– by Robin “Roblimo” Miller

It’s starting to sound more like a management bloodbath, or as a PR person would probably say, “a major upper-level staff realignment.” But whatever words you use, Mandrake seems to have had a sudden change of heart … err … management. We are not exactly sure who is now in charge of the popular Mandrake Linux distribution, but hope to find out soon. One positive note: The original rumors we heard about Mandrake laying off “all the desktop developers” are apparently untrue.
The first inkling we got that all was not right in Mandrake-land came in the form of an email from a freelance journalist of our acquaintance who forwarded a rumor purportedly from “French sites” about Mandrake canning its entire desktop development team. NewsForge night editor David Graham, who is fluent in French (at least of the Canadian variety), cruised all the French-language sites he could think of that might carry news of such an event, but saw nothing verifiable.

Meanwhile, NewsForge editor Dan Berkes got Mandrake’s California office to admit that MandrakeSoft CEO Henri Poole has departed. Further research put us in contact with several MandrakeSoft insiders who say this is what has gone down so far:

• The president, CIO, and “other executives” have been fired “as a group.”
• CTO Jean-Loup Gailly is out.
• All the IS team except one is bye-bye.
• Some engineers and other “random troops” have either been laid off, taken “voluntary” pay cuts, or have gone from full-time to part-time status.

But the team responsible for developing Mandrake for the desktop, contrary to the rumors, is supposedly going to remain (mostly) intact for the moment. As one Mandrake insider put it, the desktop developers “are still the people who make the product Macmillan [Mandrake’s shrink-wrap product distributor] sells that generates income.”

Company insiders note that most of the Mandrake managers who were shown the door today are American. One source suggested that this was because “Mandrake can’t rationally hope for a U.S. IPO any time soon, so there was no reason to keep a lot of high-cost American managers around. The company is now more French than it has been for the last few years.”

Sales and marketing staff were supposedly affected least by the cuts.

Maybe this is an unhealthy display of bias, but in the spirit of full disclosure we must admit that a majority of NewsForge editors use and like the Mandrake GNU/Linux distribution. We are seriously rooting for Mandrake. We want them to keep improving their fine software, and hope they will keep us up to date on any more changes in the company.

We also wish they’d finally ship the Mandrake 8.0 boxed sets they claimed were in stores on May 16, but weren’t.

Maybe, under their new CEO, the Mandrake 8.0 “powerpack” version will finally hit the shelves. We’re certainly willing to go out and buy a few copies for our own use, and if these numbers can be believed, more than one third of all retail Linux distro buyers are waiting for the next big-time version of Mandrake with breaths as bated as ours.

We’ll have follow-ups to this story as they come in. Don’t go away!

eWeek has a story about Linux’s future on the desktop and on the server, where the forecast is sunnier.

The Apache Software Foundation’s
(ASF) XML Project’s Batik Team today announced the release of Batik 1.0, a
sophisticated open source, Java-based toolkit for SVG (scalable vector
graphics).
SVG is an XML syntax for rich 2D graphics and Batik allows developers to
view, generate and manipulate SVG images with unprecedented precision, detail
and functionality. Since the release of the W3C candidate recommendation of
the SVG specification, Batik continues to set new high-water marks for the
implementation of this maturing specification.
“In the past months the Batik team has moved quickly toward realizing its
goal of providing a full implementation of the W3C’s SVG specification,” said
Vincent Hardy of the Batik team. “The latest Batik release provides a high
quality implementation of many of the high-end SVG features. With the highly
modular tool, developers can cut down the cost of creating, viewing and
exchanging graphical content between applications or across the Internet, and
easily generate, manipulate or view SVG content. The contribution, experience
and expertise of companies and individuals has helped create a team dedicated
to the success of the project.”

