Slashdot Mirror

Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for ZDNet: Academics from the Vrije University in Amsterdam, Holland, have published a research paper this week describing a new variation of the Rowhammer attack. For readers unfamiliar with the term, Rowhammer is the name of a class of exploits that takes advantage of a hardware design flaw in modern memory cards. By default, a memory card stores temporary data inside storage units named cells, which are arranged on the physical silicon chip in multiple rows, in the form of a grid. [...] In research [PDF] published today, named ECCploit, academics expanded the previous Rowhammer techniques with yet another variation. This one, they said, bypasses ECC memory, one of the memory protections that hardware makers said could detect and prevent Rowhammer attacks in the past.

ECC stands for Error-Correcting Code and is a type of memory storage included as a control mechanism with high-end RAM, typically deployed with expensive or mission-critical systems. ECC memory works by protecting against rogue bit flips, like the ones caused by Rowhammer attacks. Surprisingly, it wasn't developed to deal with Rowhammer. It was initially developed in the 90s to protect against bit flips caused by alpha particles, neutrons, or other cosmic rays, but when Rowhammer came out, it also proved to be effective against it, as well. But after spending months reverse engineering the designs of ECC memory, the Vrije University team discovered that this protection mechanism has its limits.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writing for ZDNet: Matthew Garrett, the well-known Linux and security developer who works for Google, explained recently that, "Intel chipsets for some years have included a Management Engine [ME], a small microprocessor that runs independently of the main CPU and operating system. Various pieces of software run on the ME, ranging from code to handle media DRM to an implementation of a TPM. AMT [Active Management Technology] is another piece of software running on the ME." [...] At a presentation at Embedded Linux Conference Europe, Ronald Minnich, a Google software engineer reported that systems using Intel chips that have AMT, are running MINIX. So, what's it doing in Intel chips? A lot. These processors are running a closed-source variation of the open-source MINIX 3. We don't know exactly what version or how it's been modified since we don't have the source code. In addition, thanks to Minnich and his fellow researchers' work, MINIX is running on three separate x86 cores on modern chips. There, it's running: TCP/IP networking stacks (4 and 6), file systems, drivers (disk, net, USB, mouse), web servers. MINIX also has access to your passwords. It can also reimage your computer's firmware even if it's powered off. Let me repeat that. If your computer is "off" but still plugged in, MINIX can still potentially change your computer's fundamental settings. And, for even more fun, it "can implement self-modifying code that can persist across power cycles." So, if an exploit happens here, even if you unplug your server in one last desperate attempt to save it, the attack will still be there waiting for you when you plug it back in. How? MINIX can do all this because it runs at a fundamentally lower level. [...] According to Minnich, "there are big giant holes that people can drive exploits through." He continued, "Are you scared yet? If you're not scared yet, maybe I didn't explain it very well, because I sure am scared." Also read: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's (a professor of Computer Science at Vrije Universiteit) open letter to Intel.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Five researchers from the Vrije University in the Netherlands have put together an attack that can be carried out via JavaScript code and break ASLR protection on at least 22 microprocessor architectures from vendors such as Intel, AMD, ARM, Allwinner, Nvidia, and others. The attack, christened ASLRCache, or AnC, focuses on the memory management unit (MMU), a lesser known component of many CPU architectures, which is tasked with improving performance for cache management operations. What researchers discovered was that this component shares some of its cache with untrusted applications, including browsers. This meant that researchers could send malicious JavaScript that specifically targeted this shared memory space and attempted to read its content. In layman's terms, this means an AnC attack can break ASLR and allow the attacker to read portions of the computer's memory, which he could then use to launch more complex exploits and escalate access to the entire OS. Researchers have published two papers [1, 2] detailing the AnC attack, along with two videos[1, 2] showing the attack in action.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Five researchers from the Vrije University in the Netherlands have put together an attack that can be carried out via JavaScript code and break ASLR protection on at least 22 microprocessor architectures from vendors such as Intel, AMD, ARM, Allwinner, Nvidia, and others. The attack, christened ASLRCache, or AnC, focuses on the memory management unit (MMU), a lesser known component of many CPU architectures, which is tasked with improving performance for cache management operations. What researchers discovered was that this component shares some of its cache with untrusted applications, including browsers. This meant that researchers could send malicious JavaScript that specifically targeted this shared memory space and attempted to read its content. In layman's terms, this means an AnC attack can break ASLR and allow the attacker to read portions of the computer's memory, which he could then use to launch more complex exploits and escalate access to the entire OS. Researchers have published two papers [1, 2] detailing the AnC attack, along with two videos[1, 2] showing the attack in action.

