Broken Windows, Dec 21, 2001

Microsoft's newest version of Windows, billed as the most secure ever, contains several serious flaws that allow hackers to steal or destroy a victim's data files across the Internet or implant rogue computer software.

Microsoft asked a court on Thursday to stop a Linux start-up from using a name the software giant contends infringes on the Windows trademark.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant filed a motion with the U.S. Court for the Western District of Washington against Lindows , which is developing a version of the Linux operating system that will run popular applications written for Microsoft's Windows OS.

... it seems clear we need an organization which would for example sort documentation between free (as "libre" or "freedom") and non free. After some discussions with people from the GNU project and the FSF, we came to the conclusion no such project already existed. I am please to announce that I am now starting the GNU Writing Movement with help from the GNU project.

According to market researcher IDC, Linux is the fastest-growing operating system for servers, the workhorse machines that handle computing tasks for businesses. Linux's worldwide market share of new and upgraded operating systems for servers was 27 percent in 2000. It was second only to Microsoft, which stood at 42 percent.

At the end of November Microsoft posted a document on its Web site comparing the Windows XP Embedded and embedded Linux operating systems, with the emphasis on the technical and business inferiority of Linux. Embedded Linux distributors argue that the document not only distorts the value of Linux, but contains inaccuracies.

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n the Darwinian drag race among operating systems, Linux is still struggling to make itself palatable to the everyday computer user. Help may come in the form of Ximian Evolution, a new information-management program for Linux and Unix devotees that integrates e-mail, task and contact lists, scheduling and calendars.

Sun bought the software when it acquired Star Division for $73.5 million in 1999 and offered StarOffice as a free download. Later, the company released the source code for the software, hoping to build a cooperative developer community such as the group that has pushed the Linux operating system into the mainstream.

So Weta Digital has started building a wall of machines with the sole function of rendering the Lord of the Rings images. So far Labrie has purchased 16 dual-processor SGI 1200 servers running Red Hat's version of the Linux operating system. By the time the films are finished -- the first one is due out by the end of 2001 -- Weta will have 200 processors dedicated to rendering.

The nine US states that want tougher remedies imposed on Microsoft are attempting to weaken the software giant's desktop monopoly by giving the Linux operating system something it can really use: Office.

This week I've written a small rant on people's expectations of AbiWord - many need to stop and think about what AbiWord is, judging from some of the feedback we get. It would please me (and the other AbiWord developers, I'm told), if you took the time to read it - and possibly forwarded the link to other people using AbiWord. Thanks

Responding to a vnunet.com article last week, in which AV experts said that Linux is becoming more of a target, one Linux user has challenged "any AV company to infect my desktop Linux machine with an email borne virus".

Bill Gates, the world's richest man and boss of software giant Microsoft, has admitted that his computer crashes and he's mostly looking forward to getting books for Christmas.

He also revealed that he thinks Microsoft is a great place to work - and he's fed up with his long-running battle with the US government.

Sun's free StarOffice 6.0 offers features that could draw firms away from Microsoft applications, especially in the face of Microsoft's potentially costly new licensing schemes

The PDA market will rebound next year with a 30 per cent increase in device shipments, one of the world's largest handheld display panel suppliers has claimed.

However, the rising star of the PDA world will [be] Linux, which Lin expects will have carved out ten per cent of the market by the end of 2003 from effectively zero today.

Many 'gurus' teaching new users about Linux make it look harder than it needs to be, and apparently fail to explain that yes, you can make PowerPoint-style presentations in Linux, you can view Web Pages that use Flash animation and other "glitz" features, and that you can manage all your files though simple "point, click, drag and drop" visual interfaces. Could the biggest problem with Linux usability be that most of the people teaching newbies to use Linux are too smart and know too much?

Next week, lawmakers will take up the settlement issue when several Microsoft critics appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some senators have expressed skepticism about the way the Justice Department handled the case.

New York antitrust chief Jay Himes, Consumer Federation of America director Mark Cooper and Stanford University professor Lawrence Lessig all said they have been invited to testify. Industry officials said Red Hat Software executive Matthew Szulik, venture capitalist and former Netscape head Jim Barksdale and Justice Department antitrust head Charles A. James have also been invited.

VA Linux Systems, Inc. announced at its annual meeting today that shareholders voted to change the Company's name to "VA Software Corporation." The name change is effective immediately.

Open-source software projects tilt heavily in the direction of freedom: No one owns the underlying code behind Linux, and thousands have contributed to it. The software grows more sophisticated over time for three central reasons: (1) The ethos of the hacker community has a strong communitarian tradition that encourages contributions, which are rewarded only by the respect of one's peers, (2) modern software applications are modular enough to be built by committee, with thousands of dispersed participants chipping in their ideas, and (3) because the code base is openly shared with anyone interested in looking at it--unlike Microsoft's hidden Windows source code--interesting new ideas "freely spread from one to another over the globe," if not for the moral and mutual instruction of man, then at least for the improvement of his printer drivers.

