Mandrake Linux policy angers members, Mar 24, 2002

MandrakeSoft finalized version 8.2 of Mandrake Linux on Monday, and became the first Linux distributor to announce that it would include StarOffice 6.0, an office suite from Sun Microsystems that recently instituted fees after several years as a free download. Because of the fees from Sun, MandrakeSoft decided to allow only some Mandrake Club members to download the office software--those paying higher fees.

Marcelo Tosatti, the 18-year-old hacker commandeering the 2.4 kernel tree of Linux, reckons a cool head is what's needed to develop the open source operating system.

He maintained that infighting is one of the biggest problems with developing Linux. "I do not start ego fights. I set a target and I try to achieve it," he said. "You'll see people on the Linux Kernel List fighting for ego reasons: you know, 'I'm better than you'."

Japanese manufacturer Kawada has released details of a Linux-based humanoid robot that it believes could be employed in the workplace. The robot, called HRP-2P (which stands for Humanoid Robotics Project-2 Prototype) runs on a real-time version of the Linux operating system, called ART-Linux. ART-Linux is based on the well-known RT-Linux, which is designed for robotic applications, as well as data acquisition and systems control functions.

So where does SuSE fit into the picture? The open source nature of Linux gives IBM a chance to bend an OS that it doesn't own around its other intellectual property. This option is not readily available with Windows or Java. Windows is under the tight grip of Microsoft . Java is theoretically "bendable" through participation in the Java Community Process, but that still doesn't compare to how easy it is to get Linux running on IBM mainframes the way Big Blue wants. Who's going to argue -- especially when IBM open sources all the code to make it work? While IBM open sourced the code to run Linux on its various systems, it doesn't actually sell its own distribution of Linux. IBM has left it up to other distributors to pick up that open source, incorporate it into their distributions, and compete by offering something special beyond the code itself.

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