Salon.com opens its article on multimedia file sharing by calling Napster’s recent woes “the largest service outage ever in online history.” While RIAA’s lawsuit has hobbled the popular file-trading service, this hasn’t stopped users from embracing alternatives during Napster’s downtime. Indeed, writes the author, such developments “ought to be keeping the RIAA awake at night.”

Anonymous Reader writes “In a recent study, embedded systems market analyst Venture Development Corporation found that although certain segments of the embedded market have been slow to adopt Microsoft’s “Windows Embedded” operating systems, the software giant is beginning to gain ground with Windows CE (Pocket PC) in the consumer electronics segment. Full story at LinuxDevices.com.”

Linus Torvalds has a few words on 2.4.7-pre9, reprinted from the kernel list. kernel.org and the usual mirrors should have it by now; read on for the message from Torvalds.

                  I'm getting ready to do a 2.4.7, but one of the fixes in 2.4.7 is a nasty
                  SMP race that was found and made it clear that using an old trick of
                  having a semaphore on the stack and doing "down()" on it to wait for some
                  event (that would do the "up()") was a really bad idea.

                  This kind of trick was used in the kernel vfork() implementation, and also
                  in block device "wait for request completion". I've fixed both with a new
                  and fairly simple "wait for completion" infrastructure, but I'd like
                  especially SCSI device driver writers to check their own drivers as a
                  result before I make the final 2.4.7.

                  I've changed all generic code, so drivers are all expected to compile and
                  work. However, some SCSI drivers use the semaphore trick in their own
                  code, and I've not mucked with that. It's not worth worrying about too
                  much, as the race is basically impossible to hit (famous last words), but
                  I wanted a heads-up and people to give it a quick look. I also wanted to
                  have people who actually have the hardware in question to verify that my
                  untested (but on the face of it obvious) changes are indeed working.

                  So please give it a quick spin,

                                  Linus

The Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), an
independent, vendor-neutral, non-profit organization dedicated to enabling Linux
for enterprise and carrier-class functionality, today announced the addition of two
software engineers well-known in the open source community for their Linux
expertise and ability to develop sound code.
Zach Brown and Randy Dunlap join the OSDL team of seasoned Linux
professionals supporting open source development worldwide by lending their
expertise to a wide range of projects, providing analysis and recommendations
throughout the project cycle, while also contributing work of their own to the Linux
community.

“OSDL is fortunate to have added this depth and breadth of Linux expertise to its
team of lab engineers,” says Tim Witham, lab director. “We welcome Randy and
Zach, who will undoubtedly be integral components to the increased visibility of
the lab and the enterprise functionality of Linux.”

Brown, 24, has contributed to the Linux kernel with the sound OSS driver for the
ESS Maestro3 and has spent most of his career working on the Linux development
and maintenance of Linux servers. His prior experience includes work at Red Hat,
Intel and Zero-Knowledge Systems. Before joining OSDL, Brown was a member
of the scalability group at Zero-Knowledge Systems, a provider of
privacy-enabling products and services. There he provided Linux expertise and
implemented software and protocol that increased the speed, security and
efficiency of the Freedom server. Brown has also contributed to a number of Linux
initiatives including Cisco’s NetAid project, the ZD-Net retest of MindCraft Inc.’s
Linux/NT benchmark comparison and hftpd, a threaded FTP server discussed at
the Ottawa Linux Symposium.

Brown is currently serving as a member of the program committee for the Annual
Linux Showcase in November 2001.

Holding a Masters degree in Information and Computer Science from Georgia
Tech, Randy Dunlap has spent over 25 years in the field of software development
and hardware/software co-design and co-development. He has worked with an
array of systems and networks including multi-user minicomputers (operating
systems, firmware, and communications software development), NetWare network
drivers and SCSI drivers. Prior to joining OSDL, Dunlap was the Linux USB
subsystem maintainer while at Intel.

About the Open Source Development Lab
Supported by a global consortium of industry leaders, the Open Source
Development Lab (OSDL) is an independent, vendor-neutral, non-profit
organization dedicated to enabling Linux and Linux-based programming for
enterprise and carrier-class functionality worldwide. Headquartered outside
Portland, Oregon, OSDL fulfills a critical need in the open source development
community to have access to the high-end hardware for programming and testing.
More information on OSDL is available at www.osdlab.org.

###

Press Contacts:
Leslie Proctor (818) 364-8061
Siobhan Lyons (310) 407-7911
Alexander Ogilvy Public Relations

lproctor@alexanderogilvy.com
slyons@alexanderogilvy.com

ActiveState is pleased to announce the 8.3.3.2 release of the ActiveTcl
distribution for the Tcl scripting language. This is the second release
based on the Tcl/Tk 8.3.3 language core. More details can be found below.

