O’Reilly.net: “You do not need Passport to develop .NET applications that work with the existing e-commerce
infrastructure. For example, .NET’s System.Net.WebRequest is perfectly happy talking to an https server.
.NET’s web forms can sit behind a web site that is protected with SSL. The System.Security.Cryptography
namespace is full of support for strong crypto.”

OpenProjects.net, an IRC network intended to facilitate the free exchange of information and ideas, and to provide a platform for the development of Open Source projects, has launched a new set of services and daemons to provide better stability and a better working environment for our thousands of users.

For the last 18 months, a small group of volunteers has put thousands of hours of its time into putting together an IRC daemon suitable for the development of Open Source projects, and the free exchange of information, without the problems associated with conventional IRC networks. After many difficult periods, and a lot of effort, the new code-base was launched without any serious setbacks at 01:00 Universal time on Monday, July 30th, 2001.

The list of improvements for users is available at www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~aps100/ docs/dancer-user-guide/ dancer-user-guide.html, and should help both current and new users adapt to the differences in this code-base from conventional IRC networks.

Among the highlights of the new code-base:
    * The addition of the +c channel mode, which will prevent colours and control characters from being displayed to a channel with that mode set.
    * Operators are treated in a revolutionary new way, where very specific individual privileges can be assigned to each staff member.
    * Built-in flood protection to reduce problems caused by floodbots, a problem that often hampers development channels.
    * Improved stability of services (ie. NickServ and ChanServ).

A partial list of participants and contributors to this project, as well as a partial list of projects based on OpenProjects.net is available at www.openprojects.net/ acknowledgements.shtml, and we wish to express our sincere gratitude and appreciation to everyone who has put so much work into accomplishing this exercise in international Open Source development.

We hope to encourage the use of OpenProjects.net by Open Source projects seeking a stable and welcoming platform and a wealth of great minds to help in their development processes, and to encourage the free exchange of information and ideas.

OpenProjects.net can be accessed by logging in with any IRC client to irc.openprojects.net.

For further information, do not hesitate to drop by in channel #OpenProjects, or contact us at
OpenProjects.net Staff: support@openprojects.net.

MozillaQuest Magazine:”Look for Netscape 6.1 soon. The directory for Netscape 6.1 already is in place on the Netscape FTP server. However, at publication time the Netscape FTP server NS 6.1 directory is not open for public downloading. Meanwhile Netscape denies that Netscape 6.1 is on its way. Current plans are to build the Netscape 6.1 browser-suite from Mozilla Milestone 0.9.2, which was released June 29, 2001. Netscape 6.1 Preview Release 1 was released June 13, 2001, more than six weeks ago.”

– By Grant Gross –

Microsoft v.p. Craig Mundie — yes, the same guy who ripped on the GNU General Public License and the Open Source business model back in May, faced an Open Source crowd this week and walked away unfazed.

Mundie, in his May speech, questioned the Open Source business model, suggested Open Source development leads to forking, and said Open Source “has inherent security risks and can force intellectual property into the public domain.” But on Thursday, at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, Mundie said the press blew his May speech out of proportion. He claimed “Open Source isn’t the issue” that Microsoft has a problem with. Instead it’s that viral GPL, which, at least according to Microsoft, forces a company to release everything it creates under the GPL, if it uses a GPLed product.

More reporters than just those of us covering Open Source development for a living noted that Microsoft seems to be talking out of both sides of its mouth. Here’s the lead paragraph of that Red Herring story: “Microsoft thinks Linux is a cancer. Wait, strike that. Microsoft thinks open source is un-American. Wrong again. Microsoft is ‘concerned’ about a certain open source software license.”

You use words like “cancer” and “un-American” to describe Open Source products, then you blame the press for blowing things out of proportion. Nice.

Mundie was received at OSCon either with “open arms” or “he didn’t get a warm reception”, depending on which reporter was writing the story.

Poole reflects

An interesting article from BusinessWeek showed up, about how Yankee Henri Poole fared at French Linux distro MandrakeSoft. The thesis of the article: It’s easy for U.S. executives to “ruffle Old World feathers.”

Dubya a fan of Linux?

Well, kind of. One report this week said the White House Web site was running on Linux. Then, later reports had only the Akamai cache running Linux. Oh well.

Free that Russian!

Adobe, which had cooperated with the U.S. FBI in the arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, asked this week that he be released. Sklyarov was arrested earlier this month for allegedly violating the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, for making a program that allowed users to back up Adobe’s eBook format and to read eBooks in non-supported operating systems, such as Linux.

But the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco refused to release Sklyarov after negotiating with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. As a result, a second round of protests is planned for Monday, July 30.

New in NewsForge

Stories unique to NewsForge this week:

News editor Tina Gasperson reminds Linux User Groups about the newbies sitting in the back and offers some pointers about how to keep them coming back.

Business columnist Jack Bryar compares the business plans of Linux companies SuSE and Mandrake and finds that both are still searching for a business plan that makes money.

We also report that two sites that were hosting any remains of the Indrema gaming platform development are shutting down.

The story’s at Mozillaquest.com: “Look for Netscape 6.1 soon. The directory for Netscape 6.1 already is in place on the Netscape FTP server. However, at publication time the Netscape FTP server NS 6.1 directory is not open for public downloading. Meanwhile Netscape denies that Netscape 6.1 is on its way. Current plans are to build the Netscape 6.1 browser-suite from Mozilla Milestone 0.9.2, which was released June 29, 2001. Netscape 6.1 Preview Release 1 was released June 13, 2001, more than six weeks ago.”

Noon Monday 30 July 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 second of a series
of
rallies, whose Lead Organizer and First Contact is Leonid Gorkin
lgorkin@excite.com or mailto:lgorkin1@nyc.rr.com.

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

— From Jay Sulzberger , Corresponding Secretary LXNY:

“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 sits in jail today. Come to the Rally and help get him
out!

“I neither confirm nor deny that at the Rally Mr. Bones and Mr.
Interlocutor
will lead certain passers-by and some shills in a short round of
Fourier
analysis, present a didactic piece called Pig-Latin, Patents Royal,
Imaginary Lines upon the Earth, and Groups Generated by Reflections,
based
on the standard work of Lewis Carroll, and also forcefully demonstrate
by
direct manipulation little known advantages of Free Software to certain
folk who might otherwise walk past without finding out where and when
we
next meet.”

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

TheStandard: “Remember Bluematter, Project Nigel or Project Madison? Hardly anybody does. Those were the obscure names assigned to the last schemes for moving the major record labels into digital downloads.”

Slashdot: “ARIN has announced the last call for public comments on its proposed IPv6 address allocation policy. This last call for public comments will expire on 23:59 EDT August 03, 2001.”

Slashdot: “Amiga`s CEO Bill McEwen announced in a keynote speech held prior to the AmiWest 2001 show that new consumer PPC motherboards, AmigaOS 4.0 PPC and also AmigaOS for x86 will ship by November 1.”

Slashdot: “Citing the need for up-to-date digital copyright laws, the Canadian government is starting hearings into our own version of the US’s DMCA. Do you still wonder why people protest at the G-8 and other such summits?”