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andyo from O'Reilly submitted linkage to a report he wrote over there where he urges Red Hat to think twice about letting AOL eat them. Talks about GNN, as well as Netscape. I'm sure this isn't the last word we'll hear on this subject either.

Lisa points to this article on oreillynet with "two opposing viewpoints on whether all software created by publicly funded research should be licensed as open source, and the chance to weigh in yourself." Open-source software (under whatever license) seems to me like a good way to multiply the investment of tax dollars that public funding relies on, but the counterarguments offered here are interesting.

Michael writes: "The O'Reilly Open Source Convention has announced their call for participation for the upcoming OS Convention. They're especially seeking presentations that invoke open source's innovative, do-more-with-less origins and address the challenges of today's economic turbulence. The convention takes place at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina, San Diego, California, July 22-26, 2002."

As promised chrisd back with his report from the expo floor at MacWorld and a brief note about what Linux can learn from the Macintosh. Walking the show floor at MacWorld, I'm beginning to feel a little sorry for people who are Windows boosters. Where do they go for their community? The Mac folks have MacWorld and WWDC, we have LinuxWorld, O'Reilly and Usenix, but they have what? Comdex? There is no MicrosoftWorld. Whether this is a result of their size or what, I couldn't tell you. But there is a similar feel that the "Linux Faithful" and "Apple Faithful" share and that is that we are clearly part of a user and developer community.

Yesterday, I reported on the Jobs keynote and his ability to expand his reality field to encompass and entire ballroom. Today, do people still feel energized by his talk? Some were still pumped just to a part of the show, gasping and oo'ing and enjoying the melodrama of it all, but the next day there was a collective vibe of "well, was that it?". This is not to say that they were disappointed by it, but they perhaps wanted something more. The rumors had been flying for months about a flat screen iMac, and since that was what Apple brought forward, it was going to been seen as an evolutional, and thus anti-climactic, step, even if it was daringly packaged.

Many noted that they were expecting a speed bump for the G4 towers, but with Seybold coming up in February, many expect Apple to announce their tower update then to a more professional audience.

At the Tuesday keynote "The Power of X", Phil Shiller and Avie Tevanian talked about OS X and what it means to apple and to the future of the Macintosh platform. Apple is stressing how stable and crash proof OS X is and what this can means to the "Apple Faithful". They discussed the kernel, the media layers, security and the user interface and how it all works together. What they've done with their BSD derived core is really impressive. As part of the keynote, Tweak Films showed off an OS X based deep ocean wave visualization app that they assert they ported from Unix in weeks, with significant functionality gains.

The show floor itself was bouncy fun. For me it was a nice change from the austerity of a Linux exposition and it's focus on sheer functionality, capability and commerce. Large exhibitors included Alias|WaveFront, Adobe (not having anyone at this conference arrested, I noted), FileMaker pro, Microsoft and a number of other software development houses. As I walked the floor, I made a mental note of applications that were available for both Windows and the Macintosh. The reality is that there isn't much that is specifically for the Mac intosh, with the obvious exception of the hardware from apple, with all the vendors one ends up asking, what is unique here?

What Apple has that is unique, and sadly Windows and Linux both lack, is cohesion. Everyone with devices and software for the Mac seem to work so well with each other and the OS. We should strive to emulate that cohesion whenever practical for open source software. Before, the apple story was cohesion without stability or power. Now, with BSD at it's core, you can bet that Apple will be able to attack Windows, SUN and Linux on the power front. A year from now it will be interesting to see how many people are running apache to serve pages from their Apple machines, and I will be unsurprised if someone is giving an apache serving presentation at the next Apple WWDC.

Please note that I have posted some pictures of my trip to MacWorld, with some pictures of the new iMac and of the keynote.

Masem writes: "Salon has a well-written article article on the recent revival of much of the USENET archives from '81 to '90 by Google. It mentions that much of the recovery was thanks to years of work in transferring data off 140-some 10" magnetic tapes (~120megs of data) to a more conventional format in order to recover much of the early posts. Even a reference to the previous Slashdot story is made." Update: 01/07 23:52 GMT by T : btempleton adds: "O'Reilly Network asked me to do an article on similar themes and rememberances of USENET history." Thanks, Brad.

Lisa writes "Tim O'Reilly has a piece called "Open Source and the Obligation to Recycle" in his weblog, where he urges every company whose products are "obsolete" to consider making them available under an open source license, or putting them in the public domain, thereby enriching the soil of our collective commons. (Interestingly, the first posting on the weblog disagrees, saying "...Giving away the software of failed companies could turn every corporate failure into a disaster for everyone else.)""

