Slashdot Mirror

Namaste writes, "As reported on MacNN. Connectix who after a recent legal victory over Sony has signed an OEM agreement with Red Hat in which Connectix Virtual Game Station (VGS) will ship bundled with Red Hat Linux. The press release can be found here. The Macintosh version has been out for a while and seems to be quite a hit. Both the Linux and Win2k versions with be shipping in March. " Update: 02/16 03:21 by H :OK, this issue got confused: Red Hat won't be bundling VGS with Red Hat. Instead, Connectix will be bundling Red Hat with their Virtual PC emulator. VPC is not released for Linux at this time. I'll make sure Rob gets some more coffee before posting again. *grin*

BigTed writes "Webmonkey has got an interesting article up about the VA Linux takeover of Andover and its effect on *gasp* Slashdot and the Open Source Community." Personal note: I almost quit when I heard about the merger, because I had exactly the same worries Jay Greenspan expresses in this editorial. Since then I have been personally reassured by Larry Augustin that VA Linux has no desire to mess with the content on any Andover site, including Slashdot. I'm posting this story, even though we've been over this ground before, primarily so that we don't get accused of bias by not posting it. And yes, we will continue to post news of Red Hat, Penguin Computing, and others in the Linux corporate community, same as before. Everyone who works on Slashdot, and everyone in Andover.net management, has sworn to defend Slashdot's editorial independence. Period. - Robin 'roblimo' Miller, Editor-in-Chief, Andover.net. Update: 02/09 05:16 by CT : here is a Salon Story by Andrew Leondard expressing the same concerns as the webmonkey bit.

Speare asks a question which may be on the tongue of many Linux newbies: "Is there anyone working on a GNOME or X gui front-end that can help organize all of the known device configurators into one comprehensive front-end? Let me point-n-click at /dev/cua2 and see if it's got a modem on it, for example." He also has some valid comments about ways Linux Distributions can improve their configurators. I too feel that a single configurator is better than multiple configuration tools. Linuxconf is a move in the right direction, but it still has room to improve. (More)

"I admit it, I'm a Linux newbie. As I write this, it is Day Two. I've been both impressed and unimpressed with the out-of-box experience. The variety of Linux I've picked up was RedHat 6.1 for my Intel machine. I hate lowlevel hardware tweaking like determining IRQs, and have hated it for 19 years, but I figured I could go through a little more of it.

Impressed:
I was pleased to find that there were gui or text-mode-gui things to help me get many items configured. There were a series of tools on most of the basics like mouse, monitor, graphics card, sound, net card, modem, ppp, and so on. If I knew the name of the tool or could find it (by using the Win32 laptop still attached to the Web), I was able to get my subsystems all working with a little effort. I'm not afraid of vi or bash or emacs, but the gui setup was well-adapted to letting me run around and choose options without having to remember or learn keystrokes like C-x C-s at the same time.

Unimpressed:
Very few things seemed to be organized, either in the online help, or the tools available. Most of the things I found were by searching the support requests on the RedHat page, not in any prepared documentation. Once I found *mention* of setserial(8), I could use it or get the manpage. Once I found the /etc/inittab(5), I could tweak it to get that graphical login that rh6.1 install didn't make. And so on, for problems I faced in an unsupported PnP Sony 17" monitor stuck in 640x480 SVGA, and other problems I've yet to figure out.

If I had a *comprehensive* one-stop-shopping place to go, it would help a lot. It doesn't have to know all the esoteric PnP techniques, it just has to know how to execute the tools that have already been written.

Perhaps it would let you browse all /dev/* entries, click on each one, and it would start the configurator tool that is responsible. Or at least point the user at what /etc/*.conf file was useful. I would hope to see loopback tests and more importantly, what to do or where to look if something's not working resources, even if they're just URLs back to the distro or author of the uberconfig tool."

solar writes "SecurityPortal.com is running a comparsion between RedHat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems on the response time between software bugs being found and patch releases. Find out if open-source is the champion bug squasher we all believe it to be. " Interesting bit.

D3 wrote to us with a story from Federal Computer Weekly that details the plans of GTSI (Government Technology Service Inc.) to team with Red Hat. They plan to team up to offer "enterprise level" for the federal government contracts.

Doug Muth asks: "Does anyone have any suggestions for a specific brand of tape drive I should purchase to use under Linux? SCSI tape drives are expensive (plus they require you to get a SCSI adapeter), so I've been looking at some IDE TR-4 tape drives. However, according Red Hat's Hardware Compatibility List, while IDE tape drives are "compatible", Red Hat does not support them." Anyone willing to pass along some helpful suggestions and/or more informaiton on the Red Hat/TR-4 issue?

An anonymous reader sent us a pretty cool press release where you can read about University of Michigan students protesting their schools enterprise agreement with Microsoft buy arranging with Red Hat to give away 500 CDs, and helping students install it. Often stuff like this slips through the cracks, but this one is pretty smooth. This is the sort of stuff I like to see

noom writes "Dell and Redhat have extended their strategic alliance", with Dell agreeing to install RH Linux on all of it's PowerEdge servers and Redhat agreeing to provide support. Sheesh, that was unexpected. "

Anonymous Coward writes "Red Hat has re-layed-out the site yet again. Looks like an attempt at a portal, but only internal resources. IWNSM (it would not surprise me) if future versions of Red Hat had netscape and lynx's default home pages set to redhat.com :) " It looks quite a bit like Yahoo. The GeekToys section is a bit timely, too, if not a bit heavy on Nerf.

