Commentary from The Register:

“At this point I can only conclude there are two Jack Valentis. One of them is the president of the MPAA and rightly proud of the commercial accomplishments of the industry he represents, and the other is an evil doppelganger who lies to Congress on a monthly schedule, serving up great lashings of fear and seeking to enact laws that will make a criminal of anyone who threatens to impede the monopoly that his industry, unique among all, must be permitted to maintain.”

SF Clusters Foundry writes: “Then, he took down all the older versions of Mosix and all the RPM versions and some of the documenation. Then, and this is the big news: he removed the GPL from the user-space utilities.”

Read the interview on Foundries.sf.net.

hlucar writes: “The Peruvian Congress is preparing to discuss the Free Software
Law Proposal, presented by Congressman Edgar Villanueva. It would
give free software preference in government and state agencies.This initiative, the first in Peru (see text of
proposal) has mobilized a great part of the free software
community in Peru, including local LUGs ,organizations such as gnu.pe, and
IT enterprises, in activities such as distributing fliers (see flier) to
gather support for the approval of the law.

There is a small
summary of activities here at Peru’s GNU
page.

Today (6 March 2002), a very important meeting in favorof
free software will take place. Members of Congress will analyze this
topic with the general public in a forum called “Free software – Why does
the state need a Free Software Law?”

The forum will try to explain
the importance of the use of free software. Topics such as independence,
adoption of standards, freedom of information and economic savings will be
discussed.”

NetworkWorldFusion: “Linux clustering vendor Mission Critical Linux last week laid off up to 90% of its workforce after attempts to find a buyer failed.”

– By Josep L. Guallar-Esteve –

My mom and dad run Linux. No, she is no nuclear physicist. She is a mom who works as a government employee, a regular job. At her job, she uses
some kind of Windows. She knows it is Windows, but she doesn’t know the
version, why should she care? She just uses Word and Excel. She
started using computers at her work about four years ago.

My dad, on the other hand, is trained as an electrical engineer. He started back
where there were no computers available for most users. He now works as the manager of a motorcycle shop. At work, he has been using computers for several years.
He has been using a text-based data entry and queries. No, not Windows
or DOS, but something called “Theos,” an old multi-user thing.

They are both over 50 years old. How is this possible that they use Linux at home? Isn’t Linux just for the initiated, the gurus, the 37337, the hackers?

Well, last Christmas when I was visiting, I installed Mandrake
Linux 8.1. I configured KDE 2 with colors and icons just
like Windows.

Why did I install Linux? They have a computer, but it’s kind of slow. It was running Windows. They were able to receive email — when the computer wasn’t crashed, wasn’t infected with viruses, or … you get the picture. But they were unable to send email.

The ISP where they had an email account offered poor service. But this
email address is the one they had been passing around. Their old ISP was so bad that
they signed up with another ISP, one that was fast to connect to. But this second
email system just plain sucked. And when my parents were connected with the second ISP, the first ISP didn’t let them use its smtp server to send email, even
with the proper username and password.

So I installed Linux, connecting through the second ISP to Internet,
getting email from the first ISP and sending email with Postfix on the
local machine. I configured Internet access (Kppp), a mail program (Kmail) and a Web
browser (Konqueror) with the most common plugins: JRE, Flash, and
RealPlayer.

I setup two accounts: for “Mom,” and “Dad.” They do not know about root, nor they need to know. They are users, not administrators.

I showed them how to log in, that the “Internet” icon is how the PC
connects to Internet, that the “email” icon starts the email program
(and what button they have to click to download and send email), that
the “browser” icon is the way to surf the web, and that the “home” icon
will put them in their “own” directory.

My parents live in a town near Barcelona, Spain, and I live in North Carolina, so I need them to have a working, non-crashing computer so we can email each other and exchange digital pictures. Their computer is configured to use their language, Catalan. Because Catalan is only spoken by 10 million people, Microsoft makes little effort to
translate its products. See my Linux in Catalan here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/sinner/dibus/kde22-01.jpg.

Microsoft gets money from the local Catalan Autonomous Government
(something similar to the government of a state in the United States) to
translate Windows. So far, Microsoft has a history of taking the
money, taking its time to release a few programs in Catalan and then
releasing a new Windows version in English, not in Catalan.
As far as I know, Office has never been translated into Catalan. So, in real life,
it’s hard to find Microsoft products in Catalan.

But Linux is being translated in Catalan. Check out the kde-i18n-ca package.
KDE is very advanced in its translation.

The next thing I’ll set up for my parents will be Gnomemeeting. They still have a Windows partition with MS-Netmeeting to use the webcam, so we can have video conferencing. But sometimes Windows refuses to work right. Soon Gnomemeeting will work better with their camera, and Windows will disappear from their computer. There will be no need for it.

