The Register: “SirCam is still the most infectious computer virus on the Internet. Four months after it was first
released it continues to haunt users.

The privacy-threatening, bandwidth-stealing worm headed the monthly chart of virus reports compiled
by antivirus vendor Sophos and accounted for 21.7 per cent of calls to its support centre in October.
It was followed by Nimda-A (17.8 per cent), September’s chart topper, and the Magistr-B (16.1 per
cent).”

“Discussion of the relationship with the FSF, reasserting our
current status as part of the GNU project. More work still needed
to put details on the website.”

Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 30 October 2001
          ==================================================


Presents:
=========

    Havoc Pennington (chairing)
    Daniel Veillard  (minutes)
    Jim Gettys
    Dan Mueth
    John Heard
    Tim Ney           (director)
    Owen Taylor
    Maciej Stachowiak 
    Raph Levien
    Federico          (from :20)


Regrets:
========
    Bart Decrem
    Miguel de Icaza  

Decisions:
==========

   - getting in serious contact with a new lawyer company.
   - discussion of the relationship with the FSF, reasserting our
     current status as part of the GNU project. More work still needed
     to put details on the website.
   - people should send candidacy statements to the foundation list
     for the elections

Action Done:
============

  ACTION: Havoc to sent the Advisory Board list to the Board,
          looking for completion of the member liason.
   => Tim has answer back from everybody except VA.

  ACTION: Owen make sure the mail send to the accounts@gnome.org is not lost
   => Done

  ACTION: Maciej to email the Board the current draft of the platform
          license policy for review.
   => Done

Actions:
========


New Actions:
============

  ACTION: Havoc to redirect gnome-press-contact to Leslie

  ACTION: Tim to get the membership logos one the foundation page

  ACTION: Tim, John and Havoc to get a draft statement on the relation
          with the free software and license policy.

Discussion:
===========

 - approve last meeting minutes:
   http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2001-October/msg00001.html

 - Tim announced that the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in
   Palo Alto has agreed to work for GNOME on a pro-bono basis. The WSGR
   legal team will assist the GNOME Foundation in the following areas:
     - getting tax exemption
     - copyright/licence/patent issues
     - Trademark.
   Sounds excellent !
   they have the starting documents transmitted by Tim.

 - Sun donated equipment for the Linux Expo gnome Booth in Frankfurt.
   ASLab is donating hardware for the GNOME booth at ALS in Oakland.
   Ximian will provide machines for the GNOME Hothouse at ALS.

   As a prelude to GUADEC 3, there will be an informal gathering of GNOME
   developers in Dublin on November 24th & 25th . Glynn
   Foster and Telsa Gwynne are organizing with Proinnsias Breathnach.
   Information can be found at  http://www.linux.ie/

 - elections:
   this seems on track, but there have been no nomination yet.
   Those from the current Board should send candidacy statements if running
   again for the elections in order to help start the process.

 - relationship with FSF:
   We have strong links with the free software community, even if
   we sometimes don't totally follow the guidelines. The very important
   point is to stay close to the people to avoid strong issues. We
   consider that Gnome was and should remain part of the free software
   movement and of the GNU project.
   More actions needed to get a wording defined and kept on the Gnome
   web site.

 - Sun's documentation work:
   There have been an agreement between the GNU and Sun on a revision
   of the GFDL (GNU Free Documentation Licence) needed for Sun to release
   its work under that Licence.
   So Sun will release its documentation soon.

 - Update on GNOME 2
   We are trying to get the API freeze to avoid a moving target.
   The major apps are being ported, it's looking promising.


Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Red Hat Network https://rhn.redhat.com/
veillard@redhat.com  | libxml Gnome XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/
_______________________________________________
foundation-list mailing list
foundation-list@gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list

Joe User writes: “Athene is a multi-platform operating system developed by Rocklyte Systems to run on top of existing OSes, replacing their original GUI with Athene’s four (till now) new GUI offerings. It was first released for Linux while they are now offering a Windows version too. The company hopes to become the desktop of choice for Linux, with or without the help of X. OSNews interviews the main architect of the project, Paul Manias.”

Paul Mauck writes: “I just read a review of the Handspring Visor Pro. It does not look like anything special for those of you considering it. The only main difference is the 16mb of memory. Most pocket PC’s out there have at least 32mb, so I don’t see what is so special about the Handspring Visor Pro. Something that I found cool and interesting was the fact that it had a built in microphone, yet does not support it in itself, you have to buy an add-on to use it. This would give you cell phone capabilities and more. $299 seems like a steep price too. There are defintely better ways to spend your money. What do you guys think? Here is the link for those of you who want to read more.”

– By Bruce Tober –

This is a non-story. Or is it? According to the press announcement for the WebMasters
2001 Exposition in London in October, Microsoft would be providing copies of a couple of .NET-related items, including the Linux Migration Guide: “The Guide contains technical information to
aid developers and IT specialists in migrating Linux e-commerce
solutions to a Microsoft web solutions platform.”

And, according to the program for the expo, Microsoft had a booth.
However, there was no Microsoft booth, nor were any of the company’s
representatives or spokesmen anywhere in sight, except during the
seminars they were conducting. When we contacted one of the
company’s offices in the United Kingdom and asked to speak to a public relations
spokesman, true to form for Microsoft, we were connected to the Human
Resources department. Oops.

When the event organizer tried to chase up a Microsoft spokesperson or
seminar speaker, we were told the guy couldn’t or wouldn’t talk.

During the expo, I spent all day trying to track down one of these wondrous
migration publications. They proved to be as elusive as company personnel. The
event organizer then informed me the company had apparently decided,
after publication of the press announcement, not to distribute “The
Guide” and not to take a booth.