By leveraging the force of XML and the visual strengths of dynamic and
easily accessible vector graphics, the Apache XML Project’s Batik team lead
the drive in building an industrial-grade embeddable Web graphics software
solution. Batik delivers core components for three main purposes:

— generating SVG content from any Java applications,
— viewing SVG content, and
— converting SVG to and from other formats.

The vision is to help make SVG the central format for exchanging and
viewing any type of 2D graphical information while still making it easy to
convert SVG images to other formats, for environments that do not yet support
SVG natively.

SVG combines two of computer graphic’s great practices, vector graphics
and raster graphics, in a resolution independent framework, enabling SVG
images to be rendered with high quality on any screen or printer. The SVG
framework also includes many sophisticated graphics features such as gradient
paints, filter effects, and sophisticated text support. This unique
combination of graphical features in one standard format makes it ideal for
describing any rich image content, from CAD diagrams to postcards to Grandma.
Furthermore, by using an XML syntax, SVG is extremely easy to generate,
search, transform and manipulate. Unlike other formats, SVG becomes a powerful
tool for anybody managing image content for the Web or other environments.

New features in Batik 1.0 release:
— Filter effects such as drop shadows and lighting effects.
— Internal and external use — allows developers to create.
— Highly structured SVG images where common components are easily reused.
— Masking and clipping.
— Markers.
— Linking — the ability to define SVG graphical elements as “links”
(similar to HTML hyperlinks) which can point to other graphical
elements in an SVG image (for example allowing you to zoom in a portion
of a map) either in the same SVG image, in another SVG image or in
another document (such as an HTML page).
— Sophisticated text support — Batik now supports control over complex
text layout (such as individual glyph advance).
— Run-time extensibility — Much of Batik can now be extended at
run-time, providing among other things new graphics primitives, and
support for new image file formats.

With this release, Batik provides extensive support of most static SVG
features and includes:

— Improved SVG generator — allows all applications to easily export
their graphics in the SVG format. This generator has been extended and
made more flexible.
— Improved packaging of the Batik modules — making them easier to
integrate into applications. For example, developers can plug in the
Batik’s viewing component to add SVG viewing capability into their
applications without having to know anything about SVG.

Batik delivers a number of sample applications that leverage its core
components, such as an SVG browser. Screenshots of that browser can be seen
at: http://xml.apache.org/batik/svgviewer.html .
In the near future, the Batik team aims to provide developers worldwide
support for full dynamic behavior, including scripting and SMIL (synchronized
multimedia integration language) for animations.

“Our relationship with the Apache Software Foundation allows Sun engineers
to develop technology implementations in a collaborative environment and
better enables Sun to deliver robust products based on open standards. The
Batik project demonstrates the synergy between the Java platform’s portable
code and XML’s portable data. We are proud to have worked in cooperation with
Kodak and ILOG on this remarkable toolkit for SVG-based graphics.”
— Jon Bosak, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems

“Kodak congratulates the Apache Software Foundation and the Batik project
on the 1.0 release of the SVG toolkit. Batik will significantly advance SVG as
an important element for enabling both graphical and image-intensive creative
Web-based applications. Because of its open source nature, ISV’s will be able
to leverage the powerful and extensible framework it provides to develop new
classes of creative applications and to deploy SVG in environments not
previously possible. Such applications and systems could prove fundamental to
delivering new products and services through our Internet photofinishing
services.”
— Daryl Hunt, Director of Strategic Standards, Eastman Kodak Company

“The goal of the Batik project complements ILOG’s goal of creating and
delivering the richer, more compelling online experience that Web content
providers and users want, and we congratulate the Apache Foundation and the
Batik team for this important milestone. A supporter of SVG since its
inception, ILOG will continue its commitment to the standard in our roles as a
W3C working group member, Batik technical committee member, and with real
products, such as ILOG JViews, one of the first SVG products on the market.”
— Jean-Francois Abramatic, Senior Vice President of ILOG Research and
Development.

