– By Grant Gross–

It seems as if the mood is a bit low in the Open Source community these days, at least among those watching the stock market. A column at LinuxPlanet asked the question: “Is anyone making money on free software?” The column’s answer: The author’s company, set up to sell his books on Linux, is pulling a profit, even if few other Open Source companies are.

Another article, this one from Linux World, examined how companies could make money on Open Source products. Among the answers: hardware and embedded Linux.

Then this came along: A column at Business 2.0 asks, “How long will it be before a Net business is run on only open source software?” Ummmm, gee, let’s poll the dozens of Open Source companies out there and ask them how many closed-source tools they’re using. (The article does end up focusing on Lutris’ Enhydra application business server.)

Guerrilla marketing

It’s probably not the best way to win converts. A computer virus posing as a Shockwave movie hit Windows late last week. The “Prolin” virus (for pro-Linux) renamed all JPG and ZIP files on the victim’s computer with the appendage “change atleast now to LINUX.” It then drops a text file saying: “Hi, guess you have got the message. I have kept a list of files that I have infected under this. If you are smart enough just reverse back the process. i could have done far better damage, i could have even completely wiped your harddisk. Remember this is a warning & get it sound and clear… – The Penguin.” No points for spelling and grammar. Security experts later said the virus wasn’t all that serious.

BSD on the rise

The BSD community saw a major release this week, with OpenBSD 2.8 becoming available. Among the many improvements: hardware support is improved, and OpenBSD 2.8 will run on Apple iMac, G3, G4, and G4 Cube machines.

If you’ve noticed any rivalry between the BSD and Linux camps, here’s another salvo: A ZDNet column suggested BSD could soon pass Linux in number of users, partly because of the upcoming release of Apple’s Darwin. Meanwhile, NewsForge reports on a developer who wants to create a GNU version of Darwin by adding free software tools to the Apple licensed OS.

Poles like penguins

Check out the Polish News Team’s report about the Polish Parliament installing Linux, complete with pictures, and even in English.

New at NewsForge this week

Editor-in-chief Robin Miller reports on noises coming from VistaSource that the company is giving up on marketing the Applixware Linux office suite. Apparently, there’s some disagreement in the company about this happening.

Santa likes Linux, according to news editor Tina Gasperson, but there are some things he’d like to change about his favorite operating system.

Business columnist Jack Bryar isn’t surprised that doubts about wireless businesses are starting to surface. After all, WAP still has a lot of work to do before it works the way it should.

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

The fusion of apt and RPM is complete, reports Slashdot. The packages (for Conectiva Linux 6.0) may be downloaded from the repository. “The temporarily-forked version of APT is already fully functional and actually works. Conectiva Linux 6.0 — the first RPM-based distribution to support APT — currently ships with it, and has some repositories that are available for use with APT.“

“If you’re an Emacs fan you are going to drool over Emacs v21. If you are not an Emacs fan, v21 just might convert you. Keep in mind this is not GTK XEmacs (Xemacs with a GTK front end). This is a fresh new look for the Free Software Foundation’s Gnu Emacs. This version of GNU Emacs is still under development, and from what I gather it is not available to the general public for download at this time. Check out the screenshots.” –keskoy

Satire piece on BBspot begins, “Washington DC – Bill Clinton signed into law yesterday legislation that makes Linux
bashing an offense covered under the hate crime statute. Anyone convicted of Linux
bashing will now face Federal charges. The law is in response to the recent beating of a
Linux user at the University of Colorado by a Windows 2000 Users Group.”

Slashdot readers discuss a a CNet story about plans by AT&T to offer GSM cell service to U.S. customers. This is a boon for wireless access in the U.S., as GSM offers many services previously unavailable.

From InfoWorld: “The Central Intelligence Agency announced that it has acted against 22 of its employees and nine contractors for using a secret chat room to exchange gossip and jokes over the agency’s network.” The world’s top spies using their skills for the forces of good.

Mozilla.org posts release notes for its M18 project. “These release notes … describe installation instructions and known issues pertinent to the M18 release.”

CBS reports on the progress of the current space shuttle mission. It appears that space is getting crowded lately, as the International Space Station has to juggle ships to make room for the arrival of the shuttle.

Linux World “examines how companies can make money in open source…” and discusses the fate of proprietary software.

InfoWorld reports on Intel’s release of a VPN (Virtual Private Network) router intended to pass the burden of VPN processing to the router without dragging down network speed performance.