Red Herring Magazine reports that Microsoft’s Craig Mundie says Microsoft has no beef with Open Source, but rather with just the GPL.

Mark writes “I have always followed the principal of use the right tool for the right job. Upon that principal, I have my network using Linux for the servers and Cisco hardware for switches, routers and firewalls.

It is not an issue of Commercial versus Open Source. It is an issue of the best tool. Read more” from maximumlinux.org.

O’Reilly.net rports that Dr. Dobb’s TechNetCast will be covering the live debate between Microsoft’s Craig Mundie and Red Hat’s Michael Tiemann, along with some other descritions of evsnts at the Open Source convention.

Kelly McNeill of OSOpinion writes: “With a few clicks of a mouse and some words to the crowd at DefCon, Russian software programmer Dimitry Sklyarov destroyed Adobe’s plans for the eBook. Adobe Software had created the eBook software as a means for book publishers to translate and distribute books in a secure digital format. The Adobe eBook was vying to become a new standard in digital publishing, allowing publishers and authors to protect their investment and financially benefit from books that could be read on a laptop, PDA or other digital device.”

Kelly McNeill writes “Recently I witnessed a raging debate in various Macintosh news groups regarding a hot topic: What signifies a true Macintosh application? Those included in the debate were not talking about the Macintosh that most of us know but rather, Apple’s next generation operating system, Mac OS X in all its incarnations. The debate has created a lot of heat on both sides. With Darwin, XWindows, as well as Classic, Cocoa and Carbon APIs, Mac OS X’s applications come in strange new flavors these days.”

MandrakeSoft this evening sent out an e-mail message discussing some of the issues surrounding its initial public offering. They would also like community members to share tips and strategies on how to go about purchasing shares on the Euronext exchange within their own countries. Securities-savvy users can contribute to a forum set up by the company, and those posts will eventually be edited into a HOWTO document. Read on for the message:Mandrakesoft IPO – How to buy shares ?

We apologize for any confusion due to the disclaimer on the IPO web
site. The
disclaimer was not well written and the English version has been
updated to
more accurately reflect the process. A disclaimer is required only
because
there are certain countries where an Initial Public Offering by a
foreign
country is strictly regulated. There is no law that forbids the buying
of
shares, it is just more difficult to do so in an Initial Public
Offering.

The offering will be closed on Friday at 5PM Paris time. On Monday we
will
receive the results of the IPO and send it to you; on the 3rd of August
the
shares will be publicly traded. There is no limitation to buy/sell and
be
informed about the company after the IPO because it will no longer be
an
initial offering.

We would like to build a “Howto buy MandrakeSoft shares”. Since the
“Marché
Libre” is not very well known it may be difficult to locate brokers for
purchasing shares in this market. If you have any information about
buying
shares on the Euronext Marché Libre in your country (and the costs for
doing
so) please let the Linux-Mandrake community know on MandrakeForum:
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1128&lang=en We’ll collect
all
the responses and build a HowTo.

The Industry Standard: “Microsoft’s Craig Mundie, the
software giant’s point person in its contentious
debate with the open-source coding movement,
tried to build a better rapport with 2,000
developers at the O’Reilly Open Source
Convention here on Thursday.

He didn’t get a warm reception.”

The first conference for European BSD users will take place November 9 – 11 in Brighton, UK. From the BSDCon Europe Page: “The conference format will be similar to BSDCon, with two days of technical sessions on the Saturday and
Sunday. However, instead of tutorials the first day of the conference will be used for focus group meetings.” Included in the announcement is a call for papers; check the home page for more information.

“Linux 2.2 is now firmly into maintainance state. Patches for neat new
ideas
belong in 2.4. Generally new drivers belong in 2.4 (possibly in 2.2 as
well
after 2.4 shows them stable). Expect me to be very picky on changes to
the
core code now.”

2.2.20pre8
o       Merge DRM fixes from 2.4.7 tree                 (me)
o       Merge sbpcd fixes from 2.4.7 tree
o       Merge moxa buffer length check
o       Merge bttv clip length check
o       Merge aha2920 shared irq from 2.4.7 tree
o       Merge MTWEOF fix from 2.4.6 tree
o       Merge serverworks AGP from 2.4.6 tree
o       Merge sbc60xxx watchdog fixes from 2.4.6
o       Merge lapbether fixes from 2.4.6
o       Merge bpqether fixes from 2.4.6
o       Merge scc fixes from 2.4.6
o       Merge lmc memory leak fixes from 2.4.6
o       Merge sm_wss fixes from 2.4.6
o       Resync AGP support with 2.4.6
o       Merge epca fixes from 2.4.5
o       Merge riscom8 fixes from 2.4.5
o       Merge softdog fixes from 2.4.5
o       Merge specialix fixes from 2.4.5
o       Merge wdt/wdt_pci fixes from 2.4.5
o       ISDN cisco hdlc fixes                           (Kai Germaschewski)
o       ISDN timer fixes                                (Kai Germaschewski)
o       isdn minor control change backport              (Kai Germaschewski)
o       Backport ELCR MP 1.1 config/PCI routing stuff   (John William)
o       Backport isdn ppp fixes from 2.4                (Kai Germaschewski)
o       Backport isdn_tty fixes from 2.4                (Kai Germaschewski)
o       eicon cleanups                                  (Armin Schindler)
        | Armin can you double check the clashes were ok
o       Fix an ntfs oops                                (Anton Altaparmakov)
o       Fix arp null neighbour buglet                   (Dave Miller)
o       Update sparc version strings, pci fixups        (Dave Miller)
o       Define CONFIG_X86 in 2.2 as well as 2.4         (Herbert Xu)
o       Configure.help cleanups                         (Steven Cole)
o       Add MODE_SELECT_10 to qlogic fc table           (Jeff Andre)
o       Remove dead oldproc variable                    (Dave Miller)
o       Update starfire driver for 2.2                  (Ion Badulescu)
o       8139too driver update                           (Jens David)
o       Assorted race fixes for binfmt loaders          (Al Viro)
o       Update Alpha support for older boxes            (Jay Estabrook)
o       ISDN bsdcomp/ppp compression fixes              (Kai Germaschewski)

Interactive Week: “The rollout of new Internet top-level domain names hit a speed bump
this week with the filing of a class-action lawsuit alleging that the
operators of the new dot biz domain name are running an illegal lottery
by charging customers for the chance to register a dot biz name.”