Slashdot Mirror

Slashback this evening brings you an update on the (departed, or departing) Bleem; an open letter from Dell on Linux support for some of its line; another creative way to fight spam; and some gaming updates for everyone whose thumbs still function.

Spinning so had they can feel it in Ft. Worth. L-Wave writes: "This Story is running on linux.com. Apparently Dell has written an open letter toLinux users. 'Dell has published an open letter to its Linux customers "clarifying" its position as regards the insurgent OS. Actually, the letter is headed "Clarifying Dell and Linux," but either of these would be a massive task, and we think we know what they meant to say.'"

Please note that all Dell is saying here is that they will load customer-specified software at the factory -- it's probably convenient for some customers, but nothing new for Dell. In the case of software with expensive licenses, it means some simplified paperwork. With Free software, it just means convenience. The letter is therefore rather lukewarm, but at least a lot better than refusing to install software that doesn't include a licensing markup.

Brush up on your polite conversation skills. doublem writes: "This site lists the toll-free numbers of known Spammers, so they can be called, harassed and otherwise vented against for their crimes. Something tells me the ./ crowd will like this sort of thing as evidenced by this recent article. I'd like to add 1-888-288-9043 as the number for the well-known VORTEX SUPPLIES, a collection of jerks who refuse to take me off their mailing lists." I started doing the same a few months ago, but this guy has me beat by miles, even if he doesn't list Miss Cleo's number thanks to Psychic spam that knew I'd react with a call.

Yessir, our team goes into action right after the first fortnight. jeffy124 writes "Microsoft has admitted knowledge of an IE bug a full week before a security firm announced it. Turns out sec firm Online Solutions privately informed MS of the bug Nov. 1, but MS initially said they first heard of it Nov. 9 after Online made the find public the same day. MS claims standard procedure of allowing themselves two weeks in order to make sure someone's not cryin wolf and write a patch. They also claimed that no breaches occured during that wait. MS says that Online acted responsibly in their actions, and "'apologizes for innacurate statements.'"

You mean the lawsuits didn't kill it? Far from certain conpiracy theories advanced after Bleem published their own epitaph ShadeEagle writes: "Here we find out that Sony didn't know about Bleem's death until they were asked about it. Gamespot has more relevant information as to the possible (or impossible) future of Bleem." And another gaming note: mickeyreznor writes "According to this article on CNet, Sega appears to be in good financial shape despite the trouble they've had with the dreamcast. In addition, 60 games are being planned for X-box and PS2 over the next year. Sega's future looks bright, and that can only be a good thing for gamers."

An anonymous reader points to this story at Newsforge which says that "RMS is throwing his hat in the ring as a candidate for the GNOME foundation board of directors. Speculation is that he's pissed because the GNOME summary keeps mentioning non-free software; now he's going to (try to) do something about it."

savaget writes "Evolution 0.99 (Release Candidate 1) is out! "Yes, you read that right: the release candidate for Evolution 1.0 hit the wires this evening. After two years of hard work and more than 700 thousand lines of code written, the sleepless hackers at Ximian are finally getting to the long-awaited 1.0 release of Evolution, the GNOME groupware suite."" One of the most important projects in the open source world today. Best of luck to the monkey boys @ Ximian squashing any last minute arrivals.

malibu_mex writes: "LinuxToday, ZDNet Australia, and NewsForge are all reporting on a loadable kernel module + GUI combination that implements an auditing subsystem on Linux (Like the NT event logger, or solaris BSM). This could be yet another reason for big business and government to migrate away from the costly commercial alternatives to Linux. First it was SAMBA, now it's SNARE. What have these Aussies got with 5 letter 'S' names? This topic has been discussed on Slashdot previously here."

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Running on Newsforge/Linux.com is a hardware review where Slashdot's Krow took a couple of OmniCluster's Slotservers and and built a cluster configuation inside of a singe host computer (and even had DB2 running on one of the card's inside of the host). Could something like this be the future of computing where for additional processing power you just kept adding additional computers inside of a host?"

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Running on Newsforge/Linux.com is a hardware review where Slashdot's Krow took a couple of OmniCluster's Slotservers and and built a cluster configuation inside of a singe host computer (and even had DB2 running on one of the card's inside of the host). Could something like this be the future of computing where for additional processing power you just kept adding additional computers inside of a host?"

pseen wrote to us with a conversation with Scott Draeker (of Loki Games concerning the recent Transgaming and Wine announcements, as well as the Mandrake Linux Gamer announcements.

LordXarph writes: "Newsforge has a story about Disney's anti-file swapping episode of their cartoon "Proud Family." The synopsis is simply hysterical; I'm waiting for someone to write a gnutella servent called EZ-Jackster."

A story at NewsForge details the latest on the state of Senator Fritz Hollings' proposed SSSCA, which may be the most radical attempt at legislative oversight over electronic goods ever attempted in the U.S. Opposition from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, the Association of Computing Machinery and others notwithstanding, Hollings' efforts to impede a free market in computer hardware and software through legislative fiat has been little commented on, in part because Hollings refuses to release much information about it. Eben Moglen is quoted to good effect on the risk a bill officializing and regulating all digital devices would pose to Free software. Under the SSSCA, it would be "unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies." And that rules out most Free software, right from the start. (Read on for some more information.)

