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http://old.lwn.net/daily/esr-on-va.php3 Is that the ESR statement you were referring to? I post it here because it was a moderate bear to find with Google :)

VA closed the code years ago. But there is a fork from the original author at gforge.

Reading between the lines it seems to be a reward for inducing BitMover to drop their free service for Linux.

Given subsequent events with mercurial I think this is probably a Good Thing (tm)

When the kernl shifts to 4k stacks, Ndiswrapper will stop working. http://lwn.net/Articles/160138/

The network developers have recognised that this is a major problem at present. One of the big problems was that nobody was in charge in effect of wireless! (although Jeff Garzik has done a wonderful job of overall networking devices). John Linville has now taken on the job of sorting this mess out. (http://lwn.net/Articles/167272/ http://lwn.net/Articles/167270/).

Subsequent to this discussion there has been a lot of positive discussion on the netdev mailing list and here are some updates:
* Public git tree has opened now
* WPA patches are getting merged
* Other drivers are getting merged into kernel
* OSDL is having a summit to get together the key players (http://developer.osdl.org/shemminger/blog/?p=29)

I would say the picture in six months to a year will be dramatically better.

If you want to contribute then google the netdev mailing list and jump on in. We would certainly appreciate help!!!

The network developers have recognised that this is a major problem at present. One of the big problems was that nobody was in charge in effect of wireless! (although Jeff Garzik has done a wonderful job of overall networking devices). John Linville has now taken on the job of sorting this mess out. (http://lwn.net/Articles/167272/ http://lwn.net/Articles/167270/).

Subsequent to this discussion there has been a lot of positive discussion on the netdev mailing list and here are some updates:
* Public git tree has opened now
* WPA patches are getting merged
* Other drivers are getting merged into kernel
* OSDL is having a summit to get together the key players (http://developer.osdl.org/shemminger/blog/?p=29)

I would say the picture in six months to a year will be dramatically better.

If you want to contribute then google the netdev mailing list and jump on in. We would certainly appreciate help!!!

Another banner year has passed, with Linux once again proving its superiority in the area of crappy wireless (WiFi) support.

From the license you have yet to read:


Regardless of any other provision of this License, no permission is given to distribute covered works that illegally invade users' privacy, nor for modes of distribution that deny users that run covered works the full exercise of the legal rights granted by this License.

No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological protection measure: that is to say, distribution of a covered work as part of a system to generate or access certain data constitutes general permission at least for development, distribution and use, under this License, of other software capable of accessing the same data.
...

For a brief description may I suggest you read this forum, specifically "Is PGP a a DRM system?" by Wol, before you write too much about how the sky is falling and software licensed by the GPLv3 will be shunned by the media industry. It will only be shunned by those businesses in support of the DMCA. It will be adopted by individuals like me and businesses that fear legal reprocussions, disagree with the DMCA, or get a kick out of poking holes through the dumbest laws in the land like forwarding ports through your company's firewall with ssh.

There's nothing they can do to stop us. We've already won. The ignorant masses need only wait. No, we won't pirate mp3s for them or give them free movies. But we will prevent anyone from protecting GPLv3 protected copyrighted works with the DMCA. The GPLv3 shields us from the same loops holes the DMCA uses to protect copyrighted works from your personal fair use. You don't understand this, I know. So I can provide further explanation if and when you become interested.

How you could do it:
1. Have a free look and see if you like the library.
2. If you like it, send a mail to the devoloper(s)* asking if it is possible to buy a license for use in unfree software. Include how mutch you could be willing to pay if you deside to use it. I guess many would not mind some extra cash. Also mention why you want to use it, if you belive that would help. Some, like Mysql, Trolltech (QT) and Namesys (Reiser4) will name a price. Others, like FSF, will say no (exept in special cases).
3. If you recive a yes, see if it fits best for the job. (we are now at the "Try several"-stage)
4. If it is the best library, pay for a license and use it.

or, the easy way:
0. See if you can free your own program. If you can do it, do it. Save yourself the trubble and money, and do what many (including me) considers to be the most ethical thing.

* Remember that might also include librarys used by the library.