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Hacking researchers have uncovered a new attack technique which can alter the memory of virtual machines in the cloud. The team, based at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, introduced the attack, dubbed Flip Feng Shui (FFS)...and explained that hackers could use the technique to crack the keys of secured VMs or install malicious code without it being noticed...

Using FFS, the attacker rents a VM on the same host as their chosen victim. They then write a memory page which they know exists on the vulnerable memory location and let it de-duplicate. The identical pages, with the same information, will merge in order to save capacity and be stored in the same part of memory of the physical computer. This allows the hacker to change information in the general memory of the computer.
The researchers demonstrated two attacks on Debian and Ubuntu systems -- flipping a bit to change a victim's RSA public key, and installing a software package infected with malware by altering a URL used by apt-get. "Debian, Ubuntu and other companies involved in the research were notified before the paper was published, and have all responded to the issue."

When Linus Torvalds first announced his new operating system project ("just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu"), he aimed the announcement at users of Minix for a good reason: Minix (you can download the latest from the Minix home page) was the kind of OS that tinkerers could afford to look at, and it was intended as an educational tool. Minix's creator, Professor Andrew Stuart "Andy" Tanenbaum, described his academic-oriented microkernel OS as a hobby, too, in the now-famous online discussion with Linus and others. New submitter Thijssss (655388) writes with word that Tanenbaum, whose educational endeavors led indirectly to the birth of Linux, is finally retiring. "He has been at the Vrije Universiteit for 43 years, but everything must eventually end."

An anonymous reader writes "MINIX 3.2.0 was released today (alternative announcement). Lots of code has been pulled in from NetBSD, replacing libc, much of the userspace and the bootloader. This should allow much more software to be ported easily (using the pkgsrc infrastructure which was previously adopted) while retaining the microkernel architecture. Also Clang is now used as a default compiler and ELF as the default binary format, which should allow MINIX to be ported to other architectures in the near future (in fact, they are currently looking to hire someone with embedded systems experience to port MINIX to ARM). A live CD is available." The big highlight is the new NetBSD based userland — it replaces the incredibly old fashioned and limited Minix userland. There's even experimental SMP support. Topping it all off, the project switched over to git which would make getting involved in development a bit easier for the casual hacker.

ficken writes "The great conversation about micro vs. monolithic kernel is still alive and well. Andy Tanenbaum weighs in with another article about the virtues of microkernels. From the article: 'Over the years there have been endless postings on forums such as Slashdot about how microkernels are slow, how microkernels are hard to program, how they aren't in use commercially, and a lot of other nonsense. Virtually all of these postings have come from people who don't have a clue what a microkernel is or what one can do. I think it would raise the level of discussion if people making such postings would first try a microkernel-based operating system and then make postings like "I tried an OS based on a microkernel and I observed X, Y, and Z first hand." Has a lot more credibility.'"

twasserman writes "Andy Tanenbaum's recent article in the May 2006 issue of IEEE Computer restarted the longstanding Slashdot discussion about microkernels. He has posted a message on his website that responds to the various comments, describes numerous microkernel operating systems, including Minix3, and addresses his goal of building highly reliable, self-healing operating systems."

Guillaume Pierre writes "Andy Tanenbaum announced the availability of the next version of the Minix operating system. "MINIX 3 is a new open-source operating system designed to be highly reliable and secure. This new OS is extremely small, with the part that runs in kernel mode under 4000 lines of executable code. The parts that run in user mode are divided into small modules, well insulated from one another. For example, each device driver runs as a separate user-mode process so a bug in a driver (by far the biggest source of bugs in any operating system), cannot bring down the entire OS. In fact, most of the time when a driver crashes it is automatically replaced without requiring any user intervention, without requiring rebooting, and without affecting running programs. These features, the tiny amount of kernel code, and other aspects greatly enhance system reliability."In case anyone wonders: yes, he still thinks that micro-kernels are more reliable than monolithic kernels ;-) Disclaimer: I am the chief architect of Globule, the experimental content-distribution network used to host www.minix3.org."

