The state of the SCO case

The whole SCO affair started as a breach-of-contract suit against IBM. That suit is based on the language of the Unix contracts signed with ATT almost two decades ago, which reads:

The core of SCO's claim is that anything that IBM has ever allowed to be a part of a Unix system has become a "derived product" of Unix and must be treated as if it were Unix itself. SCO cannot make any ownership claims over this code - a side letter to the contract makes that explicit - but it does claim the right to keep IBM from disclosing its own code.

Through its public statements, SCO has since made claims of massive direct copying of SYSV Unix code into Linux. There is still no court case where SCO has made such claims, however. The company's experience at SCO Forum and subsequent public statements suggest that the evidence for direct copying of code - actual copyright violations - is weak at best. SCO might have a small case against SGI, depending on how a judge might choose to interpret the copyright status of 32V Unix and the true source of the ate_malloc() code. But that is between those two companies; the code in question has already been removed from current Linux kernels.

Increasingly, it seems that SCO is left with its original breach of contract case. The recently issued open letter from Darl McBride does nothing to change that impression; it mentions the ate_malloc() case but does not allege any other direct copying. Instead, the company's claims are expressed as follows:

In SCO's view, "Unix System V protected code" is a rather wider set than "SCO-owned code." In fact, at SCO Forum, the company put up a slide discussing the "more than one million lines" that it claims. Here's where they come from:

Subsystem	Files	Lines
Read-copy-update	46	109,688
NUMA	101	56,587
JFS	44	32,224
XFS	173	119,130
Symmetric multiprocessing	1,185	829,393
TOTAL	1,549	1,147,022

(SCO has posted the slides to its presentations on this page. You'll have to click past the cheery warning that things are optimized for Internet Explorer to view them, though.)

These claims are interesting in a number of ways. Let's look at the RCU claim for a moment. In a modern Linux kernel (RCU does not appear in 2.4), the RCU implementation is contained in two files (include/linux/rcupdate.h and kernel/rcupdate.c), which add up to an amazing 402 lines. That leaves us 44 files and 109,286 lines short of the claim made by SCO. Clearly, SCO must also be making claims on any code that uses RCU in any way. If you look for files that make any use of the RCU subsystem, the results are:

File	Lines
arch/i386/oprofile/nmi_timer_int.c	57
drivers/char/ipmi/ipmi_kcs_intf.c	1275
fs/dcache.c	1641
include/asm-x86_64/kdebug.h	44
include/linux/rcupdate.h	135
include/linux/dcache.h	316
include/linux/list.h	565
include/net/dst.h	254
init/main.c	604
ipc/util.c	612
kernel/rcupdate.c	267
kernel/module.c	1949
kernel/sched.c	2594
net/802/psnap.c	160
net/bridge/br_device.c	147
net/bridge/br_forward.c	157
net/bridge/br_if.c	289
net/bridge/br_ioctl.c	309
net/bridge/br_input.c	159
net/core/netfilter.c	761
net/core/dev.c	3092
net/ipv4/af_inet.c	1250
net/ipv4/icmp.c	1120
net/ipv4/ip_input.c	433
net/ipv4/route.c	2797
net/ipv6/af_inet6.c	895
net/ipv6/icmp.c	787
net/ipv6/ip6_input.c	260
net/decnet/dn_route.c	1843
TOTAL 29 files	24,772

So, even with such an expansive interpretion of SCO's claim, there are 17 files missing. They must be big files as well, since they must account for the remaining 84,916 lines. The "contamination" caused by RCU is evidently a very broad thing. We asked SCO where the missing files were, but were told only "[T]his level of detail is something that we will save for our court case in 2005." So we're going to have to remain in suspense for a while. But one thing is clear: SCO claims that the old AT&T licenses give it amazing powers over code that has ever breathed the same air as SYSV Unix. Anybody who claims that the GPL is overly "viral" or that it threatens intellectual property should take a good look at the powers that SCO claims its license gives it. The GPL can't compete in that league.

SCO's legal argument is interesting; the company claims that Linux hackers have, while having never actually seen the SYSV Unix source, nontheless created a derived product of SYSV Unix. They are accused of copying something they never had access to. This argument seems destined to fail; how can something which contains no SYSV code be a derived product of SYSV? But that is the core of SCO's argument.

An interesting question comes out of this: what if SCO wins its case? SCO will have then convinced a court that IBM released IBM's code in violation of an agreement it had with SCO. The fact that IBM released IBM's code, however, would not change. SCO does not own that code, how can it claim a right to payments from Linux users? If SCO wins, it may get a chunk of money from IBM. But it should still have nothing which entitles it to license payment from Linux users.

Returning to Darl McBride's open letter, we note that there are no demands that Linux users buy SCO "licenses," and no threats of suits against users. Mr. McBride, instead, has taken a bit of a different approach:

One might point out that the free software world does, indeed, have an "intellectual property foundation." It is based on copyright law, and free licenses, including the GPL, which SCO has said it wants to break. One might also point out that the community is not in much of a mood for "working with" SCO at this point. But one's time might be better spent pondering what SCO was thinking when it published those words.

SCO clearly wants to be able to put a tax on Linux systems. SCO also clearly sees the GPL as an obstacle; there is no way to make a tax stick to Linux as long as it remains freely redistributable. Could SCO be casting around for a scheme to buy off free software developers should its challenges to the GPL fail? A nice tax for SCO and a few bones tossed to developers willing to relicense their code? It is hard to see how such a scheme could possibly succeed, but it is also hard to find another way to interpret the words quoted above.

In summary, the SCO case remains interesting. SCO has changed its tune several times, but, for the moment, is back where it began: a breach of contract suit against IBM. The company has yet to produce any evidence that Linux users owe it money. It is also now interested in "working with the open source community." But SCO remains unpredictable. We have not yet seen the last strange twist in this case.

Comments (13 posted)

An opening for OpenOffice.org

[This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

For years now, Linux users have had to struggle with the omnipresent Microsoft Office formats. Developers working on OpenOffice.org, Abiword, KOffice, Gnumeric and other applications have had their hands full trying to decipher the proprietary and obfuscated MS Office formats so that users could read and exchange documents with their MS Office-using colleagues. With Microsoft Office 2003, Redmond is taking obfuscation to new levels that may mean legal problems for developers who try to provide compatibility with Office, and huge fees for companies that try to adopt it.

In addition to the usual slew of new features, Office 2003 Professional comes with Information Rights Management (IRM) tools. (Users of Office 2003 Standard can not create IRM documents.) Basically, IRM is just another name for Digital Rights Management (DRM), a term that Microsoft is avoiding because of the negative connotations that DRM has already picked up. IRM allows users to restrict what others can do with a document. Without the proper permissions, recipients of IRM-restricted documents will be unable to read or print them. Recipients of IRM-restricted e-mails will be unable to forward them as well. And users can set documents to expire.

Naturally, these documents will be incompatible with previous versions of Microsoft Office, to say nothing of competing tools like OpenOffice.org, Gnumeric or Ximian's Evolution. In addition to the usual format obfuscation, however, Microsoft also has the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to protect it from competition. Since the format includes encryption, Microsoft will be able to threaten developers with the DMCA if they attempt to include support for IRM-restricted documents.

Microsoft's IRM also depends on its server-based Rights Management Services (RMS). This means that any company wanting to adopt IRM is also forced to adopt Microsoft at the server. It doesn't preclude companies using a mixture of Microsoft and Linux servers, but it does mean that organizations that have only adopted Microsoft at the desktop would be forced to make additional investments in Microsoft software.

Not only is the technology extremely restrictive, the price should be enough to give any CFO or business owner pause. To deploy RMS within an organization requires that you run Windows Server 2003. That brings some hefty licensing fees on its own, but there's more. Every user who connects to that server has to have a Windows Server 2003 Client Access License (CAL) and a RMS User CAL, not to mention the licensing fees for that user's copy of Windows XP and Office 2003 Professional. The RMS CAL alone runs $37 for a single user, or $185 for a pack of five CALs. No doubt, large organizations could get the CALs even cheaper, but it still becomes very expensive. Note that this isn't just for users who create IRM documents, but also for any user who views an IRM-restricted document.

That's to use Microsoft's RMS within an organization. Companies that want to share files with users outside the organization, will need yet another license from Microsoft. According to Microsoft's pricing and licensing overview page, this license alone will run an organization $18,066 for the Windows RMS External Connector License. This fee may not be a major obstacle for large organizations, but it would certainly represent a major burden on small companies that need to share documents with clients.

Believe it or not, Microsoft's new Office suite is potentially good news for the open souce community. It creates yet another opening for Linux vendors and proponents to make the case for free and open software in business. Microsoft has laid out its vision for the future of software, and it's filled with licensing fees stacked upon licensing fees -- and technologies that suck the user deeper and deeper into Microsoft's "stack" of solutions. Many organizations have been content to adopt Windows on the desktop, and other technologies at the server level. Redmond's all-or-nothing approach, attempting to force their customers to adopt their toolchain entirely, may end up driving them away completely.

To use IRM/RMS, an organization would have to adopt Microsoft across the board -- and likely will require them to persuade their business partners to do the same. Few organizations can get by without sharing documents externally. Expect major levels of frustration when a company adopts Office 2003 with IRM, and tries to share documents with others using older versions of Office. Even if a company is gung-ho about IRM, their business partners may not be.

If the Office 2003 strategy works, and organizations start jumping on the IRM bandwagon, it's the ultimate lock-in for Microsoft. Game over for Linux users (and vendors) trying to maintain compatibility with Windows users. This would have the potential of breaking compatibility even for reading e-mail, if you work with Outlook users who enable IRM.

But it also has the potential to cause some significant backlash against Redmond when companies start tallying up the costs of switching and being fully compatible with Microsoft's document DRM. Let's not forget that most organizations are being much more stingy with their tech purchases these days. Many companies are still smarting over Microsoft's "new and improved" licensing programs and the recent security snafus. If SoBig.F wasn't enough to send companies over to Linux, Office 2003 might be the straw that broke the camel's back.

Comments (40 posted)

On giving back

On September 8, LynuxWorks announced the availability of a beta release of BlueCat Linux 5.0. BlueCat is the company's embedded Linux distribution; 5.0, interestingly, is based on the (still unreleased) 2.6 kernel. LynuxWorks claims to have applied a lengthy series of "ISO 9001:2000" reliability tests to this kernel. The PR also cites some of the features of this kernel which are of interest to the embedded community, including kernel preemption, the O(1) scheduler, and the improved threading support. LynuxWorks, they say, is the first embedded systems company to make these features available in a Linux-based system.

