Anonymous Reader writes “New linux drivers (version 2802)
from nVidia’s site.” Read more for the changes.
“Release Highlights for 1.0-2802:
GeForce4 and Quadro4 Support
OpenGL® 1.3 with NVIDIA extensions
Improved IGP and mobile support
Overlay support for Quadro products
MPEG acceleration for GeForce4 MX
Anisotropic filtering support”

Sebastopol, CA–Why would Microsoft executives lie awake at night worrying about the antics of a long-haired, renegade hacker named Richard Stallman? Why do some of the smartest programmers on the planet revere this man as “St. Ignucius”? And how did a stubborn, precocious boy obsessed with creating the perfect model rocket grow up to play David to the software industry’s Goliath? A new book, “Free as in Freedom,” (Sam Williams, O’Reilly, US $22.95) traces Stallman’s evolution from gifted, solitary child to teen outcast to revered and reviled crusader.

As the leader of the free software movement, Stallman is one of the most influential and controversial personalities in hacker culture today. Through extensive interviews with Stallman, his family, and fellow hackers, author Sam Williams has created an intimate portrait of this freedom fighter.

No one is apathetic about Stallman, the controversial founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). A brilliant coder, MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, and self-described borderline autistic, he single-handedly launched the movement that threatens to beat Microsoft by radically changing the rules of the software game.

To Stallman, free software–“free as in speech, not beer”–is a moral imperative. From the moment he encountered “unfree” printer software in 1980, he has dedicated his life to ridding the world of proprietary code. Equipped with a messianic zeal, world-class programming chops, and a fair measure of geek charisma, he set out to enlist every last programmer in his crusade for freedom.

“Nobody but Richard could have had the patience, and the stubbornness, and the will to build something this big,” says Williams. “There are other people writing free software, but he’s the one that made it an issue. He’s the one that provided the initial gravitation that everybody else could gather around.”

This provocative chronicle offers fans and foes alike perspective on this inscrutable high-tech Robin Hood–as well as new understanding of the issues that promise to shape the future of the software industry.

“Richard has developed a coherent philosophy that has forced all of us to reexamine our ideas of how software is produced, of what intellectual property means, and what the software community actually represents.”–Ed Schonberg, Professor, NYU Computer Science Department

“Stallman’s ideals will define our future–if we are lucky.” –Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School and author of “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace”

“I think if you want to understand Richard Stallman the human being, you really need to see all of the parts as a consistent whole. All those personal eccentricities that people see as obstacles to getting to know Stallman, really are Stallman: Richard’s strong sense of personal frustration, his enormous sense of principles, his ethical commitment, his inability to compromise, especially on issues he considers fundamental. These are all the very reasons Richard did what he did when he did.”

–Eben Moglen, Professor of Law, Columbia University Law School and legal counsel to The FSF

“He was special. A clear thinker and a clear designer.”

–Gerald Sussman, MIT faculty member and former A.I. Lab researcher

“We were all geeks and nerds, but he was unusually poorly adjusted. He was also smart as sh*t. I’ve known a lot of smart people, but I think he was the smartest person I’ve ever known.”

–Dan Chess, Mathematics Professor, Hunter College, and fellow math prodigy

“Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put three man-years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product, and distributing it for free?”

–Bill Gates in his “Open Letter to Hobbyists”

“I saw in Richard the stereotypical hacker type. We don’t have much of them in Helsinki.”

–Linus Torvalds, seeing Richard for the first time in 1990

“Richard was the first to take up what is now a very important battle…He was an early, lone voice warning of how the concept of software intellectual property could undermine, rather than support, the programmer.”

–Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium

“Unquestionably one of the great seminal figures of hacker culture.”

–Eric Raymond, author of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”

“A long overdue book on a fascinating person who, by sheer force of character, has changed how the world looks at technology.”

–Bob Young, Co-Founder, Red Hat, Inc.

