The Dallas Morning News interviews Richard M. Stallman about many things, including the difference between Open Source and Free Software: “They (Open Source people) don’t think proprietary software is bad. They just
think it’s suboptimal, so fundamentally our goals are different. For them,
proprietary software is a suboptimal solution. For us, proprietary software is
the problem and free software is the solution.”

From LinuxPR: theKompany.com,
producers and distributors of high-quality open source and commercial Linux
software, announces the release of its Windows/Linux GUI development
environment for Python, BlackAdder. BlackAdder combines a visual design
environment with debugging, syntax highlighting, ODBC interfaces and extensive
HTML documentation into a comprehensive platform for developing Python
applications, announces president and CEO Shawn Gordon.

Anonymous Reader writes: SearchEnterpriseLinuxhas a news roundup including information about an a new Open Source software converter, an award to a Linux company by PC World Magazine in Denmark and the latest on company alliances.

From LinuxPlanet: “Last Friday in this space I took Mark Kellner to task for an article he wrote in the Los Angeles Times about a two-week experiment with Linux. At bottom, it seemed to me that two weeks is not enough time to tell anyone very much that’s useful about Linux; even if one were in an enterprise and an expert came in and set it up and trained the brigades, it would probably be more than two weeks before people became sufficiently accustomed to it to form the beginnings of valid opinions. Qualitative issues aside, Linux and Windows are entirely different, and skills gained in one do not translate to the other.”

Mikael Pawlo writes “A Swedish Slashdot-inspired forum for news and discussion on free software and Open Source has opened. It’s called Gnuheter which is a combination of the words Gnu and “Nyheter”. Nyheter is Swedish for news.

The web site is run by Patrik Wallstrom and Mikael Pawlo. Wallstrom has a background in hardcore Commodore 64 programming and today is the chief technical officer for Sonox.com. He’s obviously publishing most of the technical news. Pawlo is a lawyer and thus publishing news on GNU GPL-related issues and policy making. Visit the site at Gnuheter.com“

“Crackmonkey and Mr. Bad collaborate on a fine Mr. Bad’s List. We put together ALL the
TECHNOLOGY you ever need to know in order to STUMP your OPPONENT in a technical
argument. Use these only when your back is against the wall — they’re definitely desperation
tactics.” Read and laugh at Pigdog.

From SearchEnterpriseLinux: “If Sun Microsystems’ dream comes true, the Linux community will embrace the latest version of its Network File System protocol. Sun’s director of Solaris Data Technology Jon Lee is championing the message that Sun NFS, which began as a workgroup file sharing solution, fills enterprise Linux’s need for a scalable Internet file access protocol. He is sure that NFS v.4 does that job so well that it will become the file-sharing standard on the Linux operating system. Lee and David Brittle, Solaris Data Technology senior software engineering manager, outlined their company’s plan to promote implementation of NFS on Linux.”

MSNBC tells us that in Windows, pressing the F12 key was not bringing up the temporary boot device menu as it should.

Chip giant plans to power down its 2001 mobile offerings with a slew of new low-power chips, starting with an ‘ultra-low power’ mobile Pentium III, reports
ZDNET.

In December, an ILOVEYOU-style virus circulated the vulnerable email browsers advocating the use of Linux. The virus was entitled Shockwave.A, and was believed at the time to be a serious embarassment to the Linux community and a setback to the progress made over the course of the year. Planet IT reviews that view in a two part article.