Eugenia writes, “Last in the series of special FreeBSD articles this week on OSNews, is a guide that will help users migrate from Linux to FreeBSD by spotting the main differences between the two popular systems. Yesterday, OSNews featured a review of the ‘FreeBSD Unleashed‘ book.”

Anonymous Reader tells us of this press release at Compaq.com: Compaq Computer Corporation
(NYSE: CPQ), a leader in global enterprise technology and Sendmail, Inc., a leading
provider of e-mail solutions, today announced the availability of the first
enterprise-class, Linux-based e-mail solutions for industry-standard Compaq
ProLiant servers. The customizable solutions combine ProLiant servers with
Sendmail’s Mailstream Manager and Sendmail’s Integrated Mail Suite
(IMS). These highly available, secure e-mail systems are ideal for organizations and
service providers that are looking to reduce the costs associated with deploying and
maintaining their current RISC-based e-mail infrastructure, and extend e-mail access
to additional users.

Slashdot readers discuss this announcement: “I’m pleased to
announce that Libranet has started taking pre-orders for Libranet
GNU/Linux 2.0. I feel I should note, of all the vaunted Debian
based commercial distributions (Stormix, Corel, Progeny) Libranet
is the only one left … Libranet
has proven that to stay in the race what you need is a good product rather than
millions of dollars behind you; but that’s what the world of Free/Open software is
all about, isn’t it?”

IDG News Service reports that Oracle is about to replace three Unix servers
that run the bulk of its business applications
with a cluster of Intel servers running Linux,
according to Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison.

jochem writes, “The 5th issue of the Debian Weekly News (DWN) is out. There is much concern amoung the community on the progress of the next release codenamed ‘woody’. Andrian Bunk, a high-profile maintainer, called it a day last week and left his packages wandering orphaned. The motivation for his decision are secretely shared amoung many developers and users. Read all about it and more less dramatical and highly interesting stuff…”

NWfusion quotes an IBM executive as saying Linux has “reshaped our
entire server business.”

Computerwire’s take (via The Register) on the LinuxWold keynote from HP’s CEO.

“Calm down, Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina told an audience at the
LinuxWorld conference in New York yesterday. Despite her high-profile
presence delivering the conference’s opening keynote, Fiorina made it clear that
HP sees Linux only as another revenue-earner, and is certainly not going to follow
IBM into making any billion-dollar commitments to the open source operating
system.”

From
Wired.com: “LinuxWorld 2002 isn’t quite somber, but it’s certainly serious.

Gone are the interesting giveaways, the company-sponsored lavish parties, and gone for the most part
are the guys with purple hair and tattered black T-shirts. LinuxWorld is all about business this year.”

NewsFactor Network writes, “An Internet advocacy group has urged U.S. state attorneys general to take immediate investigative action against Microsoft’s Passport suite of services, charging the software company with improperly collecting personal user information and placing that information at risk online. In a letter sent to all 50 state attorneys general, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) outlined its charges against Microsoft’s Wallet, Kids Passport, Hailstorm and .NET services. EPIC filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in July and August last year. The group said that because neither complaint was addressed by the FTC, it is now turning to the states for support.”

– by Tina Gasperson –
The Open Source Development Lab will not just provide hardware to the Open
Source community anymore. OSDL has decided enough is enough, time to stop
monkeying around, let’s get the carrier-grade Linux show on the road.

Big corporations have awakened to the possibilities of Linux in the enterprise.
Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina says that HP customers have started asking for Linux, and
manufacturers of handheld devices and set-top boxes are realizing the power and
flexibility of Linux as an embedded OS. Now, telecommunications industries are
looking at Linux as an alternative to pricey Unix-based carrier implementations.

The problem is the bazaar mentality of the developers that says, “I may or may
not get around to adding this feature, but that’s OK because I’m working on what
I want to do.” This attitude is keeping Linux from realizing its potential as
an enterprise grade operating system for telecommunications. To remedy that, the
OSDL says it will now provide a “forum for creating vision and guidance to
enhance Linux to meet the needs of both the data center and carrier grade market
segments.”

To facilitate the guidance, the OSDL has formed the “Carrier Grade Linux
Platform Working Group,” which, they say, “is not intended to redefine existing
architectures, but rather will identify requirements and encourage development
of common infrastructure requirements.”

Preventing fragmentation of the Linux kernel is a “key target” for the OSDL
team, says Ari Virtanen, v.p. of Nokia Networks. In response to media
questioning, he and other OSDL representatives speaking at a press conference
at LinuxWorld in New York City said that the Open Source Development Lab itself would
not pose a forking threat to the kernel.

“Adding the term ‘guidance’ (to the OSDL mission statement) was
something we thought long and hard about,” says Martin Fink of the OSDL board of
directors. “But we needed to go beyond providing resources. We need to provide
guidance.”

Another stated goal of the working group is to “support Open Source development
efforts toward a stable platform upon which commercial components and services
can be deployed.” It will be interesting to see how the group will exert its
influence on Linux kernel development.

The Open Source Development Lab is represented by the following companies:

• Alcatel
• Caldera
• Cisco
• Computer Associates
• Covalent
• Dell
• Fujitsu
• Hewlett-Packard
• Hitachi
• IBM
• Intel
• Linuxcare
• Miracle Linux Corporation
• Mitsubishi Electric
• MontaVista Software
• NEC Corporation
• Nokia
• Red Hat
• SuSE
• Toshiba
• Turbolinux
• VA Software

Virtanen also said that OSDL will work closely with the Linux Standard Base to
avoid duplication of efforts. Additionally, the OSDL will pull in “at-large”
community members to sit on its advisory committee, which will have approval
privileges on proposed standards.