From Cox News Service: “For computer hackers, the Linux operating system – invented in a dorm room, open and free to the world, a challenge to commercial Goliaths – is a fairy tale, and its inventor Linus Torvalds is their hero.

      So Torvalds is the perfect person to write the prologue and serve as a case study in “The Hacker Ethic” (Random House, $24.95), an interesting albeit dry look into the arcane world of people who get their grins writing computer code.”

ZDNet’s Evan Leibovitch says that the major roadblock between software development and business profits are “the philosophies of the free software movement, Richard Stallman, and the GNU project.” In another ZDNet article published today, Evan’s co-workers wrote: “Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman has supported himself and the foundation for years selling free software.”

From Salon: “Since launching in January 2000, SourceForge, which is sponsored by open-source hardware and services provider VA Linux, has attracted 125,000 software developers, say company representatives. The site added more than 17,000 software developers just between Jan. 18 and Feb. 21 and has been averaging monthly growth of more than 30 percent. SourceForge, says John T. Hall, vice president for strategic planning at VA Linux, is close to eclipsing IBM as the world’s largest community of software programmers.” (VA Linux owns NewsForge)

ZDNet UK says: “It’s time we corrected a common misperception: There’s no law against selling free software. Really — read GNU’s General Public License. In fact, Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman has supported himself and the foundation for years selling free software.”

Canada Newswire press release: ”
Intrinsyc (ICS: TSE) is pleased to announce that it has received a Control
Engineering 2000 Editors’ Choice Award for its deviceCOM for Linux, a
breakthrough networking technology that reliably links Linux-based devices to
Windows enterprise systems.”

Peace, Love, and Linux? Sure, if you can get past the infighting, backstabbing, and a hundred other internal conflicts plaguing the Linux community. Linuxx Planet’s Brian Proffitt comments on IBMs new Linux ad campaign.

“Linux NetworX, Inc. announced today an exclusive
partner/distributor program, the LNXI Cluster Partner Program(TM), to resellers
and VARs (value added reseller) of all sizes.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Linux NetworX Announces Partner/Distributor Program
Small to Large Resellers and VARs Can Now Offer Fully Integrated Cluster Solutions

SANDY, Utah, March 6, 2001 - Linux NetworX, Inc. announced today an exclusive 
partner/distributor program, the LNXI Cluster Partner Program(TM), to resellers 
and VARs (value added reseller) of all sizes to provide customers with fully 
integrated cluster solutions by Linux NetworX. The new LNXI Cluster Partner Program 
will allow resellers and VARs to take advantage of the wide adoption of Linux 
clusters into the marketplace.

Program benefits include discounted cluster system demo units, product training, 
referrals and leads, marketing support through collateral kits and POP/POS, a 
partner-only Web site and monthly channel communications. Each benefit will allow 
new reseller partners to successfully sell Linux NetworX cluster solutions to 
both the high performance computing (HPC) and high availability Internet markets.

"Linux clustering is a viable solution in many industries and an increasing number 
of companies have adopted this technology as both powerful compute engines and 
extremely reliable Web server solutions," said Clark Roundy, vice president of 
Linux NetworX. "By broadening our sales channel and making Linux NetworX cluster 
solutions more widely available, resellers and VARs can take advantage of the 
wide-spread adoption of our cluster technology."

To qualify as a reseller or VAR, companies need to fill out a simple application 
form at http://www.linuxnetworx.com/partner, participate in product and sales 
training and meet minimum annual sales requirements.

Linux NetworX is a leading provider of large-scale clustered computer solutions 
for Internet, industry and research fields. Cluster technology is a method of 
linking multiple computers, or compute nodes, together to form a powerful, unified 
system.

Products available for resell include the entire Evolocity(TM) product line of 
cluster systems. Evolocity systems are fully integrated cluster solutions including 
a proprietary hardware design, Linux NetworX cluster management software ClusterWorX®, 
and RapidFlow(TM) switches. Through the LNXI Cluster Partner Program, participating 
companies can now offer their customers complete cluster solutions, including 
service and support.

About Linux NetworX
Linux NetworX (www.linuxnetworx.com) brings its powerful cluster technology to 
those demanding high availability and high performance systems. With the use 
of cluster computer technology, Linux NetworX provides solutions for companies 
with high computing needs, including Internet servers, research, industry, government 
and other technological fields including. Through innovative hardware, complete 
cluster management software, service and support, Linux NetworX provides end-to-end 
clustering solutions.

To date, the company has built some of the largest cluster systems in the world 
and hardware and software for overall system management. Linux NetworX has offices 
in Utah, New York, Calif. and Texas and worldwide distributors.

About the Linux Operating System
Linux is a computer operating system that is distributed freely on the Internet. 
As an open source project, Linux allows developers to share information, code 
and suggestions to continuously maintain and improve the system. Linux NetworX 
selected the operating system for its stability, reliability and rapid development.

# # #

Linux is a registered trademark owned by Linus Torvalds. All other products, 
services and companies are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective 
owners.

CONTACT:         
Brad Rutledge
Linux NetworX
801-562-1010 ext. 218
brutledge@linuxnetworx.com               

Brad Rutledge
Linux NetworX
www.linuxnetworx.com
801-562-1010 ext. 218

Two new Debian Linux security advisories, as posted to Help Net Security: “Todd Miller announced a new version of sudo which corrects a buffer overflow that could potentialy be used to gain root priveleges on the local system (details); “We have reported several vulnerabilities in proftpd that have been fixed (details).