I don't see how the principal of "you must make the source code for derived works available via a link" would be a EULA. I create a web-based program and my code contains a link to download the source code. I copyright it. Under copyright laws, you have no right to modify my code unless I grant you permission. I do grant you permission, but my LICENSE states that you must either leave the downloading part of my code intact or else replace it with simmilar functionality. Remember, by default you have no right to modify my copyrighted code, so if you do no follow the terms of my lisence, you have no right to remove my link to download the source code. GPL purists might object that that puts a strong restiction on the freedom of the users of the code -- they are forced to have a certain funtionality in their program.

http://lwn.net/Articles/61292/ for mopre info on what it means to be a LICENSE.

I think that the article from itarchitect.com that you linked to is clearly wrong: the new GPL draft doesn't contain this "must allow downloads" language; it only says that if there is some code with a license that DOES contain language like this then that code can still be GPL COMPATABLE. There is no issue of "loading something into RAM is making a copy" involved. The "end user" in the cases covered by the GPL and other similar licenses is the distributor or modifier of the code, not the person viewing the code's output (a user of a web-app).

Lots of lawyers are wrong in their legal views and some of them even lose cases. Lots of basketball players who can perform slam dunks sometimes miss the basket and sometimes lose games. Being an expert doesn't mean you're above being questioned. But you apparently don't even like for people to question whether you're really a lawyer, so you post anonymously, giving us no information to determine if you're actually a lawyer as you claim to be.

Eben Moglen, counsel for the FSF, is also a lawyer who has said repeatedly that "Licenses are not contracts". Perhaps you would take the matter up with him instead. After reading his essays and listening to his talks, I find him to be a far more patient and informative speaker than you appear to be. Then again, he might object to some anonymous nobody claiming to be a lawyer arguing a point with him that he's rehashed so many times.

Pamela Jones, a journalist with a paralegal background who runs Groklaw, has gone on record saying that "The GPL is a license, not a contract" in which she cites Moglen's essay and expands on it a bit. Perhaps you'd rather discuss the matter with her, since she too might be more on your level of expertise.

But I think it's telling that instead of patiently explaining the difference between the terms 'license' and 'contract' you instead chose to take a needlessly confrontational and remarkably uninformative route to point out that most non-lawyers don't understand the terms. It's unfortunate that the /. moderators don't seem to penalize such posts in an attempt to raise the level of discourse here.

Well, I guess I'm not bothered by a lack of consistency this evening. Above, I replied to a post by YesIAmAScript that I'd take Digital Restrictions Management over Digital Rights Management, as a definition of DRM, and the devil take prior usage.

Now I'm going to defend prior usage, and go with Trusted Computing over Treacherous Computing. Thanks for saying a bit in it's defense. I've just spent several hours last week having to defend it from some people who bought into a whole lot of FUD. Frustrating, but either that, or the project wouldn't have gotten off the ground...

Then you pop this short post in, and I get a chance for a public FUD-fighting post. Which begins here.

Trusted Computing has been around a lot longer than it's been used as an enabler for DRM, and picked up the Treacherous Computing moniker. It goes well back into the history of government computing, for example. Anyone can probably Google up many OS design articles related to the size of TCBs (Trusted Computing Bases) being too large, etc.

As I'm sure you're aware (but not nearly enough other people are), TC can have some righteous non-government uses. Employers might use it to make sure that home workers connecting by VPN are running a sane environment, etc. That's getting to be an essential technique in protecting some networks. I don't see anything wrong with it, if it's company gear you're using. And there are tons of other uses.

There are some dangers, like there is in using many powerful tools. The trick will be to prevent MS (or other coporations or consortia, but I trust MS the least, given their legal history) from doing some enormous power grab through Palladium-like initiatives. But it's too useful to go away. TPM (Trusted Platform Module) drivers have been in Linux since the 2.6.12 kernel, and more are in development.

There's tons of FUD being propagated about Trusted Computing, such as Cory Doctorow confusing TC and DRM (I get a lot of this) on BoingBoing at http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/31/apple_to_add_ trusted.html

But there's some good info as well. There's a good corbet article and wide-ranging discussion at http://lwn.net/Articles/144681

I would urge anyone who isn't familiar with Trusted Computing to spend some quality time with your search engine of choice. TC has important implications, only one of which is as possible DRM enabler.

