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Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 21 August 2001

Author: JT Smith

“Havoc to send mail introducing Kjartan to Leslie
and the mystery guest so that we can get feature list
for 1.4.1 press release.”

Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 21 August 2001
From: Daniel Veillard 
To: foundation-announce@gnome.org
Cc: foundation-list@gnome.org
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 18:19:30 -0400


Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 21 August 2001
          =================================================


Presents:
=========

    Havoc Pennington (chairing)
    Daniel Veillard  (minutes)
    Miguel de Icaza
    Owen Taylor
    Federico 
    Tim Ney          (director)
    Maciej Stachowiak 


Regrets:
========

    Jim Gettys (regrets)
    Bart Decrem (regrets)

Missing:
========
    John Heard
    Dan Mueth        
    Raph Levien


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

   - we need a second release coordinator for Gnome-2.0, Havoc will ask for
     volunteers
   - the announcement of Tim Ney joining as foundation director should
     be available already
   - opening a bank account for the Foundation, giving signature authorization
     and other administrativia
   - gnome.org Account Policies is published, feedback should go on the
     foundation lists we will make a check point in a few weeks.

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

  ACTION: Havoc to send Leslie ATK press release draft
   => DONE

  ACTION: Federico to put email/shell/cvs policy into gnome-docu
    and mail to foundation-list.
   => Done

  ACTION: Havoc to contact Keith Packard to find out more information
    about interop hothouse at ALS/X Technical Conference.
   => Done, the event is completely unplanned :-


Actions:
========

  ACTION: Havoc to sent the Advisory Board list to the Board,
          looking for completion of the member liason.
   => Waiting for update from the director.

  ACTION: John to try to get a copyright assignment form and procedure
          for the GNOME Foundation.
   => Still pending.

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

  ACTION: Havoc to email Sander to see if he has a suggestion for
          a replacement release coordinator.
   => Put on the agenda

  ACTION: Havoc to send mail introducing Kjartan to Leslie
    and the mystery guest so that we can get feature list
   for 1.4.1 press release.
   => Pending 

  ACTION: Owen to check details of email/shell-account/cvs policy.
   => Pending

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

  ACTION: Mjs to build the "release coordinator duties"

  ACTION: Havoc to send mail seeking a release coordinator

  ACTION: Tim to send a mail to Rob Gingell to get the lawyers paid

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

 - approved minutes from last meeting

 - release coordinator
   Get a list of "release coordinator duties"
   We need someone with a thick skin ...

 - email/CVS/etc. policy
   Federico sent this to the foundation list
   http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/docs/gnome-org-policies/index.html

 - status update from Tim, including the following topics at least:
   - bank resolution (to open account) - appended also
     Seems Silicon Valley Bank is nice since represented both in 
     the Silicon Valley and Boston
     Signers will be: Dan, Miguel and Tim
     => Approved, using money from the account needs Board approval

     Account opening will come from Ximian
     We still need a Tax ID number
     Two first planned expenses are Tim's salary and LWE.
     => Tim goes to organize the booth and the Board will pay the travel

   - revising advisory board list, talking to people on board
     Tim will organize with Havoc to get contacts
     
   - can we figure out what is up with the lawyer;
     Asked the Law firm to send the invoice. It was not paid so far
     and we can't make process untill this is fixed.

   - getting accessibility press release sent out at the
     appropriate time
     => we have a final copy appoved, but we need to have it
        sent and published on the Web site at the right time
        Tim will organize this

 - interoperability and ALS; getting something going here
   Havoc will try to get ideas and topic to hack on there.
   It's in the beginning of November Aukland (CA)
   http://linuxshowcase.org/
   People planning to go there should probably start looking for
   travel arrangements.


Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Red Hat Network http://redhat.com/products/network/
veillard@redhat.com  | libxml Gnome XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/

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Category:

  • Open Source

DDoS effort ill-placed

Author: JT Smith

LinuxSecurity: “It’s no secret that the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is the biggest security threat
to commercial networks since the advent of the virus. In fact, hackers are now using viruses as
the data delivered by zombies, further complicating DDoS attacks. And there will be no end to
the creative ways hackers will use DDoS methods to take major Web servers down.”

Category:

  • Linux

AirSnort WEP cracking utility released

Author: JT Smith

Anonymous Reader writes: “A utility to crack the encryption scheme included in the
802.11 wireless network protocol has been released. It can
be found at http://airsnort.sourceforge.net.

I have verified that it indeed works, and have used it
to crack WEP keys in an average of 4 hours.”

Category:

  • Linux

Microsoft and Kool-Aid test

Author: JT Smith

ZDNET: “Clapping his hands in rhythm,
Ballmer, drenched in sweat,
strutted back and forth to an
increasingly throaty reception from the audience:

“Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers,” he
repeated, working himself into near catatonia “Yes!!!”

