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Under march, you'll be reminded of Eric S Raymond's "Take My Job, Please" essay fiasco. If you go and reread it, as I did, you'll notice the following text at the bottom as one of the qualifications ESR said was necessary to have his job:

"You'll need to be financially secure enough not to need to have a regular job. (This one will give you some perks but no pay.)"

Especially not $36 million. No sir, I wouldn't call that pay. That one's definitely a perk.

Sun's earlyAccess JDK for Linux only runs on i386 machines. According to Kevin Hendricks, Sun spokesman only said that Sparc might eventually get supported

Here is an email from Kevin telling how the Sun applogy wasn't enough. Its a real shame.

It means that day traders have noticed the same thing most of the Linux stock
watchers noticed the last week or two. So thay drove the price up to huge heights.
Now the ticker is ticking down from it $320 high....
Its at 247... as I type. People who wanted to earn a Ferrari for Christmas
got it, and now are running to the dealership.

So what to do? Hmmm, well one thing is sure. VA Linux is going to all
over the news tonight. Meaning that LINUX will be on the news
tonight. This again, will give the general public more information
about it and many more will see that Linux is a GOOD THING(TM).
This will drive more "Real" investors to Linux companies, which will drive
the Linux index up.

I predict that Linux companies will continue to grow at a faster rate
than the market. I'd even say much faster, but some of you might take
this against me, if it doesn't happen.

Anyway, these are just some of my thoughts after the $13->$23->$30->$250->$320->$247
ride of VA Linux (LNUX) this afternoon.

What to do?
Buy Linux/Open Source related companies at a price you feel comfortable
with. Just don't come to me and complain about losses. :)

I really think that this conformation from Wall Street means that Linux is
being taken seriously and that it will continue to prosper.

So what companies are we looking at?
Look here to get an idea about some of them.

I hope I didn't bore you with these comments.

Later
...Marko

P.S. And rember how Linus answers the question:
Uninformed Interviewer: What do you want to do with Linux?
Linus: World domination, asap.
:)

There was a review on lwn.net a couple of days ago. They didn't like it much.

There was a review on lwn.net a couple of days ago. They didn't like it much.

It may be too much to hope that this statement will head off a flurry of snide opinion pieces divagating about "open-source communism"; the clumsy rhetoric of some of our past ambassadors may have made that outcome inevitable.

In order to deflect talk of Linux being a "communist enterprise", we need to be clear about the relationship of Free Software (Open Source) to communism. Free software does create a "commons": a sort of publicly-owned property, collectively maintained for the good of all. Karl Marx didn't invent that either, it's a critical aspect of every community, and most capitalistic enterprises would wither without a publicly-owned infrastructure to support them. Consider, for example, that money is part of that infrastructure. That's the message I'd like to carry to the press: having a commons, helping our neighbors, and protecting our freedoms should not be equated to communism.

Thanks

Bruce Perens

Already has happened. See http://lwn.net/1999/features/Windowing.p html

The main effect of journalling, the thing that is really important about it, is that it guarantees that metadata updates are kept consistent. That is, journalling is primarily supportive of making sure that filenames, directory structures, permissions, and such are kept consistent even when moderately catastrophic things happen.

This is a really good thing when supporting file serving activities, as that indeed tends to involve lots of manipulations of files as users shift them around.

I've been on the ReiserFS mailing list since '97; have been running a personal news spool on a small ReiserFS partition for probably 6 months. I can't tell for sure if the journalling now available is metadata-only, or if it also journals normal data updates. It looks rather more like metadata-only, which is useful for file-server work, but not so much for RDBMSes.

Databases behave in quite different ways from file servers in terms of the way they do file access.

If you look at most RDBMSes, they create a few files, and do lots of manipulations on top of them. Informix SE is a counterexample, basically using Informix C-ISAM underneath, but is unusual in that regard. If you look at the database partitions, you get one of two things:

• Partitions containing a few very large files.

  Note that for these, the metadata is very static which means that journalling of metadata is of relatively little importance.

• Partitions containing no filesystem, but rather raw data being managed by the RDBMS.

  Don't just believe me; I am not the ultimate authority on this. Transaction Processing : Concepts and Techniques is a rather definitive reference; it discusses methods of managing transactions in the context of database management systems, and goes into considerable detail discussing transaction logging, which bears striking (and not merely coincidental) resemblance to journalling.

