–By Grant Gross –

The founder of the high-profile Xbox Linux Project has left the group over concerns about the direction of the project and disagreements with the anonymous donor who’s contributed $200,000 to port Linux to the Microsoft gaming device.
Enrico Kern, whose development team H Zero Seven founded the project in August 2001, says he disagrees with some of the decisions made by current project leader Michael Steil. Kern says Steil made decisions without consulting the rest of the group and discounted Kern’s work to publicize the project.

Kern also says he has concerns about the anonymous donor’s record in the Open Source community, including license missteps and source publication delays, issues several companies entering the Open Source market have struggled with. Kern says he can’t say more without giving away the identify of the donor.

The influx of money has taken away the “fun and art” of the project, Kern adds. “I founded the Xbox-Linux project after I read a article from a Microsoft
employee about using the upcoming Xbox as a Web server,” he says.
“I thought it would be funny [to port it to Linux]. Fun and skill enhancement stands for me in the foreground. After the press release that we had a donor willing donate $200,000 USD, many, many people were coming to the project, some very good developers and some guys only willed to work for the money. I would rather die than publish my free code in mind for the profit of big commercial companies.”

The Xbox Linux Project has gotten a lot of mainstream attention recently, especially after the $200,000 donation was announced July 1. The project announced its 0.2 release Monday.

Kern says the project will go on just fine without him. He says Steil and other core members of the project are “great developers” and the project is in the right hands with Steil as its leader. He hopes he can sit down and share a beer with the group at Linux events in Europe.

Steil says Kern won’t be missed. “He was not important. This sounds hard and mean, but it’s just the truth.” Steil says Kern registered the original .org domain for the project in 2001, but many developers did more work on the project than Kern did.

” I hope you don’t understand this all as a war between the Xbox Linux maintainers,” Steil says. “Imagine, we had just clicked the ‘admin’ checkbox on Sourceforge once too often by mistake? If we take the checked box away, it doesn’t mean there is a problem with the person!”

Kern answers that he did a lot of non-programming work for the project, including publicity, writing documentation, and finding sponsors to donate bandwidth.

Kern says he hasn’t left the Open Source community. He’s currently working on the installation GUI of the InceptionOS Linux distribution.

LinuxGames.com has the interview. He answers questions about the future of Linux gaming, Majesty Gold, and his opinion of Transgaming.

The Register has a story about security options for Linux users. ”
One of the most attractive things about Linux is the number of installation options one is presented with and how tempting it is to customize. But for a newbie, in terms of Web security and PC hygiene, that’s also the worst thing about it. The fact is, Windows is easier than Linux for a casual user to make fairly secure, whereas Linux is easier than Windows for a power user to make very secure.”

Patrick Khoo writes: The Data Storage Institute (DSI) today released the HyperSCSI
protocol and reference implementation code into open source. HyperSCSI is a new storage protocol
designed for the transfer of SCSI data and commands over networks. The current protocol release runs on
Ethernet-based networks.

“Our engineers’ work on HyperSCSI demonstrates that using Ethernet for high performance storage
networking is indeed viable and secure,” said Professor Chong Tow Chong, Director for DSI. “HyperSCSI is
designed to be extremely flexible. In this way, it can meet the network storage needs of various diverse
technology fields, from consumer electronics to enterprise storage systems.”

DSI, a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), has been
working on the HyperSCSI project for over two years. Unlike other network storage protocols based on
Ethernet, HyperSCSI does not use TCP/IP as a foundation for communications. While this may run counter
to convention, it has in fact allowed HyperSCSI to achieve high throughput without the need for complex
and expensive hardware add-ons. Intrinsic advantages of bypassing TCP/IP include immunity to hacking via
the Internet, simplicity and plug-and-play functions, making HyperSCSI easy to use for developers and
users.

Benchmarks conducted by the DSI using common off-the-shelf hardware demonstrate that HyperSCSI can
achieve 100MB/s sustained data throughput using a 2GB size data set. There was no requirement for
customized hardware, device drivers, accelerator chips or proprietary software. In another
demonstration, HyperSCSI was used to display smooth DVD video played directly from a standard DVD drive
over an 802.11b Wireless LAN network.

Not limiting itself to just IDE and SCSI hard disk drives, HyperSCSI also supports optical, tape and
even removable USB drives. DSI has successfully used HyperSCSI for CDRW recording and tape drive backup
over the network. It is compatible with Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet (with and without Jumbo frames)
and 802.11b Wireless LAN. The present version of HyperSCSI also includes built-in 128-bit encryption.

Some of the application areas in which HyperSCSI is currently being tested include data backup and
recovery, storage for high performance computing clusters and grids, wireless network storage, home
network storage, personal area network storage and Ethernet-based storage area networks.

Upcoming developments for HyperSCSI include multi-channel support, in-band management and wider
platform support. Ultimately, HyperSCSI will help to provide cheaper and more efficient storage
solutions to both enterprises and ordinary consumers.

The HyperSCSI protocol has been recognised by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) and assigned the Ethertype Number #889a.

For further information or to view HyperSCSI’s protocol specifications, reference code and
benchmarking results, please visit http://nst.dsi.a-star.edu.sg/mcsa/hyperscsi/.

 
About Data Storage Institute
A national research institute under the Agency for Science, Research and Technology, Data Storage
Institute is ranked among the top six storage R&D centers worldwide. DSI aims to achieve excellence in
research with a dynamic research culture and stay relevant to industry in the provision of technology
solutions to industrial partners. Collaborating closely with academia and industry in research and
manpower training, its core competencies are consolidated under the five major research divisions of
Head, Media and Materials; Mechanical, Electronics System Design; Optical Technology, Network Storage
Technology and Technology Support. For more information, please refer to http://www.dsi.a-star.edu.sg.