Besides writing your own representatives (email and faxes are probably better than phone calls), note that according to Hollings' contact page, "South Carolina residents may call, toll free, 1-800-922-8503" to reach him. In addition, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Privacy Center will be holding a meeting on "Security or Surveillance? Technology's Impact After September 11" on October 22 at Washington, DC's National Press Club; you can email for details on this meeting.

A story at NewsForge details the latest on the state of Senator Fritz Hollings' proposed SSSCA, which may be the most radical attempt at legislative oversight over electronic goods ever attempted in the U.S. Opposition from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, the Association of Computing Machinery and others notwithstanding, Hollings' efforts to impede a free market in computer hardware and software through legislative fiat has been little commented on, in part because Hollings refuses to release much information about it. Eben Moglen is quoted to good effect on the risk a bill officializing and regulating all digital devices would pose to Free software. Under the SSSCA, it would be "unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies." And that rules out most Free software, right from the start. (Read on for some more information.)

Besides writing your own representatives (email and faxes are probably better than phone calls), note that according to Hollings' contact page, "South Carolina residents may call, toll free, 1-800-922-8503" to reach him. In addition, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Privacy Center will be holding a meeting on "Security or Surveillance? Technology's Impact After September 11" on October 22 at Washington, DC's National Press Club; you can email for details on this meeting.

ldopa1 writes "True to form, AMD has released the new Athlon XP today. This article on Tom's Hardware has the full technical specs for the chip as well as a look at the new packaging. Tom's also has a full set of benchmarks for the chip." michael : See also reviews on LinuxHardware.org, Newsforge, AnandTech and AMDMB. Update: 10/09 20:29 GMT by T : gregfortune points out that AMD is giving away quite a few of these in a six-city promotion as well, so if you live in one of the six, perhaps you can snag one.

friday2k writes "There is a nice Article on Newsforge describing how the German Government moves ahead on looking into Free Software solutions for government agencies. And you need a standard, secure, email client for this." Basically, they are funding some good secure e-mail - but making sure that it works with stuff like Kmail.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "You probably suspected some sort of "follow the money" thing was behind Sen. Fritz Hollings' support of SSSCA, the draft bill that would make using 'any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies' illegal in the U.S. This proposed law could effectively outlaw Linux and most Open Source software, depending on how judges interpret it. A NewsForge story details where Sen. Hollings' money comes from. Guess what? His biggest contributors are entertainment industry companies, their lawyers, and their lobbyists. The story also says Hollings and his staff refused to comment on the bill, and staffers the reporter talked to refused to even give their names." Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of VA Linux.

Anonymous Coward writes "LinuxDevices.com reports that the Free Software Foundation has reached an agreement with Victor Yodaiken which resolves what FSF considered to be a violation of GPL by the Open RTLinux Patent License. Details are not yet available, but it sounds like the clause in the license which required users of RTLinux to keep records and provide them to FSMLabs on demand was the principal source of the violation, and that the requirement is being dropped from an updated version of the RTLinux license that will be published in the next day or two. All in all, it seems like the FSF has successfuly enforced the GPL even though it was neither an owner nor co-owner of the software (i.e. the linux kernel) whose license terms were being violated. It's interesting to see this practical example of FSF in action, and bodes well for the future of GPL -- at least in a small way."

crimoid points to ZDNet coverage of the FSF's criticism of RTLinux's licensing terms, written before such a resolution was clear. Sourceforge on Thursday quoted RTLinux CEO Victor Yodaiken, CEO as saying that his company is happy to change "minor problems" with the RTLinux license, and that discussions are still going on with the FSF about those changes.

Ron van Balen writes: "Lutris has retracted the open source Entreprise Enhydra product. The old version will remain open source, but the open source community will not get access to the new J2EE compliant product. The decision was made because Sun J2EE license requirements don't allow an open source release, Lutris says. Lutris also says it wil refocus its efforts to its commercial products and support the open source community at a lower priority. It seems there is one less commercially supported OSS project on the planet." Newsforge has an excellent piece on this as well which gets into the reasoning and details on this move.

Further news of the events going on around the world following the attacks earlier today on New York and Washington. To follow things even more closely, you are encouraged to join realtime CNN coverage in channel #cnn_newsfeed on irc.idlenet.org. (Doubtless there are other similar IRC and IM feeds going on -- please post them in comments.) In addition to the news below, note that CNN has reported that multiple suspects were arrested with a van loaded with explosives in the vicinity of New York's George Washington Bridge. Update: 09/12 04:29 AM GMT by T : Many readers have reported that the van in question was found not to contain explosives, though its occupants were held for questioning. And Giacomo DiGrigoli, international product manager at PayPal.com, wrote with word of a donation fund on the PayPal website where folks can make donations to the American Red Cross.

Contradicting earlier reports, reader Adam Brookman writes: "I can guarantee that no car bomb went off in front of the State Dept. in DC. My father is part of the critical personel at State dept. When I read that I called him. He said he heard the same thing and he also heard that the building was hit by a plane, but neither were true."