  The critical point here is that it is the database manager that wants to manage the logging/journalling; Oracle and Sybase and IBM and Informix will be loathe to pass on responsibility for this to Hans Reiser, wonderful guy though he is.

Conclusions

1. Sorry, I have to disagree with you on ReiserFS being of fundamental importance to those doing serious database work.

   What will be of fundamental importance will be when Stephen Tweedy's Raw Device Support gets integrated into the "production" kernels. That is what Oracle is looking for (consider: Oracle has pumped some funds into RHAT, and RHAT is paying Stephen Tweedie... Could there be some connection?)

2. Journalling IS important for sorts of applications that manipulate lots of files, which includes things like dynamic web serving and file serving.

   Even if this isn't such a boon to those doing serious RDBMS work, it can still be a boon to lots of other folks...

Strangely, I found out about this yesterday, when I followed the lwn link to the FreeGIS web site newly created by Jan-Oliver Wagner in Germany.

This site has links to a number of other interesting free software GIS packages, as well as a couple of sources of data.

It is my hope that a real free GIS community will develop. I have a personal interest in this, as I think my libart 2D graphics rendering library has the potential to render maps at a much higher quality than most proprietary GIS packages today (i.e. antialiasing, semi-transparent layers, combining vector with image data). If there's anyone who's interested in integrating libart's cool rendering capabilities with the cool free software GIS apps, both current and future, please get in touch.

http://lwn.net/1998/1203/a/rms-qpl.html

In fact, if it screws up and leaves your video card in "apeshit" mode (see http://lwn.net/1999/0304/a/xfree.html), then there really is nothing you can do except reboot.

I use a PS/2 mouse, and back in the day if it was sending any input to my computer while I switched to X it would take the whole Xserver down. Nowadays it just locks X up straight, sometimes similar to how a three-button mouse mistaken for a two-button mouse might screw up. So far, with XF86 3.3.5 I've managed three crashes within two weeks with just this problem, the latest (yesterday) screwing my system up so bad that remotely killing the Xserver did nothing, nor did any of the keyboard SysRq or ctl-alt-* combinations work.

Now, I have no idea how much validity is in Xig's claim that AccelX is any better than XFree86, but it is true that problems exist in the latter in the way they so claim... Still, I'll stick with OSS anyday.

Look a little ways down the page, at the section starting with "Ext3 support is getting closer".

This doc should answer your questions and more:
Wonderful World of Linux 2.4

Here ya go:

The Wonderful World of Linux 2.4

http://lwn.net/1999/1007/a/wwo_2.4.html

I have seen other versions of this; this is allegedly the "final" version.

--

First off, the product isn't licensed as free software or OSI Certified -- because there's not yet either product or a license (which is to say, WRT product, there's a program, but it's not yet product).

From what I've pieced together of comments of Larry's (SVLUG), web blurbs (his, others), and the license sketch currently on the download site, terms will be liberal but not quite free. Larry likes the idea of free software, but isn't convinced he can make a commercial go of it all in and of itself. Specifically, my impression was that the source is available and hackable (a specific requirement of Alan Cox, per Larry).

Given that his business model right now is sort of half-software house, half-consulting services (SW: BitKeeper and others, services, Hunkin' Big Clusters), I'd like to hope he eventually discovers he doesn't have to worry quite so much about this. Along the lines of Cygnus.

For insight on licensing, you might want to read:

• The current COPYING file of the BitKeeper FTP archive.
• A bit about BitKeeper and Free Software, at the BitKeeper site.
• An LWN feature on BitKeeper and its licensing|business model.

Note that the most commonly cited alternatives to Larry's solution all have pretty heavy consequences:

• Sun Community Source License. As the wags say, it's the (Sun Community) + (Source License), not the (Sun) + (Community Source License). Sun gets some hefty rights reserved to itself, largely so that it can continue to control the direction software to benefit itself.
• The Alladin Ghostscript licensing method -- what's been called "Delayed Public License" -- software is licensed under the GPL (largely because Peter Deutsch promised RMS that he always would) -- but only after an initial period in which the software is covered by a proprietary license. This means that the OSS version of the software is always slightly behind the proprietary version.
• Shareware|Freeware -- there's lots of software out there that's cost-free to use, but the source isn't available. Convenient, yes. Full benefits of free software, no.

