Pointless ideology?

Last week's USB subsystem patch posting included a number of changes, from some data structure shrinking and continuing improvements to the new USB OTG support. A less welcome part of that patch, however, was the removal of the Philips webcam (PWC) driver, by the request of its author.

The PWC driver had a unique feature in the form of a hook which allowed the loading of a binary module into the driver. This hook was used to load a closed-source decompression routine, needed to use the camera in its higher-resolution mode. This sort of hook goes against kernel policy, so, when USB maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman became aware of it, he prepared a patch to take it out. The PWC driver maintainer (Nemosoft Unv.), in response to this change, requested that the driver be removed altogether. He has also removed the driver and all the related files (including the binary-only part) from his web site.

Greg Kroah-Hartman's FAQ on the removal of the PWC driver is worth reading.

The reaction in parts of the community has been quite strong. This is, according to some, another example where licensing fundamentalists have, through their intolerance of binary-only modules, cost Linux users the ability to work with their cameras. The PWC driver, which was not hurting anyone, has been needlessly lost. Linux will never be able to compete with Microsoft or be taken seriously by vendors as long as this kind of silliness is going on. And so on.

Whether Linux developers should be concerned with "competing with Microsoft" is a topic for a different article. For now, let us look at the issue of proprietary modules, and the kernel developers' approach to them. The general attitude toward proprietary modules is overtly hostile. Critics claim that this attitude is the result of blind ideology which puts free software fundamentalism above the needs of Linux users. The truth of the matter is that there is no end of solid, practical reasons for discouraging the creation and use of binary-only kernel modules.

The first of these is that the copyright status of many of these modules is ambiguous at best. Any module which is a derived product of the kernel must carry a GPL-compatible license; no exception to the GPL for loadable modules exists. A serious legal challenge to the distribution of a proprietary module has not yet been made. Yet. There may yet come a day, however, when one of the many holders of copyrights on kernel code decides that a binary module violates his or her copyrights, and does something about it.

Binary modules are, by their nature, platform-specific. One of the strengths of Linux is the freedom of choice it gives with regard to hardware, but binary modules take that freedom away. Linus Torvalds put it this way:

Non-free drivers lock users into specific architectures.

When binary modules have bugs, there is no way to even track them down, much less fix them. A bad module brings down the entire kernel with it, making Linux appear to be unstable. And closed-source modules tend to have a much higher rate of bugs than free modules; they have been seen by very few eyes, rarely conform to kernel programming conventions, and their authors cannot be educated on how to do things right. A system which contains proprietary modules is less stable, and there is nothing that the kernel developers can do about it.

Closed-source modules break when the system is upgraded. The internal kernel interfaces can be changed at any time, a longstanding policy which exists for several good reasons. In-tree modules are fixed quickly; proprietary modules are fixed when the vendor gets around to it, if ever. A binary module has no future beyond whatever promises the vendor may have made regarding its support plans. Some of the more cynical among us have been known to mutter that such promises have, on occasion, not been kept. And those promises tend to be minimal in the first place; technology manufacturers are much more interested in getting people to buy new hardware than supporting their old, obsolete products.

Perhaps more to the point: binary modules are a drag on the development of the kernel. Whenever a kernel change breaks those modules, users complain loudly. The kernel developers express their lack of worry about breaking binary modules in a very clear way, but the fact is that they (and their employers) have to think before making that sort of incompatible change. Consider, for example, the change to 4KB stacks on the x86 architecture. This change makes the kernel more stable in a number of ways. But it broke the binary nVidia modules, leading to a loud chorus of protests. To the extent that those users' complaints are heard, important kernel improvements will be delayed or blocked.

Binary-only modules lack transparency; users never really know what is going on inside. There is speculation that the PWC decompression code is closed-source because opening it would reveal that the camera has far less resolution than advertised. This is almost certainly untrue, but there is no way to look at what is going on and know for sure. The lack of transparency also makes it impossible for programmers to benefit from the work that was done on the proprietary module; there may well be useful ideas there which could be applied elsewhere in the kernel, but there is no way to know. The creator of a binary-only module is benefiting from the free software development process, but is not giving back to it.

At the 2004 Kernel Summit customer panel, the technical manager from Goldman Sachs - not a person who is likely to be inclined toward ideological licensing fancies - was in the interesting position of telling the kernel developers about the advantages of having device drivers in the mainline kernel. He pointed out that drivers which have been freed and merged into the kernel do not have the sorts of stability issues experienced by users of proprietary drivers. Even the most focused and hard-nosed of users are beginning to realize that wedging proprietary code into the kernel is not in their best interest.

It is thus in the interest of all users to discourage proprietary modules. It is not a question of irrational allergies to end-user license agreements or free software fundamentalism; it is, instead, a matter of creating the most stable and capable kernel possible. Had the kernel been a friendlier environment for proprietary code, the kernel we all use now would be less capable, less stable, and less portable than it is. When you see a proprietary module break, or (as in the case of the PWC driver) be withdrawn, what you are seeing is the risk which is inherent in the use of non-free modules, not irrational behavior on the part of the kernel developers.

Comments (65 posted)

Garage door openers survive appeal

Remember the Chamberlain v. Skylink case? It is a DMCA lawsuit filed by Chamberlain, which argued that Skylink, by virtue of having made remotes which interoperate with Chamberlain's garage door openers, had violated the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA. That line of reasoning was rejected by the court one year ago, mostly because Chamberlain had not explicitly prohibited the use of competing remotes.

Now an appeals court has had its say; the ruling is available in PDF format. Skylink has won once again, and the appeals judge has drawn some lines around the behavior which the DMCA can control. The result is, perhaps, an improvement in the situation, but the basic nature of the DMCA remains unchanged.

The judge has ruled that circumvention is not, in itself, a crime; for the DMCA to apply, circumvention must be associated with an actual act of infringement. That was not the case in the Chamberlain case:

So, bypassing access control mechanisms to access a copyrighted work you have purchased is legal. Unfortunately, this ruling does not go as far as one might like: under U.S. law, moving copyrighted information from a disk into main memory is an act of copying, not just an access. So this language is unlikely to, for example, make the legal problems experienced by DeCSS go away.

In the end, here's the court's interpretation of when the anti-circumvention rule applies:

That is a tighter reading than we have seen before, but it still leaves things open. Code which can be used for circumvention of an access control mechanism can violate the law if it has "limited commercial significance." How long will it take for somebody to argue that code released under a free license cannot have commercial significance?

In the end, a defeat for a DMCA plaintiff is a good thing. But this case has not brought about the sort of change that many in the community would like to see. That kind of change, it seems, can only be made by the legislative branch.

Comments (6 posted)

A report from the SCO teleconference

SCO's quarterly earnings teleconference was held on August 31, with Darl McBride, president and CEO, and Bert Young, CFO, present for the call. SCO announced an "active and productive quarter" that "exceeded every bar we set last quarter". "Exceeding every bar" includes, it seems, a net loss of $7,423,000 with legal expenditures of $7.3 million. It's all a matter of where you set the bar.

SCO managed to drag in $678,000 in SCOsource licensing, though the company declined to specify the source or the nature of the income. It was indicated that the revenue was "primarily from two sources"; one of those is clearly EV1Servers.Net, while the other remains a mystery. Their UNIX products performed much better than their legal strategy, bringing in $8,929,000 in the quarter. McBride and Young spent very little time in the teleconference talking up their UNIX products, though McBride did announce a "major upgrade to OpenServer" called "Legend" due for 2005.

In addition to the company's third quarter results, SCO announced a "Shareholder Rights Plan" and a deal with their legal teams to cap legal expenses going forward. The company also reiterated the retirement of BayStar's 40,000 shares of A-1 preferred stock in exchange for $13 million in cash, and 2,105,263 shares of common stock in SCO.

The Shareholder Rights Plan is to "deter coercive takeover tactics", though McBride denied that the plan was put into place to counter any specific takeover attempts. McBride did admit to being "concerned" about the company's stock price. As of this writing, the company's stock is trading at $3.76 per share, a far cry from the high water mark of $22.29 per share. In any case, a large fraction of SCO stock is held by insiders, making a hostile takeover unlikely even without a poison-pill "rights plan."

The deal with Boies, Schiller & Flexner, if finalized, will limit SCO's legal costs to $31 million in costs, but will boost the firm's potential take should SCO manage to win its legal battles. McBride was sketchy on the details, but Boies, Schiller & Flexner will receive between 20 to 33 percent of the take of any award. SCO has already paid out just over $15 million in the past five quarters, according to Young, and will have $12 million left over after the $31 million is taken into account. There is some ambiguity over whether SCO has committed to paying Boies that much regardless of what happens; we will have to see the actual agreement to get an answer to that question.

Despite exceeding every bar they set for the third quarter, the company is still looking at downsizing. According to Young, the company has 230 people now and is looking at closing offices in the U.S. and overseas. Young did clarify that that the company is simply moving from larger offices to smaller offices in some areas.

Once again, the questions posed to SCO during the question and answer period were largely non-confrontational -- though one reporter did press McBride on SCO's legal strategy, and asked McBride whether SCO had bothered to get a "second opinion" to protect SCO's shareholders in the face of "a plethora of legal opinion counter to" SCO's own legal position. McBride's answer, of course, was that SCO had not. McBride also pointed out that many items before the court are under seal, and that the only parties able to fully size up the case are SCO, IBM and the judge.

SCO once again chose to not to allow a representative from LWN to ask a question during the call. While SCO told reporters that they would be limited to one question during the Q&A period, Maureen O'Gara was allowed to ramble though at least six questions and follow-ups during the call. SCO shut down the Q&A rather quickly, citing time constraints.

In stark contrast to previous teleconferences and interviews, McBride refrained from any rhetoric about "stolen" code or the GPL. He did, however, take make references to "IBM-sponsored" websites that have been questioning SCO's legal position. Unfortunately, none of the reporters who were allowed to ask questions pressed McBride on this allegation. Nor did any of the reporters use the occasion to ask specific questions about the filings or McBride's assertion that IBM has not delivered all materials as ordered by the judge in the case.

