There are no statutes in the U.S. that ban the use or export of cryptography.
You read that right. Instead, we have a law that controls the export of articles of defense that allows the Executive Branch to define articles of defense.
That means President William Jefferson Clinton, since he is in charge of the Executive branch, could unilaterally authorize the export of encryption software right now. He could also unilaterally redefine SUVs, Metallica CD's, and sex toys as articles of defense subject to all the export restrictions to which cryptogrpahy is currently subjected, right now.
Well, It's about time that the US congress dragged themselves into some semblance of reality on this issue.
Rather, it's about time that the U.S. Congress dragged the Executive Branch into some semblance of reality. The Arms Control Export Act only applies to cryptography because the Executive branch is delegated the authority to name what goods are covered by the Act.
(Note that under the non-delegation doctrine, largely abandoned by the Federal Courts in the 1930's, giving the Executive branch this kind of authority is unconstitutional.)
The laws are, in fact, so stupid that if I download a program that does encryption/decryption from a site in, for example, France, and then I translate the text in its GUI from French to English and stick it back up on the Internet, I have committed treason
No, you're just illegal international arms dealer. See Article III, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution for the definition of treason in the U.S.
In short, every version of NT has a security exploit that allows any user to get root access. That's a far greater security risk than this DoS attack, which can simply crash your system.
It has been known for over ten weeks. And AFAIK, Microsoft hasn't released a fix (at least I can't find one on microsoft.com). It is possible that NT 4.0 Service Pack 5, released six weeks after the hole was found, fixes it -- for NT 4.0 users and NT users willing to pay to upgrade to 4.0 only.
Now, which is a bigger deal -- a DoS attack fixed eight hours after publication, or a root exploit unfixed for at least six weeks after publication?
So that whatever environment you migrate from, it can be familier. and you can pick-and-choose any feature you want
But that's not the point. Getting KDE to have WPS-like behavior for the end user isn't truly valuable. The WPS advantage is in its underlying object model, which is largely independent of behavior.
As an analogy, imagine you're running Win95 with a version of command.com rewritten to use bash command names and options. You might now be writing "ls" instead of "dir", but you don't have access to the features that make Unix shells more powerful than command.com.
Yes, the proliferation of lxrun will reduce the number of Linux installations in the short run. In the long run, the commercial ISVs (especially smaller ones) will cut costs by cutting AIX, Solaris, and SCO Unix versions in favor of a single Linux version that runs on all of them.
IBM, Sun, and SCO will be caught in the trap of having to make significant investments in lxrun to keep compatibility with the newer versions of Linux, while people who want the fewest compatibility hassles will go with the Real Thing. Only in areas where the non-Linux alternatives are clearly more capable will AIX, Solaris, and SCO Unix survive -- and slowly wither as Linux becomes more capable.
I wonder if there will be a divide between those who want EXT3 to become the new standard or XFS (assuming it becomes a decent open-source alternative
The more the merrier. Except when it comes to pretty low-level disk manipulation, the choice of FS isn't going to hinder application compatibility, and all the major distros (if smart) will provide all the free FSs.
Now, if SGI releases XFS under the GPL, will a hacker port the XFS VFS to a OS/2 XFS IFS? It's already been done with ext2...
It is true that the FAQ could be claiming that UltraHLE may be violating the Nintendo copyright on Mario and Zelda via contributory infringement, not the Nintendo copyright on N64 system code by direct infringment. Of course, it's such a poorly written FAQ...
Well, it's high time somebody started writing development software for these emulators so they have a legitimate use, isn't it? Where did I leave that "Teach Yourself C in 21 days", anyway?
In the late 80's Atari made a number of carts under the tengen name. NOA took them to court on the basis that in order to play on their system (the NESat that time) the carts had to validate via some secret code and that code was copyright or patented by Nintendo.
Are you sure? IIRC, a U.S. court ruled that Atari had the right to go so far as to acid-strip the chips in the NES console in order to get enough information to produce NES-compatible games (although they could not then use the information to produce a competing console, of course).
What is Nintendo's Position on the N64 Emulator, the UltraHLE?
