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• nice
• link (The story of the Linux kernel By) about kernel dev., contrasting linux and plan9.

[A]t the time I started work on Linux in 1991, people assumed portability would come from a microkernel approach. You see, this was sort of the research darling at the time for computer scientists. However, I am a pragmatic person, and at the time I felt that microkernels (a) were experimental, (b) were obviously more complex than monolithic Kernels, and (c) executed notably slower than monolithic kernels... Essentially, trying to make microkernels portable is a waste of time. It's like building an exceptionally fast car and putting square tires on it. The idea of abstracting away the one thing that must be blindingly fast-the kernel-is inherently counter-productive.

He already Answered this one in the LinuxWorld interview
Direct Quote:
"Jon Johansen: They are currently investigating, and I still haven't received my computers back. So I have ordered a new one today, which I will be receiving on Friday. Which is a bit too late, because ABC News is coming tomorrow, and I was supposed to demonstrate DVD playback under Linux. So I'm going to call some people now and try to get hold of a computer with a DVD-ROM and get Linux installed on it.
You can Find the whole Interview: here.

By the way, I asked a big on-line magazine to publish a link to opendvd.org which links to a petition which you can sign. It is a protest against the way Johanson was treated!

• Reviews
  • Linux version
  • at LinuxWorld
  • at CNN
• at GameSpot.com
• at GamesMania.com
• at Play Now
• at Game Power (with video)

Tips, Cheats, Hints

• at Gamespot.co.uk
• http://sages.ign.com/codes/14/codes_h.html">at IGN
• at CD mag

Fan Pages

• BOG

========

Here is a copy of the Open Content License for IDG Books who are building The Essential Open Book Project. This is aimed at being a community generated "living guide to the planning, installation, and operation of a Linux system". I haven't been following this project for a while, but it does seem to be moving with rough drafts for several chapters and hierarchical structure mapped out for the majority of the book.

Here is a copy of the Open Content License for IDG Books who are building The Essential Open Book Project. This is aimed at being a community generated "living guide to the planning, installation, and operation of a Linux system". I haven't been following this project for a while, but it does seem to be moving with rough drafts for several chapters and hierarchical structure mapped out for the majority of the book.

This article is paying lip-service to the community. Given ZD Net's track record I wouldn't be suprised if it was written specifically to get posted to slashdot (like many other articles like
this which seem to make it to the front page). Don't buy it.

Not sure what you're getting at here. If you mean that the article was on ZDNet, it wasn't - it's on InfoWorld which is an IDG publication (and a bitter rival of all things ZD). If you mean that InfoWorld is just imitating ZDNet by posting a pro-Linux column, then I have a rebuttal or two. Apart from the boneheaded Bob Metcalfe column of last year, InfoWorld and IDG have a very good track record on Linux support. Nick Petreley writes the back page column in InfoWorld "Down To The Wire". It's the most consistently pro-Linux column I know, except for perhaps his editorials in LinuxWorld, another IDG publication, of which he is the editor. InfoWorld gave Redhat "Best Supported Product of 1998 Award", something which raised serious eyebrows when it was given.
ComputerWorld has also had some excellent reviews of various distros and applications like StarOffice.
About the only bump in the road from the average /.er's point of view has been the idiotic column by Metcalfe. But that's not too much out of the ordinary - columnists are expected to be opinionated and stirring is part of their job.
The bottom line: IDG has supported Linux since long before it was fashionable to do so, and they've put their money where their mouths are.

In my articles about this company for The Register and LinuxWorld Online, I raised questions about LinuxOne's fulfillment of its GPL obligation to provide access to source code. I'm happy to report that the company appears to have substantively corrected its omission, in this area: The on-line order form now includes a checkbox to request source code, at no extra charge.

That is a welcome development, and I applaud it.

Credit where due, folks: It's only fair.

As to the rest: As I mentioned in my (and Eileen Cohen's) LinuxWorld article, if LinuxOne can carry through on its ambitions to produce and distribute Chinese- and Japanese-language versions, I'll be the first to cheer them on.

And I won't be investing in this firm, for reasons amply described, but I nonetheless wish them luck.

I think RMS really is a communist, even though he strongly denies it. He's not authoritarian or fascist at all, though those are often confused with communism. But really -- "to each by his need, from each by his ability".