In all, the teleconference was fairly tame by SCO standards. For those interested in listening to the SCO conference call, there is an archive on SCO's web site.

Comments (1 posted)

Sendmail's Sender ID implementation

Sendmail Inc. has announced the availability of a test implementation of the "Sender ID" email specification. Sender ID is the result of a combination of SPF and Microsoft's Sender ID system. The mechanism uses information stored in domain name service records to verify whether a message can really have come from its claimed source address.

This technology is being promoted as an anti-spam measure, but it is unlikely to do much to reduce spam. What it can do is to cut back on spoofed email. It will thus be effective against phishing attacks and forged return addresses in general. It will do nothing about email sent from domains without SPF records, spammer domains, or messages sent from worm-infected systems.

There is one thing potential users should know about this technology, however: it is patented by Microsoft. There is nothing in the Sendmail press release, the sender authentication FAQ, or anywhere else on sendmail.net about this patent. But the fact is that Microsoft is claiming that a patent license is required to use or distribute code which implements the Sender ID specification.

Microsoft has published a royalty-free license agreement (PDF format). The license allows the implementation, use, and distribution of code using the patented techniques, but "solely for the purpose of conforming with the Sender ID Specification." This agreement is clearly a contract - it must be signed and returned to Microsoft to be effective. In theory, anybody who uses the Sender ID code without having signed the agreement is infringing the patent. One would think that Sendmail, Inc. would have wanted to mention this little fact.

There is nothing in the license which would allow Microsoft to terminate it - unless the user sues Microsoft for patent infringement. Microsoft could, however, change the license in the future, and anybody using the software without a signed license would be affected by the change. Running security-related software which has possible future licensing problems is a security risk in itself. Sender authentication would be a worthwhile improvement to the email system, but, perhaps, we need to look for another way to implement that capability.

Comments (11 posted)

Back door in Diebold voting systems?

Black Box Voting is reporting a back door found in the Diebold GEMS central tabulator - the system which collects totals from electronic voting machines and spits out the bottom line. "By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks." There is a second page with some light technical information; it seems the system runs on Microsoft Access.

Comments (30 posted)

acrobat: errors in uuencode

Package(s):	acrobat	CVE #(s):	CAN-2004-0630 CAN-2004-0631
Created:	August 26, 2004	Updated:	September 1, 2004
Description:	iDEFENSE has reported that Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 contains a buffer overflow when decoding uuencoded documents. An attacker could execute arbitrary code on a victim's machine if a user opens a specially crafted uuencoded document. This issue poses the threat of remote execution, since Acrobat Reader may be the default handler for PDF files. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project has assigned the name CAN-2004-0631 to this issue. iDEFENSE also reported that Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 contains an input validation error in its uuencoding feature. An attacker could create a file with a specially crafted file name which could lead to arbitrary command execution on a victim's machine. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project has assigned the name CAN-2004-0630 to this issue.
Alerts:	Red Hat RHSA-2004:432-01 acrobat 2004-08-26

Comments (none posted)

gaim: arbitrary code execution

Package(s):	gaim	CVE #(s):
Created:	August 30, 2004	Updated:	September 1, 2004
Description:	Gaim fails to do proper bounds checking in several instances. An attacker could crash Gaim or execute arbitrary code or commands with the permissions of the user running Gaim.
Alerts:	Slackware SSA:2004-240-01 gaim 2004-08-27 Gentoo 200408-27 gaim 2004-08-27

Comments (1 posted)

kernel: integer overflow

Package(s):	kernel	CVE #(s):
Created:	September 1, 2004	Updated:	September 1, 2004
Description:	The 2.6 kernel NFS and XDR code contains a number of integer overflow vulnerabilities which could be exploited (from a trusted address) for a denial of service attack.
Alerts:	SuSE SUSE-SA:2004:028 kernel 2004-09-01

Comments (none posted)

krb5: double-free and ASN.1 parsing

Package(s):	krb5	CVE #(s):	CAN-2004-0642 CAN-2004-0643 CAN-2004-0644 CAN-2004-0772
Created:	August 31, 2004	Updated:	September 21, 2004
Description:	Several double-free bugs were found in the Kerberos 5 KDC and libraries. A remote attacker could potentially exploit these flaws to execute arbitrary code. See CAN-2004-0642, CAN-2004-0643 and CAN-2004-0772. An infinite loop bug was found in the Kerberos 5 ASN.1 decoder library. A remote attacker may be able to trigger this flaw and cause a denial of service. See CAN-2004-0644. See this CERT advisory for additional information.
Alerts:	Whitebox WBSA-2004:350-01 krb5 2004-09-20 OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2004.039 kerberos 2004-09-13 Conectiva CLA-2004:860 krb5 2004-09-09 Gentoo 200409-09 krb5 2004-09-06 Trustix TSLSA-2004-0045 kerberos5 2004-09-02 Mandrake MDKSA-2004:088 krb5 2004-08-31 Debian DSA-543-1 krb5 2004-08-31 Fedora FEDORA-2004-277 krb5 2004-08-31 Fedora FEDORA-2004-276 krb5 2004-08-31 Red Hat RHSA-2004:350-01 krb5 2004-08-31 Red Hat RHSA-2004:448-01 krb5 2004-08-31

Comments (none posted)

MoinMoin: Group ACL bypass

Package(s):	MoinMoin	CVE #(s):
Created:	August 26, 2004	Updated:	September 1, 2004
Description:	MoinMoin contains a flaw that may allow a remote attacker to gain access to unauthorized privileges. The issue is triggered due to a unspecified function failing within the program, which could allow anonymous users to gain administratively privileges, resulting in a loss of integrity. See this OSVDB advisory for more details. This has been fixed in MoinMoin version 1.2.3.
Alerts:	Gentoo 200408-25 moinmoin 2004-08-26

Comments (none posted)

vpopmail: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):	vpopmail	CVE #(s):
Created:	September 1, 2004	Updated:	September 1, 2004
Description:	Versions of vpopmail prior to 5.4.6 suffer from a number of SQL injection, buffer overflow, and format string vulnerabilities.
Alerts:	Gentoo 200409-01 vpopmail 2004-09-01

Comments (none posted)

Kernel release status

The current 2.6 patch remains 2.6.9-rc1; no new prepatches were released over the past week.

The developers have been busy, however. Linus's BitKeeper repository contains, as of this writing, more filesystem conversions to the new symbolic link resolution code (which will eventually allow an increase in the maximum link depth), a new waitid() system call implementing the POSIX call by the same name, a "fake NUMA" mode for x86-64 testing, a small-footprint tmpfs implementation, the base KProbes patch, a set of IDE updates, support for scheduler profiling (seeing where context switches come from), automatic TCP window scaling calculation, a kobject change (it uses kref now), a USB gadget interface update with "On The Go" support, a big ALSA update, the removal of the Philips webcam driver, numerous network driver updates, some random number generator fixes, a fix for the audio CD writing memory leak, some VFS interface improvements, executable support in hugetlb mappings, the Whirlpool digest algorithm, some virtual memory tweaks, a number of asynchronous I/O fixes and improvements, a User-mode Linux update, the "flex mmap" user-space memory layout (covered here last June), a number of scheduler tweaks, the removal of the very last suser() call, and lots of fixes.

The current tree from Andrew Morton is 2.6.9-rc1-mm2. Recent changes to -mm include some scheduler fixes (Nick Piggins's scheduler is still in -mm), the removal of the resident set size limit ("pending some evidence that it does useful things"), the out-of-line spinlocks patch (for x86 and x86-64), lockmeter for x86-64, and many fixes and updates.

The current 2.4 prepatch is 2.4.28-pre2, released by Marcelo on August 25. Changes include a serial ATA update, some gcc-3.4 fixes, an NFS update, and various other fixes.

Comments (5 posted)

Quote of the week

-- Linus Torvalds

Comments (none posted)

More notes on reiser4

The article on reiser4 which appeared here last week drew a number of comments. One comment from Hans Reiser took LWN to task for not having started with a kernel tarball which was created from a reiser4 filesystem to begin with. It seems that reiser4 is highly sensitive to the order in which files are created, and using the wrong order does not show the filesystem in its best light.

Here is last week's table, with a new line for tests done starting with a reiser4-built tarball:

Filesystem	Test
	Untar	Build	Grep	find (name)	find (stat)
ext3	55/24	1400/217	62/8	10.4/1.1	12.1/2.5
reiser4	67/41	1583/386	78/12	12.5/1.3	15.2/4.0
reiser4 (new)	57/35	1445/393	58/9.9	8.4/1.3	11.1/4.0

The results do show a significant difference in performance when the files are created in the right order - and the differences carry through all of the operations performed on the filesystem, not just the untar. In other words, the performance benefits of reiser4 are only fully available to those who manage to create their files in the right order. Future plans call for a "repacker" process to clean up after obnoxious users who insist on creating files in something other than the optimal order, but that tool is not yet available. (For what it's worth, restoring from the reiser4 tarball did not noticeably change the ext3 results).

Last week, the discussion about reiser4 got off to a rather rough start. Even so, it evolved into a lengthy but reasonably constructive technical conversation touching on many of the issues raised by reiser4.

At the top of the list is the general question of the expanded capabilities offered by this filesystem; these include transactions, the combined file/directory objects (and the general representation of metadata in the filesystem namespace), and more. The kernel developers are nervous about changes to filesystem semantics, and they are seriously nervous about creating these new semantics at the filesystem level. The general feeling is that any worthwhile enhancements offered by reiser4 should, instead, be implemented at the virtual filesystem (VFS) level, so that more filesystems could offer them. Some developers want things done that way from the start. If there is a consensus, however, it would be along the lines laid out by Andrew Morton: accept the new features in reiser4 for now (once the other problems are addressed) with the plan of shifting the worthwhile ones into the VFS layer. The reiser4 implementation would thus be seen as a sort of prototype which could be evolved into the true Linux version.

Hans Reiser doesn't like this idea:

Somehow, over the years, Hans has neglected to tell the developers that he was, in fact, planning to replace the entire VFS. That plan looks like a difficult sell, but reiser4 could become the platform that is used to shift the VFS in the directions he sees.

