Anonymous Reader writes “LinuxDevices.com has published its weekly Embedded Linux Newsletter, which features XScale processor launch coverage from this week’s Intel Developer Forum and other news from the world of Embedded Linux. Read it here.“

From Turbolinux, Inc.: Turbolinux, Inc., the leader in high-performance Linux for Internet infrastructure solutions, today announced that Liderar Seguros, a leading insurance company in Argentina, has deployed a Turbolinux solution for secure business communications on the Internet linking its 40 branch offices nationwide.

The deployment, implemented in under 10 hours on Hewlett-Packard Netserver LH 3000 servers, allows Liderar Seguros’ branch offices to run their applications as if they were in the headquarter office, with remote secure online access to customer transactions and financial information.

“We’re very pleased with the Turbolinux solution,” said Gustavo Clementi, Systems Manager for Liderar Seguros. “We eliminated many problems and our branch offices find it much easier and less expensive to link up to our headquarter’s operations and data.”

Security was the paramount issue for the insurance company and the systems integration firm managing the deployment installed Turbolinux Server proxy/firewalls using secure shell technology that funnels data through an encrypted channel for inter-branch communications.

“The security and reliability of this solution is what convinced the customer to go with Turbolinux,” said Pablo Barletta, Manager of Commercial Systems for SCB IT Solutions, a Turbolinux Authorized Partner based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“Latin America continues to be a vibrant market for Linux and we see more of our customers deploying Turbolinux solutions in the financial services and banking industries where security and uptime are critical to success,” said Fernando Skrobacki, General Manager of Latin America for Turbolinux.

About Turbolinux, Inc.

Founded in 1992, Turbolinux develops Linux-based software solutions for Internet and enterprise computing infrastructure, including reliable, available and scalable operating systems for workstations and servers and software clustering solutions for computing traffic management and peer-to-peer distributed computing. Backed by more than $95 million in investments from some of the world’s leading technology companies, including Compaq, Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, NEC, Novell, Oracle, SGI and Toshiba, Turbolinux is headquartered near San Francisco with offices around the world. For more information, visit the Turbolinux Web site at www.Turbolinux.com or www.powercockpit.com.

– by Adam Kessel –

An observer at the hearing for a temporary injunction against NuSphere says the
judge had pretty much made up her mind before entering the court room. The following is a post to the Free Software Law discussion list, made by Adam Kessel and reprinted here with his permission.
Hi All:

I just returned from the hearing for a preliminary injunction on the
NuSphere/MySQL case. Here are some initial reactions, many of which are not
original to me.

First, the headline: There was nothing to suggest that the GPL itself or
free software is in danger, although the judge is unlikely to rule in
MySQL’s favor on this preliminary injunction.

The details: Judge Saris was surprised by the number of people attending the
hearing (around 20 to 30). I suspect she didn’t know this was being seen as
the first test case of the GPL in court. She threw both sides off balance
by announcing, before any arguments, that she had more or less made up her
mind.

She said she was inclined to grant the defendant’s (MySQL AB) motion for a
preliminary injunction with respect to the trademark issue (enjoining
NuSphere from using MySQL’s registered trademark against MySQL’s wishes
after their “temporary agreement” broke down) but was not inclined to grant
the preliminary injunction against NuSphere from using the GPL’ed code at
all. There followed about two hours of arguments, and when the Judge
adjourned the hearing it seems she held the same views.

The judge did not want to get into issues of fact beyond their most
minimally necessary. Although her technical knowledge was limited, she
realized that it could take several hours and probably several days to fully
explore the technical side of things, and she wanted to make her decision
today after this hearing, particularly since people had traveled great
distances to attend the hearing (including the two MySQL AB developers from
Sweden).

Like most judges, Judge Saris was hoping this could be settled between the
parties, particularly since the Court is not particularly well equipped to
deal with the more technical issues of ‘statically and dynamically
linked code’, etc. She urged the parties to use the remainder of their
time in the courtroom to talk, and was trying to set up some mediation with
a professional mediator or magistrate judge. One analysis is that she
will grant one motion but not the other so as not to put either party in too
powerful a position in an out-of-court settlement.

