From David Sugar: Now that we are close to the 1.0 release of GNU Bayonne, it seemed a good time to discuss what my vision and goals are looking forward. We have seen Bayonne become part of the GNU project, and form associations with a number of other projects including GNU Enterprise, and even DotGNU thru phpGroupWare. We have also seen the rise of activity of GNUCOMM, a project for which provides a broader context for understanding what we are doing in Telephony, specifically in regards to Free Software. These are related to our long term goals and strategies, and I will address these questions by describing what we wish to do, especially in the broader context of these other projects.

One goal we envision is the creation of a universal inbox service where one can receive all one’s correspondence, whether it is fax, email, video, or voice. To have universal messaging requires interchangable media, whether this means transforming written email to voice messaging, or other forms as needed by the user based on circumstances of the user’s choosing on demand and unversally available.

To achieve universal inbox we also require universal and ubiquitous voice services that can be used anywhere. Ubiquitous data already exists; data can be transported over virtually any media, and we have a universal set of open and interoperable protocols universally accessible and implementable. We wish to achieve this same level of ubiquity for voice, whether it is transported over circuit switched networks such as the traditional phone system, broadcast over radio or thru cellular, or delivered as packetized data.

Universal voice means more than just messaging. It means personalized voice agents that can contact a universal client using free and open protocols, whether it is a soft phone, a cellular phone, or a land line. It means voice driven personalized assistances that can perform useful daily functions on your behalf and that can interact in the media we humans are most comfortable with using.

Part of what we envision in universal inbox messaging and personalized voice assistants clearly belongs in the domain of existing projects such as phpGroupWare or Jabber, and certainly plays a core role in anyenterprise. Parts of it can touch many things, including email clients and servers, softphone development, instant messaging, and many other areas of active development. Our goal is to leave none of these untouched and to draw all of these ideas together starting with a more universal approach to the client, perhaps starting by melding softphone and instant messaging into a single entity, and later merging the result into email clients. In fact, the question of a universal softphone/instant message client was one of the starting points for the GNU ccRTP softphone effort.

Universal inbox, personalized and universal voice response, collaborative media independent communications, these are all goals stated within the broader context of GNUCOMM, and envisioned in other broad projects as well. What do these have to do with GNU Bayonne specifically?

To understand GNU Bayonne in the context of these goals, one has to understand how fundamentally I develop. To create something larger, I start by creating something small as a foundation for it. A framework was created as a foundation to create Bayonne, and to create this framework, Common C++ was initially written. Similarly, GNU Bayonne, as it stands today, is also simply a foundation to create the next level of solutions. Within this context, GNU Bayonne will provide fundamental services, in conjunction with many others, to make this larger vision become deployable and commonplace. As free software and by using freely implemented protocols, we expect everyone to be able to participate openly in the advancement of telecommunications and to build upon existing work and projects to create these and other better solutions for industry, and for our users, now and in the future.

Finally! writes, “He said he wouldn’t, but Mosfet has reconsidered and ported his Liquid theme to KDE-3.0. Details, download links, and installation instructions are found in this Linux and Main story.”

jeremy writes, Due to popular demand LinuxQuestions.org has added a forum dedicated to Slackware.
The Announcement
The Slackware Forum

–jeremy

– By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols –

So where is Caldera going with its older operating systems? Linux may be all fine and
dandy, but the fate of OpenServer is what the people at the DTR Business Systems reseller show in Las Vegas last week wanted to know, and Caldera’s CEO Ransom Love was there to give them answers.

First and foremost, Caldera will not put the older Unix OpenServer out to pasture after years of neglect from former owner SCO. In the past,
SCO tried to move OpenServer users and resellers to UnixWare –now OpenUnix — but they simply wouldn’t budge. Why not? Because, as Rene Beltran, vice president of sales for DTR, says: “OpenServer already does everything the customers want.” DTR, a value-added reseller that works with resellers, integrators and customers,
still sells 20 times the copies of the older OpenServer operating system as OpenUnix copies, he says.

It’s not just DTR. According to Dan Kusnetzky, IDC’s vice president for system software research, OpenServer has a much larger market share than the often touted, but it would seem seldom deployed, OpenUnix.

Caldera will continue updating OpenServer with driver updates and a refresh of the operating system, in the third quarter of 2002, that will bring OpenServer up to version 5.0.7.

At about the same time, to make OpenUnix more attractive, Caldera will be adding an
OpenServer Kernel Personality to OpenUnix. This will enable users to run OpenServer programs on OpenUnix come the day that they need OpenUnix’s much more powerful database infrastructure and or need up to eight-way processing power. Caldera hopes that OpenServer users who want server-consolidation will then use this as an upgrade path.