1. SuSE's implementation of the "Read/Copy/Update" algorithm
2. SuSE's implementation of NUMA Aware Locks
3. SuSE's implementation of the distributed lock manager
4. SuSE's implementation of reference counters
5. SuSE's implementation of asynchronous I/O
6. SuSE's implementation of the kmalloc data structure
...

Kmalloc? lwm.net/Articles/124374

Are theses guys on Dope?

TFA links to http://lwn.net/Articles/163266/

On that page we read:

Weird factors come into play. The BlueZ project used to have a very nice list of working hardware, but that list was pulled down as a result of objections from the "Bluetooth Qualification Administrator."

On that page there are two mailto: links - mailto:bqa@bluetooth.com and mailto:member.relations@bluetooth.com

See that @bluetooth.com bit? That's called a domain. Since these bits of email are going to people @bluetooth.com it is safe to assume that they are involved with the website that appears at http://www.bluetooth.com/ - let's go there, shall we?

There is a very prominent link "about the SIG" that appears on this page. Since TFA was about "a registered member of the Bluetooth SIG" it is fairly probably that this is the SIG in question. Let's click on the 'about the SIG' link, shall we?

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is a trade association comprised of leaders in the telecommunications, computing, automotive, industrial automation and network industries that is driving the development of Bluetooth wireless technology, a low cost short-range wireless specification for connecting mobile devices and bringing them to market.
The Bluetooth SIG is a privately held trade association and is not publicly traded. The Special Interest Group, whose name was inspired by the Danish King Harald Bluetooth, known for unifying Denmark and Norway in the 10th century, was founded in September 1998. Now, in the 21st century, unification is a guiding principle of Bluetooth wireless technology, as it connects innovative products and companies to consumer aspirations.
The Bluetooth SIG has established its global headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, USA . The staff is comprised of Executive Director Michael Foley, Ph.D., Marketing Director Anders Edlundand a small staff of Marketing, Engineering, and Operations professionals. In addition to the Bluetooth SIG Staff, volunteers from member companies play key roles in running the Bluetooth SIG organization.
The Bluetooth SIG includes promoter member companies Agere, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Microsoft , Motorola, Nokia and Toshiba, and thousands of Associate and Adopter member companies.

http://tinyurl.com/e4olu

On the other hand, you might want to Forget the debugger.

LWN.net has more comments on their link to the original report (http://lwn.net/Articles/160247/#Comments).

Anybody who criticizes Goto Kazushige's Free Software credentials - he created a Linux/Alpha distribution called Stataboware, which among other things included an early version of his hand-tuned math library back in 1999 (it's now defunct, unfortunately).

Mercurial might be farther along if Larry McVoy hadn't (about ten weeks ago, curiously enough) gotten rid of one of their core developers by threatening their employer.

BitKeeper is pure dag-nasty evil.

It's because John Dvorak is delusional, and wants to be Bill Gates' but-buddy. John Dvorak is cleary an idiot, with no insight into IT.

http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/160023/27b2a2ec75f19 81b/

Keith Packard, ahead of his time as usual, demonstrates an important step in this direction.

Yeah I did some googling after I posted, and the patent issue is pretty old. This LWN article is interesting on the subject, and apparently if the commenter ejhuff is correct the first two patents are already expired and the final patent expires in June 2006. It hasn't scared Red Hat away from implementing SELinux.

Either way, it hasn't stopped my employer from implementing SELinux in our product, either. Blatant plug: download our LiveCD if you'd like to check out our SELinux implementation.

Anyone remember?
http://lwn.net/Articles/145972/

There's also a nice article @ heise.de/telepolis unfortunatly is german...

Not to mention that Mr. Florian Mueller (who I'm sure many slashsheep will be voting for) worked for Blizzard and supports them in their case against reverse engineering.

His statements concerning the bnetd case and reverse engineering in general makes me believe that someone like Michel Rocard would be a much better choice.

Probably the single best resource on the Net for kernel discussion is Linux Weekly News, www.lwn.net. The main editor, Jon Corbet, is a very rare breed, a lucid writer who more or less understands the internals of the Linux kernel. As far as I can tell, in the entire Linux universe, this consists of a population of exactly one.

