DebianPlanet: “Has anybody managed to get KDE 3.0alpha running on sid yet? Or woody or potato for that matter?

If no one has, and I decided to do it, how would I go about packaging it up and how would I go about
distributing them?”

ZDNET: “The artists contended in their brief filed Nov. 7 that the big recording labels may not indefinitely
own some of the sound recording copyrights they are suing over in the landmark suit against
Napster, said Jay Rosenthal, a lawyer for the Recording Artists Coalition. The record giants in
September requested summary judgment on the issue of liability, which would leave as the only
trial matter the amount of damages and nature of an injunction against Napster.”

– By Grant Gross –

A Web services company that was bought by VA Linux last fall, then sold back to one of its founders this summer, released its first product last week and is projecting profitability any day now.

XAO Inc., a privately held spin off of VA Linux, announced the release of the XAO 1.0 Web server, a Web-services software package based on Apache. According to the press release, “XAO 1.0 allows companies to integrate data quickly from disparate sources such as relational databases, legacy applications, ERP systems, and other application servers and make them available in a standardized fashion. The resulting information or system can then be made available as a web service or in whatever data format is needed for the customer.” (VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

XAO 1.0 is released under the XAO Open License, basically a copy of the Sleepycat License except for the name change. XAO, the company, is also pitching a host of consulting services, including deploying “Open SourceForge,” a non-proprietary version of VA’s SourceForge collaborative development package.

Brian DeSpain, CEO of XAO, says the Open SourceForge service isn’t the company’s main focus and won’t compete with VA Linux. “We got a couple of inquiries about deploying the Open Source SourceForge system,” he says. “We use SourceForge internally and have found it a good tool. One of the sales guys suggested we put it up on the Web site and see if we get any more inquiries. For $25,000 turn key we install and customize it for a company. It’s entirely incidental revenue and not our main focus.
We just know the program and like it.”

DeSpain respects his former employers but also seems mystified about why VA parted ways with what he says was a profitable venture. XAO was founded this June, after DeSpain sold his Brave New Worlds Inc. to VA back in September 2000. DeSpain was leader of e-commerce professional services, the team that built and deployed e-commerce products using Open Source software.

DeSpain says his company is close to a profit right now. He expects to turn a profit in November after a couple of months of profits and a couple of months of small losses since the company was relaunched in June. “We should be profitable thereafter unless the economic climate radically changes,” he adds.

DeSpain says he disagrees with VA’s decision to focus its energies on SourceForge, but he acknowledges that VA was helpful with the transition back to a private company.

“They offered us the opportunity to buy back our company which we did,” he says. “Keep in mind that throughout the time we were a division, we were posting some pretty solid revenue numbers and were profitable … So it really wasn’t a difficult decision for us to buy back the company. VA did want us to succeed as an independent
entity so they helped us along.”

DeSpain obviously sees potential for his business model, where VA viewed it as a “shopping cart” service, he says. “… We had a long-running research and development project in web services and XML dating back to January of 2000, well before it was on the radar screens of most companies. That R&D coupled with a large contract we landed in February deploying an e-commerce/web services project gives us a competitive
advantage in the marketplace. We have already dealt with many of the issues
with web services … that other companies haven’t even begun to deal with.”

XAO’s business plan calls for the company to focus on Web services and XML. In the next six months, the company plans to release more modules for the XAO product, “ensuring compliance with a wide variety of XML standards and
business applications,” DeSpain says. “Our business plan focuses on the Fortune 500 and the middle market companies where our message of avoiding single vendor
lock-in through Open Source while being built around the world’s leading Web
server has begun to gain traction. Nearly every company we talk with has
some single vendor lock-in disaster story.”

DeSpain sees a wide group of potential customers for XAO, which can be customized to create several kinds of business-related Web-based services. He gives the example of one current customer, which replaced a legacy wholesale insurance application
with XAO’s customized Foundation Server customized. As a result, the company’s core business processes are Web enabled. XAO’s target markets include insurance, energy, distribution and manufacturers.