rvannieuwpoort writes "Ibis 1.0 has been released. Ibis is a flexible and efficient Java-based programming environment for Grid computing. Ibis improves Java's serialization and RMI performance up to a factor of 10. It also extends Java with a range of communication paradigms, including group communication, divide-and-conquer and collective communication. An additional nice feature of Ibis is that it can communicate through firewalls, without opening ports, using TCP. Ibis is free software (BSD-style license). It runs on any platform that has a Java 1.4 or higher JVM."

rvannieuwpoort writes "Ibis 1.0 has been released. Ibis is a flexible and efficient Java-based programming environment for Grid computing. Ibis improves Java's serialization and RMI performance up to a factor of 10. It also extends Java with a range of communication paradigms, including group communication, divide-and-conquer and collective communication. An additional nice feature of Ibis is that it can communicate through firewalls, without opening ports, using TCP. Ibis is free software (BSD-style license). It runs on any platform that has a Java 1.4 or higher JVM."

dealsites asks: "Recently, The Electorial Vote website run by Andrew Tanenbaum was hit with a triple-threat. Not only was it Slashdotted, it was hit with a DDOS attack in conjunction with the busiest normal traffic day, due to the election. Netcraft has an article detailing the steps taken to mitigate the traffic. Andrew's host provider is also the provider of my site. I'm sure were are on separate servers, him a dedicated server and semi-dedicated hardware for myself, but I noticed dramatic slowdowns of my site during this triple-threat traffic onslaught to Andrew's site. Are there any techniques other than throwing more CPUs and bandwidth at the problem to remedy this type of situation? I'm sure I can't be the only one that has noticed this. Any comments on other similar stories?"

A reader writes: " www.electoral-vote.com, a site of daily updated maps of the US electoral college based on a number of polls is probably a site that the policially inclined check daily. Well, it has been revealed that the person behind the site, AKA the votemaster, is none other than Andrew Tanenbaum, noted author of numerous CS books." He's also known for a little discussion with someone named Linus Torvalds.

Stephan Schulz writes "Andrew Tanenbaum has rebutted Ken Brown's reply to his original comments on the (in)famous AdTI report on Linux's origin. It's quite entertaining, and leaves little doubt (well, even less than before) that Brown is conciously twisting the truth. Choice excerpt: 'I'm pretty animated all the time. But I only get tense when people try to put words in my mouth. After half an hour of repeatedly answering the question "Could Linus have written the Linux kernel by himself?" in the affirmative, I was getting a bit irritated. ... People who know me would probably confirm that I do not suffer fools gladly.' I'd add that being called 'the good Professor' repeatedly would have me exploding in no time..."

akahige writes "Fresh from the debunking of the 'Linus couldn't possibly have written an OS without ripping someone off' book published by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Tanenbaum has published an email he got from the consultant hired to do the code comparison between MINIX and Linux. Among other juicy comments, 'pay no attention to this man.' (There was no stolen code, either.) In related matters, ESR was apparently sent a pre-release excerpt of the book which he completely eviscerates with his usual zeal. Another story on NewsForge." See our previous stories if you're coming to this late.

BigFire writes "Professor Tanenbaum responds to the slashdot effect and a small critique of Ken Brown's forthcoming book in his followup. A small gem is where he disclosed that Ken Brown can't multiply simple positive integers."

Andy Tanenbaum writes "Ken Brown has just released a book on open source code. In it, he claims (1) to have interviewed me, and (2) that Linus Torvalds didn't write Linux. I think Brown is batting .500, which is not bad for an amateur (for people other than Americans, Japanese, and Cubans, this is an obscure reference to baseball). Since I am one of the principals in this matter, I thought it might be useful for me to put my 2 eurocents' worth into the hopper. If you were weren't hacking much code in the 1980s, you might learn something." Tanenbaum's description of the interview process with Brown is classic. See also Slashdot's original story and Linus' reply.

Andy Tanenbaum writes "Ken Brown has just released a book on open source code. In it, he claims (1) to have interviewed me, and (2) that Linus Torvalds didn't write Linux. I think Brown is batting .500, which is not bad for an amateur (for people other than Americans, Japanese, and Cubans, this is an obscure reference to baseball). Since I am one of the principals in this matter, I thought it might be useful for me to put my 2 eurocents' worth into the hopper. If you were weren't hacking much code in the 1980s, you might learn something." Tanenbaum's description of the interview process with Brown is classic. See also Slashdot's original story and Linus' reply.