Worth reading is this analysis of the motives and some possible suspects in today's violence, at Jane's International Security News. They've picked three plausible attackers. Motive aside, Jack Bryar has a convincing take on who is really most hurt by the attacks today.

babyruth writes: "amazon.com has a Red Cross Relief fund set up on their homepage, where you can contribute online. Only several hundred have contributed so far, let the power of /. help!" Iridium provides a link straight to the donations page, noting that "All standard fees are waived -- all proceeds go directly to the Red Cross." Of course, the Red Cross is -still- in desperate need of blood. If you can donate, please call 1-800-HELP-NOW to find the donation center nearest to you.

iggyflashbulb writes: "CNN reports some oddball group not associated with bin Laden is attacking Kabul at night. Are they taking advantage of the NY situation or did they create it?"

An anonymous reader writes: "Following the sad (and outrageous) mess of these terrorist attacks, results are already starting to impact the country. When a RSM failed on one of our 5500 Ciscos, we recieved the following notice

'Due to a national emergency completion of your case, delivery of your parts or engineer will be delayed until further notice. Several areas of the country have restricted transportation and currently no air traffic is available. Cisco will notify you as soon a we are able to dispatch your order.'

There doesn't seem to any information on Cisco's site."

CERT is in action as well: SilentTone writes: "Ween Hall at Carnegie-Mellon University was evacuated today so the the Computer Emergency Response Team could go into action."

Many readers have been assembling mirrors for the overloaded news sites of the world. Jon Anhold writes: "I've compiled more photos and what not, mirrored many of the sites around to help the load. They're available here: http://ziggy.dreamland.net/wtc/"

Owen Bossola writes: "This is a simple webpage I put up with shots I took all day of the World Trade Center. I go to school across the river at Stevens Institute of Technology and I watched the whole thing from campus. It is absolutely nuts, I'm looking out my window and for the first time, downtown NYC is dark, and there aren't two large buildings gleaming back at me."

rhyder writes: "I was last in the World Trade Center and the attached World Financial Center on Saturday evening. Many people I know work in those buildings, even more live and work in the shadow of those 2 towers.

From the Port Authority of NY and NJ:

1. The Port Authority
   
2. Trade Center Concourse Level Map
   
3. Trade Center Plaza Level Map
   
4. Trade Center Complex Overview
   
5. Area Map showing southern tip of Manhattan and the Trade Center location."

An Anonymous Coward seeks more information about an interview that Washington area readers may be able to provide: He writes: "Fox News channel 5 (local around 6:30ish E.S.T) this evening had an interview with a witness about what he saw at the Pentagon the moment of impact. His interview was the basic 'I was in my car looked to my side..blah blah' but then he said something totally unexpected. He observed a second airplane immediately swing behind the first in a follow like manner and swoop down on the Pentagon only to pull up at the last second, out of the smoke cloud, and fly away. His description of the plane was pretty detailed, saying it was propeller-driven ... He stated everyone around him who were also outside their cars saw the SECOND Airplane following the first and it was also going in."

Anyone else able to confirm this rumor?

Jon Bishop asks: "Why Today? Why did this attack happen on September 11, 2001. Here is a guess. I played with the date commonly used for programming. YYYYMMDD returns 20010911. 911...in 2001. Is this play on numbers intentional or coincidence?" It may be significant that the anniversary of a Congressional resolution "favoring a Jewish homeland in Palestine" falls on this date. Then again, if you go back a century or two, you may find a lot of anniversaries that seem just as significant.

Carl Merritt writes: "Since many sites seem to be creaking under the load today I've dumped every relevant picture and video I can find onto my server, please feel free to suck up some of my unused bandwidth with downloads or links: http://www.binaryvista.com/WTC/ I'll probably leave it up for a couple weeks, or until CNN asks me to remove their pictures ;-)."

An Anonymous Coward writes "I just want to remind everyone that there is still active air cover over at least Chicago. A tanker is orbiting O'Hare and at least what appear to be two F-15s are making the rounds. If you would like more information including frequencies I suggest subscribing to the CARMA mailing list at QTH.net for up to date monitoring information."

Disheartening news from Egypt: soulflakes points to this story of some Egyptians celebrating the attacks today. Here's a BBC piece which indicates the feeling is shared in some other African countries. This doesn't mean that all or most people in any country feel the same way.

yoda389 writes: "I'm getting reports from friends that gas prices are jumping to as much as $5.00 a gallon. There are huge lines at all gas stations here in my hometown someplace in Wisconsin." And ikohl1 writes: "A friend just informed me of how gas prices were raised to $3.50 in a town near where i live. I didn't believe him at first but I found this article on Yahoo."

Gas prices may fluctuate in the short term, but in the long haul, effects on exports of goods physical and abstract may be affected just as drastically: elliotj writes: "MSNBC has a Steven Levy opinion piece on the possible implications of today's attack on America and governmental policy on encryption export restrictions. Personally, I think we need to determine exactly what happened before blaming physical or electronic security measures for a role in the tragedy. I heard the planes were hi-jacked with knives ... that doesn't sound very high-tech or a sign of significant security failings to me. It is the act itself that is so shocking and sickening."

