The Register has a different take on the story. “Gates
comes up with something not so much misunderstandable as only marginally
comprehensible: ‘But if you say to people, “Do you understand the GPL?” (then)
they’re pretty stunned when the Pac-Man-like nature of it is described to them.’

Think hard about that one — it’s a little thing that runs around gobbling up everything
it comes across, like alternative GUIs for Dos, disk compression, independent
TCP/IP stacks, the browser market, email clients, instant messaging, digital audio
and CD burning … No wait, that’s something else entirely. What Bill really means is
that the GPL is the Borg/bodysnatcher de nos jours, tainting everything it comes into
contact with and assimilating it to The Hive. “

From Net-security.org:

A problem exists with the kdesu component of kdelibs. It
created a world-readable temporary file to exchange
authentication information and delete it shortly after.
This can be abused by a local user to gain access to the X
server and could result in a compromise of the account that
kdesu would access.

Reports ZDNet: “RealNetworks Wednesday, with the support of AOL Time Warner, Sony , IBM and others,
plans to introduce Wednesday a set of technical specifications aimed at stimulating the
rollout of digital entertainment by making it easier for copyright-protection systems to
work with each other.”

From LWN.net: IBM, the leading global IT solutions provider, and
Trustix AS, the leading provider of solutions for Linux systems
administration, today launched their first joint product, GoldBox. GoldBox
is a turn-key IT infrastructure based on Linux, the fastest growing
operating systems for servers.

There’s been all kinds of coverage on Red Hat’s Q1 earnings announcement Tuesday. From IDG News Service: “Red Hat Tuesday reported a profit on an
adjusted basis for the first time in its history,
citing customer moves to the Linux operating
system as a reason for success in its first fiscal
quarter.” The Register also has a short item. ZDNet UK notes that Red Hat is now “flush with cash.” Also, check out the Reuters take on the story, and see what Slashdotters have to say.

LWN.net has the newsletter. Among the items: “2.0 continues to shape up with information being centralised on the ‘dotplan’
pages at developer.gnome.org. Concerns over how tight the deadlines are and
the tough decisions that need to be made exploded into a major flamewar across
a number of lists. Martin Baulig, one of the 2.0 Release Co-ordinators, felt
he’d had enough and posted he wanted to step down: at the moment he is
considering what to do for a week. Underlying this are a number of complex
architecture decisions which have to be made so a lot of debate is needed.
Hopefully things will be back to an even keel soon and Martin will come back
refreshed and rejuventated.”

CNet reports: “Trying to bolster its reputation in the fast-changing Linux world, Compaq Computer will
release software designed to make Linux computers better able to withstand crashes or
other interruptions.”

LinuxPlanet has a column on the “paradox of news” and whether news reporters should do stories airing the Open Source community’s “dirty laundry.”

ZDNet interviews Microsoft’s Gates and asks him about a variety of subjects, including Microsoft’s view of Linux and Open Source. “There is this whole history that free software is developed often in the
academic environment, where basically government money funded that work. And then
commercial work is done. TCP/IP came out of the university environment. Now, 90 percent of the
implementations you buy are commercially tuned and supported. And then the companies that do
that commercial work pay taxes, create jobs, so the government keeps funding more research,
primarily in universities. So that ecosystem where you have free software and commercial
software, and customers always get to decide which they use, that’s a very important and
healthy ecosystem.”

Tom Owad writes, “The Apple I Owners Club, founded in 1977 by Joe Torzewski, is back, along with the most extensive reference to the Apple I in existence. The site contains over 120 pages detailing the Apple I computer.”