Meanwhile, the reiser4 approach to metadata has attracted a fair amount of attention. Imagine you have a reiser4 partition holding a kernel tree; at the top of that tree is a file called CREDITS. It's an ordinary file, but it can be made to behave in extraordinary ways:

$ tree CREDITS/metas
CREDITS/metas
|-- bmap
|-- gid
|-- items
|-- key
|-- locality
|-- new
|-- nlink
|-- oid
|-- plugin
|   |-- compression
|   |-- crypto
|   |-- digest
|   |-- dir
|   |-- dir_item
|   |-- fibration
|   |-- file
|   |-- formatting
|   |-- hash
|   |-- perm
|   `-- sd
|-- pseudo
|-- readdir
|-- rwx
|-- size
`-- uid
 
1 directory, 24 files

You can also type "cd CREDITS; cat ." to view the file. (One must set execute permission on the file before any of this works).

What appears to be a plain file also looks like a directory containing a number of other files. Most of these files contain information normally obtained with the stat() system call: uid is the owner, size is the length in bytes, rwx is the permissions mask, etc. Some of the others (bmap, items, oid) provide a window into how the file is represented inside the filesystem. This is all part of Hans Reiser's vision of moving everything into the namespace; rather than using a separate system call to learn about a file's metadata, just access the right pseudo file.

One branch of the discussion took issue with the "metas" name. Using reiser4 means that you cannot have any file named metas anywhere within the filesystem. Some people would like to change the name; ideas like ..metas, ..., and @ have been tossed around, but Hans seems uninclined to change things.

Another branch, led by Al Viro, worries about the locking considerations of this whole scheme. Linux, like most Unix systems, has never allowed hard links to directories for a number of reasons; one of those is locking. Those interested in the details can see this rather dense explanation from Al, or a translation by Linus to something resembling technical English. Linus's example is essentially this: imagine you have a directory "a" containing two subdirectories dir1 and dir2. You also have "b", which is simply a link to a. Imagine that two processes simultaneously attempt these commands:

Process 1		Process 2
mv a/dir1 a/dir2/newdir		mv b/dir2 b/dir1/newdir

Both commands cannot succeed, or you will have just tied your filesystem into a knot. So some sort of locking is required to serialize the above actions. Doing that kind of locking is very hard when there are multiple paths into the same directory; it is an invitation to deadlocks. The problem could be fixed by putting a monster lock around the entire filesystem, but the performance cost would be prohibitive. The usual approach has been to simply disallow this form of aliasing on directory names, and thus avoid the problem altogether.

In the reiser4 world, all files are also directories. So hard links to files become hard links to directories, and all of these deadlock issues come to the foreground. The concerns expressed by the kernel developers - which appear to be legitimate - is that the reiser4 team has not thought about these issues, and there is no plan to solve the problem. Wiring the right sort of mutual exclusion deeply into a filesystem is a hard thing to do as an afterthought. But something will have to be done; Al Viro has made it clear that he will oppose merging reiser4 until the issue has been addressed, and it is highly unlikely that it would go in over his objections (Linus: "This means that if Al Viro asks about locking and aliasing issues, you don't ignore it, you ask 'how high?'")

One way of dealing with the locking issues (and various other bits of confusion) would be to drop the "files as directories" idea and create a namespace boundary there. Files could still have attributes, but an application which wished to access them would use a separate system call to do so. The openat() interface, which is how Solaris solves the problem, seems like the favored approach. Pushing attributes into their own namespace breaks the "everything in one namespace" idea which is so fundamental to reiser4, but it would offer compatibility with Solaris and make many of the implementation issues easier to deal with. On the other hand, applications would have to be fixed to use openat() (or be run with runat).

Another contingent sees the reiser4 files-as-directories scheme as the way to implement multi-stream files. Linux is one of the few modern operating systems without this concept. The Samba developers, in particular, would love to see a multi-stream implementation, since they have to export a multi-stream interface to the rest of the world. There are obvious simple applications of multi-stream files, such as attaching icons to things. Some people are ready to use the reiser4 plugin mechanism and go nuts, however; they would like to add streams which present compressed views of files, automatically produce and unpack archive files, etc. Linus draws the line at that sort of stuff, though:

Yet another concern has to do with how user space will work with this representation of file metadata. Backup programs have no idea of how to save the metadata; cp will not copy it, etc. Fixing user space is certainly an issue. The fact is, however, that, if reiser4 or the VFS of the future changes our idea of how a file behaves, the applications will be modified to deal with the new way of doing things. Meanwhile, it has been pointed out that reiser4-style metadata is probably easier for applications to work with than the current extended attribute interface, which is also not understood by most applications.

The discussion looks likely to continue for some time. Regardless of the outcome, Hans Reiser will certainly have accomplished one of his goals: he has gotten the wider community to start to really think about our filesystems and how they affect our systems and how we use them.

Comments (43 posted)

The return of the Philips driver?

When the Philips webcam driver maintainer requested that driver's removal, the kernel developers complied. The fact remains, however, that the code for the core driver was released under the GPL; it remains out there for those who wish to make use of it. The proprietary "pwcx" decompression code is another story; it has been withdrawn and is unlikely to return. But the GPL code could, perhaps, come back.

The original maintainer questions the value of the GPL-only code. Without the decompression module, the camera can only be used in a very low-resolution mode. There are a couple of reasons for wanting that code back, however. One of the more interesting ones was posted by a member of the LavaRnd project. It seems that a Philips webcam, with the lens cap in place, is a good source of entropy for random number generators. In fact, the low-resolution stream is even better than the full-resolution version for this application. The LavaRnd folks would like to see the GPL driver back - and they have even volunteered to maintain it.

The other use for the GPL driver would be as a starting point while the compression protocol is reverse engineered and a completely free driver is created. There has been some speculation that this reverse engineering would be relatively easy - but it will remain speculation until somebody produces some code.

In any case, the PWC driver is likely to come back in some form; USB maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman has stated that a conversation is in progress with Nemosoft (the original author) and that a patch is forthcoming. Getting a driver which only supports the low-resolution mode is unlikely to please many PWC owners, but it is a start. If the end result of all this is, eventually, a 100% free driver supporting full functionality, everybody will be better off.

Comments (7 posted)

A general caching filesystem

Many filesystems operate with a relatively slow backing store. Network filesystems are dependent on a network link and a remote server; obtaining a file from such a filesystem can be significantly slower than getting the file locally. Filesystems using slow local media (such as CDROMs) also tend to be slower than those using fast disks. For this reason, it can be desirable to cache data from these filesystems on a local disk.

Linux, however, has no mechanism which allows filesystems to perform local disk caching. Or, at least, it didn't have such a mechanism; David Howells's CacheFS patch changes that.

With CacheFS, the system administrator can set aside a partition on a block device for file caching. CacheFS will then present an interface which may be used by other filesystems. There is a basic registration interface, and a fairly elaborate mechanism for assigning an index to each file. Different filesystems will have different ways of creating identifiers for files, so CacheFS tries to impose as little policy as possible and let the filesystem code do what it wants. Finally, of course, there is an interface for caching a page from a file, noting changes, removing pages from the cache, etc.

CacheFS does not attempt to cache entire files; it must be able to deal with the possibility that somebody will try to work with a file which is bigger than the entire cache. It also does not actually guarantee to cache anything; it must be able to perform its own space management, and things must still function even in the absence of an actual cache device. This should not be an obstacle for most filesystems which, by their nature, must be prepared to deal with the real source for their files in the first place.

CacheFS is meant to work with other filesystems, rather than being used as a standalone filesystem in its own right. Its partitions must be mounted before use, however, and CacheFS uses the mount point to provide a view into the cached filesystem(s). The administrator can even manually force files out of the cache by simply deleting them from the mounted filesystem.

Interposing a cache between the user and the real filesystem clearly adds another failure point which could result in lost data. CacheFS addresses this issue by performing journaling on the cache contents. If things come to an abrupt halt, CacheFS will be able to replay any lost operations once everything is up and functioning again.

The current CacheFS patch is used only by the AFS filesystem, but work is in progress to adapt others as well. NFS, in particular, should benefit greatly from CacheFS, especially when NFSv4 (which is designed to allow local caching) is used. Expect this patch to have a relatively easy journey into the mainstream kernel. For those wanting more information, see the documentation file included with the patch.

Comments (6 posted)

GmailFS - using Gmail as a filesystem

Version 0.2 of GmailFS has been released. GmailFS is a fun hack which allows a Linux system to use a Gmail account as a remote storage device; it can be mounted as a normal (if, perhaps, slow) filesystem. It's a user-space filesystem written in Python.

Comments (12 posted)

A Look at Conectiva Linux 10

Last weekend, Conectiva Linux celebrated its 9th birthday since its humble beginnings in 1995. This is quite an achievement, considering that, as a strong believer in Free Software, the Brazilian company has always given its distribution away for free and released all of its own software, art work and documentation under the GPL. Conectiva Linux 10 was released to the public early in July. How does it compare to other, more widely-used distributions?

Going back in time by about one year, most people agreed that Conectiva Linux 9 was a disappointing distribution, a buggy product which received a full CD's worth of bug fixes within two months after its release. Luckily, the developers have learned from their mistakes and have implemented several measures ensuring better quality control. Firstly, the beta testing period of Conectiva 10 lasted seven months and consisted of two technology previews, two betas, and three release candidates before the product was declared final. A full set of ISO images of each development release was provided for download, together with comprehensive release notes, known issues, and public announcements; again, this was a departure from the past practice of simply maintaining a continuously updated development branch on the distribution's FTP servers. Finally, a public mailing list for beta testers was set up to discuss bugs and user suggestions during the development period. All of these factors have contributed towards the much improved final release of Conectiva 10

Conectiva uses its own graphical installer, a standard program not too dissimilar to most other installers on the market - except for two things. Firstly, the installer has the ability to use a native X server compatible with the system's video chipset, inclusive (unlike Red Hat's Anaconda) the proprietary NVIDIA modules. Secondly, Conectiva's front-end for apt, Synaptic, is fully integrated into the installer. This allows for the package selection to be fine-tuned as Synaptic offers the ability to search for packages and to define sources of installation, while providing means for automatic resolution of dependencies.