Although the court clearly didn’t understand the specifics of open source
(she seemed to think “linking” code was analogous to hyperlinks on the web,
and that a single package was like a single icon you would click on on the
desktop), she did pretty clearly understand what the GPL is about, and
said nothing to suggest she didn’t think it would be enforceable. The issue
at hand was whether the facts required immediate injunctive relief. For
preliminary injunctive relief, the Judge looks at:

(1) likelihood of prevailing on the merits
(2) immediate and irreparable injury, loss or damage
(3) balance of harm to moving party vs. harm to non-moving party lies in
moving party favor

It seemed like she might be convinced on (1), but she had trouble seeing how
(2) was the case, so she was not particularly interested in hearing a lot of
argument about whether or not the case would eventually prevail on the
merits. She also was concerned that the injunction from using MySQL code at
all would essentially destroy NuSphere’s entire business (despite the fact
that they are a subsidiary of a $300M company), and thus found it hard to
believe that the balance of harms would lie in MySQL AB’s favor.

It is thus likely that she will not actually address the terms of the GPL
itself in her decision, which is a good thing, since there was so little
expert testimony about it (Eben Moglen was present but was not given a
chance to testify). Instead, I expect she will focus on the lack of proof
of irreparable harm in a short opinion denying the motion.

The trademark issue was more clear cut. Under copyright law, non-permitted
use of a trademark is presumptively irreparable harm. MySQL AB and NuSphere
had previously had a provisionaly contract granting NuSphere the right to use
MySQL’s trademark; however, the court found it convincing that that contract
terminated (1) because it had a horizon date, after which further
arrangements would need to be made, and (2) because NuSphere ceased making
payments to MySQL AB. NuSphere wanted to argue that MySQL AB should be
stopped from the claim because they took 18 months to bring suit about it
(therefore, in NuSphere’s view, “acquiescing” to the continuation of the
contract) but MySQL AB was in good faith negotiations for most of that time;
once things did break down and MySQL AB learned that NuSphere had
distributed MySQL along with proprietary software, then they did file suit
fairly promptly.

I’d be happy to answer any questions about the proceedings for those who
couldn’t make it.

A couple of thoughts:

(1) NuSphere probably figured they could probably violate the GPL and MySQL
would not have the resources to sue them. This is probably true of most
free software developers who have not assigned their copyrights to the FSF.
After watching this hearing, it seems to me imperative that developers
assign their copyrights to some party that will have the resources to
enforce it (whether the FSF or some other organization). These violations
can only become more common as GPL software becomes more powerful and
widespread, and it is quite expensive to litigate against them.

(2) The GPL termination clause (section 4) is going to cause problems. Does
the person who violates the GPL permanently lose their license until the
licenser re-grants it, even if they bring their use back into compliance with
the GPL? Can they not redownload the GPL’ed software and become a ‘fresh’
licensee? What if the original licenser can’t be located? Does this mean
there is a “special class” of people in the world who can’t distribute GPL
software for the rest of their lives because of some past action that has
been cured? How are courts likely to view this interpretation? Is it good
policy? These issues were quite present because it appears that NuSphere
has substantially cured their prior violation (although there was a dispute
of fact over whether they actually had fully cured it).

That’s it for now. The parties were given until August for discovery,
although the judge urged them again to settle before that. It appears that
a preliminary injunction against NuSphere to stop them from using the
trademark (they will probably change the software name to something like
“NuSphere Enhanced for MySQL”) will likely give them something on the order
of three months to implement.

SuSE: “SuSE Linux… announced that the venture capital company AdAstra Erste Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Munich, Germany, [will] invest EUR 4.4 million in SuSE Linux AG.”

