From Slashdot: “It’s been a long time since /. ran this story, but a few days ago the Open Watcom Project made it’s first public release. It’s only a binary patch targeted at 11.0a/b owners, but it’s still an important roadmark on the way to the planned full open source release of both the Watcom C/C++ and Fortran compilers. Most programmers, particularly game programmers, should remember the amount of prestige id software’s DOOM generated for the Watcom compiler and the sudden proliferation of 32-bit DOS games with the tell-tale “DOS/4GW” startup banner. The download is available for free, but Open Watcom requests a $1-$50 donation to help support the development effort required to remove code Sybase doesn’t own and to prepare the open source release.”

– By Grant Gross –

It was a week of releases in the Open Source world from a new version of the Mandrake Linux distribution, to a business-focused KDE initiative, to a much-anticipated update to Mac OS X, to a new version of Linux itself.

Let’s start with the Linux 2.4.10 release, which began hitting the Web when Linus Torvalds sent an email announcing it last Sunday. Torvalds told readers to “give it hell,” and outlined these changes: “In addition to the VM changes that have gotten so much attention there are architecture updates, various major filesystem updates (jffs2 and NTFS), ACPI updates, and tons of driver merges. And, of course, the min()/max() changes.”

Over at Mandrake, version 8.1 of the desktop-friendly Linux distro was announced Thursday. Among the new features: The latest versions of the KDE and Gnome GUIs and MandrakeFirstTime, an “easy-to-use wizard that helps to setup desktop environment, choose a theme and configure email settings.”

Apparently, not everyone was impressed with the new Mandrake offering, however. Adequacy.org, a sometimes-critic of the Open Source culture, reviewed Mandrake 8.1 and compared it with the new Windows XP. The reviewer’s main complaint is that Mandrake doesn’t run Windows applications. Take a look if you want to see what a lot of uninformed outsiders think about Linux in general, even if the article is a parody.

Apple’s BSD-based Mac OS X limped toward an upgrade this week, with rumors that 10.1 would be released this weekend. NewsForge’s sister site, SourceForge, has added 10.1 to its compile farm, meaning developers will be able to test drive their 10.1-compatible applications at SourceForge.

And finally, to end our new products wrap-up, the crew at KDE announced the KDE::Enterprise initiative this week, an attempt to promote KDE to corporate desktop users.

Nasdaq drops its $1 rule

Good news this week for a handful of Open Source companies with stock hovering at or below the $1 range: They’re no longer in danger of being delisted from Nasdaq. The tech-heavy stock exchange has suspended its rule that stocks must stay above $1 or face getting booted from the exchange. Probably a good move for Nasdaq, or who’d be left?

Microsoft watch

A couple of news items from everyone’s favorite monopolist this week. The new judge in the Microsoft antitrust case apparently thinks there are more important things going on in the world. She’s encouraging Microsoft and the government to settle the case quickly.

Better news from the Gartner Group. The tech analyst is encouraging corporate network admins to replace Microsoft IIS servers because they just aren’t secure enough. Welcome to the Open Source revolution, Gartner! Microsoft, of course, is standing by its products.

New in NewsForge

Stories that appeared first in NewsForge this week:

Robin “roblimo” Miller says it’s time for Windows developers to switch to Linux because Microsoft often drives competing developers of Windows-compatible software out of business, while Linux users are begging for more commercial applications.

Tina Gasperson writes about a potential GPL violation by Empower Technologies, makers of embedded LinuxDA. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this one.

LimeWire, the Gnutella file-trading program, has been GPLed by the company also called LimeWire. The company’s CEO says he hopes to create a standard for Gnutella apps.

The Midgard Community has released a new version of the Midgard Application Server. The release contains Midgard core libraries, scripting language bindings for PHP4, Web application server for the Apache platform and Asgard, the Web-based administration interface.

The 1.4.2 release provides major bug fixes to the Midgard platform,
and is recommeded as an upgrade to all production servers. New
features in 1.4.2 include:

   * Handling of article objects has been improved on both sorting
     and event management
   * The new mod_midgard2 Apache module now supports caching of
     PHP-generated pages
   * Installation is improved by usage of the midgard-config tool
     for universal configuration management
   * The PHP3 bindings have been rendered obsolete

The key features of the Midgard 1.4 Application Server include:

   * Easy and well documented Application Programming Interface (API)
   * Efficient management of Web content using a hierarchical topic
     system
   * Separation of layout, content and site logic
   * Support for editorial workflow and approval mechanisms
   * Attachment of metadata to all content objects
   * Multilingual support and localization
   * Replication for clustered setups and staging
   * Flexible user and group management

ABOUT MIDGARD

Midgard is a freely-available solution for managing content on Web,
Extranet and Intranet services. It is also a toolkit for building
dynamic applications to power eBusiness and Information Management
processes. Midgard has been built and is actively maintained a global
group of software professionals working together in this Open Source
project.

Midgard is a powerful toolkit for managing online information. Writing
applications and functionalities to the platform is done using the
easy-to-learn PHP scripting language. All interfacing with the system
is done via standard Web interfaces, and no special tools are needed
for developers or content authors.

Midgard works on most common UNIX platforms, including Linux, FreeBSD,
Mac OS X and Solaris. Prebuilt binary packages are available for some
Linux platforms (including Red Hat, Debian and Mandrake), and the
system can be installed from sources to most other environments.

Commercial support, applications and services for the platform are
available from a range of companies worldwide.