The release is highly up-to-date. It includes the Linux kernel 2.6.5, XFree86 4.4.0, KDE 3.2.3, GNOME 2.6 and most other packages were brought up to their latest versions at the time of the release. It is interesting to note that Conectiva is one of the very few distributions that is seemingly unconcerned about the license changes in XFree86 4.4.0 and currently has no plans to switch to an alternative X Window system. Also worthy of note is the fact that the NVIDIA driver is included even in the freely available FTP edition of Conectiva Linux; most other major distributions, such as Mandrakelinux, provide these drivers and other proprietary software in their commercial editions only, not in their freely downloadable editions.

What does Conectiva offer for system administration? Besides the standard KDE Control Center, the distribution also comes with another centralized system administration utility called "Conectiva Control Center". For the most part, this is nothing but a pretty front-end to all the individual KDE Control Center modules, but there are noteworthy additions integrated into the application; these include the Conectiva Personal Firewall and several Webmin modules. In fact, Conectiva's server administration seems to revolve quite heavily around Webmin, a utility missing from all recent releases of Red Hat Linux and Fedora Core. The Conectiva Personal Firewall is a simple graphical front-end for iptables, enabling home users to open certain useful ports, such as the SSH port, ports used by the BitTorrent client and several others. And as a curiosity, Conectiva still ships with Linuxconf (remember Linuxconf?), a system administration tool extremely popular around the times of Red Hat Linux 6.x and before, but later deprecated by most distributions.

In recent years, Conectiva has settled into a roughly one-per-year release cycle of its distribution. While this is probably more than enough for most home users, those who prefer to keep their systems up-to-date will be interested to know that they can track Conectiva's development branch, known as "snapshot". This can be done in the same fashion as one would track Debian Sid, Mandrake Cooker or Fedora Development - by pointing the package sources to the Conectiva's snapshot branch on the nearest mirror. This can be accomplished by adding the following line (select your preferred mirror) to /etc/apt/sources.list:

rpm ftp://ftp.tiscali.nl/pub/mirrors/conectiva/ snapshot/conectiva all

Alternatively, the location can be configured from within the Synaptic package manager. Needless to say, this is only an option for those users who are not afraid of dealing with occasional bugs, since the snapshot branch is in constant state of heavy development and is not meant to run on production systems.

Conectiva 10 features a well-designed desktop and menus, clearly simplified for novice users who might be intimidated by the cryptic names of some open source applications. Besides its native Brazilian Portuguese, the distribution also supports English and Spanish, although its comprehensive set of online books is only available in Portuguese. While Conectiva is obviously biased towards KDE (in a fashion not dissimilar to SUSE Linux), the latest GNOME desktop is available too, together with IceWM, Fluxbox and a number of other light-weight desktop environments.

Conectiva Linux 10 is a worthy contender on the Linux distribution scene. The hard work of its developers over the last 7 months has resulted in a product that has received plenty of positive feedback on public forums of many Linux web sites in Brazil. Although the distribution has yet to find great following outside of Latin America, with the quality of its latest product, and with the company's continued adherence to the GPL, as well as its ardent support for Free Software, Conectiva Linux is bound to attract new users in markets dominated by bigger and better-known distributions.

Comments (none posted)

Debian GNU/Linux

The Debian Weekly News for August 31, 2004 looks at splitting the package files, using a 2.4 kernel for Sarge, Debian cloaks on Freenode, several Sarge release topics and more.

Martin Schulze covers the preparation of another stable woody release, version 3.0r3.

Steve Langasek presents an update from the sarge release team. The library transitions and toolchain fixes are done, the new installer is almost done and many RC bugs have fixed, however much work remains before sarge can be released.

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Mandrakelinux

Mandrakelinux has updated mkinitrd packages for ML 10.0 that fix a problem with scsi modules on 2.4 kernels.

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Slackware Linux

This week Slackware-current received upgrades to syslinux, alsa, distcc, libpng, iptables, samba, gaim and getmail. See the slackware-current changelog for complete details.

Comments (none posted)

Trustix Secure Linux

Trustix has a bug fix release of courier-imap, stunnel and postresql available for TSL 2.0, 2.1 and Enterprise Server 2.

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Xfld - new Xfce live demo cd

Xfld is 'Xfce live demo', a GNU/Linux operating system (derived from Knoppix) that can be run completely from CD. It features an up-to-date Xfce as desktop environment. The initial version of Xfld uses Xfce 4.1 and is derived from Knoppix 3.4.

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Octoz GNU/Linux

Octoz GNU/Linux is new project, based in France, aimed at creating a simple and reliable Linux distribution for beginners, with multi-media, office automation, consumer networks and Internet. The initial version (0.1 - released August 28, 2004) uses a 2.6.7 Linux kernel, and is installed using the Live-Octoz CD.

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Annvix

Annvix is a Mandrakelinux-based secure Linux server distribution that aims to provide a small, easy-to-use server with high security. Features include a secure kernel, gcc with SPP stack protection patches, and secure defaults for all services. It also includes unique features such as running all services under DJB's daemontools and auditing tools such as rsec (msec's baby brother), Tripwire, Snort, and chkrootkit. Annvix joins the list at version 1.0-CURRENT alpha2, released August 26, 2004.

Comments (none posted)

AGNULA/DeMuDi 1.2.0-rc3 is out

The third release candidate of AGNULA/DeMuDi 1.2.0 is out. This release is going to be the final candidate. All developers of included audio applications are particularly invited to test the distribution to ensure that their applications work correctly with this release.

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Buffalo Linux

Buffalo Linux has released v1.4.0 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This major Buffalo update includes the latest 2.6.8.1 kernel, a switch to Xorg, icewm 1.2.16, abiword 2.0.10, two graphical login options (XDM/GDM), and many bugfixes, including a fix for sound using ALSA-1.0.6. GNOME-pilot was added to the GNOME package. Three window managers are now available: Buffalo ICEWM, XFCE, and GNOME. Version 1.4.0 is the first to use Xorg and the new 2.6.8.1 kernel."

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ClusterKnoppix V3.6-2004-08-16-EN-cl1 released

ClusterKnoppix V3.6-2004-08-16-EN-cl1 has been released. This release uses OpenMosix 2.4.27-om-20040808 and the latest version of Knoppix.

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Impi Linux 2 to be launched at open source Installfest (ITWeb)

ITWeb covers the launch of Impi Linux 2, at the Open Source Installfest at Dimension Data Campus, Bryanston SA, on International Software Freedom Day, 28 August 2004. "Impi Linux 2 is the next generation of original South African-developed open source software. Unlike the first release of Impi Linux 1, this latest version is not based on any existing Linux distributions such as Red Hat and Debian. It is purely South African-developed open source technology."

Comments (9 posted)

stresslinux

stresslinux has released v0.3.0pre1 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: The distribution base was changed from SuSE 7.3 to 9.0. Kernels are now running in recent versions (2.4.27 and 2.6.8.1), and now support Cyrix, K6, and Via CPUs. All included software is now up2date. sl-wizard was extended with many new mainboard configurations."

Comments (none posted)

Windows-to-Linux migration made easier? (LinuxWorld.au)

LinuxWorld.au takes a short look at the release of Lycoris PowerPak 1.4 which comes with CodeWeavers CrossOver Office. "James Governer, a software analyst at Red Monk, commented on the lukewarm reception he feels die-hard Linux fans will offer. "Most distros throw in everything including the kitchen sink when it comes to media handling, productivity tools and so on," he said. "SUSE, for example, packages pretty much every piece of relevant open-source code available. This is not an offering for Linux fans.""

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The Audacity Audio Editor

Audacity is a GUI-based audio editor. It is a cross-platform project with versions for Linux/Unix, Mac OS-X, and Windows. It has been built with the wxWidgets GUI framework, and is written with a combination of C and C++ code. Audacity has been released under the Gnu GPL.

The project description gives a brief description of Audacity's capabilities:

The Audacity Screenshots page shows the program in action, it is fairly easy to figure out, with standard tape recorder buttons and an oscilloscope-style sound file display.

Version 1.2.2 of Audacity was released this week.

The addition of the record/playback level meter is an essential feature for the use of Audacity as a serious recording program. Apparently, it is also possible to record a new track while playing back another, this is a feature that is missing from many audio recording utilities, yet is of critical importance to most musician-users. The Audacity FAQ discusses some of the difficulties involved with multi-tracking.

Audacity features several online Tutorials to assist the user in learning its capabilities.

Audacity is available for download here. Dependencies include wxWidgets 2.4, and optionally MAD (Mpeg Audio Decoder), Ogg Vorbis, and LAME.

Audacity appears to be a fairly active project with a lot of development and a focus on adding useful features. It should be considered for any Linux audio enthusiast's collection of tools.

Comments (none posted)

Planet CCRMA Changes

Version 1.2.2 of The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include new versions of Rosegarden, Seq24, SoundTouch, Rezound, Fox, ZynAddSubFX, Sweep, Audacity, and Galan.

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MySQL 4.1.4 has been released

Version 4.1.4 of the MySQL database is out. "This is a new gamma development release, adding new features and fixing recently discovered bugs."

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Release of PyGreSQL 3.5

Version 3.5 of PyGreSQL, a Python module for interfacing to PostgreSQL, is available. "This release fixes a few bugs, adds a few minor features and makes a few speedups in the code. It works with Python version 2.3 and PostgreSQL version 7.3 and up."

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PostgreSQL Weekly News

The August 31, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL database articles.

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Loudmouth 0.17 announced

Version 0.17 of Loudmouth, a C library for writing Jabber clients written using GLib, is available. "This release adds support to connect to a different server than the host part of the JID. Also added API to have Loudmouth send keep-alive packages at regular intervals."

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SDIF 3.8.6 released

Version 3.8.6 of the Ircam SDIF (Sound Description Interchange Format) library is available. Changes include better thread safety, faster operation, support for reading from pipes, completion of the API, and bug fixes.

