Tux's got game!, Feb 19, 2004

We recently used Linux to orchestrate a network of more than 2,000 machines from more than 50 countries, in real time, to become the first distributed global network to play a chess game against a single human opponent, setting a world record in the process.

The ChessBrain project is a non-profit distributed computing experiment that harnesses the processing power of remote machines. While ChessBrain is functionally similar to other distributed computation projects such as SETI@home, Folding@Home, and GIMPS, ChessBrain is unique in that it requires results in real time!

Chris Wysopal, vice president of research and development at security firm @Stake, said Microsoft should expect to field a lot of calls in the coming months as developers chime in with their ideas for improving the code.

Indeed, experts say the leak of Microsoft's proprietary code to the public might just result in code benefits to the Windows platform overall.

The netfilter/iptables project (http://www.netfilter.org/) announces out-of-court settlement with Allnet GmbH (http://www.allnet.de/) on Allnet's infringing use of copyrighted material.

Allnet was offering two products, a wireless access router and a load-balancing DSL router, both including software developed by the netfilter/iptables project.

However, Allnet did not fulfill the obligations of the GNU General Public License covering the netfilter/iptables software. Specifically, Allnet did not make any source code offering or include the GPL license terms with their products.

Smarting from criticism from open-source programmers, Intel has committed to release Linux versions of essential supporting software at about the same time it releases Windows versions.

The change in development plans, which Intel President Paul Otellini disclosed internally earlier this month, is due to go into effect by the end of 2004, Will Swope, general manager of Intel's Software and Solutions Group, said Wednesday at the Intel Developer Forum here.

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