Anonymous Reader writes, “The Board of Directors of the Embedded Linux Consortium (ELC) voted to
adopt an Intellectual Property Agreement that lays the groundwork for building a unified embedded Linux platform specification. Details will be available and working groups chartered at the March 12 ELC Business/Technical meeting, being held in conjunction with the Embedded Systems Conference 2002 in San Francisco. The ELC’s full announcement is here at LinuxDevices.com.”

From Declan McCullagh’s Politech mailing list: Summary: There are two lawsuits relating to the DeCSS
DVD-descrambing/copying utility. In the federal one, the Second Circuit
said the DMCA prohibits 2600 from distributing DeCSS. The state claim
is
being litigated in California by the DVDCCA under state trade secret
law. Last November, the state appeals court ruled that Californians have a
“First Amendment right to publish the DeCSS program.” I haven’t looked
into
this closely, but I suspect that ruling now may be in jeopardy because
the
state supreme court could veer in the opposite direction. –Declan]

Politech archive on DVDCCA lawsuit:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=dvdcca

EFF document archive:
http://www.eff.org/Cases/DVDCCA_case/

Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 09:49:47 -0800
To: declan@well.com
From: David Greene
Subject: review granted in Bunner

Declan:

In case you haven't heard, the California Supreme Court granted review
in
DVDCCA v. Bunner yesterday. The Court of Appeal decision has been
vacated.

David Greene
Executive Director
First Amendment Project
1736 Franklin Street
9th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612

510-208-7743
510-208-7744 (FAP staff)
510-208-4562 (fax)

dgreene@thefirstamendment.org
www.thefirstamendment.org

The First Amendment Project is a nonprofit, public interest law firm
and
advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and promoting freedom of
information, expression, and petition. FAP provides advice,
educational
materials, and legal representation to its core constituency of
activists,
journalists, and artists in service of these fundamental liberties.

POLITECH — Declan McCullagh’s politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
Declan McCullagh’s photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
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Autonymous Leader writes, “2diskxwin-1.2, the vnc/rdesktop micro (Linux) distribution has been released. Claims that the distro has been rushed to ship were confirmed by mungkie assoc. They state that: ” … this is just a basic demo knocked out by an intern. what the hell do you expect for free. No we wont be supporting it, We just want people to beta test some of the basic system for us. BUY OUR DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM YOU MEAN BASTARDS.” (Editor: I think that’s a joke.)

Slashdotters discuss several links, including a vnunet.com article, that discuss the disagreements between Apache developers and Sun over the Sun Java Community License. From vnunet: “The Apache Software Foundation’s battle with Sun Microsystems stepped up a gear last week as the open source community struggled to loosen Sun’s cast iron grip on the Java platform.

The group, which represents open source developers, issued a statement last week which called on Sun to discontinue licences prohibiting Java compatible open source implementations, and make compatibility testing more accessible.
“

jensend writes, “GCC 3.0.4 has been released. Improvements include support for the Xtensa processor, ELF x86 NetBSD, and compiling the PPC Linux kernel as well as better debugging output from functions that have multiple source files, a fix for Fortran, fixes to the exception handling runtime, fixes for bad code generation in C++, a fix for shared library generation under AIX 4.3, and documentation updates. See details at the GCC mailing list. Be sure to use the mirrors.”

From a column at ZDNet: “The idea expressed in many articles — that GNU/Linux is good for servers but not for the desktop — is a joke. The fact is, Linux will prevail … Two paths are before us. One leads to increasing proprietary control, protectionist measures and legal threats, while the other leads to open source, freedom and accelerated innovation. I, of course, choose the latter because it is ‘win-win.’ Vital innovation, new markets and vastly improved customer service win the vote readily over the purveyors of proprietary hoarding.”

Slashdot has this announcement: “The first public beta release of the GNOME 2.0 Desktop is ready for your testing pleasure! It is available for immediate download here. Please read the release notes first! Due for general consumption in March, the GNOME 2.0 Desktop is a greatly improved user environment for existing GNOME applications. Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME’s highly regarded user interface.”

vnunet.com reports that the CodeCon conference in San Francisco saw the launch of Tinfoil Hat Linux, a self-proclaimed “exercise in over engineering” and security.

“What started out as a secure, single floppy, bootable Linux distribution for storing PGP keys, and encrypting, signing and wiping files, turned into a useable Linux distribution for the totally paranoid.”

LinuxPlanet has a review of Anywhere Office and its spreadsheets component. “If VistaSource can lick (a) problem with filtering, I think that they have a very strong offering, especially when you consider the $99 price will get you an application server as well as the desktop version of Anyware Office. A cross-platform and cross-format office suite would be an excellent addition to a business environment looking to slowly shift to a more open, less costly environment.”

It’s at kt.zork.net and among the items are DCOP for C programs, bleeding edge adventures, a XSLT KOffice filter, fixes for IRIX, the aRts CVS module and changes to make KDE comply to the Thumbnail Managing Standard.