From Debian.org:
“Welcome to this year’s 28th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. It looks like Free Software got recognized by the European
Commission (EC), since a study of the EC suggests that software developed for and owned by public administrations should be issued under a free
license. In response to an item from last week’s issue Henrik Härkönen told us that he prepared Debian swirl images for the Ericsson T65 cellular
phone. Debian fans in Berlin are going to throw a Debian release party next weekend.”

LinuxSecurity Contributors writes: “LinuxSecurity.com has the latest issue of Phrack. “In the latest from the Phrack team includes Handling the Interrupt Descriptor Table, Advances in kernel hacking II, Defeating Forensic Analysis on Unix, Advances in format string exploiting, Cryptographic random number generators, and much more. Always great reading. “This issue comes with a goodie – check out phrack_tshirt_logo.png. We got in contact with a printer and are happy to announce that the PHRACK TSHIRTS will be ready for the public PHRACK 59 release.” Go to the story.”

Frank writes: “IBM has released DB2 v8.1 for Linux(Intel 32 and 64 bit) today. New features include multi-dimensional clustering(queries and analytics nearly 100% faster), self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing, self-protecting, and the ability to consolidate Web Services queries through a single SQL statement. Heres a link to all the platform downloads.”

Jeff Gerhardt writes: Tuesday, July 23rd, 2002, from the home of Wayne’s World, Aurora IL,
tonight LIVE on
www.thelinuxshow.com :
At 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et…. Kevin Hill, Jeff Gerhardt, Doc
Searls (Linux Journal), Arne Flones and Russ Pavlicek; have another strange and wonderful show lined up tonight on The Linux Show!!

Segment One- The News. We will cover THE HOT NEWS of the last few weeks tonight. In particular, we will talk about the The InceptionOS Project, and the HUGE story of REAL NETWORKS commitment to open source development for their new Helix product. Is the announcment just PR or will it be the real stuff? With huge competitive stress from Microsoft Media Player (and server), Reals’ slipping market share is following a Netscape like drop. Will open source, (or at least an open standard) save Real Networks closed products as well?

NOTE: we have invited representatives from Real to appear on the show, but as of yet have had no confirmation of their acceptance.

Segment Two- This is Phat Dude Phat Linux 4.0
Tonight we are joined by Cameron Cooper the Wunderkind founder of Phat Linux. This segment was originally scheduled for June 11th, but had to be rescheduled due to a conflict (your standard #7 TLS f— up).

We first had Cameron on the show in the summer of 1999 when we first became aware of the product. At the time he was 15 years old, so at the age of 19 Cameron has done what the vast majority of companies were unable to do during the “dot com bust” and that is survive the washout. And, in our opinion he did it through innovation. Phat is a perfect product for getting the technically impared to experience Linux.

The partitioning demands of a ordinary Linux distributions make installing Linux very intimidating for many Windows users. Often times this can even defer experimenting. This is why Phat Linux was created.

Phat Linux doesn’t require a seperate hard drive partition, to be installed. It can be installed in a folder of a Windows FAT32 partition. This means Phat Linux can be installed on the same partition as Windows, without conflicting with Windows. Because of this ability, your run of the mill Windows
users are free to install Linux on their computer without the fear of losing valuable information. Phat Linux will install like a regular Windows application, but run as any other Linux installation would.

Phat is no longer the only product that will allow such a demonstration mode to be built on a Windows C drive, but it is the first to get it to work right, and in our opinion, is still the benchmark product for this niche.

Phat Linux also comes with a complete desktop environment. The packaged environment, XIMIAN GNOME, is a complete desktop environment built completely of free software.

Phat Linux was, in year 2000, one of our winners for product of the Millenium.

Do not forget the:
Tell Ten Friends Campaign

We ask that you tell 10 of your friends and associates about the AOTC and GeekPAC and the need to contribute to BOTH organizations. Also ask them to Tell Ten Friends of their own. This will make the AOTC nd GeekPAC grow like an organic entity, like a political virus.

