“The PiperNet is both a network and a community-developed standard for the
peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution of programs and data-flow. It is an alternative to
Microsoft’s .NET, not a clone.

The aim of the PiperNet is to bring the power and flexibility of the UNIX
command-line interface (CLI) to the graphical user interface (GUI) and to
Internet-distributed computing.” Read the full press release at LinuxPR.

From a press release at LinuxPR: “IDG World Expo announced today that
the upcoming LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, to be held August 26-30, 2001 at
San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center, will feature an Embedded Linux
Pavilion to educate attendees on the growing opportunities for Linux in embedded
computing.”

The Register covers a heated debate in the security industry over “Zip of death” attacks that could cripple anti-virus and content-filtering packages. The attacks work by sending a client a file that can be as small as 42KB and bulking up to 16GB once decompressed. The news caused Microsoft to issue a security alert; other security firms and consultants say there’s no news here.

ZDNet has a small blurb on Snapgear, a new wholly-owned Lineo subsidiary that will sell inexpensive server appliances for firewalls and other tasks. The new appliances will use Lineo’s own flavor of Linux.

From a press release posted at LinuxPR: “DocBrowser [from theKompany.com] is a perfect compliment for any KDE development, be it KDE Studio Gold, KDevelop or whatever your favorite environment is. It allows you to read documentation in a variety of formats and for a variety of special sub-systems.”

“Panasonic and Microlite
Corporation today announced that Microlite’s newly enhanced version of
BackupEDGE fully supports the Panasonic 4.7GB DVD-RAM drive in Linux,
UnixWare and OpenServer operating environments. With BackupEDGE and the
Panasonic rewritable DVD drive, users can have full system backups, instant
access to archived files, and complete crash recovery using highly reliable,
low-cost DVD-RAM media.” Read the full press release at LinuxPR.

Linux Journal’s Phil Hughes shares his Costa Rican travelouge, or at least the part involving his visit to the Coast Rica Linux User Group. With talks from local Linux and political luminaries, CLUG’s June 30 meeting attracted a crowd of over 200 gearheads and curious onlookers.

Now that the hype surrounding Linux stocks has finally ebbed, it’s time to get down to the business of Open Source. ZDNet Linux Opinion columnist Evan Leibovitch covers Linux’s “season of steady progress,” noting the latest release of Linux kernels and associated software, version 1.0 of the Linux Standards Base Group’s 1.0 reference specification, and that Microsoft’s prolonged attacks have had little, if any impact on the rate of enterprise adopting Linux.

“The theory is that writing — including the writing of software — is like scientific advances: It has an inevitability; if I don’t discover it
today, you will tomorrow, and therefore my discovery today oughtn’t be mine. (Whether this theory holds up, whether the supposed
inevitability exists, is highly questionable, but let’s let it pass for now.)

So it is said, too, of patents — all discoveries are destined to be made, so the first person there oughtn’t be rewarded.

There’s a terrible flaw in all this, though: It’s manifestly wrong. The profit motive, as codified by intellectual property ownership, is the
reason in many cases why research and development were undertaken to begin with.” Full column at LinuxPlanet.

From Slashdot: “German news service heise online reports that Adobe wants to settle the
KIllustrator case. According to the article (here’s Google’s translation), they demand that
KIllustrator gets a new name, but don’t want to stop its distribution or development. They also
promise that the author won’t have to pay anything.”