“There is wide application of our software in some very
different markets,” he says. “I believe its a real testament to the strength of our
platform. We offer companies the ability to put their data where they want
to put it and don’t lock them in. The relational database layer should be
largely invisible to enterprises, they should be able to move their data
seamlessly from one platform to another. Our Foundation Server offers them
that ability, along with the ability to marry that data with modern XML
standards. We feel that’s a pretty powerful value proposition.”

ZDNET: “An attack designed to flood the Web’s master directory servers with traffic “is capable of bringing
down the Internet,” Paul Vixie, a speaker at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN) annual meeting, told Reuters.

After the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, non-profit corporation ICANN
pushed other agenda items aside to concentrate the discussion on ways to keep the Internet
safe.”

MSNBC tells us: “There is another creative IE vulnerability discovered by
Georgi Guninski. This time he has demonstrated that IE
Javascript can spoof the Windows desktop. A rogue
Web site can open a Javascript to take over the whole
screen and emulate common items such as taskbar, clock,
etc.”

“There will probably be no .comment column the week after the first negligence suit is filed against a firm whose negligent action is the use of
Microsoft software when they should have known better, with the result being a client’s confidential documents having become public.

It is difficult to type when one is laughing oneself into a total thoracic muscle cramp. And I’m not sure I’ll be able to get it out of my system in a week.” More at LinuxPlanet.

– by Jack Bryar –
Was the fix in during the Microsoft negotiations?
The more I
look at Assistant Attorney General Charles A. James
and the methods he used
to generate the settlement the uglier and uglier it
looks.

Stockholders may be celebrating the Department
of Justice’s proposed
settlement with Microsoft: since the settlement was
proposed, Microsoft’s
share price has risen better than 18%. But everyone
else has been annoyed
and amazed at the proposed settlement.

The San Francisco Chronicle called it a
“cave-in.” Toronto’s Globe
and Mail described it as “tilted,” noting that the
agreement avoids even
antitrust basics such as mandatory standard pricing
guarantees. The Berliner
Morgenpost suggested that “clear re-work of the
agreement was necessary.”
The Economist wondered about a settlement where,
“Microsoft will once again
get away with a slap on the wrist,” and said “The
agreement would, in effect,
turn the company’s defeat in court into victory —
an astounding turn of
events.” The Electronic Engineering Times declared,
“Microsoft
has gotten away with murder. The murder of
innovation.”

Legal experts have been particularly tough. The
president of the Antitrust
Institute, Albert A. Foer denounced
the deal, saying, “It is shocking that the
Department of Justice, after
having its victory upheld… would agree to terms
that are not only weaker
than the interim relief ordered by Judge Jackson
pending an anticipated
break-up of the company, but weaker still than the
terms agreed to by Microsoft
in the mediation conducted by Judge Posner a year
and a half ago when the
issue of whether Microsoft had even violated the law
was an open question.”

Even the most generous interpretation heard
outside of Redmond was that
Charles
A. James, the assistant attorney general for antitrust had
made a bad deal, distracted
by an atmosphere poisoned by security concerns and
under severe time pressure
to come up with a settlement. There are less
generous interpretations.
They involve ideological bias, political influence
and the buddy system
that makes so many people hate lawyers in general
and Washington lawyers
in particular.

Originally from Newark, New Jersey, James is one
of a number of black
conservatives recruited by both Bush administrations
and by Attorney General
John Ashcroft. Like so many Bush appointees, James
was a retread. He had
served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for
Antitrust in 1991-2 and
was acting head of the unit for the last few months
of Bush I. During that
tenure, James had conspicuously avoided so-called
vertical cases, where
companies used their strengths in one end of a
market to squeeze out competition
in another. During the twelve years of Reagan and
Bush the Justice Department
had never prosecuted a single case of that type.
Instead, James had focused exclusively
on those antitrust cases which involved direct price
fixing, or so-called
“horizontal mergers” — situations where the
partners were merging to
effectively eliminate competition. James had
personally overseen the revision
of Justice’s Horizontal Merger Guidelines. Those
guidelines were cited
by the Clinton administration when it blocked a
proposed merger between
Staples Corp, the biggest office supply chain
retailer, and Office Depot,
its largest competitor.