Well, we've gotten a massive number of submissions with the haps at LWCE. I've distilled some of the good ones below: Chanc_Grokon wrote to us with the press release from Ximian about the monthly charges for Red Carpet, their installer. He also raises the "Why not just use apt-get?" point. A number of people wrote pointing out LinuxLookup.com's Day 1 coverage and Day 2 coverage. Of particular interest to Daeslin was Larry Lessig's attack on overly strong intellectual property laws. A number of people, Krismon included, have voiced some disappointment at the excitement of the show - not being there, I make no judgments. Sun has unveiled more details about StarOffice 6. Compaq's CTO also made comments about Linux improving in the enterprise. jrbw sent in Linus' thoughts (dismissive) of .Net/Hailstorm. And KDE has won the "Best Open Source Project" award. Newsforge has also got a round-up and coverage piece. More news as it happens.

Goatbert writes: "More Athlon news, seems to be a lot of that going around. This time, LinuxHardware.org has a DDR Athlon motherboard comparison to find out which of the three featured chipsets performs the best with Linux."

Anonymouse writes: "AMD today released their 1GHz Duron, based on the morgan core, which was mentioned briefly in your earlier Athlon article. It adds hardware pre-fetch, an internal thermal diode for accurate temperature sensing on boards that can read it, and SSE instructions. It is also the same core that will become the DuronMP for ultra cheap low-end SMP system. NewsForge has a review of it under Linux, and FiringSquad and Hexus.net have reviews for it under Windows." Nice complement to the new Athlons. 1GHz in a low end processor -- sheesh!

An anonymous but adulatory reader sent in: "Grant Gross wrote a truly sterling editorial on NewsForge about the Felten SDMI-crack paper and how the RIAA's attempt to suppress it uses the DMCA in a most unhealthy way. Jim Tyre, one of Prof. Felten's attorneys, read this article and said, simply, 'Grant rocks.'"

chill writes: "Princeton scientist Dr. Edward Felten and his colleagues presented their paper entitled 'Reading Between the Lines: Lessons From an SDMI Challenge' at the Usenix Security Symposium. CNN has an article. This is the paper that the RIAA threatened legal action (DMCA) over in the past, if he made his findings public. They have since backed off their threats." Newsforge is carrying a piece on the same thing that goes into a bit more depth, and links to coverage of yesterday's press conference, and the Standard has a decent piece on it as well.

chill writes: "Princeton scientist Dr. Edward Felten and his colleagues presented their paper entitled 'Reading Between the Lines: Lessons From an SDMI Challenge' at the Usenix Security Symposium. CNN has an article. This is the paper that the RIAA threatened legal action (DMCA) over in the past, if he made his findings public. They have since backed off their threats." Newsforge is carrying a piece on the same thing that goes into a bit more depth, and links to coverage of yesterday's press conference, and the Standard has a decent piece on it as well.

A few weeks ago, dot.kde.org featured a great why-should-this-be-amazing story about Linux being used as the day-to-day desktop operating system for city employees in Largo, Florida. Roblimo got a chance to see the system in action to find out how ordinary office workers are proving that the old "Linux is tough to use" shibboleth is nothing but FUD, and how a medium-sized city is saving buckets of money by minimizing the tax dollars spent on licenses and hardware. Oh, and they've also pre-empted the kind of costs (in hassle and money) that can face any organization that Microsoft suspects may have some licenses out of order. This is the kind of thing every elected official should have politely waved in his or her face by concerned taxpayers. The Largo system uses KDE on Red Hat, but since both KDE and Gnome are paying much attention to user interface, similar systems could easily be running on various combinations of hardware / distribution / desktop system.

A few weeks ago, dot.kde.org featured a great why-should-this-be-amazing story about Linux being used as the day-to-day desktop operating system for city employees in Largo, Florida. Roblimo got a chance to see the system in action to find out how ordinary office workers are proving that the old "Linux is tough to use" shibboleth is nothing but FUD, and how a medium-sized city is saving buckets of money by minimizing the tax dollars spent on licenses and hardware. Oh, and they've also pre-empted the kind of costs (in hassle and money) that can face any organization that Microsoft suspects may have some licenses out of order. This is the kind of thing every elected official should have politely waved in his or her face by concerned taxpayers. The Largo system uses KDE on Red Hat, but since both KDE and Gnome are paying much attention to user interface, similar systems could easily be running on various combinations of hardware / distribution / desktop system.

I don't understand why Symantec classifies a "remote root" exploit as only "medium" damage. Code Red ^[?] is hitting cable modem networks especially hard, as the new variants scan "nearby" IP's in preference to random ones, which has apparently caused enough damage and network congestion that AT&T's residential broadband division (MediaOne) has cut off port 80 across their network to try and halt the spread of the worm, or so several submitters reported. Newsforge has a story about various reactions to the worm, and reader nettdata sent in an interesting story about the worm becoming the main course at a dinner of security specialists.

