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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Bad laws, bad code, bad behavior (ZDNet)News.com looks at bad laws in the U.S. including a new bill which would require parental consent before installing "peer to peer" software. "Software distribution sites like those of SourceForge and the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network would be outlawed, if they did not follow these byzantine legal rules, which include obtaining 'verifiable parental consent,' if the downloader is a minor, ensuring that the software can be readily uninstalled, keeping 'records of its compliance' and so on. Anyone running such a Web site outside the United States would be required to hire a "resident agent" and file reports with the FTC--hardly a boon to the burgeoning global open-source movement."
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld)Nicholas Petreley trashes GNOME 2.6 in a ComputerWorld column. "Of all the criticisms one might lodge against GNOME, it's the hypocrisy of its design philosophy that looms largest. GNOME grew out of the desire to free people from Microsoft's ability to dictate what users can or can't do. Yet GNOME is built on the premise that its developers are so much wiser than users when it comes to navigating folders and setting colors that GNOME users shouldn't have a choice in the matter."
Benchmarking Filesystems (LinuxGazette)LinuxGazette compares journaling filesystems. "I recently purchased a Western Digital 250GB/8M/7200RPM drive and wondered which journaling file system I should use. I currently use ext2 on my other, smaller hard drives. Upon reboot or unclean shutdown, e2fsck takes a while on drives only 40 and 60 gigabytes. Therefore I knew using a journaling file system would be my best bet. The question is: which is the best? In order to determine this I used common operations that Linux users may perform on a regular basis instead of using benchmark tools such as Bonnie or Iozone. I wanted a "real life" benchmark analysis."
Trade Shows and Conferences The Linux Audio Conference 2004 (Linux Journal)Dave Phillips reports from the Linux Audio Software Conference in the Linux Journal. "Developer Bob Ham revealed plans for his Linux Audio Session Handler (LASH), a system for saving and restoring the states of and connections between any number of LASH-aware audio applications. LASH is a much-needed system. As Linux audio applications continue to subscribe to the JACK bus, a means for saving and restoring their states becomes most valuable."
Open Source in Africa (O'ReillyNet)Here's an O'ReillyNet report from the Africa Source conference. "This meeting, called Africa Source, was the first event of its kind, bringing together developers from roughly 25 countries on the continent, as well as visitors from a dozen countries outside Africa. Africa Source had several organizers, including SchoolNet Namibia, The Tactical Technology Collective, and The AllAfrica Foundation, with support from The Open Society Institute, and USAID."
The SCO Problem Canadian bank backs away from SCO (News.com)News.com reports that the Royal Bank of Canada has sold the bulk of its investment in SCO to BayStar, which is currently trying to redeem its stake. "'The timing and price of our purchase of RBC's holdings in SCO presented a strategic and financial opportunity for BayStar and its investors,' a BayStar representative said, declining to discuss the motivation or terms of the sale."Update: Interestingly, RBC has converted the remainder of its holdings into common stock at a rate of $13.50/share - over twice the current market price. One might conclude that RBC has had enough of this particular game.
Darl Secretly Attended Novell's Brainshare (Groklaw)Groklaw looks at a pair of interviews with Darl McBride and comes to some conclusions about SCO's strategy in its suit against Novell. "Both interviews indicate that the SCO plan in the Novell lawsuit was to have some ex-Novell executives on the stand to testify that they were at Novell at the time when the negotiations were going on and the contract was written up, both when Novell bought UNIX and when it sold whatever portion of UNIX they sold (SCO claims all of it, naturally), whereas the current Novell executives were not participants. They presumed that testimony would carry the day. Darl is one of the ex-Novell executives. Of course, if Novell succeeds in turning it instead into a federal copyright question, that plan goes down the drain."
Now It's Novell v. Canopy (Groklaw)Groklaw delves into a strange, obscure legal battle between Novell and Canopy (SCO's parent company and largest owner) over DR-DOS and the associated Microsoft lawsuit. "According to the Daily Herald article, Canopy says it all happened like this: Novell was really the one that wanted to sue Microsoft but was afraid of retaliation. So they negotiated with Canopy to do it for them, then sold them rights to the DR-DOS source code on condition that Canopy sue Microsoft. Novell retained rights to royalties and license fees, but they kept out of the written agreements the part about Canopy suing on their behalf. That, according to Canopy, was agreed upon orally, their little secret. Now Canopy is trying to compel them to live up to the alleged oral contract. Those Canopy folks seem to have altogether too much time on their hands."
