The Register reports that VIA has released a low-cost, high-performance chipset to go with Intel’s Pentium 4 processor in spite of threats of legal action by the chip manufacturer.

Network World Fusion reports that a “flaw in the Network News Transport Protocol service in Microsoft’s Windows NT and Windows 2000 could allow attackers to paralyze the server,” using a malformed message to the service.

– by Tina Gasperson –
Bryce Wilcox-O’Hearn, aka Zooko, has put together a simple chart that in just a few lines displays the characteristics of each of the most popular Open Source licenses. The table, which is currently in version 0.8.3, makes it easy to see in a glance how the licenses compare to one another.He posted the news to the license-discuss mailing list, which has more than its share of lawyers. Everyone knows lawyers don’t like simplicity, so someone was bound to jump on Wilcox-O-Hearn’s license reference and trample it a bit. “Oh my! I most definitely do not want to discourage you, and the chart is not
a bad idea, but your commentary is written as if you ARE dispensing legal
advice. You use phrases like ‘a court might decide that’ and ‘it has no
legal effect’ too frequently,” wrote a list member with the letters J.D., L.L.M, after his name.

Wilcox-O’Hearn then added this comment to the table: “Apparently the only way to be safe against the accusation of having given “legal advice” is
to write with such ambiguity and obfuscation that nobody can learn anything from what you’ve written. Presumably this culture of fear increases the
demand for lawyers’ services. I value speaking plainly, and I feel that plain discussion of software licenses is much needed. In particular, this document
would be useless if all specifics were removed in favor of cautious generalities. Therefore, I simply reiterate that I am not a lawyer and that I am not
acting as one in describing my understanding of the law in simple terms.”

Legalese aside, most of the responses to the chart were positive, with constructive suggestions for improvement. And the reference seems to be the only one available. A couple of years ago, there was an Ask Slashdot query posted looking for just such a comparison, and while a heated debate ensued about the merits of the BSD license vs. the GPL, no one offered a direct answer to the question.

Wilcox-O’Hearn is a hacker for Mojo Nation, a “peer-driven content distribution technology.” His personal web log is located at Zooko.com.

He’s looking for more comments and suggestion on the Quick Reference for Choosing a Free Software License and says he will release new, improved versions as those comments come in. You can email him at zooko@zooko.com or post your criticisms in the discussion forum below.

ZDNET: “Or are there problems lurking that Microsoft
needs to know about? That’s the question I was asked late last week, and by none other than
Microsoft’s Jim Allchin, the man responsible for getting the next-generation OS out the door.

What did I tell him? Yes, Windows XP seems ready to go–but some concerns remain. Here are
the two I think are most important: ease of upgrading and compatible drivers. ”

LinuxToday: “Some argue that Linux has no future on the desktop and will never reach beyond the internet server.
Linux fans are sure that the free operating system is now ready for the workstations and
mission-critical business servers. We wanted to be sure – and nearly 10,000 Heise Online readers
filled in our online inquiry”.

LinuxSecurity: “Encrypted e-mail has flopped in the
enterprise.

More than five years after standards were
created and vendors rushed to support
them, virtually no one secures e-mail
today, despite widespread concerns
about prying eyes and corrupted data.”

“I’m writing this in AbiWord (which would be better were it to be endowed with a cursor, which in the version shipped with
Red Hat 7.1 it does not appear to have, but which otherwise looks very nice, as it always has).

What’s more, I’m running it atop Gnome. More still, I’m running Gnome atop Red Hat 7.1.

It’s been a very unusual week. (Made more unusual with the sudden appearance, just now, of aforementioned cursor.
Much nicer.)” More at LinuxPlanet.

The Register: “A DoS vulnerability with the installation and management software used on HP’s line
of commercial print servers has been reported.

The potential flaw, which HP has not so far publically acknowledged, is interesting
not because it is particularly devasatating (it isn’t) but because it may explain
problems our readers are having with printers of late.

According to a posting on security mailing list BugTraq, HP JetDirect devices
configured using the JetAdmin web interface fail to set a password for Telnet access
when the administrator password is chosen.”

The Register: “The unnamed man allegedly wrote the Leave worm, which affects machines already
infected with the with Sub7 Trojan horse program, and failed to cause much damage
or spread widely when it first appeared in June. However variants of the worm were
created that posed as emailed security warnings from Microsoft and this may be
why the authorities have taken a particular interest in tracking down the perpetrator.”

PRNewswire: “The month of July saw an additional 486,205 downloads of Gnotella version
0.9.9, as well as 156,219 downloads of the new version 1.0, released on
July 26, 2001, for a total of 642,424 downloads in the month of July alone.
Also in July, there were 1,760,493 page views of the http://Gnotella.com
website, which was updated with the release of version 1.0 to include
additional information and forums in which users may exchange questions and
information.
Released on March 2, 2001, version 0.9.9 of the Gnotella P2P application
had been downloaded a total of 2,626,674 times directly from the Gnotella.com
Web Site.”