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This very question (and a possible change of Linus' position on this) has just been the top story of the last LWN issue: Proprietary kernel modules - the boundary shifts?

Is the RPSL compatible with the GPL? - In most cases, probably not. We have it on the list of "compatible licenses" to make it clear that we have no beef with other people using the license with their code and combining it with ours. Moreover, there are cases where people place exceptions on top of the GPL that may make it compatible with the RPSL. However, standard GPL software probably can't be combined with RPSL software, due to restrictions in the GPL.

Is Helix license compatible with GStreamer? - Yes, when used correctly. GStreamer is under the LGPL, and the RPSL is compatible with the LGPL when used carefully. There are multiple ways of complying with both licenses; the simplest way is to make sure that there's no mixing of licenses within a particular executable file or dynamic library.

Why did RealNetworks create another license - This is addressed in our posting to the license-discuss alias, as well as my response on Linux Weekly News. In short, we're putting out software that we've invested millions of dollars and seven years developing with dozens of engineers. We've carefully studied all OSI-certified licenses, and understand them completely, but we didn't find one that struck the balance we're trying to achieve.

Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator

If you're going to share a disk/fs between multiple machines, you will need a filesystem capable of performing proper file locking in order to avoid data corruption and race conditions.

Global File System (aka GFS) can do this. I believe that it was originally developed under a OSS license, but eventually went commercial. There's rumors of a GNU/GPL GFS (called OpenGFS) but I don't have many details as to the maturity of the project, or any experience with it at all.

I found GFS's learning curve to be pretty steep, but if I was able to set it up, I'm sure that you can work through it.

Lastly, I have only used GFS with a SAN cluster, connecting multiple machines via fabric fibre channel (you might want to consider into using a third box as a RAID host). I know that you are using a very different solution than I did, on a different budget -- so YMMV.

I hope that this is helpful to you.

--Turkey

http://old.lwn.net/2002/0307/pr/pr5588.php3

Over a million minutes a month running on Linux boxes...yeah...i work there...

o in 2.5.31 Support insane number of processes (Linus Torvalds)
Just how insane would this be? Anyone know?

More than 65536. Hardly anyone needs more than 65536, but a few people with very large boxes are asking for it. Linus put the limit at something like 2^31 (~2x10^9) but that will most likely be reduced somewhat before 2.6 actually ships.

LWN has a good writeup explaining how this issue came up, though it was written before the issue was completely resolved.

There's a better link at LWN explaining the approach and drawbacks. It links to the high-resolution timers project (Anzinger's), which I believe is going into 2.5.

Sumner

There seem to be a lot of thse CD distributions the best list I found is at CD-based A cd based distribution does sound the way to go if you have a CD-ROM, CD-ROMs are cheap to add if you don't have one.

aegis (aegis.sourceforge.net) is a mature source code management solution much better than CVS and offers the same core functionality of BitKeeper (transactions, changesets) plus a lot more. Heck, there was even a proposal to use aegis to manage the Linux kernel source code, way back in 1999! See this article. Unfortunately the choice was made for non-free software. Maybe now it's time to look at that proposal again.

They just hired Jon "maddog" Hall to 'help SGI to sponsor and encourage a community-based "Extreme Linux" movement around SGI's NUMAFlex architecture.'

So anybody who depends on "dump" getting backups right is already playing
russian rulette with their backups. It's not at all guaranteed to get the
right results - you may end up having stale data in the buffer cache that
ends up being "backed up".

Dump was a stupid program in the first place. Leave it behind.

Linus Torvalds

The only super hero I care for is Tux. I cannot comment on the classic super heroes, as the site could not bear the load. Since there are several tux sites, they will probably survive the load better. Check here, here, here, here, here, here or here.

There are two main thoughts that run through my mind when I think about competing with Open Source and the IBM model. The first is that, the main problem with competing with Open Source is that it's always faster to copy than to innovate. It may take years, multiple focus groups and millions of dollars to produce feature X or behavior Y in some commercial product but after that it usually takes a fraction of the time for that feature or behavior to be replicated in competing products. This is much compounded by Open Source which is also typically free (as in beer) thus undercutting the original innovators. A good example of this is commercial Unix and Linux.

