From Slashdot: “Id has just released Return to Castle Wolfenstein for Linux multiplayer client test, download here for the full version, or here if you’ve already installed the windows version.”

From Debianplanet: “A ReiserFS netinst (installs base system and then allows you to install your dist of choice over the ‘net) iso is now available.”

– By Grant Gross –

A controversy over an apparent GNU GPL violation was settled quickly this week, although other questions remain about the the Free Software Foundation’s role in enforcing the GPL.

As you remember, the Free Software Foundation sent out a press release September 14, saying FSM Labs had violated the GPL with its patented RTLinux distribution. Early Monday, Victor Yodaiken, CEO of FSM Labs, responded by saying the accusation may have been a misunderstanding, and he questioned whether the FSF was mixing its GPL guardian role with its activism against software patents. At any rate, by late Monday, the two sides came to an agreement.

The FSF also put out a position paper recently describing its defenses of the GPL. However, some leaders of the Open Source community question whether the FSF is helping or hurting the Open Source movement. Other Open Source leaders, it should be noted, still see a vital role for the FSF.

In other GPL violation news, Microtest’s DiskZerver was also accused this week of violating the license.

Red Hat’s small loss

Linux company Red Hat reported a $100,000 quarterly loss after adjusting for those expensive one-time charges. Red Hat’s local newspaper noted that Red Hat holding its own was cause for “cautious optimism.”

New this week

KDE 2.2.1 was released this week, causing ZDNet to proclaim that the Linux desktop rivals Windows.

The Open Source Initiative approved four new Open Source licenses this week, just a couple of weeks after public criticism over how long the group was taking to evaluate license applications.

Microsoft ‘opens’ Hailstorm

Microsoft, apparently bowing to some criticism, announced this week it was “opening” its Passport and Hailstorm Web services. Others noted, however, that the announcement really didn’t mean much, with Microsoft still requiring partners to include proprietary technology in their .NET-compliant Web services. So much for openness.

Speaking of Microsoft, the new Nimda worm plagued Microsoft servers and email this week. So much for security.

Protecting your privacy

With talk in the U.S. Congress of allowing law enforcement agencies to spy on Web users without warrants, we thought the LinuxWorld review on how to install GnuPG was particularly timely. In fact, the leader of the GNU-Darwin project argues that using encryption programs such as GnuPG is your patriotic duty as a way to combat terrorism.

New in NewsForge

Stories NewsForge reported first this week:

Dan Berkes tries to get U.S. Senator Ernest Hollings to explain his reasons for introducing the vague and ominous-sounding Security Systems Standards and Certification Act. Hollings, apparently, doesn’t want to talk about it.

The FSF’s Richard Stallman warns the United States against taking away freedoms after the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon September 11.

Linus: “Ok, I released a real 2.4.10, let the fun begin..”

Linux-2.4.10
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 11:54:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Linus Torvalds 
To: Kernel Mailing List 


Ok, I released a real 2.4.10, let the fun begin..

This is an uncomfortably large changeset, largely because I was away in
Finland twice during the 2.4.9->2.4.10 development, and partly of course
because I've tried to aggressively sync up especially with Alan.

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.

Give it hell,

                 Linus

-----
final:
 - Andrew Grover: ACPI update
 - Al Viro: block devices..
 - Andrea Arcangeli: fix list manipulation bogosity
 - Trond Myklebust: 64-bit file locking fixes
 - Brad Hards: USB CDC ethernet
 - Chris Mason: reiserfs speedup
 - Robert Love: re-merge AMD 761 GART support that was lost in -ac merge
 - Adam Richter: check pci_module_init() return value

pre15:
 - Jan Harkes: make Coda work with arbitrary host filesystems, not
   just filesystems that use generic_file_read/write
 - Al Viro: block device cleanups
 - Hugh Dickins: swap device lock fixes - fix swap readahead race
 - me, Andrea: more reference bit cleanups

As annouced on Slashdot, LimeWire (a Java Gnutella client) has become Open Source under the GNU Public License.

From Slashdot: “Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire), who called for global backdoors in encryption products in a floor speech last week, is readying legislation . This is another push for backdoors – but it seems that Gregg wants them to be used cautiously, only with permission from a US Supreme court appointed commission, subject to normal search and seizure rules.”

From TheDot: “Benjamin Reed wrote in to tell us that he has helped out RedHat’s KDE users and put together KDE 2.2.1 RPMs for RedHat 7.0 and 7.1.” URLs of http and ftp sites carring the packages. Ben adds: “Coming soon: RedHat 6.2 packages — who needs a life? =).”