In it, he proposes that those taxes should go to the recording artists based on polls to determine popularity. That suggests "To each according to his ability" rather than need. In other words, it encourages doing something useful rather than being needy as communism does.

In the context of Free Software, his philosophies apply to the distribution of information, not of material things, which communism concerns itself with.

Regarding economics, Free Software specifically allows itself to be sold with the profits completely retained by the seller. Something I would consider more compatible with marxist ideals would be more along the lines of "Free for non-commercial use" and "Pay x% of your profits if you're making money with this. We'll make sure it gets to a needy person".

Also, rms' philosophy on copyright and patents is completely within the bounds described by Thomas Jefferson, who predated the idea of communism.

Quoth Mr. Jefferson:

"It would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors... It would be curious... if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody... The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:333

http://www.linuxworl d.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-11/lw-11-rms.html

But not to get you down, have a look over at Linux World where Nick Petreley has a good, if quick review of Corel Linux.

Wade.

Nearly a year ago Corel sold GraphOn their technology for allowing remote access to Windows boxes in a platform neutral way. This announced agreement would appear to be based on that old event. Corel would presumably prefer it if you used Linux. But if you have a legacy Windows application that must be run, Corel wants that not to be a barrier.

Pluse Corel does partly own GraphOn, so what is good for GraphOn is good for Corel. :-)

Cheers,
Ben

Nearly a year ago Corel sold GraphOn their technology for allowing remote access to Windows boxes in a platform neutral way. This announced agreement would appear to be based on that old event. Corel would presumably prefer it if you used Linux. But if you have a legacy Windows application that must be run, Corel wants that not to be a barrier.

Pluse Corel does partly own GraphOn, so what is good for GraphOn is good for Corel. :-)

Cheers,
Ben

Cruise on over to linuxworld.com. They just had an article on that.
http://linuxworl d.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-11/lw-11-integration.html

VolanoMark VM Results Technically speaking, Linux is fastest but only with the TowerJ VM which costs mega $$$. The IBM JDK is the next fastest VM on Linux but it's behind VMs on NT and OS/2

and the 1999 FSF ass kissing award goes to... JMC

Reverse-engineering the GNU Public Virus.

It's odd, really; in other areas of endeavour, people seem to understand perfectly well that fighting for freedom is all about trying to stop people from taking away that freedom.
--

I for one (and I'm guessing I'm not the only one) am growing a little tired with all this petty bickering between more or less likeminded people whom we all seem to respect. Now, I don't have particular respect for Stig Hackvan (the author of the original article to which RMS is responding) because personally I've never heard of him. That and his article is entitled "Reverse-engineering the GNU Public Virus." Um, sounds kind of sensational and malevolant to me.

But the point I've strayed from is larger than this. What I'm trying to say is that I'm tired of the respected and revered advocates of "Open Source" or "Free Software" poking at each other due to little more than differences in semantics. We're all after basically the same thing; just because many of us have different ideas of how to get there or what's slowing us down, doesn't mean there needs to be such animosity.

Actually, I feel a bit sorry for RMS. He took the initiative when there was no real strategy or conception of how to go about freeing the world of software. He came up with a useful and (although dubious) long-lasting strategy in the GPL, and to be honest none of us would be using any "free" or "open" software without it. People, however, feel they can come along and take quick shots at him and his GPL for it's shortcomings (which it does have) completely disregarding the good things that stem from exactly the same parts of the GPL as the bad. Sure, it's viral nature might make it unattractive to corporations, but had it not been, they would have snatched whatever parts they wanted from free software long ago, neither releasing the extensions and fixes they added nor considered open source as a business model, viable or not. Without GPL-like licenses, opening your source helps your competitors more than yourself.

But I digress. As I was saying, I feel a little sorry for RMS. He is in an unenviable position of having founded something good that is not ideal. Everyone has a license to criticize him, and his responses seem generally knee-jerk. Intelligent, but seemingly whispering "ingrate." Which he has the right to. When ESR says "Shut Up and Show Them the Code," I think he has a right to be hurt.

