Linux in the news

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Open source: Prepare for attack (ZDNet)

Bruce Perens tells the community to be ready for more legal attacks in this column on ZDNet. "What we need is a one-stop, collective defense entity for open source--one that is well-capitalized and vendor neutral; one with funding primarily from enterprise users, rather than vendors with their conflicted interests; and one involved with most of the existing open-source legal defense efforts, so that it can handle cases economically and with the greatest possible expertise."

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Open Source And Viruses

Santeri Kannisto, Managing Director of SOT Finnish Software Engineering Ltd. has written an editorial on Open Source and the War on Viruses. "Open Source software, such as GNU/Linux, has remained remarkably free from the viruses which have plagued closed source software. It has been claimed by closed source advocates that viruses targeting GNU/Linux will begin to appear as Open Source software gains in popularity. However, the lack of viruses threatening GNU/Linux must also be understood as a result of the Open Source business model. It is this factor that leads us to expect that GNU/Linux will continue to be largely virus-free in the future." Click below for full text.

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Greedy hackers can hog Wi-Fi bandwidth (New Scientist)

The New Scientist has discovered that free software systems can make certain types of wireless bandwidth policies harder to enforce. "This type of hack became possible when a new generation of Wi-Fi access cards hit the market in 2003. The cards run the MAC protocol in software, rather than hardware. This makes it easy to change when using a Linux computer, on which all the code is openly available. For example, one line of the MAC protocol randomly assigns each hotspot user a rate for data transfer. The rates are constantly re-assigned so that on average each user receives data at the same rate. But by changing that line of the MAC protocol, a hacker can fix his rate at a high value, and siphon off most or all of the bandwidth."

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The SCO Problem

Pipe Dream or Problem? (StarBanner)

The (Ocala) Star Banner is running a New York Times article on the hazards of PIPE investments. "Mr. Goldfarb's fund, BayStar, invested last October in a private placement of convertible preferred stock in the SCO Group, a technology company. A few months later, BayStar demanded its money back in a dispute over how SCO's management was handling litigation related to its interest in the Unix operating system. SCO's stock has fallen 75 percent since BayStar's investment, although Mr. Goldfarb said his loss was much smaller. 'This is a lesson in why a smart investor would hedge their Pipe investment,' he said." There has been a lot of speculation that BayStar had hedged its SCO position (and thus not lost all the money it appears to have lost); this quote would appear to confirm it.

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First Report from the SCO v. IBM Hearing (Groklaw)

There was a hearing today in SCO v. IBM on SCO's motions to split the trial in two and to further delay the schedule. Groklaw has a preliminary report on what happened. "Judge Kimball took both [motions] under advisement. He acknowledged the importance of both this ruling and the ruling from the Novell hearing (which he recognized he had not ruled on yet), and said that he would try to 'get a ruling out within a few days.'"

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Judge Wells Denies SCO's Motion For Protective Order (Groklaw)

Groklaw reports that SCO has lost a small battle in the IBM case: a last-minute request to delay some depositions. "Court hears arguments and DENIES the motion due to lateness of the objection and inconvenience to the parties scheduled for deposition."

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Companies

The Open Sourcing of Ingres (IT-Director)

IT-Director is running a Robin Bloor column on the open-sourcing of Ingres by Computer Associates. "CA is also partnering with Zope, a popular Open Source content management solution. In effect this provides the world with an Ingres-based Open Source content management offering. On top of this CA is partnering with Plone (an Open Source Document Management solution) to provide an Ingres-based document management solution. The picture that is emerging then, is not of CA simply throwing Ingres into the Open Source pool, but using Ingres to assist mature and well respected Open Source initiatives, that could happily make use of an industrial strength database."