Because their computer has 96MB of RAM and a small hard drive, I
decided to not install StarOffice. But I know from my computer that
OpenOffice can handle all Microsoft Office documents. It has opened all of them
so far.

Now my parents’ computer doesn’t crash — it used to crash a lot when
it was running Windows. They get no viruses now. They do not need to update their antivirus program every month. I get no phone calls asking me to fix the computer, which isn’t easy for me to do now that I’m living in the United States.

They have their connection to the Internet. They can send and receive
email. It works. They only need to know about clicking around on their desktop.

Linux can work for everyone, as long as it is installed
properly.

Nathalie Bellamy writes: “Linux Motor, a Open Source company, offers new support services (English/French/German) for SAP/Db. These support services include single incidents, 10 incidents or 1 year contract and remote-call duty with guaranteed response times. With these support SAP/Db now provides all advantages: not only investment safety and low TCO, but also professional and mandatory support.

Linux Motor proposes contracts of technical support on the various information technologies used in SME companies up to the multinational ones. We know that your information systems are critical for your company and Linux Motor implemented a quality process to enable you to have an external center of competence on the questions of technical support. Our priority is your satisfaction and to guarantee the availability of your infrastructures to you.

Advantages of the Linux Motor Support

From PlayStation: “What is Linux for PS/2?; Availability, when, where, pricing; What is in the kit?”

Alexandre Dulaunoy writes: “In the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg (Europe), a 3 days (25-26-27 March) event regarding Free Software concept and advocacy. Visit libre.nu for more information.”

LPH writes: “Linux advocacy sites should be careful about the stories they link to on their websites. Here’s my opinion published on TuxReports. What do you think? Have you been had a time or two too?”

Gwynne: “Late. Mea culpa.”

Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 26th February 2002
          =====================================================

Present:

        Jonathan Blandford
        Jim Gettys
        Jody Goldberg
        Telsa Gwynne (minutes)
        James Henstridge (:35)
        Miguel de Icaza (:35)
        George Lebl
        Tim Ney
        Havoc Pennington (chair)

Regrets:
        Daniel Veillard 

Missing:
        Nat Friedman
        Federico Mena Quintero



Actions done:
=============

  ACTION: Havoc draft the agenda of the Advisory Board meeting
        => Done. See discussion section below. 

Actions
=======

  ACTION: Tim, John and Havoc to get a draft statement on the relation
          with the free software foundation and license policy.
        => Still pending.

  ACTION: Jim to restart the font discussions with various parties
        => Jim had a meeting last week with various people and 
        will continue to work on this. 

  ACTION: Nat and Jonathan talk to gnome-sysadmin about adding ssh
          tunneling for GNOME CVS access
        => This has been postponed until after Gnome 2.

  ACTION: Nat to talk to Havoc to get a discussion about rules
          w.r.t. backward compatibility rules in the 2.x time.
        => Nat has been on holiday; got back yesterday. 

  ACTION: Tim and Miguel check for logistic and policy of funding
          people travels and accomodations.
        => Tim has been following this up. We have several individual
        nominations/requests for funding, but need the overall
picture.
        
  ACTION: Jody and Leslie to find possble presentators from KDE,
          StarOffice and CUPS.
        => Still pending

New Actions:
============

  ACTION: Havoc to bounce draft by-laws to foundation-list so everyone
can
          see them.

Discussion:
===========


On the Advisory Board meeting agenda: the general theme is sharing
information. Current proposal:

        o Presentation on Gnome 2.0 to open meeting.
        o Looking at current and future userbase: will invite members
        to make presentations on that, as we expect several Advisory 
        Board members to have information on that.
        o Find out what features the Advisory Board members would
        like to see in Gnome.
        o Discussion of future releases: what is contained in 
        'platform', 'apps', 'fifth toe' (that name makes sense to
        people who know the Gnome foot has four toes but not to 
        anyone else..) 
        o What is Gnome currently lacking? (This might be part of
        the initial 2.0 presentation.)


Nat wanted to discuss ABIs: guarantees and plans. He wasn't here,
so postponed.

Tim Ney forwarded the proposed by-laws for the legal entity that
is the Gnome Foundation. They're long and legalistic and arrived
yesterday, so not everyone has read them yet. It will take a
foundation board meeting to adopt them, so we all need to read
them and agree (or disagree..). Havoc will send them to
foundation-list too so everyone has a chance to see them and 
comment. We hope to adopt them (or to say why not) at the next 
meeting. This is in two weeks' time so comments should come 
before then.

Telsa