Sun Microsystems has released the source code for its StarOffice, but the Web-based StarPortal version of the software is still delayed, InfoWorld reports. Linux PR has the press release about the code release.

NewsForge was down for about 12 hours Monday because of a faulty power supply on our main server, but returned about 6 p.m.

The server, which had been rebooting randomly late Sunday, refused to boot up about 6 a.m. Monday, said Jamie McCarthy, head programmer at NewsForge. “It was stuck on fsck, waiting for someone at the console
to tell it what to do,” he said.

Server administrators pressed a quad-Xeon 550 into service, and McCarthy spent most of the day copying files over and configuring it — a complete Slashcode installation.

McCarthy wasn’t sure NewsForge needed the power and size of a Type III server, but it does have multiple backup power supplies. “But it turned out that it helped us again already,” he said. “Around 3 p.m., we had a hell of a scare when one of the hard drives apparently flaked out. But since it’s parity RAID, and since the others are working fine, nothing was corrupted.”

NewsForge began posting news again shortly after 6 p.m. Monday, and our service should be back to normal. We’ll try to catch up on all the Open Source news that happened while we were down.

As always, we welcome readers’ input on everything we do at NewsForge. We apologize for the down time Monday.

— Grant Gross, managing editor
grant@newsforge.com

The Secure Digital Music Initiative may not have been hacked yet after all, reports 32bitsonline. “A report in Web ‘zine Salon last week quoted Secure Digital Music
Initiative (SDMI) insiders as saying that all six technologies were
successfully mastered after the organization issued a public
challenge to code-breakers last month. However, the SDMI is saying
this week that it is not yet sure whether challenge participants, who
were competing for $10,000 prizes offered for each technology, have
actually defeated the six methods.”

From a column at LinuxPlanet: “I’m of the opinion that while code forking in and of itself isn’t necessarily a
bad thing, it can lead to a lot of wasted effort (time that could be spent
developing ends up being wasted through postings to nasty flame wars in
discussion groups) and at worst cripple essential projects. I think we can
all agree that embedded Linux is A Good Thing and doesn’t represent a
threat to the main Linux kernel: no one is going to grab a version of
embedded Linux from MontaVista or TimeSys and expect to run it on their
PC. While I’m not entirely sure anymore that embedded Linux represents
the future of Linux, the forking of Linux in the embedded world certainly
doesn’t bother me.”

Enhydra XMLC and next-generation protocol support guarantees
application
delivery to any analog, WAP, i-mode, or J2ME cellular device.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 16, 2000–Lutris Technologies Inc., the
leading
Open Source enterprise software and services company, today announced
Lutris
Enhydra Wireless, the latest product in Lutris’ family of certified and
supported Open Source Enhydra Java/XML application servers. Lutris
Enhydra
Wireless offers developers, systems
integrators and corporate IT departments the ability to develop a
single
internet application that delivers content to any device, in any
geographic
region, by supporting every major wireless protocol: i-mode, WAP, J2ME,
and
VoiceXML.

“Supporting the protocols that make targeting every device possible is
only
the beginning. What Lutris Enhydra Wireless delivers to our customers
and
ISV partners is the ability to seamlessly deploy one application that
is
accessible by all of their customers, regardless of their Internet
device or
geographic location,” said Yancy Lind, president and CEO, Lutris
Technologies. “Through the power of Open Source, Lutris Enhydra
Wireless
benefits from a worldwide community of developers with local wireless
expertise, and thus guarantees the ability to deploy global
applications.”

Lutris Enhydra Wireless provides developers with the first development
platform specifically designed to deliver content to wireless and wired
devices including phones, PDAs, handheld computers, desktops and
laptops.
Further, unlike other application servers that require a unique
code-base
for each device that will access the application, Lutris Enhydra
Wireless
leverages Enhydra XMLC, a technology developed by Lutris, to
effectively
separate the business logic from the presentation layer, enabling a
single
application to deliver content to any number of devices. This
“one-to-many”
approach significantly decreases time to market and dramatically
improves
application manageability. Additionally, this extensible XML
architecture
ensures that future wireless devices that depend on new presentation
technologies can be easily added to the application with minimal
impact.

“Wireless technology adds yet another level of complexity to the
deployment
environments that today’s application developers must support. A lack
of
standards means that applications targeted at wireless devices must
support
multiple protocols. To ease the burden on the developer Lutris is
taking
their support one step further, beyond just supporting all the
available
wireless protocols,” said Tracy Corbo, senior analyst, The Hurwitz
Group.
“In addition, Lutris is using XML to separate business and presentation
logic making their wireless applications more flexible. This enables
developers to focus on writing applications without worrying about the
wireless protocol du jour.”