Even after this, however, Caldera doesn’t plan on giving OpenServer a gold watch on the way out the door. In 2003, if there continues to be a demand for it, Caldera will bring a Linux Kernel Personality to OpenServer. With the LKP, users will be able to run Linux programs on OpenServer.

Caldera will also continue to upgrade its Linux operating system, with
OpenLinux 3.1.2 due to come out in the third quarter.

Looking ahead, Love says on all three operating systems, there will be more frequent feature patches rather than frequent periodical major releases. Love added, “Users and resellers don’t want major releases, because installing them is too expensive, and they cause work disturbances.”

Caldera will also strive to make “it easier to switch between the operating systems, thus
enabling administrators to mix and match. This will also make it easier to migrate between environments and consolidate servers.”

How can Caldera afford to support three operating systems? Love explained that because
OpenServer and OpenUnix are already stable, they don’t require a tremendous amount of
development work. Instead, most of the development dollars are focused on Linux.

Eventually, though, Caldera thinks Linux will win out. OpenLinux alone is making the jump to the IA-64 architecture.

But, as Love says, while it’s possible that “Linux may replace Unix, we see Unix and Linux as compatible. We don’t see, as Red Hat does, one replacing the other.”

Love also made it clear that Caldera will not be following Red Hat to the enterprise space. Instead, Caldera will
concentrate on selling to small- to medium-sized businesses and branch offices through its reseller channel. As Love says, “The solution provider is our customer, not the end user.”

” If you didn’t hear about the new Sharp Zaurus (5000 series for developers and the newly release 5500 for mass market) then you are in for a real treat. The Zaurus isn’t the first Linux based PDA, but it is the first one backed by a major corporation and has just about every whizbang thing you can think of. This review isn’t of the Zaurus, but I’ll go ahead and give some background so you know what I’m talking about.” They’re reviewing all the tkc apps for the Zaurus. More at Zaurus.loveslinux.com.

From ITWorld.com: “Behlendorf noted that in the last two years there has been a lot of cost-cutting and downsizing and open source “allows people to cut corporate costs without cutting people.”

He said open source definitely takes people to run it, but corporations can shift and train staff on a less expensive system, rather than lay them off. “And that’s a much more attractive resolution.”

Anonymous Reader writes: “The recent Dutch court decision that ruled Kazaa is not responsible for the illegal actions of people using its software has had a positive effect already. Xolox, one of the simplest and best P2P programs that shut down last year due to litigation fears, is coming back.

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/xoloxretur ns.html“

Kelly Mcneill writes: “Based on recent media reports, I suspect that if the music and media companies have their way, there would be a single “media appliance” in people’s homes instead of a computer, TV, CD player, VCR and DVD player. There would be only one control on this appliance: a giant, user-friendly “play” button. No “fast-forward,” no “stop,” just “play.” Certainly, there would be no “record” button.”

David Sugar writes: “Dave Sugar, a GNU package maintainer, announced the 8th major release of GNU Bayonne, Free Software for development of enterprise and carrier class applications for the public telephone network. With this release, we have standardized GNU Bayonne as an environment for delivering new and innovative telephony solutions using GNU/Linux and we look forward to the official release of GNU Bayonne 1.0 in early June.
Requiring skills common to any system or web administrator, and using existing and familiar tools including perl, gateway execution, and Bayonne server scripting, a GNU Bayonne server, along with a supported analog or digital telephony card, can be used to rapidly prototype and deploy commercial and carrier class application services. This ease of development and easy integration with existing free software components opens telephony development to a wide audience of users and developers without requiring special skills or proprietary api’s.

As Free Software, anyone is free to use, study, learn from and modify GNU Bayonne. GNU Bayonne can be and has been packaged for commercial use by numerous vendors, both for turnkey products and in creation of custom tailored solutions. Software freedom enables both the wide commercial use of GNU Bayonne and promotes the development of tailored solutions in ways proprietary solutions cannot.

With this release we have brought GNU Bayonne up to date with the latest developments in the GNU project. This release may be built with the newer GCC 3.x compiler and supports the recently introduced GNU Common C++ “2” class foundation libraries. This release has been built and tested under some of the most current GNU/Linux distributions and the most recent Linux kernel releases.

