LinuxHQ - Old News

As with any "security by obscurity" scheme, the DVD encryption scheme didn't stand up to scrutiny. So now the industry is trying to save face by retaliating against the open-source community. Read this nasty injuction that they are attempting to use to muzzle the operators of 21 websites that mirrored the code, and an additional 72 websites which simply linked to it.

Another 2.0.x release. Includes a small fix to the networking code - probably a Denial-of-Service (DoS) fix, I think.

Probably the last 2.0.x release. It fixes a number of DoS (Denial of Service) vulnerabilities, so it's probably worth upgrading.

The original creator of LinuxHQ has brought his original site back up (with a little bit of an explanation). I wish him luck!. :-)

From now on, this site will be called kernelnotes.org, and I will continue on with my plans for it. The content on this site will always be free, so I have no problems with anybody borrowing it, or enhancing it. I believe the two different sites can develop complementary (not competing) content for the Linux community.

Many of you may have noticed that records for "linuxhq.com" are no longer in the DNS, making the website unaccessible for most. Here's the announcement I sent out. As a temporary measure, the website is currently available at:

http://kernelnotes.org/

Toshiba has now provided Dag with the information he needs. Hooray!

Dag Brattli, the developer of Linux/IrDA, has been refused the information he needs to support IrDA on Toshiba laptops. As a result, he says: "I WILL STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT LINUX USERS DON'T BUY ANY TOSHIBA EQUIPMENT!". (Update: Please read March 3rd news item)

Although it's debatable whether or not boycotting a specific manufacturer is a productive move, potential purchasers of Toshiba laptops should be aware that it is highly unlikely that IrDA will be supported on those machines (unless Toshiba has a change of heart). (Update: Please read March 3rd news item)

After two years of development, it's finally here! The patch is called patch-2.2.0-final.gz and it's in the v2.1 directory (I missed that, sorry). Thanks to Linus and the other kernel hackers for their hard work. I'm sure nobody would mind if they cool it for a little while to take a vacation. :-)

Drivers provided as obfuscated source are as unreadable and unmaintainable as drivers provided in binary format only (like the 3Dfx drivers). Such drivers do not qualify as Open Source. You are the customer. Why buy a piece of hardware from a company that doesn't want you to know how to use it?

Companies that try to keep secrets are going to lose Linux sales to their competitors (like Matrox) that are willing to document and share register-level programming details with their customers. The Linux hardware market is now worth billions annually, and companies that choose to ignore it's needs will do so at their own risk.

Michael McLagan, webmaster of www.linux.org, and a kernel contributor, recently announced the formation of the Linux Standards Association. This was intended to be an organization where different elements of the community could meet to design standards.

Unfortunately, the announcement has not recieved the response the organizers were expecting. In fact, it's been a disaster. Even though they were well-intentioned, it is apparent that the organizers did not do enough consulting with the community or build up enough support before making the announcement. It was also released at a time when the LSB/LCS project was in a state of transition, so the timing looked opportunistic.

The initially honest criticisms of this venture have degenerated into a free-for-all spasm of personal attacks on Slashdot and elsewhere. The level of negative response has been very extreme, in part because the proponents of this new organization have botched up the job of "damage control". It's so bad, even the mainstream computer press (news.com, ZDnet) have picked up on this conflict, and are using it to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) about Linux. This is a new problem that we never had in years past, when Linux was out of the mainstream.

I personally think that it is time for people to calm down, realize that they have made their point, and give the LSA folks time to rethink. I'd recommend for everybody to read Lars Wirzenius' Advocating Linux piece, and to think about how it would apply to this situation.

The only way Linux will continue to thrive is if we all pull together as a community - which can only be done if we retain our civility. It's unfortunate that this repeatedly has to be explained to the masses of new users that are introduced to Linux every year.

Note: KDE has been controversial, even though it is released under the "free" GPL license, because it uses the Qt widget library, which has a relatively restrictive license.

Kernel.org seems overloaded or down at the moment. And most mirrors haven't been updated yet. You can get it at ftp.funet.fi or ftp.uk.linux.org.

Also, you'll need to use gcc 2.7.2.x to compile it. Newer versions, such as gcc 2.8.x or egcs don't compile the 2.0.x kernels properly.

Alan Cox has posted an "it doesn't work" summary on his site.

The Open Group (who took over X11 from the X Consortium) is changing the license terms on the next release of the X11 windowing system so that it will no longer qualify as Open Source-compliant Free Software.

This means that most Linux distributions will not be able to ship with it. XFree86 will continue to remain free (so it will not be based on X11R6.4) - this "fork" means there will be two competing X standards.

If you believe this licensing decision to be ill-conceived (as I do), please inform the Open Group's X Project Team, plus it's executives, sponsors and members of your concerns.