The interesting thing, of course, is that all of those features were developed at other companies. Kernel preemption, in particular, was done by Nigel Gamble and Robert Love at MontaVista - a direct LynuxWorks competitor. The extensive testing done by LynuxWorks must certainly have turned up bugs; the 2.6 kernel is still an unreleased product, beta quality at best. Yet no fixes appear to have been sent back to the community. Over the last year, only one posting appeared on linux-kernel from either lynuxworks.com or lnxw.com - a request for help with a compilation problem. The 2.6 BitKeeper repository, containing all patches merged since February 2002, shows one set of patches from LynuxWorks.com: a USB Pegasus driver by Petko Manolov. The last patch was merged in May, 2002. We asked LynuxWorks if it had a list of recent contributions (which could, after all, have been sent in from a different email address), but got no response.

LynuxWorks, in other words, is taking full advantage of the work of others - including its competitors - to claim to be "first to market" with a set of new features. And it has done so without contributing much of anything back to the community from which it draws the software it is selling. LynuxWorks is far from alone in this behavior, of course. LynuxWorks is also acting entirely within its rights. As long as they abide by the GPL, nobody can complain if they use the software in this way. That is what free software is all about.

It is also true, however, that being within your rights and being right are not always the same thing. A company that is making money selling Linux should feel some obligation to contribute back to Linux. Especially when that company is in the operating systems business and clearly has the technical resources to make that sort of contribution.

Contributing back is not just the right thing to do; it is also good business. Customers feel better when they see that their suppliers have a good relationship with the development community upon which they depend. Customers also like the feeling that a supplier understands the software well enough to make changes and get them accepted; it improves that chances that bugs can be fixed and requested changes implemented. They feel better about the software as a whole if the vendor cares enough to make it better. Software with active support from those selling it has a better chance of being around and still maintained a few years from now.

Many free software companies understand this well; they point to their free software contributions as a source of pride. As users of free software become more sophisticated, they will ask for that information. Customers need to know that their suppliers can provide them with the support they need, and that said suppliers are committed to the future of the software they work with. A history of contributing back to the software in question is one of the best ways to show customers what they want to see. It also has the incidental benefits of making the software better and being the right thing to do.

Comments (13 posted)

The Chamberlain v. Skylink DMCA ruling

One of the many DMCA cases circulating in the U.S. court system is Chamberlain v. Skylink. Chamberlain manufactures garage door openers and, of course, the remote units which are used to open and close the garage door. Recent Chamberlain models use a "rolling code" system which is intended to protect homeowners against playback attacks; the code transmitted by the remote is different every time, so a thief with a recorder would capture nothing useful. This system also has the incidental result of preventing other companies from selling remotes that work with Chamberlain openers.

Except that Skylink figured out a way to get around the code, and marketed a working remote. Chamberlain then took Skylink to court, claiming that, among other things, the Skylink remote violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The problem, it seems, is that the Skylink remote circumvents the "technical measures" employed by Chamberlain to restrict access to the copyrighted software in its openers. Chamberlain was sufficiently confident of its position that it asked for a summary judgement on the DMCA argument. At the end of August, the court denied that request; the full text of the ruling is available in PDF format.

One might hope that this case would have been an opportunity for the court to take a serious look at the DMCA. The DMCA, used in this way, is an effective tool to prevent the creation of interoperable products in a wide range of industries. All that's needed is a bit of internal code and a simple "technical measure" to prevent interoperation; the DMCA does the rest. Unfortunately, the ruling in this case does little to help those who would like to see the power of the DMCA reduced.

The court denied the judgement for two reasons. The first is that, in the court's opinion, Chamberlain did not establish that the software inside its garage door opener was actually protected by copyright - a crucial precondition for DMCA applicability. This is a true technicality here; it is difficult to believe that Chamberlain will not have a copyright interest in the software it created.

The second reason is, essentially, that Chamberlain did not tell its customers that they couldn't use competing remotes.

This second point may be enough to sink Chamberlain's DMCA argument, but it leaves the DMCA itself untouched. A simple statement on the box that only Chamberlain remotes may be used with the opener will close the hole in the future. This ruling is a defeat for a company attempting to wield the DMCA for its commercial benefit, but it will do nothing to stop this use of the DMCA in the future.

Comments (5 posted)

The apache evasive maneuvers module

Jonathan Zdziarski announced the release of mod_dosevasive 1.8 at the beginning of September. mod_dosevasive is an apache module, licensed under the GPL, which enables a web server to detect certain kinds of denial-of-service attack and take appropriate action.

The core of mod_dosevasive is a set of hash tables keeping track of recent page requests. If a particular system (as identified by its IP address) starts requesting too many pages at once, or it requests the same page repeatedly too often, the module decides an attack is underway. The next request from that source will get back a 403 error response, and the site goes into the blacklist. The default blacklist period is ten seconds; each request received while the offending system is blacklisted extends its time there.

mod_dosevasive can also send notification email when it detects an attack, or execute an arbitrary command. The command capability is intended to make the module work with firewalls; rather than continually failing requests with 403 errors, an administrator can set up the firewall to simply block traffic from the attacking system altogether. That approach, clearly, will be more effective against large-scale distributed attacks where the real purpose is to consume bandwidth.

The mod_dosevasive web page has more information.

Comments (3 posted)

September CERT Summary

The September quarterly CERT Summary is out, discussing the security issues which are currently worth noting. Most notable this time around is the fact that Linux and free software do not figure into any of the problems covered. According to this summary, all of the serious security issues of the last three months affect only proprietary software. Enjoy it while it lasts.

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exim: buffer overflows

Package(s):	exim exim-tls	CVE #(s):	CAN-2003-0743
Created:	September 5, 2003	Updated:	October 1, 2003
Description:	A buffer overflow exists in exim, which is the standard mail transport agent in Debian. By supplying a specially crafted HELO or EHLO command, an attacker could cause a constant string to be written past the end of a buffer allocated on the heap. This vulnerability is not believed at this time to be exploitable to execute arbitrary code. CAN-2003-0743
Alerts:	Gentoo 200309-09 exim 2003-09-15 Debian DSA-376-2 exim 2003-09-07 Conectiva CLA-2003:735 exim 2003-09-05 Debian DSA-376-1 exim 2003-09-04

Comments (none posted)

inetd: DoS attack

Package(s):	inetd	CVE #(s):
Created:	September 8, 2003	Updated:	September 10, 2003
Description:	inetd has a hard-coded limit of 256 connections-per-minute, after which the given service is disabled for ten minutes. An attacker could use a quick burst of connections every ten minutes to effectively disable a service. Once upon a time, this was an intentional feature of inetd, but in today's world it has become a bug. Even having inetd look at the source IP and try to limit only the source of the attack would be problematic since TCP source addresses are so easily faked.
Alerts:	Slackware SSA:2003-251-01 inetd 2003-09-08

Comments (3 posted)

mah-jong: buffer overflows, denial of service

Package(s):	mah-jong	CVE #(s):	CAN-2003-0705 CAN-2003-0706
Created:	September 8, 2003	Updated:	September 10, 2003
Description:	Nicolas Boullis discovered two vulnerabilities in mah-jong, a network-enabled game. CAN-2003-0705 (buffer overflow): This vulnerability could be exploited by a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the mah-jong server. CAN-2003-0706 (denial of service): This vulnerability could be exploited by a remote attacker to cause the mah-jong server to enter a tight loop and stop responding to commands.
Alerts:	Debian DSA-378-1 mah-jong 2003-09-07

Comments (none posted)

wu-ftpd: insecure program execution

Package(s):	wu-ftpd	CVE #(s):	CVE-1999-0997
Created:	September 5, 2003	Updated:	September 24, 2003
Description:	wu-ftpd, an FTP server, implements a feature whereby multiple files can be fetched in the form of a dynamically constructed archive file, such as a tar archive. The names of the files to be included are passed as command line arguments to tar, without protection against them being interpreted as command-line options. GNU tar supports several command line options which can be abused, by means of this vulnerability, to execute arbitrary programs with the privileges of the wu-ftpd process.
Alerts:	Slackware SSA:2003-259-03 wu-ftpd 2003-09-23 Conectiva CLA-2003:748 wu-ftpd 2003-09-22 Debian DSA-377-1 wu-ftpd 2003-09-04

Comments (1 posted)

Linux Security Week

The September 8 Linux Security Week newsletter from LinuxSecurity.com is available.

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Whitepaper - Blindfolded SQL Injection

WebCohort has announced the release of a white paper on "blindfolded SQL injection," a form of SQL injection attack that does not rely on extracting information from the target server's error messages.

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Kernel release status

The current development kernel is 2.6.0-test5, which was released by Linus on September 8. Changes this time include new, type-safe ioctl() command code checker (see below), a USB "gadget" framework which enables the creation of user-space drivers, a new CONFIG_64BIT configuration option, a number of futex improvements, a reworked de4x5 driver, "very basic" VIA 8237 serial ATA controller support, support for a software-implemented hard disk activity LED, Intel High Precision Event Timers support, Al Viro's first set of large dev_t support patches (covered here two weeks ago), and his second set (which fixes up filesystems and removes the kdev_t type) as well, some IDE work, a large USB update, lots of network driver fixes, a new set of iptables modules, and many other fixes. The long-format changelog has all the details.

Linus's BitKeeper tree contains a number of patches including some initramfs tweaks, improvements in random driver locking (which was "consuming 60% of CPU resources in Anton's monster power5 boxes"), the removal of some ext3 debugging hooks, direct I/O support for reiserfs, some CPU frequency work, an Intel SpeedStep-SMI driver, and various fixes.

The current stable kernel is 2.4.22; Marcelo has not released any 2.4.23 prepatches since 2.4.23-pre3 on September 3.

Comments (none posted)

kdev_t is no more

Al Viro's second set of patches aimed at enabling the support of a larger dev_t type has been merged into the 2.6.0-test5 kernel. The bulk of the work is fixing up code in filesystems which made assumptions about the size of dev_t. As part of this whole process, however, Al has been converting kernel code from the kdev_t type over to using dev_t directly.

kdev_t, of course, was introduced several major releases ago as a way of hiding the actual structure of device numbers. The comments in <linux/kdev_t.h> read:

In practice it didn't work quite that way. When Linus changed the format of kdev_t early in the 2.5 development series, everything broke. And when the time came to really change the size of dev_t, it turned out to be easier and more clear to simply use dev_t directly. Kernel hackers tend to be skeptical of abstraction interfaces which are created without being immediately useful; kdev_t is an example of why that is so.