GNU Bayonne “1” is just the start of how we envision Free Software enabling new and original development in telecommunications. Already, we expect to introduce GNU Bayonne “2” by later this winter as an advanced platform offering original concepts in telephony integrated web services for current and next generation telephone networks. Within GNUCOMM, we are developing softswitches, softphones, and other technologies that will help drive real innovation in telecommunication in a manner that can be commercially exploited using Free Software licensed under the GPL. As part of GNU Enterprise, we continue to evolve telecommunications as an integral component of enterprise software. GNU Bayonne will also evolve to support carrier grade Linux kernel enhancements and to provide an environment for developing high availability carrier class applications.

With this release the original GNU Bayonne core development team has been dissolved, and a new developer committee will be appointed under GNUCOMM and GNU Enterprise leadership to continue GNU Bayonne development. If you wish to contribute to GNU Bayonne development, you can join one of the project mailing lists. We have also established a GNU Bayonne grant program thru the FSF for those that wish to contribute monetarily.

Where to get GNU Bayonne:

GNU Bayonne and all related non-hardware specific software needed for building and running it may be found at the GNU ftp site (http://www.gnu.org/gnu). Individual drivers and telephony hardware related libraries are provided directly from the respective vendors. All information about GNU Bayonne may be found at http://www.gnu.org/software/bayonne.

About the Free Software Foundation:

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users’ right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software—particularly the GNU operating system (used widely today in its GNU/Linux variant)— and free documentation. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at http://www.gnu.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA

About GNUCOMM, the GNU Telephony Project:

GNUCOMM, a subsystem of GNU, provides free software solutions to common telecommunications problems. GNUCOMM will free users of voicemail, PBX, and call-center applications from reliance on the proprietary software that currently dominates such telephony equipment. The system aims to be scalable and configurable enough to allow end-users to develop their own telecommunications systems with little or no special knowledge of GNUCOMM’s internals. GNUCOMM will support both VoIP and PSTN interfaces, as well as interfaces to existing phone systems. GNUCOMM will scale from individual user installations to carrier-class sites. The website of GNUCOMM is located at http://www.gnu.org/software/gnucomm/gnucomm.html.

About GNU Enterprise:

GNUe aims to provide a suite of tools and applications for solving the specific needs of the enterprise. GNUe will handle the needs of any size business, including applications for human resources, accounting, customer relationship management, project management, supply chain and e-commerce. GNUe is a free software project developed by volunteer software developers worldwide. The website of GNU Enterprise is http://www.gnu.org/projects/gnue/.

“

– By Grant Gross –

Co-organizer Andrew J. Hutton gives two good reasons for the existence of the upcoming Ottawa Linux Symposium: It’s not the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, and it’s not in the United States.
Hutton, CEO of contract Linux kernel developer Steamballoon Inc., says “several dozen” non-American attendees of OLS have demanded that connecting flights don’t land in the United States on the way to Canada, and some have even asked that they don’t fly over the United States, just in case they might have to make an unscheduled landing there.

Last July, Linux kernel hacker Alan Cox called for a boycott of U.S. technology conferences because of the attempt to prosecute Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov for alleged violations of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Charges against Sklyarov [but not his company] were eventually dropped, but Hutton says non-American programmers are still concerned about U.S. legal issues, even during a change of planes.

“Anyone who doesn’t wish to be under U.S. jurisdiction can come [to OLS], which is a very serious issue for a lot of people,” he says.

Another advantage of OLS: it’s less of a trade show than LinuxWorld, Hutton says, and more of a gathering of Linux developers. Attendance is limited to 500 people, and if you’re interested in attending, it’s time to start thinking about making plans for the fourth annual OLS, June 26 to 29 in Ottawa, Ontario. About 40% of the slots are already filled, and May 1 is the deadline for getting the lowest registration price.

“LinuxWorld was pure marketing driven, and it had zero content for the people actually doing the work,” Hutton says. “We needed to do something to get them together instead of scaring them away of the idea of any kind of public event. That’s the goal — to get the community together so they don’t try to kill each other by email.”

The limited attendance encourages speakers and attendees to mingle, Hutton says. “It’s really a peer-type conference, not speaking to the masses.”

This year, the symposium happens right after a Linux Kernel Summit [co-sponsored by NewsForge/Linux.com corporate parent OSDN] at the same Ottawa venue June 24 and 25. “It’s going to make sure that everybody significant to Linux is there, not just 90% of them,” Hutton says.

Also worth noting is the number of tutorials and presentations, up from about 36 in 2001 to 61 this year. That’s “due to excessive good content being submitted,” Hutton says.

“We expect the quality of the audience to go up again, which if you saw the people who were there last year, it’s pretty impressive,” he adds. “The main obstacle to getting more people out is travel budgets. We’re not Silicon Valley, so all sorts of people who would normally take off from work and go have to pay to get here.”