Interactive Week says that Open Source databases need more “essential reliability and management features” before they can compete with “commercial” databases.

In the latest issue of mailing list stats and topics posted to kt.zork.net: A Mozilla discussion, a few words on sorting packages for the CD distribution, and problems with the Linux tulip driver.

Slashdot: “According to their press release, Covad Communications Group, Inc. is
preparing to file for Chapter 11 protection for restructuring. One of the most important
points in the release is Covad Communications Group, Inc.’s operating companies,
which provide DSL services to customers, are not expected to be included in the
court-supervised proceeding and will continue to operate in the ordinary course of
business without any court imposed restrictions,’ meaning that the operating companies which deal with
service providers (such as Speakeasy, who have endorsed Covad’s action) will continue to operate
unfettered by the court restrictions, and end-user services should be unaffected. Hopefully.”

The Industry Standard: “One thing about Eric Schmidt’s new position at
the helm of the popular search-engine service
Google strikes him as funny: He got the job
because of his business acumen – not his
technical expertise.

“Normally I think of myself as a technologist first,”
Schmidt said in a telephone interview late
Monday. But “the technology strategy is just fine”
at Google.”

CNET News.com: “Corel on Tuesday said that it has agreed to purchase SoftQuad Software in a move to
boost the Internet resources in its desktop-publishing applications.

In a stock swap worth approximately $36 million, Corel is buying a company with a solid
grounding in XML (Extensible Markup Language), a key technology by which individuals and
companies can create and exchange content on the Web. The language works not only with text,
but also with audio and video data, and is a component of online transactions.”

InfoWorld: “McAfee.com announced Monday that it has been granted a patent by the
U.S. Patent Office covering the company’s method of delivering software as a service through
Web browsers.

The patent covers both the business and technology models currently used by McAfee.com
to deliver its security, management, and optimization services, Srivats Sampath, CEO of
McAfee.com, said in an interview with the IDG News Service. The technology, which
McAfee.com has been working on since 1998 according to Sampath, integrates a series of
scripts, software objects, and back-end systems, with a mark-up language like HTML or
XML to deliver up-to-date applications through a standard Web browser, he said.”

The building of the network of HAL2001, the international hacker event
on the campus of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, has
begun. HAL2001 will be the biggest open-air hacker event in the world
with 2500 visitors who will sleep, work and collaborate in tents. The
conference program consists of 100 speakers from 15 countries.

The conference and festival will start officially at Friday 10th
august and will end on Sunday 12th august. The network that is being
built starting Monday 6th August has a 1 Gb uplink to the internet and
a glass fibre backbone. Every private tent on the campsite will be
connected to this network. The huge amount of computers is powered by
generators with a total capacity of 1,5 megawatts, enough for 25,000
light bulbs.

Main topics of the conference will be security, privacy, intellectual
property issues and various political issues related to computer
networking.

Some of the highlights of the conference are:

Hacker Ethics 1984 - 2001, a panel discussion with Emmanuel Goldstein
(2600), Rop Gonggrijp (Hack-Tic) and Andy Mueller-Maguhn (CCC).

Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP, will speak about voice encryption.

A panel of security experts discusses Distributed Denial of Service
(DDoS) attacks.

John Gilmore will address copy prevention versus freedom of speech.

Drive-by-hacking, a demonstration of the poor security of wireless
networking.

Presentation by 'Mixter' of automated exploit tools.

The full program can be found at:

http://www.hal2001.org/

Hackers at Large is the sequel to the Galactic Hacker Party (1989),
Hacking at the End of the Universe (1993) en Hacking in Progress
(1997) which all took place in the Netherlands.

We’re not sure if this is the case, but it seems that the weekly summary of Midgard-related news has been replaced by a monthly progress report. The August issue discusses documentation issues, the progress of a 1.4.2 bugfix release, and announcements of new applications.

The State of Midgard - August 2001

Midgard is a freely-available solution for managing content on web and
WAP services. It is also a toolkit for building dynamic applications
to power eBusiness and Information Management processes. Midgard has
been built and is actively maintained by a global group of software
professionals working together in this Open Source project.

              http://www.midgard-project.org/http://www.nemein.com/midgard/http://www.aurora-linux.com/EN/produits/midgard/midgard3/

The software

Midgard currently works very well with its PHP4 bindings. While few
functionalities have been added since 2000, the feature set is quite
enough for almost any Web application development needs, especially by
embedding external systems using integration standards like XML-RPC.

