MC Hammer writes: “Just when we thought Gnutella was the answer, we have GNUnet. GNUnet is completely anonymous.
GNUnet is searchable like Gnutella and napster.
GNUnet is NOT written in java. For more information, visit Purdue.edu.“

jleveille writes: “Firestarter is a graphical based firewall interface to the ipchains/Netfilter (iptables) firewalls that come with your Linux distribution, ipchains is used mostly for 2.2.x kernels and Netfilter is used on 2.4.x kernels.

This firewall is easy to use and packs quite a punch, it handles masquerading for multihomed machines (two or more network adapters,) you can change rules, and add dynamic rules on the fly. More at LinuxBeginner.“

John Gowin writes: ”
You’ve done your homework. You’ve decided on a Linux distribution and you’re ready to take the plunge. The shrink-wrapped box just arrived via your favorite shipping company and you’re all set to install Linux on a PC you’ve set aside for the purpose. If you’ve purchased the “latest and greatest,” chances are your distribution will include a fairly recent Linux kernel. What you might not know is that it is almost guaranteed that the most recent stable release of the Linux kernel won’t be included on your distribution CDs. More at LinuxOrbit..”

– By Robin “Roblimo”
Miller –
April 1, 2002, Cambridge, MA — Richard M. Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, says he is shifting his energy from software to cupcakes and that the Free Software Foundation will now be known as the Free Cupcakes Foundation.

“Think ‘free’ as in ‘freedom to eat cake,’ not ‘free as in beer,'” explains Stallman. “Not that we’re against free beer, but cupcakes and beer don’t go well together.”

Many bakers have volunteered to give their time to the CAT [Cupcakes Aren’t Tastykakes] project, and the group is now accepting donations of eggs, flour, milk, sugar, baking powder, vanilla and other flavorings, and of both whipped cream and glaze-style toppings. “We believe free cupcakes can change the world,” says Stallman. “Information is already free, pretty much. Now it’s time to make sure everyone has free cupcakes. I first had this idea when I was trying to make a printer work with a proprietary Unix system and realized I needed a sugar high to keep going, but all the snack cakes in the whole building were not only proprietary, but full of preservatives and locked in vending machines.”

In response, Eric S. Raymond has launched the Open Cupcake Initiative. He insists that Open Cupcakes are not the same as Free Cupcakes, because, “we don’t think cupcakes should necessarily be free, just that you should always bring enough with you to share with others.” Raymond has also proposed a change to the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment that, if passed by Congress and approved by the necessary number of states, would have it say, “A well fed militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to bake and eat cupcakes, shall not be infringed.”

Steve Crymore, CEO of Microbake, the world’s largest commercial snack cake producer, said, “We support the idea of Open Cupcakes and have even launched a Shared Cupcake program ourselves, but the Free Cupcake Foundation is totally un-American. They are trying to put us out of business and stifle innovation.”

Stallman says, “We don’t care what Crymore and Microbake think. Cupcakes are for everyone, and should not be used to make a few people rich at everyone else’s expense. And please don’t confuse the Free Cupcake Foundation with the Open Cupcake Initiative. Neither the FCF nor I have anything to do with the Open Cupcake Initiative, and we were here first anyway.”

Stallman notes that in addition to his Free Cupcakes Foundation activities he is developing a program called the Extensible Mastication And Cooking System [Emacs] that, he says, “will not only bake cupcakes but will chew and swallow them for you, too.”

This April Fools Day article was inspired by technology journalist Rebecca Rohan, who used, “Why does information want to be free? Why not cupcakes?” as an email sig one time too many.

“In a surprising development Microsoft stated today that it would
not be using the eight year old NT kernel in its next generation
operating system. The new system, to be called Windows BSD, will
be based around the freely available OpenBSD operating system.” More…

By Robin ‘Roblimo’
Miller
April 1, 2002, Cambridge MA: Richard M. Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, says he is shifting his energy from software to cupcakes and that the Free Software Foundation will now be known as the Free Cupcakes Foundation.”
“Think ‘free’ as in ‘freedom to eat cake, not ‘free’ as in ‘beer,'” explains Stallman. “Not that we’re against free beer, but cupcakes and beer don’t go well together.”

Many bakers have volunteered to give their time to the CAT [Cupcakes Aren’t Tastykakes] project, and the group is now accepting donations of eggs, flour, milk, sugar, baking powder, vanilla and other flavorings, and of both whipped cream and glaze-style toppings. “We believe free cupcakes can change the world,” says Stallman. “Information is already free, pretty much. Now it’s time to make sure everyone has free cupcakes. I first had this idea when I was trying to make a printer work with a proprietary Unix system and realized I needed a sugar high to keep going, but all the snack cakes in the whole building were not only proprietary, but full of preservatives and locked in vending machines.”

