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xer.xes writes: "The first public beta release of the GNOME 2.0 Desktop is ready for your testing pleasure! It is available for immediate download here. Please read the release notes first! Due for general consumption in March, the GNOME 2.0 Desktop is a greatly improved user environment for existing GNOME applications. Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME's highly regarded user interface." LinuxToday or gnome-announce have the announcement. I don't see release notes anywhere - post a link in the comments if you find them. GNOME is having a bug day today.

miguel writes: "Here is my reply to the various questions on Mono, the future of GNOME and the Register statements." Linux Today has a copy of the email as well.

Flammon writes: "Linus has been overloaded with patches for a while and recently the issue started to become hot again. In an unprecedented move, Linus has started using BitKeeper, as reported by Linux Today. The benefits of BitKeeper are already showing from the large amount of detail provided in the latest unstable kernel pre-release." eirikref adds: "Read Linus' own statement and take a look at the BK web interface."

mpawlo writes: "As reported by Gnuheter, a new essay published by Bradley M. Kuhn and Richard M. Stallman carries the title "Freedom or Power?". The authors state something that we might have suspected from essays from Kuhn and Stallman before, but now is a little more clear, if still ambiguous: "However, one so-called freedom that we do not advocate is the "freedom to choose any license you want for software you write". We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom." The essay is interesting in the light of an earlier essay published by Eric S Raymond. ... Tim O'Reilly started the debate with his weblog of July 28, 2001: My definition of freedom zero." Ed. note - FWIW, Stallman and Kuhn are right. Not necessarily in their advocacy of the GPL, but certainly in their description of whether licensing is freedom for the developer or power over others. All licensing stems from copyright law, a completely man-made creation whose sole purpose is to give the writer of creative works artificial power over what others do with those works. If you take the canonical description of freedom ("Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins") and apply it to software, it's pretty clear that true freedom would not let one person control what another does with software.

Hairy1 writes: "The Council of Europe has been working on a Cyber Crime Treaty for some time. The final version is now available, and makes interesting reading." The submitter points out that treaty signers will be obligated to create legislation, as the UK already has, to force people to disclose passwords and encryption keys to the authorities. The U.S. may well sign this treaty - we've participated in the drafting process. On a slightly different note, people are up in arms because the European Patent Office has decided, apparently on its own, that software programs are patentable. Update: 11/09 15:23 GMT by M : A reader sent in this interesting bibliography of the treaty's history.

malibu_mex writes: "LinuxToday, ZDNet Australia, and NewsForge are all reporting on a loadable kernel module + GUI combination that implements an auditing subsystem on Linux (Like the NT event logger, or solaris BSM). This could be yet another reason for big business and government to migrate away from the costly commercial alternatives to Linux. First it was SAMBA, now it's SNARE. What have these Aussies got with 5 letter 'S' names? This topic has been discussed on Slashdot previously here."

Masem writes "The BBC is reporting that because 6 states have refused to agree to the settlement between Microsoft and the DOJ, Microsoft is conceeding that a settlement adjustment will not be possible, opening the door for Judge Kollar-Kotelly to begin rapid remedy hearings. There is a slim chance that negotiations might happen before the end of business today (Tuesday) that will allow the settlement to go after several refinements over the last few nights, but few expect any success. While Judge Kollar-Kotelly is promising to resolve the issue as fast as possible, legal experts are projecting a drawn out battle, with the additional time no longer on Microsoft's side. No word on which states were on which side, beyond MA being very much against the settlement and IL being for it." Besides the states, the Samba team has its own objections, below.

Jeremy Allison and Andrew Tridgell of the Samba team have posted a brief analysis of what the current settlement proposal would mean to that project. (Thanks, jdfox.) Considering that Samba is one of the most important links between open and closed software, it's worth mulling over.

mz001b writes: "Proof that just because a company goes out of business does not mean that their open source software goes with them -- Nautilus 1.0.5 has been release. See the LinuxToday notice."

Dave H writes "The first pre-release of the GNOME 2 platform is now available! Find it at you can grab it from FTP.gnome.org It is of course a technology preview; note that it can't be installed alongside GNOME 1.x." There's some more information information posted on LinuxToday.