As a Linux user and an Open Source advocate, I tend to look at the ways we (people like myself) our hurting ourselves probably more closely than the ways we are being attacked from the outside. People talk and talk about the Linux flamers with spelling deficiencies, those advocates who make us look like a bunch of raving paranoid extremists. Personally, I think if our high profile advocates (our leaders, if you will) can't act civilly and more importantly somewhat compassionately (the ESR/Bruce Perens bickering comes to mind) we're all going to be seen as nuts.
------

Jose M. Weeks

Up until now, I've used "free software" rather than "open source" because I felt that the latter was a rather awkward and inelegant phrasing. But after reading this article, I've changed my mind -- I'm going to call it open-source from now on.

The reason is that rms's article was incredibly ungenerous of spirit. While Stig Hackvan's article was not particularly well-written, Richard Stallman's response shows a breathtaking lack of awareness of the possibility of legitimate dissent.

An accusation that another person does not value freedom is a very serious insult, and should not be levelled lightly and without the awareness that reasonable people may disagree on fundamental points. Unfortunately, RMS uses this accusation as a rhetorical battering ram and I find it very ugly to watch. (Eg, the insinuation that Eric Raymond doesn't care about freedom because he doesn't like the term free software: whatever his other faults, it's pretty clear that esr is passionate about liberty.)

As a result, I can no longer in good conscience continue using the term "free software" -- it would mark me as condoning tactics that I find repugnant.

JMC

Folks, let's not forget that these are the LinuxWorld folks. In other words, we are their customers. I reccommend we all just write some nice polite (I'm serious) letters of protest.

Visit:
IDG Expos, the people who bring you the LinuxWorld Conference.
LinuxWorld, IDG Expos' sister company.

Be sure to mention that you heard about it on Slashdot. That'll grab their attention.

Marlboro

I've been working for about five years on a "human language learning exchange" project, which turned into software, which recently turned (partly) into a pending u.s. patent. The basic "method" claimed ain't rocket science, but it did take a lot of error and even more trial to come up with. And trust me, it's really *sucked* working on the chicken side of the egg. I'd prefer not to get screwed in the end. Still, there are so many reasons *not* to file internet software patents, especially as churn churns churn faster:

* if the world wide web or linux were patented, who'd use 'em? free ideas are far more powerful.

* patents perpetuate outdated economic models, imposing artificial scarcity upon abundant bits.

* the Internet is transforming human societies much faster than local laws or terrestrial governments can adapt.

* (in fact, we might experience widespread institutional failure and soon.)

* not all jurisdictions recognize the international patents, so they're difficult to enforce on the web.

* it costs a fortune to file, prosecute manage and enforce patents in multiple the jursidictions of the world.

* patent laws discriminate against the poor: those who can't pay up can't legally "protect" innovations. (this ain't a big deal today, but wait 10 years when bandwidth is 60,000 times more plentiful, tripling yearly its reach)

* patent claims set a precedent, thus inviting future patents to attempt to monopolize derivative works.

* patents perpetuate ideals of marketplace "dominance". "partnership" may give rise much more valuable trade.

* patent impose an outdated a "zero sum" game. Learning grows more valuable as more people share it.

* trademarks are a far more "defense worthy", as they identify reputable brand (increasingly valuable as info gluts)


so.. why'd i file? believe me, i been on the fence.. (and sick to the stomach) but finally decided a patent pending might buy some time and keep some options open.. (besides, the thing took forever to write, and *damned* dull it was.. (no wonder the patent office is overwhelmed.. (have you ever read a patent?)))

Anyway, i'm 100% sure that, um.. "my" project should chaorganize and go open source, and aim to host a license selection forum real soon, but here's my question now:

there's been some talk of an Open Source Patent Pool to cross-license w/ the closed stuff.. (are there any "open" patents in this pipeline yet? (any chance at "first post"8P?)).. Anyone have more info?

[btw- IMO, open source patent pooling *might* be an effective "defensive" strategy, but remember the "enemy" has deeeep pockets. Better choose playing field wisely.. the way to outmaneuver *money* is increasingly to outsmart it..]

This ... spreadsheet had caused GNOME Gnumeric to segfault when I first looked at it several months ago. ([Michael Meeks] wrote back to say he had found and fixed the bug.) What could be more natural than to try it with StarOffice? Unfortunately, StarOffice was not up to the task.

I downloaded the latest version of Gnumeric (the 0.38 release) and gave it a whirl. Finally, in all its glory, the spreadsheet appeared just as baud intended.