From:	 "Rupert Warwick" <RWARWICK@fphcom.com>
To:	 pressinfo@fphcom.com
Subject: ADASTRA INVESTS EURO 4.4 MILLION IN SUSE LINUX
Date:	 Wed, 27 Feb 2002 14:50:56 +0000

ADASTRA INVESTS EURO 4.4 MILLION IN SUSE LINUX

Investors Regard SuSE Linux as a Well-Established Company and Worthy
Investment

Nuremberg, Germany - SuSE Linux, the international Open Source technology
leader and solution provider, announced that the venture capital company
AdAstra Erste Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Munich, Germany, invests EUR 4.4
million in SuSE Linux AG.

SuSE is the leading provider of complete solutions based on Linux, the Open
Source operating system. Large enterprises benefit from SuSE's deep project
knowledge in terms of design and implementation of individual IT structures.
For the IT infrastructure of small and medium-scale enterprises, SuSE offers
cost-efficient, easy-to-administer standard solutions such as the SuSE Linux
eMail 

Server and SuSE Linux Firewall.
Private customers appreciate the multiple-award winner SuSE Linux due to its
ease of use and the variety of applications it comprises. SuSE's
comprehensive range of products and services is based on the unique know-how
of the world's largest development team for Open Source solutions.

Solid Basis for Long-Term Profitability and Ongoing Growth
During the past months, SuSE Linux AG restructured its internal organization
into four target-group-oriented Business Units, which handle the various
customer segments according to their specific needs. "In the IT world, SuSE
Linux AG is renowned for its highly innovative products and services. With
the new organisational structure, SuSE has established an optimum base for
handling the various requirements of the individual customer segments, thus
being able to participate over proportionately in the rapidly growing Linux
market," commented Hans-Christian Perle, Ph.D.,
AdAstra, on the investment decision.

"The new management exceeded our expectations. Despite a generally difficult
environment, SuSE Linux AG was able to increase its total turnover by about
50% to EUR 40 million during last year. The former technology start-up SuSE
successfully transformed into a reliable and auspicious enterprise," added
Tillmann Lauk, Ph.D., CEO of the lead investor, e-millennium 1.

e-millennium 1 incorporates investors such as Deutsche Bank, SAP, Accenture,
and other renowned international enterprises. "The new investor structure
enables SuSE Linux AG to fully exploit its potential. We are fully convinced
that SuSE and Linux are looking towards a bright future, especially in the
server and enterprise computing sectors. Additionally, SuSE has made a name
as an innovative technology provider. Partners such as IBM, Intel, Compaq,
and AMD rely on the engineering feats of the SuSE developers," said Amnon
Harman, responsible Investment Manager at e-millennium 1.

"Today's investment underscores the leading position of SuSE in the
international Linux market," said Johannes Nussbickel, CFO of SuSE Linux AG.
"In addition, it shows that decision makers in global enterprises regard
Linux as a well-established economic factor."

About AdAstra
AdAstra Erste Beteiligungs GmbH, Munich, Germany, is a privately held venture
capital company with commitments amounting to EUR 100 million. The company's
investment focus is on technology-oriented, fast growing companies in the IT,
telecommunications, media, life sciences, and high-tech sectors. The
Munich-based HypoVereinsbank AG is AdAstra's lead investor.

About SuSE:
SuSE Linux AG is the international technology leader and solutions provider
in Open Source operating system (OS) software.  SuSE´s unique expertise in
Linux and their largest development team worldwide dedicated to Open Source
software has contributed to the recognition of SuSE as a leader in Linux
solutions. SuSE offers the largest support database to the public, and owns
the largest hardware database in the Linux market. Furthermore, SuSE supports
more hardware platforms than any other commercially available Linux
distribution.

Designed for Web and enterprise server environments and efficient as a home
and office platform, SuSE's distribution, surrounding features, effective
configuration and intelligent design result in the most complete Linux
solution available today.

