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I wonder why the demand in monetary payment

Then why not find out? Google it:

Linus Clarifies the Linux Trademark

Linus went on to underscore the fact that policing trademarks is not a method of making money, quite the opposite due to Lawyer fees, "not only do I not get a cent of the trademark money, but even LMI (who actually administers the mark) has so far historically always lost money on it."

The Linux Mark Institute ... is not designed to generate profits for anyone.

Well, Tim Miller has a plan to do so. People are excited. It's even been covered on Slashdot, after he was interviewed by Kerneltrap.

My question is---what are the obstacles in the way of an open source-friendly video card that were not in the way of an open source-friendly capture card? Why do we have one and not the other, when clearly more people have video cards than TV tuners? (Probably even not counting onboard video.)

--grendel drago

Well, Tim Miller has a plan to do so. People are excited. It's even been covered on Slashdot, after he was interviewed by Kerneltrap.

My question is---what are the obstacles in the way of an open source-friendly video card that were not in the way of an open source-friendly capture card? Why do we have one and not the other, when clearly more people have video cards than TV tuners? (Probably even not counting onboard video.)

--grendel drago

Er, aren't the Sun drivers for Linux open-source?

No.

Can't the OpenBSD folk just port them?

No.

As any low-level hardware developer will tell you, there are a couple of EXTREMELY dangerous assumptions here:

1.) That the original work done is understandable. Writing drivers is H A R D. Sometimes--often in fact--there are VERY subtle, extremely easily overlooked things happening in drivers. This is exacerbated by the fact that in many cases, the work done in developing a driver by one group is garbage and basing code on garbage becomes REAL garbage. No sir. Not interested.

This is to say nothing of: what happens when it breaks in subtle, hard-to-reproduce fashions? Where do you go for your documentation on it? Another driver? [shudders]

2.) That the original work doesn't have encumbered binaries or other equally troublesome hooks.

To get to the real heart of the matter it's this: if Sun will provide Linux developers documentation, why won't they provide BSD developers that same documentation?

If you really want the scoop on this, here's a good starting point: Sun OpenBSD documentation article

according to this thread
http://kerneltrap.org/node/5627
at least as far as i can understand, fuse will be included in 2.6.14, right ?

if so, does this mean that i will be finally able to mount ssh "filesystems" ? :)

will there be a need for special utilities (mount etc) ?

i tried searching for more detailed information, but i didn't find any 'featurelist' for general population ...ok, after some more searches i found http://fuse.sourceforge.net/ :)
from that page i gather that special utilities and even libraries will be needed. hopefully distributions will cach up on this fast enough then.

Yeah, that's not a good link. Try this kerneltrap one. Things have been brewing. I haven't kept up with the most recent stuff, though.

It's really a design/people issue. There are the lingering issues of stability and similar, but these are not (as I understand) the original problem.

Reiser4 incorporates some sophisticated metadata concepts ("semantics") that are in effect a software layer over the fs - which is why Hans can compare it to WinFS. Some of these features step into the functionality domain of the VFS and the kernel. Not a bad thing, per se.

Now, we all know the stereotypical kernel dev - technically conservative, concerned about maintenaince, not really keen on making big compromises, and annoyed by ego (again, a stereotype). Keep that in mind.

Hans of course wants Reiser4 into the kernel. What's the holdup (from a technical design standpoint)? Well, individuals like Andrew Morton want functionality in the kernel that can be reused in a file-system nuetral fashion. Reiser4 has a plugin system, but it's a Reiser4 plugin system. Reiser4 and Hans want to extend Linux as an API, which right now will just be for Reiser4.

There are also some lingering details of how this will change the course of filesystem integration in the kernel, in regards to traditional POSIX and Unix-like behavior. I don't recall any enduser problems, but there are few complaints.