Svartalf writes: "There's a report on Linux Today about a proposed loosening of requirements on patented technologies being submitted for W3C consideration. Called RAND, short for 'reasonable and non-discriminatory,' it basically changes the position of W3C with respects to patents. This is a real problem as all of you know, considering that we've had all kinds of fun with other 'reasonable' licensing (MP3 and GIF come immediately to mind) -- the cutoff for comments is tomorrow (9-30) so if you want to get them in do it NOW." September 30 is now today rather than tomorrow. The same issue was raised in a post yesterday as well, but many readers have submitted news of this Linux Today piece. Reader WhyDoubt points out that comments on the change are archived on the W3C's site, including this pithy comment from Alan Cox. Do you think that fee-bound patents have a place in the standards promulgated by the W3C? Read the Patent Policy Working Group's FAQ, then add your comment.

grendelkhan writes: "According to Linux Today, Trident is denying that they are no longer supporting open source developers for XFree86." This message from Eich clarifies the events leading up to this. Looks like Trident chips will continue to be supported, one way or another.

grendelkhan writes: "According to Linux Today, Trident is denying that they are no longer supporting open source developers for XFree86." This message from Eich clarifies the events leading up to this. Looks like Trident chips will continue to be supported, one way or another.

Well, we've gotten a massive number of submissions with the haps at LWCE. I've distilled some of the good ones below: Chanc_Grokon wrote to us with the press release from Ximian about the monthly charges for Red Carpet, their installer. He also raises the "Why not just use apt-get?" point. A number of people wrote pointing out LinuxLookup.com's Day 1 coverage and Day 2 coverage. Of particular interest to Daeslin was Larry Lessig's attack on overly strong intellectual property laws. A number of people, Krismon included, have voiced some disappointment at the excitement of the show - not being there, I make no judgments. Sun has unveiled more details about StarOffice 6. Compaq's CTO also made comments about Linux improving in the enterprise. jrbw sent in Linus' thoughts (dismissive) of .Net/Hailstorm. And KDE has won the "Best Open Source Project" award. Newsforge has also got a round-up and coverage piece. More news as it happens.

mz001b writes "There is an interesting article from RH posted on LinuxToday discussing why they chose ext3 over the other available journaling filesystems (ReiserFS, xfs, jfs,...) for RH 7.2"

mz001b writes "There is an interesting article from RH posted on LinuxToday discussing why they chose ext3 over the other available journaling filesystems (ReiserFS, xfs, jfs,...) for RH 7.2"

Anderson Silva writes "LinuxToday has an article doing a pretty basic comparison on some of the major linux browsers. Although a nice article, and with a fair result, I still think Opera is the best browser available for Linux." I prefer knoqueror, although recent builds seem to have random hangs on images.google.com.

dopplex writes: "Over here at Linux Today, Eric S. Raymond has written an amusing piece in which A.) He analyzes the way in which we use the word freedom, B.) Examines the point of view of both O'Reilly and the FSF on 'freedom' and C.) Coins the term 'flerbage,' which I hereby suggest be put into immediate use, just because it's a really cool word." It's cheesy but it is a good way for people to understand the difference between Open Source and Free Software. (Oh, and I figured I'd just mention that I'll never use that F word since I think its stupid)

snotty writes "A well written article by Ganesh Prasad over at linuxtoday arguing that the shift towards web services has reduced the attractiveness of the current generation of Open Source web products. He talks about the market share decrease in Apache. Also mentions how .NET, Microsoft, Sun, Java, and Open Source Software fit into the picture." I think that the decrease in Apache's share is a red herring, but the bigger picture of web services is a troubling one.

snotty writes "A well written article by Ganesh Prasad over at linuxtoday arguing that the shift towards web services has reduced the attractiveness of the current generation of Open Source web products. He talks about the market share decrease in Apache. Also mentions how .NET, Microsoft, Sun, Java, and Open Source Software fit into the picture." I think that the decrease in Apache's share is a red herring, but the bigger picture of web services is a troubling one.

yamla writes: "Loki is dead!" and points to a Linux Review article which says the gaming company has filed for protection from creditors under bankruptcy laws. Yamla continues: "Read about it here. This is terrible news! I have paid for some of their games and they were always at least as good as the Windows versions. I hope Loki can pull out of bankruptcy and keep going but if not, it will be our loss." There is also a story at LinuxToday (pointed out by reader Beee) which draws from the Linux Review report. Meanwhile, the Loki site appears business-as-usual. Filing for bankruptcy protection is not the same as being "out of business," but it's uncomfortably close.