LWN has been around a long, long time, and it's one of the best Linux sites on the Net. Don't be put off by the relatively simple site design. The content is second to none.

Most of the really good stuff is on a time delay. If you subscribe, you get access immediately. Otherwise, you have to wait a week or two. Please do subscribe if you like it. It's not very expensive, and it's important to support the really good resources. Linux Weekly News is one of them.

(I'm not affiliated with them, except that I send in money every month.)

• NUMA - Non-Uniform Memory Access, a step beyond symmetric multiprocessing allowing for more processors and memory local to each processor
• HostAP - appears to be a driver for certain wireless chipsets that allows your computer to act as an access point
• FUSE - Filesystem in User Space, rather than kernel space
• relayfs - a common mechanism for getting large chunks of data out of the kernel safely, apparently for thing like tracing
• securityfs - apparently another pseudo-filesystem that is meant to unify things that are being handled in different ways now.
• DCCP - Datagram Congestion Control Protocol, apparently part-way between TCP and UDP, DCCP provides congestion control without TCP's reliability guarantees. Meant for streaming media, MMORPGs, and other apps that need UDPs timeliness but don't want to blindly flood links

• Released October 27, 2005 changelog

• Numa-aware slab allocator: It creates slabs on multiple nodes and manages slabs in such a way that locality of allocations is optimized. Each node has its own list of partial, free and full slabs. All object allocations for a node occur from node specific slab lists (commit - benchmarks)

• Lazy page table copies in fork() for VMAs without anonymous pages (the ones with anonymous pages are still copied): Defer copying of ptes until fault time when it is possible to reconstruct the pte from backing store, speeding up fork() greatly specially for processes using lots of shared memory (commit)

• Add /proc/$PID/smaps: This file will shows how much memory is resident in each mapping. Useful for people who want to perform memory consumption analysis (commit)

• Add /proc/$PID/numa_maps: This file will show on which nodes pages reside (commit)

• Lock-free file descriptor look-up (commit) - (commit)

• Four-level page table support for the ppc64 architecture: extends the usable user address range to 44 bits (16T). (commit)

• Support hotplug cpu on 32-bit SMP powermacs: When a cpu is off-lined, it is put into sleep mode with interrupts disabled. It can be on-lined again by asserting its soft-reset pin, which is connected to a GPIO pin (commit)

• Add TASK_NONINTERACTIVE task state bit to the cpu scheduler: It can be used by blocking points to mark the task's wait as "non-interactive". This does not mean the task will be considered a CPU-hog - the wait will simply not have an effect on the waiting task's priority - positive or negative alike (commit)

• PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) support: RFC 2637. Used to implement VPN products (notably, Microsoft in all the Windows versions). Wikipedia article (commit)

• DCCP: "Datagram Congestion Control Protocol". Datagram protocol (like UDP), but with a congestion control mechanism. (LWN article) Currently a RFC draft (commit)

• Implement SKB fast cloning: Protocols that make extensive use of SKB cloning, for example TCP, eat at least 2 allocations per packet sent as a result. To

LWN.NET has a good rundown of new features, including Direct X 9 support and a new RichEdit control :)
http://lwn.net/Articles/154451/

On August 22, 2005, Florian Mueller distributed a press release (Linux trademark issue: EU anti-swpat campaigner supports Linus, is concerned over anti-IP positioning of open source) on behalf of nosoftwarepatents.com critiquing what he considered to be "anti-intellectual property positions" in the open source/free software movement. Among those criticized was EFF's defense of the BNETD project, which was sued in U.S. courts by Blizzard entertainment for creating an open source interoperable server that worked with Blizzard games. Mr. Mueller chides the EFF for rushing to the aid of "piracy-enablers" and making it look like software patent critics are "against copyright."

In the interest of correcting the record and full disclosure, we'd like to note two things. First, the Blizzard v. BNETD case is anything but "against copyright." The defense of the case is based entirely on the right to reverse engineer and create interoperable software embodied in the Fair Use Doctrine of U.S. copyright law under Title 17, Section 107 and Section 1201(f) of the Copyright Act. It is hard to understand how one could be "against copyright" when one is relying on the Copyright Act as the defense to Blizzard lawsuit.