The BitKeeper license is most like the SCSL, though the intent seems to be to build a code escrow term into it which reverts to GPL should BitKeeper fold or fail to maintain the source.

Addressing specific points of your post, certain libs of BitKeeper will be GPLd or LGPLd, allowing them to be redistributed or incorporated into projects under terms of the GNU [L]GPL.

WRT your bugfix and feature comments -- the BitKeeper license is oriented around limiting potential for fragmentation. It's got some elements of the common view of the xBSD development model (centrally controlled cabal), and I'll share your view that this is, if not a Bad Thing, at least a Thing of Questionable Worth (TM).

I can't see how your last point (source is still closed) stands with your other arguments. The source is available, it can be reviewd, modified, and mucked with, It's not compliante with the OSD, but it's certainly not proprietary either.

Larry's blazing a new path here, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

Our interview with Donnie J Barnes (which has more meat than this interview)


So, the /. interview is different than this interview?


"LWN also has notes from a brief conversation with Donnie Barnes."


Which 'this' does 'this' refer to? Help me out, here, Rob.

Oh, and (Score:0 Redundant). heehee

To: corbet@eklektix.com
Subject: Amazon and Red Hat products
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 12:27:04 -0400
From: Melissa London

Bob Young asked me to forward this:

Re: Amazon's concerns over fake Red Hat products.

Red Hat received a call last week from Amazon.com. They were getting complaints from Amazon customers who had purchased products through Amazon's auction site from sellers they believed to be selling products from Red Hat Inc. These products turned out to be CD-ROMS that consisted of free ftp downloads of Red Hat Linux, produced by independent vendors.

In order to avoid confusion and to protect our trademarks we explained our trademark policies to the Amazon staff. This is simply that you may download and resell Red Hat Linux. You should not, however, attempt intentionally or otherwise, to confuse buyers into thinking they were buying Official Red Hat Inc. products.

So we request that independent vendors call their product something other than Red Hat, and not use our trademarks or logos. They may -describe- their product as containing Red Hat Linux, but the product itself must have another name.

All of the reputable vendors of low-cost CD-ROMS that contain free ftp downloaded versions of Red Hat Linux follow this policy without our even requesting it. The current problem has arisen because of the large number of new, sometimes-less-than reputable suppliers who are using retail outlets like Amazon.com's auction site to trick customers into believing they were getting Official Red Hat Linux from Red Hat Inc. at a bargain price when in fact they were getting a cheap knock-off product.

There's more here, but I believe that's sufficient to show that (A) RH has NOT metamorphosed into some kind of mini-M$; and (B) this Sands guy is a scammer AND a whiner, to boot.

--Zontar The Mindless (password's @ home, I'm not).

Well, probably. Anyway, you should find latest developpement at the top of http://lwn.net/daily/sands.html.

http://lwn.net/daily/sands.html

Look at the note at the top of the form...

• Changelog for 2.2.12
• Alan's 2.0.38 announcement
• Linus' 2.3.15 mail

.is from Mary Jo Foley of ZDNN Tech news.

"The slant is so weird," Foley said, citing a recent Slashdot-linked interview on the Microsoft Web site. "What they highlight from the interview is not what a journalist would highlight. They like to highlight things that make Microsoft look stupid."

It's like saying that the boy who mentioned "The Emperor has no clothes!!" is biased against the emperor. Then she goes on to say there's no editor to say what's "legitimate" ... Given what's seen coming from the direction of ZDNN Tech News, the definition of "legitimate" is tied more to finances (with clear bias favoring Microsoft) than truth.

I think if Mary Jo Foley wants to see a balanced view of Tech news, she should have a look at C'T magazine and Linux news at Linux Weekly News These are part of the very small group of publications I've seen who try to get to the actual meaning behind current events (and tend to do a good job of it) .. Highlighting Microsoft's "roadmap", "vision", etc., while ignoring the fact they've been known to be less than honest & unethical in the past is what strikes me as bad journalism.

Try this http://www.lwn.net/1999/features/1998 timeline. It is funny to see Jesse contradict himself even just weeks apart. Of course, Jesse isn't a "technical" writer, it's just his job to say something that is "popular" at the time.

At least one version is here, at http://www.lwn.net/1999/features/199 8timeline.