*ZiggyP0P* writes: "We remember hearing how Dmitry was let off and released (so he can finally go home) but how he had to cooperate with the government in the prosecution of his employer as a plea bargain. Turns out that this was all a lie by the Justice Dept. Skylarov has released his own statements which explain what exactly happened. He has entered into no legal plea bargain and he is still employed by Elcomsoft (even though the justice dept called him his former employer)."

gmr2048 writes: "CNN is reporting that RSA has helped develop "Fast Packet Keying" to strengthen WEP security. More info can be found at the RSA page. Damn, and I'm still working on my Pringles can antenna."

Lisa writes: "Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto talks about Ruby's history, the influence of Perl and Python on Ruby, and his new book, Ruby in a Nutshell. In the article he explains: "When I started the language project, I was joking with a friend that the project must be code-named after a gemstone's name (àla Perl). So my friend came up with "ruby". It's a short name for a beautiful and highly valued stone. So I picked up that name, and it eventually became the official name of the language. Later, I found out that pearl is the birthstone for June, and ruby is the birthstone for July. I believe Ruby is an appropriate name for the next language after Perl.""

Lisa writes: "Colliding billiard balls. Missile trajectories. Cornering dynamics in speeding cars. If these type of actions are expressed in computer software, applying physics-based models can greatly enhance the level of realism. David M. Bourg offers five steps towards doing just that in this LinuxDev Center article."

Lisa writes: "Colliding billiard balls. Missile trajectories. Cornering dynamics in speeding cars. If these type of actions are expressed in computer software, applying physics-based models can greatly enhance the level of realism. David M. Bourg offers five steps towards doing just that in this LinuxDev Center article."

Warhammer writes: "In his web log today Tim O'Reilly responded to Stallman and Kuhn's essay, Freedom or Power (previous Slashdot article). I think he has some great points about not getting caught up in who has more of a right to freedom. Instead he says we should concentrate on a compromise that benefits everyone, developer and user alike."

Ed. note - a brief response to Tim. A) my name isn't Timothy. (I know, I know, we all look alike. :) And B) I was trying to say pretty much what O'Reilly is saying - that all licensing, including the GPL, is an expression of power over what other people can do with the software. Hence the term "all licensing". If there were no copyright whatsoever on computer code, no intellectual property considerations at all, perhaps we could approach the state of true freedom. In the meantime, the GPL is a good way to place code firmly into a state where it is mostly free - you are free to do anything with GPL code except take it out of its free state. As far as restrictions go, this one is infinitely more palatable than most of the powers that software licensing seeks to exercise over software users.

As a more general point, I take issue with O'Reilly's description of copyright law as a compromise between creators and users. There's absolutely no evidence that the rights of users are considered when copyright laws are made. All copyright law changes made in my lifetime, nearly all copyright law changes ever, have been expansions of copyright law - if it's a compromise, it's an extraordinarily one-sided one. (I suppose you could a describe a mugging as a compromise between the mugger and the little old lady over rights to her purse.) Copyright law is more accurately described as a compromise between copyright holders and copyright holders. Other descriptions are both inaccurate and do a disservice to efforts to reform the laws.

dizzyPhoenix writes: "O'reilly net is running an article on FreeCiv and how the game came about." As is often true on O'Reillynet, the article's well-thought and interesting reading.

mpawlo writes: "As reported by Gnuheter, a new essay published by Bradley M. Kuhn and Richard M. Stallman carries the title "Freedom or Power?". The authors state something that we might have suspected from essays from Kuhn and Stallman before, but now is a little more clear, if still ambiguous: "However, one so-called freedom that we do not advocate is the "freedom to choose any license you want for software you write". We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom." The essay is interesting in the light of an earlier essay published by Eric S Raymond. ... Tim O'Reilly started the debate with his weblog of July 28, 2001: My definition of freedom zero." Ed. note - FWIW, Stallman and Kuhn are right. Not necessarily in their advocacy of the GPL, but certainly in their description of whether licensing is freedom for the developer or power over others. All licensing stems from copyright law, a completely man-made creation whose sole purpose is to give the writer of creative works artificial power over what others do with those works. If you take the canonical description of freedom ("Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins") and apply it to software, it's pretty clear that true freedom would not let one person control what another does with software.