Second, it is also worth noting that Mr. Mueller is anything but a disinterested party in this fight. In fact, he has extensive ties to Blizzard Entertainment and is listed as a contributor to numerous Blizzard games including Starcraft, Diablo, and WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness. While EFF applauds Mr. Mueller's work on software patent policy, his failure to disclose these facts and failure to accurately describe the Blizzard v. BNETD case must call into question his credibility on this issue.

Sincerely,

Jason Schultz
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation

When are slashdot going to cover the latest twist in the increasingly bizarre saga of Larry McVoy's battle against reality.

Larry McVoy really is a dick

What do you fear? Linux already support Trusted Computing. Anyone can start using it now! Microsoft is still at least a year behind.

On August 22, 2005, Florian Mueller distributed a press release (Linux trademark issue: EU anti-swpat campaigner supports Linus, is concerned over anti-IP positioning of open source) on behalf of nosoftwarepatents.com critiquing what he considered to be "anti-intellectual property positions" in the open source/free software movement. Among those criticized was EFF's defense of the BNETD project, which was sued in U.S. courts by Blizzard entertainment for creating an open source interoperable server that worked with Blizzard games. Mr. Mueller chides the EFF for rushing to the aid of "piracy-enablers" and making it look like software patent critics are "against copyright."

In the interest of correcting the record and full disclosure, we'd like to note two things. First, the Blizzard v. BNETD case is anything but "against copyright." The defense of the case is based entirely on the right to reverse engineer and create interoperable software embodied in the Fair Use Doctrine of U.S. copyright law under Title 17, Section 107 and Section 1201(f) of the Copyright Act. It is hard to understand how one could be "against copyright" when one is relying on the Copyright Act as the defense to Blizzard lawsuit.

Second, it is also worth noting that Mr. Mueller is anything but a disinterested party in this fight. In fact, he has extensive ties to Blizzard Entertainment and is listed as a contributor to numerous Blizzard games including Starcraft, Diablo, and WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness. While EFF applauds Mr. Mueller's work on software patent policy, his failure to disclose these facts and failure to accurately describe the Blizzard v. BNETD case must call into question his credibility on this issue.

SELinux is enabled by default with a good default policy in place.

ExecShield introduces other security benefits besides NX and PIE. Those were just the two I listed.

SELinux was in large part integrated into the kernel because of the work of RedHat engineers, and ExecShield was coded and patched into the kernel by RedHat engineers. Read this for more info. The security benefits I listed are not comprehensive and there are many more in Fedora, I simply pointed out the most obvious ones which Ubunutu, and most other distros, lack. I have nothing against Ubuntu, but you seem to have something against people spreading truthful information just because you don't like what is said. In addition to that, you spread some misinformation in your post. Also, I clearly stated that Fedora caters to both the Desktop and Server whereas Ubuntu is much more towards the Desktop. Many linux users like to also use their desktop as a server and I simply listed some advantages that Fedora might offer them if they have a more complex setup (yes I've seen plenty of home geeks use those features, granted on a small scale). Stop starting distro wars, I was just giving people the information they need to make an informed decision.
Regards,
Steve

A highly structured and organized operating system developed under the instruction of a central authority, no doubt?

No, that's what the BSDs are to a certain extent.

While they do collection various third party software (src/contrib, src/gpl), it is one cohesive unit. (GNU/)Linux has 300+ ways of doing things--though many are spin-offs of the larger distributions.

rpm supports multiple architectures out of the box, and knows how to install them to the proper location. Apt does not. This is actually very frustrating because as a Fedora users, I prefer using apt to yum. But for Debian users, you aren't supposed to even be able to have 64-bit and 32-bit binaries co-existing on one system.

This article on FC4 had some interesting information.

Pledges to conform to the requirements of Version 3 are Red Hat, Novell's Suse Linux, Asianux and Debian.

Four down, only 458 to go.

Your editor's final comment is this: for many years, there was only one free personal finance application of any note: GnuCash. It is now interesting to see there are three viable programs out there. The situation has changed significantly - for the better - over the past year. Come back for the second part (to be published, probably, near the beginning of October) to complete the tour of what these programs can do, and a final recommendation from the editor.

