The Register: “The OpenPGP Alliance, which was founded by PGP creator Phil Zimmermann,
doesn’t include Network Associates, whose PGP Security division owns the source
code and trademark for the popular PGP encryption package first developed by
Zimmermann in 1991.”

If you recently received an e-mail message warning of a nasty virus by the name of “sulfnbk.exe,” what you probably received was nothing more than an old-fashioned mass-forwarded chain letter. The file in question is actually a Microsoft Windows program that restores long filenames. While a Symantec rep called the hoax “social engineering on a grand scale,” another site was quick to point out that there was a virus-infected copy of sulfnbk.exe floating around, featuring a worm by the name of Magistr that is “well-known and easily removed with any good antivirus software.” Full story at ZDNet.

“Sendmail signal handlers used for dealing with specific signals (SIGINT, SIGTERM, etc)
are vulnerable to numerous race conditions, including handler re-entry, interrupting
non-reentrant libc functions and entering them again from the handler (see
“References” for more details on this family of vulnerabilities). This set of vulnerabilities
exist because of unsafe library function calls from signal handlers (malloc, free, syslog,
operations on global buffers, etc).” Full details at Help Net Security.

Librenix is running an open test of Starship Traders II, a multiplayer strategy game currently under development. ST2 is a multiplayer trading and war strategy game; requirements for the Linux test include Mesa3D or OpenGL libraries, and Internet access. Check out the Starship Traders II test page for download and full details.

“Debate about whether Linux can challenge Windows on the desktop flared to
new levels of intensity following Craig Mundie’s recent remarks. Now everyone’s
running around claiming “my desktop penetration is bigger than yours (or soon
will be).”

In the middle of this chaos, I offer the following prognosis: In five years time,
Windows will still dominate what we now call the desktop market. And no one will
care.” From osOpinion.

Irving J. Buchbinder writes “The Second Annual Libre Software Conference will be held in Bordeaux France at the ENSIERB from July 4 – 9th, 2001. This is a request for papers and presentations.
Dr Philippe Auriol of Bordeaux, France and Dr Irving Buchbinder of Hartford CT, US are co-chairing the 2001 meeting of LSM/ABUL. This is a call for papers and presentations at the Medical Topic Section for the Libre Software Meeting of the Association Bordelaise des Utilisateurs de Logiciels Libres, that is, the “Libre Software User’s Group of Bordeaux. This year the topic in the Medical Section is “Interoperability in Medical Software”.

The meeting dates for this topic are not yet set, however the general meeting is from 4 July 2001 through 9 July 2001. Visit the web site at ABUL for information on other Open Source Software topics. The Medical section is Topic 13, Medicine in Open Source Software.

You may contact Dr Buchbinder at Community Health Services or through the FreeMED project. There is some limited funding for transport and lodging for this meeting.

We ask that presenters contact us as soon possible so that we may get abstracts, assure program content and get biographical information for our presenters.

Dr. Irving Buchbinder is a co-ordinator for the FreeMED Open Source Medical Project and works for Community Health Service a Federally Qualified Health Clinic in Hartford, CT, US. Dr. Philippe Auriol is a member of the Program Committee of Association Bordelaise des Utilisateurs de Logiciels Libres and in private allergy practice in Bordeaux, France.”

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 30 /PRNewswire/ — Sun
Microsystems today
announced the launch of
SunSource.net, a new developer Web portal that
centralizes critical
information on all of Sun’s free and open source
projects and acts as a
focal point as developers inside Sun and throughout
the community engage in
conversations on open source issues. SunSource.net
further demonstrates
Sun’s commitment to advancing open source software.
It provides yet another
tool for open source developers to engage with Sun
on co-development efforts
and focuses on Sun’s rapidly growing open source
efforts, including five
Sun-sponsored community projects that total more
than 8 million lines of
source code and ten additional community projects to
which Sun contributes. Sun has made a serious commitment to open source
software development over
the last two years, including the single largest
contribution to date
through OpenOffice.org, the site that hosts the
StarOffice(TM) source code.
The benefits of developing software based on open
source are well defined
and well known throughout the community — shared
development, shared
debugging, shared support. And most importantly, no
vendor lock-in or
monopoly.

“Unlike our competitors, Sun is actually
contributing real code to the open
source community,” said Doug Kaewert, vice
president, Sun Developer Network
organization. “Open source software development is
a core part of Sun’s
strategy. It’s a model that has value for both Sun
and for developers. And
with SunSource.net, developers now have one focused
resource through which
to directly engage Sun in conversations regarding
all our open source
projects.”