Rampaging Goatbert (aka Jeff Feld) has posted a story at Newsforge about something you may want to argue about with your boss or significant other. Specifically, whether high-end CPUs are worth their high prices. Personally, I look even lower on the processor food chain, but watching those price-curve inflection points makes the runner-up chips pretty tempting. Your mileage will almost certainly vary.

rubberpaw (J. Nathan Matias) writes: "Sunspire Studios is going to release Tux Racer 1.0 as a closed source, commercial product. Tux Racer is the Free Software community's premier 3d game, and I only found out about the future closed-source release in emails from Sunspire. They are following the procedures of relicensing allowed from the GPL, so everything is legal. In response to this, I have started a project called Open Racer whose purpose is to continue development of the GPL Tux Racer. Sunspire is ok (and, I believe, happy) with everything so long as the project doesn't go into direct competition with Tux Racer 1.0. It's my goal to develop the project in a different direction in accordance with Sunspire's wishes, but I'm still looking for ideas at this point." See this Newsforge story for more details.Update: 08/02 09:55 PM by T : According to the Sunspire site, the eventual retail version of Tux Racer will have binary versions for Windows and Linux, "(and most likely the Macintosh)." The OEM version in the works, however, is presently Windows-only.

Matias writes: "Sunspire is ok (and, I believe, happy) with everything so long as the project doesn't go into direct competition with Tux Racer 1.0. It's my goal to develop the project in a different direction in accordance with Sunspire's wishes, but I'm still looking for ideas at this point."

Also, he's looking for a new maintainer -- if this project grabs your attention, pop him an email.

Subscribers to Mandrake's weekly newsletter got the news earlier today that "MandrakeSoft is pleased to announce that the company is now listed on the Euronext Marché Libre. As a result of the successful Initial Public Offering, a total of 688.480 shares were sold at 6.2 Euros each. This results in an increase in capital of approximately 4.3 million Euros and represents 20.28% of the company's capital after issue." A good portion of the offering was completed in just the last half-day of availability, according to email received from Mandrake higher-ups, in part perhaps because of the confusion about who could participate in the offer, and how. There's also a story about the IPO at NewsForge, and a discussion at Mandrake's forum. If you're interested in picking up any stock in the company, there are some useful pointers (and more info) at their investor info page.

cdlu writes: "Citing the need for up-to-date digital copyright laws, the Canadian government is starting hearings into our own version of the US's DMCA. Do you still wonder why people protest at the G-8 and other such summits?" Meanwhile, New Zealand is also planning to reform its copyright laws to include DMCA-like restrictions, and in the USA, Congress is planning to double the number of FBI agents and Federal attorneys devoted to pursuing copyright cases.

After taking some heat a few months ago for not having many products listed, the Open Source Directory has been plugging away. Steve Mallett writes: "We made the product database of Open-Source Directory downloadable in XML today. Announcement here at newsforge. We're hoping that people begin to use the data like google uses dmoz. More people see the data, which increases awareness of open-source which increases the database which gets more people to display the data etc, etc ... You get the point."

Providing a list of applications stable enough to recommend to non-gurus is a worthy endeavor, so it's great to see this project slowly becoming more useful. There are gaps to plug going forward, though. The default text strings can be ambiguous, and the information provided on individual projects doesn't always give much to go on. For instance, look at the Mosix page, where you'll find that "This product has no Latest version yet," "This product doesn't fix anything," and "This product is not like any other," but no email contact information for Mosix authors. Similarly ambiguous pages are provided for Gnucleus and OpenOffice.

I exchanged some email with Steve on the state of the entries in the database, and asked about how the missing information could be filled in. He told me that while project maintairers (and site administrators) are the only ones who can update entries, users can contact the administrators of individual projects directly through the OSD site to suggest changes or clarification.

"We're trying to make things easier for the maintainers. ... I think there is a serious lack of product maintainers to help authors," he said. To that end, Mallet may soon provide example projects for software authors to emulate, and is in the early stages of a unified project-listing tool which would update listings on various web sites. Given the number of sites that offer downloads or simply track various software projects, that could be a boon to developers.

Hopefully, this will turn into the sort of tool that you can show a boss or teacher to answer the bugaboo of Free / Open Source being unready for prime time (or just overwhelming and undifferentiated).

1millionmhz writes: "NewsForge is reporting that Alan Cox has resigned from his position on the USENIX ALS committee in protest of Dimitry Sklyarov's arrest in Las Vegas. He is also urging non-US programmers to boycott American computing conferences until the DMCA is overturned." Boy, aren't you glad that the DMCA now has nine special units to prosecute hacking and copyright violations? At least it will help keep the country safe from programmers. Update: 07/22 01:05 AM by T : Yup, it's a dupe. Mea culpa -- I missed it the first time. Worth dwelling on, though ;)

1millionmhz writes: "NewsForge is reporting that Alan Cox has resigned from his position on the USENIX ALS committee in protest of Dimitry Sklyarov's arrest in Las Vegas. He is also urging non-US programmers to boycott American computing conferences until the DMCA is overturned." Boy, aren't you glad that the DMCA now has nine special units to prosecute hacking and copyright violations? At least it will help keep the country safe from programmers. Update: 07/22 01:05 AM by T : Yup, it's a dupe. Mea culpa -- I missed it the first time. Worth dwelling on, though ;)

After the arrest of Dmitri Sklyarov, the EFF has been busy organizing protests for next Monday - check to see if there's one near you. A Las Vegas TV station apparently managed to interview him, though I can't get their video feed to work for me. The free-sklyarov mailing list has been set up to, well, you can probably guess. Read their archives before jumping in. And website BoycottAdobe.org is an easy URL to remember. Alan Cox has resigned from the Usenix committee which organizes the annual Linux Showcase, citing concerns about DMCA enforcement in the United States. And finally, Professor Touretzky has built on his DeCSS Gallery with a Gallery of Adobe Remedies for showcasing methods to remove restrictions on PDF files.

