MSNBC is reporting that AMD and Intel are both set to release their latest processors very soon. AMD is expected to release the XP 2000+ and Intel is expected to release the Pentium 4 2.2GHz chip.

– By Grant Gross –

This week brought more news of Microsoft’s attempts to discredit Linux. The Register published a second letter sent to members of the Microsoft sales and marketing organization. Microsoft is trying to “debunk the myths around Linux,” namely that it’s free.

Well, it is, or at least it can be, free as in beer. It’s also free as in speech: You can look at the code anytime you want and make changes to it. Microsoft will surely put together some numbers saying Linux costs so much to get working in a business setting, but you probably won’t find a cost comparison of Linux to the new software licenses you have to pay for with every Windows upgrade. Now, a true cost comparison — including the new hardware new versions of Windows demand — would be interesting reading from Microsoft.

Speaking of a little Microsoft reality, CIO Magazine published a 12-step program on how to free yourself from the expensive upgrades and endless security problems that come with Microsoft products. Step 2: We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore our IT department to sanity. “Linux is that power. It is less expensive to acquire. It takes up less hard disk space and requires less memory to run. There is elegance in the open-source code license: You can have the source code for free, allowing you to upgrade or patch systems as you like.”

If you don’t believe CIO Magazine, IT-director.com named Red Hat Linux and Sun’s StarOffice, the office suite similar to Microsoft’s Office, as two of the best tech products of 2001. Notably absent from the list: Windows XP.

Just when you thought your were safe from predictions …

PCWorld.com names Linux as one of the technologies to watch in 2002. “The arrival of Sun Microsystem’s StarOffice 6.0 and continued work on the KDE desktop graphical interface could make Linux a more viable alternative on the desktop … A slower economy could prompt smaller technology departments to consider Linux as a way to save money.”

GUI-Lords.org has another list of predictions for Open Source desktops in 2002.
Among the predictions: Ximian will go bankrupt, and Mandrake will fall out of favor under the onslaught from all the new desktop distributions. Hmmmm, bold predictions, indeed.

New releases

A couple of games for Linux were among the releases announced this past week:

Space Tripper is billed as a retro arcade game. From the announcement: “No story, No background, No plot and No friends. It’s just blast or be blasted.”

Majesty is the second title released by Linux Game Publishing Ltd. It’s a “fantasy kingdom simulation” real-time strategy game that was released for Windows in 2000.

Other releases is the Open Source world this week included:

Java3D 1.2.1_03 and Java3D 1.3-beta1 for Linux.

Krusader 1.0.

GCC 3.0.3.

Gnumeric 1.0.0, GNOME Office’s spreadsheet.

Newly reviewed

NewsForge’s Jeff Field checks out the LinkSys EtherFast 10/100 CardBus NIC on a Linux laptop and finds it works pretty darned easily.

Success story of the week

Industrial automation controller manufacturer SIXNET is not only putting out a Linux device, it’s also converting all its programmable products to Linux because of its flexibility and low cost.

New at NewsForge and Linux.com

Other stories that NewsForge and Linux.com reported first this week:

Tina Gasperson examines the converging doctrines of Ximian and theKompany, the commercial companies aligned with competing desktop projects GNOME and KDE, respectively. Both companies are now pitching proprietary add-ons to their Open Source projects.

Robin “Roblimo” Miller tells readers why Linux really doesn’t have to beat Windows to give users what they want. It just needs to become enough of a major player that more hardware and software companies start noticing.

Miller also checks on the progress of Linux in Pakistan. Pakistan users say Linux is become more popular as the government cracks down on pirated versions of Windows.

Stock news

The Nasdaq ended last week at back above the magic number of 2,000, closing Friday at
2,059.38 up from 1,987.26 Dec. 28. Investors seem to believe that an economic rebound is just around the corner, and some analysts are predicting another rise in the markets this coming week. Last week was a good one for our list of Open Source and related stocks — all 11 rose, with IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Caldera and Red Hat making significant gains. With the holiday-shortened trading week, there was little news coming out of our list of companies; the rises in stock values seemed to come from the larger optimism about the economy.

