LINDON, Utah, CURITIBA, Brazil, NUREMBERG, Germany, and BRISBANE, Calif. -Aug.
14, 2002- Linux Industry leaders Caldera International, Inc. (Nasdaq: CALD),
Conectiva S.A., SuSE Linux AG, and Turbolinux, Inc., today announced the
membership levels for partner participation in UnitedLinux, an initiative to
streamline Linux development and certification around a global, uniform
distribution of Linux designed for business. Membership in UnitedLinux is
designated by two main categories, Linux Distributors and Developer Partners.
“HP is very excited about UnitedLinux and the benefits this group brings to
our customers around the world,” said Rick Becker, Software CTO vice
president, OS Alliances, Industry Standard Servers, HP. “We plan to certify
all servers, including our industry-leading ProLiant servers and Itanium 2
platforms, on this business focused offering.”

“Fujitsu is dedicated to providing customers with enterprise Linux solutions,”
said Masaharu Kitaoka, General Manager, Linux Division, Fujitsu Limited. “We
welcome the announcement of the framework by which solution vendors’ and their
customers’ requirements will be reflected in the developments of UnitedLinux.
Fujitsu will also continue to support the activities of UnitedLinux.”

Linux Distributor Membership
The Linux Distributor Partner level is intended solely for companies that
offer a Linux distribution, but need to offer a higher level of support to
their customers and to offer derivative works from the UnitedLinux source base
to meet specific customer demands. Partners will receive UnitedLinux marketing
and resale rights and support, as well as general technical participation.
They will adopt UnitedLinux 1.0 and be able to add the suffix “Powered by
UnitedLinux” to their distribution. In addition, Partners will have a seat on
the Board of Directors and the Technical Steering Committee, access to the
UnitedLinux build environment and rights to build derivative works, and will
share proceeds of profits.

Developer Membership Levels
Developer membership is categorized into three levels: Technical Advisory
Board Member (TABM), Developing member and Developer Program member.

TABM: The TABM level is defined solely for those software and hardware
providers who need to offer a higher level of support to their enterprise
level customers. In addition, this level of membership is for those companies
who are already investing significant development in Linux to ensure
compatibility or optimization of their hardware and software offerings on the
UnitedLinux source base. The TABM level provides access to the UnitedLinux
build environment and coordinates all changes being integrated into the source
code tree and regular maintenance releases. UnitedLinux will make best efforts
to ensure that these enhancements and optimizations are included as part of
the supported source code tree. TABMs will receive UnitedLinux marketing
rights and support and will have a seat on the Technical Advisory Committee.

Developing Member: Similar to the TABM level, the Developing member level is
for those companies who are already investing significant development in Linux
to ensure compatibility or optimization of their hardware and software
offerings on the UnitedLinux source base. These members want to ensure
compatibility and need information, but they do not need to make support
patches themselves or submit intrusive code changes that require special
training to support their hardware or software offerings. Developing members
are allowed participation in Advisory Board meetings, but are not voting
members, and have a channel to request inclusion of features (e.g. drivers).
They
receive technical support certifying and testing software, as well as
UnitedLinux marketing rights and support.

Developer Program: The Developer Program, designed to satisfy the needs of the
individual developer or ISV, will be an additional low cost membership. The
Program, further details of which will be released in the coming weeks, will
provide information, software and services to developers to build a catalog of
available applications and middleware for solution builders.

Membership Fees
All UnitedLinux members will pay annual sign-up fees to offset development
costs, contribute marketing funds to help brand UnitedLinux, provide technical
training and certification, and provide financial and business audits.

How To Get Involved
To get involved as a UnitedLinux member, contact Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE or
Turbolinux or go to www.unitedlinux.com.

About UnitedLinux
UnitedLinux is a partnership of industry leading Linux companies combining
their intellectual property, geographic mind share, sales, support and
marketing expertise to produce a uniform distribution of Linux designed for
business. UnitedLinux applies the collaborative development model of open
source to the business model to enable a one-stop shop for developers,
partners and customers to install, support and maintain quality business
solutions based on Linux anywhere in the world. UnitedLinux is actively
recruiting membership for both industry software developers and those who
provide Linux as an integral part of their business solutions. For more
information, visit www.unitedlinux.com.

