Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Author: JT Smith
If you’d like to see a list of what has changed between OpenBSD 2.7 and
2.8, look at
http://www.OpenBSD.org/plus28.html.
Even though the list is a summary of the most important changes made to
OpenBSD, it still is a very very long list — more than 700 major
changes.
This is our ninth OpenBSD release, and the eighth release which is
available on CDROM. Our releases have been spaced six months apart,
and we plan to continue this timing.
Security and errata
We provide patches for known security threats and other important
issues
discovered after each CD release. As usual, between the creation of the
OpenBSD 2.8 FTP/CDROM binaries and the actual 2.8 release date, our
team
found and fixed some new reliability problems (note: most are minor,
and
in subsystems that are not enabled by default). Our continued research
into security means we will find new security problems — and we always
provide patches as soon as possible. Therefore, we advise regular
visits to
http://www.OpenBSD.org/security.html
and
http://www.OpenBSD.org/errata.html.
CDROM sales
OpenBSD 2.8 is also available on CDROM. A 2-CD set which costs $30USD
is available via mail order and from a number of contacts around the
world. The set includes a colorful booklet which carefully explains
the installation of OpenBSD. A new set of cute little stickers is
also
included (sorry, but our FTP mirror sites do not support STP, the
Sticker Transfer Protocol). Profits from these sales are the primary
income source for the OpenBSD project — in essence selling these
CDROM units ensures that OpenBSD will continue to make another release
six months from now.
For more information on ordering CDROMs, see http://www.OpenBSD.org/orders.html.
The above web page lists a number of places where OpenBSD CDROMs can
be purchased. For our default mail order, go directly to
https://https.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/order
or, for European orders,
https://https.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/order.eu.
All of our developers strongly urge you to buy a CDROM and support our
future efforts. As well, donations to the project are highly
appreciated, as described in more detail at
http://www.OpenBSD.org/goals.html#funding.
T-shirt sales
The project continues to expand its funding base by selling T-shirts
and
polo shirts. And our users like them, too. We have a variety of shirts
available, with the new and old designs, from our web ordering system
at
https://https.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/order.
With this release, we introduce 2 new shirts.
FTP installs
If you choose not to buy an OpenBSD CDROM, OpenBSD can be easily
installed via FTP. Typically you need a single small piece of boot
media (e.g., a boot floppy) and then the rest of the files can be
installed from a number of locations, including directly off the
Internet. Follow this simple set of instructions to ensure that you
find all of the documentation you will need while performing an install
via FTP. With the CDROMs, the necessary documentation is easier to
find.
Read either of the following two files for a list of ftp
mirrors which provide OpenBSD, then choose one near you:
http://www.OpenBSD.org/ftp.html;
ftp://ftp.OpenBSD.org/pub/OpenBSD/2.8/ftplist.
XFree86 for most architectures
XFree86 has been integrated more closely into the system. This
release contains XFree86 3.3.6. Most of our architectures ship with
XFree86, even the sparc and powerpc. During installation, you can
install
XFree86 quite easily. Be sure to try out xdm(1) and see how we have
customized it for OpenBSD.
Ports tree
The OpenBSD ports tree contains automated instructions for building
third party software. The software has been verified to build and run
on the various OpenBSD architectures. The 2.8 ports collection,
including many of the distribution files, is included on the 2-CD set.
Please see PORTS file for more information.
Note: some of the most popular ports, e.g., the Apache web server and
several X applications, are now a standard part of OpenBSD. Also,
other popular ports have been pre-compiled for those who do not desire
to build their own binaries.
Binary packages we provide
A number of binary packages are provided. Please see PACKAGES file
(ftp://ftp.OpenBSD.org/pub/OpenBSD/PACKAGES) for more details.
System source code
The CDROMs contain source code for all the subsystems explained above,
and the README (ftp://ftp.OpenBSD.org/pub/OpenBSD/README) file explains how to deal with these source files. For those who are doing
an FTP install, the source code for all four subsystems can be
found in the pub/OpenBSD/2.8/ directory:
X11.tar.gz; ports.tar.gz; src.tar.gz; srcsys.tar.gz.
Thanks
OpenBSD 2.8 introduces artwork and CD artistic layout by Ty Semaka
(who as it happens, performs in a band called the Plaid Tongued
Devils, http://www.thedevils.com/). Ports tree and package building
by Brad Smith, Marc Espie, and Chris Turan. System builds by Theo de
Raadt, Niklas Hallqvist, Todd Fries, Steve Murphree, Miod Vallat,
Mats O Jansson, Marc Espie, and Bob Beck. ISO-9660 filesystem layout
by Theo de Raadt. Release announcement written by Aaron Campbell.
We would like to thank all of the people who sent in bug reports, bug
fixes, donation checks, and hardware that we use. We would also like
to thank those who bought our previous CDROMs. Those who did not
support us financially have still helped us with our goal of improving
the quality of the software.