An interesting twist has popped up in the Open Source database market. MySQL AB (the company that develops the DB by the same name, and owner of the .com) has sent out a press release (attached below) attacking NuSphere for running MySQL.org. NuSphere has extended MySQL with the very cool, but not open source Gemini table type (which we are seriously considering using on Slashdot and kick ass over anything MySQL has), and are doing tons to promote it in the US. The press release is pretty brutal but I find myself mixed on the issue: Afaik its not a GPL issue, but rather a trademark and name dilution issue. What scares me most is the hostility in this press release, and also the fact that we will see more of this sort of story with other open source projects being abducted and by companies that didn't write the code. Personally I don't have a problem with this stuff happening, but I'm not MySQL AB. Update: 07/13 10:30PM EDT by C :As always, it appears that there is more to the story. Many of you were right to assume that these maneuverings might be due to a business deal gone sour, and that seems to be the case as reported by NewsForge.

What follows is the Press Release MySQL AB has released attacking MySQL.org (and NuSphere). It was submitted to us by Marten Mickos from MySQL

MYSQL COMMUNITY THREATENED BY OBSCURE .ORG WEBSITE

Uppsala, Sweden, 12 July 2001 - Open source software company MySQL AB today announced that an unauthorised party has set up a website on www.mysql.ORG in direct violation of the trademark rights of MySQL AB and with the apparent goal to confuse the huge worldwide community of MySQL users.

Michael "Monty" Widenius and David Axmark, co-founders of MySQL AB and the creators of this world-leading open source database software commented "We normally welcome new sites that focus on the MySQL(TM) server, but this one violates our trademark and may lead users to wrongfully believe it represents the people behind the MySQL(TM) server. We were not contacted about this website and it operates without our authorisation. We cannot recommend anybody to visit that site."

The obscure .ORG site claims to offer free services, but a registration is needed for downloading the software that apparently has been copied from the official MySQL.com website. The .ORG site fails to display information of the people or organisations behind it. The domain was registered in the name of NuSphere Corporation, a subsidiary of Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), on 4 June 2001. Both companies sell proprietary, non-open software.

The original and official MySQL.com website of MySQL AB is immensely popular and serves millions of users with free software, free information, and an opportunity for visitors to contribute comments and other things, such as additional tools and utilities. No registration is required for accessing MySQL.com. In addition, the MySQL(TM) server is a popular topic on several other open source websites such as Slashdot.

Yahoo! has been using MySQL(TM) servers in mission-critical applications for several years. Jeremy Zawodny, a member of the MySQL user community and an engineer at Yahoo! commented "I really don't see the need for the MySQL.org Web site. The MySQL.com site already contains a wealth of information and software from the MySQL developers and members of the community. I worry that the introduction of this Web site will confuse new users and potentially fracture or otherwise harm the MySQL user community."

Marten Mickos, newly appointed CEO of MySQL AB, commented "We consider operating the mysql.ORG site illegal activity and we are taking steps to enforce our trademark and other rights." In respect to how the MySQL(TM) community is served, he said "We will continue to serve existing and new MySQL(TM) users with software under GPL and free information without requiring registration. Our new 'portals' present an even wider array of useful information and services, and users are free to comment on the items there. At the same time, we have the best commercial support services for the MySQL(TM) server and as the owners of the software we are the only ones who can sell commercial licences." MySQL AB develops, supports and markets the MySQL(TM) database server worldwide. MySQL AB, the sole owner of the MySQL(TM) trademark, is fully committed to the Open Source philosophy and to making MySQL(TM) available and affordable for all. MySQL AB is a Swedish privately held company co-founded by David Axmark, Allan Larsson and Michael Widenius. MySQL(TM) is a trademark of MySQL AB in the US, Sweden, and other countries, and is registered in Sweden and 13 other countries. Other names are trademarks of their respective owners. For more information, please visit www.mysql.com or write to press@mysql.com."

Newsforge (part of the sinister OSDN keiretsu ^[?] ) has a nice story about getting starting developing for the GNU/Linux desktop. I'm not totally sure this is the best way to start (any guide that starts off "First, learn C++" is not optimal in my book...) but there are some good tips in there.

Slashback tonight with just a few small items: an update on the AOL vs. Gaim brouhaha (good news), a slight return to the NSA's recommendations on securing that legacy Windows box, and oh, by the way, the official launch of the Free Software antidote to paying fealty forever to Redmond.