Why might this be annoying? Well, Hans wants his fs into the kernel now and he makes the case of its superiority, the markets demand, and the need to compete with companies like Microsoft. I wouldn't be the one to tell kernel devs that they need to compete with MS, but Hans is - to say the least - confident. And he did name the filesystem after himself, so I'm not how this couldn't be personal on some level.

The middle ground is to say to Hans: we'll take Reiser4, but we want these Reiser-only features to be ultimately modified for all capable filesystems. Hans insists - and I'm sort of generalizing here - that the details can be sorted out, but right now we should go with Reiser4 and not worry about making it anything but a great fs.

So, Hans took a "assertive" position on why Reiser4 should not only be included in the Linux kernel but also change the kernel. Linus, Morton, and a few others took a stand and said - in so many words - "Hans, we aren't putting your ego into our kernel. Not even experimental."

It would be interesting to see if end users put enough momentum behind Reiser4 to put in into mainline or start it in 2.7.

Is that worth a few flames? ;) If I butchered anybody's perspective, please correct me. I don't do kernel dev or psychology.

Yeah, that's not a good link. Try this kerneltrap one. Things have been brewing. I haven't kept up with the most recent stuff, though.

It's really a design/people issue. There are the lingering issues of stability and similar, but these are not (as I understand) the original problem.

Reiser4 incorporates some sophisticated metadata concepts ("semantics") that are in effect a software layer over the fs - which is why Hans can compare it to WinFS. Some of these features step into the functionality domain of the VFS and the kernel. Not a bad thing, per se.

Now, we all know the stereotypical kernel dev - technically conservative, concerned about maintenaince, not really keen on making big compromises, and annoyed by ego (again, a stereotype). Keep that in mind.

Hans of course wants Reiser4 into the kernel. What's the holdup (from a technical design standpoint)? Well, individuals like Andrew Morton want functionality in the kernel that can be reused in a file-system nuetral fashion. Reiser4 has a plugin system, but it's a Reiser4 plugin system. Reiser4 and Hans want to extend Linux as an API, which right now will just be for Reiser4.

There are also some lingering details of how this will change the course of filesystem integration in the kernel, in regards to traditional POSIX and Unix-like behavior. I don't recall any enduser problems, but there are few complaints.

Why might this be annoying? Well, Hans wants his fs into the kernel now and he makes the case of its superiority, the markets demand, and the need to compete with companies like Microsoft. I wouldn't be the one to tell kernel devs that they need to compete with MS, but Hans is - to say the least - confident. And he did name the filesystem after himself, so I'm not how this couldn't be personal on some level.

The middle ground is to say to Hans: we'll take Reiser4, but we want these Reiser-only features to be ultimately modified for all capable filesystems. Hans insists - and I'm sort of generalizing here - that the details can be sorted out, but right now we should go with Reiser4 and not worry about making it anything but a great fs.

So, Hans took a "assertive" position on why Reiser4 should not only be included in the Linux kernel but also change the kernel. Linus, Morton, and a few others took a stand and said - in so many words - "Hans, we aren't putting your ego into our kernel. Not even experimental."

It would be interesting to see if end users put enough momentum behind Reiser4 to put in into mainline or start it in 2.7.

Is that worth a few flames? ;) If I butchered anybody's perspective, please correct me. I don't do kernel dev or psychology.

Now having read all of the ML discussion in the link GP posted I still don't see how it shows Reiser's immaturity. He may be a bit overconfident about his ideas but that's not necessarily a bad thing. That said I wanted to add that the link is a very good read and it is about features of Reiser4 that may be more important than raw speed (especially raw speed according to benchmarks on Reiser's own homepage =).

Here's a link to the page that hides the asshats making the pages super-wide with lame comments.

"Reiser4 is a much more mature design, representing a 10 year effort"."

Grog may not run linux....

But, linux runs on glogg (similar to grog?)...

See 'Woozy Numbat' release.