Our developers are:
Aaron Campbell, Angelos D. Keromytis, Anil Madhavapeddy, Artur
Grabowski,
Assar Westerlund, Bob Beck, Brad Smith, Brandon Creighton, Brian
Somers,
Bruno Rohee, Camiel Dobbelaar, Chris Cappuccio, Christian Weisgerber,
Chris Turan, Constantine Sapuntzakis, Craig Metz, Dale Rahn, Damien
Miller,
Dan Harnett, David Terrell, David Leonard, David Sacerdote, Dug Song,
Eric Jackson, Federico G. Schwindt, Hakan Olsson, Hans Insulander,
Horacio Ganau, Hugh Graham, Ian Darwin, Jakob Schlyter, Jan-Uwe
Finck,
Janne Johansson, Jason Downs, Jason Ish, Jason Wright,
Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino, Kenneth R Westerback, Kevin Lo, Kjell
Wooding,
M. Warner Losh, Marc Espie, Marco S Hyman, Mark Grimes,
Markus Friedl, Mats O Jansson, Matt Behrens, Matthew Jacob,
Matthieu Herrb, Michael Shalayeff, Miod Vallat, Nathan Binkert,
Niels Provos, Niklas Hallqvist, Oleg Safiullin, Paul Janzen,
Peter Galbavy, Phillip Lenhardt, Reinhard J Sammer, Sontri Tomo
Huynh,
Steve Murphree, Theo de Raadt, Thorsten Lockert, Tobias Weingartner,
Todd C. Miller, Todd T. Fries, Wim Vandeputte, and Yannick Cote.
For press contact, please contact press@OpenBSD.org.
List of FTP sites
The following list should be helpful for those who want to install
OpenBSD via FTP.
ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/OpenBSD; Pennsylvania,
USA
ftp://download.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/OpenBSD; Sunnyvale, CA,
USA
ftp://filoktitis.noc.uoa.gr/pub/OpenBSD; Athens, Greece
ftp://ftp.au.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD; Melbourne,
Australia
ftp://ftp.bsdfr.org/pub/OpenBSD; Oleane, France
ftp://ftp.ca.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD; Edmonton,
Canada
ftp://ftp.calyx.nl/pub/OpenBSD; Amsterdam,
Netherlands
ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/OpenBSD; Chernogolovka,
Russia
ftp://ftp.de.openbsd.org/unix/OpenBSD; Berlin, Germany
ftp://ftp.duth.gr/pub/OpenBSD; Thrace, Greece
ftp://ftp.esat.net/pub/OpenBSD; Dublin, Ireland
ftp://ftp.eu.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD; Zurich,
Switzerland
ftp://ftp.fr.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD; Paris, France
ftp://ftp.gigabell.net/pub/OpenBSD; Frankfurt,
Germany
ftp://ftp.grolier.fr/pub/OpenBSD; Paris, France
ftp://ftp.inet.no/pub/OpenBSD; Oslo, Norway
ftp://ftp.it.net.au/mirrors/OpenBSD; Perth,
Australia
ftp://ftp.jp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD; Tokyo, Japan
ftp://ftp.kddlabs.co.jp/OpenBSD; Tokyo, Japan
ftp://ftp.kmitl.ac.th/pub/OpenBSD; Thailand
ftp://ftp.knowledge.com/pub/mirrors/OpenBSD; London, UK
ftp://ftp.netlab.is.tsukuba.ac.jp/pub/os/OpenBSD; Ibaraki, Japan
ftp://ftp.nl.uu.net/pub/OpenBSD; Amsterdam,
Netherlands
ftp://ftp.nz.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD; Auckland, New
Zealand
ftp://ftp.op.net/pub/OpenBSD; Ambler, PA, USA
ftp://ftp.openbsd.org.ar/pub/OpenBSD; Buenos Aires,
Argentina
ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD; Edmonton,
Canada
ftp://ftp.plig.org/pub/OpenBSD; London, UK
ftp://ftp.radio-msu.net/pub/OpenBSD; Moscow, Russia
ftp://ftp.rediris.es/mirror/OpenBSD; Madrid, Spain
ftp://ftp.snu.ac.kr/pub/OpenBSD; Seoul, Korea
ftp://ftp.src.uchicago.edu/pub/openbsd; Chicago, IL, USA
ftp://ftp.stacken.kth.se/pub/OpenBSD; Stockholm,
Sweden
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/OpenBSD; Uppsala, Sweden
ftp://ftp.task.gda.pl/pub/OpenBSD; Gdansk, Poland
ftp://ftp.tux.org/bsd/openbsd; Springfield, VA,
USA
ftp://ftp.volftp.mondadori.com/mirror/openbsd; Italy
ftp://ftp.wiretapped.net/pub/OpenBSD; Sydney,
Australia
ftp://ftp.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD; Boulder, CO, USA
ftp://ftp1.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD; Ann Arbor, MI,
USA
ftp://ftp7.usa.openbsd.org/pub/os/OpenBSD; West Lafayette,
IN, USA
ftp://gandalf.neark.org/pub/distributions/OpenBSD; Batesville, AR,
USA
ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/opsys/OpenBSD; Vienna, Austria
ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/OpenBSD; Brisbane,
Australia
ftp://openbsd.csie.nctu.edu.tw/pub/OpenBSD; Taiwan
ftp://quasar.uvt.ro/pub/OpenBSD; Timisoara,
Romania
ftp://rt.fm/pub/OpenBSD; Algonquin, IL,
USA
ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/pub/OpenBSD; Zurich,
Switzerland
ftp://sunsite.org.uk/Mirrors/ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBS; London, UK
ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/OpenBSD; Oslo, Norway
ftp://uiarchive.uiuc.edu/pub/systems/OpenBSD; Urbana, IL, USA
ftp://vell.nsc.ru/pub/OpenBSD; Novosibirsk,
Russia
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Author: JT Smith
Patents
Software and technology patents have gone to some rather absurd extremes over the last few years. Online retailer Amazon, for example, was able to patent a single mouse click. The company was able to claim that its “one click” shopping method was so unique and original that it deserved the legal protections afforded a patent.
