Waldo Bastian has updated the KDE 2.2 release schedule: The HEAD branch was frozen yesterday, the last three days of July set deadlines for critical bug-fixes, testing, and tarball production, and the official 2.2 announcement should happen on Monday, August 6. Get all the details at KDE Dot News.

From Help Net Security: “vipw, from the util-linux package in Red Hat Linux 7.1, included a new option that allowed editing of the
/etc/shadow file as well as /etc/passwd. However, this option did not take measures to ensure that the file
remained only readable by root.” Read on for more information and new packages to fix the problem.

From Network World Fusion: “Sun is rolling out a
critical customer service application on an
operating system that’s almost completely untried
for handheld devices – Linux.

Why Linux? Sun says the open source
operating system has shown itself to be reliable,
adept at handling multiple applications and
inexpensive. Sun rejected far more prevalent
handheld operating systems, such as Windows
CE and Palm OS, for a variety of ideological
and technical reasons.”

Help Net Security posts an updated advisory from Red Hat regarding the elm e-mail client: “Elm had a buffer overflow when handling very long message-ids. This overwrote other header fields, and could
potentially cause more damage.” Instructions for updating elm included in the advisory.

Commentary from eWEEK’s Jeff Moad: “Microsoft has been gifted with a rare opportunity to show that it’s learned
something from its long antitrust battle. I’m not talking about the breakup reprieve issued recently
by the U.S. Court of Appeals. I’m talking about last week’s news that two key players in the
open-source software movement–the Free Software Foundation and Ximian Inc.–plan to
develop Windows-compatible .Net development tools for open-source platforms including Linux.”

A federal appeals court has given new life to a patent lawsuit initiated by E-Data covering software downloads on computer networks. An en banc decision issued Friday by the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals requires a lower court to reconsider E-Data’s patent. If the company prevails in court, it could entitle E-Data to collect licensing fees for all software downloads covered by its patent, which was issued in 1985. Full story at CNET News.com.

From Slashdot: “Dmitry Sklyarov, a
programmer at Russian software company Elcomsoft, [was] arrested after
giving a talk at Def Con 9 in Las Vegas titled “eBook Security: Theory and
Practice.” Elcomsoft publishes a program to remove restrictions from
encrypted PDF files, which has severely annoyed Adobe Corporation.
Adobe was apparently responsible for the arrest, charging that Elcomsoft is violating the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act by publishing the software and giving the presentation at Def Con.”

Tuesday, July 17th, 2001 — from the home of Wayne’s World, Aurora IL — Tonight LIVE on
www.thelinuxshow.com:
At 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et…. Kevin Hill, Jeff Gerhardt, PJ
Hyett, Doc Searls(Linux Journal), and Arne Flones have another great show
lined up tonight on The Linux Show!! (and yes the Loki tribes server is up
and running, jeff will be playing after the show tonight.)

In Segment One – Hot News: We will be covering the hot Linux news of
the last few weeks. In particular, we will talk about the FSF Opening a chapter in India and

In Segments Two- VA Linux What is the next step forward?

We will be joined by Larry Augustin, the President and CEO of VA Linux (we might be joined by a few more of the VA crew as well). With the news out June 27th on VA getting out of the hardware business, we felt it important that we have Larry on the show as soon as possible to talk about the future of VA as a services based company.

VA, one of the Linux communities cornerstone vendors, has had a roller coaster ride since their IPO in 1999. Their stock went as high as $330.00 a share at the IPO and is now down to about $2.50 per share (holding steady since March 1st).

Today VA enters a new era in its history as a services based company, instead of a hardware based company. We will get the inside story behind the choices made by the board of directors, and some insite as to the road forward.

NOTE: IT SHOULD BE KNOWN THAT VA IS A MAJOR SPONSOR OF THE LINUX SHOW.

In Segments Three- “Microsoft, Linux and the Fat Lady PART TWO”- or Contrary to many
opinions, Linux is far from over and Microsoft still has a very very long
road ahead
This is PART TWO of a segment that will carry
over the next several weeks.

We are going to take this segment as an opportunity to re-ignite our (TLS)
position of taking Microsoft to task at will. We have been called to task
on this issue a number of times over the years. We do not accept the
argument that we need to play nice to look make the Linux Community look
“corporate.” The mail so far has been favorable to our renewed “vigor.”

Last week we will focused on the Wall Street Journal article, written by ROBERT H. BORK AND KENNETH W. STARR. You may wish to check this out for background.

Please also check out Arne Flones response to Bill Laberis of computerworld at http://www.thelinuxshow.com/025_view.shtml

This week we will focus on the new trend in main stream media coverage and the new face of the ongoing spinning. Boy oh boy, did you know that because of the new rulling Microsoft “gets to” offer more options to hardware OEM’s??????

This is far from over folks……

Other opinions are welcome at GeekCast. If you would like to join
us on the show, check our IRC Chat
(irc.thelinuxshow.com #linuxshow).