The seventh patch (of 15) in Al Viro's second dev_t series changes the type of the much-used i_rdev inode structure field; it is, of course, a dev_t now. Since Al had already converted users of that field over to the new iminor() and imajor() macros, the effect of this change was small. But, as it turns out, i_rdev was the last kdev_t object in the kernel. So patch eight removed the type altogether.

Out-of-tree drivers will, of course, be broken as a result of this change, but the fixes should not be that difficult. At this point, the bulk of the large dev_t preparation work should be done. About all that's left is to decide what the format of the new dev_t will really be and make the change. Once the dust settles, another one of the 2.6.0 "must fix" items will have been taken care of.

Comments (1 posted)

Straightening out ioctl() size confusion

The ioctl() system call includes a general "command" argument which specifies which operation the calling program wishes to perform. The Linux kernel has long had a mechanism for defining these command arguments, with the goal of keeping them all unique. If no two drivers implement the same command codes, there is no danger of strange things happen if the wrong code is passed to the wrong driver. A world where "rewind the tape" for one driver never translates to "initiate self destruct" for another is a safer place to be for all of us.

The Linux kernel takes things a little further by encoding some useful information in the command codes. Along with driver-specific "magic" and command numbers, the ioctl() command code includes the direction of data movement (if any) between kernel and user space and the size of the data to be moved. The kernel itself does not do anything with those values, but their presence does enable a driver to perform some checks. If, for example, the size of a structure used as an ioctl() argument changes, the driver can use the size field in the command code to determine whether the application is using the older version or not. Some kernel code actually does check the sizes to be sure that things match up.

The command codes are created using some macros in <asm/ioctl.h>. A driver defining codes would use one of these macros:

    _IOR(type, number, size)
    _IOW(type, number, size)
    _IORW(type, number, size)

The macro used specifies whether the ioctl() operation reads or writes kernel-space data (or both); type is the driver's "magic" code, and number is the command-specific code. The confusion comes in with the argument called size; it is supposed to be the type of the data to be passed between kernel and user space. So, for example, the "get tape position" code is defined as:

    #define MTIOCPOS _IOR('m', 3, struct mtpos)

The problem is that a number of hackers saw the size argument and assumed that they were expected to pass the size of the expected data transfer. The result was a number of definitions like:

    #define CIOC_KERNEL_VERSION _IOWR('c', 10, sizeof (int))

As a result, the actual size value, as encoded within the command, was the size of the size value, or, on most architectures, four bytes. Since most code never looks at that size value, things worked, but the values defined were not as intended. Another problem that occasionally came up was that some code used very large size values, overflowing the space allotted in the command word, thus corrupting the rest of the command code. Once again, things worked, but not quite in the way people expected.

One of the themes of 2.6 development has been the addition of type checking anywhere that the compiler can be coerced into doing it. So the obvious thing to do was to add checking to the generation of command codes; Arnd Bergmann submitted a patch which does exactly that. It adds a bit of preprocessor magic in the form of this macro:

     #define _IOC_TYPECHECK(t) \
        ((sizeof(t) == sizeof(t[1]) && \
          sizeof(t) < (1 << _IOC_SIZEBITS)) ? \
          sizeof(t) : __invalid_size_argument_for_IOC)

The first test ensures that an actual type (as opposed to a simple size) has been passed in; the second makes sure it is not too large.

All that remains is the inconvenient fact that the old, erroneous codes have found their way into a number of application programs. Changing those codes would break those applications, and that's something the kernel hackers try never to do. So, for these cases, a new set of macros (with names like _IOW_BAD() has been introduced, and the erroneous uses have been moved over to the new macros. The command codes remain unchanged, but the mistake is noted so that it is not replicated when somebody copies the code in question.

Comments (5 posted)

A wealth of suspend options

Patrick Mochel has posted a new set of power management patches. Power management is, of course, one of the last unfinished projects in the 2.6.0-test kernel. So developments in that area are of interest.

Much energy has gone into the suspend-to-disk implementation. Patrick has been unable to come to an understanding with (2.6) swsusp maintainer Pavel Machek; rather than keep trying, he has chosen to create his own implementation (starting with swsusp) called "pmdisk." Should Linus accept the patches, the 2.6.0-test kernel will have two separate, competing implementations of the suspend-to-disk functionality. The swsusp version has been reverted to its previous state; the patch includes the comment "Note that I would never publically admit to putting such code into the kernel."

The new pmdisk implementation has since seen some fixes, though it still does not work on SMP systems, and apparently will not for some time. There is a /sys/power/state file used to control pmdisk; writing "disk" to that file will cause the system to suspend itself to disk. Beyond that, pmdisk is still mostly the swsusp implementation with a lot of cleanup work and the names of the functions and variables changed.

One remaining question with the suspend-to-disk functionality is what will happen to all of Nigel Cunningham's work. Nigel has put a great deal of effort into the 2.4 swsusp implementation, with the result that it has become a reliable option for many users; see our review of that work from August. Nigel would like to port his work forward to 2.6, but is uncertain about what to port to.

This whole situation could be resolved by Linus, who has not yet accepted the "fork swsusp" patch. Releasing a 2.6.0 kernel with two different suspend implementations seems like a suboptimal course which could reflect poorly on the Linux development process. Linus has made no public noises to this effect, but it would not be surprising if he imposed some sort of solution that led to a single suspend subsystem in 2.6.0.

Comments (3 posted)

Modules move into sysfs

Greg Kroah-Hartman has posted a patch with the rather uninspiring title of "add kobject to struct module." What the patch really does, however, is enable the creation of a /sys/module directory which will contain information about the modules currently loaded into the kernel. With this patch, the only available information (beyond the name of the module) is the reference count, but that will be expanded in the future. Eventually all of the information found in /proc/modules will also appear in the /sys/module tree, though in the standard sysfs "one value per file" format. The values of parameters passed to the module will also be made available for inspection and (permissions willing) change.

This patch continues the process of moving system information from /proc to /sys. It may take a couple more development series worth of work, but /proc might just end up being pared down to the process information it was originally created to hold.

Comments (none posted)

Kernel debugging via the net

One nice feature that was quietly slipped into the 2.6.0-test4-mm6 release is the kgdb-over-ethernet patch, by Robert Walsh and San Mehat. As described in the included documentation, kgdbeth makes it frighteningly easy to hook into a running Linux kernel over the network and prowl around in it. It's really just a matter of setting four boot parameters:

• gdbeth=number the device number of the ethernet interface to use for debugging. Usually zero for eth0.

• gdbeth_remoteip to set the IP address of the machine which is able to hook in with gdb.

• gdbeth_remotemac to set the remote system's MAC address.

• gdbeth_localmac to tell the kgdb stub what the local system's MAC address is.

As one would expect, the target system will only respond to debugger traffic coming from the system designated by the boot-time arguments. Once you've booted a kernel with the kgdbeth patch and the proper parameters, hooking in with gdb is simple. Here's a (slightly cleaned up) log from a quick session done here at LWN Labs:

gdb ./vmlinux
    (gdb startup stuff...)
(gdb) target remote udp:victim:6443
warning: The remote protocol may be unreliable over UDP.
warning: Some events may be lost, rendering further debugging impossible.
Remote debugging using udp:victim:6443
do_IRQ (regs=
      {ebx = -1069465600, ecx = -1054087008, edx = -216755, esi = 624384, 
       edi = -1072664576, ebp = 581632, eax = 0, xds = 123, xes = 123, 
       orig_eax = -251, eip = -1072652202, xcs = 96, eflags = 582, 
       esp = -1072652057, xss = 0}) at arch/i386/kernel/irq.c:514
warning: shared library handler failed to enable breakpoint
(gdb) print ioport_resource
$2 = {name = 0xc0362e75 "PCI IO", start = 0, end = 65535, flags = 256, 
      parent = 0x0, sibling = 0x0, child = 0xc03a2a80}
(gdb) print *ioport_resource->child
$3 = {name = 0xc035d94f "dma1", start = 0, end = 31, flags = 2147483648, 
      parent = 0xc03a40e0, sibling = 0xc03a2a9c, child = 0x0}
(gdb) c
Continuing.

For anybody who has wanted to be able to use gdb on a running kernel, but who has never gotten around to setting up the requisite serial lines and such, kgdbeth promises to make things easier than ever.

Matt Mackall has noticed that a number of patches - including Ingo Molnar's network console code and kgdbeth - each provide their own low-level ethernet functions. Code which hooks into the kernel at such a fundamental level needs to be able to send and receive packets without involving the entire networking subsystem. As a way of addressing this duplication of code and effort, Matt put together and posted a netpoll API. The patch came accompanied by new versions of netconsole and kgdbeth, both of which are somewhat cleaned up and significantly reduced in size. An added bonus is that netpoll supports almost all interfaces out there without the need for any driver changes. As of this writing, netpoll has not found its way into an -mm release, but that could change.

Of course, Linus's feelings on kernel debuggers are well known, so kgdbeth, while potentially useful for developers, is unlikely to find its way into the 2.6 mainline. So Andrew Morton will have to keep this one in -mm. At least, until Linus hands off the 2.6 kernel - to Andrew.

Comments (none posted)

A Brief Tour of New Distributions

[This article was contributed by Ladislav Bodnar]

New Linux distributions are being created at an alarmingly high rate, currently perhaps two or three per week worldwide. While most of them will not survive the initial enthusiasm, which is soon dampened by the realization of how much work is involved, and disappear in a few short months after launch, there are undoubtedly many great ideas which might some day develop into a major project. Just take a quick look back in time - very few people knew of Gentoo or Knoppix as recently as two years ago, but today both of these projects are extremely popular distributions with many thousands of users. It is quite clear that the Linux world is full of bright people with brilliant ideas. Inevitably, much effort is also wasted on projects of little value, serving more as a learning curve for the distribution's creator than a useful tool for the rest of us.

How does one spot a gem among the multitude of new projects? It is not easy, especially since many developers have little marketing or web page design talent and often lack fluency in English. But let's take a look at some of the distribution launched in the past year or so and try to foresee possible winners or at least identify those projects which are likely to be around for a while. It helps to organize them into a few simple categories, such as Red Hat/Mandrake-based distributions, live CDs, distributions for old hardware and specialist distributions. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather a look at some of the more promising, unique or unusual Linux distributions created recently.

