperGuide. "While this SuperGuide is written mainly for beginners, we hope that an occasional nugget of information may also be of help to the more experienced Zope user or developer, for example if he/she needs to learn about Zope Sprinting or the Zope Public License."
Reviews Cubicleware: Sun's JDS vs. Ximian XD2 (NewsForge)NewsForge compares the Java Desktop System (JDS) from Sun to Ximian XD2. "Sun's Java Desktop System joins Novell's Ximian XD2 as a tailored GNOME desktop that's aimed at cubicle workers in large enterprise settings, such as government offices and big educational institutions. In the future, Linux will be the desktop used by the most, and the least, computer-literate folks on the planet."
Marcel Gagne: Books Featuring KDE (KDE.News)KDE.News covers KDE oriented books by Marcel Gagne. "We have a scoop about a new book Marcel is writing. He is finishing his third book which will feature KDE 3.2 as the corporate desktop of choice."
The Secret World of ReiserFS (Yahoo!News)Yahoo!News looks at ReiserFS and the upcoming Reiser4 release. "Among the early adopters will be Lindows.com, which has a financial relationship with Namesys and is building Reiser4 into the next version of LindowsOS, the desktop operating system. The new version of Lindows will be out sometime in 2004. (LindowsOS currently uses version 3 of ReiserFS.) SuSE Linux and Gentoo also use ReiserFS as their default filesystem." (Thanks to Rich Brown)
Miscellaneous Improvements in kernel development (developerWorks)developerWorks has posted a look at how the kernel development process has changed between 2.4 and 2.6. "Having a live, central repository for the latest changes to the Linux kernel is invaluable. Every change or patch that is accepted into the kernel is tracked as a changeset. End users and developers can keep their own copy of the source repository and update it at will with the latest changesets using a simple command. For developers, this means the ability to always be working with the latest copy of the code."
OSS in Space (Linux Journal)Linux Journal takes a look at how OSS might have benefited the 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission. "At first glance, this dialogue is merely interesting; I think every hardware and software engineer/tinkerer should read them. On deeper reflection, however, I was struck by something more. Although I assume it was not their intention, the authors quite clearly demonstrate how open-source software (OSS) and the OSS development model would have helped this project enormously, not only in finding the bug but, in all probability, preventing the bug in the first place. The extracts from these e-mails and my comments below should make more sense to you after you've read the original postings."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Non-Commercial announcements Finnish Government supports Open Source in South AfricaThe Finnish government will fund the use of Midgard in South Africa. "The Finnish government has funded Ungana-Afrika to support Southern African NGOs, which will include the recommendation of appropriate web-site and content management solutions using the Open Source Midgard Content Management System (CMS)."
Medical gives FreeB and OpenEMR greenlight (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews covers the acceptance of the FreeB medical billing system in California. "FreeB the only medical billing system available under the GPL, has just passed a major milestone thanks to the OpenEMR Project. A X12 file generated by FreeB has passed the tests to be accepted by Medical."
Non-Profit Mozilla Europe Group Launches (MozillaZine)MozillaZine has an announcement for a new non-profit European Mozilla group. "Mozilla Europe aims to promote Mozilla, encourage contributions to project and provide services to stimulate enterprise adoption. The group plans to work with existing Mozilla communities throughout the continent and has the full backing of the Mozilla Foundation, which has designated the nascent organisation as its first international affiliate."
The Open Group's February 12 Teleconference MinutesThe minutes from the February 12, 2004 Open Group teleconference are available.
Commercial announcements Allnet GmbH resolves iptables GPL violationThe Netfilter/iptables project has sent out a press release noting that Allnet GmbH, which had been shipping a couple of routers containing netfilter code but which had not been making source available as required by the GPL, has come to a settlement with the project. Allnet will bring itself into compliance with the GPL; the company will also be making a "significant" donation to the Free Software Foundation Europe and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure.
Aonix Expands Its ObjectAda for Linux Product LineAonix has announced the availability of its product line on Linux. "Aonix, a leading provider of Ada 95 software development environments, is pleased to announce the expansion of their Linux product line with the new ObjectAda(R) for Linux cross PowerPC/LynxOS."
Astaro Unveils Configuration Manager for Management of Security Policies on Astaro FirewallsAstaro has released a new configuration manager. "Astaro (www.astaro.com), makers of the popular Astaro Security Linux, an all-in-one Internet security software appliance, today announced shipping of the Astaro Configuration Manager, a configuration tool that allows users to manage and configure their security policies centrally, automating the provisioning of network security rules on Astaro firewalls and VPNs."