Anonymous Coward writes "Red Hat has re-layed-out the site yet again. Looks like an attempt at a portal, but only internal resources. IWNSM (it would not surprise me) if future versions of Red Hat had netscape and lynx's default home pages set to redhat.com :) " It looks quite a bit like Yahoo. The GeekToys section is a bit timely, too, if not a bit heavy on Nerf.

bgarcia writes "There is a PR Newswire story stating that Red Hat and RSA Security have signed an agreement to include RSA's BSAFE SSL software in Red Hat Linux Professional Edition." And Wired tells us Red Hat is coming out with with a new version that improves large system performance and speeds crash recovery. (Click below for more)

Plus, earlier this week we read about the e-commerce product they're working on with Oracle and their rumored Cygnus acquisition. Hot stuff, especially for corporate Linux users.

It looks like Red Hat is back on track, doing great Linux stuff, instead of fooling around with peripheral things like their Linux version of MSNBC (with Salon, The Industry Standard, and The Register jointly playing NBC).

According to a friend of mine who dabbles in the stock market, Red Hat's stock is up nicely as a result of their decision to go back to doing more of what they do best: improving Linux and extending its marketability.

Mazeltov!

Anonymous Coward writes "There's a press release out that says Red Hat and Oracle are teaming up to take on e-commerce. They have outlined bold initiatives to add support for IA64, a journaled filesystem and high avaliability. Even more they say it will include Motif, but they still say all additions will fit with the GPL." It's basically Oracle 8i teamed with an "optimized" version of Red Hat. Sounds nice. This joint product could have major impact on the e-commerce software marketplace if it works as promised. Claimed shipping date is mid-December.

Chilli writes "I just stumbled over RMS Linux on RedHat's web site. It includes only free (as in freedom) software and at least $1 is donated to the FSF for every sold package. This is super cool, I think, and I probably have to buy one just because it is so cool. I think, this finally proves that - as far as this is possible for a company - RedHat cares about the community. (The URL is to RedHat's secure commerce server, I hope it manages the /. effect, but I didn't find another URL - so, this is maybe not really official yet, but what's on the Web, is on the Web.)"

An Anonymous Coward wrote to inform us of a new Chinese Linux distro, Blue Point Linux 1.0RC, which includes support for Chinese characters. The bad news is the developers, who have based their effort on Red Hat's are alleged to have forgotten to include the modified kernel source. Coward asks: "Don't they violate the GPL?". Some people over at the BP Forum apparently have some thoughts. What do you think: is this against the terms of the GPL? (Can someone translate this?)

Niklas Paulsson was the first to tell us that Red Hat now has a press release on their website Announcing v6.1 of their distribution. It was on the FTP servers last week, but now its official.

Booker writes "Red Hat, Inc. has released their 2nd quarter financial results. You can see the press release here. Operating at a loss, but then we all knew that would happen for a while. Revenues up 95% over last year. Kinda ironic that an Open Source company has to join The Man on Wall Street before their balance sheet becomes publicly available. :)

duder writes "It appears that both sides in the Microsoft anti-trust suit are filing the closing arguments according to the Washington Post. " It doesn't look any surprises-CNNfn has an additional update as well. The DOJ and MS have filed sharply contrasting legal briefs-Microsoft claims there's competition, citing Sun and Red Hat, the government claims they have a monopoly. And give the US justice system, I'm sure we'll see the end to this case sometime shortly after Rob actually finishes reading Cryptonomicon.

C|Net talked with Marc, but we got hold of Red Hat's Donnie Barnes yesterday, and interrogated, er, asked him questions. Click below to learn more about what to do with IPO money (Hint: Think missle-toting Lear jets), software patents, open source licensing, and trademark issues.

One of our first and most pressing questions for Donnie was, "What the heck are they going to do with all of this fresh money?" The answer, as one would expect, was some mumbo-jumbo, with some hints of future plans. Barnes said, "We will certainly grow development, marketing, sales, etc." And to whet the appetite of users, "You can certainly expect the 'grow development' part to include some neat new toys for Linux, though we don't preannounce new features. ;-)."

So the company itself will be growing, as we would expect, and the staff will be growing as well. However, what's interesting is the comments on where it will grow.

According to Barnes, "International expansion is a key area for us," which is "very expensive." It is partly due to the sheer expense that they have not really pursued this area before. Some of the shifting in this direction can be seen already, in actions like the severing of the relationship with their former Japanese distributor. In that case Red Hat "basically chose to enter the Japanese market in a bigger way and bring our products and services into that area directly." At the current time, they plan to focus on a European expansion first, to be followed by an Asian expansion soon after.

Waidaminute! Europe? Isn't there already a certain Germanic company established over there? Well, yes. We pressed Barnes about moving into what's considered to be S.u.S.E. Territory, and, on a broader scale, what's going to happen with the expansion of Linux-based companies and competition that will happen between them.

Barnes's response is one that Bob Young has been giving for quite some time; that rather then trying to play a zero-sum game, taking users away from each other, the aim of the Linux companies is to make the entire pie bigger so that /every/ company can grow. Well, every company but Microsoft, I guess, but the point is still there. Both CT and I find this to be a bit idealistic, but given the current atmosphere of change, maybe it will be how things fall out - we'll see how things shape up over the next six months to a year.