The UltraHLE is illegal. The N64 emulator infringes Nintendo's intellectual property rights, including copyrights, and circumvents Nintendo's anti-piracy security system
Does the UltraHLE (or any other emulator) actually include any Nintendo code? If not, it can't violate the copyright.
And Nintendo doesn't have an anti-piracy security system -- because the security system does not prevent illegal copies of the games from being made, or even played on an N64 (if you have the ability to manufacture cartriges). The so-called "anti-piracy security system" just prevents both legal and illegal copies from being executed on non-Nintendo machines.
On the other hand, imagine for a moment that one of the hardware cartridge copiers is adapted slightly to only load the code into your PC's RAM, where it is then executed by an emulator. This does not violate the Nintendo or cartridge copyrights at any point unless I've included actual Nintendo code in the emulator or copy the cartridge other than into RAM for execution, which I havent done. But the Nintendo "anti-piracy system" would prevent legal execution of the game -- unless my emulator circumvents it.
Accordingly, the "anti-piracy system" is not copy protection, so tools to circumvent it do not violate even the new U.S. copyright laws. So Nintendo can stuff it.
This is hardly a proof that the concept is practical.
And it wasn't intended as such. It was claimed that people believed 386-on-386 was impossible. Claiming that it was believed to be impractical is a different argument.
Had he been really convinced of the feasibility and marketability of the product, he would have done it himself.
That's ridiculous. Something can be feasible and marketable and still not be worth doing. For example, it is feasible to raise corn on a lot near my home, and the zoning allows it, and there is a market available for the corn at the price it would take to grow it. However, the current owners are going to be making a hell of a lot more money building a strip mall and leasing retail space instead.
Similarly, Alan Cox is a programmer of significant reputation who currently has a job at a fast-growing firm that distributes over half of the copies of the fastest-growing OS in the world. Why in the world would he abandon that in favor of what is at best a niche market product?
Er, steal the idea? The VMWare idea isn't even remotely new.
The first Microsoft product was BASIC for the Altair. Bill Gates & Paul Allen didn't have an Altair -- they implemented the product on a virtual machine on a PDP-(something).
Intel built support for virtual 8086's able to run 8086 operating systems directly into its 80386. Software support for such machines is already included in OS/2 2.0+, Windows 3.0+, and all Unicies that run DOSemu.
Java uses a protected, virtual Java machine, which also is available in hardware implementation.
VMWare is simply a software implementation of a virtual 386 machine. While complex to execute, it isn't exactly a new idea -- there have been lots of 386 system emulators out there.
386-on-x86 is somewhat rarer -- but there have been attempts dating back almost to the day that the 386 was released.
In short, saying that people shouldn't try to make a open source vmware clone is like saying that people shouldn't work on KDE and Gnome because CDE is already available for Linux.
It's an open question, but I will say that Linux compatibility systems are good for Linux and bad for competing Unicies. My justification of this position is the example of OS/2 2.0+.
OS/2 had almost-perfect Win2.x/3.x support. Anyone who wanted to sell to the OS/2 market was faced with the question, "Why don't I just write a Windows version and make sure it runs under Win-OS/2, giving me the chance to develop a single product and sell to both markets?" As a result, OS/2 software was really only worth writing if it used OS/2-only features.
On the other hand, anyone who was only concerned with the Windows market wrote software that might or might not run reliably under OS/2 (or under Windows, for that matter) -- and people cursed *OS/2* if it didn't, because IBM claimed OS/2 ran Windows programs.
Substitute "Linux" for "Windows", "Solaris" or "SCO Unix" for "OS/2", and "Sun" or "SCO" for "IBM", and you can see what a victory these emulators could be for Linux -- and what a tragedy they could be, long-term, for competing Unicies.
OTOH, with the source for the lower layers of Darwin and several flavors of xfree86-on-PPC-unix running around, a port of X should be a relatively simple project (compared, say, to the OS/2 port, which dealt with an OS very unlike Unix and had to rely on official documentation instead of being able to look at OS code).
----------------- ObQuake: Is that the new simulation of surviving the Big One in L.A.?