BitRock InstallBuilder 1.0 ReleasedVersion 1.0 of BitRock InstallBuilder has been announced. "BitRock InstallBuilder simplifies the installation process of commercial Linux software, helping Independent Software Vendors and custom application developers improve the packaging, distribution and deployment of their products."
Grand Central Communications Elects Tim O'Reilly to Board of DirectorsTim O'Reilly has been elected to the Board of Directors of Grand Central Communications, Inc.
Lin---s (Lindash) Program Ensures LindowsOS for allLindows.com has announced the "Lin---s" (Lindash) program. In countries where the use of 'Lindows' is no longer allowed, the company has launched a new website at www.lin---s.com.
MailStripper 1.1.4 releasedVersion 1.1.4 of MailStripper, a commercial spam filter, is available.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Chosen for Electronic Design AutomationRed Hat has announced that it has made inroads into the EDA market. "..Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been selected as the recommended Linux platform for the x86, Itanium 2, and Opteron hardware architectures specified in the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Operating System Industry Roadmap published by the EDA Consortium. Leading EDA software companies such as Cadence Design Systems, Inc., Mentor Graphics and Synopsys, Inc. have also demonstrated their support for Red Hat by releasing products running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux."
Red Hat Appoints Matrix As Distributor of Its Solutions and Services In IsraelRed Hat has announced the appointment of Matrix as its main Solutions and Services Distributor in Israel.
SCO OpenServer Update Pack 2For your amusement: the SCO Group has just announced the availability of "OpenServer Update Pack 2." Bleeding-edge features in this update include support for USB devices and the bundling of PostgreSQL. Free software, it seems, is OK if it does not compete with SCO products. The "OpenServer development roadmap" calls for the eventual addition of other advanced features, including Apache and Mozilla.
New Books "The Perl CD Bookshelf, Version 4.0" Released by O'ReillyO'Reilly has published The Perl CD Bookshelf, Version 4.0. ""The Perl CD Bookshelf" keeps all the books Perl programmers have come to rely on right at their fingertips, wherever they may go. Version 4.0 gives them convenient access to their favorite books, traight from their CD-ROM drive."
Resources IBM releases free Q104 Software Evaluation KitIBM has released a new Q104 Software Evaluation Kit on two DVDs. "Get the latest DB2, Lotus, Rational, Tivoli, and WebSphere Linux code from IBM on DVD. This is the fastest way to get access to all of IBM middleware that has been ported to Linux."
LSB-FHS 2.3 Beta Release AvailableThe Open Group has announced the beta release of the LSB-FHS test suite for the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard Version 2.3, used to test the filesystem hierarchy aspects of the Linux Standard Base. This release is targeted for testing the LSB 2.x specification release series and is not for use with LSB 1.3 or earlier.
Upcoming Events Real-time and Embedded Systems Workshop CFPA call for papers has gone out for the Annual Real-time and Embedded Systems Workshop. The event will take place in Washington, DC on July 12 - 15, 2004.
Novell's Chris Stone Will Not Speak at Harvard Feb. 23 - Moglen Will (Groklaw)Novell's Chris Stone is unable to speak at the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology on February 23, Eben Moglen will take his place. "Due to concerns regarding litigation filed by SCO after our invitation for Mr. Stone to speak was issued, Novell's General Counsel has informed us that Novell Vice Chairman Chris Stone will be unable to come speak to JOLT on Feb 23rd."
OSBC 2004: Major Linux VCs, Users and Legal expertsOpen Source Business Conference 2004 debuts March 16 and 17 at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. Keynote presentations, panel sessions and speakers from some of the world's leaders in business, law, venture capital and technology assess the financial impact of open source software on global business.
PyCon Early Bird Registration ExtendedThe early bird registration for PyCon 2004 has been extended to February 22.
Invitation to GNU/Linux Summit 2004The GNU/Linux Summit 2004 Seminar will be held in Helsinki, Finland on February 26 and 27, 2004.
Events: February 19 - April 15, 2004
Web sites new Linux Portal and the Linux E-MagazineThe Linuxhotbox E-Magazine is a new Linux portal and online magazine. "The magazine will focus on issues interesting to Linux users and professionals, with Linux news and articles and information regarding to Linux software and distributions."
PostgreSQLFr.org launchedPostgreSQLFr.org is new French language web site that is devoted to coverage of the PostgreSQL database.
Software announcements This week's software announcementsHere are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
Page editor: Forrest Cook Letters to the editor Firefox browser review -- missing features?
Greetings,
MSFT Code and BugTraq
Jonathan,
Please take down or alter this page
The following page contains a false claim, and several misleading ones:
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
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