ZDNet reports on VA Linux’s release of SourceForge
Enterprise Edition 3.0, a “new proprietary version of SourceForge, the
collaborative programming software that now is the centerpiece of the company’s survival
strategy.” (VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

From ZDNet: “A prominent civil liberties group is jumping to the aid of MusicCity, a popular file-swapping
company confronting a lawsuit from the Hollywood and record industry that could blaze
new, influential legal ground.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has represented hackers, cryptographers and
computer scientists in its push for digital rights, agreed to defend MusicCity against copyright
infringement charges by movie studios and record labels. It’s helping build a high-powered team
of lawyers to show that this case is different than Napster.”

SiliconValley.internet.com reports that researchers with 40 universities will be getting the latest version of the Red Hat Linux operating system from Hewlett-Packard and Linux software maker Red Hat. The program is part of the $2.5 million Itanium-based Systems Grant program from Hewlett-Packard and Intel.

SiliconValley.internet.com reports that researchers with 40 universities will be getting the latest version of the Red Hat Linux operating system from Hewlett-Packard and Linux software maker Red Hat. The program is part of the $2.5 million Itanium-based Systems Grant program from Hewlett-Packard and Intel.

LinuxSecurity: “Responding to an effort by Microsoft [NASDAQ:MSFT] to squelch the full disclosure of software vulnerabilities, a group of “white hat” hackers is putting
out a call to other experts, asking them to deluge software vendors with bug reports. “Let’s flood the security department of every vendor with new
issues. Let’s show the world what they would miss and what information could just as easily have stayed in the underground,” wrote a security
researcher who uses the nickname “HellNbak,” in an announcement posted to several security mailing lists last week.”

– by Robin “Roblimo” Miller –

Mark Douglas, senior engineering v.p. of commercial Apache provider Covalent, says there’s an easy way to make Microsoft’s famously insecure IIS server impervious to Nimda, Code Red, and other worms and viruses: hide your IIS servers behind Apache.”Simply,” Mark says, “even with all the viruses that are proliferating over the Web, if IIS is not directly on the Web it is not subject to them.”

Covalent has a number of security experts on staff who not only work to make the company’s own products secure, but feed their code back into Open Source versions of Apache. Plus, there are thousands of other Apache developers out there who don’t work for Covalent but also have their eagle eyes on the code, constantly seeking out and destroying security holes.

The $64,000 question here is, of course, “Why not just ditch IIS and switch to Apache?”

Because, Mark explains, a lot of companies have huge investments in Microsoft-based software that will only run on IIS servers, and they don’t want to throw away all that work — at least, not immediately. But Mark expects that “a lot of these companies will migrate [to Apache] over time…”

We couldn’t help asking one more question: If a company that wants to curry favor with the Open Source community couldn’t (sneakily) hide their IIS servers behind a Covalent or generic Apache Webserver; would Netcraft, for instance, be fooled?

“Yes, Netcraft would see it [a IIS server behind Apache] as Apache,” Mark says.

Covalent marketing v.p. Jim Zemlin points out, though, that “this is like putting a Mercedes hood ornament on a Chevy. The true way to solve IIS problems is to migrate to Apache.”

CNET: “Almost every large company has at least thought about Linux, and many of them are running pilot projects or even
day-to-day (albeit nonessential) systems on the open-source operating system.

And because the economy is still weak, many tech observers believe Linux–and its price tag of “free”–will attract
more businesses looking to cut costs.

At least that’s the theory. Practice
indicates something else.”

Version 2.2.0 of Slashdot Like Automated Storytelling Homepage (Slash) has been released. From the site: “Slash is written in Perl, and is built on top of Apache and mod_perl. It
requires a database backend, though the only well-supported database
used with it is MySQL (more databases will become well-supported as time
goes on; PostgreSQL support is already well on its way). Slash is fast,
scalable, and secure (as evidenced by one of the best test cases you
could have, running Slashdot itself).”

TrollTech: “Starting today, Sharp is accepting pre-orders from the
developer community for the SL-5000D developer unit. The
SL-5000D uses the Embedix Plus PDA solution, which
contains: Lineo’s Embedix? Linux; Trolltech’s Qt/Embedded?
and Qt AWT GUI technologies; Insignia Solution’s Jeode PDA
Edition?; and Opera Software’s embedded web browser.”

Kelly McNeill writes: “The U.S. District Court judge handling the Microsoft antitrust case is meeting Tuesday with court-appointed mediator Eric Green to determine whether the settlement tentatively negotiated last week between the software giant and the Department of Justice (DOJ) can withstand opposition from members of the 18-state alliance that were co-plaintiffs in the case. California and Massachusetts, two states with large high-tech industries, plan to reject the settlement, sources believe.”