Kernel release: 2.4.25-rc1, Feb 05, 2004

2.4.25-rc1 has been released today.
See changelog for full details.

Files added: 325
Files changed: 1755
Files removed: 40

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), the Beaverton, Ore.-based organization dedicated to advancing Linux, today announced that Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Co. (NTT) has joined the group.

NTT, the world's largest telecom company, will help advance OSDL's Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) effort. CGL is the spin off the open-source operating system aimed at network operators, telecommunications equipment manufacturers and network equipment manufacturers.

Jorg Janke didn't set out to write open-source ERP software. But like many small start-up application vendors, he found the traditional path to success blocked by sales and marketing costs.

"I thought open-source was a model where I can make money and not have salespeople," he says. "My customers do presales and demos on their own by simply downloading the software and trying it."

Until he launched his legal campaign last year, hardly anyone had heard of Darl McBride. Today, he's one of the most hated men in the computer software business. "I believe his unpopularity far exceeds that of Bill Gates, who is number two," said software developer Ron Newman after hearing McBride speak at Harvard Law School on Monday.

"Bill Gates has produced something of value," Newman said of the cofounder of Microsoft Corp., who has been reviled for abusing his company's monopoly on desktop operating systems. But Newman said that McBride "has produced nothing of value."

Microsoft is moving to a new phase in its competitive attack, arguing that the company is better than IBM and Linux when it comes to connecting different applications.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software colossus had been contending, through a series of Microsoft-funded studies and "Get the Facts" advertisements, that Microsoft products have a lower "total cost of ownership" than Linux and other open-source software. Now Microsoft is trying to move the debate to the challenge of interoperability.

Where the first target of the Get the Facts attack was Linux, the interoperability phase also puts IBM in the crosshairs.

eWEEK.com Linux & Open-Source Center Editor Steven Vaughan-Nichols has gotten awful tired of the shopworn argument that if Linux were as popular as Windows it would be in just as much security hot water as Linux. Wrong!

In MyDoom's aftermath, once more I'm confronted with the old lie that if Linux were only as popular as Windows, it too would have Windows-sized security problems. What nonsense!

Yes, Linux has security problems too. Yes, by sheer count of security problems patched, Linux, not Windows, has more holes. But that's not important.

What's really important is how serious those problems are. With Linux, the problems tend to be small and fixed quickly. With Windows, the problems tend to be larger and not fixed quickly enough. Take, for example, the Internet Explorer phishing bug, which everyone knew about by early December but wasn't fixed until Feb. 2.

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