In response, Eric S. Raymond has launched the Open Cupcake Initiative. He insists that Open Cupcakes are not the same as Free Cupcakes, because, “we don’t think cupcakes should necessarily be free, just that you should always bring enough with you to share with others.” Raymond has also proposed a change to the U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment that, if passed by Congress and approved by the necessary number of states, would have it say, “A well fed militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to bake and eat cupcakes, shall not be infringed.”

Steve Crymore, CEO of Microbake, the world’s largest commercial snack cake producer, said, “We support the idea of Open Cupcakes and have even launched a Shared Cupcake program ourselves, but the Free Cupcake Foundation is totally unAmerican. They are trying to put us out of business and stifle innovation.”

Stallman says, “We don’t care what Crymore and Microbake think. Cupcakes are for everyone, and should not be used to make a few people rich at everyone else’s expense. And please don’t confuse the Free Cupcake Foundation with the Open Cupcake Initiative. Neither the FCF nor I have anything to do with the Open Cupcake Initiative, and we were here first anyway.”

Stallman notes that in addition to his Free Cupcakes Foundation activities he is developing a program called the Extensible Mastication And Cooking System [Emacs] that, he says, “will not only bake cupcakes but will chew and eat them for you, too.”

This April Fools Day article was inspired by technology journalist Rebecca Rohan, who used, “Why does information want to be free? Why not cupcakes?” as an email sig one time too many.

vmlinuz sends this along: “Do you wish you could run Linux on your old IBM/XT or indeed the original IBM
PC itself ?

We are pleased to announce that Linux 8086 has now reached the point where
it is ready for some wider testing. Harry Kalogirou has the TCP/IP stack
functioning, and the rest of the system – though a little incomplete –
is operating nicely. Not all compile options build admittedly, but it
does boot, it does run and it does have a web server.

It has taken a lot of work to squash so much into so little room, and we
all have developed a great deal of respect for K&R along the way. Special
thanks must go to
Harry Kalogirou (TCP/IP)
Riley Williams (our persistent CVS housekeeper)
Alistair Riddoch (large chunks of the earlier code)

and the rest of the contributors (some twenty or more)

You will need the dev86 compiler kit (bcc for 8086, linker, tools), and
a machine with 640K of RAM (booter assumption for now). EMS and extended
memory is not yet supported. 286 machines will work but the 286 protected
mode is not yet supported. A single floppy will do for a complete library and
tools install. For hard disk devices 20Mb is vastly more than you will need.

For reference an original IBM PC clocks in at 0.7 bogomips.

A port to the PSION 3 is underway, along with disk based swapping.

http://elks.sourceforge.net/
Alan
—
“Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers
and deluge the hobby market with good software.” — Bill Gates 1976

We are still waiting ….

– By Grant Gross –

It was the week for a couple of big software releases impacting people using Open Source software in business settings. Our own Tina Gasperson and friends reviewed Codeweaver’s Crossover Office, which is supposed to allow Microsoft Office products to run on Linux, and found that it mostly works as advertised.

Another big excuse for why people can’t switch to Linux — “but we can’t run Microsoft Office in Linux” — now falls by the wayside. At what point do businesses and government offices finally admit that paying huge license fees for products that spy on them no longer makes any sense?

If you’re looking for a simpler solution than running Crossover Office with expensive Microsoft software on Linux, Robin “Roblimo” Miller reviews a pre-release copy of StarOffice 6.0, the office suite that opens most Microsoft documents. Sun Microsystems is planning to start charging for StarOffice, but Robin says the added features in StarOffice over Open Source counterpart OpenOffice might be worth $50 or so. The big new feature in StarOffice: support for dBase and database files.

Mozilla inches closer

There are more reports of the impending Mozilla 1.0 release. It should be available for download within days, say project leaders. The Mozilla cvs tree closed this week to prepare for the release.

Fighting the SSSCA, or whatever it’s called this week

Business columnist Jack Bryar gives advice on fighting the Consumer Broadband and Television Promotion Act, formerly the SSSCA, which would require copy protections on every piece of piece of hardware and software produced in the United States.

More mainstream press besides the technology media is noticing this is a bad bill, too; the headline on a Salon.com story this week: “U.S. prepares to invade your hard drive.” The Washington Post suggested the bill would tample all over customers’ fair use rights and presumes all computer users are guilty of “stealing” music.

Wired.com noted that many technology users are “howling mad” over the bill. Infowarrier.org even called the bill’s backers the “American Techniban.”

In other news about bad legislation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that on Monday a Northern District of California Federal Court judge will hear arguments on Russian software firm Elcomsoft’s motion to dismiss the criminal charges leveled against it under likely unconstitutional provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Says the EFF, “Elcomsoft is charged with offering a tool that circumvents the copy protection in Adobe eBooks, allowing fair, noninfringing use by eBook purchasers.”