Remember tune in at 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et.
Catch the Linux show at
www.thelinuxshow.com

Anonymous Reader writes, “The Register has a further followup on the Adobe/Killustrator/Kontour issue, which may point the blame at overzealous German lawyers rather than Adobe itself. Apparently, German law allows for firms to independently pursue copyright infringement claims without the prior knowledge of the copyright holder.”

NuSphere Corporation announced today (July 16)
the launch of MySQL.org, a Web site designed to provide MySQL
developers and the open source community with an independent forum
for sharing code and ideas surrounding the use of this leading open
source database. MySQL.org will serve as an incubator of innovation
for open source developers who are not prepared to pay licensing
fees or buy commercial products. MySQL is a leading open source
database with users such as Yahoo!, Dow Jones and NASA.

Anyone visiting MySQL.org will be able to freely re-distribute the
source code and binaries offered under the General Public License
(GPL). Since there will be no commercial considerations to restrict
technical developments, MySQL.org will contain the best and most
current ideas and contributions. NuSphere will fulfill its
commitment, announced in January 2001 [see release at
http://www.nusphere.com/releases/013001.htm], to make Gemini
available under GPL at MySQL.org. Gemini is the table type that
gives the MySQL database transactional, row-level locking
capabilities.

Motivating factors behind the decision to launch MySQL.org

MySQL AB, a Swedish company, develops and markets the MySQL
database server through MySQL.com. Recently, MySQL AB has taken
venture funding, hired a new CEO and become more commercially
focused.

Red Hat’s move into the open source database market, aligned with
PostgreSQL, further underscores the need for a unifying forum for
the MySQL community.

“MySQL.org is designed to more clearly separate church and state
for the MySQL community. Developers will not encounter licensing
demands or sales calls with MySQL.org, as they may with the
MySQL.com Web site,” said Britt Johnston, chief technology officer,
NuSphere. “Now that Red Hat is promoting PostgreSQL, NuSphere felt
it was even more important that MySQL have a strong and vibrant
open source community.”

MySQL.org will be a community-driven site with NuSphere’s support,
much the same way IBM backs the Apache Software Foundation’s
Apache.org site. NuSphere is launching the Web site to guarantee
that MySQL developers and supporters continue to get the best open
source information and code offered under the GPL. The GPL permits
users to publish their modified versions as long as source code is
made available. A crucial aspect of open source software is that
users are free to cooperate and help each other by sharing
improvements with other users. The decision to establish MySQL.org
was made with the understanding that core changes and contributions
will not be owned by a single party for commercial benefit.

“MySQL is critical to our clients in transportation and
distribution who are required to respond to the information needs
of their customers,” said Kevin Krieger, president of Krieger
Consulting Group. “MySQL allows them to scale in a competitive
market place without prohibitive licensing requirements. To be a
successful value-added reseller, I need to show my customers that
their business systems are scalable and supported. Directing
customers to a Web site like MySQL.org provides an unbiased
validation that they have made the best purchase. I will be a
frequent visitor on the site as its existence is going to create an
even better MySQL than available today.”

NuSphere market research estimates that there are between one to
three million MySQL servers in use. The MySQL database is being
downloaded at a rate of more than one million downloads per year.
Interest in MySQL.org is strong, as evidenced by the almost 500
users who registered in the first 24 hours. MySQL.org is open to
contributions from other organizations. Organizations and
individuals interested in linking, or contributing code, to
MySQL.org should e-mail support@mysql.org.

“As the open source software community continues to grow, there
will need to be increasing emphasis on creative ways to engender
collaboration and facilitate the development of technology
partnerships and alliances,” said Vito Mabrucco, director, software
partnering & alliances at IDC. “MySQL.org provides a structured
approach to help the open source community collaborate to continue
the development of MySQL as an open source database.”

About MySQL.org

MySQL.org is being created as a non-profit organization dedicated
to the development and distribution of the open source database
MySQL. The organization will comprise the open source database
community, developers, individuals and institutions who believe in
the continued free exchange of ideas and improvement for open
source development.

About NuSphere Corporation

NuSphere delivers the first Internet Application Platform (IAP)
based on open source components, providing an integrated foundation
that allows companies to deploy reliable, cost-effective,
enterprise-class applications across Windows, UNIX and Linux
environments.

NuSphere Advantage is an integrated software suite that pairs the
reliability and cost-effectiveness of Apache, MySQL, Perl and PHP
with new technology for building business-critical Web
applications. Based in Bedford, Mass., the company?s commercial
software services include technical support, consulting and
training. For more information, visit www.nusphere.com or call
+1-781-280-4600.

NuSphere is a trademark of NuSphere Corporation in the U.S. and other countries; and
NuSphere is a registered trademark in Australia and Norway. MySQL AB has applied for
trademark registration of MySQL.