# # #

LINDON, Utah, CURITIBA, Brazil, NUREMBERG, Germany, and BRISBANE, Calif. -Aug.
14, 2002- Linux Industry leaders Caldera International, Inc. (Nasdaq: CALD),
Conectiva S.A., SuSE Linux AG, and Turbolinux, Inc., today announced that
UnitedLinux will be available as a closed beta product by the end of August to
partners of the four founding companies. It is expected to be publicly
available in open beta by the end of Q3 2002.
The UnitedLinux product is the result of an industry initiative to streamline
Linux development and certification around a global, uniform distribution of
Linux designed for the business user. UnitedLinux will leverage the collective
resources of the founding companies, with the end result designed to provide
an unprecedented an unprecedented Linux business infrastructure and product.

With this business focus, the UnitedLinux beta incorporates features that make
it ready for the global enterprise. UnitedLinux will be compliant with LSB and
Li18nux, and will be available in English, Japanese, Simplified and
Traditional Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, French, and
Hungarian.

Benefits of UnitedLinux include:
* A global Linux for the enterprise supported by leading ISVs and IHVs
* Local language and local time zone support for customers around the world
* A channel of more than 16,000 resellers that sell and support UnitedLinux
* A global support team for pre and post sales

To participate in the UnitedLinux closed beta, please visit
www.unitedlinux.com or contact any of the four founding Linux companies.

About UnitedLinux
UnitedLinux is a partnership of industry leading Linux companies combining
their intellectual property, geographic mind share, sales, support and
marketing expertise to produce a uniform distribution of Linux designed for
business. UnitedLinux applies the collaborative development model of open
source to the business model to enable a one-stop shop for developers,
partners and customers to install, support and maintain quality business
solutions based on Linux anywhere in the world. UnitedLinux is actively
recruiting membership for both industry software developers and those who
provide Linux as an integral part of their business solutions. For more
information, visit www.unitedlinux.com.

# # #

Bi0s writes: “Are you happy with the way things are? Do you enjoy having your computer hacked? How would you like to pay extra tax on your next hard drive so the RIAA can compensate for its piracy & losses? These are issues that we are currently facing and it’s time to stand up. More at Digitalrights.org.“

Anonymous Reader writes: “OSNews hosts an programming article written by the author of MUSCLE, Jeremy Friesner. MUSCLE is a cross-platform client-server messaging system for dynamic distributed applications. For the article, Jeremy wrote from scratch a brand new multiplayer game that runs on all major platforms! If you are a developer interested in any kind of networking programming (including games), you should not pass this article without reading it! And if you are a simple user, you can always try out Jeremy’s concept game, FoxRabbitCarrot.”

Ursula Bartels writes: “I turn to you by the hope to draw your attention to the project 1dok.org which we are carrying out on behalf of the German federal state Schleswig-Holstein and the European Commissions GD Regio. 1dok.org aims at establishing an open standard format, non-specific of vendors, for electronic documents on XML base. Government, economy and citizens will profit from the following advantages this project among others wants to gain:

-Overcoming of the incompatibility of varying office products and, as a result, achieving the free and unimpeded exchange of electronic documents without spoiling the format, in several situations of communication:
-administration citizen
-administration administration
-administration business
-business business
-business citizen
-citizen citizen.

-Automatic archiving of electronic documents by normalizing particular meta information describing the contents.

-Maintenance of the government s obligation to be neutral towards its citizens regarding free choice of an office product in the course of introducing government e-services.

In the first phase of the project, along with initiating a community process, we are working on a catalog of requirements in coordination with public institutions, interested economical enterprises and citizens.

While working on our project, we were lucky to discover OpenOffice.org because the OOo file format seems to fulfill most of the requirements we have found until now.

What is missing from our point of view, is a more sophisticated, hierarchical meta data model which would enable document management systems, workflow management systems, archiving systems etc. of any vendor to automatically identify and process documents and application specific content like address fields, order numbers, etc..