Thanks to Dean Pannell (and Paul Ferris for the initial head's up) for pointing out the apology and statement of fact from Kevin Reichard, the Executive Editor of LinuxToday. I think the argument that people would know that "George Tirebiter" was merely a contrivance is weak, but whatever. You can read the previous stories in the astroturf ^[?] ing saga.

metalhed77 writes: "A new version of the Nautilus file manager (1.0.4) has made its way out to the gnome ftps. here's the article on linuxtoday. It includes various improvements which are described on linux today, these primarily consisted of bug fixes and speed ups." Good to see that the effort that went into making Nautilus friendly wasn't wasted. But if you want to browse more than your hard drive, HeUnique points out another interesting project which is not distributed with the official KDE package. It's called: KDENOX ("KDE No X" -- you can use it with X or with framebuffer and QT Embedded: here's a screenshot). The gain? You get Konqueror without KDE, with SSL, cookies, proxy, bookmarks, fonts, and without KDE itself. The executable is small (4MB), doesn't take much RAM, and it works very nicely on low end machines ... (grab it from KDE CVS). Update: 07/08 01:17 AM by T : Here's a screenshot elsewhere; first person to mirror gets a lollipop.

metalhed77 writes: "A new version of the Nautilus file manager (1.0.4) has made its way out to the gnome ftps. here's the article on linuxtoday. It includes various improvements which are described on linux today, these primarily consisted of bug fixes and speed ups." Good to see that the effort that went into making Nautilus friendly wasn't wasted. But if you want to browse more than your hard drive, HeUnique points out another interesting project which is not distributed with the official KDE package. It's called: KDENOX ("KDE No X" -- you can use it with X or with framebuffer and QT Embedded: here's a screenshot). The gain? You get Konqueror without KDE, with SSL, cookies, proxy, bookmarks, fonts, and without KDE itself. The executable is small (4MB), doesn't take much RAM, and it works very nicely on low end machines ... (grab it from KDE CVS). Update: 07/08 01:17 AM by T : Here's a screenshot elsewhere; first person to mirror gets a lollipop.

def writes "Linux Today has a good article that clarifies a lot of the misconceptions about the Pine and Pico license, and why these are not, in fact, open source programs." All things aside, I use Pine - for many of the reasons that the article points out - because I've used for as long as I can remember. Of course, CowboyNeal keeps talking about mutt but we'll see.

Motor writes "Caldera is to "introduce per-seat licenses for their upcoming OpenLinux Workstation 3.1." I'm not sure how I feel about this. I guess theoretically they can do it, although it sure feels wrong somehow. But I've always been somewhat wary of Caldera.

Nikato Muirhead writes: "Need I say more?" and points to this page at LinuxToday which says that Mandrake is preparing a beta -- for PPC. Considering the price of a used-but-decent G3, this sounds fun to get in on. (E-mailing sympa@linux-mandrake.com with "SUB cooker-ppc" in the body will start you on the road to beta-testerhood.)

So, quite a number of people have submitted this hideously poorly titled story that talks about a GPLed IPv6 Web Server that's on Microsoft.com. A number of people thought it means everything will be GPLed starting this afternoon - it's their research server called Fnord!. Now, please stop submitting it *grin*

jmt(tm) sends in Microsoft's shared source webpage, and their FAQ. An AC sends in a LinuxToday story and shared-source.com. Discuss.

