Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Going Upstream to Fight Spam (Wired)
Wired covers a talk by Eric Raymond at a Spam Conference at MIT. "Raymond is promoting an antispam technology called SPF (sender permitted from), an open-standard SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) extension that stops spam before ISPs have to download messages by rejecting those e-mails coming from forged addresses. Under SPF, e-mail users enter their valid domains and IP addresses into the SPF registry. More than 4,000 domains have published their SPF records, including AOL, said Raymond. The registry will also be supported by an upcoming version of SpamAssasin and other antispam applications."
Under the hood of the Open Source Awards (ZDNet)
ZDNet takes a look at the projects that are winning the Open Source Awards. "Today marks an important milestone for the open source community. It's the day that, for the first time in the movement's history, the community's elders begin to dole out cash awards--known as the Open Source Awards -- to the lesser known contributors whose efforts are critical to the vibrancy, viability, and preservation of the open source culture. The first recipients are Julian Seward for Valgrind, Paul Davis for JACK, the VideoLAN project, and the Pango project."
Eclipse to split from IBM (News.com)
News.com reports that Eclipse will split from IBM. "The current Eclipse consortium, made up of about 50 software companies, will be incorporated as the Eclipse Foundation, a nonprofit modeled after other successful open-source organizations, such as the Apache Foundation, said McGaughey."
Trade Shows and Conferences
Saudi open source conference opens minds (NewsForge)
NewsForge covers a small open source conference in Saudi Arabia. "Dr. Aljahadi is Chairman of the Saudi Linux Group, so when he presented facts and figures about Linux and open source after all the buildup, he had an attentive audience. Most of what he said is old hat to NewsForge readers, but not many government officials in Saudi Arabia knew, for instance, that open source Apache was a clear leader in the Web-serving software realm until he told them. Introducing open source to government and industry leaders here was what the conference was all about, so it's nice that he got such a fine reception."
Novell advocates open source (News.com)
News.com reports from the Novell press conference at LinuxWorld. "SCO, which now is attacking Linux and its intellectual property foundations, refuses to withdraw from UnitedLinux, Richard Seibt, SuSE's CEO, said in the press conference. 'There's no value for us to work in the UnitedLinux corporation,' Seibt said. 'This doesn't mean we're not focusing on continuing with the development relationship we have with Turbolinux and Conectiva.'"
The SCO Problem
Declaration of Ryan E. Tibbitts (Groklaw)
Groklaw has posted the text of SCO's declaration to the Utah court that it has provided the required evidence. PJ is not impressed. "After they get everything they list in this document from IBM, they figure they'll need 90 days to evaluate what IBM turns over. I'm not kidding. 90 more days. They'd better send Boies to court for the next hearing. This is going to be a hard sell."
The Wrath of Linux (Motley Fool)
This Motley Fool article is another sign that SCO is losing the PR war. "If SCO thought threat-born licensing fees would provide a quick boost to the bottom line, it looks to have miscalculated. As fellow Fool Tom Taulli noted last month, SCO has tried to cast its lawsuits in apocalyptic terms. But with the entire computing world putting its money behind Linux, it appears that, for SCO, the apocalypse is now."
Linux users face licence cash call (BBC News)
The BBC News covers SCO's attempts to sell Linux licenses to European firms. "Mr Sontag said taking out a licence was a cheap way to avoid potential legal action and was less expensive than the indemnification schemes set up by firms such as Novell to bail out Linux users that end up in court."
Changes in the New SCO SEC Filing (Groklaw)
The SCO Group has a new regulatory filing available now. Groklaw has posted a listing of differences between this filing and previous versions that is definitely worth a look. For example, "In addition to SCOx, we implemented our first SCOsource initiative in January 2003 to review and enforce our intellectual property rights in the UNIX operating system. became "In addition to SCOx, we implemented our first SCOsource initiative in January 2003 to review and establish our intellectual property rights in the UNIX operating system." (emphasis added). As a whole, the changes do not indicate that everything is going SCO's way.SCO Hints at a Short List and Licenses Go on Sale in Australia (Groklaw)
Groklaw looks at SCO's plans to sell licenses in Australia. "More menacing hints from SCO. It seems they are making their list smaller and smaller, and it's down to about a dozen or so. Didn't they already say it was a definite? But they now say they "may" sue. Here are some on the short list, according to Darl: "BP, Siemens and Fujitsu are among a large number of big companies whose use of the operating system has come under scrutiny, said Darl McBride, chief executive of SCO, the small US company that has mounted the challenge. He said the company had not yet decided whether to sue. But he added: 'That clearly is an option we are looking into very closely.'"Aust firm tells SCO to detail evidence (SMH.com)
The Sydney Morning Herald talks with Leon Brooks about his efforts to get SCO to detail its claims. "Brooks said that several people at last week's Adelaide conference on the use of open source software in government had indicated that they were holding off on adoption or testing of software of this genre for public sector use until the case which SCO has filed against IBM is resolved."
Companies
Commentary: Oracle envisions grand future in China (News.com)
News.com has a commentary that looks at Oracle's leveraging of Linux in China. "Oracle's database and business applications growth in the United States may no longer be very robust, but in China, the company sees greener fields. Oracle plans to reap those fields with Linux, which has received strong support in China because of that country's distaste for being locked in to Microsoft's proprietary Windows systems."