Red Hat/Mandrake-based distributions. These are distributions which take Red Hat or Mandrake as a base and add many useful applications purposely left out of Red Hat and Mandrake for various reasons. These are NVIDIA's proprietary drivers, multimedia applications with codecs of questionable legal status, Java, Flash, RealPlayer, Acrobat Reader and other commercial or unsupported applications. While installing and setting up all these is certainly possible in both Red Hat and Mandrake, it requires some searching around the Internet as well as time and effort to configure newly added applications. Several distributions are attempting to fill the gap and come pre-installed and pre-configured with some or all the above mentioned software.

One of the best efforts to-date, at least judging by the overwhelmingly positive user feedback in forums, is JAMD Linux. Despite the low version number (the latest stable version is 0.0.6) and relatively short time since the distribution's launch, it has succeeded in attracting a fair amount of satisfied users and in creating a large user community. Another interesting distribution falling into this category is Aurox Linux - not so much for technical reasons, but rather for its innovative distribution model. Aurox Linux is produced by an large publishing house in Poland and is included as part of a low-cost multi-lingual Aurox Linux magazine. The idea is to get this publication out to as many retail outlets as possible, including general bookstores and supermarkets. By doing so, Aurox is trying to increase the visibility of Linux and tempt potential impulse buyers. This model has proved very successful and if you live in Europe look out for a new Aurox Linux magazine, version 9.1, due to be released this week. Two more interesting projects worth mentioning here are Canada's EduLinux (based on Mandrake 9.1) and Mexico's LGIS GNU/Linux (based on Red Hat 9 with Ximian desktop).

Live CDs. This is probably the fastest growing category of Linux distributions, since it is fairly trivial to re-master Knoppix or even create a custom, bootable Linux CD from an existing installation. Damn Small Linux seems to be one of the more unique Knoppix-based live CDs; it fits on a 50MB business card-type CD and once booted, it provides a script to download and launch Firebird, the web browser, which would have taken too much space on the CD. Other live CD distributions focus on multimedia, with Dyne:bolic GNU/Linux being designed for live streaming audio while GeeXboX for general media playback with MPlayer. Another popular use of live CDs is their deployment as firewalls and Sentinix (formerly a commercial product called Compledge Sentinel, but "freed" recently) seems to be a very promising project. The last distribution worth mentioning in this category is the newly launched MEPIS Linux, a desktop distribution which one can first boot to confirm hardware compatibility before proceeding with a supported hard disk installation. The product tracks Debian's unstable branch, it is frequently updated and it supplies additional applications on supplementary CDs.

Distributions for old hardware. This is one category of Linux distributions, which has sadly been neglected by most mainstream Linux integrators. Many of us have old PCs or notebooks, which not long ago used to run Windows 95 satisfactorily, but are no longer suitable for daily computing tasks. Wouldn't it be nice to get them run a light-weight distribution with a browser, e-mail and, say, a word processor in a graphical mode? Unfortunately, distributions like that are very hard to find, but perhaps DeLi Linux or Drinou-Linux could fill this gap. Both of them are based on an older Slackware release and offer light-weight Sylpheed for email, Dillo for web browsing, SiagOffice for word processing and other low resource software on top of the Fluxbox window manager. They are certainly worth a try.

Specialist distributions. Problems need to be solved and Linux seems to be a perfect solutions for many computing tasks. Puppy Linux is a small distribution that runs entirely in a 48MB ramdisk and can be booted from floppy, USB or ZIP drives, as well as the more traditional hard drives or CD. Other USB pen drive-based distributions include SPB-Linux and RUNT, while NBROK is designed to be installed and run from a ZIP drive. Both RUNT and NBROK are Slackware-based distributions. Another interesting new project is BlackRhino GNU/Linux, a Debian-based distribution for the Sony PlayStation with over 1,200 software packages. And while on the subject of Debian, it is only appropriate to mention a brand new project called DebToo, which as you have probably guessed, is a Gentoo-style Debian distribution "recompiled for your system".

This is of course just the tip of the iceberg and some other distribution categories immediately spring to mind. What about the dozens of floppy and embedded Linux distributions? Or distributions for various non-Intel architectures? We'll look at these in a future issue of LWN.

Comments (3 posted)

Debian GNU/Linux

The Debian Weekly News for September 9, 2003 is out. This week looks at the Rio Karma 20, possibly the first industrially manufactured digital audio player that supports the Ogg Vorbis audio format; an open letter to the European Parliament; Debian and the FSF; Politics in Free Software; and much more.

A second revision of the current stable Debian distribution (woody) is underway. No dates have been set yet for the 3.0r2 release, which will add many security fixes to the stable version.

Comments (2 posted)

Gentoo Weekly Newsletter -- Volume 2, Issue 36

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of September 9, 2003 is out. This week looks at the success of the second Gentoo BugDay; a continuing look at Gentoo security issues; and more.

Full Story (comments: none)

LynuxWorks Embedded Beta Based on 2.6 Kernel (eWeek)

eWeek takes a look at BlueCat Linux 5.0, due out in November. "The San Jose, Calif., company this week will announce availability of a public beta program for the next version of its embedded Linux operating system, BlueCat Linux 5.0, which is based on the as-yet-unreleased Linux 2.6 kernel."

LynuxWorks has also put out a press release announcing the availability of the beta release.

Comments (none posted)

Mandrake Linux

MandrakeSoft has released 9.2RC2. The QA team would like to get feedback on upgrades from Mandrake 9.1/9.0/8.2, and any of those last few bugs. (Thanks to Mark Walker)

Comments (none posted)

Slackware Linux

It's been a busy week at Slackware according to the slackware-current changelog. Various sources have been patched and recompiled, including some the kernel 2.4.22 modules. Lots of packages have been upgraded, and some have been recompiled to take advantage of a new libmad. There are also more ham radio package updates from Arno Verhoeven.

Comments (none posted)

Trustix Secure Linux

Trustix reports a speed bump in the mailing lists as they are being moved to a different machine. If you've been having trouble getting in touch with Trustix, or haven't been getting mail, this could be why.

Full Story (comments: none)

Kernel patches for specialized distributions

openMosix has released the latest clustering extensions to the Linux kernel, version 2.4.22-1.

uClinux has released v2.6.0-test5-uc0 of its Linux kernel for MMU-less processors.

Comments (none posted)

evelin

evelin is a Linux distribution based upon Mandrake. Its main purpose is to be kept secure and small, while providing the basic functionality that system administrators might need. It runs within its own chroot jail on an existing Linux system. The initial release is version 0.1, dated September 5, 2003.

Comments (none posted)

GNOPPIX 0.5 released (GnomeDesktop)

FootNotes notes the release of GNOPPIX 0.5. GNOPPIX is a live CD distribution of the Knoppix variety, but it is based around the GNOME desktop.

Comments (none posted)

Linare Linux Desktop OS launches

Linare Corporation has announced its entry into the desktop Linux business; the distribution is KDE-based and retails for $19.95.

Comments (7 posted)

wrt54g-linux

wrt54g-linux is a mini-distribution for the Linksys wrt54g 802.11b/g access point and router. It includes basic tools such as sh, syslog, telnetd, httpd (with cgi-bin support), vi, snort, mount, insmod, rmmod, top, grep, find, nfs modules, etc. The installation script runs in about 20 seconds and installs strictly to the RAM disk. The initial release, version 0.1, is dated September 6, 2003.

Comments (none posted)

Damn Small Linux

Damn Small Linux has released v0.4.6 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This version features many patches, the addition of traceroute, fixes for a rendering problem with netcardconfig, and modifications to startx so that it will save selected settings for the next X session."

Comments (none posted)

floppyfw

floppyfw has released v2.9.5 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This version features bridging with ebtables and iptables, ISO images, images for the Soekris NET45xx boxes (and probably other CF/DoC-based systems), and PCMCIA/HostAP support."

Comments (none posted)

Recovery Is Possible!

RIP! has released v6.2 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: PPP/PPPOE support has been added."

Comments (none posted)

Sentry Firewall

Sentry Firewall has released v1.5.0-rc4 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: In this version, the Linux kernel has been updated to version 2.4.22-ow1, along with the IPSec+X509 patches and software. Bind9 and Snort were moved to a chroot environment. The configuration scripts were also updated to include new NIC module dependencies, and network configuration support should now work properly with most 10/100BaseT NICs."

Comments (none posted)

stresslinux

stresslinux has released v0.2.6 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: All boot kernels have been upgraded to 2.4.22 with some extra networking modules. ISA-Bus and ISA-PNP is now working. Syslinux, smartmontools, and netio were upgraded to new versions. Pcopy is now included for drive mirroring. A display bug in sl-wizard at 80x25 mode was fixed. ASUS-CUV4X-D was added to sl-wizard."

Comments (none posted)

Debian Review (Distrowatch)

Distrowatch reviews Debian GNU/Linux. "Debian - there has never been any other Linux distro quite like it. Long a favorite of the geek elite, there is no doubt that Debian is popular. Sign up for the Debian-user mailing list, and you can expect to receive about 300 messages a day. Perhaps (just perhaps) there are more people using Redhat, Mandrake or SuSE. However, if bigger means better, then Debian is the undisputed champion - Debian's "stable" branch boasts 8710 "packages" (packages = precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation). In Debian's "unstable" branch there are about 13,000 packages (more than six gigabytes worth). If software was sold by the kilogram, then Debian would fetch top dollar. However, this massive collection of excellent software is free, the work of hundreds (or thousands) of unpaid volunteers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it."

A discussion about this review can be found at DebianPlanet.

Comments (none posted)

The Net-SNMP project

The Net-SNMP project (formerly called ucd-snmp) consists of a set of tools relating to the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), an internet protocol for managing network-connected devices.

The major components of Net-SNMP include:

• An extensible SNMP agent (snmpd) that accepts incoming SNMP connections.
• An SNMP library for developing SNMP-based applications.
• Tools for setting and retrieving information from other SNMP agents.
• Tools for generating and handling SNMP traps.
• An SNMP-based netstat command.
• A Tk/Perl based Management Information Base (MIB) browser.

The Net-SNMP documentation covers the various facets of the project in greater detail.

Version 5.0.9 of Net-SNMP has been announced. "This does contain a security fix so all users are encouraged to update their software immediately." Also included in this release are: kerberos support fixes, documentation improvements, better augmentation table support, improved 64 bit handling, and miscellaneous bug fixes.

Net-SNMP should be a useful addition to the list of available networking tools.

Comments (none posted)

GNOME 2.4 released

It's finally official: GNOME 2.4 has been released. The extensive release notes talk about what's in this release; there's a lot of good stuff there. Congratulations are due to the entire GNOME development community.