From PR Newswire: “F-Secure Corporation, a leading
developer of centrally managed security solutions for the mobile, distributed
enterprise, today brought its acclaimed anti-virus firewall solution to the
open source world. F-Secure Anti-Virus for Firewalls on Linux provides
unsurpassed detection and disinfection of Internet-borne viruses and malicious
code passing through OPSEC CVP firewalls.”

– by Robin ‘roblimo’ Miller –

A few days ago I got an email with the subject header “IBM Linux Kernel Development Positions” that opened with the line, “My name is Robert Kemp and I recruiter [sic] representing IBM in Beaverton, Oregon. I came across your name at the linuxjournal.com website.” If IBM is sending out recruiting spam to people whose names and email addresses it has harvested from Linux Web sites — or is trying to headhunt journalists for kernel development jobs — IBM is a long way from “taking over” Linux. Let’s assume this was the act of a single IBM employee acting on his own initiative, not corporate policy. It still sucks.

After the first sentence (above) the email continued,

I know
that you are extremely busy so, please forgive my intrusion. As you might
have heard IBM is developing a world-wide virtual development team inside
of IBM working within the Linux community. Our goal is to utilize our
world-class IBM programming resources and IBM’s best-of-breed software
technology to actively accelerate the maturation of Linux as an enterprise
operating system. Currently we’re involved in the journaled file systems,
networking, S/390 support, logical volume manager, SMP performance,
scheduler performance, the IA-64 port of Linux, print work in both Linux
and Samba, PowerPC bring-up, probe tools for kernel debugging, glibc,
mathlibs, TCP/IP, testing and information development, internationalization
support, the Linux Standards Base and Linux cluster installation.

So, to make a long story short. If you or anyone you know would be
interested in a position with IBM here in Beaverton, Oregon or possibly
offsite work, please send me your resume at your earliest convenience. I
would greatly appreciate it.

I am really interested in talking with anyone who has experience with Linux
kernel development involving C programming experience, significant
expertise in one or more kernel areas such as: scheduling, device support,
I/O or multi-processor (SMP and/or NUMA) systems is a plus.

I have no experience or training in any of these areas, and I’m quite happy working for OSDN, but I replied anyway. I wanted to find out why IBM was sending me recruiting spam out of the (big) blue.

My email to Robert Kemp, senior staffing specialist/technical recruiter, IBM eServers, said:

Robert,

I’m curious. In what context did you come across my name on
the linuxjournal.com website, and what kind of job did you
have in mind for me?

Cheers,

– Robin Miller

To which Kemp responded,

Hi Robin,

Thanks for your response. I located your name at
[URL].
Attached is a hotsheet of jobs that IBM has open locally here in
Portland, Oregon. Please let me know if you happen to see any jobs that
might be of interest.

(See attached file: HotjobsFeb.doc)

Also, feel free to visit our website at www.ibm.com for more exciting IBM
jobs ..

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Rob Kemp

Yeah, I still had the same question I had in the beginning: Why is IBM sending me headhunting spam meant for software engineers and developers? If you look at the Linux Journal Speakers Bureau page from which our friend Rob Kemp harvested my name and email — the URL mentioned a few paragraphs back — you might notice that the first words on it say,

Linux advocate and Linux-oriented
journalist since 1996. *Not* a developer;
I am the equivalent of a sportswriter in
the Open Source development community,
the guy who can’t hit big-league pitching
but has a good handle on the players,
the teams, and what’s generally going on.

After I got done laughing at the fact that IBM not only had trouble telling the difference between a journalist and a kernel developer, and the fact that they had sent their “hotjobs” list as an attachment in .doc format, I fired up StarOffice and read said attachment. As I suspected, not a single job shown was for a reporter or editor.

If a smart recruiter wanted names and email addresses of almost every Linux kernel developer, I can think of several great places to find them, and if you’ve been developing, writing about or using Linux for any length of time you probably know exactly where I’m talking about. (I’m not going to mention any of these spots here; I do not want to be responsible for unleashing a tide of headhunting spam on kernel developers.) But a recruiter Linux-hip enough to know how to find kernel developers in (shall we say) their native habitat wouldn’t be spamming. He or she would know better.

IBM may be investing more than a billion dollars in Linux development, but apparently many people at IBM haven’t yet realized that there is a specific Linux and Open Source culture that has its own ways of doing things. Until IBM figures this out, the chances of the company “taking over” Linux development in any meaningful way is exactly zero.

Hewlett-Packard hired Bruce Perens essentially as a native guide to Linux Country. It was a wise move, one that not only gave HP Linux credibility it couldn’t have gotten by spending 100 times Bruce’s salary in advertising, but one that may help HP avoid serious gaffes like sending recruiting spam to random email addresses found on popular Linux and Open Source Web sites.

Perhaps IBM should consider hiring its own Perens-style in-house Linux guru to help its management people — and its recruiters — deal effectively with Linux and Open Source developers .

Come to think of it, I know someone who might be perfect for that job. And if someone appropriate at IBM sent me an email requesting an introduction to that person, I just might arrange it.

But first, please stop the recruiting spam. It’s bad enough when this sort of junk comes from penny-ante hustlers. A world-class corporation like IBM resorting to this tactic makes me as sad as I’d feel if I learned that Microsoft had decided to make its own proprietary version of the Java programming language instead of using the same Java used by everyone else in the world, including IBM.

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