“Happy hacking, folks.”–Richard M. Stallman

Additional Resources:

An interview with the author can be found online at:

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2002/02/28/williams.html

Richard Stallman’s personal web site:

http://www.stallman.org/

Chapter 3, “A Portrait of the Hacker as a Young Man” is available free online at:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/freedom/chapter/ch03.html

For more information about the book, including Table of Contents, index, author bio, and samples, see:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/freedom/

For a cover graphic in jpeg format, go to:

ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596002874.jpg

Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software

By Sam Williams

March 2002

0-596-00287-4, Order Number: 2874

240 pages, $22.95 US $34.95 CA

order@oreilly.com
(800) 998-9938

(707) 827-7000

http://www.oreilly.com/

About O’Reilly

O’Reilly & Associates is the premier information source for leading-edge computer technologies. We communicate the knowledge of experts through our books, conferences, and web sites. Our books, known for their animals on the covers, occupy a treasured place on the shelves of the developers building the next generation of software. Our conferences and summits bring innovators together to shape the revolutionary ideas that spark new industries. From the Internet to the Web, Linux, open source, and now peer-to-peer networking, we put technologies on the map. For more information:
http://www.oreilly.com/

# # #

O’Reilly is a registered trademark of O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Comcorderinfo.com has the story. “With more and more consumers getting fed up with Windows and the expense of video editing applications on the platform, Linux and video editing applications in the Linux environment are becoming more and more appealing. This article reviews capture programs, video editing programs and other utilities for video in a Linux environment. If you’re a consumer with a little computer experience and an interest in video editing, Linux is a great environment for you to edit your video’s in.”

From Newsfactor.com: “According to one (yes, just one) analyst, Mac OS X is a big winner in a Linux vs. Mac face-off on the desktop side, but it is a big loser to Windows in terms of market share.
“

Anonymous Reader writes, “ReactiveLinux.com is proud to announce XFactor, a site devoted to everything OS X. There currently isn’t much content on the site and most of the articles are already posted on ReactiveLinux, but don’t fret more is coming soon. Kind of just giving everyone a heads up, especially the Mac fans lurking around here (yeah, you know who you are! all 5 of you!)…. Read More.”

Eugenia writes, “This is the _first time_ we see a SPEC benchmark results of modern G3s or G4s (Apple prohibits such benchmarks – guess why). However, Heise has done some benchmarks with the latest dual 1 Ghz G4 against the PIII 1 Ghz. SPEC is known to be very precise when comparing the CPUs themselves without having major interference from the rest of the system or surrounded hardware. It is the ultimate CPU-only benchmark. The G4 can’t always even keep up clock per clock with a Pentium-III and Heise didn’t even use GCC3 or ICC for the PIII… and that’s only in integer. In floating point, the ‘supercomputer’ G4 significantly lags behind the PIII, and this is an area where both the Pentium4 and Athlons are known for being *significantly* faster than the PIII. So much for the ‘Mhz Myth’ that Apple is feeding its costumers.”

Slashdot readers discussa commentary piece at Fox News saying Republicans should back consumers and artists, not the proposed SSSCA. The article calls SSSCA sponsor Fritz Hollings “the senator from Disney.”

What follows is an open letter to Shahin Khan, Chief Competitive Officer,
Sun Microsystems, from Dr. Alexander Tormasov, SWsoft’s Chief Scientist, of behalf of the Open Source Community.Dear Mr. Khan,

On February 8th of this year, Sun announced plans to embrace the Linux operating system. Scott McNealy, dressed like a penguin, even said, “We love Linux, and I hope there isn’t any doubt about it.”

Apparently, you did not get the “memo,” as on February 20th, you issued a misguided condemnation of Linux and, more specifically, Linux on the Mainframe.

In sharp contract to Sun’s condemnation of Linux on the mainframe, the ever-growing enterprise Linux community feels that within seven (7) years Linux will become the dominant server OS in the datacenter, replacing UNIX-like systems such as Solaris, AIX, and HPUX. A unified Linux presence by Sun, Compaq, HP, Dell, and IBM will have enough momentum to effectively battle Microsoft’s entrée into the datacenter.

As Mr. McNealy previously stated, server companies love Linux. IBM loves Linux because according to Bill Zeitler the head of IBM’s server group, IBM invested $1B in Linux then “recouped most of it in the first year in sales of software and systems.[i]” At this rate of return, it’s easy to understand Sun’s fear of losing marketshare at the high-end and desire to reap the benefits of enterprise Linux.

Even the German government loves Linux, as their parliament recently switched from Microsoft to Linux, with one member saying it was irresponsible to entrust the work of
Parliament to “closed-source software.”

IBM’s recent announcement of the z800 Linux mainframe represents a big win for the Linux community. Linux is emerging as the default OS for major enterprise-class servers. Although Sun’s recent (and confusing) announcement about Linux tries to push customers to use Solaris at the core of the datacenter and Linux at the edge, the current trend indicates that Linux on the mainframe is used as the core of the datacenter and Linux on Intel-based servers are used as the edge.