mpawlo writes: "As reported by Gnuheter, a new essay published by Bradley M. Kuhn and Richard M. Stallman carries the title "Freedom or Power?". The authors state something that we might have suspected from essays from Kuhn and Stallman before, but now is a little more clear, if still ambiguous: "However, one so-called freedom that we do not advocate is the "freedom to choose any license you want for software you write". We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom." The essay is interesting in the light of an earlier essay published by Eric S Raymond. ... Tim O'Reilly started the debate with his weblog of July 28, 2001: My definition of freedom zero." Ed. note - FWIW, Stallman and Kuhn are right. Not necessarily in their advocacy of the GPL, but certainly in their description of whether licensing is freedom for the developer or power over others. All licensing stems from copyright law, a completely man-made creation whose sole purpose is to give the writer of creative works artificial power over what others do with those works. If you take the canonical description of freedom ("Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins") and apply it to software, it's pretty clear that true freedom would not let one person control what another does with software.

Lisa writes: "Even an open community wireless network needs to keep track of who's using it, says Rob Flickenger, who describes the authentication system used by NoCat in this article." This is at least partially an ad for Flickenger's new book, but since I plan to buy the book anyway... Update: 11/17 14:53 GMT by M : Yep, this is a duplicate. But community wireless needs more participants, so why not read it again? :)

Lisa writes: "Even an open community wireless network needs to keep track of who's using it, says Rob Flickenger, who describes the authentication system used by NoCat in this article." This is at least partially an ad for Flickenger's new book, but since I plan to buy the book anyway... Update: 11/17 14:53 GMT by M : Yep, this is a duplicate. But community wireless needs more participants, so why not read it again? :)

bgood writes: "O'Reilly Network has an interesting article on authentication for wireless networks. The author discusses both the technical aspects, specifically NoCatAuth, and the overall context of why someone would choose (or not choose) to monitor or track the use of their wireless network. While geared towards network neighborhoods, the article definitely has applicability in more formal settings."

bgood writes: "O'Reilly Network has an interesting article on authentication for wireless networks. The author discusses both the technical aspects, specifically NoCatAuth, and the overall context of why someone would choose (or not choose) to monitor or track the use of their wireless network. While geared towards network neighborhoods, the article definitely has applicability in more formal settings."

eggboard writes: "The coast of Maine started getting lit up by wireless over long distance back in 1997. Now hundreds of users, some of them dozens of miles from the connecting ISP's HQ, use plain old 802.11, 802.11b's predecessor, to hit nearly 2 Mbps of throughput. Cable Internet is broken out there; DSL unreachable; ISDN expensive. Other communities are also adopting tower-based point-to-point, bridge and repeater wireless to bring broadband to rural and small towns. Is this the way to drag lesser-populated areas into the modern economy, and promote deurbanization?"

Phos writes: "A cool article over at the O'Reilly Network outlines a possible solution to cellular network outages in the event of an emergency. A P2P SMS technique where individual handsets act as autonomous SMS relays."

Phos writes: "A cool article over at the O'Reilly Network outlines a possible solution to cellular network outages in the event of an emergency. A P2P SMS technique where individual handsets act as autonomous SMS relays."

LiquidPC writes "Running a cvsupd server isn't an easy task, but ONLamp.com has some help to make it simpler. In the article, Michael Lucas continues his series on CVSup."

eggboard writes "You can bridge two wired networks using two cheap Linksys 802.11b access points. This isn't exactly new, but the article I wrote, which just went up on Friday, describes in excruciating detail how to configure the units. The big news is really price: the WAP11 described is about $185 with a manfacturer's rebate. Using higher-gain antennas than the ones shipped with the WAP11 and/or tuning line-of-sight access, you've either figured out how to hook up a neighborhood of separate wired networks, or how to link multiple offices cheaply."

Tim O'Reilly writes "Brian Jepson, a long-time perl hacker who's been working with Microsoft on some of O'Reilly's books about .Net, and with Miguel on mono, rebuts Petreley's warnings about mono."

So, we've gotten a lot of submissions about various things related to the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. Michael Tiemann had a few words before the convention; Dan Gillmor wrote a column about it; Fred Baker made a few flameworthy remarks. For whatever reason the whole conference seemed to be dominated by the Mundie-Tiemann debate. See our earlier story for some good links, or watch the debate video, or just read some post-debate coverage here or here. And if you haven't heard enough from Mundie, you can even read his post-debate letter.

Thanks to Simone for pointing out Doc Searls' weblog as well as Dan Gillmore's weblog being updated about the Craig Mundie (of Microsoft)'s speech @ O'Reilly's Open Source Convention. Dan's take is excellent - that's what I'm hearing from people there as well.

