IDG (via CNN.com) reports on efforts to make computers that “can see.” From the article: “OpenCV, or Open Source Computer Vision Library, is a resource
tool created by Intel, where the stereoscopic code is now available
to researchers. The OpenCV library is intended to expedite efforts
of researchers in industry and academia and lead to the development
of commercial uses of computer vision.”

From LinuxJournal.com: “We’re planning
a party, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to celebrate Dmitry’s
release. Meet your favorite EFF personalities, Linux Journal staff and Bay
Area freedom lovers.”

Tycho Fruru writes, Conostix S.A. today announced the availability of the Open Source IPFC (Inter Protocol Flexible Control)
v1.0. IPFC v1.0 is a flexible software framework to manage, monitor
and control multiple devices in complex networked environments.

IPFC addresses the interoperability of heterogeneous corporate security infrastructures for:

Comprehensive entreprise infrastructure reporting

Through centralized secure logging and data correlation

Easier security operations

Securely outsourcing part or the global security infrastructure

IPFC is a software and framework to manage and monitor multiple types of security modules across a global network. Security modules can be as diverse as packet filters (like netfilter, pf, ipfw, IP Filter, checkpoint FW1…), NIDS (Snort, arpwatch…), webservers and other general devices (from servers to embedded devices).

Another way to explain IPFC : It’s a complete generic Managed Security Services (MSS) software infrastructure.

The main IPFC features are :

Centralized and unified logging of multiple devices (from server to firewall including special device)

Dynamic correlation of logs

Active evaluation of your security infrastructure

Unified policy and configuration management

Can be integrated into existing monitoring infrastructure

Auditable source code available (under GNU General Public License)

Scalability and Security of the framework

Easy extendable

You can find more information on IPFC on http://www.conostix.com/ipfc/

About Conostix

Conostix is a young computer security company based in Luxembourg.
Conostix is a security services and software company providing solutions
for complex and distributed networked infrastructures. Conostix provides
Managed Security Services and Managed Security Monitoring (MSS-MSM) in
Europe. Conostix has taken a fundamentally new approach in their research and
developement by using a Free Software (Open Source) methodology.
Research and development focuses are : distributed framework for managing
networked security devices, trusted operating systems and dedicated
security devices.

Conostix is located at Technoport Schlassgoart, rue de Luxembourg 66,
L4221 Esch-Sur-Alzette (Grand Duchy of Luxembourg)

Phone : +35226103061 Fax : +35226103062
Website: http://www.conostix.com/
Press contact : press@conostix.com

– By Grant Gross –

Red Hat is revamping its trademark policy after a NewsForge story on the company’s enforcement of that policy spurred dozens of comments and questions from the Open Source community.

Since the release of Red Hat 7.2 in October, the company has been more actively pursuing what it sees as trademark violations by CD resellers such as UnixCD.com and CheapBytes.com. Red Hat is asking those retailers to not call what they sell “Red Hat,” because of customer confusion over whether the resold product is a complete version or includes service from Red Hat.

The NewsForge story generated dozens of responses, some supporting and some criticizing Red Hat’s trademark enforcement, and several questions. Among the questions, posted and unposted: What if the CDs were labeled as Unofficial Red Hat? What about LUG members who trade CDs labeled Red Hat? What about distributing under a pseudonym?

Melissa London, director of corporate public relations for Red Hat, says it’s too early to answer some questions, because the trademark revisions are still in the works. “We are committed to encouraging the large community that uses Red Hat Linux versions and will continue to do so,” she says of the policy revamp. “This includes LUGs, students, hobbyists and others that rely on the free distributions.”

London says the new trademark policy will likely provide alternative trademarks to be used with redistributed products. The current controversy started when the founder of the UnixCD.com auction service objected to a cease and desist letter he received from Red Hat’s lawyers earlier this month.

“We want users to understand what they are entitled to — a difference of service and support levels exist for downloaded and purchased products, and consumers have already been confused in buying the replicated product expecting to receive support directly from Red Hat,” London says. “Likewise, our boxed product includes printed manuals and also some third-party applications which only Red Hat is licensed to distribute. We will be addressing as many of these scenarios as possible in new guidelines.