The feature set includes:

     * Easy and documented PHP4 Application Programming Interface (API)
     * Tree-based content storage
     * Attachment of meta-data to all content objects
     * Multiple levels of personalization
     * Replication between servers for clustered environments and staging
     * Separation of layout, content and site logic
     * Support for editorial workflow and approval mechanisms
     * Multilingual support and localization
     * Transparent file and attachment management
     * Completely Open Source and based on common standards

The 1.4.1 release made in March 14th 2001 is the current stable
version of Midgard. However, it suffers from some severe bugs, and so
usage of the latest CVS version is adviced. See:
http://nightlybuilds.midgard-project.org/snapshots/

The core developers are working on a bug fix 1.4.2 release, that
should appear around late August - early September, depending on how
quickly some segmentation fault issues are tracked down. See:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=midgard-dev&m=99710702212898&w=2

However, the 1.4.2 release should be the last of the 1.x series, as
the development focus is being moved to the Midgard 2 series.

The first commercial implementations of Midgard 2, particularly its
internal search system have already been made in May 2001 by Nemein
Solutions. The experiences from these implementations prove that parts
of Midgard 2 are ready for production use.

The next anticipated release of Midgard 2 search implementation is
scheduled for late August.

Installation

With the coming 1.4.2 release, the installation process seems to be
easier than ever. Although already simple to install on popular Linux
platforms like Red Hat and Mandrake, more work would be needed to make
binary packages available to the user community.

Documentation

Midgard's documentation project has been on hold since late 2000,
causing the documentation online to be outdated and lacking in
information on newer features.

Partly this is because the project has been looking for new
documentation tools, but also because there are no paid documentation
authors. As in most Open Source projects, the actual development in
Midgard progresses quite well but resources for doing the
documentation work are harder to find.

Applications

During spring 2001 Repligard has finally become a viable packaging
platform, and so some early Midgard applications have already appeared
into the market.

   Asgard is an improved administration interface to Midgard developed
   by Aurora. It has been included in the midgard-data package since
   the 1.4 release.

   CommenText is a collaborative document authoring system for
   transforming discussion into structured documents. See
   http://www.commentext.org/

   DocStore is Nemein's Web-based document management solution for
   project workgroups. See http://www.nemein.com/products/docstore/

   MidHoo is a Midgard implementation of a Yahoo!-like link directory
   application produced by Link-M. See
   http://home.link-m.de/phr/midhoo-2.0.2a.tar.bz2

   Nadmin Studio is HKLC's advanced content management interface to
   Midgard that is available as a commercial application. Nadmin Studio
   has made Midgard suddenly a viable content management solution for
   even large companies, and has an extensive reseller network around
   the world. See http://www.nadminstudio.com

   TimeTracker is Nemein's project management, invoicing and work
   tracking application that uses Midgard as the back end data storage
   system. See http://www.nemein.com/products/timetracker/

   YAMP (Yet Another Midgard Packager) is front end to Repligard for
   packaging and moving Midgard data from Link-M. See
   http://users.nehmer.net/~classic/yamp-1.0.1.tar.gz

Community

The Midgard community has gained in numbers and activity during the
year. The mailing list volume on the Midgard user list has climbed
from 440 in May 2000 to 921 in May 2001.

There is also a Midgard user group in Germany. Its previous activities
have included localization of some Midgard material to German, and
running a Midgard booth in LinuxTag, the largest Free Software event
in Germany.

Also, Nemein Solutions has started running a series of Midgard
seminars and installfests in Finland. A Repligard seminar was held by
Alexander Bokovoy on June 21st, and there will be an installfest on
Aug 14th.

The Midgard Web site is still sadly lacking upgrades. However, it has
recently been moved from Teraloop's hosting to Envida's network. This,
and the upgrade to the latest Midgard version on the server means that
making new developments on the site should be easier for anyone
willing to take the task.

Core developers

With the Midgard core developer team, the situation has changed quite
much from last year. Most are not any more paid by Aurora to work full
time on Midgard. However, almost everybody still involved in the
project. While this somewhat reduces the number of resources available
for the development work, it is also a great opportunity for new
volunteers to get involved.

   Henri Bergius is kept busy by his work at Nemein Solutions. He would
   like to be more involved in the project, but at the moment can't
   find time for it. However, he tries to commit resources from his
   company to the project whenever available.

   Alexander Bokovoy is now working at SaM-Solutions, a software
   outsourcing company based in Belarus. In the Midgard project he
   works on core libraries and the PHP4 bindings.

   Ami Ganguli has recently moved to Finland for his position in Nemein
   Solutions. He continues to work on Midgard 2 as part of his work
   duties.

   Emile Heyns is currently enjoying a well earned vacation from the
   project. However, he still works on bug and issue reports as the
   come.

   Torber Nehmer provides bug tracking services for the Midgard 1.4.x
   series, and works for the Midgard hosting provider Link-M. In his
   spare time, he is also involved in Midgard 2 development.

