– By Grant Gross
–

The business end of the Open Source community has been in a funk lately, with layoffs and bad earnings reports all around, but there was some good news this week. Linux distributor Red Hat announced it beat earnings estimates.What that means is that Wall Street was expecting a one-cent loss per share, and Red Hat actually broke even. That still means Red Hat lost $600,000 for the quarter, but investors liked the stock late in the week. Analysts weren’t so positive, however, saying that slowing I.T. spending could spell trouble down the road.

On the other end of the Open Source business news spectrum, don’t be surprised, but Turbolinux pulled its IPO this week, citing the current crappy market conditions. Wouldn’t you just love to see a press release quoting a company big-wig saying, “This market @#*&ing blows right now. We all thought we were gonna get rich, now I’m not sure if I still have my golden parachute.” That’s not meant to disparage Turbolinux, their heart’s in the right place, just a commentary on the general tech stock environment these days.

I’m not sure where to file this on the spectrum of Open Source business news stories: China’s Ministry of Information is planning to invest in Red Flag Linux, a Chinese Linux distributor. Call it Red Rebellion against Microsoft.

Your own reason not to use Microsoft software

Some enterprising computer cracker apparently tricked VeriSign into giving him two digital certificates for Microsoft.com. Basically, you might not want to trust the certificates if you’re downloading updates to Windows for awhile, you never know what you might be getting.

On the other hand, a worm affecting Linux machines (but only ones running the BIND nameserver) hit the Internet this week. Apparently, the Lion Worm scans the Internet, infects vulnerable machines, steals the password file, installs other cracking tools, and forces the newly infected machine to begin scanning the Internet looking for other victims. Ouch, sounds painful.

Do Open Source projects need patents?

Patents would generally seem to go against the grain of the Open Source philosophy, but the Foresight Institute, a nonprofit nanotechnology think tank, and IP.com, a Rochester, N.Y., start-up, are working on a way to help Open Source developers “defensively publish” their work, so another person can’t steal the idea and patent it. It’s like having a patent without actually stooping to get a patent.

Finally, a followup on the OpenSSH vs. SSH Communications Security Corp. trademark dispute you’ve read about here. Tatu Ylönen, chairman and CTO of SSH Communications Security, was rejected by the Internet Engineering Task Force in an attempt to get the group to change the name of the Secure Shell protocol. The IETF will continue to use “SSH” as the name.

New in NewsForge this week

Stories that our readers seemed to like this week:

News editor Tina Gasperson checked out layoffs at Linux services company Linuxgruven and found a lot of disgruntled former employees, who felt the company wasn’t up front with them. Some ex-Linuxgruven-ers have started over, saying the idea for the company was a good one even if the execution wasn’t.

Freelancer Joab Jackson reported on the U.S. National Security Agency’s plans to pitch some security measures to the Linux kernel developers. Could Linux soon be the spy community’s operating system of choice?

Editor in chief Robin Miller reported on the Linux presence (or lack thereof) at the Federal Office Systems Exposition. Linux was represented at a panel discussion featuring Sun vs. Microsoft vs. Linux, with some interesting admissions from Microsoft.

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted
on our discussion
page.

ZDNet’s gamespot has a report on the OpenAL effort,spearheaded by Creative Labs. “ Creative started openly talking about starting up a cross-platform audio API early last year, clearly emulating SGI’s OpenGL approach from the first.

It seems a consortium of interested companies are intending to push ahead with their DMCA-condoned fair-usage restrictions. Slashdot has the full details.

Issue 3 of the KDE Kernel Cousin has been posted on kt.zork.net.

Gnome-news reports on the Gnome hall of fame, a collection of images (in SVG and PNG format) of the various “big names” behind the Gnome project.

The BBC online has coverage of CeBit’s Linux offerings.

Have a spare Shopvac and a spare Mac? You, too, can combine them with the easy-to-follow instructions posted to Slashdot.

Slashdotters discuss an article on GameSpy.com that features the company Transgaming, which is working on a process that allows
Linux users to play Windows games.

Bloomberg.com features the IBM Linux wristwatch in its coverage of the German computer show. The story says several handheld devices are attempting to be able to download photos, maps and other information. “Someday soon IBM hopes to be able to download similar information onto a wristwatch it’s
developed with a touch-screen face and Linux operating system. The watch is already capable of
controlling household appliances, like IBM’s Internet-ready washing machine, storing phone numbers
and a calendar and running slide shows with Bluetooth technology.”

Slashdot has discussion on an OpenP2P.com story on file-trading service Gnutella’s relationship to the Web. “What do Gnutella and the Web have to do with each other? Isn’t Gnutella just one of many P2P file-sharing
systems?

Yes, Gnutella enables P2P file sharing, but take a closer look. With Gnutella, file transfer is accomplished via HTTP, the same protocol Web
browsers and servers use to transfer Web pages and other data. Under the hood, each Gnutella application contains a no-frills Web-server
component for serving files and a primitive browser-like element for retrieving them.”