You're question is quite timely, actually.

The main alternatives are GnuCash and KMyMoney.

May be you want try to other linux distributions?

http://lwn.net/Distributions/

There's already 462 entries listed.
Honestly I don't know what and how to choose, but may be you can investigate it?

Well, unless you want 6 articles a day on just linux security issues, I suggest you stick with windows alerts. There are a bit fewer of them.

http://lwn.net/Alerts/

Or you can just turn your heads and ignore the real world like the rest of the zealots.

http://lwn.net/Articles/150464/

To summarize:

"Until that draft has been published, everything is pure speculation and your guess is as good as mine.

.
.
.
So the best thing you can do is to ignore that article.

It is FUD and I am deeply sorry for this, for I have been centrally (if falsely) quoted as the contributor of it.

That has been a most unpleasant experience."

Regards,
Georg Greve
FSFE, President

Last Wednesday I see this:

China Daily covers an anti-Linux FUD campaign being run by the China Software Industry Association. "Sun Yufang, a Chinese scholar who has long been researching Linux software, says most Linux developers cannot make a living under the current business model. Most of these developers 'either have died or have focused on other businesses in past years,' Sun says."

And then today:

Google Lawsuit Exposes Microsoft Offshoring Deal.

I wonder if these two events are in any way related?

For example, on page 14, I fail to comprehend how this case differs from Vault. The judge says

Unlike in Vault, the state law at issue here neither conflicts with the interoperability exception ...

For another, on page 17, it says that the "secret handshake" controls access to the "copyrighted game". This is an extremely strained interpretation: the handshake controls access to the Battle.Net servers, and only incidentally to the Battle.Net portions of the client.

So I would be very disappointed if this weak analysis were the last word in this case.

So the first point here is that regardless of you call your Linux distribution "Linux Something" or something totally different, you'll want to protect that name if you are serious about making a big commercial distribution. -- Linus Torvalds

I haven't forgotten history, you just don't pay attention to the present. Check here to see some of the things you might have missed while living in mommy's basement.

The only reason there's any support for licensing the trademark at all is Linus has a good track record, but he might not always control the trademark. Then what happens? This is a real issue, and being concerned about it doesn't make me a troll.

There's a good summary of the new features over at LWN. Among other things, inotify has finally been merged in - about time! I wonder when Gentoo will add the new version to Portage, and if I'll dare to upgrade?

And let's repeat: somebody who doesn't want to _protect_ that name would never do this. You can call anything "MyLinux", but the downside is that you may have somebody else who _did_ protect himself come along and send you a cease-and-desist letter. Or, if the name ends up showing up in a trademark search that LMI needs to do every once in a while just to protect the trademark (another legal requirement for trademarks), LMI itself might have to send you a cease-and-desist-or-sublicense it letter.

Well, that's it at present, anyway.

Yeah. But misleading. To quote Linus himself:

"And let's repeat: somebody who doesn't want to _protect_ that name would never do this. You can call anything "MyLinux", but the downside is that you may have somebody else who _did_ protect himself come along and send you a cease-and-desist letter." [...] "It's all about whether _you_ need the protection or not, not about whether LMI wants the money or not."

Which is what I wrote. Or at least, it's what I meant.

See his letter here: http://lwn.net/Articles/148590/

He did. http://lwn.net/Articles/148590/

I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not.

Umm, I resent that, I'm in it for the +5 Funny.

But I was really hoping this particular wanking session wouldn't overflow into Linux-kernel.

How could it not? Oh, I don't know, maybe by answering on the wanking session board instead of LKML.

I do appreciate his position. However, the whole thing makes me feel icky.

Cease and Desist from a Linux® Organization. Kinda Like getting a disease from immunization (no offeense RFK jr.)

In the interest of FUD-Stomping I offer this : http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/tac/doc/basic/
Don't miss this part. http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2005 jul18.htm
That's just in th U.S.A. It is expensive and Requires all of this licensing.

My advice, Choose another name for you Distro/Service Company. Attribute Linux® trademark to Linus. Hmm, Time to change sigs.