So we propose to implement the ability to store semantically structured, arbitrary content specified by XML schemas inside the OOo file format.
See www.1dok.org for an illustration of the 1dok.org proposal for a meta data model.

Yours faithfully, Ursula Bartels”

Lori Pike writes: “ActiveState Corp., the leader in
open language-based software, services, and resources, and HP (NYSE:HPQ) announce a new agreement for
optimizing the most popular open source programming language, Perl, for
the HP-UX operating system.

ActiveState’s quality-assured distribution of Perl, ActivePerl,
is now available for HP-UX 11.0 and HP-UX 11i, which is ranked the #1
UNIX platform in the world according to DH Brown’s 2002 UNIX Function
Review. ActivePerl is supported on systems running HP-UX 11.0/11i
PA-RISC and HP-UX 11i for the Intel Itanium Processor Family.

“We’re delighted to work with HP to extend ActiveState’s Perl
initiatives on additional UNIX platforms. We’ve had over one million
ActivePerl downloads in the past year, and now an even wider range of
enterprise users will be able to take advantage of the power of Perl on
the HP-UX platform,” said Shawn Thomas, Director, Business Development,
ActiveState.

“It’s been great working with ActiveState on this project to extend
ActivePerl’s platform list to include HP-UX,” said Mary Kwan, HP-UX 11i
Product Marketing Manager from HP. “Their contribution to the community
is invaluable to users who want the ease of use, reliability, and
technical services that ActivePerl provides.”

Under this agreement, ActiveState is porting ActivePerl to HP-UX and
ensuring the easy installation and management of Perl extensions on
HP-UX through ActiveState’s Perl Package Manager (PPM). ActiveState is
also providing technical support to HP Support centers. To obtain a
free download, visit HP software
depot.

About ActiveState Corp.
ActiveState is the leader in open language-based software, services, and
resources. Our solutions are used by 72% of the Fortune 500 and
encompass cross-platform and Web services development, and server-side
email management. Our key technologies are Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, and
XSLT. ActiveState’s solutions empower people through computing,
minimizing obstacles for programmers, and increasing productivity in the
enterprise.

About HP
HP is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and
services to consumers and businesses. The company’s offerings span IT
infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services
and imaging and printing. HP completed its merger transaction involving
Compaq Computer Corp. on May 3, 2002. The company would have had
combined revenue on a pro forma basis with the Compaq transaction of
approximately $81.1 billion in fiscal 2001 and has operations in more
than 160 countries.

Media and Analyst Contact:
Lori Pike, ActiveState
Mary Kwan, HP

Copyright ActiveState Corporation 2002.

ActiveState and ActivePerl are trademarks of ActiveState Corp. All
other company names herein may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

“

Anon1 writes: “In the series of articles guiding on how to write your own Operating System, OSNews presents the second part of the article, “Climbing the Kernel Mountain“. First article here.”

Anonymous Reader writes: “I tripped over this after your link on the Dell Story at TuxReports. The girls have provided a set of awards for companies exhibiting at LinuxWorldExpo. They gave points for being a Geek. Red Hat sits at the bottom, tied with IBM and Dell. KDE wins. Read more“

– by Tina Gasperson –
It’s another incredibly hot day, late summer in Florida. As I sit here on my
back porch watching the kids swim, I’m thinking about just how much my
understanding of the Open Source software world has changed my life. First, it
was just, “oh, this is an operating system I can run for free if I’m willing to
forego some of the ease and familiarity of Windows.” And for me, that really
was enough reason to try it, because I happen to be one of those curious
types who loves playing with her computer (for many hours on end if the
challenge warrants it).
The reason I kept using it was, of course, because of my job. It just wouldn’t
do to have a reporter for an Open Source news site using Windows. And granted,
this was pretty strong incentive to make it work. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t
long until I was running Linux full time, and so was my husband. We figured out
how to do everything we needed to: use a Web browser, send and receive email,
create and view graphics files, do word processing and spreadsheets, use the
calculator, play free cell, and listen to music. I also learned how to find and
install applications, whether they were packaged in .rpm format or in a “tar
ball” as source code.