In such an arena, it seems inevitable that the only way to slow the inexorable march of Open Source is to resort to Intellectual Property. So far no one has done this to any significant degree (the MP3 patents don't count because they are a different issue) although there has at least been discussion amongst Linux kernel hackers about patent liability which will only continue given the proliferation of software patents and the more features that various Open Source projects copy from their proprietary brethren. It is food for thought.

The second thing that comes to mind is that Open Source is shifting the balance of power from software developers to software consultants. For companies like IBM with huge consulting divisions (their Global Services division is at least thrice as large as all of Microsoft) this a great boon which they are willing to sacrifice a lot of software development to gain which explains their intense support of the Linux and Apache projects. To compete with this, I believe large software companies will have to use similar tactics including providing more source code to customers, making more software available free of charge and providing more extensive consulting services. Of course, this would significantly change the landscape of the software industry. Open Source and Linux would indeed have changed the game.

Disclaimer: This post is my opinion and does not reflect the thoughts, strategies, intentions or opinions of my employer.

• Consider that the Linux scheduler hasn't changed significantly in those THREE years.
• Consider Ingo Molnar's post on the subject.
• Consider providing some evidence for your position, rather than just saying that I'm wrong.
• Bulleted lists are pretty. I can do that too.

'Cuz up until fairly recently, they weren't.

P.S. And if anyone wants to compare Windows XP's scheduling performance with NT's, be my guest... I don't think you'll see much of a change. Remember that XP is just NT 5.1, and I haven't heard about any significant performance improvements in NT's scheduler. (The only vaguely scheduler-related change I remember is the addition of "fibers" in NT 4.0 SPsomething (3?))

leastsquares writes:

Many Linux distributions first see light of day as closed betas.

The fact that it's a "closed beta" is not the issue here.

For example, the Xandros betas have been available to only a small number of people,

What Xandros has or hasn't done also isn't the issue here. I don't know any details about what Xandros did, but I remember hearing that they talked to key Debian and FSF people. I would be surprised if they released GPL software under additional restrictions (particularly since an earlier version of their distribution got slammed for doing the exact same thing back when it was first beta tested by Corel).

all of whom have signed NDAs.

That is the issue. It is perfectly legal to release your own code under an NDA, or your distribution of BSD-licensed code. However, the GPL does not permit you to redistribute the software with additional restrictions, so wrapping a distribution of GPL software in an NDA is solidly illegal.

It should be fairly simple for them to write the NDA containing appropriate holes for the GPL to peek through, something along the lines of "This NDA does not cover the software in this distribution licensed under the GPL, LGPL or any other license that explicitly precludes additional restrictions". This way, you still get a "closed beta", since nobody can redistribute the whole thing, but if people feel the need to redistribute a GPL'ed bit from inside the distribution, they retain the legal right to, as required by the GPL.

As I understand it, the FSF is merely asking to see the text of the NDA, to ensure that it is worded so as not to violate the GPL.

As I see it, a closed beta is not a public release, and therefore not violating the GPL in any way.

The GPL does not say anything about "public release", it is a license for distribution, and a beta distribution, even a "closed" beta distribution, is still a distribution.

In these situations, making the full source available would not help anybody

I disagree, I have found source code helpful in many unexpected situations.

Your comment here makes me wonder if you understand the situation, the question isn't "is source code helpful", the question is "is UnitedLinux violating the GPL". I'll do a simplified rundown: take Alice, Bob, Carol and Doug. Alice writes a piece of software, and releases it under the GPL. Bob creates a software distribution containing precompiled binaries of many different programs under many different licenses, and sells a copy to Carol. Neither Bob, Carol nor Doug have any interaction with Alice or her legal representatives.

In order to legally distribute his package to Carol, Bob has accepted the GPL, and must abide by its terms (this is called a contract of adhesion). One of the terms is that he is legally obligated to make the source available to Carol (Section 3). Another is that along with the distribution, he must pass on a copy of the license to Carol, with no additional restrictions (Section 6). This ensures that, if Carol wishes, she can also accept the GPL and give a copy of Alice's software to her friend, Doug.

If Bob distributes his collection under an NDA, that doesn't change his legal obligations to Alice. It doesn't matter that Carol can get the source from SourceForge, Bob is obligated to make it available to her himself. It doesn't matter that Bob wants to keep the details of his collection under wraps, he is required to give Carol a GPL, unencumbered by the NDA or any other additional restrictions. He can legally use the NDA to cover other parts of his collection, but not Alice's GPLed software.