While Sun’s Linux announcement of February 7 tries to position Solaris as the big brother to Linux, the Linux community feels that with the high reliability of IBM’s zSeries mainframe, Linux is positioned to dominate the core as well as the edge of the datacenter. In the statement, Ed Zander, Sun president and CEO, subjugates Linux to only “low-end servers.” However, the Linux community refuses to buy into claims by Zander that Linux will be pushed aside to the edge of the datacenter. The fact is that Linux is stable and scalable enough for the core of the datacenter.

On average, the mainframe has 50-year uptimes achieved through redundant processing unit (PU) error-checking, self-healing by automatic identification of damaged PUs and automatic replacement with spare healthy PUs embedded in the system, and the ability to hotswap hardware components with no downtime. When mainframe capacity is upgraded, system administrators can take advantage of the zSeries’s Capacity Upgrade on Demand feature which allows the switching on of additional CPUs, memory, disk and channels with zero service interruption.

Sun claims that Linux is “designed for Intel” and that “Linux on the mainframe is complicated.” This obviously shows a lack of understanding of Linux since Linux is widely available in Alpha, PowerPC, ARM, and Sparc systems. Sun must also know that some of Sun’s customers are running Linux on Sparc on partitions in Sun’s high-end servers to take advantage of Linux applications. Linux is appropriate for the mainframe and the mainframe is the standard for the core of the datacenter.

Further, the mainframe is specifically designed for high usage scenarios. For example, the processor cache memory has extremely high memory bandwidth. In the case of the zSeries, there are two 16 MB L2 caches that are shared by 6 to 10 PUs each. Unlike non-mainframe processor caches, the mainframe processor caches are highly connected with sophisticated interconnect logic. Again, the end-result is better performance from the hardware.

IBM’s VM, the most widely used and respected virtual machine technology in the world, has been refined over the last decade for high-end enterprise use and is actively used by the majority of Fortune 1,000 companies. Sun’s positioning of z/VM as a secondary layered OS is not accurate as z/VM has support for all the same hardware as z/OS and is used to run z/OS itself.

IBM is developing enterprise features that further integrate Linux and their mainframes including IBM’s Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) which allows the management of multiple Linux images. This means less system administrators (and less cost) to manage Linux servers. Using LPAR and z/VM, mainframe users can run and manage multiple instances of z/OS and Linux on the same machine, getting the best of both worlds on a single server.

A few years ago, IBM announced the ability to run 41,800 instances of Linux on a single mainframe with VM and has since deployed Linux on VM at the majority of the Fortune 1000. Their recent announcement of their z800 Raptor Linux mainframe proves that there is serious demand in the enterprise for the Linux OS technology on the world’s most reliable hardware platform with the world’s most advanced and widely used VM technology.

While demand for Linux on mainframes remains high, Sun is correct that 20 Linux instances on the mainframe is not economically feasible for most users. However, the facts are again twisted. Sun claims low-end pricing on the mainframe starts at $400,000 ; however, according to IBM, pricing actually starts at $250,000. In addition, due to the high scalability of the mainframe, Sun’s example of consolidating 20 Linux servers is faulty. Mainframes are used to consolidate hundreds and, in some cases thousands, of Linux servers. With high numbers of users, mainframes have excellent ROIs.

For smaller server consolidation deploys, Linux, not Solaris, is also the best answer. Technologies such as Virtuozzo (www.virtuozzo.com) allow the consolidation of hundreds of Linux servers on commodity Intel-based servers costing less than $3,000. Although Sun claims that using Linux for server consolidation requires applications to be “recompiled and recertified,” the fact is that Linux server consolidation on Intel servers with Virtuozzo requires no recompilation or recertification. Solaris will encounter Linux not only on high-end mainframes, but also on lower-cost deployments with 4-way and 8-way Intel-based servers and even low-cost 1-way Intel servers.

Although Sun tries to position Linux on the mainframe as a closed and proprietary system, Sun’s technology remains more closed than Linux and is thus far less attractive to many system architects in enterprises. Although Sun releases some portions (not the interesting parts) of the source code for Solaris 8, the source code for the upcoming Solaris 9 remains closed. SWsoft went through the lengthy process of trying to get full access to the Solaris source code and finally gave up in frustration, forcing us to put software development for Solaris on hold.

No one can dispute that Sun is, and will always continue to be a Silicon Valley staple; however, what role your company plays in the future is not as certain. It is sure to play a larger role if it fully embraces Linux and dumps its current dual-OS strategy that is confusing customers. Linux will ultimately win on the edge and in the core of the datacenter. On behalf of the Linux community, which has grown to millions of people, companies and organizations around the world, I encourage you to recognize Linux’s place at all levels of the data center to work with the Open Source community to grow the server consolidation market.