Evolution as a product remains very firmly an open source tool but in January 2002 Ximian will start to sell software, Ximian Connector, to connect Evolution to Microsoft Exchange. This move by a stalwart open source supplier is further evidence that open source companies have to generate income and profits in order to survive. Connector will initially support Exchange 2000 with an Exchange v5.5 offering arriving later in the year.

Microsoft isn't the only OS with built-in security holes, although it is easily the worst. If anything it does better than some of its competitors at fixing those holes. According to a Netcraft survey, the Code Red virus that popped up earlier this year prompted Microsoft to offer a cumulative patch to fix many of the most glaring security holes in their system. It also prompted many users to pay attention and implement the patch. Meanwhile, security problems on Sun remain uncorrected. Even Linux systems have been hit with viruses. Based on the number of defacements reported by a German Web site that tracks such things, Linux and Apache can be messed with, as well.

In addition to the much-anticipated release of Evolution 1.0, which is possibly the best GUI mail client going on the Linux desktop, Ximian announced that it is developing a component for the software that will allow it to interoperate directly with Microsoft's Exchange. If Ximian lives to see the other end of the tunnel in the current economy, it will be taking its desktop strategy in a new direction: from simple mimicry of the things it admires most about Microsoft's own desktop products to a stance of collaboration or, if more angry rhetoricians among us feel like skirting Godwin's Law, appeasement.

Ximian has supported the open-source Gnome desktop software project for Linux computers for some time; indeed, Ximian co-founder Miguel de Icaza was the founder of Gnome. And in a culmination of its open-source efforts, Ximian on Monday released Evolution 1.0, a clone of Microsoft Outlook that has support for e-mail, contact lists and calendars.

Ximian, Inc., the leading open source desktop company, today announced the availability of Ximian Evolution? version 1.0, the premier personal and workgroup information management solution for Linux and UNIX-based systems. In one powerful and easy-to-use application, Ximian Evolution uniquely integrates email, calendar, contact and task list management. Evolution's broad support for data exchange and communications standards enables Linux and UNIX users to be integrated into corporate networks and messaging systems. Ximian Evolution 1.0 and its source code can be freely downloaded or purchased on CD as part of the Ximian Desktop software at www.ximian.com.

For reasons of national security and national pride, government officials in countries such as China, France and Germany are increasingly adopting the free, open-source computer operating system known as Linux.

Sharp USA has announced today that the "SL-5000D" (the developer versions of their upcoming StrongARM-based PDAs running Linux and Java) are shipping. They're taking orders from their USA website.

If you haven't used Kylix before, the OE comes with complete source code for a number of demo applications. Studying these can greatly reduce your learning time. There are demo apps for a basic text editor, clock, timer, sort, and even a demo illustrating the use of threads.

A vulnerability in the most widely used FTP server program for Linux has left numerous sites open to online attackers, a situation worsened when Red Hat mistakenly released information on the flaw early, leaving other Linux companies scrambling to get a fix out.

After the unit is set up and configured, the user can surf the Net direct from their television using either the player's remote or optional wireless keyboard. The first step is to download and install your favorite P2P program that offers a Linux version. Once you have that, you can begin trading movies direct from the box.

``Last year, Linux in China was hot,'' says Liu Bo, co-founder and chief executive of Red Flag Software, a prominent Linux vendor here. ``This year, we are more realistic.''

Linux and other open-source products should be ideal for China. Microsoft's products are not affordable for the huge majority of people here. Linux is extremely inexpensive, or free. Microsoft's software is notoriously porous to hackers and the source code, or programming instructions, are secret. Linux is more stable and its source code is open for inspection.

Opera Software ASA today released Opera 6.0 for Linux Technology Preview 1 (TP) with new and exciting features, including the ability to display non-Roman characters, a completely new and customizable user interface, as well as a range of different improvements that increases the speed and enjoyment of Linux users' browsing sessions.

Next year's launch of Microsoft's network gaming service for Xbox has been pre-empted by an open source/Linux development, Xbox Gateway. Bill is no doubt absolutely ecstatic about this, but he can console himself with the thought that at least all the work XboxGW has put into the system is on the outside - the box itself remains unsullied by viral GPL-related stuff.

At long last, after a year and a half of work, we're proud to announce that Galeon 1.0 has been released.

Several personal organizers running Linux were on display at this year's Comdex trade show in Las Vegas, including Sharp Corp.'s upcoming Zaurus, which will be the Japanese electronics giant's first PDA for the U.S. to ship with the operating system installed. South Korea's Gmate Inc., meanwhile, showed its Yopy device, and a German company launched a version of Linux designed to run on Compaq Computer Corp.'s iPaq.

Microsoft's Windows XP -- and all its clunky restrictions -- might just send you running to more versatile programs like Linux.