Consumers nix Microsoft Passport

Author: JT Smith

Kelly McNeill writes: “Research firm Gartner aid Internet consumers are passing up the Microsoft Passport sign-in feature, fearing that using it could lead to a loss of their privacy. According to Gartner, consumers are giving Passport the cold shoulder, however. In a survey, the New York-based firm said just 11 percent of U.S. online consumers believe Passport will improve their online experience. Gartner added that 8 million Passport users signed up for the service primarily to gain access to other Microsoft services like Hotmail e-mail”

Category:

  • Programming

Linux4.TV sponsors hope for all kinds of set-top development

Author: JT Smith

By Grant Gross

Jon Buetler of Century Software thinks the sky is the limit for the Linux4.TV project, which officially launched this week.

Buetler is director of new business development for Century Software, a partner with National Semiconductor in the Linux4.TV set-top box project. The project is looking for developers and business partners to develop applications for set-top boxes based on the National Semiconductor Geode SC1200 integrated processor, and early features will include Web browsing and a DVD player, but Buetler doesn’t rule out partnering with gaming developers or a TiVo-style recording device developer.

In fact, Buetler called out both TiVo and Playstation maker Sony, saying both companies could add functionality to their current products by participating. On a TiVo-like project, he says: “To my knowledge, the application hasn’t been written for this device. However, I would suspect with all of the people I’ve talked to, that’s high on their list. I’d like TiVo to get involved and be one of the resources for this project.”

And although the Linux gaming console project Indrema project died quickly, Buetler says “everything is possible” when asked about the possibility of gaming. “With launching the Web page, we wanted to make sure we had the basics there for a set-top box, meaning hardware and the middleware APIs,” he says. “Now that it’s in place, we hope some of these gaming companies will come forward. You hear about the Playstation 2 already running Linux; this may be a good platform for Sony to use for their next-generation box.”

In the short time the project’s been announced, no gaming partners have come forward that Buetler’s aware of. “I think it’ll come, it really makes sense.”

Century Software, which has been developing PC-to-Unix connectivity software for more than 16 years, isn’t a new Linux convert. About three years ago, the company’s founder and CEO, Greg Haerr, started a project called Microwindows, a replacement for X-Windows in embedded Linux systems. And partner National Semiconductor has used Linux to provide Internet access to Brazilian residents.

With the Linux4.TV project, National Semiconductor’s business interest is fairly obvious, selling set-top boxes using the Geode processor. Century Software plans to make money by selling engineering and consulting services related to the project, Buetler says, as well as custom applications development and some proprietary software that partners can use with the boxes.

Several of the pieces of the project, such as Century Software’s WebMedia Set-Top Box GUI and the SP1SC10 development platform already work and are being used by the sponsors’ partners, and interested developers can order the hardware from National Semiconductor. The two sponsors will showing off a set-top box box at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo next week.

“Once you have the hardware, you can download all the projects that are available today and actually start producing commercial-grade set-top box applications,” Buetler says. “The software’s available today, and it’s a good starting point for people.”

Buetler says he’s been happy with the interest in the project in its first few hours of release. The project caught a little flack on Slashdot for requiring registration to download the software, but Buetler says the registration hasn’t seemed to stop people from looking around. The sponsors are using the registration to keep track of the interest in the project, he says.

Buetler’s hope for the project is that it’ll become a central repository for information and development for Linux set-top projects. “The good news is it’s a big market, and there’s a lot of people out there trying to do a lot of little things,” he says. “Linux4.TV is to help jump-start these people and get them all working on the same playing field.”

Category:

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CVSup infrastructure

Author: JT Smith

Michael Lucas at Onlamp “explains CVSup and the infrastructure required to distribute the FreeBSD source code globally. He also relays information on the use of CVSup from its creator John Polstra.”

Category:

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European Hotmailers can dial in for e-mail

Author: JT Smith

ZDNet reports that Microsoft is adding a feature to its European Hotmail operation which will allow users of hotmail in Europe to use their mobile phones to dial in to read their email.

Microsoft releases tool to lock IIS systems

Author: JT Smith

Network World Fusion reports that Microsoft has released another piece of software to fight against problems bugs in its software have caused. IIS lockdown is intended to block vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s IIS webserver from being exploited.

Something missing from Open Source

Author: JT Smith

Kelly McNeill writes “After going to Source Forge and seeking out an open source GNU CAD project, I found that one existed, but that it had remained dormant for over a year, with no serious effort underway. I cannot function professionally without a CAD graphics program. Neither can any of the world’s architects and engineers. So while the computer geek in me revels in open source, it is astounding that it continues to be useless for so many technical people. If I thought that I could take on such a project, believe me, I would certainly try.”

Category:

  • Open Source