J1 writes "The World Wide Web Consortium today released the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL) as W3C Recommendations. RDF is used to represent information and to exchange knowledge in the Web. OWL is used to publish and share sets of terms called ontologies, supporting advanced Web search, software agents and knowledge management. Read the press release for the full list of twelve documents, read the testimonials, and visit the Semantic Web home page."

Jeroen writes "Students from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam used a so-called 'optical trap' to construct a version of Tetris that measures 25 x 20 micrometers. Blocks are constructed from tiny glass beads and all the action takes place in a waterdrop under a microscope. Considering the equipment needed, this must not only be the smallest, but also the most expensive Tetris clone around. A short description and a movie can be found here."

Jeroen writes "Students from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam used a so-called 'optical trap' to construct a version of Tetris that measures 25 x 20 micrometers. Blocks are constructed from tiny glass beads and all the action takes place in a waterdrop under a microscope. Considering the equipment needed, this must not only be the smallest, but also the most expensive Tetris clone around. A short description and a movie can be found here."

Otter writes "Minix is best known as the Unix clone for x86 that inspired Linus Torvalds to write one himself. It's pretty much dropped off the map since. The latest patch for XFree86's xterm drops support for Minix. As the changelog notes, 'Juliusz Chroboczek noted it was removed from XFree86 server; there have been no users since 1996.'"

Gerard Jendras sent in a submission about applying computing power to an ancient game. The game of Awari has been solved: with perfect play, the game always results in a draw. There is a Java applet to test your skills against.

J1 writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has officially given its Stamp of Approval to the XML Schema specification. This makes it an official W3C Recommendation. The press release has the details."

Minix is now Free Software! Andrew Tanenbaum posted to the comp.os.minix newsgroup yesterday announcing: "Better late than never. I finally got permission from Prentice Hall to change the MINIX license to the BSD license. The lawyers sort of sat on this for two years." You can read the full posting on deja, as well.

Ramon van Handel has written a summary of the Freedows project for everyone to read. He talks about what it is, where it is going, and tries to address some of the major concerns that folks have expressed about it. The following was written by Slashdot reader Ramon van Handel Due to the recent misunderstandings about the Freedows projects, I have decided to write this article to put the facts about the project straight. I will attempt to sum up the goals of the Freedows project, and the current status. The goal of Freedows The goal of the Freedows project is to create a stable operating system based on a modified version of the Stanford Caching Model of Operating System Functionality (http://www-dsg.stanford.edu/papers/cachekernel/main.html). Our version is somewhat modified to make it usable on normal PC hardware (the original cache kernel was implemented on a PaRadiGM computer that was made at Stanford for research purposes) and introduces a modern system for distributed computing, having a CORBA ORB as communication backbone for external kernels.

In the caching model, it is attempted to take as much functionality out of the lowest level of the system, the Cache Kernel. On top of the cache kernel run so called Application Kernels. Each Application Kernel provides medium-level sevices to applications running on top of it (as opposed to the low-level services that are provided by the cache kernel.) Basically, the only things the cache kernel manages are the creation of kernels, threads, and the address spaces they run in, as well as the multitasking of the threads. The rest of the services are provided by each application kernel for the applications running on top of it, thus making this environment very suitable for emulation of other operating systems. As have said above we have modified the original model a bit to allow it to run on conventional hardware. For more details, see the original paper and our current specifications.

The most important reasons for using the cache kernel as our basis are:

• It provides the modularity of micorkernels with the speed of monolithic kernels
• The CK (cache kernel) design is extremely suitable for emulation of other OSes

The Freedows team is not affiliated with Stanford in any way. We are just using a modern kernel type designed there, in stead of using old-fashioned kernel types like the unflexible monolithic kernel or the slow and memory-hungry microkernel.

It is not the primary purpose of the Freedows project to provide emulations for all the platforms in existance. This would, as anybody can see, be impossible. In stead, our primary goal is to provide an environment where this kind of emulation is possible and relatively easy to implement.

About emulation

So, what about emulation ? When the base system is relatively stable, the Freedows team will attempt to convert an (or several) existing free operating system(s) to Freedows FEAKs (Freedows Emulation Application Kernels.) This will help test the design, and aside from that provide support for binaries and sources from other environments for people switching to Freedows. Nowadays, you will have great trouble getting people to switch to a new operating system if it doesn't support the old, familiar programs the user used on his previous OS. Thus, emulation is a good thing. The first operating systems to be converted will be Linux and DOS (based on FreeDOS, probably.)