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.

raelity writes "Microsoft has announced its first foray into the waters of publicly shared source. In an O'Reilly Network interview, Tim O'Reilly talks to Microsoft program manager (and FreeBSD sympathizer) Dave Stutz about Redmond's plans to release shared-source code of parts of the .NET framework. The offerings include: a C# compiler, C# based ECMAscript compiler, and shared-source CLI for Windows and FreeBSD. The announcement comes against a backdrop of Microsoft's recent attack on some aspects of open source software development, particularly against the GNU Public License (GPL)." I think Jamie put it best when he said recently 'open source: "share and enjoy"; shared source: "look but don't touch"'. This is most certainly an interesting development- so far the Open Source/Free Software division has been the main one, but not we have a third branch. Imagine what would happen if MS adopted a fair license? Compatibility and competition. We would all benefit.

raelity writes "Microsoft has announced its first foray into the waters of publicly shared source. In an O'Reilly Network interview, Tim O'Reilly talks to Microsoft program manager (and FreeBSD sympathizer) Dave Stutz about Redmond's plans to release shared-source code of parts of the .NET framework. The offerings include: a C# compiler, C# based ECMAscript compiler, and shared-source CLI for Windows and FreeBSD. The announcement comes against a backdrop of Microsoft's recent attack on some aspects of open source software development, particularly against the GNU Public License (GPL)." I think Jamie put it best when he said recently 'open source: "share and enjoy"; shared source: "look but don't touch"'. This is most certainly an interesting development- so far the Open Source/Free Software division has been the main one, but not we have a third branch. Imagine what would happen if MS adopted a fair license? Compatibility and competition. We would all benefit.

A reader writes "I've been wanting to get a Linux based handheld, and was trying to decide between an iPaq and a Yopy. This article about the Yopy has pretty well convinced me the iPaq is the way to go, but I'm hoping some /.ers might have some additional insight before I drop a bit of serious cash. I'm a poor student, and can't afford to make a mistake here."

Scooter[AMMO] writes: "I thought people might be interested in this IPv6 overview currently on O'Reillynet. It touches on what a lot of us already know, like a larger addressable space, security, and mobility, but it also goes into some detail that others may not know yet. It gives information on how addresses are divided between host bits and network bits, address creation, NDP, name resolution, multicasting, localnets, and localsites. It also has RFC references for the more demanding researchers among us."

Scooter[AMMO] writes: "I thought people might be interested in this IPv6 overview currently on O'Reillynet. It touches on what a lot of us already know, like a larger addressable space, security, and mobility, but it also goes into some detail that others may not know yet. It gives information on how addresses are divided between host bits and network bits, address creation, NDP, name resolution, multicasting, localnets, and localsites. It also has RFC references for the more demanding researchers among us."

A nameless reader writes: "There is a very favorable and detailed review of the Agenda VR3 at O'Reilly's oreillynet.com site. Unlike many previous reviews, this reviewer is a developer himself, and appreciates the benefits that a full Linux/X windows on a PDA can offer to a knowledgeable user. He also has obviously done his homework, and provides a lot of useful supplementary information." The "Consumer IR" port is one feature I predict will soon mysteriously end up in a lot of other similarly-sized devices as well. Funny, weren't we just reading the obituary of Linux on the desktop?

A nameless reader writes: "There is a very favorable and detailed review of the Agenda VR3 at O'Reilly's oreillynet.com site. Unlike many previous reviews, this reviewer is a developer himself, and appreciates the benefits that a full Linux/X windows on a PDA can offer to a knowledgeable user. He also has obviously done his homework, and provides a lot of useful supplementary information." The "Consumer IR" port is one feature I predict will soon mysteriously end up in a lot of other similarly-sized devices as well. Funny, weren't we just reading the obituary of Linux on the desktop?

raelity writes: "The O'Reilly Network is featuring An Introduction to Extreme Programming, by Chromatic (of Slashdot and PerlMonks fame). 'The central tenet is, "Find the essential elements of creating good software, do them all of the time, and discard everything else." Programmers should program and make schedule estimates. Managers should make business decisions. Customers should choose the features they want and rank them by importance.'"

Simone from O'Reilly pointed out the continuing developments with Rob Flickenger & Co's efforts with 802.11. This time around they're trying to make a five mile to homes, via a 20.9 mile boost antennae. Fun for the whole wireless family.

beat.bolli asks: "As of today, Netscape has 'updated' its my.netscape.com personalized portal to version 2. It seems that they decided to drop all external RDF channels. What gives?" Well, Will Sargent writes: "Netscape removed the RSS 0.91 DTD from their website. This means that all RSS feeds which depend on the RSS 0.91 (many, MANY news sites) cannot be used with a validating parser. Rael Dornfest has more details."

tadghin writes: "Rob Flickenger at O'Reilly Network has written a neat little piece about the range of wireless networks and how high antennae need to be to reach the maximum promised range, given factors such as the earth's curvature and the fresnel zone." Not that most people have solid transmitter disks and clear lines of sight to a wireless reciever miles away, but the more the better when it comes to bypassing modems and expensive per-computer hookups.