To ensure that developers using Lutris Enhydra Wireless have the
technologies needed to meet the new demands of wireless development,
and to
address the absence of a global wireless standard, Lutris has included
support for a variety of leading presentation protocols. These include
HTML,
WML, cHTML, XHTML-Basic, VoiceXML and the new J2ME/MIDp protocols
required
for the emerging Java phones. In addition, Lutris has bundled emulators
for
many of the leading mobile phones, empowering developers to see how the
applications they have built will appear on the phone’s screen at run
time.
To aid in development and deployment, the product also includes
PostgresSQL
7, JBuilder Foundation, Forte for Java Community Edition and
comprehensive
wireless sample applications and source code.

Pricing and Availability
Lutris Enhydra Wireless will be generally available in December 2000.
Pricing for the product is still under consideration, and will include
options for selected training and support packages.

About Lutris Technologies
Lutris Technologies, a leading Open Source enterprise software and
services
company, is the original developer and primary sponsor of Enhydra, a
leading
Open Source Internet application server supporting Java, XML, and
wireless
technologies. Lutris offers a full range of support services and
technical
training to Lutris Enhydra customers and provides complete Internet
consulting services, including strategy and development services, to
the
Enhydra community and to Internet-savvy businesses. Clients range from
entrepreneurs and companies launching new Web ventures to Fortune 500
IT
organizations growing their business with an online presence.
Additional
information about Lutris products and services is available at
www.lutris.com.

Lutris and Enhydra are registered trademarks of Lutris Technologies,
Inc.
Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and
other
countries. All other trademarks belong to their respective holders.

Open Source print-and-file server vendor Samba Corp. announced Friday plans to fork its code base because of two warring camps in the company, and reactions have ranged from ho-hum to “we need this like we need a hole the head, reports ZDNet. Linux.com also has an opinion piece called “The Right to Fork.”

LinuxToday.com.au looks at some of the system administration issues that the Red Hat Network confronts users with. “The first thing that you will need to know is that currently only Red Hat Linux 7 is
supported by the RHN, although soon 6.2 will also be supported. So if your
company is running an old 5.2 box, as well you might be, for 5.2 was quite a
reliable release, then forget about the RHN. It’s not supported.”

From a column at OS Opinion: “Transmeta has the world watching them now that the first Crusoe-based laptops have been made commercially available. At present, the only place you can purchase one is in Japan but they will be available worldwide by the end of October. I’m not licking the stamp on a letter to Saint Nick begging for one to play with Christmas morning, but I’m very interested in how it performs in benchmarks and in the marketplace.” — Submitted by Kelly McNeill

The announcement is posted at LWN.net: “Ok, so Im back and its time to shift the backlog. Nothing too bad has come up
so far. This merges the pending DSL driver and NFSv3 patches and fixes
further bugs along the way. The big chunk is the m68k patches which dont
touch non m68k code.”

– By T. Bruce Tober –

This is a non-story. Or is it? It seems that according to the press announcement for
the WebMasters 2001 Exposition in London last week, “Microsoft will be providing copies of Visual Studio .NET Beta 2 for all attendees.” And this it did, packaged in a cutsie accordion fold-out pack. However, the press announcement also advised us the
behemoth would “be providing copies of the Linux Migration Guide.”

According to Microsoft, “The Guide contains technical information to aid developers and IT specialists in migrating Linux e-commerce solutions to a Microsoft
web solutions platform.” (While the Guide was apparently never distributed at the conference, it’s online at Microsoft.com.)

And according to the program for the expo, Microsoft had a booth. However, there was no Microsoft booth, nor were there any of the company’s representatives or
spokesmen anywhere in sight, except during the seminars they were conducting. When this reporter contacted one of the company’s offices in the U.K. and
asked to speak to a public relations spokesman, true to form for Microsoft, we were connected to the human resources department.

When the event organizer tried to chase up a Microsoft spokesperson or seminar speaker, he was told the guy couldn’t or wouldn’t talk with me. No need to try
to divine why that might be.

This reporter spent all day trying to track down one of these wondrous publications. They proved to be as elusive as company personnel. The event organizer then informed me the company had apparently decided, after publication of the press announcement, not to distribute “The Guide” and not to take a booth.

So rather than go away empty-handed, our intrepid reporter tracked down a spokesperson from a major Linux distribution company. She agreed to speak on
terms of anonymity.

Anyway, when asked “why Microsoft would want or feel a need to give out a migration guide for Linux to .Net,” she speculated, “Because they realize the Linux market is
growing. They would like to find a way to get some of the Linux market back to Microsoft.”

But, what percentage of Linux users do you think would be crazy enough to be interested in migrating to Microsoft, she was asked. “I’m not aware of any at the moment.”
“None?” I asked. “Not that I’m aware of,” she reiterated.

Finally, I asked, “why do you think Microsoft gave up the idea of distributing The Guide?” To which she responded, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s costing them too
much in marketing budget to send them out to customers.”

“You mean in terms of return of investment,” I suggested.

“I just don’t know,” she demurred.