Note to Sun/StarOffice and Applix: the GNOME gnumeric development team will be happy to explain to you what it did to handle this monster sheet.

Joe converted from Eudora to KMail simply by copying the Eudora mail files to his unix partition and pointing KMail at them. I would imaging sharing the mail database would work quite well.

Hope this helps.
------------------------------------------ -------------

4.5+ has neat LDAP/HTTP roaming profile features.

See the Linuxworld article on it.

I still think it's odd that CNN would have an article about sendmail.

Umm.. that's because it's a reprinted article from LinuxWorld. CNN reprints a lot of stuff that comes from IDG magazines..

Does this sound like a mistake to you?

Overall, I thought it was worthwhile. Philip is an excellent speaker and provided a good "big-picture" overview of database backed web sites - and some examples of using AOLserver for serious development.

But remember, this is only a one-day class. There's only so much that can be covered, and since the audience is made up of people with varying levels of experience, he doesn't spend too much time with source code (but there is enough to see what's going on).

If you want a good one-day intro, this is it. If you want depth, read his book.

Linuxworld.com had a good article by Philip about AOLserver - and why you might want to consider it if you are at all concerned about scalability. It's Open-Source and AOL is using it right now to serve 28,000 hits per second.

"The microkernel approach was essentially a dishonest approach aimed at receiving more dollars for research."

Linus' essay from Open Sources

Linus apparently ain't fond of microkernels. The essay talks about portability too.

The issue that Suck.com talks about is valid. Before RH went public, people worked on Linux for the pure joy of contributing something for the greater good. But now, people are going to start thinking about why they should do anything that directly benefits the big corporations.

This is why Netscape/Mozilla is having such a hard time attracting outside help. Nobody wants to work on something that they get nothing for but somebody else gets rich off of. In the early times of Linux, nobody was making money, but now people are (big $$), and that's going directly against the idea if OSS.

Suck mentions the war between KDE and Gnome. Both parties are going after the "unified desktop", but their ultimate goals are trying to create a business out of it. (The interview with Migel from Gnome states that they have started a support business)

Hopefully, the different distibutions will keep people interested in developing the software instead of feeling like they are doing work for the big corp for free. If help from the opensource community dies off and RH, Caldara, etc. are the only ones left developing, Linux is dead.

The RH IPO brought out the greediness in a lot of people. I hope this rotten apple doesn't ruin the whole bunch.

You see, there I would have to say you're wrong. Linux and this whole free software/open source stuff has been around for quite a while now. The companies you list, and anyone getting in now has got to have asked themselves, "What if someone copies what I do and makes it better?" The thing about the GPL, is they must release the better code as well. RedHat recognizes this, Mandrake recognizes this. If RedHat wants to include Mandrake changes in updated RPMs, fine. Everyone gets a better product in the end.

At Comdex back in April, Bob Young was asked this sort of question during one of the panels, he basically said this same thing, I don't have an exact quote is all. But for a more recent quote (yesterday), visit LinuxWorld's web site. When Nick Petreley asked:

Donnie Barnes replied that Mandrake had asked Red Hat if they had a problem with this, and they do not. Red Hat is actually pleased, because under the GPL, Red Hat can incorporate the improvements. This is an example of the open source model working, and it is the responsibility of companies using the model to help new companies coming into the open source community. Larry Augustin voiced his agreement and added "this is a credit to the (open source) culture." Giving up control, which would drive a traditional company crazy, actually results in better products. (Donnie Barnes is from RedHat.)

I can't say it better myself. Once you leave that, "I'm being cheated" attitude and realize all of what Open Source means, you'll get it too.

There's also a Linuxworld review, which goes into this: Fortunately, Corel noted that it plans to return all of its enhancements to the community by making them open source. The exact license has not yet been determined.

btw, Sun's SCSL is aimed more at commercial developers (including Sun's OEMs) and researchers, not so much general members of the public. However, they are releasing quite a bit of stuff under the SCSL - Java, Jini, HotSpot (later this year), their SPARC processors and several other software products. They seems to be SCSL'ing their products in general. They haven't said much about SCSL'ing Solaris recently - the last time it was brought up they said it would be quite hard to do, because of all the liscences.