There is a Freedows subteam which researches and will try to implement Win32 binary emulation on top of Freedows, probably based on the existing efforts Wine, TWIN, and Win32-OS/2. The binary support will probably be about the same as Wine binary support - don't expect miracles. After all, we wish to use clean-room techniques, but Microsoft hides a lot of 'undocumented' calls from us that ARE used, but that we CANNOT legally emulate.

But as I said, our first goal is to create an environment in which this is all possible. Emualtion can then be implemented either by the Freedows team or by a third party.

So why does the webpage say something else, then ? The one thing we have done very badly in the Freedows project is PR. The website, though constantly changing its looks, is terribly outdated. The 'more info' and 'FAQ' sections were written in the early days of the project, when the ideas and goals were still different. They have never been changed since, though our goals and views certainly have. This is very unfortunate, because it leads to many misunderstandings.

I am told that the HTML team is working on a new website with improved and updated content. Also, our project ambassador, Davis Sickmon, is working on a new FAQ. Hopefully, the bad state of the website and its contents will be corrected soon.

About the code Linux didn't have to spend a year designing his system. Why is this ? Not because the design phase isn't important. It is because the design was done for him already, by Dennis Ritchie. Linus is an implmenter -- and implementer of a well-thought-out, well-designed, and oft-proven system. We are in a completely different situation: we are not implementing an old system, we are working with a novel design. The design wasn't done for us already; it isn't proven yet, and needs to be well-thought-out and well-designed by us. Thus, it is not fair to compare the two projects, as they are in different situations.

The good news is, that the design-and-specification state is slowly but surely coming to an end. We have specified most of the system by now, and slowly all specifications are slipping into a stable state. Soon, we should be able to start coding seriously. So hang on there...

About the development model

The development model we are using is currently rather closed. The reason for that is, that we can simply not use the open model before we have code. Quoting Eric S. Raymond's 'The cathedral and the Bazaar' (http://www.kde.org/food/cathedral/cathedral-paper.html):

"It's fairly clear that one cannot code from the ground up in bazaar style. One can test, debug and improve in bazaar style, but it would be very hard to originate a project in bazaar mode. Linus didn't try it. I didn't either. Your nascent developer community needs to have something runnable and testable to play with."

We are creating the first code in our closed model. When we have a first alpha, we will switch to the open model. The original Freedows teams will continue actively developing their parts of Freedows, but the teams will get mostly a maintainance function: every team maintains its part of the system, much like Alan Cox maintains the stable linux kernel in the linux community.

When will a beta be released

I am often asked when Freedows will go beta. The answer is, 'I don't know.'

A beta will be released when the code has become stable and contains the main features that are specified in the specs. When this is, we can not know. We currently have no deadlines (and as far as I know aren't planning to have any.)

I wish to mention that this project is running entirely on donated time. All developers have other things to do, either working or studying. We cannot expect these people to devote more time to Freedows than they have to give; and so we can also not predict how fast our progress will be. We hope to have at least an alpha by mid-1999, but these are just projections. (it depends on how optimistic you are; some say beta by mid-1999, some say much less.) I suggest you don't take the projections too seriously.

Where can you get more information

As the website is outdated, that is not the place to get information. What can you do ?

1. wait for the new website, or
2. read our specifications

Usually, the current specifications can be found at the Freedows forum: http://www.freedows.org/english/index.html

Click the 'guest' button, click on kernel, and follow the links to read the specifications.

Unfortuanetly, the forum doesn't always contain the latest specs either (we're currently running behind again here too.) The only way at the moment to get ALL the news is to subscribe to the kernel team mailing list. Contact one of the kernel team leads, or myself, for more information on this.

Conclusion

I hope this article manages to clear up misunderstandings about the Freedows project, and to explain its goals clearly. I hope the website will be changed soon to reflect the things I have mentioned.

If you still have questions, comments or suggestions feel free to contact either myself, or any other Freedows developer (you can find some email addresses on the website.) We will be glad to hear your opinions/clarify matters. Of course, we will be responding to all comments posted on slashdot.