This is enabled via the PAE (Physical Address Extension) extension
of the PentiumPro processors. PAE addresses the 4 GB physical memory
limitation and is seen as Intel's answer to AMD 64-bit and AMD
x86-64. PAE allows processors to access physical memory up to 64 GB
(36 bits of address bus). However, since the virtual address space is
just 32 bits wide, each process can't grow beyond 4 GB. The mechanism
used to access memory from 4 GB to 64 GB is essentially the same as
that of accessing the 1 GB - 4 GB RAM via the HIGHMEM solution
discussed above.

Tracking Kernel Usage
http://kerneltrap.org/node/5606

I always have trouble finding the new features and driver changes with each major release.

For reference, Kernel trap has a copy of Linus' e-mail to the Linux Kernel Mailing List with a list of changes. If someone has a better link, please reply.

You're kidding right? A kernel release like this doesn't even make kernel.org break a sweat. Read this. The only time they ever even start to see some strain on their bandwidth is with a new release of Fedora, because they are a mirror for it (both of their gigabit links become saturated). For kernel releases though, they say that their bandwidth stays pretty normal at around 150Mbps to 200Mbps.
Regrds,
Steve

Since fighting and winning that battle, maddog noted that Linux International has spent over $300,000 defending the Linux Trademark, over $250,000 of which came from his own pocket. A lengthy write-up that further clarifies trademarks and their importance can be found on groklaw.

Those that explicitly benefit from using the trademark should help foot the bills for defending it. I don't think it is reasonable to expect people (such as maddog) to shoulder all of the financial burden of protecting the Linux (R) trademark. As others have said, if the price is too high, just use a different name.

isn't tis a bit much from the man who wrote less than 2% of the code????

Thanks for you concern but you don't have to worry. Jeremy at the Kernel Trap says:

Since fighting and winning that battle, maddog noted that Linux International has spent over $300,000 defending the Linux Trademark, over $250,000 of which came from his own pocket. A lengthy write-up that further clarifies trademarks and their importance can be found on groklaw.

...is a pretty savvy fellow; he's a frequent LKML poster and has gotten some mentions on Kernel Traffic.

The AC did not claim to be Mike Smith. To the contrary, their note as "Ed." (editor) implies that they are someone who is not Mike Smith. And the note is authentic. They did, however, omit the date: three years ago, 5/9/02.

Therefore, "BSD is dying" inferences are up to you. If you're not going to check an anonymous info dump on the Internet, then any mistaken inferences are your own fault.

Once Fernando understood the vulnerabilities he'd found in the ICMP protocol, he began to try and safely report the problem ... To begin, he wrote an internet draft which he submitted to the IETF in August of 2004. At that time he contacted CERT/CC and NISCC, and privately notified several open source projects ... as well as larger vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco, and Sun Microsystems. ...

Around this same time, Fernando began receiving emails from Cisco who had numerous technical questions about his solutions to the problems. He continued to reply thoroughly to all their questions, until two months later when he received an email from Cisco's lawyer claiming that Cisco held a patent on his work. He asked their lawyer for specifics, but they refused to reveal any details. For two more months this continued, until Fernando was cc'd on an email thread between Cisco, Linus Torvalds, and David Miller. Reading back through the thread, Fernando found where David Miller had asked Cisco how they could possibly patent sequence tracking as Linux had been doing it for many years, and later in the same thread Cisco noted that they had withdrawn their patent. ...

While the patent issue was happening with Cisco, CERT/CC created a mailing list to allow vendors to communicate amongst themselves about the newly discovered vulnerability. "They blamed me for submitting my work," Fernando said in exasperation. "One of Cisco's managers of PSIRT said I was cooperating with terrorists, because a terrorist could have gotten the information in the paper I wrote!" Fernando was familiar with intellectual property arguments with last year's Slipping In The Window paper, so he had intentionally publicly published his findings to prevent it from being patented. "Then they accused me of working with terrorists, and even still tried to patent my work!" He noted that he now suspected had he actually worked exclusively with Cisco as they had requested, they probably would have managed to patent all of his ideas. ...

