Linux in the news

Part I: Corporate Desktop Linux - The Hard Truth (OSDir.com)

W. McDonald Buck, retired CTO of World Bank, looks at what it will take to put Linux on the corporate desktop, on OSDir. "I'm a Linux devotee. I'm offended by the rigged analyses that Microsoft has purchased in its "Get the Facts" campaign. But I think it is important that the open source community demonstrate fairly that open source software presents a better cost/benefit case than Windows. This case is not helped by resorting to the same kind of trickery and distortion of which Microsoft is guilty. I don't like to see obviously skewed analysis on Linux's behalf any more than I like to see it on Microsoft's behalf. No that's wrong. I have a greater dislike of pro-Linux trickery, because I expect better of us."

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Experts Predict Spyware for Mozilla Firefox in 2005 (NewsForge)

NewsForge reports that experts are predicting that spyware creators will soon target Mozilla Firefox. "For his part, Stu Sjouwerman -- founder and COO of Counterspy maker Sunbelt Software -- agreed that Firefox spyware is likely in 2005. "I'm pretty sure you can expect one or two Firefox (spyware) exploits before the end of the year," Sjouwerman said. "The more popular a platform gets, the more likely it is to come under attack. Firefox -- which I use myself -- I don't think is going to be immune from that. If you go wide like this, you have to expect that your product will be exposed to a trial by fire.""

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Linux leaders at open-source summit (ADT Magazine)

ADT Magazine reports on the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) Linux Summit. "On the corollary subject of the lawsuit filed back in 2003 by The SCO Group against IBM for illegally contributing its proprietary Unix code to Linux, panel moderator Stuart Cohen saw a bright side to the legal rangles over patent infringement in the open-source community. "The SCO lawsuit was probably the greatest thing that every happened to acceleration of Linux and open source," he said. "If the press hadn't covered it to the extent they did, and the due diligence hadn't then been done by all of the attorneys, Linux and open source probably never would have had the rapid success that it's had over the past 18 months. Because it came through all of that with such flying colors, it became a real phenomenon.""

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License issues lining up for Linux, open source (NewsForge)

NewsForge covers license discussions at the recent OSDL Enterprise Linux Summit. "In a presentation on open source software licensing issues, noted open source legal mind and license author Larry Rosen gave attendees a sampling of the new license applications he received via email while working for the Open Source Initiative (OSI) last year."

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How SCO's Threats Rallied Linux (Business Week)

Business Week is running a column by Stuart Cohen (CEO of OSDL) on how the SCO Group has helped Linux. "The SCO litigation and surrounding media hoopla actually helped accelerate Linux's popularity -- and its legal foundation. SCO's legal offensive was effectively a wake-up call for a community, mobilizing and uniting a large but disparate group of customers and developers around a single cause. It spurred the Linux community to get its house in order. Its response revealed to the world how large that house had become and gave Linux newfound credibility."

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SCO's Opposition to IBM's Motion for Reconsideration/Clarification of Wells' Discovery Order (Groklaw)

For those following the details of the SCO/IBM trench warfare, Groklaw has SCO's opposition to IBM's attempt to get reconsideration of the latest discovery order. There is also a detailed discussion of why the parties are behaving as they are. "The Nazgul are also implicitly telling Judge Kimball that it is so likely Magistrate Judge Wells will reconsider or clarify her discovery ruling that the matter is not ripe for his consideration, and the effort required to come up to speed on a small mountain of briefs and evidence. By doing so, they actually compliment the magistrate judge, in effect signaling that she has overlooked dispositive factors on an important issue but they regard her as an honest, competent judge who will make the correct decision if she takes a fresh look at the issues in light of the brief that will accompany the motion for reconsideration or clarification."

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Ray's Return (ComputerWorld)

ComputerWorld looks at the trouble at the Canopy Group. "So when [Ray Noorda] takes control of SCO's Linux litigation, we can be pretty sure one set of lawsuits will go away almost immediately: the ones aimed at corporate Linux users. At 80, Noorda may have lost a step. But he'll never be so far gone that he'll think it's a good idea to sue his own customers."

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The Yarro Complaint (Groklaw)

For those of you following along with the self-destruction of the Canopy Group: Groklaw has Mr. Yarro's complaint in the suit. "In a nutshell, Yarro and the others who 'resigned' from Canopy say Noorda meant to give them millions and millions (and in some cases part ownership of the company) instead of to his children. You see, it was like this: Yarro was such a valuable employee that Noorda wished to keep him there, and apparently it required millions in perks to retain his services."

