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m3.142 writes "Author J.S. Kelly in his LinuxWorld article says [summarized] 'In 1999, Linux became the Next Big Thing. Linux grew in market share and mindshare, in users and in servers, in support from hardware companies, software companies, and software vendors, in media coverage and in stock valuation. J.S. Kelly isn't convinced that the people who so badly wanted Linux to become the Next Big Thing knew precisely what they were wishing for, and thinks they may be in for an unwelcome lesson ...'"

Well, we've done one more show before we leave for LWCE from where we'll have multiple icecasts throughout the week. In our latest episode, we talk about the Slash code release, Kevin Mitnick's encrypted data, and the DoubleClick fiasco.

AlphaBrav sent news that LinuxOne is planning to up their IPO price range. For those who don't know who LinuxOne is, don't feel bad: read this amazing article that point by point shows that there are more problems with this company then I can list in this space, although my favorites include their CEOs questionable past, GPL violations, and a corporate web server that not only doesn't run their own distribution but offers to sell you a (binary only) CD if only you send your credit card unencrypted to them. Best of all, their ticker symbol is set to be LINX.

nickm writes "Many eyebrows were raised when Linux One announced its upcoming IPO. None were raised quite so high, however, as commentator Rick Moen's. The story is up on LinuxWorld Online. Truly a bizarre tale - check it out. "

nickm writes "Many eyebrows were raised when Linux One announced its upcoming IPO. None were raised quite so high, however, as commentator Rick Moen's. The story is up on LinuxWorld Online. Truly a bizarre tale - check it out. "

A reader wrote to point out that RMS has responded to a recent LinuxWorld article by Stig Hackvan concerning the GPL. Interesting debate over what free means, amongst other topics.

wozz (a frequent contributor of BSD news) writes "There's nice summary of FreeBSD Con in this LinuxWorld article." This is not the first FreeBSD-friendly article LinuxWorld have run, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

A. J. Rimmer writes "Just ran across this review of Caldera 2.3 from Nick Petreley ^[?] of LinuxWorld. " Saint Nick likes it - says that "not only continues to leapfrog over all other Linux distributions for ease of installation; it also proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Linux can be easier to install than Windows. " Pretty strong words - what do you folks like best?

A reader writes "Joe Barr has written a very interesting review of KDevelop. KDevelop seems to be a strong contender for folks looking for a C or C++ IDE environment under Linux. " We're going to be reviewing this as well, along with other IDEs - but you can check out our current review of Cygnus Solutions' Code Fusion for Linux.

Phexro writes "Looks like Nick Petreley, IDG and the LinuxWorld gang have a neat idea- Open Books. They are soliciting the Linux community to help write "The Essential Linux", which will be written and edited completely(?) by the members of the Linux community. The finished work will be distributed under the terms of the IDG Books Open Content License." I'll probably volunteer; I'm already in the Open Source Writers Group. But will enough others participate to make it a viable project? (More below)

The reason I wonder if this project (which I think is an excellent idea) will draw enough support is that it's facing stiff competition from commercial publishers. The market for Linux books is so hot right now that one New York literary agent I know, Lisa Swayne, is literally begging for Linux authors.

While much Linux software is free, books about it cost plenty. An awful lot of people, including me, have noticed this and are not happy about it. Writing is not that much different from coding. In many ways. the two tasks are different applications of the same talents, and the way writers and coders work is quite similar, especially the fact that people who are good (or want to get good) at either task often become so obsessed with their work that they give up almost everything else in their lives. Given this similarity, why should people who write about free software almost invariably get paid, while people who write free software are expected to "contribute to the community" without getting any money in return?

Personally, I believe it is the duty of any writer or editor who uses free software to donate his or her skills to the community, just as programmers who use free software often contribute bugfixes and patches even if they aren't heavily involved in kernel or applications development. We each can and should contribute in our own way.

But now Linux is going big-time, and publishers move in packs just as surely as Wall Street investors, so suddenly there's competition for anyone who can write competently about Linux. I believe this is going to lead to a lot of bad books, just as the explosion of science fiction's popularity in the 1970s led to the publication of many SF novels that never should have been printed.