If you like, we can send you a penguin suit of your own, or you can use Scott’s.

Regards,

Dr. Alexander Tormasov

Chief Scientist, Swsoft

The Cyberspace Policy Institute of The George Washington University will
have demonstrations of mature Open Source programs every month in
conjunction with General Services Administration at NSF facilities. A Q&A
session will follow the presentations.

This month: March 19, Open Source at the Census Bureau
Location: National Science Foundation, Stafford II Building,
Room 555, 4121 Wilson Blvd., Ballston metro
Time: 2-4 PM

FREE, but please RSVP to stanco@seas.gwu.edu. (Picture ID required for
admission)

Description:

Open Source at the Census Bureau, Presenters: Lisa Wolfisch Nyman, Senior
Internet Technology Architect, Census and Bureau and Rachel LaPorte
Taylor, Senior Internet Technology Architect, Census Bureau

and

Overview of the Open Source Data Base Server, MySQL, Presenter: Marten
Mickos,CEO, MySQL AB

This talk will introduce several Open Source projects at Census.gov and
FedStats.gov, used for both data collection and dissemination. Lessons
learned from these projects can help advocates promote Open Source for
building a solid technology infrastructure, allowing developers to
concentrate on the less tractable aspects of web site development.

Lisa Wolfisch Nyman has 10 years of experience designing and developing
Internet-based services. As a Senior Internet Technology Architect on the
Census Bureau’s Internet Staff, she creates customer-friendly web sites,
researches new technology, and advises on accessibility concerns. Ms.
Nyman is a persistent advocate for accessible, user-centered design in
delivering government services over the Web.

Ms. Nyman began her career with the Census Bureau as a cartographer and
was a contributing editor to GIS World Magazine. In addition to her
activities at the Census Bureau, she is active in the Perl community as a
member of DC PerlMongers and a participant in the Yet Another Society, a
non-profit corporation that advocates the use of Open Source, sponsors
annual conferences around the world, and supports Perl development
efforts. Ms. Nyman also serves on the Board of Directors of DC Web Women,
an educational and service organization for women in new media.

Rachael LaPorte Taylor, Senior Internet Technology Architect, oversees
application development, content management, and system administration for
FedStats, the gateway to the U.S. Federal statistical system. In addition,
Ms. Taylor has been a significant contributor in developing the Census
Bureau’s information architecture for rapid data dissemination through the
use of the Internet.

Ms. Taylor has received numerous awards, ranging from the Census Bureau’s
Bronze Medal and Director’s Award for Innovation to the Hammer Award for
FedStats development.

Ms. Taylor has been a featured speaker at a variety of national and
international conferences describing how the Census Bureau and FedStats
has utilized open source solutions to develop dissemination strategies for
public data.

Marten Mickos will describe how open source software is changing the way
software is procured and used. The changes are profound and positively
affect total cost of ownership, integration challenges and overall
durability of software. With examples from the MySQL world, Mickos will
highlight how organizations are benefiting from open source and reducing
the time from decision to deployment of new systems. Organizations such as
Yahoo! NASA and the US Census Bureau serve as examples.

Robbie Williamson writes: The Linux Test project ltp-20020307 has been
released. For more information about the Linux Test
Project, or to download the testsuite, see our website at
http://ltp.sourceforge.net. This release includes
enhancements to the test driver, pan, that allow for more
control over testing duration. Additional tests have been
added that cover disk I/O, semaphores, signals, Streamed
Controlled Transmission Protocol (SCTP), and tools for the
scheduler. Numerous posted bugs were also addressed and
closed in this release, as well.

We have added a new mailing list for the purpose of
publishing and requesting test results
( ltp-results@lists.sourceforge.net ). This list was
created to act as a convenient way of keeping a central,
archived place, where anyone can publish the results of
tests being run on Linux. This list may also serve as a
place for developers to request others to test their
patches, then reply to the list with results. We encourage
everyone in the Linux Community to start actively testing
Linux and publishing the results of those tests. In
addition to this list, we’ve also added a page of expected
LTP failures to the website (http://ltp.sourceforge.net/expected-errors.php ),
and a link to a whitepaper that details enterprise level
testing in Linux
( http://www6.software.ibm.com/devcon/entteswp/Enter priseWhitePaperv.07.html ).