The Batik project’s name comes from the famous and highly developed art
traditions of the Indonesian island of Java. The Apache XML team seeks to
honor and capture Java’s rich history of creating geometric patterned and
colorfully designed textiles through Batik’s high quality graphical
representation capabilities.

The Batik Project encourages participation through its mailing list:
http://xml.apache.org/mail.html/.

For more information about the Batik project please see
http://xml.apache.org/batik/.

About the Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation provides organizational, legal and
financial support for the Apache open source software projects. The Foundation
was established as a nonprofit corporation in order to ensure continuation of
the Apache projects beyond the participation of individual volunteers, to
enable contributions of intellectual property and financial support, and to
provide a vehicle for limiting legal exposure while participating in open
source software projects. For more information on the Apache Software
Foundation, please see http://xml.apache.org/.

From a column at LinuxPlanet: “OK, it’s official: Linux on the desktop is dead. Oh, sure, the corpse is still kicking around a little, and there’s some debate about whether the patient is
officially dead. But all we’re waiting for now is the official death certificate from the coroner … But as it stands Linux on the desktop is not an entity that is usable by the average PC user when it comes
to accomplishing their daily work. This has nothing to do with the quality of the desktop environment, but
has everything to do with how PCs are actually used: end users don’t use the environment, they use
applications.”

From PR Newswire: Thanks to Trolltech, the Apple
software universe is getting a lot bigger.
Trolltech is demonstrating a preview release of Qt/Mac (the Mac OS X-port
of Qt, Trolltech’s emerging-standard cross-platform C++ GUI application
development framework) at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, Monday, May
21 – Friday, May 25, 2001, at the San Jose Convention Center.

From ZDNet: “Will Unix be enough to grow a new crop of Apple customers?

That’s the question Apple will begin to address Monday at its weeklong Worldwide Developer
Conference in San Jose, Calif.

By choosing to build Mac OS X on Unix, the company opens up thousands of new applications
to Mac owners–potentially expanding Apple’s market share–and gives Unix developers
access to a lucrative new audience.”

– By Dan Berkes –
MandrakeSoft, creator of the popular Linux-Mandrake distribution, confirmed today that Henri Poole is no longer the company’s chief executive officer.
A spokeswoman at the company’s Pasadena, Calif., office said that Poole was no longer with the company, but was unable to provide further details. Prior to joining MandrakeSoft, Poole, 37, co-founded Vivid Studios, a popular Web design firm based in the San Francisco bay area. In addition to his role of co-founder, he was also Vivid’s chairman and CEO.

The CEO spot at MandrakeSoft has been filled by company co-founder Jacques Le Marois. Along with Le Marois, other top positions at the company are held by fellow company founders Gaël Duval and Frédéric Bastok, who created the Paris-based company in 1998.

MandrakeSoft is perhaps best known for its desktop-centric Linux distribution, touted by the company as “the most international” flavor of Linux available due to an installation program fluent in 40 languages. The change in leadership has led to speculation that the company may shift its strategy from the desktop arena to the enterprise server market.

We’ll have more on changes at MandrakeSoft as they come in. Stay tuned!

Alan Cox releases the latest version of the the 2.4.4 Linux kernel. Read on for the changelog:

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/2.4/

                 Intermediate diffs are available from
                        http://www.bzimage.org


2.4.4-ac12
o       Just tracking Linus 2.4.5pre4                   
        - A chunk more merged with Linus
        - dropped out some oddments that are now
          obsolete

An anonymous reader pointed us in the direction of this article at MozillaQuest: “Why are major Linux distributions not shipping with Netscape 6 included
in their packages? To find out we asked people at Caldera, Mandrake, Red
Hat, and SuSE. Altogether, these four Linux distributions comprise about
90% of the Linux distribution market. Representatives from these major
Linux distributors have some very interesting comments.”

How does the United States government respond to a breach of computer security? Skim the Department of Energy’s First Responder’s Manual to find out. Available in HTML and PDF formats.