So with all this money: International Expansion, more developers, marketing and saleses staff. And, for the record, "...no, there are no big ticket surprises like Lear Jets..."

However, Marc might be purchasing a Porsche dealership. (Note: Joke! Don't sue me, Marc. Please).

The question that everyone had, whether they got the letter, didn't get the letter or just watched the fireworks was the E*Trade/Red Hat stock situation. In summary, the numbers broke down as following:
5000 open source developers were invited to participate
1300 responded, indicating interest
1150 of those were ultimately able to participate

Looks pretty good, right? It'd be interesting to know how many of those 1150 had to go back and try again, but c'est la vie. When asked about RH's feelings on the stock offering, Barnes said, "We feel that an over 88% participation rate was very good for the community at large." We talked about the people angry about the situation, whether or not a lot of the people originally banned were able to get in. His response: "Most of the angry people were [able to get in], but the bumps we had in the way caused them to be confused as to where they were and what level of participation they could expect. But at the end, most of the angry people were able to participate and I think came away happy."

What I thought was interesting was what precipitated the whole meltdown: Bad Information? Clash of Cultures? Red Hat's answer: "Mostly lack of information, and some bad information from E*TRADE's 'systems.'"

Additionally, "Sure, the open source community meeting big business and high finance was part of it too. Both sides needed education about the other, and I think lots of education happened. :)" I'm sure many of the companes looking at similar situations watched the RH IPO closely, trying to figure out what they did right, and what they can do differently. Barnes recommends examining what happened with them, and also shopping around. The latter part to that comment is the interesting part: Not dissing E*Trade, and Barnes does say they would at least shop them against other brokerage houses, but I think that the lesson learned here is to make sure of the house you use, especially after watching the Red Hat fiasco.

And given the recent hoopla over Unisys's perceived attempt to charge for GIFs that use the LZW patent, and Red Hat's closeness with major patent holders like IBM and Hewlett-Packard it seemed appropriate to talk about software patents. Red Hat's take on software patents: "Well, I think it should be fairly obvious that software patents are a bad idea in general and we are not in favor of them." Additionally, when it comes to big-boys like IBM, HP and others they "...will be working to try to lobby in the proper areas to help this issue. Yes, we do care about that stuff and have already begun talking to folks." (Note: I envisioned Bob Young with a flamethrower in the IBM Corporate Lobby)

Despite this, Barnes allowed for the fact that "Given current regulations you may see RH own patents one day. That may be unavoidable until the current way they are handled is changed." RMS would be displeased, but Barnes said that "What folks do with these patents, otoh, can be vasty different." That's an odd world, but I think it's just a further sign of how messed up the US Patent Office is, regarding software patents.

The issue of software patents led to talk about the other software licenses that have come out, like the APSL and Sun Community Source License. As you would expect, Red Hat would like to see fewer open source licenses, but "...at the end of the day, as long as they are truly open source and companies are *using* them, I don't really care." Barnes is pleased to see that Sun is taking steps to making good software more widely availible. I asked if Sun was viewed as being a competitor. Barnes says that perhaps, but that RH is trying to make fundamental changes to the way software is built. "Perhaps Sun will join. They have taken steps in that direction so far, so they could be an ally."

Oh, and again for the record, Hurricane Dennis got Barnes "personally quite wet."

The last question sparked a lot of back-and-forth, regarding the whole Red Hat trademark issue.

(Note: To get background on this, read the original article, and the subsequent follow-up with a letter from Bob Young.)

The following, according to Barnes, is what's going on: "We have to protect our trademark. People were selling hand-burned CDs and using our name, box image, and logo to do it. We had customers complain vehemently to us directly about that as they felt burned. We had to take action to keep that from happening." This was what sparked the original issue with Amazon, and how it appeared that Red Hat was banning anyone from using their name in any way unlicensed by them. The issue, then, is, how do people know what they're getting? For example, people want to know what they're getting when they buy Cheapbytes/LinuxMall/Bob's1$LinuxEmporium/LinuxCentral Linux. Are they getting Debian, Suse, Red Hat, Caldera etc.? Recognizing that Red Hat has a valid brand they must protect, where does that leave the manufacturers? RH's answer: "If they ship "Red Hat Linux" as their own "Cheapbytes Linux", then it must *be* Red Hat Linux. We can verify that with PGP signatures and the like. They can say it contains Red Hat Linux, but they can't explicitely *call* it that." For example, under this scheme, they could "call it `Foo Linux which contains Red Hat Linux 6.0' or something similar." What they can't do, however, would be to release a CD with a PGP signature that checks out, but call it Red Hat Linux. Only Red Hat can explicity title their distribution "Red Hat Linux". And if a company puts out a CD saying it "Contains Red Hat" and the PGP doesn't check out (e.g. modified from original or something, then "they can't say that and we'd have cause to have the product sales stopped."

Phew. So, how do you handle something like Mandrake-Linux? Can you call say "Derived from Red Hat Linux?" Barnes points out that he's not a trademark lawyer, so don't hold him to be a legal litmus test, but that, yes, that will be possible. (Note:More guidelines on this will be coming out soon. Keep an eye on Red Hat's site for details.)

But when it comes to recognition, of course Red Hat appreciates being recognized for having contributed, e.g. Mandrake putting "Derived from Red Hat" on the CD. As Barnes says, "Acknowledgment of one's hard work is always welcome. We just want it done properly... they can take Internet bits and build their own name. You don't see us claiming the name of every other distribution that contributed some code to RH, do you? But they can take our code and use it. That's what this is all about."