I believe Open Source books have the potential to be better and more useful manuals than those written under commercial pressure. Editing is the writer's equivalent of debugging. Just as good programmers often spend more time debugging than actually writing code, good writers often spend more time editing their work than typing their first drafts.

If you are a programmer who can write, or a writer who understands programming, I urge you to donate at least a little of your precious time to either of the two Open Source writing projects mentioned above, or to one of the many other worthwhile ones that have sprung up elsewhere.

Sure, there's lots of pressure to spend every waking moment making money coding or writing, but doing the same work without deadline pressure, for love instead of money, at least a few hours every week, will not only make you feel better about yourself, but may also help you improve your skills in ways you cannot when you're cranking out copy or code against a commercial deadline.

Note: this story was posted briefly earlier, then pulled when we discovered that LinuxWorld's servers weren't responding. Now, at 1:13 EDT, LinuxWorld is back up, so the links all work. - ed

Phexro writes "Looks like Nick Petreley, IDG and the LinuxWorld gang have a neat idea- Open Books. They are soliciting the Linux community to help write "The Essential Linux", which will be written and edited completely(?) by the members of the Linux community. The finished work will be distributed under the terms of the IDG Books Open Content License." I'll probably volunteer; I'm already in the Open Source Writers Group. But will enough others participate to make it a viable project? (More below)

The reason I wonder if this project (which I think is an excellent idea) will draw enough support is that it's facing stiff competition from commercial publishers. The market for Linux books is so hot right now that one New York literary agent I know, Lisa Swayne, is literally begging for Linux authors.

While much Linux software is free, books about it cost plenty. An awful lot of people, including me, have noticed this and are not happy about it. Writing is not that much different from coding. In many ways. the two tasks are different applications of the same talents, and the way writers and coders work is quite similar, especially the fact that people who are good (or want to get good) at either task often become so obsessed with their work that they give up almost everything else in their lives. Given this similarity, why should people who write about free software almost invariably get paid, while people who write free software are expected to "contribute to the community" without getting any money in return?

Personally, I believe it is the duty of any writer or editor who uses free software to donate his or her skills to the community, just as programmers who use free software often contribute bugfixes and patches even if they aren't heavily involved in kernel or applications development. We each can and should contribute in our own way.

But now Linux is going big-time, and publishers move in packs just as surely as Wall Street investors, so suddenly there's competition for anyone who can write competently about Linux. I believe this is going to lead to a lot of bad books, just as the explosion of science fiction's popularity in the 1970s led to the publication of many SF novels that never should have been printed.

I believe Open Source books have the potential to be better and more useful manuals than those written under commercial pressure. Editing is the writer's equivalent of debugging. Just as good programmers often spend more time debugging than actually writing code, good writers often spend more time editing their work than typing their first drafts.

If you are a programmer who can write, or a writer who understands programming, I urge you to donate at least a little of your precious time to either of the two Open Source writing projects mentioned above, or to one of the many other worthwhile ones that have sprung up elsewhere.

Sure, there's lots of pressure to spend every waking moment making money coding or writing, but doing the same work without deadline pressure, for love instead of money, at least a few hours every week, will not only make you feel better about yourself, but may also help you improve your skills in ways you cannot when you're cranking out copy or code against a commercial deadline.

Note: this story was posted briefly earlier, then pulled when we discovered that LinuxWorld's servers weren't responding. Now, at 1:13 EDT, LinuxWorld is back up, so the links all work. - ed

RPoet writes "LinuxWorld Today has an interview with Miguel de Icaza, in which he talks about what we can expect in the upcoming GNOME versions 1.2 and 2.0. " He also explains what he & Nat's new GNOME company is up to and assorted other worthwhile tidbits. Not a bad interview.

Having finally flown back home, recovered from the gain/loss of sleep, time zones, and of course, the obligatory luggage being lost, we're trying to wrap-up the latest installment of LinuxWorld. If you are interested in some commentary and stories coming out of LWCE, click below. The big issue of LWCE was something that didn't occur even in the same state as the show. The Red Hat IPO, complete with lotsa confusion and news went up, and showed that, yes, Wall Street is interested in Linux.

One of the more interesting commentaries brought up the newest Linux Spokesperson-Casper Weinberger. Yes, the former Secretary of Defense is an Open Source guy. Strange. It also brings up the living penguins that were on the show floor. I dunno-it still seems to me that live animals on a show floor has to be tantamount of animal abuse, under some sort of law.

