Linux.com interviews Matthew O’Keefe: ”

From 1990 until May 2000, Matthew O’Keefe taught and performed research in storage systems
and parallel simulation software as an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at
the University of Minnesota. Unable to find a storage solution for the complex data they were
gathering, Matt’s entrepreneurial vision gave way to the creation of Sistina Software. Founded in
May 2000, Sistina Software creates storage clustering software for Linux, including the Global File
System and the Linux Logical Volume Manager.”

A trio of security updates from Red Hat for a potentially remotely exploitable buffer overflow in fetchmail (details), issues arising from a recent security audit on xinted (details), and sendmail’s local exploit root access bug (details).

“There is a argument handling problem which allows a local attacker to
gain access to the uucp group. Using this access the attacker could
use badly written scripts to gain access to the root account.” Updates, more information available at Linux Weekly News.

A short item at The Register reports that Intel has set Decemer 7 as the last date on which the company will accept orders for its Pentium III chip.

From The Register: “August has been a good month for Taiwan’s mobo makers if no one else in the PC
business. On average, they report last month’s sales were up 20 per cent on July’s
figures.

The boost appears to have come from Intel’s i845 chipset, though boards based on
its predecessor, the Rambus-based i850, seem to have done quite well too,
Taiwan’s Commercial Times reports.”

ComputerWorld: “Databases were once the forgotten
stepchild of the open-source family. Companies like Red Hat
Inc. included database software with their Linux distribution
disks, but the main focus was on the operating system, the
kernel and the graphical interface. A database was just
another add-on, like a Minesweeper clone. But now,
companies and users are scrambling to realize the value
locked up in quality, open-source database software.”

Augustus writes “LinuxHardware.org has just published its latest article. This one focuses on the Seagate Cheetah X15 36LP SCSI hard drive and covers the technology, noise, heat, size, and performance. Check it out for the fastest hard drive scores ever posted.”

MozillaZine has comments from Asa Dotzler regarding the status of the 0.9.4 release, which was scheduled for Friday, September 7: “The mozilla.org Drivers have decided to get some
additional coverage on the new “-turbo” mode, and we have added a few days to get it turned on by default in
the win32 installer builds (don’t worry, you can still uncheck the checkbox in the install routine). This and a few
other late fixes have us targeting early to the middle of [this] week for the release.” A different perspective on the delay can be found at MozillaQuest.

– By Grant Gross –

A Netscape spokeswoman has confirmed that the company has laid off the Mozilla project manager, but claims the layoff won’t affect Netscape’s commitment to the Open Source browser project.

Last Tuesday, MozillaQuest.com reported that Netscape had laid off Mitchell Baker, the chief lizard wrangler, and possibly other contributors to the Mozilla project.

Netscape spokeswoman Catherine H. Corre responded to a couple of NewsForge emails by saying that Baker had been laid off as part of a “restructuring” late last month at Netscape parent company AOL during which 1,700 positions were eliminated. However, CNet’s catty Rumor Mill column suggested Baker was fired by Netscape, not laid off.

The difference is probably small consolation to Baker, who continues to be listed as the Mozilla project’s manager on the “Who We Are” page at Mozilla.org. An update to the original MozillaQuest story says Bug 96747 was changed from saying Baker had left Mozilla.org to saying Baker is gone from Netscape. Apparently not wanting to talk about being laid off, Baker, understandably, didn’t return an email from NewsForge asking about her future at Mozilla.org.

Corre says no other Mozilla contributors were laid off from Netscape during the restructuring at AOL. “There were no other layoffs in the Mozilla group and no changes at Mozilla,” she writes. “This lay-off was part of the overall restructuring that happened last month at Netscape-AOL … and is not reflective of any sort of policy change at
Netscape with regard to Mozilla. Netscape remains fully supportive of the
current Mozilla organization, projects and philosophy.”

“Linux is used on only 2% of all desktop PCs, compared with 92% for
Windows. But Linux may get a boost on the desktop next month when Boston-based start-up Ximian Inc.
releases Version 1.0 of Evolution, its open-source, Microsoft Outlook-like e-mail and calendaring software.

Ximian’s founders hope that end users will flock to Linux on
the desktop, given Version 1.4 of the company’s Linux
graphical user interface (GUI), which is based on the
open-source GNU Network Object Model Environment
(GNOME), along with its Red Carpet tool for automating
Linux software management.” Full story at ComputerWorld.