Wrap-up:: Interesting to talk with Donnie, and you can see that the quiet period has been hard on them - being unable to respond to comments would be, I suppose. It seems that the basic direction of Red Hat remains unchanged; that is, commitment to the GPL, working with the industry on software patent issues, and trying to get people to join the "movement." The greatest concern that CT and I is how all of this money will affect them as an organization, but I suppose that's an issue for the greater Linux universe as well. Only time will tell. And, on that platitudianal note..

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat

C|Net talked with Marc, but we got hold of Red Hat's Donnie Barnes yesterday, and interrogated, er, asked him questions. Click below to learn more about what to do with IPO money (Hint: Think missle-toting Lear jets), software patents, open source licensing, and trademark issues.

One of our first and most pressing questions for Donnie was, "What the heck are they going to do with all of this fresh money?" The answer, as one would expect, was some mumbo-jumbo, with some hints of future plans. Barnes said, "We will certainly grow development, marketing, sales, etc." And to whet the appetite of users, "You can certainly expect the 'grow development' part to include some neat new toys for Linux, though we don't preannounce new features. ;-)."

So the company itself will be growing, as we would expect, and the staff will be growing as well. However, what's interesting is the comments on where it will grow.

According to Barnes, "International expansion is a key area for us," which is "very expensive." It is partly due to the sheer expense that they have not really pursued this area before. Some of the shifting in this direction can be seen already, in actions like the severing of the relationship with their former Japanese distributor. In that case Red Hat "basically chose to enter the Japanese market in a bigger way and bring our products and services into that area directly." At the current time, they plan to focus on a European expansion first, to be followed by an Asian expansion soon after.

Waidaminute! Europe? Isn't there already a certain Germanic company established over there? Well, yes. We pressed Barnes about moving into what's considered to be S.u.S.E. Territory, and, on a broader scale, what's going to happen with the expansion of Linux-based companies and competition that will happen between them.

Barnes's response is one that Bob Young has been giving for quite some time; that rather then trying to play a zero-sum game, taking users away from each other, the aim of the Linux companies is to make the entire pie bigger so that /every/ company can grow. Well, every company but Microsoft, I guess, but the point is still there. Both CT and I find this to be a bit idealistic, but given the current atmosphere of change, maybe it will be how things fall out - we'll see how things shape up over the next six months to a year.

So with all this money: International Expansion, more developers, marketing and saleses staff. And, for the record, "...no, there are no big ticket surprises like Lear Jets..."

However, Marc might be purchasing a Porsche dealership. (Note: Joke! Don't sue me, Marc. Please).

The question that everyone had, whether they got the letter, didn't get the letter or just watched the fireworks was the E*Trade/Red Hat stock situation. In summary, the numbers broke down as following:
5000 open source developers were invited to participate
1300 responded, indicating interest
1150 of those were ultimately able to participate

Looks pretty good, right? It'd be interesting to know how many of those 1150 had to go back and try again, but c'est la vie. When asked about RH's feelings on the stock offering, Barnes said, "We feel that an over 88% participation rate was very good for the community at large." We talked about the people angry about the situation, whether or not a lot of the people originally banned were able to get in. His response: "Most of the angry people were [able to get in], but the bumps we had in the way caused them to be confused as to where they were and what level of participation they could expect. But at the end, most of the angry people were able to participate and I think came away happy."

What I thought was interesting was what precipitated the whole meltdown: Bad Information? Clash of Cultures? Red Hat's answer: "Mostly lack of information, and some bad information from E*TRADE's 'systems.'"

Additionally, "Sure, the open source community meeting big business and high finance was part of it too. Both sides needed education about the other, and I think lots of education happened. :)" I'm sure many of the companes looking at similar situations watched the RH IPO closely, trying to figure out what they did right, and what they can do differently. Barnes recommends examining what happened with them, and also shopping around. The latter part to that comment is the interesting part: Not dissing E*Trade, and Barnes does say they would at least shop them against other brokerage houses, but I think that the lesson learned here is to make sure of the house you use, especially after watching the Red Hat fiasco.

And given the recent hoopla over Unisys's perceived attempt to charge for GIFs that use the LZW patent, and Red Hat's closeness with major patent holders like IBM and Hewlett-Packard it seemed appropriate to talk about software patents. Red Hat's take on software patents: "Well, I think it should be fairly obvious that software patents are a bad idea in general and we are not in favor of them." Additionally, when it comes to big-boys like IBM, HP and others they "...will be working to try to lobby in the proper areas to help this issue. Yes, we do care about that stuff and have already begun talking to folks." (Note: I envisioned Bob Young with a flamethrower in the IBM Corporate Lobby)

Despite this, Barnes allowed for the fact that "Given current regulations you may see RH own patents one day. That may be unavoidable until the current way they are handled is changed." RMS would be displeased, but Barnes said that "What folks do with these patents, otoh, can be vasty different." That's an odd world, but I think it's just a further sign of how messed up the US Patent Office is, regarding software patents.

The issue of software patents led to talk about the other software licenses that have come out, like the APSL and Sun Community Source License. As you would expect, Red Hat would like to see fewer open source licenses, but "...at the end of the day, as long as they are truly open source and companies are *using* them, I don't really care." Barnes is pleased to see that Sun is taking steps to making good software more widely availible. I asked if Sun was viewed as being a competitor. Barnes says that perhaps, but that RH is trying to make fundamental changes to the way software is built. "Perhaps Sun will join. They have taken steps in that direction so far, so they could be an ally."