Fernando also found Microsoft difficult to work with. "Microsoft's acknowledgment policy says that you must report the issues to them 'confidentially'", he explained. As he chose to contact CERT and various open source projects as well, he claimed that they refused to give him credit for the discovery. Only with much effort did he finally get them to acknowledge that he had discovered the issue.

• Hurd (now with KDE)
• Haiku
• TUNES
• House
• Squeak

To answer the question, what is Drupal...

Drupal is the open-source CMS behind:

• KernelTrap
• SpreadFirefox
• Gnome Footnotes
• Linux Journal

and many more sites. Even if you don't know Drupal, you've probably visited a Drupal site before. Drupal is known for its modular architecture, clean code and developer friendlyness.

The spec calls for a sequence number in the block. Vendors aren't checking it.There are a lot of technical details about how TCP connections can be slowed down by a ICMP attack, but if the vendors checked the sequence number it would make it almost impossible to implement these attacks.

PS: that was the link I missed: http://kerneltrap.org/node/477

Already been done.

Don't forget, HP donated some kick-ass machines for kernel.org! linky

http://kerneltrap.org/node/5070

this interview with the maintainers has a comment from sombody who claims he asked by email and got the reply that ext3 is used

if thats not a good enough perhaps guessing that as "At this time, the servers run Fedora Core and use the 2.6 kernel provided by RedHat." they might be using ext3 that is the default.

linky

Here are Theo's comments on Linux from the past few weeks of interviews:

Interview 1: ( http://kerneltrap.org/node/6 )

JA: What advantages does OpenBSD offer over Linux?
Theo de Raadt: I don't use Linux, so I do not really know how to answer this.

Interview 2: (http://www.tuxjournal.net/intervista3-en.html )

Q: Do you like GNU/Linux ? Yes/No, why? Do you use it sometimes?
A: I have never used it.

Interview 3 (http://os.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=05/06/09/213 2233 )

NF: The BSDs are still considered by some to be more technically correct than the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds has said in the past that it's not all about technology. Do you think the BSD project you work on is better technically for some or all uses than GNU/Linux (in general)?
Theo de Raadt: I don't know. I have never run Linux.

Mission

Availability of a graphics card with fully published specs and open source drivers.

Note that the mission is not to actually design or make it. And:

In order to get manufacturers to make such hardware, we have to show that it will be economically viable to do so.

No mention of making it themselves. The rest of the page makes it appear that their main work is coming up with a feature list.

If you dig through the rest of the site, it appears some guy wrote some sort of emulator and they intend to convince someone else to translate it to FPGA code and put it on an FPGA, but the FPGA code probably won't be available. That's not an open source graphics card.

I believe this project is an offshoot of what was originally this guy's ideas. In fact I am pretty sure of it because the name of the guy on OpenGraphics is also Timothy Miller. I wrote those guys when that original article first hit slashdot that I was willing to pre-commit to paying $200 each for up to 5 cards, and I stand by that. But I won't pay for someone's simulation code, or for an FPGA sold by the same bullshit company as before and with a closed FPGA.

I wish someone would try to do an Open Source graphics card, I'd like to buy it. I think it it likely that people would find other uses for it -- reprogramming it to be a software radio, for example. Perhaps after the Open Graphics Card project screws around with the big companies enough, someone else will take their simulation and design and make an open graphics card.

But in the end, the Open Graphics Card project is simply producing a very detailed spec and begging one of the usual asshole companies to make a closed source version to match it. This is doomed to failure. They won't do it, and if they do there will be small undocumented differences from the spec and you won't be able to correct the spec easily or change the FPGA.

This is not a situation that can be solved by lobbying companies. I believe it can be solved by making hardware, even if you have to make your own company in the process.

It's not like that. A lot of companies say 'degree required', but in reality it might not be so. You just got to have a courage to apply that job even if you don't have a degree.

Kernel guru Jordan Hubbard (Apple's Darwin project manager) does not have a college degree either.