It is important that people contribute to both organzations, if they can legally do so. ONLY US voters may contribute to GeekPAC. Anyone may contribute to the AOTC, even our friens from around the world. Donation forms are located at http://www.aotc.info/joinhelp/joinform.html for the AOTC, and http://www.geekpac.com/joinhelp/joinform.html for GeekPAC.

If you are in a band or represent an artist, please contact us asap to be added to our play list.
Please join us on the show, and check our IRC Chat(irc.thelinuxshow.com
#linuxshow).
Remember tune in at 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et. NOTE: we are now on
Daylight Saving Time in the US.
Catch the Linux show at www.thelinuxshow.com

Americans for Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions (AFFECT), chief among the many critics of the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), is preparing to continue its steady opposition to UCITA even if the currently proposed amendments to UCITA are approved by the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) at its annual meeting in Tucson on July 26-August 2. These amendments to UCITA, the controversial proposed state contract law, have been drafted in the hopes of mollifying longstanding opponents and to respond to recommendations made earlier this year in an American Bar Association report. (Jan. 30, 2002)
AFFECT finds no significant improvements to UCITA in the proposed changes and notes that of the 38 changes proposed in May almost half had been issued by NCCUSL’s UCITA Standby Committee in December 2001. Only two of the remaining amendments are new; most merely involve grammatical and stylistic changes or the addition of sub-headings that do not alter the meaning of the text.

AFFECT’s analysis of the proposals are available in its Response to the Proposed Amendments to UCITA, June 28, 2002
( http://www-affect.@ucita.com/ProposedChanges.htm)
UCITA is a controversial proposed state contract law that sets forth rules for licensing “computer information.” Both the ABA and thirty-three state attorneys general (in a letter to NCCUSL, Nov. 13, 2001) have recommended redrafting UCITA. AFFECT has found the act overly broad in scope, hard to understand and fundamentally biased against the needs of end users and, despite the new amendments, still in need of redrafting.

Miriam Nisbet, president of AFFECT states, “This may be the new UCITA, but it is not improved. We are disappointed that NCCUSL merely tinkered with headings under the guise of ‘clarifying’ a seriously flawed document, while refusing to take the sage advice of the ABA to scrap this model and go back to the drawing board.”

AFFECT finds that the changes in text that address consumer protection issues do not reduce UCITA’s potential harm to consumers. UCITA would still negate many of the currently enacted state consumer protection laws unless advocates for individual and small and large business consumers were able to persuade their state legislators to make existing consumer protection laws apply to computer software. In addition, NCCUSL has rejected the advice of its ABA colleagues on the fundamental consumer issue of pre-disclosing contract terms. AFFECT agrees with the ABA working group report that UCITA should be changed to require that all contract terms be available for review before the licensee pays for the product.

Professor Jean Braucher, of the University of Arizona College of Law, explains that “there can be no working market for better terms when business and consumer customers have to enter into transactions before they can find out what the terms are.” UCITA allows an “opportunity to review” the terms after payment. “This provision does not make up for the lack of transparency in advance, putting a burden on customers to try to reverse transactions when they find objectionable terms after delivery.”

UCITA has been criticized for its tolerance of electronic “self-help” or electronic repossession. This practice which allows a licensor to remotely shut down a licensee’s system when the licensor believes the user has not followed the terms of the license, and has been one of the most controversial issues in UCITA. The standby committee has included a proposal to prohibit electronic self-help, but has kept language in other sections effectively permitting an equivalent practice.

“Business observers have repeatedly asked the drafters of UCITA to prohibit electronic self-help in a meaningful way,” said Elaine McDonald of the Principal Financial Group.
“We have asked for a prohibition with teeth, and we have asked for loopholes in other parts of the law to be closed, so that licensors could not engage in electronic self-help under another name. While the proposed amendment gives the appearance of making a major concession, it is mostly illusory because the prohibition has no teeth and the loopholes have not been closed.”