Companies HP brings OpenVMS to the SuperDome (ZDNet)ZDNet covers the release of OpenVMS. "The porting of the operating system to Itanium 2-based systems will give OpenVMS users an upgrade path when HP discontinues the Alpha processor line, which it picked up with the acquisition of Compaq."
Red Hat Desktop strategy: Semantics have been part of the messaging problem (NewsForge)NewsForge has an article by Jeremy Hogan, Red Hat's Community Relations Manager, about the company's desktop strategy. "And here we are. We've just launched the first Red Hat product with "desktop" in its name (albeit with the silent "corporate" in front of it). This move is alleged to be in response to Sun's Java Desktop System. In actuality, it is in line with our market's demand, and the strategy we articulate in our Open Source Architecture. It is also just the first phase, because we aren't ready to give (or exceed) the single system consumer desktop experience currently available."
Linux Adoption A public library's success story (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org covers a library's conversion to Linux. "Over the past year, the Howard County (Md.) Public Library has migrated more than 200 public PCs from Windows 98 and Windows NT to Linux. These PCs are used both to surf the Internet and to access the library's catalogues."
Penguin power may rule in Vic classrooms (LinuxWorld)LinuxWorld looks at Novell's plans for Linux expansion in Victoria, Australia. "Swinburne senior systems administrator for IT services, Brian Habel, said the IT staff are very excited by Novells Linux strategy as it opens up a lot of opportunities. If you can run NetWare on Linux you can leverage other [Linux] applications, he said. We may already have Linux boxes installed so we could re-use that hardware. Novells SuSE Linux will give us more flexibility to get the job done."
Interviews Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge)NewsForge interviews Larry McVoy, author of Bitkeeper. "We are strongly committed to helping the Linux kernel community and other open source projects. Not everyone may believe this, but we'd be doing it even if there was no benefit to us. It is our way of giving back some value for all the great free software we use every day. We run our business on free software, we develop our product with free software, the free software community has been great for our business. All companies who benefit from free software ought to find a way to help the people who are producing that software."
de Icaza: Rest of World Will Force US Into Linux (OS News)OSNews talks with Miguel de Icaza about all things Linux and Novell. "Regarding Mono and the Microsoft .NET patents, Ximian is now splitting the "non-free" parts of .NET in Mono, and so OS providers can decide if they want to include in their products the "non-free non-ECMA" portions or not. Apparently, even without the non-free portions, Mono is fully usable, complete with the GTK# bindings, database and other free parts. Miguel knows that a completely "clean" Mono will still find resistance from some OS/distro makers for political reasons, rather than legal or technical ones, and he is prepared for it." (Found on Footnotes)
JBoss CEO Opposes Open-Source Java (CRN)CRN has posted an interview with Marc Fleury, CEO of JBoss. "JBoss CEO and founder Marc Fleury recently spoke with CRN Senior Editor Elizabeth Montalbano about why he's committed to open source as a lucrative business model and how things have changed between his company and Java steward Sun Microsystems since JBoss Inc. became an official J2EE licensee. Fleury also took a firm stand on why, despite objections from IBM and open-source proponents, Sun should continue to oversee Java licensing and compatibility."Thanks to Phillip Warner.
The People Behind KDE: Helio Chissini de Castro (KDE.News)This week the People Behind KDE travels to Brazil to talk with Helio Chissini de Castro. "The first time I took on KDE, I got Ark maintainership. After that I started packaging Conectiva Linux independent packages. Today I work on Kmix, solve a bug, or another time I try to see whats happening with Ark (since I plan to pass maintainership to the other new guys :-). On a non developer basis, I got the task to be the primary contact on South America and the personal task to annoy some guys of core kde from time to time... :-) And of course, I work hard on PR to show KDE to the Brazilian masses." (Found on KDE.News)
MandrakeSoft: An inside look (NewsForge)NewsForge interviews the Mandrakesoft management team. With regard to getting Mandrakelinux back on store shelves: "I can't divulge any specifics, but I can tell you that we are striking a deal with a major partner and we will be making that announcement in the next few weeks.... I will say that users know them and will be very pleased."