"Microsoft Windows has better security than Linux out of the box" is my favorite line -- but there are many other good ones, find them and trade them with your friends -- in the polemic "Linux in Retail and Hospitality." This is actually from February apparently, but c't and LinuxToday have called attention to it. If you don't feel like reading their .doc file (I'm still looking for a robust .doc reader that doesn't suck), the IGLU LUG comes to your rescue with their HTML version. This is about using Linux in point-of-sale systems, in case you were wondering what POS stands for.

pjones writes: "This just in! Open Source is bad for companies and countries too. In a New York Times article (registration required), John Markoff reports that: "In a speech defending Microsoft's business model, to be given on Thursday at the Stern School of Business at New York University, Craig Mundie, a senior vice president at Microsoft and one of its software strategists, will argue that the company already follows the best attributes of the open-source model by sharing the original programmer's instructions, or source code, more widely than is generally realized." Singled out for particular rebuke and scorn are IBM and the famous GPL and its author Richard Stallman. Who will be there to cheer Craig on?" See also ESR's dispatch on same. (Read below for update with time and place.)

Update: 05/03 01:55 PM by T : cananian points to this announcement on time and place. The upshot: from noon to 1:30 p.m, in room 1-70 of NYU's Kaufman Management Center (KMEC), 44 West 4th Street.

JoeT-Bone writes "Found this at LinuxToday, It's a UnixReviw.com review of the of the IBM Small Business Suite for Linux. " Part of Big Blue's continuing move to porting to programs to Linux - anyone had experience with this? Good, Bad? Post below!

avidwriter@excite.com writes: "Linux Today is reporting that the phone lines to Stormix have been disconnected, and the Web site isn't accepting orders. Looks like another Linux vendor is down for the count." So, I think we'll officially pronounce Stormix dead. Some of the FTP sites are still carrying Stormix ISO's, so if you're looking for an easy way to install Debian on a machine, better get them while you can.

avidwriter@excite.com writes: "Linux Today is reporting that the phone lines to Stormix have been disconnected, and the Web site isn't accepting orders. Looks like another Linux vendor is down for the count." So, I think we'll officially pronounce Stormix dead. Some of the FTP sites are still carrying Stormix ISO's, so if you're looking for an easy way to install Debian on a machine, better get them while you can.

avdi asks: "BeOpen.com was once one of the crop of promising free-software based dotcoms, basing their business on selling corporate support contracts for the open-source development tools they also maintained. They were even the center for Python development at one time. Now, however, Python has moved on; their web site is out of date; their supported software cannot be downloaded; and they are unreachable via email. So, has BeOpen.com silently gone the way of many other dotcoms in these hard economic times, and if so, what has/will become of the open-source software they once maintained?" I tried calling the contacts listed for BeOpen.Com, and the numbers for both the administrative and techical contacts were disconnected. Not good news for those interested in the site, but maybe the software projects they housed managed to find new homes. One can hope...

"I recently became interested in a couple of XEmacs-based open-source development tools, namely Infodock and OO-Browser. A quick search on Freshmeat directed me to a page at BeOpen to download these tools. The BeOpen page was simply the top-level of a Freshmeat-like open-source application directory; when I finally drilled down to the listings for Infodock and OO-Browser they directed me right back to Freshmeat. This despite the fact that BeOpen has some lengthy product pages providing overviews, contract prices, and documentation for these tools. Everything, in fact, except a link to the source tarballs. ftp.beopen.com was unavailable. Eventually I tried emailing them at one of the addresses listed on the product pages. The email bounced.

Does anyone know of other repositories where it can be found? Is there any other group who might take on maintenance of these, software packages?"

LowneWulf writes: "Check it out! The Mozilla QT port has finally been checked into the Mozilla tree! Annoucement from the author here." The sad part is that I've switched to mostly using Konqueror these days. Less memory. Less crashes. Loads faster. AA fonts look better. Mozilla has a ton of excellent functionality that I look forward to getting in on (plus I've had a few compatibility problems with javascript and Konq). But its cool to see this coming along.