Only two states, Maryland and Virginia, have enacted UCITA since it was first approved by NCCUSL two years ago, while three other states, Iowa, North Carolina and West Virginia, have passed “bomb-shelter” bills to keep UCITA from being applied to their residents through contract clauses adopting Maryland or Virginia law.
AFFECT members include large retail and manufacturing concerns, financial institutions, technology companies and IT professional groups, consumers, and libraries. The national coalition has criticized UCITA for being unbalanced in favor of the needs of the software developers and publishers who license digital information products.

Bernard B writes:

Linux.conf.au 2003 announces Paper Submission Extension.

Linux.conf.au is pleased to announce an encore to its Call for Papers for Linux.conf.au 2003, to be held in Perth, Western Australia in January 2003.
This “Second Call For Papers” is to permit further contributions to be put forward for review. LCA has recieved many submissions in the last few weeks, however formal reviews will not begin until August 1st, and thus we are allowing further submissions until this point in time.

Our range of submissions recieved thus far have been broad; from Kernel-hacking to usability.

Please see http://www.linux.conf.au/cfp.html for the requirements for the Call For Papers.

About Perth Linux Users’ Group Inc.

PLUG is a a non-profit association for the Linux and Open Source community and aims to promote and assist this community through fortnightly seminars and workshops providing the opportunity to connect face-to-face with industry speakers and other Linux users. In addition to the free email discussion list, PLUG provides news, technical support, resources and forums on the web site (http://www.plug.linux.org.au/).

About Linux.conf.au

Linux.conf.au is a national ‘roaming’ conference under the auspices of Linux Australia Inc (http://www.linux.org.au/). Its original incarnation was under the name “Conference of Australian Linux Users” (CALU), held in Melbourne at Monash University in 1999. In January 2001 it was renamed to “Linux.conf.au”, and held in Sydney at the University of New South Wales under the direction of the Sydney Linux User Group (SLUG). In February 2002 it was held in Brisbane at the University of Queensland under the direction of the Home Unix Machine Brisbane User Group (HUMBUG).

LCA has a very high standing in the international community for being a very technically focused, yet relaxed conference schedule. All presenters are selected from the community are of the highest calibre.

MEDIA RELEASE CONTACTS:
Perth Linux Users’ Group Inc

James Bromberger
+61 417 772 286 (GMT +0800)
james@rcpt.to

Linux Australia Inc
Anand Kumria
treasurer@linux.org.au

PUBLICITY CONTACT:
LCA 2003, Perth Linux Users’ Group Inc
Bernard Blackham
+61 402 291 684 (GMT +0800)
bernard@blackham.com.au

Dave B writes: “Her Majesty’s Government has announced its position on open source software. Following an investigation into the viability of open source software and in-line with other EU member states future UK gov’t software purchases will examine OSS along side propriety solutions and when commissioning new software will insist on open source and use of open data formats.

The Register has the story
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26335.html.”

–By Anne Zieger –

When IBM announced that some zSeries users could run hundreds of Linux instances on its mainframes, tech buyers were interested, but few could afford the hardware needed to test the new capability.
Recently, however, a growing list of commercial technologies have emerged making it possible to power up multiple Linux copies on an ordinary Intel box, including products from SWsoft, VMware and Idaya. Open Source efforts — notably the User-mode Linux Kernel project — also offer technologies that create virtual, self-contained Linux versions.

Vendors believe that the ability to run OS copies in parallel will soon be a standard way of doing business for Web hosting and Internet service providers. In most cases, commercial software vendors are bundling multi-OS support with basic ISP management platforms handling core functions such as billing, authentication and server management.

Hosting companies are gradually beginning to kick off products based on these virtual OS approaches, using them to offer dedicated-style Linux hosting and to consolidate Linux systems with other operating systems in data centers.

ASPs, ISPs and other alphabet-soup service providers believe they can reach new markets with “virtual private servers,” Linux instances offering root access and control without the need for a dedicated box. Companies like South San Francisco-based SWsoft, for example, allow users to run as many as 50 copies of Linux on one box. “We’ve tested it with about 2,000 [copies] on one server, but if users go above 50 the resources on the physical server tend to be constrained,” says Craig Oda, vice president of business development for SWsoft.

This approach is especially popular with smaller hosting providers, such AWorldWideMall.com Inc., based in Alexandria, Virginia.

