– By Grant Gross –

For what’s supposed to be a slow news month, at least until the LinuxWorld Expo, it was a busy week for those of us who covered Open Source-related activities. Big news this week, even in Big Media, was that Princeton Professor Edward Felten’s team finally presented their paper describing their defeat of the Secure Digital Music Initiative’s proposed anti-copying technologies.

Someone might ask what Felten’s work has to do with the Open Source community. Actually, there are several intersections, one being the interest of conducting science in the open, instead of behind closed doors, as the recording industry would prefer. And the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with which the recording industry first threatened the Felten team, has also been used to go after people who create Open Source-related programs, such as the DeCSS DVD code.

While the Felten team’s presentation was a victory against the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, the law could still be used to sue other creators of legitimate research and technologies. The DMCA could even be used to stop the media from reporting on such efforts.

Good news, bad news for the Linux desktop

The great news came in the form of NewsForge editor in chief Robin Miller’s report from Largo, Florida, where hundreds of city workers are using Linux on their desktops and making out just fine, thank you. So much for the argument that the secretaries can’t figure out Linux.

The not-so-good news is that Loki Software, which ports PC games to Linux, has filed for bankruptcy. Apparently, the company owes a former employee some money, but founder Scott Draeker says he plans to keep the company open.

Making their debuts

Linux Mandrake 8.1Beta1 was released for downloading and testing.

KDE 2.2 was also released. It’s the real deal, not the beta version.

The latest version of the Ogg Vorbis digital music compression format was also released, for all you digital music connoisseurs out there.

Ahhh, darn

A U.S. federal appeals court rejected a Microsoft appeal that could’ve indefinitely delayed further proceedings in the government’s antitrust case against our favorite monopolist. We weep for you, Bill.

New in NewsForge

Stories that first appeared in NewsForge this week:

News editor Tina Gasperson reports on Bryce Wilcox-O’Hearn’s effort to do a side-by-side comparison of Open Source licenses. The reviews have mostly been positive, saying Wilcox-O’Hearn’s table is a good reference.

Gasperson also reported that Linux hardware company Penguin Computing laid off 25 percent of its staff.

Business columnist Jack Bryar cheered Red Hat for refusing to provide long-term guesses on its profits to stock analysts.

Anonymous Reader writes, “MaximumLinux.org’s Adam Lang has posted part 1 of his series on how to create a simple dynamic content web site using PHP. The article is geared towards newbies and uses his personal site as an example of the code is action.” From the article: “Currently the site is designed in a ‘template’ format. The template separates the HTML table definition from the actual data being displayed. For the record, this is sort of what Cascading Style Sheets and XML do. The advantage of using XML is that your data is also accurately described and can be enhanced for other programs. The drawback is that cascading style sheets are not universal and can cause problems for some browsers. So, I took the approach of going with the format that is better for more people.”

Noon Monday 20 August 2001 at 41st Street and Fifth Avenue, before the
New York Public Library, on the Island of Manhattan, there will be a
rally
to free Dmitry Sklyarov.

Note that this is not an LXNY event, but rather the fifth of a series
of
rallies, whose Lead Organizer and First Contact is Leonid Gorkin at
lgorkin@excite.com or lgorkin1@nyc.rr.com.

Do not bring any sticks to this rally. There is a New York City regulation forbidding sticks at gatherings.

The New York City police officers who told us of this regulation were
parfit gentle in their courtesy.

There have been and will be rallies in about twenty cities.

http://freesklyarov.org/calendar

Much of the organizing of New York City Rallies to Free Dmitry take
place
on the fairuse mailing list of NYFairUse, which list may be joined at

http://www.nyfairuse.org

To download a flyer go to:

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/dmitry-links

For more information:

http://freesklyarov.org
http://zork.net/mailman/listinfo/free-sklyarov
http://eff.org
http://www.dibona.com/dmca
http://www.templetons.com/brad/free.html

This week’s rallies are particularly important. Dmitry’s next court
date
is Thursday 23 August 2001. Before that a grand jury may hand down
charges. Our rallies and all the work of propaganda and education have
been important in reducing the threat facing Dmitry. Dmitry could
still be
prosecuted, despite Adobe’s half back-down, and he could be convicted,
in
which case he may be imprisoned for years.

Why do we rally at the New York Public Library? Because the
Association of
American Publishers has declared that they plan to close down all free
public libraries. Their chosen tool is the Digital Millennium
Copyright
Act. The DMCA outlaws fair use of books that you, or the library, have
bought and paid for:

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36584-2001Feb7.html
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-6545588-0.html
http://www.visi.com/~tneu/pro-book.html
http://www.macfergus.com/niels/dmca/index.html
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Sklyarov
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Sklyarov/boucher_ashcroft_dmca.html
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/July01/ginsparg.archive.ws.html
http://arXiv.org/blurb/pg01unesco.html
http://xxx.lanl.gov
http://front.math.ucdavis.edu
http://www.baen.com/library/home.htm
http://www.lightandmatter.com/article/article.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/30/opinion/30LESS.html
http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/08/07/lessig.html
http://www.immaterial.net/page.php3?id=44
http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/articles/issue12/LU12-ebenmoglen.html
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu
http://cryptome.org
http://www.ala.org

We need marchers and leafleteers and copiers of leaflets and designers
of
leaflets and propagandizers and lobbyists and lawyers and coders and
water
carriers and publicists and diplomats. Come to the Rally and help!
Come
to the Rally and meet allies!

Dmitry Sklyarov today remains under threat of criminal prosecution
under
the DMCA. Come to the Rally and help get Dmitry free! Free to go home
and
free to do his work.

Jay Sulzberger
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York’s Free Computing Organization.
http://www.lxny.org

Another reminder, the second wizards of OS conference is being held this October in Berlin. The full details are in the release on lwn.net.

SysAdmin: “UNIX systems are especially talkative and log considerable amounts of data. Many administrators at first find digging through all those logs annoying, and some abandon the practice of checking logs for that reason. However, when system problems arise, those admins are left wondering what occurred and why. Because there is so much data to sift through on a regular UNIX system, efficiency must be sought to make sense of all of this data and keep a watchful eye on your system.”

BusinessWeek:
“Why did Gates & Co. seem so hamstrung during the antitrust trial? A new book, Breaking Windows, blames an internal feud between the Windows and Internet camps.”

ftobin writes, “xmlhack reports that the W3C has issued a Last Call Working Draft of the W3C Patent Policy Framework, and is seeking public comment. Patent and other intellectual property concerns are a frequent topic of discussion on the xml-dev mailing list, and some previous brushes with patents (notably on P3P, XForms, and XPointer) have raised community concerns about the terms on which these specifications can be used.”

LinuxPR: “IBM today announced IBM eServer Developer Domain, a new Web resource for server developers. The site offers developers everything they need to know about using, optimizing and developing for IBM eServer products.”

LinuxPR: “Bynari Inc. announced today the availability of version 2.1 of Insight, an Outlook compatible groupware client for Linux. Insight allows Linux and UNIX workstations to operate in Microsoft exchange enterprises. Insight provides similar features to Outlook while remaining RFC compliant.”

As reported on Slashdot, Intel has decided to tell people that VIA’s DDR P4 chipset is something that consumers shouldn’t use. Intel says VIA has no license to produce P4 compatible chipsets.