I got frustrated many, many times. Easily distracted, I would go on wild goose
chases to find the files I needed to satisfy dependencies. I learned that it was
very important to make sure the “developer” applications were installed when
switching to a new distribution in order to be able to compile source code (this
is one of those things they don’t tell you — you just have to figure it out for
yourself; kind of like a rite of initiation).

Speaking of rites, a friend of mine once told me about the time he went down to
the Moose Lodge with the intention of becoming part of the club. Until he found
out that in order to be accepted, he’d have to pick up a cucumber between the
cheeks of his (fully-clothed) butt and keep it there while he walked across the
meeting hall, at which time he decided he had to leave.

I think the
Linux community is a lot like that. You have to be willing to suffer a little
humiliation in order to gain entrance to what is really a wonderfully intricate
and entertaining circus of human interaction. A whole bunch of people aren’t
willing to do that — all they can see is the cucumber and the posture required
to carry it. We can’t really blame them, can we?

Regardless, because some of us are willing to use our rears to make a place for
ourselves, the “community” exists and thrives. It’s not just programmers,
although programmers seem to make up the core group. It’s everyone you’d expect
to find in a bazaar, to borrow from Eric Raymond’s theory, where the “merchants”
are programmers and the “shoppers” are users. There are lots of opinionated people on both
sides of the merchandise table; squabbles over features and price and usability
that sometimes turn into heated disagreements and a few deftly pitched insults.
You’ll even find some “town criers” who’ve secured a place in the busiest square
and a megaphone to amplify their words, who shout out all the “news” and
“events” of the day — and for every town crier there are dozens of watchdogs to
shout back, “hey, you got it wrong, again, stupid…” Oh, to be a town crier who
learns from her mistakes!

But learning how to use Linux and learning how to move in this “community” and
learning how, hopefully, to get the story right more often than I get it wrong,
haven’t changed my life as much as another aspect of the Open Source/Free
Software philosophy: the realization that “ideas” and “innovations” are
things to be shared freely with others. They are the basis of our ability to
move within our environments with freedom.

We use an idea to make some aspect
of our life easier or more productive, or we use an idea to facilitate a
money-making enterprise. We make the choice to share our ideas with others, or
to keep our ideas locked up. I haven’t tested this theory, but I have to wonder
if generosity with ideas works the same way as generosity with money — after
all, the principle is the same. The more you give, the more you get. Turn on the
faucet, and the water flows. Turn off the faucet, and the water gets stagnant
and sour.

Stagnant and sour, like the way the music industry and “big software” want to
artificially maintain their flow of money, not by letting the ideas flow freely,
but by shutting out our rights and extorting payment in order to fill up their
greedy stinking cesspools. Don’t misunderstand what I am saying. I am not a
socialist, nor do I want to eliminate competition, or use the government to
perform policing functions it was never meant to do. But if American businesses
are colluding with government officials to take away our freedoms, we as
citizens have a moral obligation to stand up and defend those freedoms. Too
often these days, as a result of our 12-year long indoctrination into the “lack
of critical thinking skills” mindset that makes it easy for us to be led around
by the latest “sounds good” moral outrage, we do get led into
sacrificing our freedoms for the sake of comfort and security.

Our ancestors would be appalled and saddened at how we have wasted their most
extreme efforts to gain our liberty. We owe them more than that. They gave their
lives for us. Maybe it is time for us to give up companies that would limit our freedom until they get the picture.

Here are a few organizations whose member companies might need to feel the sting of lost business
before they begin to support liberty.

Business
Software Alliance

DVD Copy
Control Association

Recording Industry Association of
America

The so-called Initiative for Software Choice

Anonymous Reader writes: “The new desktops appear to be a slick interpretation of Microsoft’s new licensing terms and a way to navigate customer demand for PCs without an OS installed. The Microsoft licensing terms, which were put in place on Aug. 1, specify that PC makers must ship PCs with an operating system. The new policy exists to prevent piracy and to better track OS shipments.
With the n-Series, Dell will include a copy of a free operating system — FreeDOS — inside the cardboard box. However, the OS will not be pre-installed, so customers will not have to worry about reconfiguring their machines should they want to use a different product.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-949671.html?tag=fd_t op.”