Until recently, AWorldWideMall.com offered a “developer” option to shared hosting customers, using SSH access as a secure connection method. The problem was, SSH-based tinkering often had a catastrophic effect on servers, says Andreas Barth, CEO of AWorldWideMall.com. “What happened was that after a year and a half, the server was destroyed,” he says. “When too many people tweak around on a server, installing and configuring stuff, it’s like beating on a car.”

In response to this problem, Barth recently spent $12K to pick up three copies of SWsoft’s HSPComplete. Each HSPComplete copy runs on a Dell Grade Five server with a one gigahertz processor over Red Hat Linux. “Now everyone gets a virtual environment, which means his or her own world,” Barth says. “They can do whatever they want to do. If they drop an atomic bomb on it, it’s fine, because it’s their own server.”

Also attacking the market for Linux-copy based service is UK-based Idaya, whose ProVSD Web hosting product offers service providers the ability to sell multiple copies of Linux. Unlike SWsoft, the Idaya system gives customers “admin” access rather than true root access to their virtual private servers, but customers can reconfigure and restart services on their own virtual machine. [A 30-day trial version of ProVSD is available at http://www.idaya.com/products/provsd/trial.phtml.]

Meanwhile, high-end business-oriented hosting players — and enterprises themselves — are looking at ways to bring big, sprawling applications running over multiple platforms into one cozy locale.

VMware, for example, offers a range of servers allowing companies to run a variety of operating systems in parallel. Its customers have deployed a wide range of systems, including various flavors of Linux, FreeBSD, Windows NT and Windows 2000. VMware’s customers are largely drawn from the ranks of the Global 2000 list and government, including Citibank, Lockheed Martin, Visa International, the U.S. Census Bureau and the IRS.

The company’s GSX server, aimed at departmental administration, allows IT staffers to run four OSes per CPU. The ESX server bumps up the ante, allowing customers to run as many as eight operating systems per CPU.

VMware’s customers are using this multi-OS capability primarily to eliminate server creep — to bring applications into one more-manageable location. “Most of the time when applications like Siebel or PeopleSoft get complicated, you need multiple servers,” says Michael Mullany, director of product management with Palo Alto, California-based VMware. “With [our products] you can take all of those servers and offer them on a single system.”

While VMware’s customers are not focused primarily on Linux, they say that’s on the way. VMware user Agilera, for example, uses the technology to consolidate AS400, Unix and Windows systems, but expects to add Linux relatively soon.

Agilera, an ASP based in Englewood, Colorado, sells access to complex enterprise software from corporate mainstays like PeopleSoft, Lawson and JD Edwards. Given the interest players like JD Edwards have shown, Linux consolidation may very well be next, says systems engineer Neil Reamer. “We are just not quite there yet,” Reamer says.

In the future, hosting and service providers will find that they have even more options. Consolidating applications through virtual OS use becoming increasingly more important to major hardware and software players, including IBM, Dell, and Sun.

At the same time, technology users are gaining access to increasingly powerful computers, a trend that can only help to boost the number of virtual OS copies the systems can run. On the one end, there’s IBM, pushing down the cost of an entry-level zSeries mainframe as hard as possible, while pitching Linux servers and virtualization technology. On the other end, commodity boxes are getting more muscular; in particular, parallel OS capabilities should get a boost as platform vendors migrate to the Intel 64-bit chip.

Even if nothing changes on the vendor front, however, service providers say they have plenty of reason to make co-housed copies of Linux a part of their daily routine. Getting customers out of their hair — letting them do their own thing without having to supervise — is benefit enough. “Managing shared hosting was becoming a bit needy on my time,” says Todd Robinson, president of Penguix, a service provider based in Tampa, Florida. “But now I have the ability to generate these virtual servers with very little interaction from me. The customer can do it for themselves.”