   Armand Verstappen works in the Midgard hosting provider and
   consultancy Envida. He is also involved in managing Midgard's
   network services and is visible on the mailing lists.

The Midgard Project Ry

The Midgard Project Ry (MPRy) is a nonprofit organization founded in
Finland on May 2000 to support the Midgard project. The registration
papers on the organization were submitted to the National Board of
Patents and Registration of Finland in June 2000. The board requested
changes to MPRy's charter in order to approve the registration.
However, due to personal matters Henri Bergius, the chairman of MPRy
was unable to call together a general meeting of the organization,
and so the registration period has expired.

Because of this, new volunteers will be needed for running the
organization, and getting the registration process going again. There
is still obvious need for MPRy, as the project's network
infrastructure requires some financial support, and the intellectual
property rights of the project need to be stewarded.

Volunteers interested in helping out with MPRy can contact Henri
Bergius or the Midgard mailing list on the matter.

Commercial viability

Midgard has continued to gain commercial viability through the
year. As Midgard itself is a platform, and not a sellable product,
many kinds of add-on businesses have been made possible.

There are companies around the world that make their revenues through
selling consulting and hosting services and applications based on
Midgard. These include Aurora, CGX, Envida, Hexagon, Hong Kong Linux
Center, Lanifex, Link-M, Nemein Solutions, Netrex, and others.

With more and more Midgard-powered sites and information systems
popping up every month, the services market keeps gaining
attractiveness. Currently most providers of Midgard services are
small, quite locally operating businesses, but it is only a matter of
time before larger IT consultancies begin to notice the possibilities
of the market.

In this summary: Python 2.1.1 released, the first alpha release at Python 2.2, patches to make ExtensionsClass compile with 2.2a1, and yet another “endless and at times vitriolic flame war” over PEP 238 in comp.lang.python.

This is a summary of traffic on the python-dev mailing list between
July 16 and July 31 2001.  It is intended to inform the wider Python
community of ongoing developments.  To comment, just post to
python-list@python.org or comp.lang.python in the usual way. Give your
posting a meaningful subject line, and if it's about a PEP, include
the PEP number (e.g. Subject: PEP 201 - Lockstep iteration) All
python-dev members are interested in seeing ideas discussed by the
community, so don't hesitate to take a stance on a PEP if you have an
opinion.
        
Summaries are archived at:
         
<http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/>
<http://www.amk.ca/python/dev/>

And following close behind the grossly delayed July 4-15 one,
here's the python-dev summary for July 16-31.

Two Python releases came out during this period.  As usually happens
in the interval surrounding a release, there were two kinds of
discussions on python-dev: a few lengthy ones thrashing around an
issue, and lots of little short ones to resolve a single bug or issue.

--amk


Python 2.1.1 released
=====================

Python 2.1.1, a bugfix release, was issued on July 20th as announced
by GvR.  Thomas Wouters was the release manager, and did a fine job of
backporting patches from the 2.2 CVS tree. 
        http://www.python.org/2.1.1/

2.1.1 makes a slight modification to Python's license for the sake of
GPL compatibility, so there should no longer be any impediment (if
there ever was) to 2.1 finding its way into Linux distributions.
Roswell, the new Red Hat beta, already includes Python 2.1.1, and it
should also make its way into Debian testing before too long.

The first alpha release of Python 2.2 was also issued during this
period, on July 18.
        http://www.python.org/2.2/
        
2.2a1 includes new support for iterators and generators, plus the
usual pile of bugfixes, of course.  The source distribution for 2.2a1
was taken from 'descr-branch', the experimental branch in CVS
containing significant changes to the implementation of Python's
object model (PEP 252 and 253).  Guido is working on a tutorial for
these changes:
        http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html

As usual I'm writing up an explanation of the changes in 2.2:
        http://www.amk.ca/python/2.2/

Neil Schemenauer posted some patches to make ExtensionClass compile
with 2.2a1, and ran the MEMS Exchange's basic unit tests successfully;
this amounts to 3569 test case over roughly 18,000 lines of code, so
this is a good sign.
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016494.html

No one else reported any problems with the descr-branch changes, so on
July 31 Tim Peters announced that the descr-branch would be merged
back into the trunk and the branch brought to a close.  That was done
a day or so later.


