O’Reilly reports on the compatibility between Linux and BSD on the Power PC platform. The report “is intended to document various parts of the emulation subsystem, and to highlight some architecture-dependant issues that can arise in argument passing, signal handling, and with the way some system calls work.”

theHighlander writes “Microsofts periodic licensing model, if accepted by large enterprises, will have far-reaching implications for all IT products. Large corporates like Dell can declare that the hardware they manufacture are their intellectual properties and consequently, a licensing fee will have to be paid every three years by the customers for use of the same product!”

– by Robin “Roblimo” Miller –
According to a post on the Open Source Initiative‘s license-discuss email list today from attorney Larry Rosen, the OSI board has decided that two new software licenses, one from IBM and one from Apple, comply with OSI’s Open Source definition and are now entitled to carry the OSI Certification Mark.The Apple Public Source License, version 1.2, was originally posted at opensource.apple.com on January 4, 2001. It is the license under which Apple has released Darwin, the FreeBSD-based “core” of Mac OS X, as well as a number of other Apple-sponsored software development projects. This license is far away from The Free Software Definition in concept; for example, it specifically states:

You may create a Larger Work by combining Covered Code with
other code not governed by the terms of this License and distribute the Larger Work as
a single product. In each such instance, You must make sure the requirements of this
License are fulfilled for the Covered Code or any portion thereof.

IBM’s Common Public License, version 0.5, which is also quite different from one designed primarily to encourage Free Software development, is much simpler and shorter than the Apple Public Source License. A fast layman’s reading of the Common Public License shows it to be more concerned with limitations on corporate liability than anything else, especially if a “contributor” to software released under this license sells some or all of that software as part of another product. Here’s a sample paragraph:

For example, a Contributor might include the Program in a commercial product offering, Product X. That Contributor is then a Commercial
Contributor. If that Commercial Contributor then makes performance claims, or offers warranties related to Product X, those performance claims
and warranties are such Commercial Contributor’s responsibility alone. Under this section, the Commercial Contributor would have to defend
claims against the other Contributors related to those performance claims and warranties, and if a court requires any other Contributor to pay any
damages as a result, the Commercial Contributor must pay those damages.

This license is the second one from IBM that has been approved by OSI; the IBM Public License Version 1.0 (which also contains the paragraph quoted above) has been around for a while. Developers working with IBM may want to look carefully at the difference between the two, and may want to obtain legal advice before contributing to, or using code from, any project released under either license.

The same “check with a lawyer first” advice holds true of work done under the Apple Public Source License, too, of course, and of virtually all other Open Source and Free Software licenses, whether or not they are on the OSI’s “approved list.” That list now contains (counting the two additions just announced) 23 separate software licenses, each of which contains its own set of caveats, clauses, freedoms, restrictions, and disclaimers.

(It’s sad that there can’t just be two or three simple, easy-to-understand Open Source and Free Software licenses that everyone agrees to use, but so it goes.)

TheRegister has a short item saying just what the headline says. No specific date has been announced yet.

EET.com reports on the progress of the “Simputer,” a sub-$200 PC running Linux. What’s new: The developers in India working on the project have unveiled a prototype.

CNet reports on Microsoft’s latest license changes. “New changes to Microsoft’s software licensing program may give rivals a chance to lure
away several key customer groups, analysts and competitors said Thursday.

Earlier in the day, Microsoft told customers it would revamp its licensing program. Among the
changes, the Redmond, Wash.-based giant is selling optional ‘software assurance’ contracts that
commit customers to annual upgrades for a fee. Some customers will also have the option of
buying software through subscription services.”

From DebianPlanet: “CheepLinux now have available Debian GNU/Linux 2.2r3.
This new release of Debian GNU/Linux includes both security
updates and fixes to important bugs in the stable
distribution. The distribution spans 6 CD-ROMs (3 Binary &
3 Source Code)

CheepLinux also supply the official non-US version which includes cryptography
and encryption tools.”

Linux Journal has a story about expanding possiblities for Linux on the PowerPC. “The Linux community is in a unique position to assure such an expanded role for the PowerPC. IBM is already leading the way toward a
LinuxPC with its POP project, an Open Reference Design for a more or less standard ATX/PCI motherboard, but with a PowerPC chip
rather than an x86 chip. Because of IBM’s need to emulate high quality standards for its own RS/6000 boards that use the same PowerPC
family of chips, this design project has encountered some delays, but it now appears to be on track.”

Lori Pike sends along this press release: ActiveState, the leader in open source programming, announces the release of PerlEx 2.0. A plug-in for NT Webservers, PerlEx 2.0 enables programmers to easily create and deploy Web services. PerlEx allows Perl to function more efficiently on a Windows based web server by lowering web page delivery times and decreasing CPU load.

“The impact of Web services is similar to that of Perl CGI scripting in the early days of the Internet,” stated Dick Hardt, Founder & CEO, ActiveState. “PerlEx will be helpful even to programmers with only minimal knowledge of the new Web services standards. They can create and deploy new services by simply writing the Perl code that embodies that service and then deploying it to PerlEx, which generates WSDL on-the-fly for them.”

Key Benefits of PerlEx 2.0:

• Web services support. Easily build & deploy Web services that utilize SOAP.
• Fast. Building on earlier versions it can speed up Perl CGI programs by as much as 50x.
• Script Caching. Eliminate startup time in your Perl CGI programs.
• Persistent data connections. Allows you to keep data connections open, dramatically improving performance speed in web applications.
• Instrumentation tools. With the Windows NT Performance Monitor, you can monitor system resource usage and performance.

“PerlEx 2.0 brings deploying Web services into the realm of the trivial,” said Gurusamy Sarathy, PerlEx Project Lead. “PerlEx helps web developers publish existing modules as Web services and efficiently dispatch SOAP and XML-RPC requests.”

“Systems should be kept as simple as possible and with PerlEx we can do any integration. From PerlEx we connect to the database, make socket connections to proprietary apps and shell out command line apps. The beauty of this is that we can do it from one language, relatively simply and efficiently thus lowering development cost and time,” said Douglas Anderson, CTO at a US trading firm.

PerlEx 2.0 is $395/CPU. Upgrading to PerlEx 2.0 is free for registered users of earlier versions of PerlEx. PerlEx 2.0 is compatible with Windows NT and Windows 2000.

About ActiveState:
ActiveState is the leading provider of open source based programming products and services for cross-platform development. ActiveState’s key technologies are Perl, the Internet’s most popular programming language; Python and Tcl, user-friendly scripting languages; PHP, the dynamic Web programming language; and XSLT, the XML transformation language. The ActiveState Programmer Network (ASPN) offers these technologies with the latest information and productivity tools, empowering programmers with the freedom to work with their preferred language and development environment.

© ActiveState Corporation 2001.

ActiveState, PerlEx, and ASPN are trademarks of ActiveState Corp. All other company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

ZDNet has a column about Microsoft’s comments and Caldera’s Ransom Love’s comments on the GPL. “All I’m saying is that from where I sit, having
watched Open Source and the businesses around it for more than a decade, I’m with Love on
this one. Bottom line, if I were an ISV, I’d be writing my programs under BSD. Your licenses may
vary.”