Oh, and again for the record, Hurricane Dennis got Barnes "personally quite wet."

The last question sparked a lot of back-and-forth, regarding the whole Red Hat trademark issue.

(Note: To get background on this, read the original article, and the subsequent follow-up with a letter from Bob Young.)

The following, according to Barnes, is what's going on: "We have to protect our trademark. People were selling hand-burned CDs and using our name, box image, and logo to do it. We had customers complain vehemently to us directly about that as they felt burned. We had to take action to keep that from happening." This was what sparked the original issue with Amazon, and how it appeared that Red Hat was banning anyone from using their name in any way unlicensed by them. The issue, then, is, how do people know what they're getting? For example, people want to know what they're getting when they buy Cheapbytes/LinuxMall/Bob's1$LinuxEmporium/LinuxCentral Linux. Are they getting Debian, Suse, Red Hat, Caldera etc.? Recognizing that Red Hat has a valid brand they must protect, where does that leave the manufacturers? RH's answer: "If they ship "Red Hat Linux" as their own "Cheapbytes Linux", then it must *be* Red Hat Linux. We can verify that with PGP signatures and the like. They can say it contains Red Hat Linux, but they can't explicitely *call* it that." For example, under this scheme, they could "call it `Foo Linux which contains Red Hat Linux 6.0' or something similar." What they can't do, however, would be to release a CD with a PGP signature that checks out, but call it Red Hat Linux. Only Red Hat can explicity title their distribution "Red Hat Linux". And if a company puts out a CD saying it "Contains Red Hat" and the PGP doesn't check out (e.g. modified from original or something, then "they can't say that and we'd have cause to have the product sales stopped."

Phew. So, how do you handle something like Mandrake-Linux? Can you call say "Derived from Red Hat Linux?" Barnes points out that he's not a trademark lawyer, so don't hold him to be a legal litmus test, but that, yes, that will be possible. (Note:More guidelines on this will be coming out soon. Keep an eye on Red Hat's site for details.)

But when it comes to recognition, of course Red Hat appreciates being recognized for having contributed, e.g. Mandrake putting "Derived from Red Hat" on the CD. As Barnes says, "Acknowledgment of one's hard work is always welcome. We just want it done properly... they can take Internet bits and build their own name. You don't see us claiming the name of every other distribution that contributed some code to RH, do you? But they can take our code and use it. That's what this is all about."

Wrap-up:: Interesting to talk with Donnie, and you can see that the quiet period has been hard on them - being unable to respond to comments would be, I suppose. It seems that the basic direction of Red Hat remains unchanged; that is, commitment to the GPL, working with the industry on software patent issues, and trying to get people to join the "movement." The greatest concern that CT and I is how all of this money will affect them as an organization, but I suppose that's an issue for the greater Linux universe as well. Only time will tell. And, on that platitudianal note..

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat

Will in Seattle writes "Marc Ewing, Chief Technology Officer of Red Hat Software, opens up, in an interview with cNet, about Microsoft, the IPO, and more" C|Net gets Marc, and Slashdot get's Donnie? Waaait a minute! (We love ya Donnie!) Our interview with Donnie J Barnes (which has more meat than this interview) should be up tomorrow.

Will in Seattle writes "Marc Ewing, Chief Technology Officer of Red Hat Software, opens up, in an interview with cNet, about Microsoft, the IPO, and more" C|Net gets Marc, and Slashdot get's Donnie? Waaait a minute! (We love ya Donnie!) Our interview with Donnie J Barnes (which has more meat than this interview) should be up tomorrow.

nd writes "A new beta of Red Hat is out, available at the Red Hat FTP site. This presumably pre-6.1 release is named Lorax, with quite a bit of new features (note: this is beta and is NOT intended for everyone). Perhaps the biggest is their new installation program, Anaconda, featuring gtk+ and text interfaces. Even better, Anaconda is GPLed. Mirror list available here. Check it out. "

nd writes "A new beta of Red Hat is out, available at the Red Hat FTP site. This presumably pre-6.1 release is named Lorax, with quite a bit of new features (note: this is beta and is NOT intended for everyone). Perhaps the biggest is their new installation program, Anaconda, featuring gtk+ and text interfaces. Even better, Anaconda is GPLed. Mirror list available here. Check it out. "

There's been a significant amount of confusion in the past couple days over the issue of whether Red Hat was requiring everyone who was re-selling the distro to no longer mention Red Hat anywhere. That, thankfully, is not the case. Click below to get the full skinny on what you can - and can't - do with the Red Hat name. Thanks to Melissa London at Red Hat for sending this information over. The information in question is from Bob Young, CEO of Red Hat.

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. Red Hat depends on the open source software development model, and our customers rely on Red Hat Inc. to supply the benefits of this open source model to them. For this reason we publish every line of code we write under open source licenses, in effect we do not own any proprietary software. But we do own our trademarks.

The purpose of trademark law is to enable vendors to identify their products for their customers. If anyone could call their ketchup "Heinz Ketchup" consumers would have no idea when they were buying the product from the Heinz company, and when they were buying a cheap knock-off.

The way trademark law works is that if you do not police your trademarks, if you allow anyone to use those trademarks without permission, then you will eventually lose control over those trademarks. So we grant permission to use our trademarkednames generously to those who ask permission, and we will continue to insist that others do not use our trademarks without permission or in ways that confuse our customers and the marketplace.

