On June 14, Slashdot asked its readers to submit questions to IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky; the highest-moderated questions were submitted. Read on for Kusnetzky’s replies to questions about BSD, corporate-sponsored research, and what, exactly, constitutes a Linux server.

The Register: “Mac OS X’s Finder: love it or loathe it, the two points that unite almost everyone
who has used Apple’s next-generation operating system are that it’s not up to
scratch and that Apple’s reason to write it using OS X’s Carbon API is the chief
reason why.”

Linux Today posts an announcement from LNX-BBC developer Seth Schoen: “I am pleased to announce to the general public a new mini-distribution derived from the Linuxcare
Bootable Business Card. This distribution is called LNX-BBC, and you can see its home page at www.lnx-bbc.org.
All of the original developers who created the Linuxcare Bootable Business Card (Duncan
MacKinnon, Thomas Crimi, and myself) are now working on this project, with the co-operation of
several other long-time Bootable Business Card developers and contributors.”

David A. Wheeler has published his analysis of GNU/Linux source code, and has come up with some rather interesting results: “In particular, it would cost over $1 billion ($1,000 million – a Gigabuck) to develop this Linux distribution by conventional proprietary means in the U.S. (in year
2000 U.S. dollars). Compare this to the $600 million estimate for Red Hat Linux version 6.2 (which had been released about one year earlier).”

“The Vector Linux team is proud to announce that Vector Linux 2.0 has just been unleashed on
the unsuspecting computer world. Hold on to your hats boys and girls this distro really rocks
with the 2.4.5 kernel, glibc-2.2.3, sysV style init, gcc-2.95.3, XFree-4.1, and two X desktop
systems to choose from. If that weren’t enough we put our compilers into overdrive to
produce seperate 386/pentium versions of VL2.0. But it doesn’t stop there, we have tuned
and tweaked the whole system to make this the best Vector Linux yet. We are accepting
orders for the CD version now. The base systems can be down loaded from the usual places.” More information at the Vector Linux home page.

“Zope 2.3.3 is a relatively minor bug-fix release. It contains fixes
for a few issues since 2.3.2 and includes the fixes included in all
hotfix releases to date. The main goal of the 2.3.3 release is to
make sure that the latest “stable” release distribution is up to
date regarding hotfixes.” Read the announcement at LinuxProgramming.com.

CNET News.com reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission is investigating companies for possible deception through the use of pro forma financial results. Pro forma results often exclude items like one-time charges for mergers or restructuring activities, and go against the grain of Generally Accepted Accounting Principals (GAAP) that companies are required to use for their SEC filings. From the article: “It’s no wonder that companies love pro forma results. The difference between pro forma results and those based on GAAP can be startling.

Take Red Hat, for instance. The Linux company reported first-quarter results Tuesday in a press release titled “Red Hat Achieves Positive Cash Flows
From Operations and Shows a Profit for the First Time in First Quarter.”

But further down in the press release, the company revealed that “on a reported basis,” it had a net loss of $27.6 million, or 16 cents per share.”

From an Associated Press report at CNET: “ZixIt executives said that someone illegally accessed credit card databases at its
independent subsidiary Anacom Communications, an online credit card processing service
provider.”

Wired News: “The defining accomplishment of the European Parliament’s temporary committee on Echelon may be that it is due
to close up shop right on schedule, less than a year after it began its work.

Many will remember the committee for backing off from accusing the United States of using the alleged satellite-based surveillance system
for industrial espionage, as many of the committee’s 36 members clearly believe it did.”

A Reuters item at CNET reports on a newent Gartner study that says the memory chip market segment is in deep trouble. According to the study, revenue of DRAM chips will drop by 55.5 percent to $14 billion for 2001. Last year, global revenue from DRAM chip sales were $31.5 billion. There is light at the end of the tunnel, however, as Gartner is calling for 2002 to be a “transistion year” with increasing sales, and 2003 should give the market segment its strongest growth since the early 1990s.