No? What's it like, then?
What's Doom?
Oh. I didn't like Wolfenstein all that much. Who in the world wants to play a real-time shooting game, when you can go down to the shooting range and empty a real 9mm?
Movielike action? Don't you have any imagination? Bet you even prefered Baldur's Gate to ADVENT, didn't ya?
...Meanwhile PNG... From my limited work and reading, PNG appears to be an excellent format -- but one that hasn't reached the critical mass that Linux has. HowToHelp: plug ins. M$ probably won't listen...
Actually, Microsoft has been very good about PNGs. IE has supported PNGs since version 4.0b1, and Office 97 uses PNG as its native compressed image format and also directly in its PowerPoint, Excel, Word and OfficeArt components.
My only concern is that an intelligent user may be able to use the information in this article to avoid destroying his computer. I accordingly urge everyone to e-mail the author to revoke his article until it can be effectively stripped of all information that may help such a user.
I like the phrase "liberated software". It is less ambiguous than "free software", and shorter than "free (think speech not beer) software". It has a connotation of freedom that "open source (tm) software" does not.
To grab my dictionary, "liberate" has three meanings: 1) To free, as from oppression, represssion, bondage, or foreign control. 2) (Chemistry) To release from combination. 3) (Slang) To obtain by looting; steal. In this sense, used ironically.
So, you could call GPLed software "liberated software" under meaning 1 -- and a warez d00d could call an illegal CD of MS Office "liberated software" under meaning 3. I'd argue that free speech/free beer is a lesser burden to explain to buisnessmen than free speech/stolen goods.
Another alternative, emancipated ("no longer subject to official authority or control") has a secondary definition as well ("no longer subscribing to accepted moral and social conventions"), with some connotations of libertinism (no, I do not mean libertarianism or liberalism). Could cause problems with buisnessmen -- and if you don't care about them, "free" is just as good.
Public software carries both connotations of the public domain and of government control.
"Free Source software" or some variant separates GPL/BSD/X/NPL from Microsoft Internet Explorer while keeping the word "free" around (which is lost in "open source") with the secondary connotation that *binaries* do not necessarily have to be free.
Frankly, I think Libre is the right word to use. It has the exact definition we want and isn't too difficult to understand (it even looks like the word "liberty"). Heck, English borrows from foreign languages (esp. French) for new words all the time anyway -- why not libre?
By Caldera. They loaded in a whole bunch of proprietary and closed-license software, and for quite a while there were the only Linux that could get reviewed by the tech mags. And they failed.
But here's a scenario -- RedHat goes nuts and dumps lots of closed-source and otherwise restricted software into RedHat 6.0, in an attempt to leverage their 70% marketshare into proprietary control of Linux.
What happens? Free Linux temporarily loses marketshare and market momentum as RH Linux becomes just another commercial Unix. RH5.x derivatives and descendants, Slackware, Debian, and all the rest continue as free alternatives, as do versions of RH 6.0 that are stripped of the commercialized portions by third parties.
The worst that can be done is that Linux's market acceptance is disrupted for a while. The greatest victims of such a disruption would be the commercial Linux distributors -- that is, the greatest victims of closing Linux would be the people who closed it.
Sure, Red Hat might take an action that stupid. And after it goes bankrupt, the community will pick up the pieces and move forward.
But it won't. Oh, there'll probably be a few dozen more failed attempts to do it (after the few dozen that already have failed or are stuggling), but the problem comes down to one thing -- people want the flexibility of full-powered computers.
Think about it. The #1 argument you heard in, say, 1989 for buying a DOS PC over an Apple II was that the PC ran more programs. The #1 argument you hear in 1999 for buying a Windows PC over a Mac is that it runs more programs. And a limited-power device like the Netscape-Linux IA the column talks about will slam into the same wall -- it's less useful than a PC.
Computers are programmed general-purpose information devices. A programmed limited-purpose iformation device will always be percieved as crippled.
Picking a local standard of KDE or Gnome or CDE isn't much different than choosing between Win98 and WinNT. You can't have a mixed 98-NT environment and install an off-the-shelf package on every desktop unless you watch compatibility issues, and you can't choose NT or '98 and run every "Win32" tool from it.