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bogofilter-0.92.6 - New Stable Release

Release 0.92.6 of Bogofilter, a mail filter, is available. "Bogofilter-0.92.6 has been promoted to "stable" status."

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GNOME Nettool 0.99.3 released

Version 0.99.3 of GNOME Nettool is available. "Version 0.99.3 is feature complete, and will be released as 1.0 after some testing period."

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Content Management with Bricolage (O'Reilly)

David Wheeler introduces Bricolage on O'Reilly. "This article is the first in a series on Perl.com introducing Bricolage, a Perl-powered, open-source, enterprise-class CMS currently in production for some of the most actively updated sites on the Internet today, including MacCentral, ETonline, and the World Health Organization."

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Gallery 1.4.4-pl2 is now Available! (SourceForge)

Version 1.4.4-pl2 of Gallery, a web-based photo gallery system, has been announced. "Gallery 1.4.4-pl2 is an update to Gallery 1.4.4-pl1 that addresses two issues discovered after the release. Skins will now work properly in all situations and extra long filenames for uploaded files are now handled properly."

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ZopeMag Weekly News

The August 25 - 31, 2004 edition of the ZopeMag Weekly News is online with the latest Zope and Plone articles.

Comments (none posted)

gnopernicus 0.9.10 is out

Version 0.9.10 of gnopernicus, a GNOME desktop screen reader for the visually impaired, is available with incremental improvements.

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Marlin 0.6 released

Version 0.6 of Marlin, a sample editor for GNOME using GStreamer, is available. "This is the first ever release of Marlin that depends on actually released tarballs of GStreamer. Don't think this'll be happening too regularly, but you never know."

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GNOME 2.8 Release Candidate 1

The first GNOME 2.8 release candidate is out. Now is the time to do some serious testing and catch those final bugs; click below for details and download info.

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KDE-CVS-Digest (KDE.News)

The August 27, 2004 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest is out. Here's the content summary: "Kopete Groupwise support ready for testing. Digikam adds oil-painting and charcoal drawing effect plugins. Two new kioslaves; kio-trash and kfiledevice for disk size and usage. Kexi now supports subforms. Work started on a common multimedia interface to various backends."

Comments (none posted)

Metacity 2.8.4 released

Version 2.8.4 of the Metacity window manager for GNOME 2 has been announced. "This release features a number of bug fixes, and also the disabling of the focus-stealing-prevention code".

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Scribus 1.2 Released

Scribus 1.2 is out; click below for the announcement. Changes in this release include a new PostScript importer (allowing PS and EPS files to be edited as native objects), an improved template mechanism, support for 27 languages, "basic tables," and more.

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GerbMerge 0.7 is out (Open Collector)

Open Collector has an announcement for GerbMerge 0.7. "GerbMerge is a panelizer for Gerber RS274X and Excellon files created by the EAGLE CAD program. It can merge multiple, different jobs or copies of the same job. Jobs can also be rotated by 90 degrees. This version adds optional automatic placement of jobs, using either randomized search or exhaustive search. Also, one bug was fixed for tool lists that used different tool names for the same size drill."

Comments (none posted)

XCircuit 3.2.24 released

Version 3.2.24 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing package, has been released. The changes include a major fix to the netlist code and improvements to the TCL command-line functions.

Comments (none posted)

uniLETIM version 0.9.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.9.2 of UniLETIM is available. "UniLETIM is a web-based environment for complementary currency systems such as Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) or TimeBank/TimeDollars. It is written in PHP/MySQL. Release 0.9.1 includes new div-based XHTML/CSS layout theme, many bugfixes and it is able to manage multiple CC groups at one installation."

Comments (none posted)

gnome-games 2.7.8 is out

Version 2.7.8 of gnome-games, a collection of games for the GNOME desktop, is available. "This release is ready for the code-freeze. It contains only bug-fixes. One more release with documentation updates and any emergency bug-fixes can be expected before 2.8.0."

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GTK+ 2.4.9 released

Stable version 2.4.9 of GTK+, a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces, is available. "This is a respin of 2.4.8 to fix a mixup with the library versioning."

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Gtk2-Perl 2.7.92 announced

Version 2.7.92 of Gtk2-Perl, the Perl bindings to GTK+ 2.x is out with documentation generation fixes.

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Gossip 0.7.7 announced

Version 0.7.7 of Gossip, an instant messaging client for GNOME, is available. "This release features a nice addition in that you see which contacts has been updated in the contact list. Often you find yourself noticing that something changed but when you look you can't find what actually changed. Martyn was quick to solve this and now the background changes on a contact for 7 seconds after an update. Geert-Jan did some work to make the group chat behave more like a normal chat. And Mikael Hallendal added support for keep-alive packages being sent and HTTP proxy being used if the user has setup a desktop global HTTP proxy."

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Wine Traffic

Issue #237 of Wine Traffic is online with the latest Wine project news.

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GStreamer Plugins 0.8.4 are available

Version 0.8.4 of the GStreamer Plugins have been released. "The FFmpeg-based decoder element has been moved to its own module. If you want support for a lot of popular video formats, you need to install this module along with the GStreamer Core and Plugins. An FFmpeg-based colorspace element has been added to the Plugins however." Numerous bug fixes are also included.

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Liferea 0.5.3c announced

Version 0.5.3c of Liferea, the Linux Feed Reader, is available with bug fixes, and an updated Italian translation.

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Gnumeric 1.3.2 released

Version 1.3.2 of the Gnumeric spreadsheet is out. "This release transitions from development to beta and begins the run up to the next release. Emmanuel has been on a tear in the charting engine improving the rendering and adding mapping support to axes. We've also been busy in xls export. Jon Kåre added image export and I've been tweaking bits to improve compatibility with MS formulas. We've finally landed Uwe Steinmann's landed Paradox db importer. Re-enabling the psion importer and ssconvert should put us back on par with 1.2.x."

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Planner 0.12.1 announced

Version 0.12.1 of Planner, a project management application for GNOME, is out. "This is a maintenance release from the stable branch of Planner. A number of small bugs have been fixed, including a problem with assigning resources and printing problems when using older versions of GNOME. Last but not least, the translations have been updated."

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ooo-build-1.3.2 released

Build 1.3.2 of OpenOffice.org is out. "This is a brown-paper-bag release; a couple of acute build sillies, and a mistake in the release announcement, plus a few nasty bugs nailed."

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Gnome Pilot and Conduits 2.0.11 released

Version 2.0.11 of Gnome Pilot and the accompanying Gnome Pilot Conduits is out. Changes include storage of USB device vendor/product ids, support for a number of new PDA platforms, bug fixes, and more.

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Epiphany 1.3.8 is out

Beta release 1.3.8 of Epiphany has been released. "Epiphany 1.3.8 is a beta release in the unstable series leading up to GNOME 2.8." Numerous bug fixes are included.

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Epiphany Extensions 1.1.4

Epiphany Extensions version 1.1.4 is available. Changes include a new tab grouping extension and translation updates.

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GNOME Configurator 0.7.2

Version 0.7.2 of GNOME Configurator is available with bug fixes and other enhancements.

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GNOME Configurator 0.8.0

Version 0.8.0 of GNOME Configurator is out with bug fixes and more.

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Gnome OSD 0.5.0 announced

Version 0.5.0 of Gnome OSD, the GNOME desktop On Screen Display notification system, is available. Changes include a preference setting for playing sounds on message popup, and bug fixes.

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gcalctool v4.4.17

Stable version 4.4.17 of gcalctool, a calculator for GNOME, is available. "Contains updated online help to match the changes made since the version of gcalctool in GNOME 2.6."

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gnome-applets 2.7.3 released

Version 2.7.3 of gnome-applets is out with bug fixes and translation work. "The package includes applets like the battery applet, CPU load applet, weather applet and mixer applet."

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Revelation 0.3.3 released

Version 0.3.3 of Revelation, the password manager for GNOME 2, has been announced. "This release includes the long-awaited support for entry launchers. A password generater dialog was also added, along with a search toolbar and an XHTML/CSS exporter. In addition, a couple of bugs were fixed, and the internal data handling was further refined."

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Yelp 2.6.2 released

Version 2.6.2 of Yelp, the GNOME help browser, is available. "This is a maintenance release for Yelp". Various leaks and crashes have been fixed.

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Caml Weekly News

The August 24-31, 2004 Caml Weekly News is available with another roundup of Caml language articles.

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Aspect-Oriented Annotations (O'ReillyNet)

Bill Burke writes about AOP and attributes on O'Reilly. "Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) and attributes are two leading-edge programming concepts, each with typical applications. By combining them, using attributes to indicate where AOP code should execute, you can effectively declare new Java syntax."

Comments (none posted)

The State of the Onion (O'Reilly)

O'Reilly's Use Perl site has published Larry Wall's State of the Onion speech from the recent Open Source Conference. "One of the things that bubbled up recently was that the subject of this talk had to be screensavers. I didn't know why. Maybe I still don't know why. But be that as it may, that's what this talk is about. Screensavers, and why I have to talk about them today, and why I have to talk about why I have to talk about them today. It's a kind of recursive problem, you see."

Comments (none posted)

These Weeks on perl5-porters (use Perl)

A three week version of This Week on Perl-5-Porters is available for August 9-29, 2004. "This is an olympic summary: it jumps over three full weeks!"

Comments (none posted)

PHP 4.3.9RC2 released

Version 4.3.9RC2 of PHP is available for testing. "This is the last release candidate before the final release and should have a very low number of problems and/or bugs. Nevertheless, please download and test it as much as possible on real-life applications to uncover any remaining issues."

Comments (none posted)

PHP Form Handling (O'ReillyNet)

David Sklar works with forms in PHP on O'Reilly. "If your PHP program is a dynamic web page (and it probably is) and your PHP program is dealing with user input (and it probably is), then you need to work with HTML forms. Here are some tips for simplifying, securing, and organizing your form-handling PHP code."

Comments (none posted)

PHP Weekly Summary for August 16, 2004

The PHP Weekly Summary for August 16, 2004 is out. Topics include: PHP 5 objects passed as reference, time() SAPI fix, PHP-GTK 1.0.1, install notes, SQLite 3, sort() behaviour continued, PHP 4.3.9 RC 1, faster foreach(), PHP 5.0.1, PHP_EOL, and 5_0 branch on snaps box.