Prior to getting the appointment back to Justice,
James spent a significant
amount of time burnishing his conservative
credentials and signaling that
he’d effectively kill the Microsoft litigation. He
told the Washington
Post in 1998 that his reading of Netscape’s
documents undermined the government’s
case. He began describing himself as a “bedrock
conservative” — albeit one
with a taste for sports cars and rap
music. He repeatedly expressed
concern about applying antitrust law to “vertical
cases.” And according
to colleagues at his former law firm of Arent Fox,
he had let it be known
that he considered the proposed restructuring of
Microsoft into two companies
as a particularly extreme case of unwarranted
judicial intervention. James
had also suggested that antitrust laws should not
apply in intellectual
property cases. His comments had won the praise of
conservative activists
such as Dominick T. Armentano, who said, “The new
Bush antitrust nominees
are appropriately skeptical of government planning
— especially the proposed
dismemberment of Microsoft currently on appeal. If
we can’t abolish the absurd and archaic antitrust
laws, the best we can
do is leave their administration to those who
understand their sad history
and their own regulatory limitations.”

Following his appointment James has proposed law severely
limiting the scope of future antitrust
investigations and involving
the proposed target at an early stage. He has even
backed away from his
moderately interventionist position on horizontal
mergers. Once in office
he supported a proposed merger between GE and Honewell, two giants that
dominate the military electronics business, and he
denounced European intervention that finally killed
the deal.

Still, Microsoft opponents had some reason for
hope. The James nomination
had been championed by the likes of Kenneth W. Starr,
the former special
prosecutor and noted movement conservative who
was also working with Procom, a public
policy group funded by
the likes of Corel, AOL Time Warner, Oracle and Sun
specifically to battle
Microsoft. Starr had said, “The facts here point
…strongly to a consistent
pattern of exclusionary conduct and the abuse of
monopoly power,” and
he was sure James would “stay the course and respect
the very overwhelming
set of facts.” The Progress & Freedom
Foundation, another
libertarian-but-Anti-Microsoft policy organization,
publicly predicted that James would fully prosecute
the case, suggesting
that a restructuring of the company rather than a
regulatory “conduct”
settlement would be superior “from a conservative’s
perspective.”

There was some reason for optimism. After June
28, when the D.C. Circuit
Court confirmed that Microsoft was both a monopoly
and was acting in violation
of applicable antitrust law, James put together a
team that looked thorough
and professional. It included both Philip S. Beck
and Phillip R. Malone,
the career government attorney who had been a key
member of the original
team prosecuting the case during the Clinton era.
However, he also signaled
that he had his own doubts about the case. In an interview
with Businessweek he suggested that “the
standard formulation on remedy
is that it ought to cure past violations and prevent
their recurrence.
That’s what antitrust is all about. And to the
extent this is an
antitrust case — that’s what the remedy will be
about.”

Justice officials claim that the decision to
abandon any strict remedy
was made by James himself, and that he was given
full discretionary authority
by Attorney General John Ashcroft. This may be true,
but it is also true
that a number of prominent Republicans had been
lobbying on behalf of Microsoft. The company’s political donations in recent years
had jumped nearly fifty-fold,
with two-thirds of it going to Republican
candidates. In addition the company
retained such political operatives as Ralph Reed, a
senior advisor to the
Bush Campaign, and Haley Barbour, former chair of
the Republican Party.
While James himself has claimed to be relatively
apolitical, many of his
colleagues have been overtly partisan. His former mentor
(and current FTC Chair),
Tim Muris, was part of President Bush’s legal team
during the Florida election
dispute. It would have been difficult for James not
to know the type of
deal the administration wanted.