 
For media enquiries, please contact:
Loo See Mei / Angeline Chua
Porter Novelli Convergence Group
Phone: +65-6330-6222
Fax: +65-6339-9337
Email: angeline.chua@porternovelli.com

For technical enquiries, please contact:
Patrick Khoo
MCSA Group, NST Division DSI
Phone: +65-6874-8413
Fax: +65-6777-2053
Email: KHOO_Beng_Teck@dsi.a-star.edu.sg

jar writes: “DesktopLinux.com contributing editor Malcolm Dean examines the reemergence of Caldera under new leadership and brand name — The SCO Group. Unveiled at the GeoForum in Las Vegas, the company’s new focus positions it to make an impact on the business desktop in a big way … Read the article at DesktopLinux.com.”

“If Linux is so good, as so many users claim, why aren’t more people using it?

The simple answer is that Linux lacks a central marketing organisation. And with
several distributions available, the waters get very murky indeed. Despite this,
Linux is gathering more adherants as they discover the power it gives users to
control of their computing experience.

I have tried all three major distributions for the desktop, RedHat, SuSe and
Mandrake, and I can recommend them all.” Note: The Bangkok Post seems to have started blocking outside links to this article after we posted it, but you can apparently read it by pasting this URL in your browser:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/Database/28Aug2002_datacol05.html

“The operating system, once the province of hobbyists
and geeks, is going mainstream. A case is building that
open-source software, freely modifiable and subject to
constant improvement by a global community of coders,
can pay off in savings and efficiency.

Take Amazon.com. Last year, the online retailer switched
to Linux across most of its computer network. Amazon had been using a proprietary version of
Unix, a system often found in large computing environments.”

“PC purchases traditionally involve choosing a Windows operating
system. But now your OS choices are broader. Walmart.com, the
online arm of the world’s largest retailer, is offering a line of
ultrabasic Microtel PCs equipped with a Linux-based OS from
Lindows.com. We took a look at the $299 Sysmar701 with
LindowsOS 1.1, an interesting entry-level PC somewhat hampered
by LindowsOS 1.1’s odd mixture of polish and omissions.”

Bi0s writes: “It appears Verizon is making a stand against the RIAA.
Last month the RIAA had a subpoena sent to Verizon, They wanted Verizon to reveal a name of one of their subscribers, who is accused of trading hundreds of songs. Sounds to me like they were looking for a scapegoat here. anyway, Citing privacy concerns and potential legal liability, Verizon has refused to comply.”

– By Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller –
Cariocas is a San Francisco-based startup that specializes in “brand relationship management” for large consumer product companies. Cariocas’s “one man IT show” (his words), Daniel Curry, has gradually been introducing Linux and Open Source solutions to the company, and he says management has been happy with the results.
Curry’s basic migration tactic is to implement a solution before he tells his bosses what he’s done. “After it’s in place,” he says, “they find out.”

Then, he says, “They ask, ‘Why did you go that way?’ and I explain dollars and pennies and my time savings to them, and they say it’s okay.”

The new Microsoft license model helped spur Curry’s interest in using more Linux and Open Source at Cariocas.

“I did an analysis about six or seven months ago for my company,” he says. “I approached them about moving everything to Open Source.” Curry estimated that the move “would save us close to $50,000.”

Management was happy with the idea of saving money by using Open Source software, but didn’t want to lose some proprietary programs, especially Microsoft Exchange. And most Cariocas desktops are still Windows-based. Curry looked at the Bynari “Exchange replacement” server but, he says, “Management came down and simply said ‘no.'”

Curry and other Linux users at the company are using Ximian Connector or IMAP email clients to connect to the Exchange server. “Connector is a 1.0 product. It works well in the capabilities it has,” Curry says. “It’s missing a few things I need, such as public folders, but if you can live without those it’s a good tool.”

Curry runs two computers himself. One is a desktop loaded with Windows 2000 that he uses to try to replicate Windows users’ problems so he can fix them. The other is a Linux Thinkpad he has loaded with many Linux programs he both uses himself and is testing with an eye toward spreading them gradually through the rest of the company. He is generally happy with StarOffice, he says, but is not ready to deploy it widely because some of the company’s spreadsheets contain immensely complicated calculations that don’t translate well from MS Office to StarOffice.

One of the most important programs Curry uses is rdesktop for remote access to the company’s (Windows) servers from his Linux laptop. One engineer in the company is also using rdesktop, and Curry says, “It gives him access to Outlook and other Windows tools, but he gets to run an Open Source desktop otherwise.” Indeed, Curry hopes he can eventually get more Cariocas employees to switch to an Open Source operating system and use rdesktop to access Windows programs running on one remote server. “If I could get all my users to switch over and get one big server,” he says, “I could save major money.”

A major barrier to a complete Linux switchover is the lack of Linux applications that can handle some of the company’s primary tasks. And even when Linux ports are available they may not be as good as the Windows versions. A prime example of this is the TogetherSoft product Cariocas uses to aid collaborative development. Curry says a Linux version is available, but it is not as stable as the Windows version.

This is a fairly typical Linux migration scenario: Some, but not all, of the company’s tasks can be performed with Linux and Open Source software, so there is going to be plenty of Windows at Cariocas in the forseeable future. But every function that moves to Linux or Open Source saves money, so the migration will almost certainly continue, one slow step at a time, as new and better Linux and Open Source applications become available.

Do you have a corporate Linux or Open Source migration story to tell? Email editors@newsforge.com and we’ll set up an interview.