A number of good interviews came out of the show - one with RMS where he talks about the whole GNU/Linux thing, Communism. The interview is done in the inimitable Stallman style, so...be warned. *grin* In a parellel vein, ESR talked with ZD, foretelling amongst other things, the downfall of Microsoft and FUD issues. MSNBC did a nice story on Gnome, giving it some of the props needed. The KDE folks were also at the shows, with some nice displays at their screen in the booth.

We spent almost every waking moment in the .Org pavilion, a scary sort of place with furniture with no back support, and lots of people wandering through. Included amongst these people was no less then three documentary film crews. I think two+ is a sign that a movement has reached commericial mainstream. So, uh, congrats to....someone.

Some great picture shots came in - thanks, as always, to Marc Merlins' wrap-up complete with some good shots. Marc's, as always, is incredible comprehensive. Read it. If you want some shots of .Org pavilion, the Slashdot party (Woo-hoo! Good beer! *grin* ), check out Joey Hess' page. HUGE # of pictures, and still more going up.

The show was fun. Lotsa people who we don't get to see, except at the conventions. The commericial element was stronger then at the last show, but I think it was evident that the companies attending understood that they at least needed to give a nod to the feelings of the Community. This being the 2nd round of a show this size, I think the initial glamour of "Woo! Big Show!" is wearing off, and people are getting to work at these. It makes things a little less glamourous, but what the attendees/exhibitors of the show did see is that Linux is something to be taken seriously. Every major media outlet had people there, warndering the floor, and media like CNN ran pieces about it during the show. With the first IPO under its' belt, the establishment of several major shows, and major vendors established on the scene, I think Linux continued success looks good.

Bill Clarke wrote to us about WholeLinux system they unveiled at LinuxWorld. From a "cheap" CD-ROM even, they can install Red Hat Linux in 4 minutes, plus another 2 for things like Apache, Sendmail etc. Heh-run around with one of these things at your office/school. See how long it takes for the NT people to reinstall. *grin*

Daniel Stone writes "Linux Mandrake won the best product of the year award at LinuxWorld. It's bound to be a contentious discussion about what deserves the awards-but Nick Petrely's comments speak for themselves.

While it's been known that for the last few months Corel has been hacking on Debian GNU/Linux to create a distro of their own, they have finally begun demoing it at LinuxWorld. Our friends at LWN were given an early demonstration, and have posted review of it to accompany their coverage of the event. The juicy stuff is that the install is very simple, and a beta should be out before the end of next month. Corel also seems to have updated their Linux site. Thanks to Mindjiver, we now have a link to screenshots.

Polo was the first of several to send us an article over at LinuxWorld about PC-Tel announcing LinModems, eg, software modems that can run under Linux as well. Some interesting comments in there about hardware modems being a "Luxury" item. Kinda amusing.

Marc Merlin writes "After Red Hat has been called the next microsoft by several, and after some people saying that Red Hat has not reason to follow the LSB (Linux Standards Base), this Linuxworld article should hopefully give a better view of the situation, and it also gives a nice history of the LSB "

The one and only Eric S. Raymond has submitted his response to the Mind Craft report that we've talked about a bit here lately. This is a good wrap-up type piece which nicely summarizes the flaws with the testing (which range "yeah maybe" to "you gotta be kidding!"). Anyone who thought the tests had any validity should read this. The followingw as written by Slashdot reader, Jargon File Maintainer, Fetchmail Author, Open Source Evangelist, Eric S. Raymond The Mindcraft fiasco

Microsoft's latest FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) tactic may be backfiring.

A 21 April ITWeb story reported results by a benchmarking shop called Mindcraft that supposedly showed NT to be faster than Linux at SMB and Web service. The story also claimed that technical support for tuning the Linux system had been impossible to find.

Previous independent benchmarks (such as "Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 versus UNIX") have found Linux and other Unixes to be dramatically faster and more efficient than NT, and independent observers (beginning with a celebrated InfoWorld article in 1998) have lauded the Linux community's responsiveness to support problems. Linux fans smelled a rat somewhere (uttering responses typfied by "Mindcraft Reality Check"), and amidst the ensuing storm of protest some interesting facts came to light.