“We still want to provide a product that is broadly available at no cost
or a very low cost, and we will continue to do so,” she adds.

London was able to provide answers couple of “what-if” questions, based on the general direction of Red Hat’s trademark policy revisions.

NewsForge: What’s Red Hat’s position on members of LUGs trading CDs with downloaded Red Hat on them? Is it OK to call these Red Hat Linux 7.2, or something similar?

London answers: “Probably, but with a codicil that states that this is the free download, or not supported, etc.”

NewsForge: If you auction Red Hat on eBay, what’s Red Hat’s preference? Would prominent notice saying “not supported by Red Hat” be more acceptable than what UnixCD and other places are doing right now?

London: “This will likely be better clarified in policy revisions, but my understanding
is that a statement such as free download, not supported, etc., would need to
accompany it.”

Asked about a distribution project that changes the name, such as “LeRoy’s Linux, based on Red Hat 7.2,” London says that issue also will probably be addressed in the new trademark policy.

Meanwhile, UnixCD and CheapBytes are trying to get around the Red Hat trademark policy by renaming Red Hat on their sites. UnixCD founder Jason Phillips didn’t immediately return an email sent to him this morning, but his site is now marketing Red Hat Linux 7.2 under the name, “RH Linux 7.2.”

CheapBytes declined a request for an interview, but has this notice on its store page: “Looking for CDs containing the downloadable version of the XXX XXX Linux distribution? Hint: The name has to do with an article of clothing to keep your head warm. We can’t call it by it’s real name due to trademark law. Our president will be providing a statement and information at a later time regarding this subject. Please be informed about this matter prior to jumping to any erroneous conclusions.”

Asked about the CheapBytes practice of hinting at the name, London says the new trademark policy may address that issue better than she can right now. “I don’t suppose that we would try to stop that, but let’s wait for new policies so I can get better clarity,” she says. “The point is that we don’t want to limit anyone using Red Hat Linux, but we just want limit any expectation that people will be receiving any ‘official’ support or workbooks from Red Hat.”

Posted at LWN.net: “A buffer overflow exists in the telnet portion of Kerberos that could
provide root access to local users. MDKSA-2001:068 provided a similar
fix to the normal telnet packages, but the Kerberized equivalent was
not updated previously.”

IT-director.com has an analysis piece on the UK government’s embrace of Open Source software. “The policy suggests increasing the use of open source software across
the whole range of government activities. The proposal states that the
open source movement is ‘the start of a fundamental change in the
software infrastructure marketplace, but it is not a hype bubble that will
burst’. This positive, forward-looking statement is just about as bold a
declaration that open source is here to stay as anyone has ever made, at
least from those not intimately connected to the radical wing of open
source movement itself.”

From PR Newswire: Lineo(R), Inc., a leading
innovator of operating systems, host development environments and vertical
solutions for the embedded market, today announced the results of recent
changes, including the removal of hardware businesses and changes to the
executive team, along with another round of investment. Collectively, these
changes have increased Lineo’s focus on its core business of providing
embedded operating systems, tools, host development environments and
professional services that create solutions for target vertical markets,
including the handheld, residential gateway and digital television products.

IBM today announced an initiative to
accelerate the adoption of Linux among small and medium business (SMB).

To speed the development of Linux applications that address the unique
needs of small and medium business, IBM introduced the Linux Test Drive for
eServer iSeries, which makes available over the Internet a “virtual Linux
server” to help independent software vendors and the open source community
write and port their applications to Linux on iSeries.

The eServer iSeries uses advanced “partitioning” technology that allows a
single physical server to be divided into dozens of virtual servers that
can be accessed remotely by software developers around the world.

IBM believes the combination of Linux, the fast-growing server operating
system, and IBM eServer iSeries, with its popularity among SMB customers,
can help small business consolidate dozens of standalone servers on a
single, easy-to-manage, mainframe-class server, reducing cost and
complexity. To date, more than 200,000 customers around the world, many of
them mid-sized companies, run their businesses on IBM eServer iSeries,
choosing it for its security, reliability and low total cost of ownership.