Sometimes it's nice to catch a disease. A few days ago, michael posted that Ximian was about to release its Free Software answer to Microsoft's .NET. Now it's official. Miguel de Icaza adds some detail: "Hello guys, As of today, we launched Mono, a project to implement a GPL-ed Common Language Runtime, class libraries and C# compiler to be compatible with Microsoft's .NET Framework. You can look at the press release that we put out. We also have a FAQ that covers various points and tries to explain how this is not .NET."

Newsforge is carrying a piece which ties together a bit more as well to explain how the promised benefits of .NET, as amorphous as they are, can be addressed with these and other software. Miguel has seemingly been busy on the phone today.

Hornsby points as well to "a very interesting article on the implications of Microsoft's .NET technology on open source development. The article heavily quotes Miguel, who "believes that .NET is going to be the dominant development environment for the next 20 years."

They oughtta know how to secure a box. Jhereg42 writes: "The NSA has posted their W2k security guides on a new (Slash proof :-) web site. Also included are Cisco security guides and a 'Supporting Documents' section containing docs on "Defense in Depth" and I-Planet Web Server configuration."

This is what lawyers are for. Rolan writes: "Mark Spencer has sent out an update on AOL v GAIM. It seems that the request for assistance was met well beyond the goal of US$500, at US$1700! The letter and attached response. The response was converted from an attached rtf file into an html file by StarOffice 5.2."

Thanks to all who sent along a few bucks, and good luck to the Gaim folks in the Surreal Themepark World of Contested Trademarks.

The Alchemist asks: "So I'm reading the Newsforge commentary on the newest Microsoft and Business Software Alliance (BSA) threat letters here, and I'm wondering: 'Has anyone been through these things?' How do they (the BSA officials) conduct themselves? Are the local authorities involved? Do they even bother with a warrant? Has anyone been found in compliance with this private Microsoft police force, other than the Mexican Firm that's suing them?" For a software licensing organization how does the BSA pull off things like this? Do they have any ties with law enforcement? Of course, the more you know about how the BSA works, the better off you will be in preventing your company from receiving an unexpected visit. It's 2001: do you know where all of your software licenses are?

The Alchemist asks: "So I'm reading the Newsforge commentary on the newest Microsoft and Business Software Alliance (BSA) threat letters here, and I'm wondering: 'Has anyone been through these things?' How do they (the BSA officials) conduct themselves? Are the local authorities involved? Do they even bother with a warrant? Has anyone been found in compliance with this private Microsoft police force, other than the Mexican Firm that's suing them?" For a software licensing organization how does the BSA pull off things like this? Do they have any ties with law enforcement? Of course, the more you know about how the BSA works, the better off you will be in preventing your company from receiving an unexpected visit. It's 2001: do you know where all of your software licenses are?

The European Union is considering anti-trust action against Microsoft. The Wall Street Journal ran a column today about the Windows XP registration process, which is apparently news to a lot of people who don't read enough Slashdot. IBM says Microsoft is arrogant. Microsoft's XP Beta program is a little more open than they thought. And finally, and most amusingly, one of the threat letters being sent out by the BSA on behalf of Microsoft was sent to (wait for it...) OSDN. Okay, no more Microsoft submissions today, please.

The subject pretty much says it. You can read the announcement over at Yahoo, but the short and long of it is that VA, the company that owns OSDN which owns Slashdot, Freshmeat, and assorted other Linux web sites, has announced that it is leaving the Hardware Business to focus on SourceForge OnSite, OSDN, and Linux development and consulting. Slashdot should be unaffected.Update: 06/27 08:43 PM by H :It's also relevant to point out this statement from Richard French, the General Manager of OSDN, which is a message to the Community.

wrinkledshirt writes: "Bill Gates has finally spoken his mind on the GPL here. Interesting that he calls the GPL a PacMan-like entity considering that's how many of us view him and his company, but I digress ..." According to Gates, GPLd software "makes it impossible for a commercial company to use any of that work or build on any of that work. So what you saw with TCP/IP or Sendmail or the browser could never happen." Or the development of a full Free operating system either, I guess. Perhaps he should issue a company memo to the folks running Microsoft's stats.zone.com, who seem to be using GNU/Linux and Apache happily without donating MS Office to the FSF. Wacka wacka.

Quite a few readers submitted news about a recent Gartner study which implies a far-lower-than-usually-supposed percentage of servers running GNU/Linux. Reader mfarver, for instance, writes: "Only 8.6 percent of servers shipped in 3rd quarter 2000 were running Linux, claims a recent Gartner Dataquest report. A previous study published by IDC estimated linux held about 24% of the server market share. Unsurprisingly the Gartner study was partially commissioned by Microsoft." Roblimo has penned an interesting piece up at NewsForge about why those numbers might smell a little funny. Hint: how many machines have you bought running any Free operating system from the get-go?

SLUG member writes: "At the Computer and Technology Showcase this week in Clearwater, maddog was the keynote speaker, but Microsoft still thought they owned the show. There was a little confrontation out front with the guys from the Suncoast Linux Users' Group when the MS people decided they didn't like them handing out free Linux CDs and magazine. There's something about it at Newsforge." Newsforge is owned by VA Linux, which also owns Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: "Tech stocks are in the toilet and the word Linux makes investors curse right now, but Mandrake is talking about an IPO. Business writer Jack Bryar suggests a way Mandrake could go public in spite of Linux's bad rep on Wall Street: by selling shares to loyal users the same way the Green Bay Packers sold shares to local football fans who wanted to 'be part of the team' but didn't necessarily expect to make a profit. Do you think enough people love Manrake enough to make this work? I might buy $1000 worth myself if they did this, just for the hell of it. Would you?" It's an interesting idea, not necessarily limited to Mandrake either, though that does sound like a good first candidate.