In other news …

Could Microsoft have killed Linux? Open Source advocate Eric S. Raymond thinks so. But Microsoft made some strategic missteps in the late ’90s, he says. Microsoft, in return, blamed Linux’s small market share on Red Hat’s lack of internal development. Microsoft really doesn’t get the Open Source model of development, does it?

Apple’s Open Source Darwin project kicked a programmer off the project because he was only 15 years old. And I always thought the Open Source and Free Software movements welcomed anyone who wanted to contribute or use their software. It’s all about freedom, as long as you fit into the age demographic of an Apple buyer?

Unlike Apple, Microsoft is trying to indoctrinate them while they’re young, at least of college age. Microsoft announced it was sharing more than a million lines of code with college students interested in the company’s .Net Web services initiative.

Newly released

Tina noted KDE 3.0 was out on cvs as of Friday.

Gentoo Linux 1.0 was announced this weekend.

Yellow Dog Linux 2.2, a leading Linux for Macintosh distribution was released this week.

Newly reviewed

Our own Russell C. Pavlicek reviews two business-card bootable Linux CDs that can help sysadmins repair damaged systems.

TuxReports provides an overview of Kondara MNU/Linux 2.1, a Japanese distribution.

Stock news

The Nasdaq ended last week at 1,858.25, up slightly from 1,851.30 March 22. It wasn’t Open Source-related stocks that pushed the Nasdaq up; of our 11 stocks below, only three posted gains for the week.

Among the business news, Red Hat announced what it called the “first enterprise-class Linux operating system,” which prompted reactions from competitors SuSE and Caldera, with SuSE wondering if Red Hat has ignored its enterprise OS released six months ago, Caldera claiming Unix scales better than Linux. Those Caldera statements were met by a rebuttal from DissociatedPress.net.

Here’s how Open Source and related stocks ended this past week:

Company Name	Symbol	3/22 Close	3/29 Close
Apple	AAPL	24.09	23.67
Borland Software Int’l	BORL	11.99	13.01
Caldera International	CALD	1.61	1.591
Hewlett-Packard	HWP	18.15	17.94
IBM	IBM	105.60	104.00
MandrakeSoft	4477.PA	e3.00	e2.60
Red Hat	RHAT	5.95	5.709
Sun Microsystems	SUNW	8.86	8.82
TiVo	TIVO	5.18	5.30
VA Software	LNUX	1.72	1.70
Wind River Systems	WIND	12.53	13.59

Harry Zink writes: The PostNuke Content Management System, a premier open source content management system, received the ServerProven designation from the IBM X-Series server proving team. Arguably the most adaptable open source content management system and application server package currently available, attaining the IBM ServerProven designation moves PostNuke into the spotlight as a corporate software solution.

Being one of the most actively developed open source projects on the Internet and the first ServerProven open source content management and application server, PostNuke is positioned to draw on the vast marketing and technological resources that IBM offers.

“PostNuke will redefine the standards of dynamic application and content management,” says Steve MacGregor, project coordinator for the PostNuke Proving Team. “We have got the concept, the vision, the developers and the resources to do whatever we need to do. It is time to take PostNuke to another level.”

The tests were performed on IBM servers running Red Hat Linux, SuSe Linux, Caldera Open Linux, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 Professional Server on a variety of IBM X-Series servers.

“The latest release of PostNuke represents a milestone in the PostNuke,” stated Harry Zink, a PostNuke developer, “not only has significant new functionality been included in the powerful permissions system, but stability and performance have been improved significantly.”

The PostNuke Proving Team consists of Steve MacGregor (Grape), Michael Collins (Subgeni), Gregor Rothfuss, Greg Allan (Adam_Baum), Jim McDonald, and Carl Corliss. To contact this team please email Steve MacGregor at steve@grape.dyndns.org.

PostNuke
PostNuke is a free multi-lingual, database-driven Content Management System and application server written in PHP and licensed under the GNU General Public License. With a focus on modularity, security and stability, PostNuke drastically reduces the cost of implementing content management and web application services. For more information on PostNuke please visit http://postnuke.com.

About IBM
IBM is the world’s largest information technology and e-business company and provides a full range of solutions. IBM Global Services is the world’s largest information technology services provider, with approximately 150,000 professionals serving customers in 160 countries and annual revenue of about $35 billion (2001). IBM Global Services integrates IBM’s broad range of capabilities — services, hardware, the full value of information technology. For more information, visit: www.ibm.com/services.

Anonymous Reader writes, “We’ve all heard about public-key encryption, and most of us have used it. Rob Landley has an article on Linux and Main that explains its origins and how it works. A good treatment of the subject for Linux users who aren’t technically savvy.”