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MP3.com founder returns to music biz (News.com)

News.com looks at Linspire executive and MP3.com founder Michael Robertson's MP3Tunes downloadable music service. "Robertson says he will open the service next week, with "hundreds of thousands" of songs from independent and unsigned artists already available at 88 cents apiece. He'll approach the major labels for access to their music, too--but it will be a tough sell. The big labels have adamantly opposed selling any songs online that are not wrapped in digital rights management technology." A Linux-based music player appliance is also in the works.

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Sun Responds to Criticism of CDDL (Groklaw)

Groklaw takes a look at Sun's response to criticism of the CDDL. "If Sun prefers to carve out a smaller community for itself, it is free to build its own little island, with its own big fence. The result will be, though, that Linux will continue to develop more quickly and it will bury Sun's license and its code, because the open, GPL method works better, and the GPL requirement of giving back all modifications results in rapid improvement. Sun is free to cut itself off from that, if it so chooses, but it will reap what it sows. If they imagined that the world would drop the GPL and adopt the CDDL instead, I trust by now they realize that isn't going to happen."

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Trolltech to Extend Dual Licensing to Qt for Windows (KDE.News)

KDE.News reports that Trolltech will be offering the Windows version of Qt under a dual license. "Trolltech, maker of the Qt toolkit which forms the basis for KDE, announced today that the Qt version for Microsoft Windows will be available under the GPL in addition to its current commercial license offerings for that platform. This change will take place with the release of Qt 4."

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It's Windows vs. Windows as Microsoft battles piracy (News.com)

News.com covers a new heavy-handed approach to operating system piracy coming from Microsoft. "In its most serious bid yet to reap revenue from those who've been getting Windows without payment to Microsoft, the company plans to require computer owners to verify that their copy of Windows is properly licensed before allowing them to download software from Microsoft's site. By mid-year, the once voluntary Windows Genuine Advantage program will become mandatory." The article hints at a possible increase in Linux adoption in emerging markets as a result of the change.

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Eiffel Tower: Repossessed (Fast Company)

It's not directly Linux-related, but this Fast Company article does show that the U.S. has no monopoly on copyright excesses. The company which maintains the Eiffel Tower, it seems, has copyrighted it. "As a result, it's no longer legal to publish current photographs of the Eiffel Tower at night without permission. Technically, this applies even to amateurs."

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Warming up to open source (News.com)

Here's a News.com article on a change in patent policy at the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. "But the overture to open-source developers only goes so far, making royalty-free (RF) licensing of patents in standards an option next to the existing status quo, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) licensing of those patents."

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Linux kernel maintainer joins patent celebrations (ZDNet)

ZDNet UK talks with some free software developers about the (hopefully) restarted European software patent discussion. "But there is a dark cloud already looming over the celebrations of anti-patent campaigners, as the EC has not yet decided whether to agree to the EP's request for a restart. Linux developer [Alan] Cox said he is worried that the EC may ignore the EP's request. 'Unfortunately, however, it seems the Commission will not treat this as a chance to drop the entire issue but will continue pursuing software patents for the sole benefit of a tiny number of large, mostly American, companies,' said Cox. 'The battle is far from over.'"

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FOSDEM 2005: KOffice Interview (KDE.News)

KDE.News interviews Raphael Langerhorst, who will be giving a talk at FOSDEM on "KOffice - Desktop Integration and Workflow Automation". "A big advantage of KOffice is its KDE base, which makes it more lightweight and integrated. OOo brings its own framework which makes the codebase bigger and harder to maintain, but it is necessary to be cross platform. And this is what makes OOo more suitable in mixed environments - OOo builds the bridge between Windows and Linux/Unix whereas KOffice might be a better choice in pure KDE environments. OOo is also a suitable bridge between many legacy file formats and the OASIS Open Document format."

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Cygwin: Changing the Face of Windows (Linux Journal)

Machtelt Garrels gives an overview of Cygwin in a Linux Journal article. "Cygwin does not convert your Windows machine into a UNIX-compatible one, however. Cygwin does not enable your computer to understand UNIX signals, pseudo-terminals (PTYs) and such; it only provides mappings of UNIX actions to the Windows platform. It is not a way to make native Linux applications run on Windows. If you want an application to run on your Windows workstation, and it is not yet a part of the Cygwin suite, you will have to compile the source. If the application is a graphical one, another solution is to run the application remotely by using X functionality."