LICENSING

The Midgard core libraries are distributed under the GNU Library
General Public License, a license which permits the software to be
freely used so long as it is dynamically linked or the user can relink
it to new versions of the libraries. This is the same license used by
the Linux C libraries. This licensing scheme qualifies Midgard as free
software developed with an Open Source model.

The Midgard-based administration tools and usage examples in the
Midgard packages are distributed under the X Consortium license, which
doesn't impose any conditions on modification or redistribution of
source code or binaries other than requiring that copyright/license
notices are left intact. The new administration site, Asgard, is
licensed under GPL.

Official Documentation is licensed GFDL which supports the Free Usage
principles defined by the GPL for code.

COMMUNITY

Bug reports and enhancement requests on Midgard 1.4 can be submitted
to the Midgard Bug Tracker at:

    http://bugs.midgard-project.org

Users are also encouraged to join the discussion on the Midgard user
mailing list. To subscribe, send an empty email message to:

    user-subscribe@midgard-project.org

CONTACT INFORMATION

    Alexander Bokovoy, Midgard 1.x branch manager
    a.bokovoy@sam-solutions.net

    http://www.midgard-project.org

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/linux-2.4/. Intermediate diffs are available from http://www.bzimage.org.

2.4.10-ac1
o Merge with Linux 2.4.10 tree
– Drop VM changes
– Drop raw/block I/O changes
– Drop out O_DIRECT
– Basically remove the seriously unsafe stuff and
keep the -ac VM
– I’ve not applied the obvious fixes so ACPI and joysticks
are still icky – that is for ac2
o Fix the noncompile of SMP OOSTORE kernels (me)

2.4.9-ac18
o Fix aic7xxx and ncr53c8xxx compiles (Erik Andersen)
o Next PPC merge (Paul Mackerras)
o Updated patch-kernel (Dave Gilbert)
o Fix pgtable_cache_init escape on S/390 (Russell King)
o Fix alpha build (Dave Gilbert)
o Further scsi ifdef fixes (Arjan van de Ven)
o Revert softirq changes

2.4.9-ac17
o Fix vfree error on swap off (Hugh Dickins)
o Further USB serial fixups (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
o ISDN cleanups – flags, includes, license texts (Kai Germaschewski)
o Fix bitfields in struct documentation (Tim Jansen)
o Next batch of MODULE_LICENSE tags (Arjan van de Ven)
o Fix the gendisk bugs (me)
o Endian fixes for cisco hdlc over isdn (Bjoern Zeeb,
Kai Germaschewski)
o PPPoE memory corruption fixes (Chris Mason)
o RSS accounting fix (Hugh Dickins)
o ide-tape fixes for HP colorado (Pete Zaitcev)
o Fix APM disable handling (Randy Dunlap)
o Fix mousedev behaviour with new gpm (Vojtech Pavlik)
o Add support for the ib700 watchdog (Charles Howes)
o Fix sysreq build fail (me, Junio)
o S/390 tree warning fixes (Martin Schwidefsky)
o Update the IBM serveraid driver (Keith Mitchell)
o Apply usb list_del fix (Georg Acher)
o Further midibuf fixes (Adrian Cox)
o Fix toshoboe pci initialisation (Adam J Richter)
o pci registration fixes for tlan (Adam J Richter)
o NFS lock reclaiming fixes (Trond Myklebust)
o Add Belkin F5D5050 USB ethernet idents (Dane Johnson)

From Slashdot: “CompTIA (the Computing Technology Industry Association), the people who made the A+ and I-NET+ certifications, have made a Linux certification . I just received an e-mail a day or two ago that the test is out of beta. This seems pretty important seeing how CompTIA is non-vendor specific.”

Anonymous Reader writes, “Adequacy.org has an early review of Linux Mandrake 8.1. The columnist touts the almost head-to-head releases of Mandrake and Windows XP as the ‘final battle for the domination of the computer industry’, and his conclusions don’t make comfortable reading for fans of Mandrake.” Editor’s note: Is it a serious article or not? You decide.

From DebianPlanet: a warning that the latest libc in ‘Sid’ in unstable to the point of breaking many applications, “libc6 2.2.4-2 (which is in sid/unstable) is broken, and breaks Konq/Mozilla (and thus Galeon, etc). This is a known issue and has been for quite some time; so please don’t add to the 30-odd RC bugs currently filed on libc6 for the same thing. Or Mozilla, or Konq, for that matter. It’s a known issue, and the maintainers have been working on it for a few days. We didn’t post anything, as we assumed it would quickly get fixed.”

From Advogato: “It looks like the W3C is considering changes to their patent policies that would allow recommendations to be covered by patents provided under “Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory” (RAND) licensing terms. For information on how this affects you, go to this analysis of the proposed policy and how it may affect Free Software.”

From Slashdot: “In Australia there are essentially only two major backbone suppliers; eventually all traffic either rides on Telstra (Part govt. owned) or OptusNet (part of C&W Optus). According to this page OptusNet has gotten itself on spews.com blacklist, potentially causing issues for a large percentage of Australian Internet users.”

proclus writes, “Only GNU-Darwin AbiWord has 200 excellent royalty-free fonts from
the ports. This
release includes hebrew fonts and bidirectional support for carefree native
language editing. GNU-Darwin AbiWord is
simply the best word processor available for the Apple platform. GNU-Darwin AbiWord
developer, Francis James Franklin, has also been hard at work on this great word
processor. Be sure to check out
his latest work too. Get the
latest
AbiWord release now. Read the package installation instructions here.”