Here’s how Open Source and related stocks ended this past week:

Company Name	Symbol	12/28 Close	1/4 Close
Apple	AAPL	22.43	23.69
Borland Software Int’l	BORL	15.85	16.62
Caldera International	CALD	0.89	1.05
Hewlett-Packard	HWP	20.82	23.16
IBM	IBM	122.90	125.60
MandrakeSoft	4477.PA	e4.69	e4.95
Red Hat	RHAT	7.02	8.25
Sun Microsystems	SUNW	12.59	13.93
TiVo	TIVO	6.30	6.43
VA Software	LNUX	2.49	2.83
Wind River Systems	WIND	18.05	18.89

Ben Campbell writes, PomPom software has released a Linux version of their award winning game,
Space Tripper.
Download the demo at http://www.pompom.org.uk

Space Tripper brings you the very best in retro arcade gaming.
No story, No background, No plot and No friends.
It’s just blast or be blasted.
Inspired by Williams arcade classic, ‘Defender’, Space Tripper delivers
probably the most furious shoot-em-up of the modern era, combined with
state of the art graphics.
If you like your video games tough, then this for you.

Everything you need comes included.
A fast, highly maneuverable craft.
Enough firepower to take out the universe.
Absolutely loads of enemies to obliterate, and some seriously mean bosses.
Nothing else comes close for that classic arcade experience.

David Sugar sends this along: What’s new in GNU Bayonne (January 6, 2002)
See http://www.gnu.org/software/bayonne for general information.

1. A definition of terms
2. New releases everywhere
3. GNU Bayonne for the S/390
4. Next 0.7.x GNU Bayonne release
5. The new server admin interface
6. OSDL reorg for 1.0 development
7. New project documentation

A definition of terms
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the 1.0 release of GNU Bayonne, we are changing our terminology a bit. In the past “GNU Bayonne” referred to the package as a whole and the server it creates. This is no longer true with the new 1.0 distribution.

“GNU Bayonne” will continue to refer to the package as a whole. However, there are three services built from GNU Bayonne, and these, individually, will be referred to as “Bayonne” (the telephony interface application server), “Olorin” (the softswitch application server), and “Babylon” (the pbx integration server). Hence, “Bayonne” is part of “GNU Bayonne” and not an interchangeable term for the latter, as has been the case in the past.

New releases everywhere
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have distributed a new set of releases for GNU Common C++, GNU ccScript, GNU ccrtp, and GNU ccaudio. These have changes I found necessary for development of GNU Bayonne 1.0. In particular, I have added symbol dumping in GNU ccScript so that I can complete the GNU Bayonne tcp admin interface and offer direct support for XMLRPC in GNU Common C++. The latter will help in creating GNU Bayonne application scripts that can invoke foreign services thru XMLRPC.

XMLRPC is becoming standard in GNUCOMM as well as in other packages. In fact, XMLRPC will get used as an alternate option to TGI based external service integration in GNU Bayonne application servers. XMLRPC support is somewhat limited in GNU Bayonne because GNU ccScript cannot easily represent some of the data structures one may use in XMLRPC, but it should be sufficient for most useful services.

GNU Bayonne for the S/390
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I recently received a note that the Debian project has had problems building a S/390 target from the current GNU Bayonne (0.7.x) release set. At first, I found the notion that this was a serious bug to be highly amusing. In this respect it is a strange issue, since, technically, there is no telephony hardware to interface a Bayonne server to on an S/390!

However, In the upcoming 1.0 release series, it actually will be of some real practical value to build for a S/390 target. While the Bayonne server may not have a useful role on a S/390, certainly Olorin, which is a pure network application server, could operate there, and perhaps there even could be a useful role for Babylon.

If anyone has some expertise in building S/390 targets and would like to supply a patch for building on it, I would be happy to take it in for the next release.