Thank you for reading all of this, Ramon van Handel
Freedows CK and SORB developer
vhandel@chem.vu.nl

Ramon van Handel has written a summary of the Freedows project for everyone to read. He talks about what it is, where it is going, and tries to address some of the major concerns that folks have expressed about it. The following was written by Slashdot reader Ramon van Handel Due to the recent misunderstandings about the Freedows projects, I have decided to write this article to put the facts about the project straight. I will attempt to sum up the goals of the Freedows project, and the current status. The goal of Freedows The goal of the Freedows project is to create a stable operating system based on a modified version of the Stanford Caching Model of Operating System Functionality (http://www-dsg.stanford.edu/papers/cachekernel/main.html). Our version is somewhat modified to make it usable on normal PC hardware (the original cache kernel was implemented on a PaRadiGM computer that was made at Stanford for research purposes) and introduces a modern system for distributed computing, having a CORBA ORB as communication backbone for external kernels.

In the caching model, it is attempted to take as much functionality out of the lowest level of the system, the Cache Kernel. On top of the cache kernel run so called Application Kernels. Each Application Kernel provides medium-level sevices to applications running on top of it (as opposed to the low-level services that are provided by the cache kernel.) Basically, the only things the cache kernel manages are the creation of kernels, threads, and the address spaces they run in, as well as the multitasking of the threads. The rest of the services are provided by each application kernel for the applications running on top of it, thus making this environment very suitable for emulation of other operating systems. As have said above we have modified the original model a bit to allow it to run on conventional hardware. For more details, see the original paper and our current specifications.

The most important reasons for using the cache kernel as our basis are:

• It provides the modularity of micorkernels with the speed of monolithic kernels
• The CK (cache kernel) design is extremely suitable for emulation of other OSes

The Freedows team is not affiliated with Stanford in any way. We are just using a modern kernel type designed there, in stead of using old-fashioned kernel types like the unflexible monolithic kernel or the slow and memory-hungry microkernel.

It is not the primary purpose of the Freedows project to provide emulations for all the platforms in existance. This would, as anybody can see, be impossible. In stead, our primary goal is to provide an environment where this kind of emulation is possible and relatively easy to implement.

About emulation

So, what about emulation ? When the base system is relatively stable, the Freedows team will attempt to convert an (or several) existing free operating system(s) to Freedows FEAKs (Freedows Emulation Application Kernels.) This will help test the design, and aside from that provide support for binaries and sources from other environments for people switching to Freedows. Nowadays, you will have great trouble getting people to switch to a new operating system if it doesn't support the old, familiar programs the user used on his previous OS. Thus, emulation is a good thing. The first operating systems to be converted will be Linux and DOS (based on FreeDOS, probably.)

There is a Freedows subteam which researches and will try to implement Win32 binary emulation on top of Freedows, probably based on the existing efforts Wine, TWIN, and Win32-OS/2. The binary support will probably be about the same as Wine binary support - don't expect miracles. After all, we wish to use clean-room techniques, but Microsoft hides a lot of 'undocumented' calls from us that ARE used, but that we CANNOT legally emulate.

But as I said, our first goal is to create an environment in which this is all possible. Emualtion can then be implemented either by the Freedows team or by a third party.

So why does the webpage say something else, then ? The one thing we have done very badly in the Freedows project is PR. The website, though constantly changing its looks, is terribly outdated. The 'more info' and 'FAQ' sections were written in the early days of the project, when the ideas and goals were still different. They have never been changed since, though our goals and views certainly have. This is very unfortunate, because it leads to many misunderstandings.

I am told that the HTML team is working on a new website with improved and updated content. Also, our project ambassador, Davis Sickmon, is working on a new FAQ. Hopefully, the bad state of the website and its contents will be corrected soon.

About the code Linux didn't have to spend a year designing his system. Why is this ? Not because the design phase isn't important. It is because the design was done for him already, by Dennis Ritchie. Linus is an implmenter -- and implementer of a well-thought-out, well-designed, and oft-proven system. We are in a completely different situation: we are not implementing an old system, we are working with a novel design. The design wasn't done for us already; it isn't proven yet, and needs to be well-thought-out and well-designed by us. Thus, it is not fair to compare the two projects, as they are in different situations.

The good news is, that the design-and-specification state is slowly but surely coming to an end. We have specified most of the system by now, and slowly all specifications are slipping into a stable state. Soon, we should be able to start coding seriously. So hang on there...