SuSE Linux AG, headquartered in Germany, and SuSE Linux Ltd., based in
Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, UK are privately held companies focused entirely
on supporting the Linux community and Open Source development. With a
workforce of over 500 people worldwide, SuSE has offices all over Europe,
Latin America and in the US.

SuSE contributes considerably to Linux development projects such as the Linux
kernel, glibc, XFree86TM, KDE, ISDN4Linux, ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound
Architecture) and USB (Universal Serial Bus).

Additional information about SuSE can be found at http://www.suse.co.uk
For more information please contact:
Rupert Warwick 
T: 020 7436 4336 F: 202 7436 4224 E: rwarwick@fphcom.com 

________________________________________________________________________
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CodeWeavers today announced the release of CrossOver plugin 1.1 which now supports Windows Media Player 6.4 under Linux, in addition to the Windows Real Player, Macromedia’s Authorware Web Player and Apple’s QuickTime Player

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Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

We are very happy to announce version 1.1 of CrossOver Plugin.

Version 1.1 adds a number of new plugins and features.  These
changes include:
    *  Windows Media Player Support
    *  Support for multiple user (root) installations
       (This is primarily intended to be used by site
        license customers; we still feel that the per user
        installation method is the safest and most robust
        for 'normal' users).

    *  Support for directly using True Type fonts
       This should allow the viewers to exactly reproduce
       .doc, .xls, and .ppt files just as they render under
       Windows.

    *  Support for the Windows Real Player
    *  Support for Macromedia Authorware Web Player
    *  Support for the Trillian messenging client
    *  Integrated support for Chime, VP3, ModPlug,
       and a range of other plugins that worked with
       1.0.1, but were awkward to install
    *  Support for Galeon, Skipstone
    *  Improved support for Konqueror and Opera
    *  A large number of bug fixes.

A complete change log is included at the bottom of this email
with further details.

All version 1.0.X customers can upgrade to 1.1 for free by
downloading the upgrade script at:

    http://www.codeweavers.com/support/crossover/downloads.php

If you have problems with that script, please email us
at store@codeweavers.com.
I want to thank you once again for your business.  

Please contact us at support@crossover.codeweavers.com for
further help.  Please bear with us today; release days tend to
be very busy around here, but we will respond as soon as we can.

Best regards,

Jeremy White
CEO
CodeWeavers, Inc.



--=-3ca+CvMUFpxjqXwQ6bt3
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=RELEASES
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

 * CrossOver 1.1.0 - 2002/02/26

   Added support for Windows Media Player 6.4.
   Added support for the VP3 for QuickTime plugin.
   Added support for the iPIX plugin.
   Added support for the Chime plugin.
   Added support for the SkipStone browser.
   Added support for the Trillian messenging client.
   Added support for anti-aliased true-type fonts. Application-installed
         true-type fonts are automatically taken into account too.
   Added support for multi-user setups. You can now install CrossOver once
         for all the users on a system, and create an RPM package for=20
         pushing it to multiple systems.
   Improved the Opera support.
   Improved associations support, especially for Mandrake and SuSE systems.
   Improved PluginSetup so that you can now seamlessly download and install=
=20
         applications. PluginSetup can also remove the installer files=20
         for you, thus freeing disk space.
   Prevented QuickTime from highjacking PNG images.
   Fixed a bug that would cause Mozilla to crash if plugins are=20
         uninstalled.
   Fixed printing in the Excel Viewer.
   Fixed handling of embedded URLs in the PowerPoint Viewer.
   Fixed a bug that prevented QuickTime from downloading extra codecs.
   Fixed a bug in Shockwave which prevented Defender, SissyFight and=20
         Habbo Hotel from working (among others).
   Fixed a bug which sometimes caused applications to be shown as=20
         'Not Installed' after they had been installed.
   Fixed the display problems that were occurring in QuickTime with=20
         the XFree86 3.3 SVGA server in 16bpp mode.
   Fixed the handling of relative paths in the scripts launching the=20
         QuickTime player and Microsoft Viewers.
   Fixed PluginSetup to make it possible to install Shockwave without=20
         having Netscape.
   Fixed PluginSetup so that it supports spaces in filenames.
   Improved launchurl so that it knows about more browsers. Launchurl=20
         can now be made to start any browser.
   Improved the support for launching browsers from applications.=20
         This fixes issues with some QuickTime channels.