Comments (none posted)

Planet CCRMA Changes

The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio packaging project include new versions of Qjackctl, Lilypond, Guile, Texinfo, and Gmorgan.

Comments (none posted)

MySQL 4.0.15 released

MySQL 4.0.15 - a bugfix release - is now available. This release includes a long list of fixes; see the announcement (click below) for the details.

Full Story (comments: none)

PostgreSQL Weekly News

The September 4, 2003 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out. Read about the PostgreSQL beta 2 release, thread safety issues, and more.

Full Story (comments: none)

GNU Scientific Library 1.4 released

Version 1.4 of the GNU Scientific Library has been released. "The GNU Scientific Library (GSL) is a collection of routines for numerical computing in C. This release is backwards compatible with previous 1.x releases. GSL now includes support for cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) contributed by Jason H. Stover."

Comments (none posted)

liblrdf 0.3.2 released

Version 0.3.2 of liblrdf, a library for working with the Resource Description Framework (RDF), is available. "Doesn't add any features, but builds with raptor 1.0.0 and removes a dependency on the LADSPA SDK."

Full Story (comments: none)

milter-sender/0.36 (beta)

Version 0.36 beta of milter-sender, a spam filtering package for sendmail, is available. This version features bug fixes relating to the parsing of sendmail.cf.

Comments (none posted)

SSHVnc 0.1.2 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.1.2 of SSHVnc, a Virtual Network Console that uses ssh for secure communications, is available. "This release of our secure VNC application marks a change in our software distribution policy. The installation is now catered for using the ZeroG installer, providing distributions for Linux and Windows with and without the Java 1.4.2 VM. This release also sees the inclusion of a number of useful configuration options. These include the execution of commands on connect/disconnect allowing the user to start/stop their VNC server remotely, and predefined settings for low/high bandwidth connections."

Comments (1 posted)

WAP11GUI version 0.12 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.12 of WAP11GUI has been released. "WAP11GUI is an SNMP management application for the Linksys WAP11 wireless access point. It provides a Unix/Linux user with a graphical, QT based interface with which to configure and manage a WAP11 AP over a LAN. The biggest news (if you could call it that) in this release is that a memory leak that went unnoticed for 2 years has been fixed."

Comments (none posted)

CUPS 1.1.20rc1 available

Version 1.1.20rc1 of CUPS, the Common Unix Print System, has been released. The release notes list all that is new, many bug fixes are included.

Comments (none posted)

LPRng 3.8.22 released

Version 3.8.22 of the LPRng printer spool system is available. Change information is in the source code.

Comments (none posted)

LinuxPrinting.org news

The latest printer database changes on LinuxPrinting.org include the following: "September 7, 2003: Added Epson Stylus C83, C84, Olympus P-300E, P-300NE, P-300U, P-400, and Canon CP-100; the driver "ljet4" is not recommended any more for PCL-5e printers in the database, instead we recommend "hpijs" now due to better printout quality. The recommendations of "gimp-print" are replaced by "gimp-print-ijs" as the more modern interface of GIMP-Print. For the HP LaserJet 1200 the recommended driver is "pxlmono" now due to the bad graphics performance in the PostScript mode."

Comments (none posted)

Working with the Echo Web framework, Part 1 (IBM developerWorks)

IBM's developerWorks has an article by Tod Liebeck on Echo, a development framework. "This two-part series provides an introduction to the Echo framework, an open source, Java technology-based platform for building Web applications that look and act like rich clients. Part 1 introduces the framework and discusses what it does and how it is best used, providing an introductory walkthrough of its features."

Comments (none posted)

Gallery v1.4 Release Candidate 3 available (SourceForge)

Version 1.4 RC3 of Gallery, a PHP-based web site photo album management package, is available. "Version 1.4 premieres some major new features: Gallery is now multilingual, and can be displayed in 18 different languages, with more on the way! In addition, we've completely overhauled the documentation and made it more accessible and more informative. Other changes include ownership of individual album items, not just of albums, and a slew of minor improvements and bugfixes."

Comments (none posted)

mnoGoSearch-php version 3.2.1

Version 3.2.1 of mnoGoSearch, a web site search engine, is available. New features and bug fixes are listed in the Change Log.

Comments (none posted)

Mod_python 3.1.0a alpha available

Version 3.1.0a Alpha of Mod_python has been announced. The download page says: "This is an ALPHA release, therefore it is likely to contain bugs and is not of production quality. Additionally, some functionality may change until first beta release. We strongly recommend that you try out your application in a test environment with this release and report any incompatibilities or problems you may encounter."

Comments (none posted)

Zope 3 Newsletter, Issue 10

Issue 10 of the Zope 3 Newsletter is out, take a look to see what's happening with the next generation of the Zope web platform.

Full Story (comments: none)

Babeldoc 1.1.9 released (SourceForge)

Babeldoc 1.1.9 has been released. "Babeldoc is integration tool that can plumb together data flows. It is completely configurable and scriptable. It is heavily XML biased but not exclusively so. This is going to be the last development release - the next set of releases are going to be Release candidates to version 1.2. This now has the J2EE module added. Please test."

Comments (none posted)

Access USB devices from Java applications (IBM developerWorks)

Qingye Jiang explains how to talk to USB devices from Java on IBM's developerWorks. "The Java platform has traditionally prided itself on its platform independence. While that independence has many benefits, it makes the process of writing Java applications that interact with hardware quite tricky. In this article, research scientist Qingye Jiang examines two projects that are making the process easier by providing APIs through which Java applications can make use of USB devices. While both projects are still in embryo form, both show promise and are already serving as the foundations of some real-world applications."

Comments (none posted)

ALSA Patch Bay 0.5.2 available

Version 0.5.2 of ALSA Patch Bay has been released. This version fixes a minor build problem.

Full Story (comments: none)

Gnome-Python, PyGTK and PyORBit hit 2.0 (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org has a multiple announcement for new versions of PyGTK, Gnome-Python, and PyOrbit.

Comments (none posted)

Writing GnomeVFS modules (IBM developerWorks)

Mikael Hallendal and Richard Hult show how to extend GNOME with virtual file systems on IBM's developerWorks. "This article describes how to use GnomeVFS -- a C library for accessing various file systems -- to extend GNOME and develop your own extensions to the virtual file system. The article is centered around an imaginary example file system that lets you access an in-memory directory tree."

Comments (none posted)

KDE-CVS-Digest for September 5, 2003

The September 5, 2003 KDE-CVS-Digest has been published. Here's the content summary: "In this week's CVS-Digest: Umbrello now has a document model code generator. Changes in menus and tab configuration in Konqueror. Optimizations in KConfig, KMail and Konqueror. Drag and drop fixes in KOrganizer. Bug fixes in KOffice and Kopete."

Comments (none posted)

KDE Traffic #63

KDE Traffic #63 is available. The summary on KDE.News says: "KDE Traffic #63 was released this week with news about cookie problems, discussion about Cut and Copy entries in the context menu of Konqueror, usability of the Kicker window list, the proposed move of kpdf from kdenonbeta to kdegraphics and more."

Comments (none posted)

KDE Traffic #64 is Out

The KDE.News summary of issue #64 of KDE Traffic says: "KDE Traffic #64 has been released, with lots of news articles about KDatePicker, iCalendar, OpenOffice integration in KDE, the software patent fracas, a neat little devices applet for Kicker, a private extension for DCOP, and of course, a nice treat at the end."

Comments (none posted)

XCircuit 3.1.21 released

Version 3.1.21 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing program, is available. Change information is in the source code.

Comments (none posted)

gEDA News

The latest releases from the gEDA project include new versions the Icarus verilog compiler and gaf (gschem and friends).

Comments (none posted)

PyGame Tutorial Updated

A new version of Shandy Brown's PyGame Tutorial is available. Take a look if you are interested in working with PyGame.

Comments (none posted)

flPhoto 1.1rc3 available

Version 1.1rc3 of flPhoto, an image management and display program, is out. See the Release Notes for change information.

Comments (none posted)

GIMP 1.3.20 Released (GnomeDesktop)

Development version 1.3.20 of the Gimp has been announced. "This release features a lot of bug-fixes as well a number of improvements over 1.3.19. Definitely worth an update, especially if you want to participate on the bug week."

Comments (none posted)

GIMP Bug Week (GnomeDesktop)

The GIMP Bug Week for version pre-2.0 has been announced. "As some of you might already know, next week is the pre-2.0 GIMP Bug Week. The first pre-releases of 2.0 will start coming out the door around the end of this month, and we need to get some concentrated testing done before then, as well as classifying known bugs into those which will be fixed before 2.0 final and those which will be fixed later."

Comments (none posted)

QGIS version 0.0.12 (SourceForge)

Version 0.0.12 of QGIS, a Geographic Information System built for Linux and Unix, has been announced. "The biggest change is the ability to select features in shapefiles and zoom to the selected set. Features can be selected by dragging the mouse or from the attribute table (thanks to Marco)."

Comments (none posted)

FLTK 1.1.4 released

Version 1.1.4 of FLTK, the Fast Light ToolKit, is available. Change info is in the source code.

Comments (none posted)

GTK+ 2.2.4 Released (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org has an announcement for GTK+ 2.2.4. "This is a bug fix release and is source and binary compatible with previous releases in the 2.0 and 2.2 series. This is an emergency release to fix a critical GtkTreeView problem which broke context menus in several applications."

Comments (none posted)

PyGTK 2.0.0 released

Version 2.0.0 of PyGTK, a Python language binding for GTK, has been announced.

Full Story (comments: none)

Samba-3.0.0 RC3 available for download

The Samba Team has announced Samba-3.0.0 RC3, hopefully the final RC before the real 3.0.0 release, which should take place early next week. "Unless there is a severe bug in the Samba source that would affect a large number of the community, the source/ directory in RC3 will stay the same for 3.0.0."

Full Story (comments: none)

Wine Traffic

Issue #186 of Wine Traffic has been published. "This is the 186th release of the weekly Wine Weekly News publication. Its main goal is to run amok. It also serves to inform you of what's going on around Wine."

Comments (none posted)

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.2 Released (MozillaZine)

Version 0.2 of the Mozilla Thunderbird email and news client has been released. "Based on Mozilla 1.5 Beta, Thunderbird 0.2 features a redesigned Options dialogue, spell checker improvements, enhancements to the default theme and better performance and stability."

Comments (none posted)

New stable Pan releases (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org reports on release 0.14.2 of Pan, a newsreader for GNOME. "Pan 0.14.2 fixes a configuration corruption bug in 0.14.1, which was released a few days ago."