About the development model

The development model we are using is currently rather closed. The reason for that is, that we can simply not use the open model before we have code. Quoting Eric S. Raymond's 'The cathedral and the Bazaar' (http://www.kde.org/food/cathedral/cathedral-paper.html):

"It's fairly clear that one cannot code from the ground up in bazaar style. One can test, debug and improve in bazaar style, but it would be very hard to originate a project in bazaar mode. Linus didn't try it. I didn't either. Your nascent developer community needs to have something runnable and testable to play with."

We are creating the first code in our closed model. When we have a first alpha, we will switch to the open model. The original Freedows teams will continue actively developing their parts of Freedows, but the teams will get mostly a maintainance function: every team maintains its part of the system, much like Alan Cox maintains the stable linux kernel in the linux community.

When will a beta be released

I am often asked when Freedows will go beta. The answer is, 'I don't know.'

A beta will be released when the code has become stable and contains the main features that are specified in the specs. When this is, we can not know. We currently have no deadlines (and as far as I know aren't planning to have any.)

I wish to mention that this project is running entirely on donated time. All developers have other things to do, either working or studying. We cannot expect these people to devote more time to Freedows than they have to give; and so we can also not predict how fast our progress will be. We hope to have at least an alpha by mid-1999, but these are just projections. (it depends on how optimistic you are; some say beta by mid-1999, some say much less.) I suggest you don't take the projections too seriously.

Where can you get more information

As the website is outdated, that is not the place to get information. What can you do ?

1. wait for the new website, or
2. read our specifications

Usually, the current specifications can be found at the Freedows forum: http://www.freedows.org/english/index.html

Click the 'guest' button, click on kernel, and follow the links to read the specifications.

Unfortuanetly, the forum doesn't always contain the latest specs either (we're currently running behind again here too.) The only way at the moment to get ALL the news is to subscribe to the kernel team mailing list. Contact one of the kernel team leads, or myself, for more information on this.

Conclusion

I hope this article manages to clear up misunderstandings about the Freedows project, and to explain its goals clearly. I hope the website will be changed soon to reflect the things I have mentioned.

If you still have questions, comments or suggestions feel free to contact either myself, or any other Freedows developer (you can find some email addresses on the website.) We will be glad to hear your opinions/clarify matters. Of course, we will be responding to all comments posted on slashdot.

Thank you for reading all of this, Ramon van Handel
Freedows CK and SORB developer
vhandel@chem.vu.nl

To read news about Amoeba (a newly freed OS), Sun's new free software website, IBM's new UNSUPPORTED ADSM client, Staroffice 5.0, and a possible port of QuickMotion to Linux, hit the link below. Jesper Juhl informs us that the Amoeba Distributed Operating System is now available for free download with a pretty liberal license. Amoeba is a powerful microkernel-based system that turns a collection of workstations or single-board computers into a transparent distributed system. It has been in use in academia, industry, and government forabout 5 years. It runs on the SPARC (Sun4c and Sun4m), the 386/486, 68030, and Sun 3/50 and Sun 3/60.

Robert Herrmann writes "Sun is getting serious about helping people use free software on Solaris."

On the commercial side, an anonymous reader informed us that IBM released an UNSUPPORTED Linux port of the ADSM Version 3 client., so please don't discourage them by bugging them for support.

Telcontar writes "StarOffice 5.0 for Linux will be available by August 18. The English website has not been updated yet (will be updated today), but the German website says that more than 400,000 users are already registered for the latest version (4.0 with service pack 3). The final version will be released on September 30 and will have all features of the versions for other platforms. It is free for private/educationaluse. 5.0 will be available in 8 languages (soon to be 24), and StarDivision has just opened an office in the USA"

Finally, David Nedrow writes that Practice Corp makes QuickMotion/2 for OS/2: a Quicktime viewer which provides standalone viewing, plugin support and QuickTimeVR and is better in many cases than XAnim. Tom Harding at Practice has indicated that they have been looking at Linux as a target platform. So if you'd like to see a port send a pleasantly worded message to the developers.

(I've edited the comments for brevity)

Andrew writes "Amoeba is an operating system designed by Andrew Tanenbaum (author of "Modern Operating Systems", among others) to treat a network of machines as one giant server. It is now free (open-source). Interesting idea; the OS has some limitations. It would be interesting to hack around on the source. The Hurd developers want Hurd systems to be able to do this. " I actually own Modern Operating Systems. Big heavy book. Lot's of good stuff. I'm kinda tempated to snag the code and take a gander. Probably have more pressing issues this weekend though.