Frankly, there isn't enough KDE or Gnome specific software out there to make the issue any more serious than the NT-98 inconsistencies. Sure, they're worse in potentia, but right now they're both just different frosting that run "generic" X apps.
Okay, but it took five years of development (1990-1995) before Windows reached every-box consistency on GUI. One desktop would be running Progman as the shell, one Fileman, one any of the dozens of third-party shells. And all sorts of apps expected Progman and broke on third-party shells (especially when installing, but plenty of other times as well).
In short, Windows only had a consistent interface if you stuck with the default installed GUI shell. And, if every one of those Linux boxen was installed with the same version of the same distro using the distro's default shell, you have the same consistency.
Consistancy is also an important part of the GUI experience. Microsoft has tried to maintain control over the consistancy of it's desktop for a very good reason. A user should be able to use any windows machine without having to relearn the interface.
Oh, yeah. Lemme see, compare Win2.1, 3.1, '95, and '98 (with the IE-integrated desktop enabled). Click the box in the upper right corner of the window to maximize it -- or was that end the program? Double click on the desktop to bring up the task manager -- or was that move to the bottom of the screen to reach the taskbar? Double-click the program name in the Executive to launch it -- or was that on the icon in Program Manager -- or single-click on the icon in the Start menu -- or single-click on the icon on the desktop?
Yep. Can't fault Microsoft for interface consitency. It's always different.
Slashdot Mirror
There are no statutes in the U.S. that ban the use or export of cryptography.
You read that right. Instead, we have a law that controls the export of articles of defense that allows the Executive Branch to define articles of defense.
That means President William Jefferson Clinton, since he is in charge of the Executive branch, could unilaterally authorize the export of encryption software right now. He could also unilaterally redefine SUVs, Metallica CD's, and sex toys as articles of defense subject to all the export restrictions to which cryptogrpahy is currently subjected, right now.
Well, It's about time that the US congress dragged themselves into some semblance of reality on this issue.
Rather, it's about time that the U.S. Congress dragged the Executive Branch into some semblance of reality. The Arms Control Export Act only applies to cryptography because the Executive branch is delegated the authority to name what goods are covered by the Act.
(Note that under the non-delegation doctrine, largely abandoned by the Federal Courts in the 1930's, giving the Executive branch this kind of authority is unconstitutional.)
The laws are, in fact, so stupid that if I download a program that does encryption/decryption from a site in, for example, France, and then I translate the text in its GUI from French to English and stick it back up on the Internet, I have committed treason
No, you're just illegal international arms dealer. See Article III, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution for the definition of treason in the U.S.
If you see an article full of inaccuracies about Linux on linuxtoday or /., you know that the guy's going to get flamed, right?
So, send him an e-mail that starts by saying :
"I apologize on behalf of the Linux community for the idiots who are flaming you right now. Hopefully they will someday mature.
However, there *were* several errors, however unintentional, in your article. They were..."
At the very least, you'll show the writer not everybody in the Linux community thinks "pine" is for feeding flames.
As you would expect:
1) By number of computers on the list, the top 6 countries are G7 members;
2) The G7 all have a computer in the top 47, while no non-G7 state has a computer in the top 52.
See the following:
= /security/casesensitive.htm
http://www.ntsecurity.net/scripts/loader.asp?iD
In short, every version of NT has a security exploit that allows any user to get root access. That's a far greater security risk than this DoS attack, which can simply crash your system.
It has been known for over ten weeks. And AFAIK, Microsoft hasn't released a fix (at least I can't find one on microsoft.com). It is possible that NT 4.0 Service Pack 5, released six weeks after the hole was found, fixes it -- for NT 4.0 users and NT users willing to pay to upgrade to 4.0 only.
Now, which is a bigger deal -- a DoS attack fixed eight hours after publication, or a root exploit unfixed for at least six weeks after publication?
