Enough about Linus, what's the story with the penguin?, Dec 19, 2003

But why a penguin? Who came up with the image of a bird that some complained looked too much like Homer Simpson? It all started in 1996, when the 5-year-old operating system began to be more widely used and talk began about the need to create a logo for Linux.

"I always felt that the Linux logo should be something fun and something you can identify with," Torvalds explained in an e-mail interview. "And being fun and friendly pretty much means that you have an animal logo."

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Webmaster's note: The article talks about the same spam methods used to send fake mails purporting to be from Linux.org in early 2002.

Prosecutors also accused Delta Seven of obscuring the origin of the mail by breaking into computers owned by others to relay the mail. As a way to establish the state's jurisdiction, the case centered on a computer owned by Jarjo Promotions of New York City. But documents said that Delta Seven sent e-mail through a grade school in Korea, an Internet provider in Slovenia and the ministry of finance in Kuwait. A central issue will be how much responsibility Synergy6 and OptInRealBig have for any misdeeds of Delta Seven.

"We believe that to date, governments nationally have not always been allowed to follow this edict, instead often being forced to procure some products due to unfortunate pre-existing vendor lock-in scenarios," he said, adding that the ACT Bill's requirement to avoid software that does not follow open standards should reduce future lock-in scenarios.

Streaming media provider RealNetworks on Thursday sued longtime nemesis Microsoft on antitrust charges, accusing the software giant of illegally using its Windows monopoly to hurt digital media rivals.

Red Hat reported third-quarter earnings in line with Wall Street estimates Thursday, but the Linux software vendor's revenue swelled 36% from a year ago, beating analyst expectations.

The Raleigh, N.C., company reported third-quarter net income under generally accepted accounting principles of $4.1 million, or 2 cents a share, up from net income of $214,000, or break-even on a per-share basis, in the year-earlier period. Revenue was $33.1 million, up 36.2% year over year and up 14.9% sequentially.

The Linux distributors detail their plans on when they'll be introducing Linux 2.6 into their commercial releases, while the analysts consider what 2.6 will mean to Microsoft and users.

Red Hat has released a range of patches for its Linux 7.1, 7.2 amd 7.3 versions which previously allowed a local user to fire off denial of service attacks.

The real issue comes with the Apache Web server. It was discovered that if someone gained access to the main configuration and access-restriction files used with Apache, they could execute arbitrary code i.e. set up a denial of service attack. They could also gained increased system priviledges, making the possibility of other hacks larger.

Tech hot spot Austin, Texas, is considering removing Microsoft products from some of its computers and shifting to open-source software in what could be another setback for the technology giant's lucrative government business.

The city could wind up with Linux-based, open-source systems for some functions on its 5,200 desktops and Microsoft for others, said Pete Collins, the city's acting chief information officer.

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