Roanld Bultje writes: "According to this article on LinuxToday, Gnome 1.4 has just been released! Gnome and all other required packages can be downloaded from Gnome's FTP or a mirror. Medusa seems to have been removed from the final release due to some bugs that were found recently. Let's hope that this new release puts Gnome next to KDE's 2.x-version." Download.gnome.org will pick a mirror site for you automagically.

Roanld Bultje writes: "According to this article on LinuxToday, Gnome 1.4 has just been released! Gnome and all other required packages can be downloaded from Gnome's FTP or a mirror. Medusa seems to have been removed from the final release due to some bugs that were found recently. Let's hope that this new release puts Gnome next to KDE's 2.x-version." Download.gnome.org will pick a mirror site for you automagically.

jfinke writes "Linux Today is running an article about Redhat's financial situation. The company reported an adjusted net loss of $600,000, or break even per share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2001, compared to an adjusted net loss of $5.6 million, or $0.04 per share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2000. On a reported basis, the net loss was $24.2 million, or $0.14 per share, compared with a net loss of $24.6 million, or $0.17 per share in fiscal 2000." Congrats to all the folks there.

jfinke writes "Linux Today is running an article about Redhat's financial situation. The company reported an adjusted net loss of $600,000, or break even per share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2001, compared to an adjusted net loss of $5.6 million, or $0.04 per share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2000. On a reported basis, the net loss was $24.2 million, or $0.14 per share, compared with a net loss of $24.6 million, or $0.17 per share in fiscal 2000." Congrats to all the folks there.

Anonymous Coward writes "In between all the bad news about Linux it's nice to see some good like this story about Linux getting used by NASA for satellite control I saw on NewsForge. It is on Linux Today too. This is not some garage dream but a real NASA project run by a real rocket scientist. Does ThinkGeek sell 'Tux in Space' T shirts yet? I want one!" NASA has a page for FlightLinux.

Wattsman writes "Looks like Microsoft is taking a new approach. From Linux Today, Microsoft has announced that will release software that will allow non-MS operating systems to run .NET web services. Ballmer specifically mentions that Linux is one of the platforms."

Slashback, the semi-regular attempt to bring some new light to old stories, continues briskly tonight with just a few items: clarification about words from RMS, early vacation plan reminders for anyone up for a little Wanderungenmitpenguinenborkborkbierdrinkinundsoweiter, and more on Deja. Deja.

Which way to America, please? After word of Microsoft Honcho Jim Allchin's (somewhat bizarre) words on Free software (later "clarified" by MS), we linked to a (preliminary) response to Allchin from RMS. Now RMS has himself issued a final version of his statement, here for your edification, passed on by Dan Gillmore, technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News.

Very eloquent.Thanks, Dan.

And if you're not yet out of sparklers, pie, bunting or RAM, matthew writes: "Bradley M. Kuhn, the new Vice President of the Free Software Foundation, has an essay published here. It's a more personal answer to Microsoft's attack against the GPL."

Start flossing that stein and pressing those Lederhosen! Jetzt! Alex writes: "I'm proud to announce that we finally got it managed. The date is fixed. The Linuxbierwanderung 2001 (1) will take place from 25th of August to the 1st of September in Bouillon (2), Belgium. As the hall we get the upper floor of the Archeoscope (3), a museum direct in town. It's warm, dry, nice, with enough electricity and has up to some 20 ISDN-lines. To get things easier for you we added a lot of phonenumbers and addresses of camping sites and hotels on the webpage. See (4) to look for your favorite place. So, now it's time to register ! To register yourself, your family, your pets, your computers and your lectures see (5). Thank you for your attention, Cheers, Alex.

(1) The Linuxbierwanderung 2001
(2) Bouillon on the Net
(3) The Archeoscope
(4) Hotel Overview
(5) Join the Linuxbierwanderung and register !"

I wish this didn't sound suspiciously close to LinuxWorld (San Francisco) 2001, because a lot of people would probably like to go to both. Lucky Europeans;) How about one of these in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee? I'll bring the fireworks, you bring the moonshine ...

I would have stopped at Pizza-Nizza afterward ... Google bought Deja. RallyDriver sends a report from the coolest six-letter city on I-35 between Dallas and San Antonio (gulp -- covered my bases?).