This is the problem that Amazon.com wanted us to help them address for their customers. And it is the reason we will continue to enforce our trademarks whenever and wherever anyone attempts to infringe on them.

Cheers, Bob.

ps. The term Red Hat Linux GPL is neither a sanctioned term by Red Hat, nor is it accurate - a significant amount of the code in Red Hat Linux is licensed under BSD, Artistic, X, NPL, and other open source licenses.

There's been a significant amount of confusion in the past couple days over the issue of whether Red Hat was requiring everyone who was re-selling the distro to no longer mention Red Hat anywhere. That, thankfully, is not the case. Click below to get the full skinny on what you can - and can't - do with the Red Hat name. Thanks to Melissa London at Red Hat for sending this information over. The information in question is from Bob Young, CEO of Red Hat.

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. Red Hat depends on the open source software development model, and our customers rely on Red Hat Inc. to supply the benefits of this open source model to them. For this reason we publish every line of code we write under open source licenses, in effect we do not own any proprietary software. But we do own our trademarks.

The purpose of trademark law is to enable vendors to identify their products for their customers. If anyone could call their ketchup "Heinz Ketchup" consumers would have no idea when they were buying the product from the Heinz company, and when they were buying a cheap knock-off.

The way trademark law works is that if you do not police your trademarks, if you allow anyone to use those trademarks without permission, then you will eventually lose control over those trademarks. So we grant permission to use our trademarkednames generously to those who ask permission, and we will continue to insist that others do not use our trademarks without permission or in ways that confuse our customers and the marketplace.

This is the problem that Amazon.com wanted us to help them address for their customers. And it is the reason we will continue to enforce our trademarks whenever and wherever anyone attempts to infringe on them.

Cheers, Bob.

ps. The term Red Hat Linux GPL is neither a sanctioned term by Red Hat, nor is it accurate - a significant amount of the code in Red Hat Linux is licensed under BSD, Artistic, X, NPL, and other open source licenses.

Having finally flown back home, recovered from the gain/loss of sleep, time zones, and of course, the obligatory luggage being lost, we're trying to wrap-up the latest installment of LinuxWorld. If you are interested in some commentary and stories coming out of LWCE, click below. The big issue of LWCE was something that didn't occur even in the same state as the show. The Red Hat IPO, complete with lotsa confusion and news went up, and showed that, yes, Wall Street is interested in Linux.

One of the more interesting commentaries brought up the newest Linux Spokesperson-Casper Weinberger. Yes, the former Secretary of Defense is an Open Source guy. Strange. It also brings up the living penguins that were on the show floor. I dunno-it still seems to me that live animals on a show floor has to be tantamount of animal abuse, under some sort of law.

A number of good interviews came out of the show - one with RMS where he talks about the whole GNU/Linux thing, Communism. The interview is done in the inimitable Stallman style, so...be warned. *grin* In a parellel vein, ESR talked with ZD, foretelling amongst other things, the downfall of Microsoft and FUD issues. MSNBC did a nice story on Gnome, giving it some of the props needed. The KDE folks were also at the shows, with some nice displays at their screen in the booth.

We spent almost every waking moment in the .Org pavilion, a scary sort of place with furniture with no back support, and lots of people wandering through. Included amongst these people was no less then three documentary film crews. I think two+ is a sign that a movement has reached commericial mainstream. So, uh, congrats to....someone.

Some great picture shots came in - thanks, as always, to Marc Merlins' wrap-up complete with some good shots. Marc's, as always, is incredible comprehensive. Read it. If you want some shots of .Org pavilion, the Slashdot party (Woo-hoo! Good beer! *grin* ), check out Joey Hess' page. HUGE # of pictures, and still more going up.

The show was fun. Lotsa people who we don't get to see, except at the conventions. The commericial element was stronger then at the last show, but I think it was evident that the companies attending understood that they at least needed to give a nod to the feelings of the Community. This being the 2nd round of a show this size, I think the initial glamour of "Woo! Big Show!" is wearing off, and people are getting to work at these. It makes things a little less glamourous, but what the attendees/exhibitors of the show did see is that Linux is something to be taken seriously. Every major media outlet had people there, warndering the floor, and media like CNN ran pieces about it during the show. With the first IPO under its' belt, the establishment of several major shows, and major vendors established on the scene, I think Linux continued success looks good.

Bill Clarke wrote to us about WholeLinux system they unveiled at LinuxWorld. From a "cheap" CD-ROM even, they can install Red Hat Linux in 4 minutes, plus another 2 for things like Apache, Sendmail etc. Heh-run around with one of these things at your office/school. See how long it takes for the NT people to reinstall. *grin*

Joseph writes "Red Hat looks like it put those Atomic Vision folks to work with a new site design. More hype before their IPO?" I'm just glad to see a simpler, more elegant design.

PhiberOptik asks: "I recently got a BP6 board, with onboard ULTRA66 controllers and ran into a problem with my Red Hat 6.0 installation. It seems that Red Hat Linux will not support the controllers, which my main hard disks are hooked up to. So far as I know, no Linux distros exist with ULTRA66 support, and BeOS or Solaris 7 won't recognize them either. Are there any updates or distros which support this new technology?"