Comments (none posted)

GanttProject 1.9.8 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.9.8 of Ganttproject has been released. "After two release candidate, ganttproject 1.9.8 has been released. Ganttproject is a pure Java application thats lets you plan project using Gantt charts. It uses a file format based on XML and can export into HTML Web pages or PNG images."

Comments (none posted)

Gnumeric 1.1.90 RC1 available

Release Candidate 1 of the Gnumeric 1.1.90 spreadsheet is available. "This is primarily a spit and polish release. It fixes the missing documentation files from the 1.1.20 release. There are a few extensions to the charting engine, and a much improved image selector for objects. The main substantive change relates to the handling of empty cells passed as arguments to optional parameters."

Full Story (comments: none)

GNOME DTP software: Passepartout 0.2 (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org looks at version 0.2 of Passepartout, a Desktop Publishing package that is in the early stages of development.

Comments (none posted)

OpenOffice.org 1.1 RC4 is out

Version 1.1 RC4 of OpenOffice.org 1.1 is available. Also, the OpenOffice.org SDK for 1.1 RC4 has been released.

Full Story (comments: none)

OpenOffice.org Newsletter

The September, 2003 edition of the OpenOffice.org newsletter is available with the latest OpenOffice office suite news. This issue takes aim at Microsoft Office.

Full Story (comments: none)

Epiphany 1.0 Released (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine reports that Epiphany 1.0 has been released. Epiphany is a GNOME web browser based on the Gecko rendering engine.

Comments (none posted)

Mozilla 1.4.1 Release Candidates (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine reports on the availability of the Mozilla 1.4.1 release candidate builds. "Mozilla 1.4.1 is an updated version of Mozilla 1.4 with around 100 additional bugfixes."

Comments (none posted)

Arabic Localization Project and Translation Effort (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine reports on the progress of the Arabic translation of Mozilla. "Nadim Shaikli writes: "With the recent improved Arabic support in Mozilla, a flurry of activity has taken place to better acknowledge the browser's enhancements. A complete localization effort is taking shape with a large percentage of the work already completed. Mozilla's homepage has also been fully translated to Arabic."

Comments (none posted)

Independent Status Reports (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine mentions the availability of a new set of Mozilla Independent Status Reports. "The latest set of status reports includes updates from Firebird Help, BannerBlind, Next Image, StumbleUpon, Uzilla, MozWho, MultiZilla and Mozex."

Comments (none posted)

Project Orb Documentation Project Reaches Version 0.2 (MozillaZine)

According to MozillaZine, version 0.2 of the Project Orb Mozilla documentation project, is available. "Since release 0.1 additional useful end user preference customizations are included, as well as several screenshots. The project is continuing to evolve in scope. Plans are in the works for a French language version of the project, as well as more information about Camino and Firebird."

Comments (none posted)

AbiWord Weekly News

Issue #160 of the AbiWord Weekly News has been published, take a look for the latest AbiWord word processor news.

Comments (none posted)

Gsharp 0.2 released

Version 0.2 of Gsharp, an interactive, extensible editor for musical scores written in Lisp, is available.

Full Story (comments: none)

Peacock 1.9.1 released! (GnomeDesktop)

Version 1.9.1 of Peacock, an HTML editor for the GNOME Desktop, is available. "Admirers of fair creatures and HTML Editor named after them, a new version of Peacock - An HTML Editor for Gnome, v1.9.1 has been released. Sporting a new Gnome 2 look and more importantly WYSIWYG (yes! WYSIWYG) HTML Editing capabilities using the GtkHTML bonobo control (you might have bumped into it while composing a email in evo)."

Comments (none posted)

Caml Weekly News

The August 26 - September 2, 2003 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with the latest Caml language development news.

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Caml Weekly News

The September 2-9, 2003 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with even more Caml news.

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Comparing Java Data Binding Tools (O'Reilly)

Mette Hedin compares several open-source and proprietary Java data binding tools. "Many W3C XML Schema (WXS) data binding tools for Java are now emerging. These tools generate Java code from instances of WXS in order to represent the structures defined therein. The autogenerated code has the ability to convert from XML format to Java objects and vice versa. This gives the user a compile-time Java API customized for the specific schema used, which saves a lot of time and effort compared to utilizing generic interfaces such as DOM and JDOM. In addition it also enables Java developers with little or no XML knowledge to both consume and produce valid XML documents."

Comments (none posted)

GNU CLISP 2.31 released

Version 2.31 of GNU CLISP, a Common Lisp implementation, is available.

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This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)

The September 1-7, 2003 edition of This Week on perl5-porters has been published. "September begins, holidays are over. Lots of little new things occured this week. Read about lexical pragmas, syntax warnings and good style, advancement of the maintainance branches, bugs, fixes, tests and upgrades."

Comments (none posted)

PHP Weekly Summary for September 8, 2003

The PHP Weekly Summary for September 8, 2003 is out. Topics include: iconv compiler issues, studlyCaps, ming extension, Broken locale functionality, Servlet SAPI (continued).

Comments (none posted)

phpMyAdmin 2.5.3 is released (SourceForge)

An announcement for version 2.5.3 of phpMyAdmin is on SourceForge. "After three release candidates, we are pleased to release this brand new version. phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the http://www. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields."

Comments (none posted)

InlineEgg Library for Python

Version 1.0 of the InlineEgg library for Python is available. "InlineEgg is a collection of python classes (a "library"), that will help you write small assembly programs, either to use as eggs/shellcode for your exploits or for anything else you may need small assembly programs for. But! without writing assembly, just using python." Hopefully, those exploits will be non-malevolent.

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MojoView 1.0 available

Version 1.0 of MojoView, a Python package that assists in building PyGTK2 database applications, is available.

Comments (none posted)

Python beginner's mistakes

Hans Nowak has published a document entitled Python beginner's mistakes. "Beginner's mistakes are not Python's fault, nor the beginner's. They're merely a result of misunderstanding the language. However, there is a difference between misunderstanding (often subtle) language features, vs misunderstanding the language as a whole, and what can (and cannot) be done with it. The pitfalls article focused on the former; this article deals with the latter."

Comments (none posted)

Python anti-pitfalls

Richard Jones has published a document called Python anti-pitfalls. "The following are a quick (random, off the top of various heads) list of things that I think are anti-pitfalls in Python. That is, because the language has these features, it is harder to make programming mistakes."

Comments (none posted)

PyXR 0.9.3.0 released

Version 0.9.3.0 of PyXR, a Python-language HTML pretty-printing package, is available. Changes include better line linking and improved config file error message reporting.

Comments (none posted)

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The September 8, 2003 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with another round of links to Python language articles.

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Unix Squeak 3.6-beta11 available

Version 3.6-beta11 of Unix Squeak, a Smalltalk implementation, has been released, take a look to see the long list of changes.

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Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

The September 1, 2003 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! has been published.

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Enhance Ant with XSL transformations (IBM developerWorks)

Jim Creasman writes about Ant on IBM's developerWorks. "n the mid-1990s, most of the source code was C or C++. make was the tool of choice for scripting and managing code compilation. Sprinkle in a dash of batch files or shell scripts to add automation and you had a build process. Times change. Enter Java technology, XML, XSLT, extreme programming with continuous build, and a host of other new technologies and ideas. By the late '90s the playing field was looking a lot different. Perhaps the single biggest addition to the set of build tools was Ant."

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A clicking bomb (Economist)

The Economist covers the software patent fight in Europe. "Now, although many patents are centrally awarded by the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich, national courts have the final say over a patent's validity. In Britain, business methods are generally not patentable, but they can sometimes be patented in Germany. The EPO, by the way, granted Amazon a patent in May covering computerised methods of delivering gifts to third parties, a descendant of its one-click patent in America."

Comments (3 posted)

Patent Riots of 2003 (PC Magazine)

John Dvorak looks at the European software patent fight in PC Magazine. "[T]here seems to be a strong protest movement that has begun in Europe regarding software patents. It could easily become a juggernaut that will make legislative bodies reconsider the tendency to approve dubious copyright and patent laws that benefit nobody but large corporations."

Comments (none posted)

SCO faces AUUG anger, claims Linux users still liable (ComputerWorld)

ComputerWorld (Australia) was present at the Australian Unix Users Group conference, where SCO's Kieran O'Shaughnessy had the unenviable task of explaining his company's actions. "At the event O'Shaughnessy was forced to admit the legal threat against Linux users remained. With the audience clearly fuming at what they were hearing, O'Shaughnessy pointed out that the company's legal pursuits are not targeted at end users, but did make a reference to businesses that use Linux."

Comments (18 posted)

New IBM Ad features Linux in a new light (NewsForge)

Joe Barr takes a look at IBM advertising featuring Linux, in this NewsForge article. "It's a slick way to instruct the viewing audience on various aspects of Linux and the free/open source development memes. Alan Cox, currently on sabbatical from Red Hat and Linux kernel development to further his education, said of the ad "It's rather cool." Cox added that it is "perhaps more telling" that IBM made the ad available on its website in MPEG format as well as in Real and QT formats. Andrew Morton, the current number-two in the Linux hacker hierachy, found the ad "perhaps a little pretentious, but it's nice to see that IBM is keeping the faith."

Comments (5 posted)

MS' Linux obsession - time to call in the shrinks (Register)

The Register responds to yet another Microsoft-funded study showing that Windows costs less than Linux. "Microsoft thinks the problem is getting the message across. Microsoft thinks Windows 'wins against Linux every time' (although it appears unwilling to share that particular case study outside its reseller community), whereas large swathes of customers think Windows is expensive and Linux much cheaper. Microsoft is therefore convinced that if it continues to place 'the facts' in front of these sad, deluded people they will ultimately accept that Microsoft is right, and Windows will triumph."

Comments (16 posted)

Novell 'puts entire ecosystem behind Linux' (Register)

The Register reports from Novell's Brainshare conference in Barcelona. "Driving the adoption of Linux in the enterprise is central to its plans to return to profit while reaffirming its commitment to maintain support for its own NetWare operating system, the company says. Jack Messman, chairman and chief executive of Novell, (repeatedly) told delegates "we are not abandoning NetWare, we are adding Linux. It's all about choice for the customer.""

Novell also announced a partnership with MySQL AB that bundles a commercially-licensed version of the MySQL(R) database with Novell NetWare 6.5.