If Bob violates these terms, Alice has the legal right to sue, seek injunctions against Bob's distribution of her software, and so forth.

The current Bob (UnitedLinux) is not necessarily violating the GPL, the FSF is trying to determine if they are or aren't. I assume, given past history, if the FSF determines that UnitedLinux is in violation, they will offer advice on how to do what they want to do without violating the GPL, and not go farther unless UL makes no attempt to fix the situation.

(1. slower development due to extra hassle,

Cost of doing business.

2. most code is available from original sources anyway,

As described above, it doesn't matter. UnitedLinux has the legal obligation to make all the source code used to produce the GPL software they distribute available to the people they distribute to.

3. modified code will be in a state of unstable flux

That's an easy one, the source code to make available is the source used to create the binaries being distributed. If your code is in such "unstable flux" that you don't know what you compiled in order to make the binaries, then you certainly shouldn't be doing a commercial beta distribution.

At the point of full release, well, that's a different matter.

No, it isn't. The GPL makes no distinction between distribution to one person, and distribution to the general public.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be construed as legal advice. If you have an NDA to write, I strongly recommend you consult a real lawyer for advice on how to appropriately word it.

Anyone saying patents don't do immense public good, and provide worthwhile,
needed, and *effective* protection of small inventors against large corporations
is simply ignorant of the history of even quite recent technology. Many
inventors started small, but because of patent protection were indeed able to
profit greatly from their inventions.

From the "gararge-shop" POV, well, just off the top of my head, there are the
examples everyone is familiar with: Bill Hewlett and David Packard (HP,
instruments), Steves Jobs and Wozniak (Apple, home computer), and outside the
computer industry, folks like Edwin Land (Polaroid, polarized materials and
instant camera), Chester Carlson (Xerox, xerography), Henry Ford (Ford,
affordable automobiles), Thomas Edison (GE, light bulb, motion pictures,
phonograph...), and Alexander Graham Bell (AT&T, telephone), all of whom
profited greatly from their patented works. (One could argue for the inclusion
of Jeff Bezos in that list, although around here, that's a bit like whacking a
hornet's nest with a stick...)

Sun needs a transition plan to make migration from the low end Linux/x86 based desktops and servers to their Solaris/Sparc based high end workstations and enterprise servers. Otherwise they will not be able to bring as much sales up to the higher tier. There are two ways to do this. One is to run Solaris on x86 hardware as the middle tier. The other is to run Linux on Sparc hardware as the middle tier. One of these approaches leaves Sun subject to the whims of another CPU maker, which has it's own plans for 64-bit domination. The other leaves Sun subject to the whims of a huge open source software community and a few choices in Linux distributions (such as Debian, Mandrake, and SuSE) as well as FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. Which way do you think would be better for Sun?

IIRC, feature freeze date for 2.5 is October 31. Figure a few more months of shakeouts and bugfixes after that, we might see 2.6 sometime in first quarter of 2003.

There is a list around of the desired features for 2.6 that was put together at the Linux Kernel Summit. A very hasty web search turns up this list, which doesn't seem to mention things already merged like the block-IO stuff.

Linus has decreed that there will be a feature freeze at the end of October (last para). The stable kernel is usually released a couple of months after the feature freeze (bugs permitting).

I have no hard data aside from some benchmarks, but what I suspect is happening is this: hyperthreading enables "virtual" CPUs; so much so that the BIOS sees 4 procs on our dual proc machines. So what happens if you have two CPU intensive threads what happen to get loaded onto two separate virtual CPUs, but the same physical CPU?

If you have two Xeons doing HT, you ought to try Ingo Molnar's new HT-aware scheduler, which deals with exactly this issue (and a few related ones).

If you aren't running Linux, well, never mind.

There is a good description of the work going into the 2.5 kernel tree to support Xeon Hyperthreading in the Kernel development section a few weeks ago. There is work going on to keep processes on one CPU if at all possable.

Linus says dump is deprecated. Although I hear that patches have been added to make it stable in the most recent 2.4.x kernels.

That's probably one good reason.

If Linux was designed for security, then why are there new security vulnerabilities reported every week? Every system has bugs.

According to this article at lwn.net (scroll down past SSSCA discussion to get to iSCSI discussion), the possibility exists that iSCSI could not be used by free operating systems because of patent encumbrances. Were these issues resolved since then?