Division
========

I came back from vacation to find comp.lang.python filled with an
endless and at times vitriolic flame war over PEP 238, "Non-integer
Division".  It seems to have been triggered to some degree by GvR
posting a proposed patch, which gave the impression that the issue was decided
and the solution set in stone:
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016174.html

The resulting firestorm didn't touch python-dev much, so I don't
need to summarize them.  They did lead to a revised version of PEP 238,
discussing many of the suggestions and ideas that were raised:
        http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html


Parrot
======

Another lengthy thread started when Eric S. Raymond reported on 
some discussions from the Open Source Conference:
        "The Perl people are receptive -- indeed, some of them are
        actively pushing -- the idea that their new bytecode should
        not be Perl-specific.  Dan Sugalski, the current lead for the
        bytecode interpreter project, has named it Parrot.  At the
        Perl 6 talk I attended, Chip Salzenberg speculated in public
        about possibly supporting a common runtime for Perl, Python,
        Ruby, and Intercal(!)."
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016406.html

Guido didn't immediately rule the idea out:
        "Obviously, just as the new design is aiming at Perl 6, it
        would be aiming at Python 3.  Nothing's impossible these days,
        so I am keeping an open mind.  I expect that in addition to
        the bytecode, the entire runtime architecture would have to be
        shared though for this to make sense, and I'm not sure how
        easy that would be, even if Perl is willing to be flexible.
        Most of Python's run-time semantics are very carefully defined
        and shouldn't be changed in order to fit in the common
        runtime."
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016413.html
        
The resulting discussions ranged over a number of topics: regex
implementations, Python's current virtual machine, the proposed Perl6
virtual machine, how to support both Python and Perl semantics at the
same time, and the mechanics of standards committees.  The only
concrete outcome of all this chatter was that Raymond will write an
architectural comparison of the existing Python and Perl bytecodes.

It's far too early to say if anything will come of this, so a common
VM should be viewed as an interesting, but not particularly likely,
possibility for now; when more details of the Parrot VM's design
become clear, the idea will no doubt resurface.


cgitb.py
========

?!ng resurfaced after a lengthy absence, and proposed the cgitb module
for addition.  Demoed at IPC9, cgitb.py sets an exception-handling
hook using sys.excepthook that produces a nicely formatted traceback
instead of just letting the script cause an HTTP 500 'Internal Server
Error'.  For your debugging convenience, the traceback also includes
the local variables at each level of the stack.

The module itself isn't controversial, but ?!ng's suggestion of adding
an 'if' to site.py to automatically enable it was.  Writing errors to
standard output instead of standard error, and in particular sending
them out to a potentially hostile Web user, made most people nervous.
The consensus was to add the module, but authors of CGI scripts would
have to choose to enable the formatted tracebacks, instead of having
them automatically enabled.


Frank Willison
==============

On July 31st, we heard that Frank Willison, the editor-in-chief at
O'Reilly, had died suddenly the day before.  Paul Prescod posted the
news, adding an eloquent tribute:
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016479.html

Tim O'Reilly wrote a memorial on the O'Reilly Web site, and there's
also a page of comments from Willison's friends and acquaintances.  
        http://www.oreilly.com/news/frank_0701.html


Random bits
===========

Panu A Kalliokoski wrote 'Selecting', a module containing an
abstraction for writing asynchronous servers, much like asyncore but
claimed to be easier to use.
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016000.html

Paul Prescod reported on the existence of a Python port to the Sony
Playstation 2.  It exists, but unfortunately isn't publicly available.
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016365.html
        
Moshe Zadka asked if anyone has copies of old versions of Python
hanging around.  He's found 1.2, but would really like versions
preceding 1.0.

Discussion of the file encoding directive (covered in the previous
python-dev summary) continued, but there was no convergence toward a
solution.  It looks like this issue will be dropped for a while.

IPv6 support for the socket module was committed, and various minor
problems came up.  All were quickly fixed.
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016216.html
        

Unanswered questions
====================

Some questions were posted that deserved answers, but didn't get any
(in public, at least).  I'll misuse my editorial power in an effort to
nudge someone into action.

Martin Sjögren wondered why the Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS and
Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS macros don't take an argument specifying a variable
to save the thread state to.  He said he needed this, but didn't explain why.
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016190.html

Andrew MacIntyre, who's working on an up-to-date OS/2 port of Python,
noticed that the parser doesn't use Python's memory allocation hooks
to allocate parser nodes.  When he tried modifying the parser code to
use the allocation hooks, the resulting interpreter worked but took a
massive performance hit.
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016129.html


Related Links
=============
 
Python-dev archives:
        http://www.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Browse/Threaded/python-dev
 
Python project page on SourceForge:
        http://sourceforge.net/projects/python
 
Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs):
        http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/

From a press release at Business Wire: “Silicon Integration Initiative Inc. (“Si2″), the leading open-source EDA standards consortium,
announced today the formation of the LEF/DEF (Library Exchange Format/Design Exchange Format) Governing Board, charged with responsibility for
product change management in this OpenEDA.org open source community.
The governing board has the responsibility of reviewing and approving all future releases to LEF/DEF. The board will meet regularly to review
contributions to LEF/DEF, and is now accepting submissions from the open source community.”