According to IDC, small businesses represent 48 percent of all Linux server
installations. Industry analysts also estimate that small and medium size
business (up to 1,000 employees) will represent more than 50 percent of the
total server market worldwide by 2004.

“The Linux Test Drive illustrates IBM’s commitment to the development of
Linux applications that solve real business issues for small to mid-size
customers,” said Kim Stevenson, vice president, IBM eServer iSeries. “The
key to Linux adoption among small and medium-sized businesses is offering
ISVs a fast, convenient way to develop for this important market segment.”

H.A. Technical Solutions LLC, a provider of high availability clustering
and data replication software, recently ported two of its applications to
Linux on eServer iSeries. “The process of moving Unix and Java
applications to Linux on eServer iSeries proved remarkably easy,” said
LeRoy D. Earl, executive vice president, H.A. Technical Solutions. “We
simply installed the software and it ran perfectly.”

Software providers can get more information and enroll at the Linux Test
Drive site at www.ibm.com/eserver/iseries/developer/factory/testdrive.
Participants can select from SuSE or Turbolinux distributions of Linux, and
can choose between 14-day free access or 30-day access for a nominal fee.
The recently announced Red Hat Linux distribution will be supported on the
Test Drive server in January.

IBM eServer iSeries offers mid-sized customers mainframe-class reliability
and security. A single iSeries server can support up to 31 separate Linux
partitions, allowing businesses reduce cost and complexity by consolidating
multiple workloads onto a single, easy-to-manage server. Earlier this
year, IBM eServer iSeries was named “Best of Show” at the LinuxWorld
Conference & Expo in San Francisco.

The Linux Test Drive joins a comprehensive set of Linux software and
hardware offerings for SMB. The Small Business Suite for Linux includes
DB2 Universal Database, WebSphere Application Server and Lotus Domino. The
Suite is bundled to deliver all the tools necessary to help customers with
messaging and collaboration, productivity, Web site creation and design,
and data management.

The Linux Test Drive builds on the success of Linux and the IBM eServer
z900 mainframe in large enterprises. The Linux Community Development
System, a program announced earlier this year, provides developers access
to their own virtual mainframe running Linux, helping them build new
enterprise applications that enable customers to consolidate their
distributed servers on a single IBM zSeries mainframe.

About IBM
IBM is the number one server company in the world, offering a full line of
data transaction, Web application and appliance servers that embrace
industry standards. Powered by breakthroughs such as microprocessors with
copper wiring and Silicon-on-Insulator technology, IBM servers have
captured industry leading benchmarks that measure transactions, Web serving
capabilities and performance in software applications. The IBM eServer
line is an integral part of customized, flexible and scalable Internet
solutions for companies of all sizes. IBM supports Linux on its entire
portfolio of e-business servers.

Through its Small and Medium Business organization, IBM offers a host of
cross-industry and industry-specific solutions designed to meet the needs
of growing companies and help them leverage the potential of the Internet
and network computing.

IBM news releases and fact sheets are available at http://www.ibm.com.
Information about IBM eServer iSeries is available at
http:www.ibm.com/eserver/iseries.
Information about IBM solutions for Linux is available at
http://www.ibm.com/linux.
Information on IBM Small and Medium Business is available at
http:/www.ibm.com/smallbusiness.

The IBM eServer brand consists of the established IBM e-business logo with
the descriptive term “`server”‘ following it. The IBM e-business logo and
iSeries are trademarks or registered trademarks of the IBM Corporation.

Linux is registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

All others are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective
companies.

Dave Jones: “Fix up some merge errors, scoop up another bunch of pending fixes
expected to hit Linus’ tree soon, and drop some problem bits.”

Patch is available from:
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/patches/2.5/patch-2.5.1-dj3.diff.bz2

On with the changelog..