1. The benchmark had been paid for by Microsoft. The Mindcraft press release failed to mention this fact.
2. Mindcraft did in fact get a useful answer to its request for help tuning the Linux system. But they did not answer the request for more information, neither did they follow the tuning suggestions given Also, they forged the reply email address to conceal themselves -- the connection was made after the fact by a Usenetter who noticed that the unusual machine configuration described in the request exactly matched that of the test system in the Mindcraft results.
3. Red Hat, the Linux distributor Mindcraft says it asked for help, reports that it got one phone call from them on the installation-help line, which isn't supposed to answer post-installation questions about things like advanced server tuning. Evidently Mindcraft's efforts to get help tuning the system were feeble -- at best incompetent, at worst cynical gestures.
4. An entertainingly-written article by the head of the development team for Samba (one of the key pieces of Linux software involved in the benchmark) described how Mindcraft could have done a better job of tuning. The article revealed that one of Mindcraft's Samba tweaks had the effect of slowing their Linux down quite drastically.
5. Another Usenet article independently pointed out that Mindcraft had deliberately chosen a logging format that imposed a lot of overhead on Apache (the web sever used for the Linux tests).

So far, so sordid -- a fairly standard tale of Microsoft paying to get exactly the FUD it wants from a nominally independent third party. But the story took a strange turn today (22 Mar) when Microsoft spokesperson Ian Hatton effectively admitted [8] that the test had been rigged! "A very highly-tuned NT server" Mr. Hatton said "was pitted against a very poorly tuned Linux server".

He then attempted to spin the whole episode around by complaining that Microsoft and its PR company had received "malicious and obscene" email from Linux fans and slamming this supposed "unprofessionalism". One wonders if Hatton believes it would be "unprofessional" to address strong language to a burglar caught in the act of nipping the family silver.

In any case, Microsoft's underhanded tactics seem (as with its clumsy "astroturf" campaign against the DOJ lawsuit) likely to come back to haunt it. The trade press had largely greeted the Mindcraft results with yawns and skepticism even before Hatton's admission. And it's hard to see how Microsoft will be able to credibly quote anti-Linux benchmarks in the future after this fiasco.

Michael McPherson sent in a link to Nicholas Petreley's Glowing review of Caldera that appears in the current issue of LinuxWorld. Talks about the windows based install program and a lot more.

Couple of new Linux Portals to mention: An anonymous reader sent us a link to LinuxStart- a yahoo-ish Linux focused site, and FaKe wrote in to send us JustLinux.com. EmilEifrem sent us Earthweb's newly announced OpenSourceIT, which isn't a portal: More like a better designed LinuxWorld, with a cheesier name. It Debuts with the standard ESR and RMS profiles. All of these sites look pretty decent- its pretty excellent that Linux can support this much content. Anyone else remember when it was just Me and Scoop? We've come a long way. Very cool.

LinuxWorld's Nick Petrely latest column is about Linux and gaming. Excellent arguements as to why this is an important market-and it's one of the weakest areas for Linux right now. I think recent moves have been good-but, darnit, I don't wanna sit down in front of the Playstation anymore. And I still haven't gotten my beta test copy of Civ: Call To Power. Harumph.

Todd Bradshaw wrote in with an excerpt from Linus' chapter in "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution". Linus' number one rule for keeping the kernel healthy is to avoid new system interfaces.

Hygelac writes "ESR has written an article for Linux World dubbed "Halloween V". It's basically a reaction to Ed "The Sheriff of Nottingham" Muth's statements in a PCWeek article. Nothing earth shattering, but somebody had to do it, right? "

Hygelac writes "ESR has written an article for Linux World dubbed "Halloween V". It's basically a reaction to Ed "The Sheriff of Nottingham" Muth's statements in a PCWeek article. Nothing earth shattering, but somebody had to do it, right? "

I'm still here from the floor (Thanks again to LinuxWorld for giving us a booth and Linux-HW for flying us out here). Its crazy. It's absolutely gigantic relative to ALS. The mega-stars are here in full force- Caldera, Compaq, LinuxCare, Red Hat, and VA Research each have absolutely huge booths. I've been snapping pictures and trying to talk to keep up with the email and stories from here, but keeping up is proving near impossible. In the meantime, its entertaining to note that the press room is compaq boxes... running windows. And Shayde from Freshmeat is posting updates. Wired has a bit too, complete with a terribly out of context quote from me. Anyway, soon things will calm down and I can hopefully post pictures and write up a real report... hang in there.