Amazon generated no small amount of ill will by patenting what, to many, seemed like a method of Web browsing that was anything but unique or original in nature. At least they were up front about their reasons for doing so: There’s money involved. Indeed, the bookseller has already licensed its freshly patented idea to Apple for use in the computer makers’ own online storefront.
In an open letter to the Internet community, company CEO Jeff Bezos manages to defend his company’s patents while proposing sweeping reforms at the same time. From the tone of the letter, readers might speculate that Amazon is essentially admitting that it pulled a quick one on the patent office.
Problems will also arise when patent holders are less than vigorous in defending their intellectual property. In 1985, Unisys acquired a patent for its Lempel Ziv Welch, or LZW data compression and decompression utility — the algorithm at the heart of the GIF file format, and a globally accepted graphic file standard.
About a decade after CompuServe created the GIF file format using the LZW algorithm, Unisys woke up and decided that it was high time to enforce its patent. Initially, the company said that it only wanted to collect licensing fees from software developers.
In 1999, the company decided that not only was it going after developers, it would also seek compensation from the commercial users of such programs as well. Although Mark Starr, Unisys’ general patent and technology counsel couldn’t comment on specific cases, he did confirm that the company is, indeed, pursuing claims against several users of unlicensed graphics tools that use the LZW algorithm to create GIF images.
Not even Unisys is immune to claims of contributory infringement. Starr mentioned that the company is facing similar action regarding the technology it uses for several of its products. “We’re not happy about it,” says Starr, “but these companies clearly have the legal right to protect their patents.”
Waiting in the wings to replace GIF as the de facto Internet graphics standard is the freely available and Open Source Portable Network Graphics, or PNG, image file format. The Open Source community has long known of PNG’s superiority over GIF images.
In this case, the actions of Unisys can be said to have been beneficial to the Open Source community. Thousands of users who would have had no other incentive to use PNG quickly adopted this new file format in an effort to sidestep any messy licensing issues.
“The examination process for software patents is a sham,” says California-based software developer and inventor Raph Levien. “Probably half of the patents I’ve read are clearly invalid to anybody who knows the art.”
Software patents may be going the way of the dinosaur — at least in Europe. In November, the member nations of the European Union voted unanimously against an extension of the patent system to software.
“We are still very far from a decision to ban software patents in Europe,” said Stéfane Fermigier of the EuroLinux activist group. Considering that the European Patent Office is already granting patents on certain software methods, the recent vote was more of a delay against making an actual decision rather than passing any law.
Copyrights
Promising to complicate matters further is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Enacted in the United States in 1998, the law was designed as an update to national copyright laws.
In part, the law reads: “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” This is further expanded to mean, “…to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright holder.”
The DMCA and the Open Source community collided during the summer of 2000 when a federal judge ruled that Emmanuel Goldstein of 2600 Magazine broke copyright law for posting and then later linking to DeCSS, a DVD decryption program.
Goldstein played no part in the creation of DeCSS — the program was written by Jon Johansen, a 16-year-old programmer from Norway. Goldstein merely provided access to the code that would have been part of a set of programs allowing Linux users to play DVDs on their systems.
Under the DMCA, plaintiff Motion Picture Association of America didn’t have to prove that that DeCSS was ever used to make illegal copies of movies. As long as the MPAA could prove that there was a possibility that DeCSS might be used to subvert its proprietary DVD encryption, the film organization could ask the court to make merely pointing in the direction of the code illegal — even if the program was used solely to view legally purchased DVDs.
Rejecting Goldstein’s claims of fair use and First Amendment free speech rights, the judge wrote that DeCSS had violated the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA and amounted to little more than stealing.
Will honest to goodness patent reform ever happen? Unisys’ Starr says he doesn’t think so and furthermore, he doesn’t think it should happen. “Some people wouldn’t be doing the work that they do if a patent isn’t there to protect it.”
The same could be said for copyright regulations that, if anything, have become more restrictive over the years. The likely and depressing certainty of the matter is that the matter of interpretation and enforcement will be increasingly left to the court system to figure out.
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