On Halloween, lawyers representing Justice,
Microsoft, and the states
were holed up in the Washington law offices of Fried
Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson, Microsoft’s D.C. legal team. They were
going to attempt,
one last time, to come up with a settlement prior to
a penalty ruling by
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. The state attorneys general were
represented by staff
lawyers from Ohio and New York. The Microsoft team
included Steven Holley
of Sullivan & Cromwell, a
veteran of the case who had been retained by
Microsoft despite Holley’s
recent censure for leaking court documents in a
separate case, in-house
attorney David Heiner, and Rick Rule — another
James mentor and his predecessor as assistant attorney general for antitrust under
the Reagan and Bush
administrations. The Justice Department
negotiators usually included
Beck, Malone, and Debbie Majoris — a Bush appointee
but also an experienced
antitrust negotiator, but as the negotiations wore
on, James opted to
conduct negotiations on his own and without the
distractions of the rest
of his team. According to James, these private
sessions helped move the
process along. The negotiations were primarily with
Rule.

It was James who personally approved Microsoft’s
proposed “settlement”
language. It was James who approved language that
declared that “the software
code that comprises a Windows Operating System
Product shall be determined
by Microsoft in its sole discretion.” It was James
who approved language
requiring third-party developers to license their
intellectual property back
to Microsoft. It was James who overrode staff
objections concerning a proposed
exemption that would allow Microsoft to withhold
source code from other
ISVs at their discretion on security grounds. James,
who apparently considers
himself a bit of a techie, said that he considered
this a “duh” issue.
He said that “Microsoft has security protocols . Are
we going to tell everyone
how they work?” Apparently unaware that Linux has
published security protocols
which work just fine, he suggested that such
disclosure would mean that
people could “get access to your credit-card
information when you shop.”
James also declared that the core of the case, involving the
right of third party
vendors to substitute browsers no longer mattered.
“The market has changed,”
he declared.

Some have questioned the degree to which James
understood the impact
of his technical decisions or even what the language
of the agreement meant.
For example, in the middle of his press conference
announcing the agreement
James declared that “It is absolutely clear in our
decrees that computer
manufacturers can delete Microsoft middleware
products.” After a
stage whisper by an aide he amended his statement
saying, “well not the
program itself, the program will be there.”

So will Microsoft’s monopoly, apparently.

Perhaps the market will provide a remedy. The
Linux movement continues
to grow, particularly in Europe and Asia. At Comdex,
Sony President Kunitake
Ando announced deals with Nokia and AOL to develop
“microbrowsers” to runn
on a variety of electronic devices and declared that
Sony would redesign
most of its electronics products to support Internet
connectivity.

But if you are counting on government
intervention to protect you from
aggressive monopolists, you’re going to have to
wait until 2004.

TechFocus has published an article that talks about the alleged failure of PHP-nuke. The article is dated 11/8; PHP-nuke’s website re-launched on 11/13.

The Register: “Intel unveiled its Ultra-low Voltage Pentium III server processor this week, as
anticipated.

The 700MHz chip, which we’ve reported on before, in the run-up to Comdex and in
our Intel Server Roadmap, is a 0.13 micron Tualatin PIII, primarily aimed at the
notebook market.”

“SuSE offers ideal solution for consolidation of mission-critical e-business
applications with kernel 2.4, HiperSockets support, Logical Volume Manager and
Journaling Filesystem.”SuSE Linux, the international Open
Source technology leader and solutions provider, announced the release of SuSE
Linux Enterprise Server 7 for S/390, the latest version of its server operating
system for deployment in enterprise mainframes. Based on kernel 2.4, this SuSE
server version now supports S/390 servers as well as IBM eServer zSeries z900.
Extremely failsafe and high performing, IBM mainframes are the ideal solution for
running mission-critical applications such as the administration of complex
e-business transactions. SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 for S/390 excellently
matches IBM’s hardware as the perfect medium for consolidated server services
on IBM mainframes, e.g. for intranet and Internet services as well as database
applications. Additionally, the SuSE Maintenance Service keeps the operating
system in a secure, stable, and tested state for at least 24 months of guaranteed
investment security.