Several people have written in with assorted notes about LinuxWorld Expo. I've heard rumblings of prizes for the show including a VW Bug from LinuxCare and even a Harley. I've attached a blurb from Robert McMillan about the show. Also, I've written up a bunch of notes about the Slashdot Booth at the show including a wish list: We need a few contacts in San Jose to help us find some stuff for the show. Somebody has to have this stuff just sitting around, so hit the link if you wanna help. Robert McMillan writes "If you're thinking of attending or curious as to what's going on at next week's LinuxWorld expo, you should check out the site we've created, called Tapping the Source -- it tells you where to hook up with free software at the show, and we've got feature stories on WINE, Python, and sendmail, as well as show-related newslinks. Also, if you're a developer and you're going to be at the show we REALLY want to include your software in our supplement."

We're borrowing wireless PCMCIA adapaters for the show. We ordered a Kodak DC210+ digital camera that will hopefully be here in time. CopyLeft has shipped over T-Shirts for us to sell, and Jeff's hottie little girlfriend is gonna be helping sell them. It looks like we're gonna have a great time out there so definitely swing by.

Thanks to the LinuxWorld folk for helping set up up out there, thanks to Linux-HW for the plane tickets and Red Hat for paying for the bandwidth.

As promised, the stuff that we want to borrow for the Slashdot booth:

• Astroturf (10x10 piece. Anyone have a camper?)
• Reclining Lawn Chairs
• A Dart Board
• Pictures to attach to the dart board (Bill? Rob & Hemos in Wired? Sanford Wallace? Katz? whoever :)
• A Pitcher, Sugar & Kool-Aid mix (we'll get thirsty. We really want a blender and vodka and little umbrella's but its enough of a pain just to legally sell T-Shirts, I suspect a liqour license is right out of the question *grin*)
• Large breasted dancers (we're pretty flexible on this one).

Anyway, if you live in San Jose and can help with any of these items let Jeff or I know. Supposedly the mob is going to make things difficult for us out there, but we'll work it out. It's gonna be a nutty show. We're looking forward to hanging out with everyone. I'm looking forward to posting live updates from the show- and this time with pictures & a wireless network adapter. This ought to be great!

Several people have written in with assorted notes about LinuxWorld Expo. I've heard rumblings of prizes for the show including a VW Bug from LinuxCare and even a Harley. I've attached a blurb from Robert McMillan about the show. Also, I've written up a bunch of notes about the Slashdot Booth at the show including a wish list: We need a few contacts in San Jose to help us find some stuff for the show. Somebody has to have this stuff just sitting around, so hit the link if you wanna help. Robert McMillan writes "If you're thinking of attending or curious as to what's going on at next week's LinuxWorld expo, you should check out the site we've created, called Tapping the Source -- it tells you where to hook up with free software at the show, and we've got feature stories on WINE, Python, and sendmail, as well as show-related newslinks. Also, if you're a developer and you're going to be at the show we REALLY want to include your software in our supplement."

We're borrowing wireless PCMCIA adapaters for the show. We ordered a Kodak DC210+ digital camera that will hopefully be here in time. CopyLeft has shipped over T-Shirts for us to sell, and Jeff's hottie little girlfriend is gonna be helping sell them. It looks like we're gonna have a great time out there so definitely swing by.

Thanks to the LinuxWorld folk for helping set up up out there, thanks to Linux-HW for the plane tickets and Red Hat for paying for the bandwidth.

As promised, the stuff that we want to borrow for the Slashdot booth:

• Astroturf (10x10 piece. Anyone have a camper?)
• Reclining Lawn Chairs
• A Dart Board
• Pictures to attach to the dart board (Bill? Rob & Hemos in Wired? Sanford Wallace? Katz? whoever :)
• A Pitcher, Sugar & Kool-Aid mix (we'll get thirsty. We really want a blender and vodka and little umbrella's but its enough of a pain just to legally sell T-Shirts, I suspect a liqour license is right out of the question *grin*)
• Large breasted dancers (we're pretty flexible on this one).