I suppose there will be inevitable comparisons between Beowulf and Sun's HPC software, and SMP kit. The main hardware difference is bandwidth and latency - Beowulf seems more about combining lots of single CPU (or low CPU count, eg 1-4) boxes in a network, possibly having several hundred of such boxes. Sun's approach to high end computing is to have big SMP boxes (a single Starfire E10000 can take 64 UltraSparcs) with the option of clustering a few of them - currently limited to 4, ie 256 processors. A Starfire has a 6Gbyte/s I/O bus and 15Gbyte/s main memory bus, which is rather better than Ethernet. Sun's approach is more expensive, but it also solves a wider class of problems well. For some things (eg cracking codes, rendering) you don't need much interprocess communication or bandwidth, so it scales well with Beowulf, but for other things (some kinds of database operations, eg OLAP, and data intensive scientific calculations) you really need very high bandwidth and very low latency (close to main memory speeds) which is where Beowulf doesn't do so well. Still, some things don't scale so well, even on a Starfire... Btw, the Starfire is over 2 years old.

Cue Sun's next gen super-computer, codename Serengheti, which has a completely different architecture. It's memory architecture is called Cache Only Memory Architecture (COMA), which seems to have been in development for a long long time at Sun. A single box will take 128 processors, and you'll be able to cluster 8 of them, for a total of 1024 processors. It'll be powered by Sun's UltraSparc-III, which recently reached first silicion, and has b ooted on Solaris. Incidentaly, the UltraSparc-III has hardware support for 1024 processors, and is supposed to be out in volume production by the end of the year. However, Serengheti won't be out until about the 2nd half of 2000.

Those interested should read this Linux World article. A very good introduction to the issues involved.

But for high volume dynamically generated content, for example, or commerce, or databases, NT is more mature and benefits from being developed by engineers rather than hackers. DEC, from whence Cutler came, are very serious about this.

However, for midrange work, linux simply isn't up to par yet. I seem to recall Linus himself stating that he believed OS design was well understood by the 1970s, and he considers microkernels to be "stupid", plan9 to be "stupid" etc etc.

While he is undoubtedly a highly talented programmer, I think that there are engineers in the world who are at least, if not more, skilled working for Sun, CMU, Microsoft, DEC and suchlike whose work has proved Linus to be very wrong. And as such, linux is crippled.

I have to say that I generally agree with this. I think it would be far better for the Linux community to do its own benchmarks using more typical hardware configurations and a realistic mix of applications.

In other words, forget about competing with NT in an artificial playing arena. Benchmark Linux in a realworld scenario.

This is something that Linux vendors like VA Research should be doing in conjunction with Caldera, RedHat, et al.
--
Michael Dillon - E-mail: michael@memra.com

• Red Hat is getting popular, so they must be getting like Micros~1.

  Nick Petreley does a good job of refuting this, look here Most of this is cooked up by students with nothing better to do. Look at the hubub surrounding Caldera's latest release - are they the next Micros~1?

• Red Hat is the distro for Windows haters, not "serious" unix folks.

  This is ridiculous, I don't know where this came from, perhaps mainly inspired by the FVWM95 default Window Manager that shipped with Red Hat 5.x. Whatever.

• Red Hat offers a LOT of value for the money. Cutting edge software, a nice powerful installer, good package management, great response to security issues, etc.
• Red Hat returns stuff to the community (all their management utils are open source. They use linuxconf by default instead of something like YAST

They haven't done anything wrong yet.

That almost all conventional newspapers are specifically targeted to their demographic. More so than you think, to an exaggerated level. I looked at the Chicago tribune article, which was obviously biased, and saw the Trib's famed conservative spin. If you read reasonable newspapers like the NYT, coming back down to earth you notice how inadequate and obviously silly most newspapers are. I think the trib article is at linuxworld.

As Millenium is obviously a GNOME user who has used KDE only occasionally, I will try to reply to his points.
For some more comprehensive - and maybe objective - comparisons, you mau consider looking at Ars Technica about KDE, Mininco about GNOME (sorry, has vanished), and Predawnia for a comparison.
Another GNOME article is on Linuxworld.
Interestingly, only the entirely positive articles about GNOME are posted on Slashdot.