Next 0.7.x GNU Bayonne release
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am going to continue supplying patches, updates, and small improvements in the current 0.7.x distribution of GNU Bayonne. These will continue even during the 0.9/0.99 releases. With the full 1.0 release, around May, the current 0.7.x tree will be retired.

I am looking at back-porting some things from the 1.0 tree into the 0.7.x tree. If people wish to continue supplying patches for 0.7.x, please do so, they will be taken in for at least a few more months.

The new server admin interface
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have added a tcp monitoring interface to the GNU Bayonne 1.0 source tree. This will help to monitor and manipulate live running servers either from interactive or front end system monitoring tools.

The tcp session can be driven thru a simple telnet interface and uses a simple protocol for organizing command and response messages for ease of machine parsing as well as for interactive use. The interface provides a login facility in conjunction with PAM authentication and individual users that have telephony services being hosted thru a GNU Bayonne server will be able to manipulate their own environments.

Globally, an admin user will be able to perform a number of administrative chores thru the tcp interface, as well as directly manipulate and control the entire environment of a running GNU Bayonne application server. Things like dumping and changing global symbols in a live running system will become possible, as well as inspecting running call sessions live.

I am thinking of making the tcp interface bi-model, so that it can also process HTTP requests and possibly XMLRPC requests directly in addition to the simple telnet commands it supports already.

OSDL reorg for 1.0 development
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am working or re-organizing our resources at OSDL (Open Source Development Labs, “http://www.osdl.org”) so that GNU Bayonne 1.0 development can be carried out there effectively. I am going to be updating the OSDL Bayonne servers with the most current releases of related libraries for next week. I expect to carry out a lot of 1.0 related development at OSDL over the next few months.

If there is some special project or development that anyone wishes to conduct which requires OSDL resources, please let me know. It should be fairly easy to have additional people using OSDL for Bayonne related development since the equipment and servers are already in place.

New Project Documentation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have started drawing up new project documentation. This new documentation is being created in docbook. The GNU Bayonne manual will be based on the original manual Anders created last year. I am looking to add significantly to this, including better supporting sections on how to configure telephony devices. I also wish to incorporate things from the howto directly into the new manual.

Having a single, authoritative, and comprehensive reference document is perhaps the most important goal for the 1.0 release of GNU Bayonne. I am looking to create a single manual that covers all of GNU Bayonne in full rather than create a separate admin, programming, and reference manual. Perhaps supporting manuals with specific focus will be drawn out later from the primary.

If anyone wishes to contribute to the GNU Bayonne documentation effort, the help will be more than welcome.

Cyber.com.au analysis a recent internal letter at Microsoft in painstaking detail, responding to every claim Microsoft makes.

Debian Planet reports that Debian’s mailing lists are slowed to a crawl because of problems on the lists.debian.org server.

From Advogato: “Open Source mailing lists can easily spiral into a high noise-to-signal state. The following is a rough idea on how to make a system that would allow low-effort group moderation of a mailing list.”

IT-director.com makes that claim. “This one has strong
similarities to October’s Remote Shell Trojan (RST) that
was largely dismissed by the Linux community.

In a posting to a security mailing list at the end of
December, SecurityFocus brought ‘RST.b’ to the internet
community’s attention.”

Anonymous Reader writes, “Ingo Molnar recently posted a patch to the lkml that, in his own words, is ‘a pretty radical rewrite of the Linux scheduler.’ He includes patches for both 2.5.2-pre6 and 2.4.17. Kerneltrap includes links and an interesting followup discussion here at KernelTrap.org.”

tav writes, The latest zope news by Casey Duncan, Martijn Faassen and Chris McDonough, brings us up to date with the happenings in the Zope World.

It has in depth coverage of everything from the upcoming Python 10 Conference to:

• Zope 3 – the next generation
• Zope.org re-organisation
• Parsed XML development
• Eurozope
• ZMailMan
• Hybrid Storage Models
• and more…

The guys have done some great work putting this together, and this issue is a must read.