However, McVoy says it took him five years to create an industrial strength version of BitKeeper, and he thinks Torvalds will find it difficult to create a full-fledged replacement.

Git's done. Linus thinks it needs some polish, but he calls it "Feature Complete". If Linux can do in weeks what McVoy took 5 years to do, just imagine how mature and innovative BitKeeper could be.

In case you haven't been on Slashdot much, there's been a good deal of articles recently about ID; the grandparent is funny because of the 'leitmotif' quality, and because what he appears to be trying to say, sotto voice, is intrinsically hirarious to the sceptic, of which Slashdot is well-populated.

As an aside, I think that underestimation of the power of evolution is part of the reason that software patents are so readily granted.

That makes a bigger difference on Windows than on UNIX, because UNIX doesn't run multiple apps in the same address space or map the kernel into the application's address space, so even in 32-bit mode every app already has its own 4G of address space to play with.

So on the Mac this is really only an issue if you have more than 4G of physical RAM. But even under 10.3 the Powermac G5 supported 8G of physical RAM. You don't need a 64-bit OS to get this advantage, you just need an OS that doesn't waste half the available address space (or 1/4 of it, even on NTAS) on shared memory.


Once again you have no understanding or are simply making up crap...

1) Unix environments DO MAP the Kernel into the Application Address Space...

2) Unix applications on a 32bit platform do not get a full 4gb of Address space.

Lets take a look at Linux for Example...

The Kernel not only takes 1GB from the application address space, but the kernel is LIMITED to 1GB. This creates many problems for the Linux platform.

Here maybe you need to actually read about memory management and get out of your Apple fan-boy/girl club.

http://kerneltrap.org/node/2450

But even under 10.3 the Powermac G5 supported 8G of physical RAM. You don't need a 64-bit OS to get this advantage, you just need an OS that doesn't waste half the available address space (or 1/4 of it, even on NTAS) on shared memory.


This is because it was running on a 64PPC CPU that allows for this, it has nothing to do with it being a UNIX base. Geesus...

WindowsNT-32bit can and has been able to even use PAGES to get access to more than 4GB of RAM of physical RAM. For example Multi-CPU x86-32bit systems running Windows 32bit versions would use this paging trick to access up to 64GB of RAM. (Something even far above the GREAT OSX and G5)...

Go read up on memory management and what really happens and try to understand not only the architectures of the CPUs in discussions but the OSes running on them.

BTW when you say that 'even under 10.3 the Powermac G5 supported 8G of physical RAM. You don't need a 64-bit OS to get this advantage', you do realize that 10.4 is ALSO not a 64bit OS.

I should just bow out because logic and facts will not win your mind over from the Apple marketing machine. You are a lost lemming that will believe everything and only what Apple marketing tells you.

Unfortunately, as nice as OSX and the Mac platform is, it is NOT always what the marketing would lead everyone to believe.

I don't know how you solve this problem more generically with the steady growth of doctrinare propertarianism in politics throughout the world, especially since property, to many, appears as "common sense", without the more sophisticated, economist's understanding of what property is, and means.

The battle to promote educated opinion is a difficult one indeed, requiring a honing of arguing skills so that the informed opinion can be presented as common sense over the prejudiced one.

I think, personally, that the root of the problem is deeper than patents.

Everyone seems ok with that.

Not really. There's a quite vocal minority that is really choked that that's happening.

Even Linus is pretty sketchy about the closed-source binary drivers. http://kerneltrap.org/node/1758

Link from KernelTrap

I read about this last night here at KernelTrap. They offer more info, evidently having talked to Colin...

Two things here. NetBSD's pkgsrc is intended to support multiple platforms including flavours of commercial UNIX. OpenBSD's ports is (as far as I know) only intended for use with OpenBSD (on the various hardware platforms they support, of course).