Caldera International, Inc. (Nasdaq: CALD) today announced that it has completed the purchase of the shares of its common stock held by Tarantella, Inc. (Nasdaq: TTLA) and MTI Technology Corporation (Nasdaq: MTIC). Caldera acquired 4,304,000 shares or 31% of its issued and outstanding common stock for an aggregate purchase price of $4,029,000, or $0.94 per share. The repurchase of these shares has reduced the number of issued and outstanding shares of the Company to 9,487,000, of which 5,318,000 are held by The Canopy Group, Inc., and the remaining 4,169,000 are held by non-affiliates.
“These shares were an overhang to the market and were depressing Caldera’s stock price. The elimination of these shares puts Caldera in a much more attractive position for present shareholders and interested investors,” said Bob Bench, CFO, Caldera International. “The repurchase of nearly a third of Caldera’s outstanding shares now opens the way for Caldera to raise additional capital at higher prices, and will allow for the market to reach a share price that more closely reflects the value of Caldera. The company has improved its equity position, is essentially debt free, and can now take advantage of expansion opportunities.”

“During the next 12 months, Caldera will identify appropriate technologies and companies that will complement our strategy and roadmap,” said Darl McBride, president and CEO, Caldera International. “Caldera is in the enviable position of having a worldwide channel sales organization with a vast network of resellers and distributors. We will be active in licensing and acquiring technologies that leverage our channel and add value to our customers.”

Caldera International, Inc.
Caldera International (Nasdaq: CALD) provides “Powerful Choices” for businesses through its UNIX, Linux and Volution product lines and services. Based in Lindon, UT, Caldera has representation in 82 countries and 16,000+ resellers worldwide. Caldera Global Services provides reliable localized support and services to partners and customers. For more information on Caldera products and services, visit http://www.caldera.com.

Annette Oevermann writes: MontaVista Software Inc., the company powering the embedded revolution, today announced that MontaVista Linux® Carrier Grade Edition 2.1 is available immediately to customers. This revolutionary new product is the industry’s first commercial, carrier-grade quality Linux distribution. Carrier Grade Edition is targeted for edge and core telecommunications solutions, including applications for the converging IP and voice networks, optical networks, signaling gateways and Voice over IP (VoIP) gateways.
“The market is demanding a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Linux solution for telecommunications and MontaVista Software has delivered,” commented Jim Ready, president and CEO, MontaVista Software. “By leveraging our significant technical expertise, both in Linux software technology and in providing telecommunications solutions, MontaVista has delivered a standards-based, open architecture communications platform for the industry’s next-generation telecommunications systems.”

MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) enhances standard Linux with key features for deployment in carrier-grade environments. It is designed specifically for network equipment providers as a standard, modular, communications platform. Based on open source projects initiated by MontaVista Software and other open source contributions, Carrier Grade Edition provides essential high availability features, including CompactPCI hot swap drivers, redundant Ethernet and RAID1. Carrier Grade Edition also delivers a hardened driver architecture, resource monitoring and fault management services, and other carrier grade capabilities.

Carrier Grade Edition offers significant benefits to network equipment providers who face ever-increasing time-to-market pressures. These networking OEMs need to deliver scalable, high performance solutions with real time support. Carrier Grade Edition enables them to do so, and to lower their cost and time to development and deployment.

Carrier Grade Edition provides a robust software platform to meet demands from carriers and service providers for service availability. With its high performance, real-time Linux kernel and high availability features, CGE offers significant advantages beyond standard or “enterprise” Linux. CGE is based on an open architecture, incorporating standard interfaces for flexibility, portability and longevity. Moreover, Carrier Grade Edition offers developers a choice of vendors at various levels of integration — a choice currently denied by providers of closed and proprietary systems.

“Network equipment providers are moving to Intel architecture-based carrier grade modular platforms, attracted by advantages in price, performance and vendor choice,” said Ron Peck, director of marketing, Communications Software Programs of Intel’s Network Processing Group. “MontaVista Software, with its proven technology expertise, especially in telecommunications, and its alignment with Open Source Development Labs’ (OSDL) Carrier Grade Linux specifications, is poised to give these providers the carrier-class performance, levels of flexibility and speed-to-market they require.”