So that whatever environment you migrate from, it can be familier. and you can pick-and-choose any feature you want
But that's not the point. Getting KDE to have WPS-like behavior for the end user isn't truly valuable. The WPS advantage is in its underlying object model, which is largely independent of behavior.
As an analogy, imagine you're running Win95 with a version of command.com rewritten to use bash command names and options. You might now be writing "ls" instead of "dir", but you don't have access to the features that make Unix shells more powerful than command.com.
As went OS/2, so shall AIX.
Yes, the proliferation of lxrun will reduce the number of Linux installations in the short run. In the long run, the commercial ISVs (especially smaller ones) will cut costs by cutting AIX, Solaris, and SCO Unix versions in favor of a single Linux version that runs on all of them.
IBM, Sun, and SCO will be caught in the trap of having to make significant investments in lxrun to keep compatibility with the newer versions of Linux, while people who want the fewest compatibility hassles will go with the Real Thing.
Only in areas where the non-Linux alternatives are clearly more capable will AIX, Solaris, and SCO Unix survive -- and slowly wither as Linux becomes more capable.
lxrun? Is that Finnish for world domination?
I wonder if there will be a divide between those who want EXT3 to become the new standard or XFS (assuming it becomes a decent open-source alternative
The more the merrier. Except when it comes to pretty low-level disk manipulation, the choice of FS isn't going to hinder application compatibility, and all the major distros (if smart) will provide all the free FSs.
Now, if SGI releases XFS under the GPL, will a hacker port the XFS VFS to a OS/2 XFS IFS? It's already been done with ext2...
It is true that the FAQ could be claiming that UltraHLE may be violating the Nintendo copyright on Mario and Zelda via contributory infringement, not the Nintendo copyright on N64 system code by direct infringment. Of course, it's such a poorly written FAQ...
Well, it's high time somebody started writing development software for these emulators so they have a legitimate use, isn't it? Where did I leave that "Teach Yourself C in 21 days", anyway?
In the late 80's Atari made a number of carts under the tengen name. NOA took them to court on the basis that in order to play on their system (the NESat that time) the carts had to validate via some secret code and that code was copyright or patented by Nintendo.
Are you sure? IIRC, a U.S. court ruled that Atari had the right to go so far as to acid-strip the chips in the NES console in order to get enough information to produce NES-compatible games (although they could not then use the information to produce a competing console, of course).
What is Nintendo's Position on the N64 Emulator, the UltraHLE?
The UltraHLE is illegal. The N64 emulator infringes Nintendo's intellectual property rights, including copyrights, and circumvents Nintendo's anti-piracy security system
Does the UltraHLE (or any other emulator) actually include any Nintendo code? If not, it can't violate the copyright.
And Nintendo doesn't have an anti-piracy security system -- because the security system does not prevent illegal copies of the games from being made, or even played on an N64 (if you have the ability to manufacture cartriges). The so-called "anti-piracy security system" just prevents both legal and illegal copies from being executed on non-Nintendo machines.
On the other hand, imagine for a moment that one of the hardware cartridge copiers is adapted slightly to only load the code into your PC's RAM, where it is then executed by an emulator. This does not violate the Nintendo or cartridge copyrights at any point unless I've included actual Nintendo code in the emulator or copy the cartridge other than into RAM for execution, which I havent done. But the Nintendo "anti-piracy system" would prevent legal execution of the game -- unless my emulator circumvents it.
Accordingly, the "anti-piracy system" is not copy protection, so tools to circumvent it do not violate even the new U.S. copyright laws. So Nintendo can stuff it.
This is hardly a proof that the concept is practical.
And it wasn't intended as such. It was claimed that people believed 386-on-386 was impossible. Claiming that it was believed to be impractical is a different argument.
Had he been really convinced of the feasibility and marketability of the product, he would have done it himself.
That's ridiculous. Something can be feasible and marketable and still not be worth doing. For example, it is feasible to raise corn on a lot near my home, and the zoning allows it, and there is a market available for the corn at the price it would take to grow it. However, the current owners are going to be making a hell of a lot more money building a strip mall and leasing retail space instead.