“More and more of our customers are turning to server consolidation as a means
of reducing expenses and improving the reliability, security and flexibility of their
enterprise systems. ” said Rich Lechner, vice president, Marketing and Sales, IBM
eServer zSeries. ” SuSE provides our customers with more choices in optimizing
operating efficiency and leveraging the rapidly growing set of Linux solutions.”

Expanded System

Functionality Compared to its predecessor, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 for
S/390 boasts a number of improvements: SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 for
S/390 is the first server operating system to fully support HiperSockets, a new
high-performance feature unique to IBM eServer zSeries, thus substantially
accelerating the speed of the data transfer between virtual servers in the
mainframe. As the host operating system z/OS also supports HiperSockets, data
exchange between SuSE Linux and z/OS is possible with maximum bandwidth and
near-zero latency. SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 for S/390 now also supports
the journaling filesystem ReiserFS. Especially data entities containing large
numbers of small files benefit from the efficiency and performance of ReiserFS.
Also new: the network and disk device configuration can now be modified
dynamically without a reboot. The Logical Volume Manager allows the
runtime-integration of dynamically attached storage devices into existing virtual
volumes of almost arbitrary size, delivering practically unlimited disk space without
downtime.

Investment Security

Included With at least 24 months of maintenance, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7
for S/390 guarantees long-term planning and investment security and ensures the
stability and up-to-date state of the operating system basis. Improvements in the
fields of security, performance, and usability are first subjected to an extensive
quality check, especially with regard to certifications of ISV solutions. Within a
short time, these improvements are made available exclusively on the SuSE
Maintenance Web through well-documented patches, fixes, and updates. Users
are regularly notified regarding the availability of such files and receive update
CDs with important improvements every three months. Moreover, SuSE experts
provide assistance for the installation of the patches, fixes, and updates. In
addition to this service, SuSE offers individual assistance for the integration of
new patches into the existing system and for the ongoing system operation. The
optional SuSE Linux Premier Software Support even includes selected
applications. The rail freight company Transtar is developing a real-time tracking
system on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server for S/390, and thus, provides online
freight information to employees and customers.

“The SuSE people have been extremely helpful and responsive in assisting us
whenever needed, via telephone, email, and in-house training sessions,” explains
Tom Pajak, Senior Manager Information Support at Transtar. “The success of this
endeavor is undeniably important to our entire company, and we feel that we have
made the correct choice, with the most flexibility for our long-term needs.”

The cross-platform availability enables companies to integrate SuSE Linux on all
systems in their IT environment – from PC clients to powerful host systems – and to
continue to work under accustomed system conditions. A wide range of supported
hardware, including notebooks and servers based on IA32, IA64, Sparc,
PowerPC, IBM eServer pSeries, IBM eServer iSeries, as well as the latest
high-performance mainframes from IBM, predestines SuSE Linux as the operating
system of choice for professional deployment. SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 for
S/390 comes on 2 CDs together with a manual, a developer’s kit with more than
1,300 applications on 5 CDs, and 30 days of expanded support. The free system
maintenance for 12 months includes the quarterly dispatch of an update CD
containing the documented and quality-checked fixes, patches, and updates, as
well as the accompanying installation support from the SuSE experts.

SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 for S/390 will be available from the end of
November from SuSE and SuSE Linux Enterprise Partners. Prices start at US $
4,500. For more details, please check http://s390.suse.com

For inquiries to the SuSE experts, please feel free to contact
S390-sales@suse.com

About SuSE

SuSE Linux is one of the world’s leading providers of complete solutions based on
the Open Source operating system Linux. In addition to operating systems and
application software for private customers, SuSE offers software solutions and
complete systems for the deployment of Linux in companies. SuSE supports its
enterprise customers with a comprehensive range of qualified consulting, training,
and support services. The company, which hosts the world’s largest development
team for Open Source solutions, has made its unique project and support
know-how accessible via the Internet in the largest existing Linux knowledge
database. Further information on SuSE can be found at http://www.suse.com