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Coasterless DVD burning (Troubleshooters)

Troubleshooters.com has put up a tutorial on DVD burning. "This document is written for a person just getting started with DVD burning. It details the pitfalls and how to avoid them. The reason is simple enough -- I'm just now learning DVD burning, and have recently fallen into those pitfalls."

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HA-OSCAR: Five Steps to a High-Availability Linux Cluster (O'ReillyNet)

O'ReillyNet uses HA-OSCAR to set up a high availability Linux cluster. "The HA-OSCAR project's primary goal is to improve the existing OSCAR, Beowulf architecture, and cluster management technology systems (including OSCAR, ROCKS, and Scyld) while providing high-availability and scalability capabilities for Linux clusters. The OCG recognized the project as an official working group, along with the current OSCAR and Thin-OSCAR working groups. HA-OSCAR introduces several enhancements and new features to OSCAR, mainly in the areas of availability, scalability, and security. The new features in the initial release are head node redundancy and self-recovery for hardware, service, and application outages."

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Comparing MySQL performance (NewsForge)

NewsForge runs a set of MySQL benchmarks on various Linux and BSD systems. "Both Linux 2.4 and 2.6 had the strongest showing overall for these tests, dominating just about every benchmark no matter the workload. Scalability for both kernels was also excellent with addition of an extra processor. In fact, I was surprised how well 2.4 had done, as I had somewhat expected 2.6 to show at least a noticeable, if slight, increase over 2.4. Instead, they took turns besting each other from test to test -- and in scalability -- for a fairly even overall showing."

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A Temporary Internet Lounge Revisited (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal shows how to set up an Internet lounge using Knoppix 3.7. "By default Knoppix never touches the hard drive--you don't have to install it, you simply have to tell a PC to boot from the CD-ROM drive. Because of Knoppix's excellent hardware detection system, one could, in theory at least, put together a dozen different makes and models of PCs with a dozen identical Knoppix disks, and in five minutes have all of them up, running and browsing the Internet. With Knoppix, there are in essence two filesystems on the disk--a conventional ISO 9660 system that is used while Knoppix boots and a compressed filesystem that is used after the system boots. This complicates things, but it also allows Knoppix to store significantly more than 700MB of software on a conventional 700MB CD-ROM."

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Top 15 Firefox Extensions (PC Magazine)

PC Magazine takes a look at some ways to extend your Mozilla Firefox browser. "Extensions can do loads of tasks, from blocking pop-up ads to playing card games -- and even viewing a Web page as if it were in IE -- so they can make Firefox a versatile and customizable platform for your browsing activities. But where to start? Which extensions are worth downloading and installing? We evaluated dozens of extensions and present the best 15 for your perusal. It's easy to add them; just go to the Tools | Extensions | Get More Extensions menu to get started."

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Linare Releases Sub-$500 Notebook (ExtremeTech)

ExtremeTech takes a look at some new Linare notebooks. "Linare's notebook includes an AMD Athlon 1800+ processor, a 40-GB hard drive, a 14.1-inch XGA TFT-LCD, 128 Mbytes of RAM, a CD-ROM, Fast Ethernet, and the Linare Linux OS. It also ships with OpenOffice, a full office suite compatible with Microsoft Office documents."

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New site to group Aussie open source bloggers (ZDNet.au)

ZDNet Australia covers an announcement by Linux Australia about a new Planet Linux Australia site devoted to aggregating the blogs of prominent Australian Linux and open source developers. "According to the organisation, the site "is not just about aggregating feeds, it's about recognising and appreciating all the cool stuff people are doing around the country". Using RSS aggregation software popular within the blogging community, so far the the site has linked 62 Australians associated with open source development, from many different fields and from around the nation."

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Zombie trick expected to send spam sky-high (News.com)

Just when you thought you couldn't get enough of that yummy spam, News.com reports that a new surge of bogus email is soon to arrive. "According to the SpamHaus Project--a U.K.-based antispam compiler of blacklists that block 8 billion messages a day--a new piece of malicious software has been created that takes over a PC. This "zombie" computer is then used to send spam via the mail server of that PC's Internet service provider. This means the junk mail appears to come from the ISP, making it very hard for an antispam blacklist to block it."

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