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Open Source Risk Management Grabs Attention for Its Linux Insurance (Local Tech Wire)

Local Tech Wire takes a look at the company Open Source Risk Management. "The company hired Pamela Jones, a para-legal who started a site called Groklaw, which Linux creator Linus Torvalds called an "open source approach to law." The site enlisted the aid of hundreds of volunteers to help research Linux legal issues. Some of those volunteers include people who contributed to Unix development, Jones has said. Salon notes that some have called Jones "the maintainer of the Linux anti-lawsuit kernel." OSRM also recently appointed Linux pioneer Bruce Perens to its board."

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Business

The gift economy and free software (NewsForge)

This lengthy NewsForge editorial looks at the economics of developing free software. "It's not necessarily the development philosophy that scares [big proprietary software corporations] so much as it is the erroneous idea that Free Software must be free of charge as well as free as in rights, and therefore there are no benefits for the creators and maintainers of the software. This is, as modern philosophers often say, "old thinking." It's a form of outdated reasoning from the Industrial Age."

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Linux Adoption

Linux In Government: Interoperability (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal covers some Linux in Government success stories. "An outgrowth of the Massachusetts Open Source Initiative, GOCC started with seven states and four municipalities that will contribute and download open-source software designed by government agencies for their use. The repository consists of a LAMP environment. It includes MySQL, Z Object Publishing Environment application server, Apache Web server, OpenLDAP and Debian."

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Linux is inching into college curricula (NewsForge)

NewsForge looks at open source use in American colleges and universities. "While it may be not soaking in as deeply at Ivy League or Pac-10 institutions, Linux and open source are a growing part of the curriculum at Marist College in New York. The 4,800-student school, with more than a decade of Linux leanings thanks primarily to the interest of school president Dennis Murray, has partnered with IBM, the Library of Congress, and most recently, Open Source Development Labs."

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Legal

Lindows Wins One in the Netherlands (Groklaw)

Groklaw notes that Lindows has won a round in the Netherlands courts. "I thought you might enjoy reading the ruling from the Netherlands, in which Microsoft is told to pay Lindows the costs of their latest legal scuffle and Lindows is told it need not stop using its corporate name. There is an email to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer from Lindows CEO Michael Robertson, in which he tells them he doesn't want the court costs. He just wants to be left alone so he can grow his business..."

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Interviews

Nat Friedman on Novell's Linux Strategy (Open for Business)

Open for Business talks with Nat Friedman, VP of Novell's Linux Technologies Group. "One thing that has caused endless debate on the part of both users and pundits is exactly what Novell is up to purchasing the two companies that are the best known backers of the rival GNOME and KDE desktops, Ximian and SUSE, respectively. Many have wondered if perhaps Novell had second thoughts about GNOME after buying Ximian and thus moved on to SuSE to remedy the situation. Friedman does not see the conflicting desktop alliances as an issue. "Enterprises don't care about GNOME and KDE. They care about having a desktop environment that's stable, low-cost to administer, secure, interoperable with their existing network services, and flexible," he told OfB."

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Inside Mitch Kapor's World (O'Reilly)

O'Reilly's ONLamp.com site features an interview with Mitch Kapor, where he discusses OSAF, the Chandler project, and more. "I was trying to figure out what to do next, I'd been accumulating ideas for productivity tools — software people could use every day, particularly to help organize their lives. I'd acutely felt the lack of a product that I really loved, but there was a tremendous lack of commercial opportunity to start software ventures around these ideas, given the industry's structure, and I did a lot of thinking about how things might be put together, learned a lot about open source, made a pilgrimage to go see Linus, and tried to educate myself."

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Resources

Music Education With Linux Sound Tools (Linux Journal)

Dave Phillips writes about the tools he uses in this Linux Journal article. "I'm frequently asked to figure out a difficult passage from music that has no available tab. If the part is on a CD track I can use Mike Oliphant's GRip software to grab the needed track and convert it to WAV. Then I can load the WAV file into the Snd soundfile editor and use its realtime time-stretching and looping capabilities to help me through the tough passage. With Snd I can quickly excise only the section I want from the WAV, slow down the section without changing its pitch (using the Expand control), and then loop-play the slowed part until I learn it."