Similarly, Alan Cox is a programmer of significant reputation who currently has a job at a fast-growing firm that distributes over half of the copies of the fastest-growing OS in the world. Why in the world would he abandon that in favor of what is at best a niche market product?
Er, steal the idea? The VMWare idea isn't even remotely new.
The first Microsoft product was BASIC for the Altair. Bill Gates & Paul Allen didn't have an Altair -- they implemented the product on a virtual machine on a PDP-(something).
Intel built support for virtual 8086's able to run 8086 operating systems directly into its 80386. Software support for such machines is already included in OS/2 2.0+, Windows 3.0+, and all Unicies that run DOSemu.
Java uses a protected, virtual Java machine, which also is available in hardware implementation.
VMWare is simply a software implementation of a virtual 386 machine. While complex to execute, it isn't exactly a new idea -- there have been lots of 386 system emulators out there.
386-on-x86 is somewhat rarer -- but there have been attempts dating back almost to the day that the 386 was released.
In short, saying that people shouldn't try to make a open source vmware clone is like saying that people shouldn't work on KDE and Gnome because CDE is already available for Linux.
It's an open question, but I will say that Linux compatibility systems are good for Linux and bad for competing Unicies. My justification of this position is the example of OS/2 2.0+.
OS/2 had almost-perfect Win2.x/3.x support. Anyone who wanted to sell to the OS/2 market was faced with the question, "Why don't I just write a Windows version and make sure it runs under Win-OS/2, giving me the chance to develop a single product and sell to both markets?" As a result, OS/2 software was really only worth writing if it used OS/2-only features.
On the other hand, anyone who was only concerned with the Windows market wrote software that might or might not run reliably under OS/2 (or under Windows, for that matter) -- and people cursed *OS/2* if it didn't, because IBM claimed OS/2 ran Windows programs.
Substitute "Linux" for "Windows", "Solaris" or "SCO Unix" for "OS/2", and "Sun" or "SCO" for "IBM", and you can see what a victory these emulators could be for Linux -- and what a tragedy they could be, long-term, for competing Unicies.
Its $6.99 plus $5 for $11.99 total at Cheapbytes
Nope. It's $1.99 plus $5 for $6.99 total at Cheapbytes.
OTOH, with the source for the lower layers of Darwin and several flavors of xfree86-on-PPC-unix running around, a port of X should be a relatively simple project (compared, say, to the OS/2 port, which dealt with an OS very unlike Unix and had to rely on official documentation instead of being able to look at OS code).
-----------------
ObQuake: Is that the new simulation of surviving the Big One in L.A.?
No? What's it like, then?
What's Doom?
Oh. I didn't like Wolfenstein all that much. Who in the world wants to play a real-time shooting game, when you can go down to the shooting range and empty a real 9mm?
Movielike action? Don't you have any imagination? Bet you even prefered Baldur's Gate to ADVENT, didn't ya?
...Meanwhile PNG... From my limited work and reading, PNG appears to be an excellent format -- but one that hasn't reached the critical mass that Linux has. HowToHelp: plug ins. M$ probably won't listen...
Actually, Microsoft has been very good about PNGs. IE has supported PNGs since version 4.0b1, and Office 97 uses PNG as its native compressed image format and also directly in its PowerPoint, Excel, Word and OfficeArt components.
My apologies. I forgot "intelligent user" was an oxymoron. Please ignore the previous post.
My only concern is that an intelligent user may be able to use the information in this article to avoid destroying his computer. I accordingly urge everyone to e-mail the author to revoke his article until it can be effectively stripped of all information that may help such a user.
I like the phrase "liberated software". It is less ambiguous than "free software", and shorter than "free (think speech not beer) software". It has a connotation of freedom that "open source (tm) software" does not.
To grab my dictionary, "liberate" has three meanings:
1) To free, as from oppression, represssion, bondage, or foreign control.
2) (Chemistry) To release from combination.
3) (Slang) To obtain by looting; steal. In this sense, used ironically.
So, you could call GPLed software "liberated software" under meaning 1 -- and a warez d00d could call an illegal CD of MS Office "liberated software" under meaning 3. I'd argue that free speech/free beer is a lesser burden to explain to buisnessmen than free speech/stolen goods.