Simone Paddock pointed me to the article on O'Reillynet about some quick and dirty testing of WEP, wireless, microwaves, ovens and all sorts of fun stuff. The article is entertaining and informative - my favorite kind.

jse75 writes: "This story from the O'Reilly site comments on the state of HyperCard - Apple's much-loved, long-lived, multimedia software tool. Lots of HyperCard stacks are in use today, in all sorts of places - businesses, doctor's offices, museums, and more. Currently there seem to be no plans on Apple's part to update HyperCard to run natively under Mac OS X. The story from O'Reilly contains more info about the International HyperCard Users Group and their quest to get Apple to Carbonize HyperCard. They even had a booth at MacWorld Expo! Join in, maybe together we can convince Apple that continued support for HyperCard is a Good Thing!"

The One-Click Saga has been going on for a while now. BountyQuest has now thrown in the towel on finding a definitive usage of one-click web shopping that predates Amazon's patent. Tim O'Reilly wrote a response to the finding, where he accepts Amazon's patent as valid - with nary a mention of the fact that most of the world doesn't permit software patents at all. Finally, Internetnews.com looks at the future of one-click and notes that despite any smoking gun, this might help Barnes and Noble fight their lawsuit against Amazon.

Well, we try to avoid posting stories about Slashdot, but I figured at least a couple of people would want to know that we'll be speaking at the O'Reilly P2P conferences. For those of you registered, we'll be speaking at the collaborative journalism panel along with Dan Gillmor (Hi Dan) and Dave Winer (Hi Dave) and moderated by Katie Hafner from the NYT (can you fix that required login thing?). Anyway, it's on Thursday, Feb. 15, 11:15-12:00, in San Francisco. Come on by if you are attending the conference.

Richard Koman writes: "Tim O'Reilly and I interviewed cyberspace lawyer Lawrence Lessig about the law and P2P for O'Reilly's OpenP2P site. He makes some great points about the legal and investment climate for P2P (the RIAA's goal is to "guarantee that no venture capitalist invests money in new modes of distribution unless Hollywood signs off") and the full-bore attack on fair use in the DeCSS case (the DMCA says "you cannot crack copyright protection schemes even if your purpose is to allow you to have fair use of the underlying material.")" I disagree a bit with Lessig's statement on the second page about why we don't have book licenses - I think it's because the legal system refused to enforce them, not because the book industry thought it was futile. But overall it's definitely a good read.

Benno writes: "Clip2 has put up a nice story about the latest developments on Gnutella: Gnutella: Alive, Well, and Changing Fast." It's good to see that they're solving the scalability problems.

cardhore links to this O'Reilly piece about Freenet, detailing what's actually on the anonymous data cloud these days. It reads, in part, "But if we were to indulge ourselves and construct a demographic of the average Freenet user from Freenet content, he'd be a crypto-anarchist Perl hacker with a taste for the classics of literature, political screeds, 1980s pop music, Adobe software, and lots of porn." I wonder what will be there (or in equivalently untraceable data pools) in five years.

Simone of O'Reilly writes "On Freenet, the more popular information gets, the more copies it generates--and the easier it is to find and download. That's just one significant feature of this promising peer-to-peer network. Freenet inventor Ian Clarke may not be talking about his new company, Uprizer, but he has a lot to say about how decentralized architectures can fix what ails the Internet. Here's the interview." We've heard from Clarke before, but this is an interesting piece.

Simone submits this article about two different visions of peer-to-peer computing - one from Tim O'Reilly, and one from the Intel corporation. (O'Reilly expounds further in his column). Watch and cheer from the sidelines as the mega-corps jockey to control the buzzword standards process, turn it into a useless mush, and are surpassed by protocols that work.

jdean writes: "I thought I'd take a minute and toot my own horn and mention my article on the O'Reilly Network which gives a roundup of the various Linux certifications currently available. It's part of my series on Linux certification."

jdean writes: "I thought I'd take a minute and toot my own horn and mention my article on the O'Reilly Network which gives a roundup of the various Linux certifications currently available. It's part of my series on Linux certification."