NoWhere Man noted a story on CNet that that talks about Red Hat and their plans to Create a full blown Linux Portal. They note the fact that RH has job openings in San Fran, as well as the trivia that they recently hired 20 (!) people from Atomic Vision. They note that RH will be competing more directly with VAs Linux.com, and of course, yours truly.

Chuck Milam writes "Red Hat has announced Red Hat Europe. Interesting--I wonder if they're going to give SuSE a run for the money? " Looks like they are opening a German and UK office, and have announced that Colin Tenwick (of Sybase) will be in charge.

Chuck Milam writes "Red Hat has announced Red Hat Europe. Interesting--I wonder if they're going to give SuSE a run for the money? " Looks like they are opening a German and UK office, and have announced that Colin Tenwick (of Sybase) will be in charge.

hfcs writes "Just browsing the Red Hat Careers page, and a good number of their open positions are listed as being in San Franscisco. Just a couple of weeks ago, all positions were listed as being in RTP, NC. Hmmmm.... "

Computer Associates looks like it has finally released it's UniCenter Managment Framework for Red Hat Linux. Other distros to follow soon, and you can order a free CD from CA.

Christian Winebrenner writes "RedHat seems to have seen the new licensing terms on rdist (background story: Pseudo-Free software...) and decided that the best solution to the problem is to recommend that users DOWNgrade to the previous version. Their RH 6.0 errata page offers the solution of ditching rdist 6.1.5 in favor of 6.1.0. Who knows how long it will be until we find that distributions will be riddled with "holes" from out of date non-free-for-commercial-use software? "

pate writes "It looks like Red Hat has scooped up another free software name. According to this article, Havoc Pennington started work there yesterday. " He's the guy who does the weekly GNOME summaries, and is responsible for countless other Good Things(TM) in GNOME.

greg writes "This is a white paper written by Larry McVoy at Sun Microsystems discussing free Unix software, *.BSD, Linux, GNU and FSF and competition with Microsoft. In the paper Larry proposes the opensourcing and standardizing of Unix in gerneral and Solaris in particular. Whats truly impressive is that it was written in 1993 and is still quite relevant and its predictions regarding Linux were very accurate. Here is the link: " Currently only available in Postscript... HTML is coming.

A reader sent us a recent BusinessWeek article interviewing Red Hat's Bob Young. More indepth then most of them usually, I learned some of the odder tibits about Red Hat interesting, including the toliet in the first apartment and other such stories.

TriangleMan writes "Compaq will be making RH Linux an option on a number of their PCs and workstations. The press release is here and press coverage is already appearing. It also looks like RH and Compaq are going to be enhancing interoperability between Tru64 and Linux, including binary compatibility. "

The first of the big Linux IPOs is here: Red Hat has announced they have filed for an initial public offering. Details are sketchy, but the word on the street is that the stock will be very difficult to get ahold of. Now, when's the VA IPO? :)

poohbear_honeypot wrote in with the full text of Raster's letter to the mailing list, which is below. Essentially, Raster has left Red Hat for greener pastures, and (surprise, surprise) is headed West. He asks that people hold off on e-mailing for the next week or so. For the gory details, click below. "From Rasterman on the Enlightenment Mailing List:

Well I thought I'd send this mail out now...

The short and curly:

As of friday the 28th of May I no longer work at Red Hat Software. The story is along ad will be explained sometime later - it's been brewing for months though.

I am now officially unemployed.

I am as happy as chickens in a seed farm.

As of tomorrow , June 1, 1999 I will be leaving North Carolina and moving west. I currently have no other employers.

This is all good for E and E development.

I am so glad to get out of ths creativity-stifling environemnt of RHAD LABS - away from certain people there who see E and its userbase as what I can literally quote them saying a "festering crowd".

I've tolerated this attitude towards E users for way too long. I do not envisage much future support from Red Hat for Enlightenment - they have been itching to get rid of E and will as soon as they can. I don't much care. They can do whatever they like - and I wish them all the best but I do not fit in there. E does not fit in there. They want a windows clone distribution and OS. I do not. They don't believe users really count - corporates and "partners" count and what they percieve as the "business world that wants an exact windows clone" counts.

I am not advocating changing distribtuions, but I am saying that this is onyl good for E - I will be freed up to concentrate on it and associated projects (that includes working on X and extensions to X). This also means i will be able to develop E free of GNOME. E is NOT GNOME's Window Manager - GNOME does not have one. Infact E will be workign to becoming its own desktop shell (I separate Desktop and Desktop Shell here for a reason) in its own right as time moves on - but unlike GNOME I won't make a vaporware publicity stunt out of it until there's something concrete there. E is getting on and a lot of important backend code is in place. After a few more necessary features it will start to grow into a desktop shell (a desktop shell is what I term the combination of Filemanager, Window manager and a Panel app launcher and an "applet/dock" holder). This means E is independant of whatvere desktop apps you use - you can use KDE apps, GNOME apps, GTK apps, X apps, Motif apps, CDE apps - whatever apps you like - but your desktop shell will be consistent and configurable to exactly how you want it. You alreayd knwo E's memory footprint is pretty small - especialyl compared to those of gnome and KDE (when you add the memory use of all the applets, panels, programs, wm etc. of each they add up to much much much more than E). E can absorb much of the functionality of these with very little overhead since it's already got the backend code there in E. Once the desktop shell for E is compleyte, debugged, optimised and so on E will hit 1.0 - but I'mnto setting a time limit on this - this happens when it's done and not before.