Comments (none posted)

PHP Weekly Summary for August 23, 2004

The PHP Weekly Summary for August 23, 2004 is out. Topics include: Namespaces, locale-aware date parsing, cookies and Max-Age, libxml output encoding, flex.skl, ini variables, method reloading, BC and __call definition, and garbage thrown out.

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PHP Weekly Summary for September 1, 2004

The PHP Weekly Summary for September 1, 2004 is out. Topics include: SQLite security, stream filters, preg_match() cache, process discussion, implicit clone and ZE1 compatibility, multibyte support, more optimisations, interface_exists(), and Access testers required.

Comments (none posted)

AFPL Ghostscript 8.31 Beta release

Beta version 8.31 of AFPL Ghostscript has been released. New features include topological grid fitting, support for PDF 1.4 encryption, a new shading rendering method, the experimental Rinkj driver for inkjet printers, support for PDF 1.5 files, and beta support for Jpeg2000 compressed images.

Comments (none posted)

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The August 31, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! has been published. Take a look for numerous Python language articles.

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Schemer's Gazette 3

Issue #3 of the Schemer's Gazette is online with the latest Scheme language articles and events.

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Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

The August 30, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is out with this week's Tcl/Tk article links.

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Gaphor 0.5.1 Released

Version 0.5.1 of Gaphor, a Python-based UML modeling environment, is available with one bug fix for an installation problem.

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Checkmate XML (O'Reilly)

John E. Simpson applies XML to chess in an O'Reilly article. "What outsiders may not know about is the devotion of chess insiders to studying games for which the moves have been recorded for posterity. For at least 10 years, the prevailing method for recording the context and actual play of chess games has been in the form of something called Portable Game Notation (PGN), developed by the rec.games.chess newsgroup."

Comments (none posted)

GNU Development Chain 2.92 pre-release

Pre-release of version 2.92 of the GNU Development Chain for 68HC11/68HC12, a C cross-compiler for Motorola 8-bit microprocessors, is available. "It is based on Binutils 2.15, Gcc 3.3.4, Gdb 6.2 and Newlib 1.12.0."

Comments (none posted)

gedit 2.7.92 released

Version 2.7.92 of gedit, a lightweight text editor for the GNOME desktop, is available with bug fixes.

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CoMa and HO-CVS released as open source

Two new lisp-based software development tools have been released as open-source software. "CoMa is a software configuration management system written in Common Lisp. It is similar to autoconf and is intended to be used in component-based development. HO-CVS (Higher Order CVS), also written in Common Lisp, is a version control system similar to MetaCVS, with support for module versions."

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Why Free/Open Source Software Might Have Less to Fear than Non-Free Software (Groklaw)

Dan Ravicher, the guy who came up with the list of patents which might threaten the Linux kernel, has put up an article on Groklaw explaining why patents are much more of a threat to proprietary software than to free software. "Therefore, a permanent injunction is the only truly threatening remedy available for a patent holder bringing a patent infringement suit against Free Software. However, knowing that patents cannot cover functionality, and can only cover certain structure that accomplishes functionality, it is highly likely that before a patent infringement case is tried and appealed, the Free Software at issue can be designed around the asserted patent. Further, it is also highly likely that the Free Software community, a very participatory and technically sophisticated group, will be quite capable at finding prior art to challenge the patent's validity."

Comments (16 posted)

New U.N. open source agency: What value does it offer? (NewsForge)

NewsForge covers the United Nations sponsored International Open Source Network (IOSN). "The new U.N. open source initiative, which offers Internet primers on free and open source software and their use in education and government, kicked off last weekend by supporting the slightly publicized Software Freedom Day, which was Saturday. "On that day, we will make the world aware of the virtues of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and encourage its widespread use," the IOSN said on its site. "We will set up stations in public places to give away informational fliers and CDs with selected FOSS, including TheOpenCD and a Linux Live CD.""

Comments (6 posted)

Report from the KDE World Summit: Days four and five (NewsForge)

NewsForge continues its KDE World Summit coverage. "The Quanta+ tutorial marked a watershed in the status of this relatively young application. Developed originally as a simple Dreamweaver clone, Laffoon and his development team (including two developers that he pays himself) now have big plans to take on and completely outpace their proprietary competitors. Modelling the application around modern web site frameworks, Quanta+ will be positioned to allow Webmasters to develop and manage their web site holistically, thinking of it as a collection of data objects rather than as static HTML with a weak templating system."

Comments (none posted)

Report from the KDE World Summit: Day six (NewsForge)

NewsForge reports on day six of the KDE World Summit (aKademy). "Wednesday at aKademy provided KDE hackers with their first day without a special focus. The KDE PIM (Personal Information Management) developers had a discussion session, I led a Quality Team session on media and promotion work, and the usability playing ground continued; otherwise, developers roamed around chatting, hacking, partying and sleeping (a little). And if that didn't satisfy the KDE developer, he could always take some time out for one of three consecutive dinners or celebrate his exam results."

Comments (none posted)

Report from KDE World Summit, Day 7: The keyboards remained quite busy (NewsForge)

The series of reports from aKademy on NewsForge continues with this summary from day 7. "Though this shouldn't be taken as a decision of the project, it now looks likely that we will see a release of KDE 3.4, focusing on polish, usability and stability, out within six or nine months. KDE 4 will be some way off, and so those looking forward to a new multimedia architecture, integration with DBUS and HAL, and other major changes discussed in this conference will have some time to wait."

Comments (none posted)

SCO director defends fight-back stance (ComputerWorld)

SCO may have muzzled its CEO in recent times, but it seems nobody got around to his Australian counterpart. ComputerWorld (Australia) has published a talk with Kieran O'Shaughnessy, SCO's Australia and New Zealand director, which looks like something from early 2003. "IBM has transformed Linux from a bicycle to a Rolls-Royce, making it almost an enterprise-class operating system. It took us 25 years to build our business and it took [IBM] four years simply by stealing code and then giving it away free."

Comments (14 posted)

Declaration of Randall Davis of MIT (Groklaw)

Groklaw has a copy of Randall Davis's declaration in the IBM case. You can get either excerpts and commentary in text format, or the whole thing in PDF format. "Mr. Sontag grossly exaggerates what is required to determine whether there is substantial similarity between Linux and SCO's allegedly copyrighted works. The materials necessary to the task have been available to SCO for years and tools capable of evaluating that material in a matter of months have also been available to SCO for years."

Groklaw also has some dates: on September 14 and 15 will be hearings on SCO's motions to compel discovery and to dismiss IBM's 10th counterclaim, and on IBM's motion to strike Sontag's declaration. The big IBM motions on copyright infringement and the contract claims are set for December 9.

Comments (none posted)

AOL users offered Linux link-up (vnunet)

Vnunet reports on Linspire's continuing efforts to push the Linux desktop into the mainstream by adding dial-up service to ISP giant AOL. ""We've expressed to AOL that America Online dial-up support is the number one request we get from users and original equipment manufacturers, but they have yet to release anything," said Michael Robertson, chief executive officer of Linspire, in a statement. "We decided to build an open source dialler on our own, so the massive AOL customer base can now use a low-cost Linux computer with their AOL accounts.""

Comments (7 posted)

Microsoft Dismisses British Objections to Anti-Linux Ad (eWeek)

Several readers have sent in links to a variety of versions of a story about a recent Microsoft FUD campaign. To sum it up: Microsoft ran an advertisement that included a graph comparing the dollar cost per megabit-per-second of one Linux image running on two z900 mainframe CPUs with one Windows Server 2003 image running on two 900MHz Intel Xeon CPUs, "proving" that Linux is 10 times more expensive to run. This eWeek article contains the relevant facts. "Microsoft sources said Wednesday that a British regulatory agency's objections to an anti-Linux advertisement published as part of its controversial "Get the Facts" campaign are moot because the ad is no longer running."

Comments (22 posted)

XP SP2 Gives Reasons to Switch to Linux (eWeek)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols suggests switching to Linux instead of upgrading to Windows XP SP2 on eWeek. "Take, if you will, please take it, Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2). I've worked a lot with SP2, and I didn't expect to see great security improvements from it. I know Windows too well to think that anything short of a complete redesign will actually make it approach Linux's levels of security. But I did expect to see some improvement. Boy, was I wrong. Yes, some things are better, but there are also a slew of new, exciting security concerns."

Comments (none posted)

Novell Reorgs Around Linux, Identity (eWeek)

eWeek covers Novell's reorganization. "There are currently four product business units at Provo, Utah-based Novell: Nterprise, Secure iServices, Resource Management and SuSE. These four are being morphed into "two major units focused on our two core strategies," Stone said, adding that Identity Services would combine the existing Resource Management and Secure iServices teams, while the Platform and Application Services would now be a combination of the existing Nterprise and SuSE units."

Comments (none posted)

Sun woos Wall Street with new OS (ZDNet)

ZDNet covers Sun Microsystems' new Solaris 10 operating system, and reveals an almost Microsoft-like marketing campaign concerning Linux TCO. "Solaris 10 provides a number of enhancements, said Stuart Wells, senior vice president of financial services at Sun. Dynamic Tracing, for instance, enables IT departments to more rapidly tune applications, which, in turn, can lead to higher performance and/or lower costs. Ultimately, Sun hopes that these sorts of additions will demonstrate that running Solaris -either on classic UltraSparc-based servers or Sun's Opteron boxes - is cheaper than running Linux, he said. One anecdote that will surely be retold on 21 September involves a large financial institution. The company has two employees dedicated to running a Solaris server farm and 42 managing a similar Linux one, according to Sun."

Comments (21 posted)

Via tunes up Xine Linux media player (vnunet)

Vnunet reports on a new Linux-capable media player platform and software project from Via Technologies. "Via Technologies has unveiled enhancements to its open source Xine project designed to make it easier for software developers to incorporate support for Mpeg-4 and Mpeg-2 hardware acceleration in Linux-based personal electronics devices. The developments apply to the Taiwanese chip firm's latest version of the player, Via Enhanced Xine Player 3.0 (VeXP 3.0), based on Via processor platforms that feature the Via CN400 or CLE266 chipsets and the accompanying source code."