"On Thursday at the Omni hotel here in Austin ^[?] , we had the now familiar wake: the auction. While the public was overbidding on everything from furniture to laptops, dual P3 VA FullOn servers were going for as low as $275 a piece.

The show, however, goes on. Rumors of unemployment levels in Austin are greatly exaggerated, and it seems like most of the Deja people are already moving on to new opportunities. If you work in high tech, Austin is a small town of 1 million people.

Most of the server equipment (they still had the previous generation of equipment and the one before that) was picked up by junk dealers and resellers according to its vintage, but ironically a number of the rackmount boxes will be going right back where they came from -- Exodus Austin, where Deja was hosting, is also our co-lo provider."

Motor writes: "Microsoft is selling its shares in Corel." Interesting -- it was inevitable that this would happen, I suppose.

assbarn writes: "The title pretty much says it all, but LWN daily is reporting that SuSE is laying off almost all of its US staff. What does this mean for their English distribution? The details are short (and sketchy), but the link is at LWN. " I've tried reaching both the U.S. and German branches: SuSE has yet to return a call placed to the U.S. office, and at the German branch it won't be business hours for a while. I've left that message at the SuSE American office, though, and will update with any confirmation/denial. Update: 02/08 12:03 AM by H :A couple people have sent in the LinuxToday piece. SuSE's PR agency has denied it, but LWN is standing by it, and several other readers have substantiated it to LinuxToday and LWN, including the original source on LWN. As well, SuSE did say that a number of positions were being relocated. We'll keep the story updated. Update: 02/08 04:38 AM by T : LinuxGram has some great information -- with real details! Skeleton crew of 12 to remain in the U.S. What's also interesting is that it confirms that the PR agency had "bad communication," which is an interesting statement to say the least.

Newsforge (also owned by the sinister Andover keiretsu) is reporting on Corel's latest move in the world of Linux - an advance in the retrograde direction. Corel apparently plans to sell off its Debian-based distro, but retain WordPerfect and CorelDraw. Yahoo and Linux Today also have stories.

Lars Lehtonen writes: "The 2.0 kernel is no longer obsolete, it is now "vintage." 2.4.0 is out. " Here is a bit on LinuxToday but I'm sure there will be many more. I don't think the mirrors have updated as of this writing, but if I don't post this now, I'll have to spend the next 3 hours deleting hundreds of submissions. Download! Compile! Rejoice! Thanks to Linus and all the rest of the guys who made it happen.

Don Giovanni writes: "Apple Computer, Inc. has finally filed suit against the Freetype Project for violation of US patents #US5325479 and #US5159668. Linux Today has the story." This from the company that actually licensed Amazon's One-Click patent. Update: 03:30 PM EST by C :We're sorry. The link referred to in this article is incorrect. We're checking up on this information, and if we have any more to report, we will. However as of right now, the consensus is that this is a hoax.

SubtleNuance asks: "Free Software's venerable leader has made an open appeal to the Internet community. RMS seeks information about instances where Free Software projects were impeded by a software patent. You can read his open letter at Linux Today. RMS specifically seeks 'cases where a free program has been withdrawn from use or interfered with'. Surely the /. community can come up with a few examples to aid Mr. Stallman's arguments. Parties with specific information are to send an e-mail to patent-examples@gnu.org "

SubtleNuance asks: "Free Software's venerable leader has made an open appeal to the Internet community. RMS seeks information about instances where Free Software projects were impeded by a software patent. You can read his open letter at Linux Today. RMS specifically seeks 'cases where a free program has been withdrawn from use or interfered with'. Surely the /. community can come up with a few examples to aid Mr. Stallman's arguments. Parties with specific information are to send an e-mail to patent-examples@gnu.org "

Lennie writes: "Some crazy people did this for fun; let's hope it stays that way. There is enough kernelbloat already (or have you been able to compile a 2.4 kernel as zImage?). Nonetheless, lots of fun I'm sure." Of all the ridiculous things, this has got to be at least three of them. Actually the worst part is that I kinda could see this as being useful. I think I'm broken.