OpenBSD PF Developer Interview (O'ReillyNet)Federico Biancuzzi interviewed six leading OpenBSD developers responsible for PF, the packet filter. Daniel Hartmeier, Henning Brauer, Mike Frantzen, Cedric Berger, Ryan McBride and Can Erkin Acar talk about their work on OpenBSD and on new features and goals. The interviews are carried on O'ReillyNet in two parts. Here's part 1 and here's part 2.
Interview: Xandros and KDE (KDE.News)KDE.News interviews Rick Berenstein, Xandros Chairman and CTO and Ming Poon,Vice President for Software Development. "Ming Poon: When we first started our Linux desktop effort back in 1997, we actually implemented a 100% pure Java solution called Cabot which was running on the StrongARM processor on a little NC (Network Computer) called the NetWinder. It had pretty well all the key functionalities of KDE or any other desktop environment including toys like an Internet news ticker in the task bar. It is probably something more close to a true Java desktop than what Sun's Java Desktop is today. It was really 100% Java."
Mozelle Thompson, FTC Commissioner (InternetNews.com)Internet News talks with FTC commissioner Mozelle Thompson about spam, patents and other topics. "There should be a means to have the Patent Office re-examine patent they've granted. One thing we've talked about is to provide the Patent Office with better tools that would give them more granularity to understand and consider the difference between an idea and a technical standard, so they can understand that granting a patent might be overbroad or have unintended consequences." (Thanks to Doug Jensen)
Resources ULB 2004 Preview: Ultimate Linux Box Boots (Linux Journal)Linux Journal is building the 2004 edition of the Ultimate Linux Box. "Previous Ultimate Linux Boxes have had two processors, which generally has been the maximum in the market for parts for roll-your-own machines. Vendors will sell you a bigger system, but when you're building it yourself, the choice has been one processor or two. This year, we're moving up to a four-way. What better way to celebrate the 2.6 kernel?"
XSLT: Taming a functional language (DevChannel)The OSDN DevChannel has an excerpt from XSLT 2.0 Web Development, published by Prentice Hall PTR. "Everything is possible by asking the right questions. XSLT was designed as a functional programming language. The functional programming paradigm dates from the 1980s and has proved very useful, even if in a limited way. Other established functional languages include Haskell and Scheme."
Reviews Linux For Everyone: From Servers To Desktops (CXOtoday.com)CXOtoday reports that ELX, Everyone's Linux, is about to launch in India. "To flag its entry into the Linux segment, ELX plans to launch its low fee desktop operating system, known as Biz Desk 4.0, which will cater to both business and home users, and also its high end server called PowerISP, which is positioned as the primary Internet edge server for organizations, business houses, service providers and educational institutes."
Red Hat launches new desktop Linux (LinuxWorld)LinuxWorld takes a look at Red Hat's new desktop offering and a an upcoming carrier grade Linux product. "[Unlike] the WS distribution, which is sold on a per-system basis, Red Hat Desktop will be available in packages of 10 or 50 units when it begins shipping, said Mike Ferris, Red Hat's product marketing manager for Enterprise Linux. "What we are doing now is extending the Enterprise Linux product family by adding a Red Hat product that is specifically targeted at the front office," Ferris said."
Giving XFce4 a Spin (OS News)OS News reviews XFce. "[If] you've got GNOME and KDE as fantastic, complete desktop environments, why use XFce? The simple answer to this is - it's lightweight, and very fast. For users like me, who're stuck with 6-year-old Pentium IIs, KDE and GNOME seem more or less sluggish (depending upon how much RAM you have). But XFce is blazing fast." (Found on Footnotes)
Miscellaneous Luminary joins open-source protection firm (News.com)News.com reports that Bruce Perens has joined the board of directors of Open Source Risk Management, a company that sells insurance-like protection for Linux use. "Perens endorsed the company's mission. "Collective legal defense is the next necessary step for open source to be ready for business," Perens said in a statement. "Through a concentration of legal resources and expertise, OSRM will be a formidable power against the legal opponents to Open Source.""
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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