InfoWorld has a followup on an earlier report: “The first version of a new Linux Development Platform Specification (LDPS) was released Wednesday, clearing the
way for the adoption of standards that will make participating Linux platforms work together seamlessly. The new LDPS standards will be adhered to by some of the largest Linux distribution companies, including Caldera
Systems, Corel, Red Hat, SuSE Linux, TurboLinux, and VA Linux Systems, the group said.” (Disclosure: VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

It’s at LWN.net: “There is a lot going on behind the scenes in the world of Midgard. The
first version of the Midgard 2.0 requirements document has been released
along with a rewrite of the documents for 1.4. The final touches of 1.4 are
being finished as David Guerizec rewrites the Admin interface. We should
see one last beta release of 1.4 before the final candidate is released.”

The BBC reports on some artists’ support of Napster, inluding pop star Dave Stewart, who says it starts to put artists back in control of their music.

From LWN.net: ” There is a problem with versions of the boa web server prior to
0.94.8.3 that make it possible to access files outside of the server’s
document root by the use of properly constructed URL requests.”

Posted at LWN.net: “Our next major announcement should be revolving around a build
milestone we’ve targeted for later this month. The build will include
updated user interfaces (JDK 1.3 support), the SCM, the events
subsystem, some updates/fixes to jSNMP, database utilities, and some
build scripts. We’re closing in on some significant functionality, but
still have miles to go before we sleep.”

From a TechWeb story: ”
In her keynote, (Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly) Fiorina also said open systems, not
proprietary ones, are necessary for the evolution of the
Internet.

‘Proprietary systems commit an IT environment to become a
legacy environment,’ she said. ‘Openness is key to
flexibility in this new dynamic environment. We need to
embrace open-industry, standards-based technologies.’ ”

From Reuters: “iNoize.com on Wednesday became the latest company to announce a legal alternative to Napster by launching a
peer-to-peer service it says lets people share streamed music without infringing on copyrights.

‘Our goal was to create a system that is secure, easy to use and so convenient there would be no incentive for users to violate copyright laws,’ said Craig
Hamilton, president of privately owned iNoize.”

ZDNet reviews Red Hat 7, saying the version of its RPM and glibc cause problems with older versions of Red Hat. Also, Slashdotters discuss a now-fixed problem that causes Red Hat 7 to crash.

From a LinuxWorld column: “Joe Barr wasn’t just trying to outdo Miguel de Icaza when he wrote that Debian’s install sucks. In fact, he unwittingly
picked up an outdated version of Debian that VA Linux distributed at the LinuxWorld Expo. The Debian faithful were
not amused. So this week, Joe is back to give Potato a fair trial.” (Disclosure: VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

From an advisory at LWN.net: “A locally-exploitable security hole was found where a normal user could
trick root running GnoRPM into writing to arbitrary files due to a bug in
the gnorpm tmp file handling.”