Now for the points mentioned above:
Stability
I've never had either Gnome or KDE crash my machine.
So So you're either very lucky or very lazy. Look at the newsgroups, mailing lists and reviews and you'll see people are *very* annoyed about GNOME's instability. Look at the Predawnia article for more.

functionality
In terms of functionality KDE excels in areas Gnome does not, but Gnome too is way ahead of KDE in some areas. I'd call it a flat-out draw in that area.
Sorry, but that's an illusion. KDE offers undoubtedly more functionality, if you look at productivity features.
You may argue that for technology (CORBA) and eyecandy (widget themes), but there you should compare GNOME -at least until it is really stable- to the most recent KDE, and KOffice technology, which is far ahead of GNOME (CORBA object model technology working for many months, while Baboon isn't even finished).

Looks
In terms of looks I doubt anyone can argue against the assertion that Gnome wins, so I won't go into that one here.
You are using geeks' standards here: GNOME looks screamingly flashy (what I'd call kitsch; maybe cool for you). KDE looks cleaner and more elegant. All that is a matter of taste. Look at kde.t.o for WM themes or these brand new icons!

Speed and Resources
Now, we come to speed. [...] KWM is a BIG problem for KDE; it makes E look stunningly fast and stable.[...]
Now there's the matter of resources. I'm afraid Gnome wins it here. It appears to use far less in the way of resources than KDE does.
This was probably true for KDE 1.0, it's certainly wrong for KDE 1.1. This is *much* faster and leaner than KDE 1.0.
As for resources: Surely you're joking Mr Mil! GNOME needs 3 times as much diskspace than KDE (for about the same functionality), and GNOME panel applets eat memory like crazy! (But that's partly a general problem of CORBA, not so much GNOME's fault)
Besides that, many WM are already KDE aware, so you can use Window Maker, Afterstep, or the lean blackbox or flwm if you find KWM too bulky.
As much as I love the eyecandy of Enlightenment, saying that E is faster/more stable than KWM is IMHO fiction instead of fact...

Toolkits
Raw toolkits: Strip out the desktop environments, and GTK wins out over Qt. This is simply a matter of functionality: GTK offers more than a few things which you can't get with Qt alone.
I don't know where you get this information from. Even gtk advocate concede that QT is way ahead in terms of productive features, simply because they started earlier. Take e.g. printing, a pretty basic thing: gtk doesn't offer the respective widgets yet, while it is very easy to implement with QT. (And with all due respect, having pinnable or themable toolbar is not such a top priority).
More importantly, we're talking about QT 1.4x here. QT 2 is currently in late beta, and it offers many major improvements.
Don't get me wrong, gtk is a nice toolkit, and I'd love to see KDE support for it (like for fltk and tcl/tk), but we should stay realistic.

Programming Language
The language issue is irrelevant; several C++ bindings exist for GTK and a set of C bindings is being worked on for Qt
You are not an OO programmer, I presume. There is a big difference whether you have OO bindings or a entirely OO structure. Many Object Oriented features (overloading, inheritance etc.) are restricted if you have just bindings.
Making a OO lib like QT "flat" by offering a procedural interface (like C) is easier, but many C advocates will still say it's not the ideal solution (less efficient that plain C etc.)
Thus, Gtk is still the best choice for C, and QT for OOP and C++ programming. As OOP is more appropriate for GUIs, things look maybe a bit better for QT, but with the large C coder base on Linux, this may still be a draw.

Conclusion: Due to the longer development period, KDE is undoubtedly ahead of GNOME in terms of stability, maturity and productivity. It's much better than its reputation among geeks.
GNOME does a good job in offering a more individual and artistic look, so it is well suited for experiments at home.

This is just a reprint of Nicholas Petreley's article originally on Linux World.

I agree that it's a good idea to use newsreaders as newsreaders rather than to hack web interfaces that are almost as good as a newsreader.

Take a look at the way that LinuxWorld handles this. In Netscape, when you click on a link to their discussion forums, it kicks you into the Netscape newsreader, with all of the features (or lack thereof) that this implies.

What I would like, or course, is for this to be configurable so that clicking on a "news:" link could put me into nn (the greatest newsreader ever written) or perhaps into gnus, if nn is a problem. I think this is beyond the capabilities of Netscape's Communicator at present, but perhaps the new Mozilla will be a little more open about providing hooks to do this.