Oracle's Linux Push: Mozilla Browser to Front Oracle Apps (eWeek)
eWeek looks at a push by Oracle to support Linux on the desktop as well as on the server. "Oracle Corp. is ready to extend its "Linux Everywhere" campaign to client systems. In the coming year, the company will enable the Mozilla open-source Web browser to run Oracle applications."
Interviews
Linux breaks desktop barrier in 2004: Torvalds (LinuxWorld.com.au)
LinuxWorld.com.au interviews Linus Torvalds. "The fact that X and kernel development have been separate is good; one could evolve without the other but DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure) has made them not completely independent. As a developer, having the two separate is good, because different people are good at developing for each."
Interviews with FOSDEM speakers
The FOSDEM team has published 2 new interviews with FOSDEM speakers: In this one Rich Kilmer talks about Ruby. Then Tom Kistner, from the SpamAssassin project, explains current anti-spam techniques.Red Hat CEO Is Optimistic about Economy, Sector (The News & Observer)
The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C. interviews Matthew Szulik. "Last year, Red Hat hired 150 workers worldwide, bringing its total employees to 620, including 220 in the Triangle. Its stock has more than quadrupled in the past 12 months. And last week, Red Hat raised $600 million by selling convertible bonds, money that the company says it will use for acquisitions and to expand internationally. Szulik talked with staff writer Vicki Lee Parker about the role the technology industry will play in the local economy's recovery."
Open Source in Government: Newport News, Va. (O'Reilly)
Tom Adelstein interviews Andy Stein, CIO of Newport News, Va on the topic of open-source software in government. "What if you ran a city government and had to upgrade your infrastructure, productivity applications, comply with new homeland security standards, and do it in the midst of a budget crunch. If that sounds familiar, you're not the only one facing this dilemma."
Linux's 'center of gravity' (News.com)
News.com interviews Stuart Cohen, chief executive of OSDL. "We will shortly be announcing some governments that will become OSDL members, but we are not at liberty to announce them today. There are a number of government agencies around the world that are interested in participating, because they have technical requirements, they have market requirements, they have deployment requirements--whether it is for Data Center Linux, for Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) or for desktops."
Oracle's Linux Boss Gears Up for Grid (eWeek)
eWeek talks with Oracle exec Dave Dargo. "Reiterate for me, please, why Oracle's so Linux-focused. It's an enabler of a few things in the market. It enables customers to retain the skill sets they've built over the past decade or so in Unix while enabling them to take advantage of low-cost, high-performance processors from Intel [Corp.] and [Advanced Micro Devices Inc.]. The reason Oracle's made such a huge investment in Linux is so we can have a platform where we can make it easier for customers to deploy Oracle and our clustering technology."
Resources
IceWM with Sound (OfB.biz)
Open for Business describes the process of getting sound working with IceWM. "First, about the only way you can have sound is to have compiled in the ESound interface. If your distro offers an "icewm-gnome" package, there's a good chance this has been done for you. If not, you'll have to compile it in as an option yourself. I've read discussions in the past how the authors had considered working in an Alsa interface, but at that point it was too big a chore, and they had other problems that took priority."
Reviews
The KDE 3.2 Beta 2 User Review (OSNews.com)
OSNews test drives KDE 3.2 Beta. "The first thing you notice when you start up a few apps is - 'Boy, this is Fast!'. KDE 3.2 is significantly faster than 3.1, and certainly way faster than Gnome 2.4 on my machine. It reminds me of the kind of responsiveness that Windows 98 used to give me on this same configuration few years ago (minus the crashes). Konsole opens up almost instantaneously, and Konqueror takes only about 3 seconds the first time. I was afraid that the increase in bloat with every release of KDE since the 1.x series would one day prevent me from using this computer at all with KDE. I'm glad the guys over at KDE have so splendidly allayed my fears." (Found on KDE.News)
Hacking Reality (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal has more mini book reviews. This time Frank Conley takes a look at "Linux Server Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools", "Google Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools", "Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools", and "eBay Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools".Playing with a little Pogo schtick (NewsForge)
NewsForge reviews Pogo, a lightweight application launcher. "The first time I logged in to an iceWM session, I opened a terminal window and entered the pogo command. Pogo immediately appeared along the bottom of the desktop, ... After playing around with the default Pogo config for a bit, and getting used to iceWM, I decided I had some hacking to do with the defaults for both."
EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen to Teach Trusted Computing Class (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal takes a look at an upcoming class in trusted computing. "Seth Schoen, Staff Technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is uniquely qualified to conduct the tutorial. He wrote "Trusted Computing: Promise and Risk", EFF's report on trusted computing, following briefings from industry and academic experts on all sides of trusted computing."
Linux TV (Forbes)
Forbes looks at the use of Linux in electronic entertainment systems. "Linux does require more sharing of trade secrets. Recently Toshiba came out with a Linux-based portable music player and was asked by Taiwanese and Chinese would-be clonemakers to reveal the code used. 'Since Linux is open, we will reveal the code to anybody who asks,' says Toshiba spokesperson Midori Suzuki. Toshiba will differentiate its product with superior hardware, she says."
Company designing cell phone especially geared toward teens (Seattle Times)
This Seattle Times article describes another amusing Linux-powered gadget. "Dan Shapiro, the company's lead program manager, who during his time at Microsoft worked on Windows XP and its still-developing successor, code-named Longhorn, said every feature was developed to appeal to teens. The phone, which at its heart is a computer running on the Linux operating system, resembles a kidney bean because that shape allowed the teens to more readily grip the phone with four fingers, while text messaging with their thumb."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Next page:
Announcements>>