• "I think it's great if you are willing to promote Linux to your boss. As long as you are aware of the risk you are taking. The risk of getting fired." (Feb. 16).
• "Is a Linux takeover likely? Give me a break. Of course not." (June 23).
• "I personally think Windows NT will be the mainstream operating system within a few years." [...] "My belief: Linux will never go mainstream" (Sep. 9).
• "I've always said that Linux could become a serious challenger to Microsoft's Windows NT." (Sep. 28).

Linux according to Jesse Berst
"I think it's great if you are willing to promote Linux to your boss. As long as you are aware of the risk you are taking. The risk of getting fired." (Feb. 16).
"Is a Linux takeover likely? Give me a break. Of course not." (June 23).
"I personally think Windows NT will be the mainstream operating system within a few years." [...] "My belief: Linux will never go mainstream" (Sep. 9).
"I've always said that Linux could become a serious challenger to Microsoft's Windows NT." Sep. 28).

Linux according to Jesse Berst
"I think it's great if you are willing to promote Linux to your boss. As long as you are aware of the risk you are taking. The risk of getting fired." (Feb. 16).
"Is a Linux takeover likely? Give me a break. Of course not." (June 23).
"I personally think Windows NT will be the mainstream operating system within a few years." [...] "My belief: Linux will never go mainstream" (Sep. 9).
"I've always said that Linux could become a serious challenger to Microsoft's Windows NT." Sep. 28).

see the Linux Weekly News' Security page for information on Linux security projects which are already under way:
Secure Linux Projects Bastille Linux
Khaos Linux Secure Linux
Security List Archives
Bugtraq Archive
Firewall Wizards Archive
ISN Archive

Distribution-specific links
Caldera Advisories
Debian Alerts
Red Hat Errata
SuSE Announcements

Miscellaneous Resources
CERT
CIAC
Comp Sec News Daily
Crypto-GRAM
Linux Security Audit Project
OpenSEC
Security Focus
SecurityPortal

Anyway, there's stupid and there's abysmally stupid. I know we see a lot of it in general, and the technical world is no exception, but we still need to distinguish between the two. Judgment call, arguably, on whether Compaq qualifies as abysmal when there are so many more worthy contenders, most of whom can be identified by cruising alt.sysadmin.recovery, as well as grepping for the F-word in the Linux source.

http://lwn.net/1998/1119/shaper.html

See LWN's news summary; it frankly blows Slashdot out of the water when it comes to collecting news stories.)

... and Linux came out marginally on top. Conditions were a good bit more real-world, and the article is pretty well-written. Read it in English at http://www.heise.de/ct/english//99/13/ 186-1/

(Info found at http://www.lwn.net/daily/)

Part of the problem is that discussions on /. can tend to hysteria, causing authors to be bombarded with flames. So, Rob, why not simply drop such items, since other places are doing better jobs, and concentrate on what /. does best -- amusing and interesting stuff that's off the beaten path? Discussions of technical topics on Slashdot are still often quite good, modulo the occasional flamewar over GNOME/KDE or Linux/*BSD.

You are right. Most people would not understand the cleverness behind technical details of naming, etc. I seem to forget slashdot is highly mixed company.

From what I hear from the old Unix die hards, when it comes to comparing Unixen, Linux has the best feel.

Nowhere in the filing is anything about "make more money selling our distribution." Red Hat clearly sees its future elsewhere.

Nowhere in the filing is anything about "make more money selling our distribution." Red Hat clearly sees its future elsewhere.

Go here. A nice summary; well, I assume so, since, like most, I don't intend to read the whole 500 page filing :-)

--

jon

Likewise, the point is not whether CodeWarrior will work with other Linux distributions or not. The problem is that it is being marketed as exclusively Red Hat. Other major binary Linux product releases have not been marketed this way.

Let's look at the facts.

