Kelly McNeill tells us about this column at osOpinion: “I’ve spent the last three days fixing compile-time bugs with xMach, and I’m currently testing using a copy of VMware running FreeBSD. The code compiled so cleanly that a stable release was inevitable, allowing me to finally start doing some of the new innovative work I dreamed up years ago, when my SPARC (since dead due to a battery issue) glowed with warmth onto me, and inspired me to create. Who knows — we might make something useful out of xMach yet. It’s certainly come a long way from seed to sprout; as its stalk strengthens, I hope to help it blossom into the full beauty of the great scheme hatched years ago.”

ZDNet has a story talking to embedded vendors about how they view the new Midori Linux from Transmeta. They say it doesn’t compete with their products.

It’s at Seul.org and addresses this question, among others: “Has anyone had any luck with any open source presentation software. I know LaTeX can be used, but can anyone point
me in the right direction. I am about to do a presentation about open source software, and it really would be very
hypocritical of me to use Power Point.”

A story at ZDNet says the Nautilus project will thrive, even if Eazel doesn’t survive, thanks to the GPL. “The GPL ensures developers and users alke that the code will have a life of its own, apart from the economic health of any associated commerical vendors.”

Wired.com reports that Germany’s Defense Ministry says it’s still using Microsoft products, “despite a report in a
leading magazine saying security concerns would lead it to seek an alternative.

A Defense Ministry official flatly denied a report in Der Spiegel that German officials were banning Microsoft operating
systems because they were concerned about a possible backdoor built into them by the U.S. National Security Agency.”

ZDNet has a column debating the issue of diversity vs. conformity in the Linux community. “Commercial software vendors have a legitimate beef with the current
state of Linux. There are three ways to build an application that runs on
multiple distributions of Linux, none of them particularly smooth.”

LinuxPower.org interviews coder Stefan Seefeld of the Berlin Project, “the project which most people refer to
when alternatives to X are being discussed.”

From LWN.net: “imap is a package which contains POP3 and IMAP mail servers.

These vulnerabilities can be exploited only after user
authentication, which basically limits the scope of the vulnerability
to a remote shell with that user’s permissions. On systems where
users already have a shell, this vulnerability will not provide
anything new to that user (unless he/she has only local shell
access). But, on systems where the email accounts do not provide
shell access (tipically ISPs), this is a bigger problem.
It is also important to note that packages from version 5.1 or higher
of the CL distribution have been compiled with StackGuard, which
makes it more difficult (but not impossible) to exploit buffer
overflows of this type.

From a ComputerWorld column: “What is it with Microsoft and open source? It’s not so
complicated. Microsoft hates the competition from open source.
Microsoft loves the benefits of open source. Microsoft wants the
customers who like open source. Microsoft doesn’t want to let any of
its intellectual property turn into open source.

An impossible-to-resolve set of contradictions? Not to Microsoft.”

ComputerWorld has a story about The World Bank Group considering Open Source application service providers. “Like other organizations considering open-source technology, most of the
World Bank’s debate was based on the business benefits. [Gerhard] Pohl and others
say the bottom-line rationale for using open-source applications is
compelling for almost every organization.”