• They do not promote innovation, but merely fast patenting. The nature of CS is such that many ideas are independantly developed, and would be available without patents
• Software progresses faster without them. Here[PDF] is a (very) detailed analysis of the topic.
• Patents Don't encourage disclosure -- it's not very disclosed if no-one who might implement it will read it for fear of a lawsuit! I think M$ has this as a policy, but I can't find proof.
• Limited times are a joke -- many products are obsolete in 6 monthes. Others take 6 monthes to get going.

Whenever a file is to be modified, and its contents must be preserved in a snapshot, SnapFS creates a new inode in the filesystem to hold the snapshot version. An extended attribute which points to the snapshot inode is then attached to the visible version of the file. The actual blocks of the file are shared between the current file and the snapshot until they are changed; at that point the SnapFS "copy on write" mechanism makes copies of the affected blocks . Snapshots are thus relatively efficient in their use of storage, especially in situations where only parts of files are changed. For example, a snapshot of that huge web server log file, which is only appended to, does not duplicate the log entries that are shared between the current and archived versions.

Open source is supposed to be about freedom.

But in either form ("open source" or "free software"), it's revisionist bullshit.

Free software, according to Stallman and the FSF, is about the essential freedom to share and modify software. They explictly reject the choice to produce and use proprietary software as a freedom. That makes as much sense, they say, as the "freedom to choose slavery". Free software is about as far away from "freedom to choose" as you can get.

How about open source, that much more convenient doctrine? According to its founders,

The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves.

So while ESR may support the freedom to choose in general (he does), that is not at all what open source is about. Open source is about convincing the world that it is a better development methodology. Most of its adherents would be perfectly happy it it killed off proprietary software, thus eliminating "choice".

So, the "freedom to choose" may be your philosophy, or Tim O'Reilly's philosophy, but it is not that of free software or open source.

Chances are that like most patents recently filed the ones in question are junk. The best move is probably to form the Linux Expeditionary Legal Team - LELT? - to proactively get these patents derecognized.

I'd appreciate it if people would actually read my post, follow the links to the patents, and see if they agree with me that SGI is essentially claiming to own the whole concept of reverse mapping. (Reverse mapping is where each physical page of memory has a list of pointers back to the page table entries that point to it.)

Surely, around the time SGI applied for this patent, the technique was already in widespread use. Details anybody?

Apparently, all of a sudden the NSA's partner, Secure Computing Corporation, came out and made a special exception from their Manditory Access Control Patents for SELinux. It may have been a desperate act to keep the NSA on board. It seems this company was deriving exclusive software patents from work partial completed/funded by the NSA. If I were a generally unaware politican told of this situation by a Microsoft birdie, I would see it a fraud/waste as well.

Although I cannot know for sure, from the basic facts availible to me, this seems to be a case of SCC's software patent greed biting them on their own ass. MSFT probably spun it as, "the govenment partially paid for labor leading to a patent for a competitor of ours, and it's not public domain.

Disclaimer: I hate software patents, as much as I would hate math patents if they existed. This may bias me against SCC.

bandwidth is about $300/Mbps (about 30 times the home cable rate). I have a single site that costs me $2100/month for the server and the bandwidth. And the only way to pay for that is with ads.

His numbers are close enough. We all watched Linux Weely News throw fits trying to stay afloat, and failing. They can't make enough money on their banner adds. So, how many of you here use add blockers while reading LWN? How many of you went and donated money to LWN when they needed it? How many of you are sad to see them go?

The ranting anti-addblocker talks about every site going down without adds to support them. That is an exaduration, but it is not completely off base. Sites will go down. Some already are.

LWN and Slashdot both get much of their revenue from adds. How do you support them? The real question is: If you don't want to see adds on LWN or Slashdot, then how do you think they should make enough money to keep running? Or would you rather see them shut down?

LWN report that they got $25,000 of donations and advertising just after they announced their financial problems. While this isn't enough to guarantee their long term survival, it does seem to be keeping them going in the short-term.

From the tone of your mail, it sounds like you're chastising LWN for only accepting PayPal at the moment. I don't think this is especially fair as it appears the reason they've had to fall back to only using PayPal is that their credit card clearing company did the same kind of shitty thing to them as PayPal did to you.

They do say in the article that they're shopping around for a new clearing company. Maybe you'll feel differently about donating when they find one.

can you provide some more doc or a link for that.....