Anyway, if you live in San Jose and can help with any of these items let Jeff or I know. Supposedly the mob is going to make things difficult for us out there, but we'll work it out. It's gonna be a nutty show. We're looking forward to hanging out with everyone. I'm looking forward to posting live updates from the show- and this time with pictures & a wireless network adapter. This ought to be great!

Robert McMillan writes "Nick Petreley answers the question "Is Red Hat becoming too powerful" in hist latest LinuxWorld column. We also have an interesting opinion piece by Bob Young on the site explaining why Linux won't Balkanize. " I feel like throwing more bait into the ring :) Anyway, I think Nick hit on something big - if Red Hat tries to bully an OEM, the OEM laughs rather than trembles in fear like they might with a certain other vendor. Maybe that is stretching it too far, but it's food for thought. What do you think?

Robert McMillan writes "Nick Petreley answers the question "Is Red Hat becoming too powerful" in hist latest LinuxWorld column. We also have an interesting opinion piece by Bob Young on the site explaining why Linux won't Balkanize. " I feel like throwing more bait into the ring :) Anyway, I think Nick hit on something big - if Red Hat tries to bully an OEM, the OEM laughs rather than trembles in fear like they might with a certain other vendor. Maybe that is stretching it too far, but it's food for thought. What do you think?

Robert McMillan writes "Nick Petreley answers the question "Is Red Hat becoming too powerful" in hist latest LinuxWorld column. We also have an interesting opinion piece by Bob Young on the site explaining why Linux won't Balkanize. " I feel like throwing more bait into the ring :) Anyway, I think Nick hit on something big - if Red Hat tries to bully an OEM, the OEM laughs rather than trembles in fear like they might with a certain other vendor. Maybe that is stretching it too far, but it's food for thought. What do you think?

Robert McMillan writes "Nick Petreley answers the question "Is Red Hat becoming too powerful" in hist latest LinuxWorld column. We also have an interesting opinion piece by Bob Young on the site explaining why Linux won't Balkanize. " I feel like throwing more bait into the ring :) Anyway, I think Nick hit on something big - if Red Hat tries to bully an OEM, the OEM laughs rather than trembles in fear like they might with a certain other vendor. Maybe that is stretching it too far, but it's food for thought. What do you think?

Stig Hackvän apparently really wanted this story since he emailed it to me twice, and he also submitted it the right way. Anyway, he submitted a nice interview with S&P on LinuxWorld if you're interested in reading it.

Nicholas Petreley explains his recent InfoWorld statement that "Should Microsoft ultimately win the case, however, I guarantee vendors will abandon Linux faster than a rat out of an aqueduct". While his point that the war is not won is valid, he has missed some crucial details: home computer prices are collapsing making Microsoft's software a very expensive component. In the business world, Windows-terminals save money by reducing administration costs and reducing the number of software licenses that must be bought. Windows-terminals can run other OS's than Windows -- for instance, Linux with the Citrix client. Finally the enormous emerging market is the consumer appliance market which needs an idiot-proof UI -- not Windows compatibility. Some links from LT.

nikc writes "The December 17th issue of LinuxWorld features an excellent article about FreeBSD. It's refreshingly free from hype and unsubstantiated claims often made by supporters of both systems, and well worth reading. "

nikc writes "The December 17th issue of LinuxWorld features an excellent article about FreeBSD. It's refreshingly free from hype and unsubstantiated claims often made by supporters of both systems, and well worth reading. "

Robert McMillan wrote in to plug a few new articles over at LinuxWorld. The first is about a the major investments in Linux from various sources lately. The second is an anlysis of Sun's Java License.

Robert McMillan wrote in to plug a few new articles over at LinuxWorld. The first is about a the major investments in Linux from various sources lately. The second is an anlysis of Sun's Java License.

Robert McMillan wrote in to plug a few new articles over at LinuxWorld. The first is about a the major investments in Linux from various sources lately. The second is an anlysis of Sun's Java License.