From the Raleigh News and Observer via Newsalert: “In a quarter when nobody was expecting financial greatness from Red Hat, the open-source software company proved it could hold its own despite lagging sales. For the second quarter of its fiscal year, Red Hat reported a loss, adjusted for one-time charges, of $100,000, or break-even per share, compared with an adjusted loss of $4 million, or two cents per share, during the year-ago quarter.”

From LWN, the -pre14 release of Linux 2.4.10 has been released. Changes are in the extended copy.

pre14:
 - Richard Gooch: devfs update
 - Andrea Arcangeli: clean up/fix ramdisk handling now that it's in page cache
 - Al Viro: follow up the above with initrd cleanups
 - Keith Owens: get rid of drivers/scsi/53c700-mem.c file
 - Trond Myklebust: RPC over TCP race fix
 - Greg KH: USB update (ohci understands USB_ZERO_PACKET)
 - me: clean up reference bit handling, fix silly GFP_ATOMIC allocation bug

pre13:
 - Manfred Spraul: /proc/pid/maps cleanup (and bugfix for non-x86)
 - Al Viro: "block device fs" - cleanup of page cache handling
 - Hugh Dickins: VM/shmem cleanups and swap search speedup
 - David Miller: sparc updates, soc driver typo fix, net updates
 - Jeff Garzik: network driver updates (dl2k, yellowfin and tulip)
 - Neil Brown: knfsd cleanups and fixues
 - Ben LaHaise: zap_page_range merge from -ac

pre12:
 - Alan Cox: much more merging
 - Pete Zaitcev: ymfpci race fixes
 - Andrea Arkangeli: VM race fix and OOM tweak.
 - Arjan Van de Ven: merge RH kernel fixes
 - Andi Kleen: use more readable 'likely()/unlikely()' instead of __builtin_expect()
 - Keith Owens: fix 64-bit ELF types
 - Gerd Knorr: mark more broken PCI bridges, update btaudio driver
 - Paul Mackerras: powermac driver update
 - me: clean up PTRACE_DETACH to use common infrastructure

pre11:
 - Neil Brown: md cleanups/fixes
 - Andrew Morton: console locking merge
 - Andrea Arkangeli: major VM merge

pre10:
 - Alan Cox: continued merging
 - Mingming Cao: make msgrcv/shmat check the queue/segment ID's properly
 - Greg KH: USB serial init failure fix, Xircom serial converter driver
 - Neil Brown: nsfd/raid/md/lockd cleanups
 - Ingo Molnar: multipath RAID personality, raid xor update
 - Hugh Dickins/Marcelo Tosatti: swapin read-ahead race fix
 - Vojtech Pavlik: fix up some of the infrastructure for x86-64
 - Robert Love: AMD 761 AGP GART support
 - Jens Axboe: fix SCSI-generic queue handling race
 - me: be sane about page reference bits

pre9:
 - Greg KH: start migration to new "min()/max()"
 - Roman Zippel: move affs over to "min()/max()".
 - Vojtech Pavlik: VIA update (make sure not to IRQ-unmask a vt82c576)
 - Jan Kara: quota bug-fix (don't decrement quota for non-counted inode)
 - Anton Altaparmakov: more NTFS updates
 - Al Viro: make nosuid/noexec/nodev be per-mount flags, not per-filesystem
 - Alan Cox: merge input/joystick layer differences, driver and alpha merge
 - Keith Owens: scsi Makefile cleanup
 - Trond Myklebust: fix oopsable race in locking code
 - Jean Tourrilhes: IrDA update

pre8:
 - Christoph Hellwig: clean up personality handling a bit
 - Robert Love: update sysctl/vm documentation
 - make the three-argument (that everybody hates) "min()" be "min_t()",
   and introduce a type-anal "min()" that complains about arguments of
   different types. 

pre7:
 - Alan Cox: big driver/mips sync
 - Andries Brouwer, Christoph Hellwig: more gendisk fixups
 - Tobias Ringstrom: tulip driver workaround for DC21143 erratum

From LinuxCare.ch: “After purchasing LinuxDA, the OS can be downloaded immediately from some server in Canada. A box with the same package
on CD and some handbooks will be sent to the buyer via mail. The setup tool installs the desktop syncing software and unpacks
the ROM file which afterwards needs to be transfered to the Palm Pilot’s flash memory. Note: Linux DA is only available for
the Palm Pilot IIIx/xe and the Palm Vx models.”