Slashback tonight with stuff to chew on re: XFS, the baseball-Everquest connection, and whether it's safe to login at SourceForge. Oh, and yet more on the state of HAL. Please read safely.

XFS on track Have no fear for XFS at present! Thanks to Steve Lord, Principal Engineer, Filesystem Software at SGI (no relation), for the following positive news about journaling file systems for GNU/Linux systems:

splord writes "I just became aware of the slashdot posting based on email I send to the XFS linux list yesterday and I want to clarify a couple of points.

1. Linuxcare was not 'sponsoring' the port, SGI was paying Linuxcare for work on the port. This contract was terminated by SGI and Linuxcare management, all the technical people involved wanted it to continue. I believe it was financial considerations on the part of both companies which resulted in the termination of the contract.

2. SGI is not stopping work on the port, but reduced headcount will change how fast we can respond to questions and problems.

I personally remain committed to working on the port, even if at some point SGI does not. Martin Peterson of Linuxcare has also stated he will continue doing XFS work on his own time. For now however, SGI does remain committed to the port, and work will continue."

Strike Two! OakLEE writes "Following up on last weeks article about the Everquest grudge between baseball players Curt Schilling and Doug Glanville, ESPN put this article in which Schilling accused Glanville of "slanderous lies being spewn, about the kind-hearted (computer) dwarf of mine. Stout and strong, yet gentle is he. But he will not allow his good name to be dragged through the mud by a reckless goof of a Paladin." They plan a "re-match" later online this week."

It's back for a hopefully not-too-limited time! After being compromised not long ago, everyone's favorite all-in-one Open Source development site SourceForge is back up. Interesting account of how it was compromised, too. Small comfort that it had to do with a stolen password rather than a code exploit, but even small comforts feel good.

Quick, only 7 months left! mvw writes "Two interesting features on the state of AI:

• Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality is an article by Douglas B. Lenant, who is working on project cyc (pronounced psyche), a huge database of common knowledge with inference system, and gives his profound opinion and critique on 2001's HAL computer and how real intelligent computers should behave.

• It's 2001. Where Is HAL? is a lecture from AI legend Marvin Minsky (formats: video, mp3, transcript), who next to giving lots of funny annecdotes (e.g. what robotics and ESP have in common and why building physical robots is a stupid idea for students) talks about the state of present AI and some interesting ideas how to move on, that will be explained in detail in his upcoming book The Emotion Machine.

  His prior book Society of the Mind was about Minsky's view of the mind being the result of the workings of a lot of different mental processes. This time he focusess on the question of knowledge representation and the need to keep a bag of different ones around to be able to understand and solve problems (great dissing of neural nets, genetic algorithms and statistical methods :-)

Regards,
Marc"

An AC submitted this sad news: "NewsForge has a couple of articles on a management shakeup and more at French Linux distribution Mandrake. The CEO, CIO, CTO and others, including most of the IS team, have been let go. Others have taken voluntary pay cuts or cuts in their work hours. Ouch!" Several of the slashdot staff are big Mandrake fans; I hope they can keep going in the face of adversity.

An Anonymous Coward sent in: "NewsForge has a story about a company called Codeweavers releasing a program that allows nearly all Windows plug-ins such as Quicktime or Shockwave to run on Linux browsers including Netscape, Mozilla and Konqueror. The company's aiming the product at the embedded device market, but promises to release a version for the desktop, too."

Thought the GPL was a nice license for your software project, one that fit with your thoughts about software freedom? Perhaps the BSD license was more to your taste? Well, even if you confine yourself to the ones approved by the Open Source Initiative, you can now choose from a grand total of 23 different licenses. Two new licenses have been blessed by the OSI: IBM's Common Public License Version 0.5, and the Apple Public Source License 1.2. Both may fit the OSI's definition of Open Source, but Free? Neither one uses that word. Richard Stallman isn't kidding when he says Open Source is not synonymous with Free Software. Clearly, there is nothing to stop every software company in the world from writing its own Open Source license. So here we are with at least 23, and rising.

edoug writes: "Ransom Love (CEO of Caldera) said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL doesn't make much business sense. And so, Caldera is mulling a non-GPL licensing mechanism -- most likely one based on the BSD license. Love said: "Microsoft is attacking open source at its weakest point: the GPL." Check out the article here ." Update: 05/10 7:30 AM by michael : Newsforge has an interview with Love.

GroundBounce writes "Here's an article at NewsForge detailing how Red Hat is taking the initiative to broker deals with state legislatures to change parts of UCITA ^[?] which are damaging to open source software, such as mandatory warranties and reverse engineering. They are also working with the uniform law commission to try to change the prototype for the law." Good work by Red Hat - that's a necessary change.