Well, we've received a ton of Comdex Reports. Firstly there's Linux World reporting that IBM may be porting Linux to the AS/400. Then there's a Linux Today report, discussing Linux' success in France, a new French Linux Magazine France, and the presence of an HP representative in Red Hat's Booth demonstrating an apparently impressive Firehunter.Jedi Mind Trick wrote in about a demo of 500 Mhz K7 silicon. And finally many of you told us that Novell is claiming Comdex Novell-network traffic is being sniffed.

Robert McMillan wrote to tell us that LinuxWorld just published an article Bruce Perens wrote about patents This will be a really important issue for the OSS community in the coming months. It would be really useful if OSS developers responded to it here so that those of us who are trying to find a good solution to the problem can gauge developers' opinion. If you want to be heard please state what you have coded so far... or write to Bruce Perens directly. updated partents to patents (Oops)

Robert McMillan wrote to tell us that LinuxWorld just published an article Bruce Perens wrote about patents This will be a really important issue for the OSS community in the coming months. It would be really useful if OSS developers responded to it here so that those of us who are trying to find a good solution to the problem can gauge developers' opinion. If you want to be heard please state what you have coded so far... or write to Bruce Perens directly. updated partents to patents (Oops)

Robert McMillan wrote to tell us that LinuxWorld just published an article Bruce Perens wrote about patents This will be a really important issue for the OSS community in the coming months. It would be really useful if OSS developers responded to it here so that those of us who are trying to find a good solution to the problem can gauge developers' opinion. If you want to be heard please state what you have coded so far... or write to Bruce Perens directly. updated partents to patents (Oops)

Linux World has a report from the Oracle OpenWorld panel. Linus said that he will be focussing on bringing Linux to normal users. Indeed, the competition is not high end Unixes, but Windows. He also mentioned that 2.2 should be out by Christmas. Intel also announced a Linux Community Program. Despite recent speculation, Larry Ellison did not discuss a Linux strategy, but an Oracle vice-president reaffirmed Oracle's commitment to Linux. Moreover, Oracle called upon Sun today to put Java into the Open Source community to accelerate its growth. Note that Netscape's vice president said that the emphasis should not be put on the OS but the apps it runs and the services around it: similar to this idea. Thanks to beg and ensor for their URLs. updated

Linux World has a report from the Oracle OpenWorld panel. Linus said that he will be focussing on bringing Linux to normal users. Indeed, the competition is not high end Unixes, but Windows. He also mentioned that 2.2 should be out by Christmas. Intel also announced a Linux Community Program. Despite recent speculation, Larry Ellison did not discuss a Linux strategy, but an Oracle vice-president reaffirmed Oracle's commitment to Linux. Moreover, Oracle called upon Sun today to put Java into the Open Source community to accelerate its growth. Note that Netscape's vice president said that the emphasis should not be put on the OS but the apps it runs and the services around it: similar to this idea. Thanks to beg and ensor for their URLs. updated

Linux World has a report from the Oracle OpenWorld panel. Linus said that he will be focussing on bringing Linux to normal users. Indeed, the competition is not high end Unixes, but Windows. He also mentioned that 2.2 should be out by Christmas. Intel also announced a Linux Community Program. Despite recent speculation, Larry Ellison did not discuss a Linux strategy, but an Oracle vice-president reaffirmed Oracle's commitment to Linux. Moreover, Oracle called upon Sun today to put Java into the Open Source community to accelerate its growth. Note that Netscape's vice president said that the emphasis should not be put on the OS but the apps it runs and the services around it: similar to this idea. Thanks to beg and ensor for their URLs. updated

LinuxWorld has an article which may have some valid points, but would discourage me from porting my apps to Linux. How many of you have had difficulties porting from libc to glibc? (Please only answer if you tried it). How different are the different distributions for your app? How much does autoconfig solve? Any people from Red Hat, Debian, SuSe, Caldera, PHT, etc are encouraged to relate their experience. S: My comments are that Ian Nandhra was one of the founders of the LSA, and that his article is inaccurate in assuming that software will be sold at a 60 percent discount.

Nick Petreley's LinuxWorld has finally hit the net! It looks like a mag with a clue, and even includes an article by CmdrTaco, though the touted headline is an interview with some guy named Linus ;) Go forth and Slashdot this site!

Black Jack Hyde writes "Nick Petreley's new zine LinuxWorld has a web site up and running. The debut won't be until October, but you can sign up now for the email updates. "