I dunno, I'm sure there's some information somewhere. I guess you just gotta look a bit.

This is definatly a legitimate concern, and a great reason to stick to the kernels in your Linux distrabuton. You(or somebody) is paying for them to make this easy for you. I afraid of the docs getting dumbed down to much though, it will slow down the kernel writer/maintainers/bugfixers even more.

Linux kernel watching can be a spectators sport but not a occasional one. Mundane experimental kernel arguments become key conflicts in the stable series later. Linux Weekly News has a great kernel page with intermediate explanations every week. Good thing they get to live a few more weeks to live.

If it's the latter, can any of you linux gurus tell me what is the current "accepted" solution for making backups. Not archives or images, backups.

• Backing up without unmounting disks. Mondoarchive does fine with that.
• Altering atimes and ctimes. I haven't checked this so I don't know what Mondoarchive does with them.

If it's the latter, can any of you linux gurus tell me what is the current "accepted" solution for making backups. Not archives or images, backups.

For those of you who are going to say dump works fine on 2.4, please read this message from Linus Torvalds. I keep hoping he'll change his mind though, at least until a viable alternative arises.

The DMCA did get taken to court, and the judge told us to FOAD.

FWIW, I agree with the comment made by The_Noid on the same lwn page I previously mentioned about how the manner in which Theo handled this was very appropriate:

If the details to this vulnerability would have been released (even with patches) just about every Linux box on the planet would have been cracked before the owners would've had time to install the patch. Publishing a fix to this problem will only tell the cracker exactly where the problem is.

So they first work around the bug, without actually fixing the bug and telling what is it and where it is, so crackers can't make an exploit before people are immune (and I repeat, a direct fix would exactly tell the cracker what the bug is.)

A bug like this is what every cracker is dreaming of, a way into just about every unix machine on the planet!

This whole episode is very bizarre.

Check out this little snippet (the whole message can be found on lwn.net) from an email from Theo:

We've been trying to warn vendors about 3.3 and the need for privsep, but they really have not heeded our call for assistance. They have basically ignored us. Some, like Alan Cox, even went further stating that privsep was not being worked on because "Nobody provided any info which proves the problem, and many people dont trust you theo" and suggested I "might be feeding everyone a trojan" (I think I'll publish that letter -- it is just so funny).

Please do publish that letter, Theo. That would be very interesting.

PU

LWN Contribution page

Matthew Newhall
President of LILUG.
Long Island Linux Users Group.

We'll have more information next week on things like content tarballs and releasing the site source.
-- http://lwn.net/Articles/5052

Very cool. Bookmarks won't work, of course, but the content can be found somewhere as probably dozens of LWN replicas will offer it.

Some of my favorites: Indian chief Tux (page 4), Tux playing on a Lexmark "sliding board" (page 5), Beowulf cluster Tux (page 6), Argentine Cowboy Tux (page 9).

Some of my favorites: Indian chief Tux (page 4), Tux playing on a Lexmark "sliding board" (page 5), Beowulf cluster Tux (page 6), Argentine Cowboy Tux (page 9).

Some of my favorites: Indian chief Tux (page 4), Tux playing on a Lexmark "sliding board" (page 5), Beowulf cluster Tux (page 6), Argentine Cowboy Tux (page 9).

Some of my favorites: Indian chief Tux (page 4), Tux playing on a Lexmark "sliding board" (page 5), Beowulf cluster Tux (page 6), Argentine Cowboy Tux (page 9).

Some of my favorites: Indian chief Tux (page 4), Tux playing on a Lexmark "sliding board" (page 5), Beowulf cluster Tux (page 6), Argentine Cowboy Tux (page 9).

another time line> This one is little bit longer and complete. And it is still available

Am Microsoft's monopoly could collapse in 6 months

Funny I don't see either happening any time soon.

The most common answer to this problem seems to be supermount... There is also evidently a need for an audit by a serious filesystem hacker to deal with some questionable practices and race conditions.

From the TODO:

Would be nice to have before feature freeze, but most likely 2.7:
...
o Serial ATA support

From serialata.org:

Q13: When does Microsoft plan to support Serial ATA in its OS's?
A13: Serial ATA is software compatible with Parallel ATA and requires no changes to Microsoft operating systems, or any other OS as well.

If this is a drop in replacement for parallel ATA, why is support needed in the linux kernel?