• MetroWerks has a very close association with Red Hat.
• CodeWarrior is a software development tool.
• Many Linux software developers use distributions other than Red Hat. How many? I haven't measured, but it must be significant. Red Hat is known for easy installation and integration, but not necessarily as a software developer's distribution. Other distributions have that reputation. I can cite Debian as an example.
• Linux has tools to facilitate the port of projects to different distributions. Who would know this better than software developers, MetroWerks prospective customers?
• System requirements on binary releases can be easily specified as CPU+kernel+library and the program will function perfectly, as has been pointed out by many people. Again, wouldn't MetroWerks customers be aware of this?
• Support issue can be handled separately and again can be along the same lines as the build. Again, MetroWerks' customers would know this as well.
• Although it may be difficult to support all the Linux distributions, it's extremely easy, and given the number of developers using other distributions, very cost effective to support more than one.
• The Linux communitee would be eager and proud to help bring about the global Linux support of a product like CodeWarrior. MetroWerks products have been a mainstay in the Mac environment for a long time. CodeWarrior is also the preferred platform for the Palm Pilot, the most popular handheld on the planet. MetroWerks products have a great reputation in the industry and would be highly desireable.
• Corel doesn't release a different version of their software for each Linux distribution. Neither does Star Division nor Applix nor Adobe (Acroread), etc. I could go on and on here. This list would include almost all of the binary-only Linux products up to the current date.
• The MetroWerks' press release which originally announced Linux support for CodeWarrior last October says nothing specifically about Red Hat. MetroWerks' similar announcement made in early April has Red Hat all over the place.

Why specifically put for Red Hat in the name of the product when that will only result in undercutting the sales to all the other distributions, especially in a market where the number of customers could be significant?

I'm not trying to bash Red Hat but this makes absolutely no sense. More important, it divides the community. And, it's not the way things have been done--until now.

The rules have changed. I want to know why. Don't you?

There is nothing more effective in disabling the restraint I usually exercise in my use of language than fucking political morons trying to regulate what their tiny minds cannot comprehend, and thus fear.

There is nothing more effective in disabling the restraint I usually exercise in my use of language than fucking political morons trying to regulate what their tiny minds cannot comprehend, and thus fear.

There is nothing more effective in disabling the restraint I usually exercise in my use of language than fucking political morons trying to regulate what their tiny minds cannot comprehend, and thus fear.

Are you talking about performance of an application on hardware you'd never actually use for those things? Who uses a quad xeon to serve static pages? Why didn't they test Linux using a web server that's optimized for static pages?

Also, there was an article in http://www.linuxtoday.com that exposes the fact that Samba under Linux actually performed better than Windows NT on the PCWeek tests when using NT clients than NT did. This is something that everyone should know.

The PCWeek numbers were also much higher than the Mindcraft numbers, attacking the credibility of Mindcraft even more.

Another funny thing, if anyone follows http://lwn.net, they had a story that mentioned why Apache may have done so badly, and how we can modify the scheduler to make the problem go away.

If anything, we should thank MS for the Mindcraft tests. It may end up making Linux better in the end.

I don't think Linux did as bad as people think, and I'm sure that static web serving performance or Samba performance is irrelevant in a router.

Are you talking about performance of an application on hardware you'd never actually use for those things? Who uses a quad xeon to serve static pages? Why didn't they test Linux using a web server that's optimized for static pages?

Also, there was an article in http://www.linuxtoday.com that exposes the fact that Samba under Linux actually performed better than Windows NT on the PCWeek tests when using NT clients than NT did. This is something that everyone should know.

The PCWeek numbers were also much higher than the Mindcraft numbers, attacking the credibility of Mindcraft even more.

Another funny thing, if anyone follows http://lwn.net, they had a story that mentioned why Apache may have done so badly, and how we can modify the scheduler to make the problem go away.

If anything, we should thank MS for the Mindcraft tests. It may end up making Linux better in the end.

I don't think Linux did as bad as people think, and I'm sure that static web serving performance or Samba performance is irrelevant in a router.

Bitkeeper is not GPL'ed, so are they really going to use it?

Where is this article they use to support their claim that NT is more secure than UNIX? The link points to lwn.net, which is almost as vague as pointing to zdnet.com. I searched the archives on LWN and didn't see that title page.

One's jiffy counters use a 32 bit register@100Hz, thus overflowing in 497 days.
There already exists a patch to make uptimes of >100 years possible.
It resides here

--

It would be helpful if the students running Slashdot took a journalism course as an elective. People who run "news" sites should know the difference between an advertisement/press release and a true news story. An example of a responsible news site that knows the difference is the Linux Weekly News. There you will find the hype press releases segregated from true news stories. It is made clear to the reader so that the reader knows s/he is not being suckered by advertizer/advocacy agit prop.

I found this by going to Linux Weekly News and looking through the archives for the week that 2.2.0 came out. Hope this helps.