Another alternative, emancipated ("no longer subject to official authority or control") has a secondary definition as well ("no longer subscribing to accepted moral and social conventions"), with some connotations of libertinism (no, I do not mean libertarianism or liberalism). Could cause problems with buisnessmen -- and if you don't care about them, "free" is just as good.
Public software carries both connotations of the public domain and of government control.
"Free Source software" or some variant separates GPL/BSD/X/NPL from Microsoft Internet Explorer while keeping the word "free" around (which is lost in "open source") with the secondary connotation that *binaries* do not necessarily have to be free.
Frankly, I think Libre is the right word to use. It has the exact definition we want and isn't too difficult to understand (it even looks like the word "liberty"). Heck, English borrows from foreign languages (esp. French) for new words all the time anyway -- why not libre?
By Caldera. They loaded in a whole bunch of proprietary and closed-license software, and for quite a while there were the only Linux that could get reviewed by the tech mags. And they failed.
But here's a scenario -- RedHat goes nuts and dumps lots of closed-source and otherwise restricted software into RedHat 6.0, in an attempt to leverage their 70% marketshare into proprietary control of Linux.
What happens? Free Linux temporarily loses marketshare and market momentum as RH Linux becomes just another commercial Unix. RH5.x derivatives and descendants, Slackware, Debian, and all the rest continue as free alternatives, as do versions of RH 6.0 that are stripped of the commercialized portions by third parties.
The worst that can be done is that Linux's market acceptance is disrupted for a while. The greatest victims of such a disruption would be the commercial Linux distributors -- that is, the greatest victims of closing Linux would be the people who closed it.
Sure, Red Hat might take an action that stupid. And after it goes bankrupt, the community will pick up the pieces and move forward.
But it won't. Oh, there'll probably be a few dozen more failed attempts to do it (after the few dozen that already have failed or are stuggling), but the problem comes down to one thing -- people want the flexibility of full-powered computers.
Think about it. The #1 argument you heard in, say, 1989 for buying a DOS PC over an Apple II was that the PC ran more programs. The #1 argument you hear in 1999 for buying a Windows PC over a Mac is that it runs more programs. And a limited-power device like the Netscape-Linux IA the column talks about will slam into the same wall -- it's less useful than a PC.
Computers are programmed general-purpose information devices. A programmed limited-purpose iformation device will always be percieved as crippled.
Picking a local standard of KDE or Gnome or CDE isn't much different than choosing between Win98 and WinNT. You can't have a mixed 98-NT environment and install an off-the-shelf package on every desktop unless you watch compatibility issues, and you can't choose NT or '98 and run every "Win32" tool from it.
Frankly, there isn't enough KDE or Gnome specific software out there to make the issue any more serious than the NT-98 inconsistencies. Sure, they're worse in potentia, but right now they're both just different frosting that run "generic" X apps.
Okay, but it took five years of development (1990-1995) before Windows reached every-box consistency on GUI. One desktop would be running Progman as the shell, one Fileman, one any of the dozens of third-party shells. And all sorts of apps expected Progman and broke on third-party shells (especially when installing, but plenty of other times as well).
In short, Windows only had a consistent interface if you stuck with the default installed GUI shell. And, if every one of those Linux boxen was installed with the same version of the same distro using the distro's default shell, you have the same consistency.
Consistancy is also an important part of the GUI experience. Microsoft has tried to maintain control over the consistancy of it's desktop for a very good reason. A user should be able to use any windows machine without having to relearn the interface.
Oh, yeah. Lemme see, compare Win2.1, 3.1, '95, and '98 (with the IE-integrated desktop enabled). Click the box in the upper right corner of the window to maximize it -- or was that end the program? Double click on the desktop to bring up the task manager -- or was that move to the bottom of the screen to reach the taskbar? Double-click the program name in the Executive to launch it -- or was that on the icon in Program Manager -- or single-click on the icon in the Start menu -- or single-click on the icon on the desktop?
Yep. Can't fault Microsoft for interface consitency. It's always different.