The company posted losses of $55m for Q1 2002 based on revenues of $5.6m. In the same period last year, while still active in the server market, the company reported a net loss of $51m on revenue of $56m.

Alan Cox, the man known as the 'keeper of the Linux 2.4 kernel', has been nominated for the Technology Review 100 - a list of pioneers in technology and business compiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Did Bill Gates Invent Open Source Software? No, But He'll Take Credit For It, Anyway

Last month, without much fanfare, Carnegie Mellon University's CERT Coordination Center released a white paper on current trends in denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. While much of the report merely chronicles the alerts and warnings the organization has published over the last two years, a few pages toward the end--where the authors point out new tactics taken by malicious users--are downright troubling.

DeviceForge LLC today announced the launch of DesktopLinux.com -- a major new website exclusively devoted to the use of Linux as a desktop operating system for personal and business purposes. The site features news, opinions, HOWTOs, FAQs, product previews/reviews, product listings, a discussion forum, and links to other web resources, all focused on using -- or learning to use -- Linux as a desktop operating system. A discussion forum with areas devoted to Linux distributions, windowing environments, application software, and system utilities is sure to be a popular area of the new site.

Ximian Evolution 1.0 Release Candidate 2 is feature-complete for 1.0. All user-visible text and user interface details are the same as they will be for version 1.0. Barring the discovery of major bugs, this Release Candidate will become the 1.0 build. All that stands between the this software and the title of "1.0" are thousands of users trying to find fault with the software.

Unfortunately, recently published reports have stirred up a hornet's nest after implying that the open alternative to GIF may be in trouble because Apple Computer is the owner of a patent on key component technologies used in the PNG image format.

In response to the concern, Greg Roelofs -- a member of the PNG group and author of "PNG: The Definitive Guide" -- debunked the incorrect implications in a forum discussion at popular open-source advocacy Web site LinuxToday.com.

Mr. Roelofs said: "The PNG group (which includes at least one or two members of the W3C's SVG team, btw) did discuss the Apple patent several weeks ago, and we decided it was completely irrelevant to PNG itself, almost certainly irrelevant to the pnmtopng utility and to PNG's animated extension, MNG, and probably irrelevant to SVG as well."

Dell continues to support Linux customers on a variety of client and server products both through factory installation and Linux vendor certification. Dell offers the latest release of Red HatŪ Linux 7.2 on its Precision Workstation and PowerEdge Server lines to customers who range from corporate professionals to performance computing enthusiasts through multiple ordering mechanisms, including over the internet.

Dell has published an open letter to its Linux customers 'clarifying' its position as regards the insurgent OS. Actually, the letter is headed "Clarifying Dell and Linux", but either of these would be a massive task, and we think we know what they meant to say. In any event, the letter reads like it's an apologia from a company that has been taking heavy fire from mullahs... er... enthusiasts and is making a desperate but futile effort to salvage its position.

Even before Nimda hit, Gartner predicted that the Linux server market would more than double within four years, from $1.8 billion this year to $3.8 billion by 2005. We think that estimate may be conservative given shrinking budgets, burgeoning security concerns and the outpouring of commercial support for Linux by major players. Familiar names such as IBM Global Services and Red Hat will lead the way in convincing those who are shy of open source that a Linux implementation can be backed up by a real, enterprise-class support contract (click here for a sampling of support offerings).

The high-risk vulnerability in IE 5.5 and 6.0 allows malicious code to gain unauthorised access to the cookies that are used to customise and retain a site's setting for a customer across multiple sessions. Because some e-commerce Web sites use cookies to store sensitive information about users, it is possible that personal information could be exposed through the software hole.

Tuxia, a German maker of embedded Linux operating systems for television set-top boxes and other computing devices, has chosen Comdex as the place to promote its open-source operating system for Compaq Computer's iPaq handheld computer.

Hewlett-Packard was developing three low-end Linux handhelds, including a wireless device, but the projects have been sacrificed in the recent round of layoffs, a source says

Hewlett-Packard has cancelled three Linux handheld projects with the axing of an Australian research and development lab, according to a source close to the company.

The payoffs were equally real, however. Viata saved about $170,000 in software costs during the first six months of using Linux, according to Phillips. Viata also saved on hardware, as it was able to avoid purchasing the high-end machines it would have needed to run Windows. Administration is cheaper, since most functions are performed centrally and can be automated.

In May, Compaq said it would GPL its NSC, or Non Stop Clusters code. This is the code that SCO licensed and co-developed as UnixWare Non Stop Clusters. Compaq announced two projects - The CI Project (for the infrastructure) and SSI, and Bruce Walker's seven man team in Los Angeles has been making progress.

Linux software seller Turbolinux and server maker Egenera announced a partnership to market Egenera's BladeFrame servers with PowerCockpit configuration and deployment software from Turbolinux. "For data centers housing hundreds to thousands of servers, this integrated solution means quantifiable improvements in both time-to-market and total cost of ownership," said Ly-Huong Pham, CEO of Turbolinux

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