If you want to help: sit tight and stick to E - send good feedback and bug reports - We DO listen to them. Send patches to E if you want features. When the new dock applet apiu is done you can all scrutty off and write 5000 loadmeters, cd pplayers etc for E's new dock applet api (yes non square 64x64 dock apps - any size, anywhere (in the dragbar, in small windows, on the desktop istelf). all "dock applets" for E will follow the theme of the WM. This has yet to be worked on but will be - as well as adding in the iconbox again (that comes first).

Expect E to go far.

For the next week I'll be driving across the USA so dont' expect much response from me - after that I'll be moving into a new home, but therafter expect things to move along again.

I do hope we are doing things right by the majority of e users out there. You are my priority - not commerical interests, not political games, not a windows clone, not GNOME, not KDE - users come first. Those that help wiht the project get their wishes often done sooner than others becuase there aren't many working on E.

Here's to a bright future for Enlightenemnt and for all who use it.

-- --------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler) raster@rasterman.com Raster's Page raster@linux.com "

Booker writes "Miguel has posted a status report of the Gnome project to the Gnome mailing list. A good summary of what's been done, and what remains. And an admission that Gnome 1.0 might have been a leeeetle bit premature. Many packages are up to 1.0.8, and in my experience, they are vastly improved since the 1.0.0 days. Also, RHLabs has released a full set of Gnome RPMS for RH 5.2 systems, with all the latest stuff. "

Zyber writes "Red Hat is sending 6 geeks to the beach where they will live in a luxury beachhouse. The contest involves locating the Gnome footprint throughout their website. While on vacation you will have to maintain a geekworld website as well as being "videotaped, photographed and documented for the world to see". Hmmm. Female geeks? " Don't we wish.

Richard Finney sent us story to Compaq's latest Alpha announcement. They will be rolling out some new Alpha-based models, trying to use the popularity of Linux to boost sales of this chip. Interestingly, Bob Young, of Red Hat is saying that the # of units of the Alpha are too small to make a huge difference.

An anonymous reader was the first to let us know that ftp.redhat.com has something new- Starbuck, aka Red Hat 5.9, aka Pre 6.0. Hopefully this thing will be on the mirrors.

Jonathan Ocab wrote in to tell us that Red Hat has redone their site. You'll notice a summary of both Freshmeat and Slashdot stories on the page, linkage to User Friendly, as well as lots of javascript mouseovers to consume bandwidth.

The illustrious Elliot Lee writes "GNOME 1.0 is now available for download. Please peruse the press release and then download it via a convenient FTP mirror (as soon as they sync up). " Update: 03/04 08:36 by J : Whoops - forgot to plug my own program! If you've installed GNOME and want scrolling Slashdot headlines on your panel, check under Panel Applets ->Amusements->SlashApp. Thanks John, Chris, Fred, and everyone else!

Oracle will announce today Oracle 8i for Linux. It will be available within 60 days. They are also giving away 20,000 copies of an "early access CD" for the people who will register. RedHat will be showing a new portal this week (it's not available yet) which will include "everything that a Linux user need". Netscape will announce today the delivery of preview releases of Directory and Messanger servers for Linux.

Several people have written in with assorted notes about LinuxWorld Expo. I've heard rumblings of prizes for the show including a VW Bug from LinuxCare and even a Harley. I've attached a blurb from Robert McMillan about the show. Also, I've written up a bunch of notes about the Slashdot Booth at the show including a wish list: We need a few contacts in San Jose to help us find some stuff for the show. Somebody has to have this stuff just sitting around, so hit the link if you wanna help. Robert McMillan writes "If you're thinking of attending or curious as to what's going on at next week's LinuxWorld expo, you should check out the site we've created, called Tapping the Source -- it tells you where to hook up with free software at the show, and we've got feature stories on WINE, Python, and sendmail, as well as show-related newslinks. Also, if you're a developer and you're going to be at the show we REALLY want to include your software in our supplement."

We're borrowing wireless PCMCIA adapaters for the show. We ordered a Kodak DC210+ digital camera that will hopefully be here in time. CopyLeft has shipped over T-Shirts for us to sell, and Jeff's hottie little girlfriend is gonna be helping sell them. It looks like we're gonna have a great time out there so definitely swing by.

Thanks to the LinuxWorld folk for helping set up up out there, thanks to Linux-HW for the plane tickets and Red Hat for paying for the bandwidth.

As promised, the stuff that we want to borrow for the Slashdot booth:

• Astroturf (10x10 piece. Anyone have a camper?)
• Reclining Lawn Chairs
• A Dart Board
• Pictures to attach to the dart board (Bill? Rob & Hemos in Wired? Sanford Wallace? Katz? whoever :)
• A Pitcher, Sugar & Kool-Aid mix (we'll get thirsty. We really want a blender and vodka and little umbrella's but its enough of a pain just to legally sell T-Shirts, I suspect a liqour license is right out of the question *grin*)
• Large breasted dancers (we're pretty flexible on this one).

Anyway, if you live in San Jose and can help with any of these items let Jeff or I know. Supposedly the mob is going to make things difficult for us out there, but we'll work it out. It's gonna be a nutty show. We're looking forward to hanging out with everyone. I'm looking forward to posting live updates from the show- and this time with pictures & a wireless network adapter. This ought to be great!

An anonymous reader writes "rawhide.redhat.com has finally put the 2.2.1 RPMS on their site. It seems to be Kernel 2.2.1 release 3. "