 * CrossOver 1.0.1 - 2001/11/01

   Support for Powerpoint Viewer 97/2000.
   Support for ModPlug.
   Now available as a demo version.
   Better handling of xalf via a new LDPreload option.
   Fixed the 'XtDisplayToApplicationContext undefined symbol' that=20
         appeared with Mozilla 0.9.4 and later releases.
   Fixed an incompatibility with the SVGA driver of the XFree 86=20
         servers.
   Fixed the title corruption that was occuring in QuickTimePlayer=20
         in 24bpp.
   Fixed the QuickTime plugin progress bar behavior in 24bpp.
   Fixed a clipboard related lockup that could happen during QuickTime
         installation.
   Fixed the handling of file names containing spaces. Especially=20
         useful with the Microsoft viewers.
   Updated to the new QuickTime installer and fixed the installer=20
         update issues.
   Fixed the TechTV channel QuickTimePlayer freeze. All channels=20
         should work now.
   Added 'out-of-the-box' printing support.
   Added a quicktimeplayer.sh script to let you start the=20
         QuickTimePlayer from the command line.
   Added traces to make it easier to diagnose font problems.
   Added the regapi Wine tool and a script, regapi.sh to launch it=20
         more easily.
   Improved cleanup_crossover.sh to really kill all Wine processes.
   Improved winedbg support to help us better diagnose problems.
   Many other improvements in the PluginSetup interface, the=20
         documentation and various other bug fixes.

 * CrossOver 1.0 - 2001/08/28

   Initial release.
   Support for QuickTime 5.
   Support for Macromedia Shockwave Director 8.5.
   Support for Macromedia Flash 5.
   Support for Microsoft Word Viewer 97/2000.
   Support for Microsoft Excel Viewer 97/2000.

--=-3ca+CvMUFpxjqXwQ6bt3--

From Wired.com: “America’s largest and most powerful tech firms have agreed on one point: Keep Congress far away from digital content standards.

In a 600-word letter sent to movie studios on Wednesday afternoon, the chief executives of IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Intel and five other corporations said they were eager to work with Hollywood to find “technically feasible, cost effective solutions” for protecting entertainment delivered in digital form.”

The latest issue ofO’reilly’s Secutity Alerts is out. “In this column, we look at insecure Web Proxy Servers; buffer overflows in ncurses, Squid, hanterm, and ripMime; and problems in gnujsp, the NetBSD kernel, jmcce, the IRIX Unified Name Service Daemon, and Chuid.”

MSNBC: “Sun Microsystems, trailing some competitors to the market with super-thin “blade” servers, will begin to catch up when it releases its products in the second half of the year. Sun will release two types of blades this year: those using Intel chips and the Linux operating system, and those using Sun?s UltraSparc chips and its Solaris operating system, said Colin Fowles, director of Sun?s blade business team.” Read more here.

Vic writes “The Ottawa Business Journal is reporting that a new company, Netwinder Inc., is being started to resurrect the Netwinder project. In case you don’t remember, this was a small linux-based server appliance started by Corel Computer, which died when Rebel.com went under. See also the National Post article.”

ComputerWire (via The Register) has a story saying Advanced Micro Devices showed off prototypes of its x86-64 Hammer technology Tuesday a few blocks from the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. “AMD’s Hammer technology is designed to support both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems and applications and yesterday the vendor for the first time publicly demonstrated Hammer chips running Windows XP and a 64 bit version of Linux … Fred Weber, CTO for AMD’s computation products group, said that porting the Linux OS to Hammer’s 64-bit mode had been ‘fairly easy,’ although final validation would require further work.”