                  Where to get the new releases:
                  ------------------------------

                  ActiveTcl 8.3.3.2 binaries for Windows, Linux and Solaris are available
                  at our web site:

                          http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Tcl/

                  What is in this release:
                  ------------------------

                  ActiveTcl 8.3.3.2 is made up of the latest stable core of Tcl (8.3.3),
                  plus the following extensions:

                          * Tk            8.3.3   
                          * [incr Tcl/Tk] 3.2     
                          * iwidgets      3.0.2   
                          * Tcllib        1.0     
                          * Bwidgets      1.3.1   
                          * tktable       2.7     
                          * tkcon         2.2     
                          * TclX          8.3     
                          * expect        5.32     (Unix only).

                  For additional information:
                  ---------------------------

                  For more information on Tcl and its many extensions, please visit the
                  Tcl Developer Xchange web site:

                          http://tcl.ActiveState.com/

                  This site contains a variety of information about Tcl/Tk in general,
                  the core Tcl and Tk distributions, the TclPro tool suite, and much more.

                  Reporting Bugs:
                  ---------------

                  Tcl/Tk is maintained by the Tcl community, with the sources and bug
                  database at SourceForge:

                           http://tcl.SourceForge.net/

                  Everyone is encouraged to participate in making Tcl an even better
                  language.  For bugs related to the ActiveTcl packaged distribution,
                  please use:

                          http://bugs.activestate.com/ActiveTcl/

Sun Microsystems has released the results of its recent GNOME usability study. From logging in through logging out and everything in between, the study addresses the main aspects of the GNOME user experience, and offers recommendations and observations on those experiences. The study was devised by members of the Solaris HCI Group, and was conducted in Sun’s Menlo Park, Calif. labs earlier this year.

July 20th, 2001, Moncton, Canada — Today, Open-Source Directory
(www.opensourcedirectory.org)
is pleased to announce that the product information (without email address’) for OSD’s almost 400 registered
stable, open-source apps is now available in
XML.
“Since our launch last April (2001) we’ve had many authors and maintainers
register their apps with us; from well known desktop applications OpenOffice (Linux, Solaris, Win)
and Gnucleus (Win) to not as well known, but still very cool
clustering app MOSIX (Linux)”, states
Steve Mallett co-founder of OSD. “Our first stage of growth was to increase the
number of apps to an acceptable level that its sheer activity feeds future
growth. Now that we’re seeing growth come from products listed at OSD we’re
focusing on our second stage of getting the product information out to
prospective open-source users.”

With the database available in XML others can begin
to use the data for presentation on their own sites. “We’re following the dmoz model”, says Mallett. “Put the directory
information out there for any and everyone to use; not just at OSD. The chances
that people will try and use a stable, open-source application increases with
the amount of people/websites presenting it.”

“I can personally envision a closed-source user discovering that ‘Yes, you
can still ICQ in Linux!’ or ‘I can roll my own Linux Distro?
Cool!’ from someone using OSD information on their website.”

OSD’s database of stable,
open-source apps is available in XML
and distributed under the GFDL in accordance with their Social
Contract.

—
Open-Source Directory is a
community driven repository of
just stable, open-source applications. It was
launched in April of 2001.
Find out more about Open-Source Directory at:
http://www.opensourcedirectory.org

Linux developer Magic Software has appointed Steven P. Nohe, Sr. as its new chief executive officer for its Magic Americas operations. Prior to joining Magic, Nohe held various senior positions at CoreTech, TideWater Consulting Group, and a subsidiary of drug giant Hoffman-LaRoche. Read the announcement at LinuxPR.

From a press release posted at LinuxPR: “OpenOne Corporation today announced the availability of a new
version of its MailOne enterprise e-mail server for the Linux and Unix operating
systems. MailOne is an Internet standards-based e-mail server that delivers a
rich set of Internet mail services including message store, group mailboxes,
message transport and directory services, to users with different desktop
environments and e-mail applications. MailOne exchanges messages using
multiple industry standard messaging protocols including Sendmail, commercial
SMTP/MIME message transports, or optionally, X.400 protocols. It is an open
messaging system that supports leading international and industry messaging
standards.”

Help Net Security has an advisory for IBM’s AIX versions 4.3.x and 5.1: “AIX ships with the library “libi18n” located in the “/usr/ccs/lib” directory. This library
contains a function that is vulnerable to a buffer overflow through the LANG
environment variable.

An ordinary user has the ability to set the “LANG” environment variable to any value
they choose. When this variable is set to a suitably formatted string and a program is
run which uses the

vulnerable library, the program will terminate abnormally. If this program is also setuid
root, aixterm for example, a malicious user has an opportunity to spawn a root shell and
gain control of the machine.”