Comments (none posted)

Linux is the path to a bright new future (Taipei Times)

The Taipei Times covers worries that Taiwan is falling behind China in Linux adoption. "Currently there are around 20 Taiwanese companies making Linux products, such as server applications and embedded products. The government hopes to increase that number to 50 by 2007. The authorities are also setting a target to have 10 percent of personal computers and 30 percent of Internet servers used by government agencies and corporate networks run on a Linux-based system by 2007."

Comments (none posted)

Linux demand in Thailand 'artificial' (Asia Computer Weekly)

Asia Computer Weekly is carrying an article noting that Linux-installed systems are gaining market share in Thailand, while Windows systems are slipping. But our old friends at the Gartner Group have an explanation: "A report [Gartner] released on Aug 18 said that much of Linux's success in Thailand is due to its use as a cover for software piracy. 'Gartner believes that most of the Linux shipments will eventually have illegal copies of Windows installed-a fact that makes Linux's seeming dominance of this market somewhat misleading,' the report stated."

Comments (27 posted)

The Rise Of Linux (VARBusiness)

VAR Business looks at the increasing use of Linux by resellers. "We aren't just talking simple Apache Web servers and Dell boxes running Red Hat, but an entire next generation of applications that takes Java, Web services and Internet infrastructure as a given and builds new and exciting businesses on top of all of that. Almost without having been noticed, Linux has become essential for building these applications."

Comments (none posted)

FreeBSD Jails (O'ReillyNet)

In this O'ReillyNet article Mike DeGraw-Bertsch explains how FreeBSD's jails can help secure necessary applications. "Those familiar with Java recognize the security concept of a sandbox. For those that aren't, it's the concept that everyone gets a unique, well-equipped sandbox to play in, and a person in one sandbox isn't allowed into anyone else's sandbox, not even to share anything with anyone else. On FreeBSD, jails implement this concept -- they keep processes in their own part of the system, denying access to anything else."

Comments (1 posted)

Inside the GNOME 2.4 Desktop and Developer Platform (Ars Technica)

Ars Technica has posted a lengthy review of GNOME 2.4. "GNOME 2.4 brings to the Linux desktop considerable polish, accessibility and consistency. This release is a culmination of the work done by commercial vendors and the GNOME community, as evidenced by the fact that three vendors--Sun, Red Hat and Ximian--have already shipped desktops focused on the GNOME 2 platform. The end result is a pleasant desktop that is nimble, attractive and unobtrusive. While it's not perfect, the foundation is now there and the overall product has matured."

Comments (2 posted)

KAddressbook 3.2 reviewed

A review of KAddressbook 3.2 is online. "As preview for the upcoming KAddressbook 3.2 which will be shipped with KDE 3.2 later this year, we have some screenshots here taken from the CVS version of KAddressbook."

Comments (none posted)

Review - Linux+ Certification Bible (Help Net Security)

Here's a review of Linux+ Certification Bible by Trevor Kay on Help Net Security. "Since this is a Certification Bible, each chapter in this book is preceded by pre-test questions, the answers to which can be found at the end of the chapter. This gives you a glance into what you will learn that chapter. Also, at the end of every chapter, you find assessment questions that help you test the knowledge you gained while reading the chapter."

Comments (1 posted)

'Storage' to Replace Traditional Filesystems (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org reviews the Storage project. "OSNews is reporting on Storage, an innovative project which aims to replace the traditional hierarchical filesystems with a new document store which is database-based (PostgreSQL). The current implementation, built under Gnome 2.x for now, offers natural language access, network transparency, and a number of other features. The project is currently in alpha (screenshots already available), and it is part of the next major generation of Gnome."

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Open source bookmarks Australian heritage (ComputerWorld)

ComputerWorld looks at the National Library of Australia and its IT needs. "Couple its physical scope with the plethora of media types maintained by the organisation, ranging from books and manuscripts to complex digitised maps, images, audio and online data, and the need for providing innovative services has made adaptable software from the open source community appear a necessity." (Thanks to Vladimir Likic)

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East Asia plans Windows rival (BBC News)

The BBC reports that China, South Korea and Japan are involved in joint research into a new computer operating system to rival Microsoft Windows. "An open-source software forum will then be set up by major Japanese electronics companies such as Hitachi, Matsushita, NEC and Fujitsu, to establish what they need from the alternative software. However, Japanese officials confirmed that they planned more to work with current Windows alternatives than building a new system entirely from scratch."

Comments (4 posted)

Linux fan to run against Arnie in California election (Silicon.com)

Silicon.com reports on a new contender for Governer of California. "Georgy Russell, is a very un-geeky 26-year-old who works for Veritas and graduated from Berkley with a computer science degree. A Democrat, she has launched a campaign promising the legalisation of drugs, gay marriages and a universal health care system." Ms. Russell is also promoting the wider use of open source software.

Comments (26 posted)

Raymond and Perens respond to SCO

Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens have sent out a response to SCO's "open letter." "Accordingly, we of the open-source community do not concede that there is anything to negotiate. Linux is our work and our lawful property, the distillation of twelve years of hard work, idealism, creativity, tears, joy, and sweat by hundreds of thousands of cooperating hackers all over the world. It is not yours, has never been yours, and will never be yours."

Full Story (comments: 38)

Press conference on European software patents

The Greens/European Free Alliance has announced a lengthy press event on software patents in Europe, to be held in Brussels on September 17. A number of speakers are scheduled, including representatives from the scientific, economic, consumer, corporate, and public administration areas. Correction: Tim Berners-Lee is NOT on the agenda as is listed below..

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OpenOffice.org Community Contributor Vote

A vote will be held for the OpenOffice.org Community Council Representative. Voting closes on Monday, September 15, 2003.

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New Roles at The Perl Foundation (use Perl)

Use Perl reports on some personnel changes at The Perl Foundation. "gav writes "I have stepped into the new public relations role at The Perl Foundation. I'll be resurrecting the newsletter and providing news about TPF activities. If you have any TPF related news or questions please email me. One thing I will be doing is reporting on the events over the last few months, including the YAPCs and the latest round of grants." "TPF is also looking to fill a new role, one of grant manager."

Comments (none posted)

pgAdmin3 is looking for translators!

Translators are needed for pgAdmin, the PostgreSQL database admin GUI. "pgAdmin, one of the most widely used GUI's for PostgreSQL, is soon to announce it's third major release and needs more translators! It has been designed from near the beginning to handle multiple languages, and has already been mostly translated into 16 non-English ones so far: Danish, German, Farsi, French, Croatian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese-Brazilian, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Chinese simplified, and Chinese traditional We're trying to organise for a lot more translations to be finished in time for this release, so that PostgreSQL and pgAdmin are available to the widest possible audience."

Comments (none posted)

Lindows offers support line

Lindows has announced the availability of a 24-hour telephone support service for its distribution. A $79.95 annual fee buys access to the support line for a year.

Comments (none posted)

Novell announcements at BrainShare Europe 2003

Novell has issued a handful of press releases in conjunction with Novell BrainShare Europe. News includes the integration of Ximian technology into Novell Nterprise Linux Services, new versions of Novell exteNd, Nterprise Branch Office and Nsure SecureLogin, and PartnerNet for ISV/IHVs. Click below for the full list.

Full Story (comments: none)

Zend Studio 3.0 IDE announced

Zend Technologies has announced its Zend Studio 3.0 IDE. This is a development environment targeted at developers building enterprise applications in PHP, JavaScript and HTML.

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"Kerberos: The Definitive Guide" Released by O'Reilly

O'Reilly has published the book "Kerberos: The Definitive Guide".

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Paper: How to Evaluate Open Source Software / Free Software Programs

David A. Wheeler has published a paper on how to evaluate free software programs; it is aimed at those used to buying proprietary applications. "Examine the developer mailing list archives - is there evidence they're actively discussing improvements to the software? Are there multiple developers (so that if one is lost, the project will easily continue)? If their version management information is accessible to the public, take a look - are developers regularly checking in improvements and bug fixes?"

Comments (none posted)

LDP Weekly News

The September 3, 2003 edition of the Linux Documentation Project Weekly News is out with the latest documentation change news.

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LDP Weekly News

The September 9, 2003 Linux Documentation Project Weekly News is out with another round of documentation updates.

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An introduction to Thunderbird, part 6

The sixth article by Kay Frode on Mozilla Thunderbird has been published on Nidelven-it. "Changing to a new mail client don't need to be difficult, as long as you have a proper guide to help you. :) In this part of the introduction I will try to show you how to import and migrate all your information from your old mail client. Clients I will talk about are Outlook, Netscape and Eudora. Big topic, so buckle up. :)"

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Announcing the first Annual Desktop Linux Conference

The Desktop Linux Consortium has announced the first annual Desktop Linux Conference, which will take place on November 10, 2003, at Boston University's Corporate Education Center in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts.

Full Story (comments: 1)

Events: September 11 - November 6, 2003

Date	Event	Location
September 11 - 12, 2003	Python for Scientific Computing Workshop(SciPy'03)	(CalTech)Pasadena, CA
September 15 - 18, 2003 October 7 - 8, 2003	LogOn Web Days	Across Europe
September 15 - 18, 2003	Embedded Systems Conference(ESC)	(Hynes Convention Center)Boston, Mass
September 26 - 27, 2003	Third DZUG-Conference	Paderborn, Germany
October 12 - 15, 2003	International Lisp Conference 2003(ILC 2003)	New York, NY
October 14 - 16, 2003	10th Linux-Kongress	Saarbrücken, Germany
October 15 - 17, 2003	The First Plone Conference	(Tulane University)New Orleans, Louisiana
October 26, 2003 October 27 - 31, 2003	Large Installation Systems Administration Conference(LISA)	(Town & Country Resort Hotel)San Diego, CA
November 2 - 3, 2003	International PHP Conference 2003	(Astron Hotel Frankfurt-Mörfelden)Frankfurt, Germany
November 6 - 7, 2003	HiverCon 2003	(Davenport Hotel)Dublin, Ireland

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Finnish Open Source Translators Getting Organised

Linux-Aktivaattori ry is a Finnish non-profit organization promoting the use of Linux and other Open Source software. They recently organized the first Open Source translation workshop for the Finnish language on 29-31 August 2003 in the city of Turku. Click below for more information.

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This week's software announcements

Here are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:

• Sorted alphabetically,
• Sorted by license.

Comments (none posted)

Open Query: what replaces RedHat?

From:		"Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>
To:		letters@lwn.net
Subject:		Open Query: what replaces RedHat?
Date:		Thu, 4 Sep 2003 13:14:06 -0400

Yeah, I know; RedHat isn't really dying.
 