So rather than go away empty-handed, we tracked down
spokespeople from two major Linux distribution companies. The first, Benoy
Tamang, v.p. of marketing for Caldera, was asked, “Why would Microsoft want or
feel a need to give out a migration guide for Linux to .NET?” He said it
was in the best tradition of Microsoft to attempt to instill FUD
wherever possible, that “their past actions have visibly been to incite fear,
uncertainty and doubt on any threat, especially Linux.”

Tamang continued: “Along those same lines, they have frequently said
the .NET platform is their main focal point. Microsoft is no shrinking
wall-flower when it comes to aggressive marketing tactics, and this
would appear to fall in that same realm.”

The other Linux company rep agreed to speak only on terms of
anonymity. When she was asked the same question, she speculated, “Because they
realize the Linux market is growing. They would like to find a way to
get some of the Linux market back to Microsoft.”

But, what percentage of Linux users do you think would be crazy enough
to be interested in migrating to Microsoft, she was asked. “I’m not aware of
any at the moment.”

“None?” I asked.

“Not that I’m aware of,” she reiterated.

Tamang was a bit more philosophical, acknowledging that even Samson
“eventually weakened to Delilah’s entices.” But, he said, “Hopefully they wouldn’t [be crazy enough to switch], especially with the availability of strong Linux platforms, such as Caldera’s OpenLinux.”

Finally, I asked, “why do you think Microsoft gave up the idea of
distributing The Guide?” To which our anonymous Linux rep responded, “I
don’t know. Maybe it’s costing them too much in marketing budget to send them
out to customers.”

“You mean in terms of return on investment,” I suggested.

“I just don’t know,” she demurred.

So what is this marvelous, mysterious Linux Migration Guide? There is
one such document on Microsoft.com.
It is described as providing you “with in-depth technical
knowledge and step-by-step instructions on how to migrate your
customers’ Linux e-commerce sites to Microsoft Web Solutions platform.” Whether
this is the same document (or more accurately, collection of
multi-media presentations) the company had planned to distribute at the expo is
unknown. It’s possible the CD version of The Guide is what was
supposed to be distributed.

The online guide uses a “video interactive format, [to enable users to]
watch the latest information and learn how to:

• Migrate content from Linux to Microsoft Windows 2000 IIS 5.0

• Port scripts from Linux to Windows 2000

• Manage Windows 2000 Web Services with the Web Administration
  Tool

The site includes white papers about:

• Migration of a Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP platform to Windows 2000

• MySQL migration to Microsoft SQL Server 2000

• Linux to Windows 2000 scripting portability

• Taking Advantage of Windows 2000 — using Windows component
  technology

Users are also invited to “read successful Linux Migration case studies
and learn how a large number of customers requiring [more than] 99.9x per cent
reliability moved from Linux to Windows 2000.”

Microsoft says those who will benefit from the Linux Migration Guide
are its “partners who are switching Linux customers to Windows 2000-based
Web sites.” It doesn’t, however, tell how those customers will
benefit from the switch.

The Pluto Meeting 2001 (http://meeting.pluto.linux.it) will be held in the
Italian town of Terni starting December 7 and on through the 9. The meeting
will be held in the ITC Technical College “Federico Cesi”
(http://fcesi.wnet.it).

Pluto Meeting 2001 is an event devoted to the diffusion of Free Software.

This event will include talks and courses on the use of Free Software in both
the enterprise and single-user contexts. A series of meetings will be held on
topis chosen by the partecipants and companies will be meeting users in the
exibitor’s area.

We are currently seeking experts willing to hold talks of half an hour to one
hour in length during one of the days of Pluto Meeting 2001.

Those interested in submitting a proposal for a talk can write to the
secratary of the conference at segreteria@pluto.linux.it. Please include a
detailed abstract.

Your abstract will necessarily include:

* Your name and e-mail;
* A brief description of your past involvement in Free Software;
* A concise summary (one page maximum) of the talk you are willing to hold;

Abstracts will be revised by the organizing committe of the Meeting and
authors will receive feedback on their proposals ASAP.

We are currently also seeking experts willing to hold courses of three to
four hours in length during one of the days of Pluto Meeting 2001.
These courses can be either at the introductory level (amied at unexperienced
future users) or assume an experts knowledge of a subject that will be
analyzed in further detail. In either case the requirement is made of making
the learning experience as interactive as possible (in essence we are not
looking for just a four-hour long lecture).

Those interested in submitting a proposal for a course can write to the
secratary of the conference at segreteria@pluto.linux.it. Please include a
detailed abstract.

Your abstract will necessarily include:

* Your name and e-mail;
* A brief description of your past involvement in Free Software;
* A concise summary (one page maximum) of the course you are willing to hold.

The Globe and Mail reports “Microsoft Corp. and the Justice Department reached a tentative agreement Wednesday to settle the historic antitrust case against the software giant, and state attorneys general were reviewing the terms of the deal, according to people familiar with the talks.”

Linux Weekly News has its weekly edition up, and this week’s highlight is a retrospective on the Halloween Documents of 1998, in which Microsoft first acknowledged the threat Open Source posed to it.

Anonymous Reader writes “ReactiveLinux.com: “We’re officially releasing our press release for the new name change.

Thanks goes out to the entire community for supporting us since February 2001.

And by the way, the forums will return soon, under the new name as well.”

Read the press release”

Kelly McNeill writes “After doing a bit of investigative work, I’ve learned that the U.S. government still maintains many software-licensing contracts with Microsoft. It’s bad enough that the U.S. government has any dealings with the anticompetitive company, but the fact that Uncle Sam is also Microsoft’s largest customer is a gross misappropriation of funds.”