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Linux Pipeline Newsletter www.LinuxPipeline.com Tuesday, August 9, 2005 In This Issue: - Linux Checkup Redux: More Code, Fewer Bugs - IBM Open-Sources Text Search Technology - Linux POS Systems Ring Up Retail-Sector Successes - More News... - LinuxWorld Stakes Out Middle-Market Ground - Mozilla Means Business - But Not Business As Usual - Test Drive: Microsoft's First IE 7 Beta Shows Its Potential - More Picks... If you're looking to take advantage of all the benefits that Linux has to offer and demand superior uptime for your mission critical Linux applications, Red Label is your solution. Red Label provides a more responsive and stable environment for complex Linux applications. Contact a Rackspace representative today! "http://www.rackspace.com/solutions/redlabel/rl_overview.php?CMP=RL_LinuxPipelineTextLink" ----------------------------------------- Editor's Note: The Show Goes On The idea of cloning myself never appealed to me: The grocery bills and bar tabs alone would make it a ruinously expensive prospect. And there's always the chance my clones might gang up on me, steal the car keys and the shotgun, and lead off the evening news in six states. At the moment, however, I'd be glad to grow a few spare copies, pack them into a taxi, and send them down to Moscone to tackle the LinuxWorld madness. So, quickly: -- This week's sample rant from the Blog has a few tips on what looks good and what I plan to check out during LinuxWorld this week. Back in the day (did I just say that?), I made part of my living organizing, planning sessions, wrangling speakers, and perfecting my flop-sweat as a speaker at these kinds of events. So trust me: If Linuxworld sucked, then at the very least, my silence would be deafening. In fact, the program for this thing is good enough to power two or three average-quality conferences. It also helps that when I look at the 200 or so companies on this year's Expo exhibitor list, I don't see any examples of the sketchy, evasive, huckster-happy startups that have turned so many other IT trade shows into Spinal Tap outtakes (yes, but our app.....goes to 11!). -- Speaking of parodies, PR Newswire offered a free and plentiful, if unintentional, supply of them this week, courtesy of SCO Forum 2005. Yes, folks, Darl McBride packed up his shotgun and shredder, gassed up the truck, and took his comedy act -- one show only, and don't count on a return performance next year -- down the road to Las Vegas this week. Funny coincidence with the scheduling, by the way, isn't it? I wanted to post my favorite SCO press release to celebrate this event -- a stirring affirmation from (the as-yet-unindicted) McBride entitled, "Long Live Unix" -- but sadly, I ran out of time. Trust me, it took a lot of bulls and a lot of Bull Chow to generate literature of this caliber. If any of you really want to see it, though, and can't Google it by the title, let me know -- I'll post it. -- I was happy to hear so little in the way of whining (or silly Marxist rants, nutball conspiracy theories, or crypto-masochistic doomsday predictions) following Mozilla's decision last week to create a for-profit subsidiary. It's a great move, and it displays a sense of timing that, much of the time, likes to travel disguised as coincidence or good fortune. Certainly, Mozilla has made very few bad moves to date: The Foundation marshaled limited time and money to get the greatest possible returns, and it has turned more than one potentially damaging crisis into a non-event or even an advantage. Yet the Deer Park scheduling miscues, the Firefox 1.0.6 fire drill, and the decision to roll Deer Park into a Firefox 1.5 release were all warning signs that Mozilla wisely chose not to ignore. The next 12 months will decide whether Firefox can establish itself as a serious enterprise product -- and by extension, whether it can build the 25 percent or so market share required to ensure that no software firm can ever again threaten the Web standards process. Ironically, the opportunity itself exists largely due to Microsoft's own actions: The company deliberately snubbed roughly half of its worldwide, legal customer base -- Windows 200 users, many of them still two or three years away from their next upgrade -- by denying them access to Internet Explorer 7. A for-profit subsidiary can, given sound management, provide a foundation upon which to create a stable, long-term development infrastructure for Firefox. But the real payoff for Mozilla is its new freedom to engage in marketing, advertising, co-branding deals, and other activities that represent a third-rail risk to any non-profit group. Armed with these tools, Mozilla Corp. can do whatever is necessary to remind IT managers that they're being punished for not handing over their upgrade cash on Redmond's schedule. And, of course, Mozilla can offer them a high-quality, reliable, enterprise-ready alternative that ensures it will never happen to them again. On that note, I'm off to see our humble, anarchy-loving friends at IBM. Have a good week.
Matt McKenzie
Don't let future editions of Linux Pipeline Newsletter go missing. Take a moment to add the newsletter's address to your anti-spam whitelist: linuxed@techwire.com If you're not sure how to do that, ask your administrator or ISP. Or check your anti-spam utility's documentation. Thanks. Top Linux News Linux Checkup Redux: More Code, Fewer Bugs Coverity, Inc. has conducted another static-analysis audit of the latest Linux kernel, repeating its analysis of the previous version earlier this year. The good news: fewer defects of any sort, compared to the previous analysis. The better news: critical, security-relevant defects dropped from six to zero -- even as the kernel expanded to nearly six million lines of code.
IBM Open-Sources Text Search Technology
Linux POS Systems Ring Up Retail-Sector Successes
IBM Gooses Grids With LinuxWorld Announcement
Greasemonkey Bug Fix Works Out Kinks
Fresh SASH: SourceLabs Serves Up J2EE Dev Support
Novell Creates Data-Center Linux Safety Net Editor's Picks LinuxWorld Stakes Out Middle-Market Ground At this week's LinuxWorld Expo, business apps are where it's at, baby. Now, the question is whether this year's wave of ERP, content management, CRM, and other open-source providers storm a market where most firms simply can't afford traditional vendors' sky-high prices and proprietary lock-in promises?
Mozilla Means Business - But Not Business As Usual
Test Drive: Microsoft's First IE 7 Beta Shows Its Potential
MattBlog: Lindex 2005?
Bug Fixes, Security Support Top IE7 To-Do List
Podcast: Rating Open Source Software Cast Your Vote Now! In return for unspecified favors to be named later, I'm loaning the online voting booth this week to my colleagues at InformationWeek. They'll make it worth your while to vote -- believe me, if I had any(working) iPods laying around to give voters in MY polls, you'd all be the first to know -- after, of course, my wife, family, friends, neighbors, and creditors. Anyway - here's the poll pitch. If one of you wins that iPod, let me know: "Do the benefits of open-source software justify dealing with the obstacles it can create? Are open-source apps really more secure than commercial packaged or custom software? To answer these questions, the InformationWeek editors, in partnership with Optaros, invite you to vote in a confidential online survey. "To thank you for completing the survey, we'll send you a free report analyzing the survey results -- and we'll enter you in a drawing to win a 6GB Apple iPod Mini valued at $250."
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