But I don't at all know how their Big New Idea is gonna work out, and I'm sure
I'm not the only guy building production customer boxes on RH7.3 because 8
was an orphan and I'm not completely comfortable with 9 yet (for servers;
it's pretty spiffy for the desktop).
 
Hell, AutoZone (mentioned in all the SCO fuss last week) is shipping RH7.2; I
saw a login prompt at a store recently.
 
So, what's a guy like me to do? Will there still be a frozen ISO of "the latest
RedHat distribution" that I can bang on, even in The New Environment? Do I
switch to Mandrake? (I'm a RedHat guy; the Debian layout leaves me cold,
alas.) Or do I go back to paying RedHat almost as much money as I always paid
SCO (sign of the cross) and switch to ES and AS, as they so clearly want me to?
 
Yeah, I need stability, but not as much as the people whom I read as their target
audience for AS and ES.
 
Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com

Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink                             RFC 2100
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274
    OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows
        -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c

Comments (8 posted)

Reply to Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community

From:		"Dafydd Walters" <dafydd@walters.net>
To:		<dmcbride@sco.com>
Subject:		Reply to Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community
Date:		Tue, 9 Sep 2003 14:05:57 -0700
Cc:		<letters@lwn.net>

September 9, 2003
 
Open Letter to Darl McBride,
 
I would like to briefly respond to your open letter to the Open Source
Community, dated today. I consider myself to be a member of that community,
having developed Open Source software myself, although I do not claim to be
any kind of "leader", or to represent the views of other members of the
community.
 
Firstly, I would like to join you in condemning the Denial of Service
attacks that took place against your web servers. Using vandalism and
illegal tactics is not an appropriate way for people to respond, however
strongly they disagree with you or SCO's words or deeds. In your open
letter, you quoted Eric Raymond's reaction to the DoS attack, but you seemed
to suggest that he knows the identity of the perpetrator. I can't speak for
Mr Raymond, but I believe that in the letter you quoted from, he actually
said that he DID NOT know the perpetrator; it was an associate of the
perpetrator who contacted him. Do you have any evidence to suggest that Mr
Raymond is not co-operating with the authorities in helping them to bring
the perpetrator to justice?
 
The memory allocation code you mentioned, does, at first blush, appear to
have indeed been copied illegally by SGI, and perhaps SGI have got some
explaining to do. However, this is a very tiny part of Linux as a whole, and
the notion that "one million lines of UNIX System V protected code have been
contributed to Linux" is obviously based on an incredibly improbable reading
of copyright law in terms of what you consider to be "derivative works" (one
that if upheld, would turn copyright law on its head).
 
Contrary to what you suggest in your letter, in my experience members of the
Open Source community understand very well and fully respect copyright laws.
 
In fact, a very telling remark in you letter where you talk about
"transferring copyrights in contributed code to Open Source", leads me to
believe that we understand it better than you do Mr McBride. Open Source is
NOT THE SAME as Public Domain. Open Source software relies on Copyright Law
to protect the authors. There is no "transfer" to some nebulous Open Source
status. When I write a piece of software, I as the author, hold the
copyright on that work. When I choose to release it, I license it to my
customers using the GNU General Public License, the BSD license, or some
other Open Source license. My customers agree to the terms of the license.
If they violate the terms of the license (for example, they attempt to
sublicense my work in violation of the GPL), they are in breach of our
agreement, and they are misappropriating my work.
 
In your letter, you refer to "problems that exist in the current Linux
software development model". The Open Source development model, by its very
nature, is transparent. Any intellectual property problems can be quickly
identified and addressed because the code is out in the open. I contend that
there is absolutely no way for SCO to tell whether a closed-source system
such as Windows, AIX, etc. has code copied within it. You are holding the
Open Source community to a higher standard than the proprietary software
community.
 
Finally, I'd like to address the 5 points in your summary.
 
"1. Fair use applies to educational, public service and related applications
and does not justify commercial misappropriation."
 
I agree.
 
"2. Copyright attributions protect ownership and attribution rights-they
cannot simply be changed or stripped away."
 
Absolutely agree. Perhaps SGI have some explaining to do here. But also, I'd
like to hear your explanation of why the Regents of the University of
California attribution is missing from the Berkley Packet Filter that showed
up in your slides at the Las Vegas presentation?
 
"3. In copyright law, ownership cannot be transferred without express,
written authority of a copyright holder. Some have claimed that, because SCO
software code was present in software distributed under the GPL, SCO has
forfeited its rights to this code. Not so - SCO never gave permission, or
granted rights, for this to happen."
 
Again, I agree. And there certainly is nothing in the GPL that even mentions
the transferring of ownership of copyright to anybody. However, ANY TIME you
distribute Linux, which is the intellectual property of hundreds of authors,
you are BOUND, by Copyright Law, to the terms of the licenses granted to you
by those hundreds of individual copyright holders (the authors of Linux). So
if you were distributing Linux after you believed that there was tainted
code present in it, you were still bound by the license agreements with
those Linux authors.
 
Think about it Mr McBride. You are asking others to respect Intellectual
Property. Are you respecting the Intellectual Property of the authors of
Linux?
 
"4. Transfer of copyright ownership without express written authority of all
proper parties is null and void."
 
I agree again. Copyright is the property of the author, be it an individual,
IBM, HP, or whoever. I don't know how you can reconcile this statement,
which is clearly true, with your assertion that "one million lines of UNIX
System V protected code have been contributed to Linux"!
 
"5. One reason SCO sued IBM is due to our assertions that IBM has violated
the terms of the specific IBM/SCO license agreement through its handling of
derivative works. We believe our evidence is compelling on this issue."
 
I have not seen your agreement with IBM so I can't comment.
 
Regards,
Dafydd Walters
Open Source Developer.

Comments (1 posted)

Saving the earth from anarchy by eliminating the weakest link

From:		SOT Public Relations <prelations@sot.com>
To:		lwn@lwn.net
Subject:		Saving the earth from anarchy by eliminating the weakest link
Date:		Mon, 8 Sep 2003 20:09:18 +0300

 
This article is copyright free. Anyone is permitted to use, link
and publish it.
 
 
SAVING THE EARTH FROM ANARCHY BY ELIMINATING THE WEAKEST LINK
 
 
Finland, 2003-8-24
By Santeri Kannisto, SOT
 
 
The recent massive failure of the US electrical grid has got me thinking.
I've come to realize that our civilization is really quite vulnerable to
events that are completely beyond our control and influence. It didn't
make the international news, but the same kind of catastrophe happened
yesterday evening at an amusement park in Helsinki, Finland.
 
I was enjoying the fun-filled atmosphere with my 4 and 8 year old kids
when suddenly the electricity was cut off in Helsinki. In the space of
a few seconds, amusement rides became torture devices. Innocent kids and
adults hung upside-down, 10 meters in the air, without any means of
escape. What causes a failure of this magnitude?
 
Last week I lost my banking card on a hunting trip to northern Finland.
The cash machine accepted the card greedily, considered my transaction for
a disturbingly long time, and then decided to shut itself down...with my
card inside. Later, I learned from bank the reason: their cash machines
had become infected with a Windows virus. I couldn't help wondering what
effect this kind of thing might have had in the US, if it happened on
a larger scale, and for a longer time. No electricity, no cash --- it
could drive a country to anarchy! How is this sort of thing even possible
in the 21st century?
 
I've been working in the software industry for the last 12 years. I
started out as a software engineer, programming and designing various
systems. Then I moved on to managing projects and finally ended up running
a software house. One of realizations I have come to during my time is
that when it comes to software, problems will happen. It doesn't matter
how skilled people are, or what quality control processes are established.
 
Software problem can arise from so many causes --- from misunderstandings,
miscommunication, changing requirements, or simply because today's vast
and complicated computer systems are beyond the understanding of any
single human being. The basic weakness is people and the fault always
originates between the chair and keyboard. This is what makes it
impossible to achieve 100% fail-safe and foolproof software, despite
everything we do to reduce risks. Bug-ridden software is the weakest
point of modern society, posing a greater threat than even terrorism or
crime.
 
What can we do to shore up this weakness? Can we remove the danger
completely? No, unfortunately we can not. We have grown too reliant on
software, trusting it to control all aspects of our lives, even if we
know nothing about it. Airplanes fly with software, banks use software
for handling our money, power plants use software for configuring and
monitoring electric grid, hospitals need it to keeping people alive.
Isn't that scary! We use trust this thing called software to handle
matters of life and death.
 
We could reduce our vulnerability by employing armies of software
engineers, constantly on-call to deal with problems as they occurs.
We could subject software's source code to the scutiny of thousands of
eyes, alert for every possible flaw. We could ensure that systems are
designed with a thought for security. Are these ideas at all feasible?
How could they be implemented, and what would be the impact on
the software business?
 
The answer to these questions is Open Source. Open Source software
provides all these benefits and makes it possible for anyone to fix the
faults as fast as they are discovered. Open Source means that software is
being constantly examined by multitudes of people, letting us detect
faults before they risk lives. This new method of software engineering and
business makes customers and users independent of any particular company,
programming team or organization. It does this by giving anyone --- not
just the maker --- the right to fix faulty software. This reduces the risk
of bad software significantly. It's not enough just to be allowed to look
at the source code. What's the point of looking, if you're not allowed to
fix the problems you find?
 
It has been argued that Open Source will destroy the software industry,
because it makes software free (as in "free beer"). In reality, Open
Source just requires a different approach. It may well destroy or weaken
companies who cling to outdated models, but it creates opportunities for
new, forward-thinking companies who are willing to make the change for
the sake of humanity.
 
Here's the deal. You don't sell restrictive licenses and patent
everything in sight. Instead, you charge for tailoring software to
individual needs and you sell maintenance, support and development
services for the kind of software that is by nature risk-reducing.
 
From the business side of things, companies like ours are already
profitable, making nothing other than Open Source software. Whether
Open Source is a viable and sustainable business strategy is no longer
in question. It's just about having sane management, who understand
the concept of Open Source, and who don't expect too much, too quickly.
 
In my humble opinion I would feel much safer if I knew that the airplane
I fly with used Open Source software, if I knew that power plants relied
on systems they can review by themselves and that banks could fix
emerging security holes right away instead of waiting and hoping for
some third party update. It is my great hope that in the near future,
before it's too late, we will be able to eliminate modern society's
weakest link. We would be that much safer from anarchy caused by
innocent little software bugs.
 
 
 
Santeri Kannisto
tel. +358 440 833 982
e-mail sk@sot.com
 
[http://www.sot.com/en/press/2003-09-08_Article.txt]

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