In any case, there are obviously some big wins from doing things this way: you want user configurable filtering? Fine, get a better news reader. And there's no additional load on the webserver that way, so it scales a lot better. If you've got a really good newsreader, you can do positive filtering like "show me stuff by this person", "show me things on this topic". This is much more useful than killfiles.

Should software authors be required to sign their software and patches as a condition of acceptance onto FTP sites? Signing your software is a vital protection against malicious modifications by third parties and is less onerous than writing it. For those unfamiliar with the signing process, there is an excellent HOWTO document describing the process.

Surely contributors to the FSF should set an example and insist on software signing? Unfortunately, despite the risks of unsigned software, eloquently explained at Linux World, most of the software available by FTP around the world has not been signed. For example, on the alpha GNU it appears that none of the software is signed. Major FTP sites like SunSITE and XFree86 have mostly unsigned software.

Next month's edition of Uptime in LinuxWorld (or at least an upcoming article) will include a diary of an ISP change, which would probably work well for moving offices as well.
When we switched from ISP A to ISP B, the transition was done over a weekend, we had both ISPs still connected, and had only a few hours of downtime on a Sunday afternoon. By Monday morning, all was well (for the most part - e-mail, web, and FTP services were working).

ESR wrote:

Off fighting a crusade, of course.

His ``crusade'' is more than anything the reason whe have what you call Open SourceTM software today. Without emacs, gcc, and most of all his untiring willingness to say ``no, no and no'' to any type of commercial takeover of code originally published under the GNU license, there might not even have been much of a UNIX platform today.

Sure, the effort is made by thousands. Sure, we all contribute to the common goal - that no single company is owner of the foundation underneath our applications, protocols, and specifications, and controls access to it. Without RMS, those ideals would have a harder time being defined into words. We might, at best, have all be using a BSD-like license, which does encourage code fragmentation (due to corporate ``embrace & enhance'' policies) - as you say yourself in your annotations to the ``Halloween I'' document, further encouraging a ``split and conquer'' policy by e.g. Microsoft.

Your contribution, OTOH, to the furthering of Open SourceTM can be summarized as follows:

• The trade mark. For better or worse, that gives us a uniform definition to work on.
• The attempted coup on said trademark from Software in Public Interest, the organization that facilitates development of various OSS, such as Debian GNU/Linux and Debian GNU/Hurd, the Berlin windowing system, Gnome, and the Linux Standards Base.
• Applications like fetchmail, imgsizer, and contributions to emacs. For that, we appreciate your work.
• ``The cathedral and the bazaar''. A good paper, because it explains (by its very title) what the OSS phenomenon is about, especially to corporate types. Your self-congratulating attitude regarding this paper (and its successor, ``Homesteading the Noosphere'', the ``Open Letter to AOL'' and so on) is somewhat tasteless and exaggerating. Face it, you are not in RMS's league as far as contributions go - only with self-promoting publicity stunts. (He does have some also, but they are more well-deserved).
• The public appearance of the "Halloween documents". Relevant to those who want commercial penetration of Linux, but perhaps not the way you intended. In the long run, it only emphasizes the image of Linux as a ``resistance'' OS, not as the serious alternative it is. Fine for personal pages and all, but hardly suitable on the www.opensource.org site (just like the ``Halloween Nightmare'' picture).
• Your ``in-your-face'' flaunting of your gun control views. Believe it or not, this is not relevant to OSS, and not so tasteful either.
• Efforts to get commercial involvement to Linux. Be very careful. As Nicolas Petreley writes, commercial vendors now utilize a window where they face little or no restrictions from Microsoft in doing business on the Linux platform. Once Microsoft is back in business (with a mere slap on their hands), chances are that some of these may be forced to leave the scene. Users will also leave, perhaps creating the idea in the press that Linux was a fad. Hardly relevant for some of us, but if you care about the idea that the dominating OS becomes/remains open, you will think this is a loss. This is but one example of how depending on commercial involvement can be dangerous, even if it creates media hype.

To sum this up, you have the media attention available to do a lot of Linux/OSS promotion, but so far you do seem a little bit too unsophisticated to give the image the rest of us identify with.

Writing anonymously, because I am afraid future encounters with you may otherwise be viewed in the wrong light.