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Linux gets trial 'NX' security support (News.com)

News.com covers security technology designed to curtail the spread of viruses. "NX support is important enough that it's worth risking problems with some applications, Torvalds said. "I think most people have seen the security disaster that causes most of the e-mails on the Net to be spam. So this should be trivial to explain to people when they complain about default behavior breaking their strange legacy app," Torvalds argued." (The NX patch was also covered in last week's Kernel Page).

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Trying to locate Linux muscle for your computer at home (Oakland Tribune)

The Oakland Tribune takes a quick look at some places to buy a home PC with Linux installed. "Linux computers are often grouped in the Business or Workstations area of manufacturer Web sites. Even if a company does not offer Linux installed on its hardware, many will specify which models are capable of running the system, should you decide to install it yourself. Yet IBM, for instance, sells Linux on some of its high-end workstations."

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Reviews

Writing Ant Tasks (O'ReillyNet)

O'ReillyNet looks at Ant. "A nice feature of Ant is that it is designed to allow you to add your own tasks and use them in an build. This article shows you the basics of writing an Ant task and how to get a task to work."

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EIOffice: The good, the bad, and the ugly (NewsForge)

NewsForge reviews the (proprietary) EIOffice suite. "The persistence of links between EIOffice applications is not just better than OpenOffice, it is far more flexible and robust than what you get with Microsoft Office. This brings a new level of power to both Linux and Windows users."

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Gaim's Ground in a Closed IM World (InternetNews)

Internet News looks at the instant messenger client Gaim. "AOL's policy is similar to MSN's: friendly, but not entirely welcoming. "Our policy has always been to protect our networks from those hacking into them and nothing has changed on that front," AOL AIM spokesperson Krista Thomas told internetnews.com. "Tools like GAIM are in clear violation of our terms of service and our copyrights.""

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Quick Review & Introduction to Gnome-PPP (OSNews)

OSNews has published a quick review of Gnome-PPP. "Here's a kind of an application that is sorely missing from a stock Gnome installation and not many Gnome users know about: Gnome-PPP, a front-end to the wvDial, a modem/ISDN dial-up software. Read more for some quick info on the app and a screenshot."

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Web Testing with HTTP::Recorder (O'Reilly)

Linda Julien reviews HTTP::Recorder on O'Reilly's Perl.com. "HTTP::Recorder is a browser-independent recorder that records interactions with web sites and produces scripts for automated playback. Recorder produces WWW::Mechanize scripts by default (see WWW::Mechanize by Andy Lester), but provides functionality to use your own custom logger."

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Miscellaneous

Testing the Linux waters - Part 1 (VNUNet.com)

Vnunet suggests that new users try out Linux using a live CD. "For many potential Linux converts a hard disk install is too much of an investment. In response to this problem, there are now several 'live' distributions that can be run directly from CD."

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Testing the Linux waters - Part 2 (vnunet)

Vnunet continues looking at live Linux distributions, comparing Knoppix, Gnoppix, Morphix, MandrakeMove, SuSE Live, Mepis, Linspire Live, LNX-BBC, and Feather Linux. "If you're new to Linux and considering a live distribution as an introduction without commitment, a handful of options stand out. Unsurprisingly it's the bigger distributions that offer the fewest surprises: SuSE Live, MandrakeMove and Linspire Live offer the friendliest interfaces as well as a good mix of tools."

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Arriva lo scrutinio elettronico (Repubblica)

La Repubblica has an article (in Italian) on the use of electronic voting machines in the EU parliamentary elections. Editor's translation: "The software charged with tallying the results, already used in a recent test in Sardinia, is open source. 'We're not talking about a judgment on the superiority of free software over proprietary,' noted the minister [Lucio Stanca, minister for innovation and technology]. 'It's a question of transparency: with open source any political group will be able to exercise its right to know the criteria by which the program was written.'"

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