– by Tina Gasperson –
The Applied Data Systems booth at the LinuxWorld Expo is a bit spare. Especially considering the recent press releases heralding ADS’s new sleep mode for StrongARM platforms, one would expect to see some hands on demonstrations of this eagerly awaited advance in open embedded systems.

Sarah Pick, the director of marketing communications for ADS, clues us in. “Our booth is lost,” says Pick. “All our demos and set ups are on a loading dock somewhere.” The few displays of single-board systems and the GUI that ADS is known for were hurriedly sent in by train on Tuesday.

Developers and others who had been following ADS’s news noted the absence of sleep mode demos at the booth, and there was evidently some kind of furor about it among the handheld developers community, according to Pick, who assured us that they did indeed have the power management features ready for demo at the show. ADS also says that it will release the sleep mode code as Open Source.

That’s good, but some developers and users at handhelds.org’s IRC channel on the openprojects network have issues. First, they don’t necessarily believe that it was a simple case of misdelivery that has ADS’s booth demo-less. There is some speculation that, although ADS has got the sleep mode working, the company doesn’t quite have the wakeup part operating smoothly — a detail that certainly would prevent full release.

“Oh, Christ no,” says Bob Olsen, CEO of Applied Data Systems. He maintains that the technology only needs further testings with drivers before being released. “We developed this first in Windows CE,” and while he admits that CE is not the most efficient power management platform, Olsen says ADS simply cloned CE’s functionality in bringing the capabilities to Linux.

Another thing that bothers the developers is ADS’s refusal to open up development of the power management features to the community. Pick says that the plan is to release the fully developed code as Open Source. But sources at handhelds.org say they would have preferred to have been included from the beginning. During an IRC conversation today, chatter “niko”‘ said, “It would have been better if they had developed [the power management capabilities] openly, IMHO.”

Chatter “BBrox” added, “Yeah, that sucks for Familiar.” Familiar, a Debian-based OS for use on Compaq handhelds, lists sleep mode as one of its higher priorities on a todo list. Some Familiar developers think ADS’s keeping its power management closed may be detrimental to Familiar’s progress as a fully developed project, although if ADS does release the source code, Familiar developers will be free to adapt it to their needs.

Olsen says that ADS opened the project up to all comers but had extremely limited response. Apparently it was Pick’s assignment to investigate the possibilities of offering the project up to the community, and she worked on it for three months before ADS decided to take it in house.

Olsen says not to worry, the source will be released just as soon as testing is done. Exactly when is still up in the air. “I haven’t even asked anyone,” he says.

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

Carlie writes: “The FreeBSD Corporate Networker’s Guide” hit my desk recently, and I was intrigued, and I was intrigued because this book appears to have been written for someone with experience or knowledge, or at least a clue about other operating systems, and considering using FreeBSD as a network operating system as part of a corporate setup: exactly the kind of book I would want to have if I was considering moving part or all of my operations to FreeBSD. The url is http://www.linuxiso.org/bookreviews/freebsd-corp-n etwork.html“

ZDNet UK talks with Open Source evangelist Eric S. Raymond about the current bearish technology stock market. ESR’s not depressed, “in fact,
he believes now is an ideal moment for companies that are looking to
tighten their belts to start using low-cost open source software.”

ZDNet reports on IBM’s plan for network processors, an “increasingly popular class of chips.” Buried at the bottom of the story is this nugget: “IBM announced this week that the latest version of its PowerNP
development environment, version 2.1, supports the Linux operating system. The
company added Linux support to help developers, especially those at universities,
create applications for use with network processors in an environment they are used
to working in.”

From PR Newswire: Borland Software Corporation
(Nasdaq: BORL), a leading provider of e-business implementation platforms,
today announced that it won the Show Favorite Award for Best Development Tools
at LinuxWorld Expo. Borland Kylix was recognized by a panel of
industry experts, including leading technical analysts, consultants and
writers, for its innovation in open computing.

Reuters reports that Corel Corp. (nasdaq: CORL)
reported a fourth-quarter loss on Friday despite small sales gains for its graphics and word processing software.

Corel, which last posted a profit in the fourth quarter of 1999, had a net loss this time around of $8.6 million, or 12 cents a share,
versus a year-earlier profit of $4.5 million, or 8 cents per share.

From PR Newswire: VA Linux, provider of Linux-based
computer systems and services, has been selected by Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) to
be a Star of E-Business at the first annual Oracle AppsWorld, New Orleans,
Feb. 19-23, 2001. Oracle chose VA Linux for the company’s successful
implementation of the Oracle E-Business Suite, which has enabled VA Linux
to bring its core business processes onto the Internet. (VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

“We now move onto the second part of our journey and in this 2nd instalment of the series, you will learn
about some of the common Linux commands regarding System Information, Basic System
Administration, Process Control and network administration.” The rest of the story is at FreeOS.com.

“NFS or the Network Filesystem is a very effective way of sharing files and data across your Unix
network. NFS goes beyond mere file sharing and offers neat functionality that fits perfectly into the Linux
filesystem. Simply mount a directory off another machine on your network and read from or write to it –
even run applications from it – completely transparently!” Read more at FreeOS.com.

From OSOpinion.com: “A slew of partnerships and investments announced at the LinuxWorld Expo, which opened Wednesday in New York and runs
through Friday, prove that Linux has not simply arrived — it is now part of computing’s mainstream.

The Expo’s first day has been marked by a number of announcements from major high-tech firms including IBM, Compaq
Computer and Hewlett Packard, each of which has pledged sizeable investments in the Open Source operating system.

The increasing interest in Linux among New Economy bellwethers indicates that the freely distributed operating system,
invented by Finnish computer science student Linus Torvalds 11 years ago, has catapulted its way into many corporate data
centers and expanded well beyond the academic research centers where it once resided.”