SunSource.net is a one-stop access point for
developers, featuring links to
all of Sun’s free and open source projects,
including Sun-sponsored projects
(Netbeans.org, OpenOffice.org, Jxta.org, Brazil, and
Java Reliable Multicast
Service(TM)) and community projects Sun is
contributing to or sponsoring
(Apache-based projects, such as Ant, Batik, Crimson,
Struts and Tomcat; and
other projects, such as GNOME, Mozilla(TM), TI-RPC
for NFSv4, NFS v4 on
Linux, Solaris(TM) X Internationalization
Framework). Developers also have
access to mailing lists to begin conversations with
developers inside Sun
and also with members throughout the global open
source community regarding
Sun’s policies and involvement with open source and
about open source in
general.

CollabNet, a leading provider of collaborative
software development
solutions based on open source concepts, has been
contracted by Sun to
provide the infrastructure for SunSource.net, which
follows three other
community sites that Sun and CollabNet have built in
the last year,
including Jxta.org, Netbeans.org, and
OpenOffice.org. For SunSource.net, Sun
worked with CollabNet to port its SourceCast
platform to Solaris 8, rated
the #1 UNIX® operating environment by D.H. Brown
Associates for reliability,
availability, serviceability, and security and a
powerful platform for
collaborative, open source software development
projects. CollabNet will
continue to offer SourceCast on Solaris Operating
Environment as an optional
platform for its customers.

The CollabNet SourceCast platform provides a
comprehensive Web-based
development environment that enables geographically
dispersed groups of
developers to collaborate on software projects.
SourceCast tools for
revision control, issue tracking, mailing list
creation and management,
Web-based administration, and custom branding and
content. In addition,
SourceCast provides the flexibility and security
needed to support both
proprietary and open source software development
projects.

“The SunSource site provides developers with a
single location from where
they can easily link to all of Sun’s Open Source
Networks,” said Brian
Behlendorf, co-founder and CTO of CollabNet. “Since
CollabNet is providing
our SourceCast platform for all of Sun’s major open
source initiatives,
developers can use the same tools to work on any of
the projects. In
addition, SourceCast on Solaris allows CollabNet to
offer our customers an
additional platform option to help meet their
business requirements.”

For more information on SunSource.net, go to:
http://www.sunsource.net

About Solaris Operating Environment

The Solaris 8 Operating Environment (OE) is the
leading operating system for
UNIX servers and is the highest ranked UNIX
operating environment by D.H.
Brown Associates. With better than a 30 percent
share of the worldwide UNIX
server operating environment shipments in 2000,
Solaris leads with double
the market share of the next most popular UNIX
operating environment. The
Solaris 8 OE combines new levels of availability and
reliability with
support for massive scalability, sophisticated
manageability and advanced
security. It is available for both SPARC(TM) and
Intel Architecture
platforms and supports more than 12,000
applications. Integrated with
Planet’s LDAP Directory, Solaris 8 OE enables
enterprises adapting to the
Internet age, and dot-com businesses adopting the
disciplines of the data
center, to increase service levels while at the same
time reducing service
costs and risks.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision —
“The Network Is The
Computer(TM)” — has propelled Sun Microsystems,
Inc., to its position as a
leading provider of industrial-strength hardware,
software and services that
power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to
dot-com their
businesses. With $19.2 billion in annual revenues,
Sun can be found in more
than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at
http://www.sun.com.

NOTE: Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java,
Solaris, StarOffice, Java
Reliable Multicast Service, NetBeans, Java Community
Process, JavaServer
Pages PicoJava, J2EE, J2SE, Jiro, Forte, The Network
Is The Computer and all
Java-based marks are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Sun
Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other
countries. UNIX is a
registered trademark in the United States and other
countries, exclusively
licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. Mozilla is a
trademark or registered
trademark at Netscape Communications Corporation in
the United States and
other countries.

CONTACT: Jim Grisanzio of Sun Microsystems, Inc.,
408-517-7091, or
jim.grisanzio@eng.sun.com.

SOURCE: Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Hunched over a laptop in a hotel room, LinuxPlanet’s Dennis E. Powell asks the burning question: “Which takes longer, compiling the KDE-2.2 beta on a Pentium 166 with 104
megs of memory or driving from Western Connecticut to Key West, Florida, on a busy holiday weekend?”

“Microsoft isn’t the only corporation dissing Linux these days Joining the corporate chorus is Steve Smith, a Dell manager, who doesn’t believe that there’s much
of a future for Linux on the desktop. “It’s still a fundamentally technical operating system,” Smith says.. “It’s very easy for someone who doesn’t know what they’re
doing to break. It’s not designed for the novice user.”” Full story at Linux Journal.

Slashdotters discuss this item: “A few hours ago Theo DeRaadt removed the ipf source from the
OpenBSD cvs tree in reaction to the licensing change by Darren Reed, the author of ipf.
Theo’s remarks on the licensing change are visible in the commit log here.”