Also, there was some friction between OpenBSD and Sun over release of documentation relating to the UltraSparc III, which was even lampooned in a cartoon in the OpenBSD 3.4 CD-ROM notes. See here for instance: http://kerneltrap.org/node/568

On the topic of using the LEDs to show Morse code: http://kerneltrap.org/node/355 describes a kernel patch that reports panics in morse code. (Did this get merged into the main branch?)

sounds like the author could use this little gem: http://kerneltrap.org/node/143 :)

You Cannot Rip People Off - what haven't we figured out about that?

The duplication is done right away the modification occured in the main disk.
(from the comments below article)

Another reason to build a high speed backbone. Getting my 80GB harddrive image from Seattle, while I'm in Norfolk would be a lot of downtime. (parent)

Seems that this thing will sync up everytime you call home. So when you're on the road downloading that just updated massive PPT presentation for your conference.... you'll be downloading one copy from the server while the server is desperately trying update its image of your disk back the other way. Lets just arbitrarily double our bandwidth requirements!

I'm not a miserable, stingy Scottish git for nothing :-)

I'm afraid I don't understand. What does Linus' new SCM have to do with this?

If you'd been following the LKML you'd realise that that's precisely what Linus has done, immediately McVoy picked up his bat.

In fact a huge slice of the kernels genius team has pitched in, in a classic hackfest fashion, and turned out a workable replacement for that part of BK that Linus needed. Its in effect a versioned filesystem and tools. Not a full SCM but tuned to Linus' requirements, which are a scheme to allow distributed development, a marching forrest of development trees. Known as GIT

see the GIT archive at kerneltrap

http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/15/overview/thre ad

Looks like kernel development took a week and a half to two week hit if my very unscientific rack of eye guess at non GIT LKML traffic is accurate, though the onset of silly season may have contributed to that slowdown.

Things are not yet fully back to normal, but seem to be settling down, and GIT is progressing nicely.

The source for git is available online at:

I'm having some difficulty wrapping my head around what git is and how much functionality it provides that is needed to do SCM. My take on this is that git can be thought of as a low level SCM repository kernel that can implement a particule file structure (optimized for directory content management) that leads to easy replication, distributed file system with no worries about file corruption (unless you are really worried about SHA1 collisions). Git is not yet a SCM but a work in progress of the repository layer.

Anyone familiar with ClearCase (a proprietary SCM now owned by IBM) is aware (possibly painfully so if they were invloved with administrating it) that it uses its own proprietary file system (which it calls VOBs). ClearCase has replication capabilities so there may be some degree of overlap in the basic concepts between ClearCase's lower level VOB layer and git.

There's more to do on top of git to make it part of a polished SCM system. I expect just as Linux has multiple Desktops (KDE/Gnome/xfce) there will be multiple git front-end clients to use the git utilities (API) to manipulate the contents of a git repository using your favourite language (Perl/PHP/Java/...) along with utilities to provide gateways to/from other SCM repositories such as CVS.

Actually accroding to Linus. Like I said, where do think he got his GIT data from ?

If this new GIT database is incomplete then perhaps someone should have waited until the lifeboat (ie. the export) was checked before pushing the self-destruct button.

If the GIT database is complete, then what was the problem (that the reverse engineering was solving) ?

So, is Linus' new dataset incomplete or not ? He doesn't seem to think so (anywhere I've seen) and surely he should know ?

I'm one of those testers AM talks about. Please see this. I haven't been paid squat.

If someone wants to help, rather than just talk about it, I accept PayPal donations via rlrevell at joe-job.com.

http://kerneltrap.org/node/3816

Nice try, AC.

I saw some news about Linux doing some work on drive schedule control, and then it kinda died. I've had several people tell me that drive scheduling is unimportant because you always want response from the programs you're running, but while that's true, each one may have a different level of importance.

/sys/block/?d?/queue contains the scheduling configurables for each drive (this can also be specified as "elevator=_____" for a kernel startup option. There are four IO schedulers: noop, deadline, anticipatory, and cfq.

Does that answer your question?