Some of these fixes still haven't found their way back to Marcelo yet
but should show up in 2.4.17-rc2 / 2.4.18pre1 with any luck.

2.5.1-dj3
o   Drop Manfreds multithread coredump changes          (Me)
    | They caused ltp waitpid05 regression on 2.5
    | (Same patch is fine for 2.4)
o   Intermezzo compile fix.                             (Chris Wright)
o   Fix ymfpci & hisax merge errors.                    (Me)
o   Drop ad1848 sound driver changes in favour of 2.5   (Me)
o   Make hpfs work again.                               (Al Viro)
o   Alpha Jensen compile fixes.                         (Ronald Lembcke)
o   Make NCR5380 compile non modularly.                 (Erik Andersen)

– by Tina Gasperson –
Tom Adelstein, the founder of Bynari, says that Caldera’s Volution Messaging Server is a replica of his Bynari Insight serverware. “They tried to buy the server application,” he says. “Most of what they’ve done [with Messaging Server] is copy what they knew about ours. But we’ve gone way beyond what they’re doing.””We maintain the native Microsoft protocols. Other people have gotten much of Outlook to work [with their Linux-based server products] but ours is a variety of Microsoft technology that we’ve implemented with different code.”

Adelstein is talking about Bynari’s Insight mail server, the companion product to the Insight mail client, the 2.6 version of which was released as a free product last week in anticipation of 3.0 release in early 2002. The server functions as a replacement for Microsoft’s Exchange Server, a product many would call the business standard mail and messaging server. With Insight and other Linux-based mail server products, businesses switching to Linux could make the transition smoother because of the similarities and compatibility with Exchange.

Louis Imershein, product architect for Caldera’s Volution Messaging Server, doesn’t agree that Caldera’s product is a copy of Bynari’s. “Volution Messaging Server is the result of requests by our
resellers to provide a messaging solution. Initially, we looked outside Caldera for a solution, including Bynari.” But, Imershein says, Bynari wasn’t ready at the time with an appropriate server product. Imershein adds that he believes Caldera’s focus is more on ease of use and simple, repeatable tasks than Bynari’s Insight.

Adelstein is especially happy about Insight’s ability to use Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) and remote procedure calls to create an environment that will allow Outlook users to connect to the Insight server just as though it were a Microsoft Exchange server. “We isolated how they do their stuff,” and were able to duplicate it, says Adelstein. Bynari does not use Microsoft’s MAPI protocol, but duplicates its function by building on DCE.

Server-side calendaring is another feature implemented through Bynari’s Insight that, according to Adelstein, other companies haven’t been able to match yet. “This is very important when it comes to migration,” he says. “Companies that are transitioning to Linux can leave the user community in place” because the data resides on the server instead of on each individual desktop.

Adelstein says that Caldera hasn’t been the only company to express interest in Bynari’s technology. Last summer, recreation vehicle manufacturer Winnebago switched to Linux and Bynari Insight to provide email to its 1,000 employees, citing up to a 75% cost savings over upgrading to a Novell or Microsoft product.

Bynari was one of the first members of the IBM zSeries partnership program, an effort launched by IBM last summer to provide joint marketing opportunities and, as IBM team leader Joe Kirschner was quoted, “to
expand our reach and range of influencers in support of
Linux.”

Adelstein is proud of the fact that Bynari got started with no venture capital. “We started with the product and built from there.” As the company grew, says Adelstein, two investors with experience in the field came in and helped out. “We first showed our product at LinuxWorld 2000 in New York City.” Bynari shared a booth with MandrakeSoft.

And Bynari had its first “in the black” moment in August 2001, turning a profit in a time when other Linux-based businesses have struggled. But keeping things on the plus side remains a challenge. “Every time we turn around, we’re having to develop something new,” says Adelstein. “Everything is custom.”

The company is working on a possible solution to satisfy customer desires for tweaks without having to reinvent the wheel every time — a solution that is sounding increasingly familiar in Linux business circles. “Version 3 of Bynari Insight is due out in January 2002, and we’ll supplement it with optional modular plugins.”