Slashdot Mirror

> Let me know if you want a Canadian mirror.

No idea what the legal status would be in Canada. I'm not a lawyer even in the US so be sure you have your own ducks in a row.

Technically I'm probably talking about violating US law (DMCA) but pretty sure Sony would lose the PR war long before they won a legal fight. Telling a library they have to suppress knowledge is so obviously asking for a nightmare that I'm betting their legal department is smart enough to know it. The trick is I'm going to need a mostly TEXT site, too much software might confuse the issue too much, remember most librarians still miss their card catalogs, tech isn't a strength. But yell "Censorship!" and the reaction is pure Pavlovian reflex.

> As a pissed-off PS3 owner who used Linux on my PS3 and who uses my console for communication...

Good, you are probably the one to find the right dark dank corners of the Internet where the knowledge to get Linux back on a PS/3 is hiding from Sony's takedown notices. Somebody finds it either post a link in this thread, or if it can't take a slashdotting email me at the address /. has for me. My server here stood up strong to a glancing blow by slashdot in '05; we have a bigger pipe now, perhaps I'll find out if it can take a direct hit. :)

Willing to put in some time cleaning up, clarifying noisy web forum threads, etc. to get a page up. As an example, currently in the process of doing that sort of contribution for www.lg-hack.info, boiling down their research to a concise set of pages on my homepage. Not being a console owner, or even much of a gamer, I just don't hang out in the right places to know where to get good info and Google hasn't come through for me yet. Still poking around though.

I don't even own a PS3 (or any console for that matter) but I have about had it with this DMCA crap. There isn't any Sony copyrighted code in the crack is there? If somebody can point me to a good description of how to jailbreak one of these damned things I'll host it on my homepage and then toss the gauntlet down to Sony. I'm a humble librarian but one benefit is I can use a page on our server. Ever seen how rabid the library world gets when the word 'censorship' gets tossed their way?

Way I see it I can't be subject to a Sony EULA since the only Sony product I own is a fairly basic receiver. If there is no Sony code copied into the crack I can't be subject to copyright. And a text page describing something can't violate a patent. With the right disclaimers trademark is out. So that leaves it a pure DMCA play and I really don't think the bastards want that going to court. They will use em when they think they can get an instant takedown from a frightened ISP but I ain't one of those. Our lawyer happens to be the district attorney so we don't have to instantly fold at the threat of lawyering up.

The most defendable position would be detailed instructions on how to crack a PS3 for the purpose of installing Linux back on one. So has that been accomplished yet?

Haven't stuck a finger in the system's eye since my minor role in the Cuecat fiasco a decade ago. Looks like it is time to stand up again.

CentOS is one of several projects that took the source rpms from Redhat and recompiled them into a working set of isos (minus Redhat copyrighted material). Whitebox Linux, Tao Linux, and Scientific Linux are some others.

They were basically all started independantly of each other.

Whitebox (being the only one I have really used extensively) is run out of Beauregard Parish Public Library by a a JMorris. He rules with a tyranical fist and has no desire to offer anything other than the bare minimum of changes needed to make the rebuild possible. Now I like this hard-line leadership, but it has caused some friction as to the timelyness of updates.

I did recently convert a machine that was Whitebox Linux to Tao Linux to verify that it could be done. I followed this basic procedure. With this basic procedure, picking one of the projects over another isn't that much of a life or death decision. It is relatively easy to move between this projects.

As far as I can tell (not having seen an actual RHEL box) both Whitebox and Tao are very accurate representations of RHEL. I have yet to see an instance where a package desigend for RHEL didn't work with Whitebox and Tao. I have installed Oracle, vmware, various rpm's that were packaged for RHEL without much troubles.

Why do you say WhiteboxLinux is dead ?
The user list seems to be active enough. Last I heard (in dec.2004) they were working on new version WBL4.0

There are a number of interesting Library projects using Linux. Beauregard Parish Public Library helped develop its own distro of linux called Whitebox . There's also oss4lib which focuses on Open Source Projects in libraries.

Perhaps the folks at the Beauregard Parish Public Library could help out. Check out Whitebox Linux" to see what they're doing.

When Red Hat announced their new plan, they explained that:

1. Fedora is the development distribution which is maintained similar to Debian. It is intended to be bleeding edge (which is what half the RH users wanted). It is also intended for _anyone_ to use as the basis for creating a boxed distribution (one of those distributions being RHEL, of course).

2. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is their production version for Red Hat's commercial customers, whose main interests were stability and support (for which they are willing to pay).

But Red Hat went on to assure everyone that everything in RHEL is Open Source, and can be redistributed, EXCEPT FOR CERTAIN TRADEMARKS AND NOTIFICATIONS. Red Hat provided information on exactly which files would need to be removed or changed in order to make a redistributable copy of RHEL. Thus, Red Hat continues to support the Open Source approach.

And at least one group has taken Red Hat at their word, and created a distribution which is a free (as in beer) and redistributable copy of RHEL. As required, it doesn't have the Red Hat trademarks, and it is not called Red Hat Enterprise Linux. That distribution is called White Box Linux:

http://www.beau.org/~jmorris/linux/whitebox/

So you can forget all the FUD about Red Hat, because they remain completely faithful to the Open Source community.