Linux in the news

Halloween VIII: Doing the Damage-Control Dance

Eric S. Raymond leaks another Microsoft memo. "This is an unusual Halloween memorandum in that it's not particularly redolent of evil. It's a reactionary memo about trying to become less reactionary, the sort of thing that gets churned out daily by clueless corporate droids everywhere. They're tired of constantly being caught by surprise and want to do something about it."

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Linux security strong as ever (ZDNet)

ZDNet is running an opinion piece by Con Zymaris on the security of Linux. "The open source community has worked diligently to fight the good fight against security vulnerabilities. One of this community's basic security philosophies is, 'With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.' This Linux axiom points to the fact that when a bug becomes an issue, many people have the source code, and it can be quickly resolved without the help of a vendor."

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Perens, Prentice deliver Open Source books (Register)

The Register covers Open Content-licensed books from Prentice Hall. "It works like this. Prentice sells the paper version for several months until an electronic version is released. What happens next is entirely up to the community. The author retains the copyright and in the standard license, his name must be appear on the book's cover. Citations must be acknowledged, modifications must be identified, and derivative works must identify the original unmodified source document."

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Start-up beats IBM for Linux software (News.com)

News.com covers Sistina Software's LVM 2.0, which is slated for inclusion into the 2.6 Linux kernel. "Sistina's LVM products are open-source and freely available. Although the company sells support for LVM to customers who want it, its major revenue source is file system software that works hand in hand with LVM."

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MontaVista unveils Embedded Linux for consumer electronics (LinuxDevices.com)

LinuxDevices.com has an article about MontaVista's new "Consumer Electronics Edition" distribution, to be announced today at the Consumer Electronics Show. "CEE incorporates dynamic power management features, file system enhancements, and new tools to measure performance, system timing, and memory size. CEE also features support for XIP (eXecute In Place) in the kernel and applications, as well as streaming media optimizations."

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SGI begins high-end Linux push (News.com)

News.com looks at SGI's new Altix 3000 series. "The Altix 3000 systems are essentially an adaptation of SGI's existing Origin 3000 systems, which use SGI-designed MIPS processors and Irix, its version of Unix. The Altix 3000 systems, though, use Itanium processors and Linux, a move that lets SGI benefit from others' research and development budgets and that weans SGI off its reliance on its in-house technology." See also this press release from SGI.

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Big [and not so big] ideas for 2003 (CIO Magazine)

CIO Magazine has published a special issue on 48 ideas which, it is claimed, will change the shape of business in 2003. Number 16 is Linux. "In retail, and likely in other industries that deploy thousands of PCs as terminals, a big wave of open-source pilots will occur in 2003, followed by deployment in 2004..." (Number 26 is Ogg Vorbis, and number 34 is about software patent problems).

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Windows Users Should be Glad there's a Linux (ExtremeTech)

ExtremeTech has an editorial by Robin "roblimo" Miller on how the existence of Linux might improve Windows. "Perhaps 2003 will be the year Microsoft decides to actually compete with open source instead of just talking trash about it. We already see Microsoft offering enterprise customers better deals on some of its applications packages (notably Microsoft Office) than it did in the past because of competition from OpenOffice and its proprietary but amazingly inexpensive cousin, StarOffice."

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Linux TCO edge: Lower labor costs (ZDNet)

Here is a different perspective on the "total cost of ownership" issue on ZDNet. "In the survey, Linux admin salaries were slightly higher than Windows admins, with Linux at $71,400 per admin, and Windows at $68,500 per admin. But Linux admins took care of an average of 44 servers and Windows admins an average of 10. So the salary per processing unit was Linux, $12,010, and Windows, $52,060."

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Open Source Yields Savings, Minimizes Vendor Hassles For Texas Energy Company (TechWeb)

TechWeb looks at the use of Linux at Atmos Energy. "While [IT manager Scott Womer] had a $60,000-to-$80,000 budget to buy firewalls, he was able to buy two $5,000 servers and install the free open-source code for a total cost of just $10,000. Like many open-source users, however, he strongly emphasized the value of being able to address problems in open-source code internally and quickly, rather than relying on vendors to help in that effort."

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Linux invades government servers (ZDNet)

Here's the latest Meta Group pronouncement on ZDNet; this one looks at Linux in government. "The international governmental focus on developing and using Linux on servers negates one of Microsoft's arguments against the rival OS--that little is being invested in developing the alternative platform. However, the danger is that these large organizations as well as vendors (e.g., IBM and Hewlett-Packard) using Linux will create semi-proprietary branches in Linux development (known as "forking"), which is what happened when the hardware makers of the 1980s adopted Unix."

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Teen cleared in landmark DVD case (CNN)

CNN reports on the acquittal of Jon Johansen. "But Johansen argued his code was necessary to watch movies he already owned, on his Linux-based computer, for which DVD software had not yet been written. He said since he owned the DVDs, he should be able to view them as he liked, preferably on his own computer. The court, citing consumer laws which protect consumers' fair use of their own property, agreed."

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Congress to take on spam, copyright (News.com)

News.com looks at the 2003 legislative agenda in the U.S. "On Tuesday, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and three other legislators reintroduced their bill from last year that would defang the DMCA. Their proposal, called the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, would let Americans bypass copyright-protection schemes for legitimate 'fair use' purposes."

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FOSDEM Weekly Interviews

FOSDEM has published 3 new interviews with three of the speakers who will give talks and tutorials during FOSDEM (February 8 and 9, 2003 in Brussels).

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Lindows CEO funds Xbox hacking contest (News.com)

News.com talks with Michael Robertson about his role in hacking the Xbox. "Robertson confirmed the SourceForge posting in an interview Thursday with CNET News.com, saying he funded the contest not for business goals but to promote open access to technology. "There is no business justification; that's not why I did it," he said. "I did it because I thought people should have the choice to run the software they want on the hardware of their choice...I don't think when you buy a car, they should be able to tell you what brand of gas to put in it.""

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LinuxDevices.com Newsletter for Jan. 2, 2003

Here is the first Linuxdevices.com's Embedded Linux Newsletter for 2003, with all sorts of news about embedded Linux.

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Introduction to the ELC's new Embedded Linux platform spec (LinuxDevices)

LinuxDevices.com provides a brief explanation of the process that led to the development of the Embedded Linux Consortium Platform Specification (ELCPS) and a cursory description of its contents. "The ELCPS was designed to be an API specification, thus supporting source level portability of applications to different implementations. This design ensures a specification that provides developers of applications and middleware assurance that their products can be recompiled for a large variety of potential embedded Linux targets."

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Linux Certification -- Certified to thrill (LinuxLookup)

LinuxLookup editorializes on Linux Certification. "Since Linux is relatively new in the vocational courses arena, the courses and requirements are few. Requirements of a certificate, that is. When a thousand people contest for thousand placement oppurtunities, there's no need for a certificate. But when these thousand companies, need to select from a number, multiple of their count, it results in chaos. A certificate aims to bring order to chaos."

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xBox Linux donor extends prize offer (Register)

This Register article identifies the person offering the xBox Linux prize as Michael Robertson of Lindows, and says the prize has been extended. "He is extending the deadline for part B of the prize for another year. This is to enable hackers to produced a Linux capable of running on xBox with no hardware modifications. The original deadline was the end of 2002."

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