Comments (none posted)

California considers open-source shift (News.com)

News.com reports that a California state government panel is recommending Linux and open source. "Among the ideas in the panel's $32 billion cost-cutting recommendations: favoring open-source software over proprietary alternatives for new IT purchases. The report doesn't project cost-savings for such a move but describes open-source products as more flexible and secure than the proprietary code that dominates government systems today. State agencies "should take an inventory of software purchases and software renewals...and implement open-source alternatives where feasible," according to the report."

Comments (5 posted)

Cell Phones: Don't Count Linux Out (Business Week)

Business Week looks at the state of Linux-based phones. "So far, Linux phones haven't lived up to the hype. Motorola has delivered two handsets, both in China, with two more on the way. But only 1.1 million Linux-based phones are expected to ship this year, vs. 14 million using Symbian system, estimates researcher Strategy Analytics in London. Downsizing Linux to fit into mobile phones took longer than predicted, and the software has a ways to go before it equals the sophistication of Symbian's package or the mobile phone version of Microsoft Windows."

Comments (15 posted)

GNU believers (NewsForge)

NewsForge examines the increasing use of Linux and open-source software by religious institutions. "GNU's roots lie squarely with an atheist named Richard M. Stallman. Yet, GNU -- meaning GNU's Not Unix -- was born out of the Golden Rule -- a biblical precept that strikes home with pretty much every Christian. While Stallman's Kantian ethics would clash at various points with Christian theology, the Golden Rule is common to both. In fact, in personal correspondence, Stallman told me he believes the Christian Church should be one of the major advocates of free software."

Comments (40 posted)

aKademy Interview: Will Stephenson of Kopete (KDE.News)

KDE.News interviews Kopete hacker Will Stephenson at aKademy. "What's new in the Kopete version that comes with KDE 3.3?
Well, the first thing you'll notice is the new contact list, that is the main window you see when you start Kopete. It's a great piece of work - we now have animation, fading and different layouts."

Comments (1 posted)

More aKademy Interviews/Awards (KDE.News)

KDE.News continues a series of aKademy interviews with these three:

• Eirik Chambe-Eng, President and Co-Founder of Trolltec
• Avi Alkalay of the Linux Registry Project
• Kévin Ottens and Peter Rockai of the Kalyxo project.

KDE.News also reports that Waldo Bastian has won the aKademy competition.

Comments (none posted)

aKademy Interview: Bernhard Reister, FSFE (KDE.News)

KDE.News interviews Bernhard Reiter at aKademy. "Not everybody takes a huge interest in politics and I believe that it is normal that some people stay of the technical side of things and just develop software. On the other hand we need more people to engage themself politically for Free Software."

Comments (none posted)

Create Self-Booting Movie CDs (O'ReillyNet)

Robert Bernier explains the process of copying DVD movies onto bootable Linux CDs in an O'Reilly article.

"Here are the steps you should follow:
 1. Read the DVD and convert it into an AVI.
 2. Break the completed AVI into files small enough to fit onto a CD.
 3. Use K3b to create a new eMoviX project/CD for each AVI volume.
 4. Burn away."

Comments (8 posted)

Vim Macros for Editing DocBook Documents (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal shows how to use Vim macros with DocBook/XML and other similar markup languages. "Recently, while helping Linux Journal convert its editorial process to use DocBook/XML for articles, I had occasion to convert some old Vim macros for use with the new process. The original macros were key maps or abbreviations for inserting Quark tags and special characters. The new editorial process involves marking or tagging a document in DocBook/XML. From there, a stylesheet is applied to convert the document either to Quark for publication in the print magazine or to HTML for publication on the Web site."

Comments (1 posted)

XML-based documentation using AurigaDoc (NewsForge)

NewsForge looks at AurigaDoc for creating documentation. "Like many open source projects, AurigaDoc was designed to "scratch an itch." "We needed a documentation system for our internal use that would be able to generate output in a variety of formats," said Khurshidali Shaikh of AurigaLogic, developer of AurigaDoc. "We looked at some tools but they were very cryptic and difficult to use. At that time DocBook was not known to us.""

Comments (none posted)

KDE 3.3: A Milestone for Linux on the Desktop (OSDir.com)

O'Reilly's OSDir.com has an article by George Staikos on KDE 3.3. "The month of August marks a major milestone for the KDE project. Along with the occurance of the KDE Community World Summit 2004, "aKademy", the KDE team has released version 3.3 of the K Desktop Environment. This is the quickest release cycle in recent history, coming roughly six months after the release of KDE 3.2. To put this into perspective, KDE 3.2 took over a year to complete. Does this mean fewer features, less polish, or more bugs? Certainly not!" (Found at KDE.News)

Comments (1 posted)

How open is open enough for electronic voting? (NewsForge)

NewsForge revisits e-voting. "Among those with apprehension about open source elections software and systems, somewhat surprisingly to some, is Australian developer and senior lecturer with Australian National University Clive Boughton, who helped design the eVACS open source, GPL election software used in Australian elections in 2001."

Comments (3 posted)

Email Sender ID: The hype and the reality (NewsForge)

NewsForge looks at sender authentication in the fight against spam. "Technical methods of verifying sender identification are going to go forward. Exactly which ones make it and which don't are the only real questions. But the non-technical barriers make it seem unlikely to this writer at least that they will have much of a lasting impact, given today's commercial environment."

Comments (4 posted)

Leading Linux-Based Collaboration Server Now Available Under GPL

Netline Internet Service has announced that the free, GPL version of its Open-Xchange Server is now available for download at http://www.Open-Xchange.org and http://www.openexchange.com. Open-Xchange Server is the engine behind Novell's SUSE LINUX Openexchange contacts, tasks and real-time document storage.

Comments (none posted)

OpenOffice.org released in 3 South African languages

OpenOffice.org is now available in three South African languages, Zulu, Northern Sotho and Afrikaans.

Full Story (comments: none)

OSDL Names Diane Peters as General Counsel

Open Source Development Labs has announced the appointment of Diane Peters as general counsel. "Peters joins the Lab from the law firm of Ater Wynne LLP in Portland, Oregon, where she practiced for more than three years and served on the firm's management committee. She has acted as outside legal counsel for OSDL since 2002."

Comments (none posted)

Lindows Has Become Linspire, Inc.

Lindows, Inc. is now officially known as Linspire Inc. the company announced. " Linspire has ceased to use the term Lindows in any of its current marketing collateral, web site or retail packaging. The name change is a direct result of the recent worldwide settlement between Linspire, Inc. and Microsoft Corporation in the trademark infringement cases between the two companies."

Comments (1 posted)

Mandrakesoft and LaCie introduce GlobeTrotter: a 40GB mobile desktop

GlobeTrotter, a new product by Mandrakesoft based on the LaCie Mobile Hard Drive designed by FA Porsche, is a USB mobile hard drive loaded with a specially tuned version of Mandrakesoft's Mandrakelinux operating system.

Full Story (comments: none)

MontaVista Software Opens Office in United Kingdom

MontaVista Software has announced the establishment of a MontaVista office in the United Kingdom. MontaVista Software Limited will be headquartered in Bracknell, and will market and support the full range of MontaVista products, including all editions of MontaVista Linux.

Comments (none posted)

Navicat 5.0 - MySQL administration tool - released

Navicat has announced the release of Navicat 5.0 (MySQL administration tool) this month. Navicat was voted the most popular MySQL GUI at www.download.com.

Full Story (comments: none)

Orion Multisystems creates 'cluster workstations'

Linux clusters tend to bring to mind noisy rooms full of boxes and wires. A company called Orion Multisystems is trying to change that with this announcement of a pair of "cluster workstation" systems. These include a 12-node desktop box, and a 96-node, 150 GFLOP deskside system. Orion was started by a couple of Transmeta co-founders, and uses Transmeta processors.

Comments (1 posted)

SCO Group 3rd quarter results

Here's SCO's press release on its third-quarter results. $11.2 million in revenue, for a $7.4 million loss. SCOsource revenue was $678,000, from two sources; one will be EV1Servers.Net; the other is a mystery licensee. SCO has also worked a new deal with its lawyers capping its cash outflow at $31 million, but giving them a bigger chunk of any settlement.

Comments (10 posted)

VIA enhances player for Linux digital entertainment systems

VIA Technologies, Inc has released enhancements to the open source Xine project in the form of VeXP 3.0 (VIA enhanced Xine Player, version 3.0) supporting hardware-based MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 video acceleration for entertainment devices based on VIA C-series digital media chipsets.

Full Story (comments: 9)

Xybernaut Introduces Atigo T with LINUX Operating System

Xybernaut has announced that the Atigo product family of wearable computers designed for dual use as a wireless flat panel display or a stand-alone wireless-enabled mobile/wearable computer is now available with a Linux operating system.

Comments (none posted)

"AI for Game Developers" Released by O'Reilly

O'Reilly has published the book AI for Game Developers by David M. Bourg and Glenn Seemann.

Full Story (comments: none)

"OpenOffice.org Writer" Released by O"Reilly

O'Reilly has published the book OpenOffice.org Writer by Jean Hollis Weber.

Full Story (comments: none)

Preview of New Qt Book 'Practical Qt' at KDE Conference 2004 (KDE.News)

KDE.News has announced a preview of the book Practical Qt by Jesper K. Pedersen.

Comments (none posted)

Python Cookbook Second Edition call for submissions

A call for submissions has gone out for the second edition of the Python Cookbook. "We (Alex Martelli, David Ascher and Anna Martelli Ravenscroft) are in the process of selecting recipes for the Second Edition of the Python Cookbook. Please contribute your recipes (code and discussion), along with comments on and ratings of existing recipes, to the cookbook site, http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python , and do it *now*!"