Carrier Grade Edition supports industry-leading PICMG 2.16 compliant CompactPCI platforms and standard rack mount systems based on the Intel IA-32 architecture. These include systems from IBM, Intel, Motorola, Radisys and Force Computers.

“Carrier Grade Edition from MontaVista Software enables our mutual customers to build high availability solutions with an open, standards-based operating system — Linux,” said Venkataraman Prasannan, senior director for RadiSys. “This move to open standards promotes economy of scale and improves our customers? time-to-market and time-to-revenue.”

Carrier Grade Edition Attributes

Key high availability attributes of the Carrier Grade Edition include:
* Fault management framework
* Diagnostics: On-line and off-line
* Performance: Support for sub-millisecond real-time response
* Scalability: From embedded single board computers to large SMP servers
* Openness: built on systems and standard APIs

Features

MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition builds on the company’s expertise in embedded Linux and high availability. The new product incorporates all the features of the company’s flagship product, MontaVista Linux Professional Edition, including rich hardware support, a fully preemptible kernel and real-time scheduling, small footprint and journaling file systems. It also builds on technologies from the MontaVista High Availability Framework, such as PICMG 2.12 hot swap capabilities (hot replace and hot insert), redundant Ethernet, multi-hosted RAID, and resource monitoring and event management subsystems. Key new features for Carrier Grade Edition include driver hardening, high resolution timers, improved diagnostic capabilities (kernel dynamic probes, multithreaded core dumps, kernel crash dump and analysis tools), POSIX event logs, enhanced kernel panic handler and enhanced fault management framework for applications and middleware.

Commitment to Industry Standards

MontaVista Software is committed to providing carrier-grade solutions and actively participates inindustry initiatives to define carrier-grade and high availability standards. These include the OSDL Carrier Grade Linux Working Group (with Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, MontaVista Software and Nokia) and the Service Availability Forum (with Force, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, MontaVista Software, Nokia and RadiSys). Emerging specifications from these organizations will be incorporated into MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition.

Availability

MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition 2.1 is available immediately. Subscribers to the MontaVista High Availability Framework product will be able to migrate seamlessly and without additional cost to Carrier Grade Edition. Subscribers to MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition will be able to upgrade to a next-generation version of the product when industry carrier-grade Linux specifications gain further definition. Support for additional CPU architecture platforms is also planned. For more product information, please visit http://www.mvista.com/cge/index.html or email to info@mvista.com.

About MontaVista Software Inc.

MontaVista Software Inc. powers the embedded revolution by providing open-source systems software solutions for embedded developers. Founded in 1999 by real-time operating system (RTOS) pioneer James Ready, MontaVista Software’s principal products include MontaVista Linux® Professional Edition and MontaVista Linux® Carrier Grade Edition. The Professional Edition is a Linux-based embedded source and binary distribution, cross development platform and a set of tool kits for x86/IA-32, PowerPC, StrongARM, MIPS, SH, ARM, XScale, Xtensa and other microprocessor architectures. The Carrier Grade Edition is a second-generation high availability product that is an ideal Linux platform for telecommunications and carrier-grade applications. MontaVista Software also provides several complementary technology products addressing specific customer needs such as the Java development environment, high availability technology, powerful graphics toolkits and more. MontaVista offers developers a family of products and services for embedded design and development targeted for applications ranging from communications infrastructure to consumer devices.

Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, in Sunnyvale, Calif., MontaVista Software is a privately held company funded by leading investors such as Alloy Ventures, US Venture Partners, RRE Ventures, WR Hambrecht + Co., IBM, Intel Capital, Panasonic and Sony Corporation. For more information about MontaVista Software, please visit http://www.mvista.com, email to info@mvista.com or
call (408) 328-9200.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. MontaVista is a trademark of MontaVista Software Inc. All other names mentioned are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective companies.

Contacts:

Joe Samagond,
Director of Marketing and Corporate Communications,
MontaVista Software Inc.,
Phone: (408) 328-9234,
E-mail: jsamagond@mvista.com

Patricia Colby,
PR Strategy and Business Development,
Pacifico Inc.,
Phone: (408) 293 8600 x340,
E-mail: pcolby@pacifico.com