Full Story (comments: none)

nsupdate: Quick and Painless Dynamic DNS

Jeff Garzik has written an introductory article on the nsupdate utility. "Introduced in BIND version 8 and refined in BIND version 9, the nsupdate utility provides the system administrator or casual user with a quick and painless method of updating a DNS zone, adding or deleting any type of DNS record the name server supports. This article describes how to setup dynamic DNS, and provides some examples of use. For Fedora Core (and Red Hat) users, you will need to install both the bind (for dnssec-keygen) and bind-utils (for nsupdate) packages."

Comments (none posted)

"Custom Debian Distributions" workshop at Firenze World Vision

A workshop on Debian will be held in Florence, Italy. "On Sep 24, 2004, Media Innovation Unit - Firenze Tecnologia will host a one-day workshop on Custom Debian Distributions (CDDs) during Firenze World Vision 2004, which will be held in Florence (Italy)."

Full Story (comments: none)

Audio/Video streaming with Free Software workshop

A workshop on Audio/Video streaming with Free Software will be held in Florence, Italy on September 23, 2004 at the Firenze World Vision 2004 conference.

Full Story (comments: none)

"Migrating to Free Software" workshop at Firenze World Vision

Firenze Tecnologia will be hosting a workshop on Migrating to Free Software on September 25, 2004 as part of the Firenze World Vision conference in Florence, Italy.

Full Story (comments: none)

Netfilter Developer Workshop In September

A Netfilter Developer Workshop will be held near Nuremberg, Germany, on September 6-7, 2004. "Topics to be discussed in the workshop include high availability and benchmarking aspects of netfilter and iptables in the latest Linux kernel releases, implementation of IPv6 filters, and technical details of replacing iptables with pkttables. Participants flying in from all over the world will also talk about new plans to found a non-profit organization advancing security technologies on the Internet."

Full Story (comments: none)

Linux training classes for upcoming VistA Community Meeting (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews has an announcement for a set of Linux training classes. The classes will be held in Baltimore, MD in October, 2004.

Comments (none posted)

OpenOffice.org Announces Its Second International Conference

The second OpenOffice.org International Conference will be held on September 22-24, 2004 in Berlin, Germany.

Full Story (comments: none)

FOSDEM 2005 Call for Presence Developer Rooms and Booth

The FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Developers' European Meeting) is a free and non-commercial event for the community and organized by the community. The 5th FOSDEM edition is scheduled for February 26 - 27, 2005 in Brussels, Belgium. This is a call for participation in the FOSDEM DevRooms, where teams can meet and discuss their projects. Reserve your DevRoom now.

Full Story (comments: none)

YAPC::Taipei 2005 Call for Papers (use Perl)

Use Perl has announced a call for papers for the YAPC::Taipei conference. The event will be held on March 26 and 27, 2005. "The topic is 'Perl in the Enterprise.'"

Comments (none posted)

2005 O'Reilly ETech Call for Participation

A Call for Participation has gone out for the 2005 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Proposals are due by September 27, 2004.

Full Story (comments: none)

Events: September 2 - October 28, 2004

Date	Event	Location
September 2 - 3, 2004	Python for Scientific Computing(SciPy)	(CalTech)Pasadena, CA
September 2 - 4, 2004	2nd Swiss Unix Conference	(Technopark)Zurich, Switzerland
September 7 - 10, 2004	Linux-Kongress	Erlangen, Germany
September 9 - 10, 2004	Linux Expo Shanghai	(Shanghai Exhibition Center)Shanghai, China
September 13 - 16, 2004	Embedded Systems Conference	(Hynes Convention Center)Boston, MA
September 15 - 17, 2004	YAPC::Europe 2004	Belfast, Northern Ireland
September 19 - 22, 2004	2004 International Conference on Functional Programming(ICFP)	(Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort)Snowbird, Utah
September 20 - 23, 2004	New Security Paradigms Workshop(NSPW)	(White Point Beach Resort)Nova Scotia
September 20 - 22, 2004	Plone Conference 2004	Vienna, Austria.
September 22 - 24, 2004	OpenOffice.org Conference(OOoCon 2004)	(Humboldt University)Berlin, Germany
September 22 - 24, 2004	php|works 2004	(Holiday Inn Yorkdale Hotel and Conference Centre)Toronto, Canada
September 23 - 26, 2004	FirenzeWorldVision	Firenze, Italy
September 27 - October 1, 2004	4th International SANE Conference(SANE)	(Amsterdam RAI Centre)Amsterdam, The Netherlands
September 27 - 29, 2004	ConSec '04	(J.J.Pickle Research Center)Austin, Texas
September 29 - October 1, 2004	OSCOM 4	(Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)Zurich, Switzerland
October 2, 2004	Ohio LinuxFest	Columbus, Ohio
October 6 - 7, 2004	LinuxWorld Conference and Expo	(Olympia Exhibition Centre)London, England, UK
October 8 - 10, 2004	Linucon	(Red Lion Hotel)Austin, TX
October 10 - 17, 2004	MySQL Swell	Across the Mediterranean
October 11 - 15, 2004	11th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference	(Bourbon Orleans Hotel)New Orleans, LA
October 21 - 22, 2004	Web.It 2004	Bari, Italy
October 21 - 22, 2004	5. Encuentro Linux	Valparaiso, Chile
October 26 - 28, 2004	LinuxWorld Conference and Expo	Frankfurt, Germany
October 27 - 29, 2004	Sixth International Conference on Information and Communications Security(ICICS'04)	Malaga, Spain

Comments (none posted)

aKademy Hosts First Unix Accessibility Forum (KDE.News)

KDE.News reports on the Unix Accessibility forum at aKademy. "The most notable thing was that amongst all participants there was a good spirit of cooperation and consensus that standards for assistive technologies would ensure success in the accessibility of graphical user interfaces like KDE."

Comments (none posted)

Audio from OLS

The Ottawa Linux Symposium organizers have put up a set of audio files from some of this year's presentations. It apparently took a while to get the recording setup working; the Wednesday and early Thursday sessions are not available. The files are all in Speex format.

Comments (1 posted)

LCA2004 Conference CD on-line

A Conference CD from the 2004 Linux.Conf.Au event is available online. "This includes speex audio, presentations, speaker bios and conference photos."

Full Story (comments: none)

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)

Ibiblio designates September as Linux Month

ibiblio.org has announced the designation of September as "Linux Month", in celebration of the twelfth anniversary of the birth of the Linux software created by developer Linus Torvalds.

Full Story (comments: 2)

Please forward this to Sandra Rossi

From:		Leon Brooks <leon-AT-cyberknights.com.au>
To:		howard_dahdah-AT-idg.com.au
Subject:		Please forward this to Sandra Rossi (if I guessed the email address wrong)
Date:		Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:37:38 +0800
Cc:		sandra_rossi-AT-idg.com.au, letters-AT-lwn.net

...and/or make it a letter-to-editor.

From http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;97798672;fp;2;fpid;...

> It took us 25 years to build our business and it took [IBM] four
> years simply by stealing code and then giving it away free.

I'm pretty sure Kieran only does this for the sensation value, but this 
particular piece of hyper-chutzpah needs to be answered.

 * Linux *was* and *is* an enterprise-class piece of software,
   even if you completely delete IBM's contributions to it;

 * IBM didn't steal anything, they wrote their own software,
   adapted one copy of it for OS/2, another for Monterey, and
   later the OS/2 version of it again for Linux;

 * The SCO Group have in fact been distributing circa 700,000
   lines of IBM-written code without a licence to do so, since
   at least the time they denounced the GPL until the 4th of
   August this year and possibly later;

 * Unlike The SCO Group's claims, the code stolen from IBM is
   not vapourware, it is in fact listed in exquisite detail
   in the court documents recently filed;

 * IBM have not given away any code to Linux, they still own
   it; what they have done is licenced others to use the code
   that they wrote and own at no charge through the GPL;

 * IBM are required to use the GPL licence if they wish to
   modify Linux itself - as they have;

 * There is no "us", the real Santa Cruz Operation is now
   called Tarantella, with their name and a few of their
   programmers essentially hijacked by a decapitated Caldera.
   Neither Darl, Blake nor Kieran oversaw *any* of the core
   development of any original Unix, let alone AT&T's
   derivative;

 * SCO Unix is no longer an anterprise-class software system;
   since their disclaimer of the GPL, the very software which
   allowed UnixWare to stay within shouting distance of modern
   software trends is no longer available to them.

> Early this year, O'Shaughnessy warned that SCO had prepared a
> hit list and would approach Australian Linux users to ensure
> they had an IP licence.

This is illegal, and since SCO-ANZ hasn't followed up on it, I guess 
Kieran knows that. So why is he raising that empty threat again? Every 
time he does so he opens himself to a fresh count of fraud.

> "Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed
> version of Unix," he added. 

Odd, then, that *none* of the expert testimony remaining in the case, 
and *none* of the expert testimony Ken Brown of the Alexis de 
Tocqueville Institute tried to raise along the same lines supports that 
claim. Even odder that *all* of the non-hearsay testimony in both 
places supports the *opposite* stance.

It's also worth considering in particular some of the expert testimony 
submitted recently by IBM, from the people actually involved in AT&T's 
original licence of Unix to IBM, all of which says that The SCO Group 
has no case.

I don't need to defend IBM, they have their own lawyers and PR section 
for that, but Kieran and his company are essentially accusing all of 
the contributors to and deployers of Linux of stealing. Since those 
claims are baseless, continuing to make them amounts to slander and in 
some cases fraud against the Linux community, including me.

The only reason Kieran hasn't had a court order tossed at his feet is 
because as an individual developer, I can't afford to do that and 
defend myself against the inevitable legal consequences.

If you want to know how The SCO Group's economics are supposed to work, 
you only ned to read some of Darl's early statements. What he wants to 
do is turn a free road, built by others, into a toll road (all tolls 
payable, of course, to The SCO Group and eventually Darl). Another word 
for this business model is "highwayman".

Cheers; Leon

--
http://cyberknights.com.au/     Modern tools; traditional dedication
http://plug.linux.org.au/       Vice President, Perth Linux User Group
http://osia.net.au/             Member, Open Source Industry Australia
http://slpwa.asn.au/            Member, Linux Professionals WA
http://linux.org.au/            Member, Linux Australia

Comments (1 posted)