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We expended quite a bit of intellectual capital on the Red Hat issue last week. Final email count? 219 messages with the subject line "Red Hat Comments." It woke the procmail system from a bit of a recent slumber. It was capital well spent, indeed.

While we hammered away at the pros and cons of Red Hat's recent commercial moves, another issue was unfolding that rocked the Linux world from top to bottom. In a move that took everyone by surprise, SCO Group, formerly Caldera Systems, filed suit against IBM.

The action arises from SCO's ownership of the proprietary UNIX code. SCO purchased the code in 1996 and currently serves more than 30,000 UNIX licensees. SCO claims that IBM has used or given away the UNIX code in its Linux systems and has consistently worked to promote Linux to the detriment of UNIX.

In a Friday conference call, SCO Chief Executive Officer Darl McBride characterized his company's position as one of merely defending an existing contract with IBM against what it sees as unfair business practices.

[This action is] not about the debate of the relative merits of the proprietary versus open source software models. This case is also not about IBM's right to develop and promote open source software, so long as they do that without SCO's proprietary information. This case is about the right of SCO to not have its propritary software misappropriated and misused in violation of its written agreements.

SCO alleges that IBM has broken the terms of their UNIX contract by engaging in practices to use this UNIX source code to benefit their Linux business and to destroy UNIX.

SCO also alleges that in recent years, IBM has knowingly and willfully engaged in a major campaign to make Linux one of their highest priorities and to destroy UNIX.

As a result of IBM's unfair competition and the marketplace injury sustained by SCO, SCO is requesting damages in an amount to be proven at trial, but no less than one billion dollars, together with additional damages through and after the time of trial.

IBM's response was somewhat subdued. Mike Fay, vice president of communications for IBM's systems group sketched the action as, " ... full of allegations with no supporting facts."

Meanwhile, the suit has stirred unrest within United Linux, of which SCO is a founding member. Fellow member Suse is reportedly reconsidering their role in the United Linux organization. That could deal a serious blow to United Linux, as much of the core technology has been provided by Suse.

SCO stock has, for the past several quarters, been hovering in the $2.10 - $3.00 per share range. They're clearly looking for the bold gesture to appease both stockholders and top management. In all likelihood, they also need the hard blue edge that such a bold action can bring to a company - the esprit d'corps of going head to head with Goliath. From the tone of the conference call, it seems apparent that SCO does, in fact, feel violated. Sadly, this is how struggling American companies often do business.

It was also clear from the call that SCO wants to walk cleanly on both sides of this issue. Darl McBride tried several times to distance the suit from the open source issue, refocusing on IBM, their use of the proprietary UNIX code and the existing contract between the parties.

I think that position is either cheerfully shortsighted or blatantly untrue.

Precedent shows that regardless of the outcome, the suit itself will have a chilling effect on the enterprise Linux business. Scott McNealy of Sun understands that. On the day after the suit was filed, he was loudly reminding the business world that Sun's UNIX variant is fully compliant with existing licenses. Though intended more to attract new customers than to calm the UNIX world, McNealy's words clearly show the immediate effect of the suit on both UNIX and open source. Sun is, after all, also moving toward open source.

Historical precedent for this chilling effect already exists. Ironically, it comes in the form of AT&T's suit against the developers of BSD. In that action, AT&T claimed that BSD violated copyright protections by using UNIX code. Though SCO's claims of tortious intereference, breach of contract and unfair competition don't precisely parallel the AT&T action, the intent and effect are the same. The BSD developers prevailed in that action. But BSD languished for the duration of the suit, held back by the FUD factor - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The effect of the SCO suit on commercial Linux developers could very easily be the same. And that makes the action dangerous, regardless of the outcome.

The open source world will undoubtedly suffer some damage from this action, even if it only takes the form of FUD-slowed development. Real damage control, however, now lies squarely in the lap of the IBM legal team. They will have to engineer a clear, quick and convincing victory to prevent future action on the part of SCO. IBM is in a better position than possibly any other company to make this happen. They have the financial resources to hire the most talented legal guns in their defense. And, they have a deep cache of intellectual property that lends an undeniable credibility to their own innovative capabilities.

But this must be an unequivocal victory on the part of IBM. Why? Because the slightest scent of captiulation by IBM leads directly to Red Hat, and Suse, and Mandrake, and on down the Linux ladder. If IBM should choose to settle out of court, they'll only finance the next action. After all, if IBM has donated proprietary code to the open source world, everyone is a legitimate target. If that's the case, then the real villian in this suit will forever be seen as IBM. They must prevail - quickly and unconditionally.

Tell me what you think.

Happy just sittin' here in my tux,              
Tony Steidler-Dennison       

GnomeTWEAK

Getting Unstable

If the discourse on Red Hat last week proved nothing else, it showed me clearly that many of you are more than willing to give a Debian a shot. In fact, that was one of the comments most repeated throughout the voluminous chain of email I recieved. "I, too, will be moving to Debian."

I've begun that move, myself, with three of my seven machines now fully functional Debian boxes. Given both my own increased interest and yours, today's GnomeTWEAK is aimed at the new Deb faithful among us.

We've expended no small amount of electronic ink extolling the virtues of Debian's apt system - the Advanced Package Tool. Debian was, in fact, at the forefront of package management with the dpkg system. apt has since become the defacto package manager in Debian systems. It provides a way for users to quickly update packages, manage dependencies and adapt configuration files all with a minimal set of commands. In fact, apt-get (the command most familiar to new Debian users) is nearly all that's needed for most uses.

apt is truly a connected system, relying on networked servers to provide both software indices and packages for each user system. On your machine, apt looks to /etc/apt/sources.list to update your local software index and to connect to servers providing software. A typical line in /etc/apt/sources.list looks like this:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main

This points your system to the /debian directory on ftp.us.debian.org, looking for stable packages from the main collection. The apt-get update command will do nothing with this server other than read its index, updating your local index copy with any changes found. apt-get install package, on the other hand, will look to this server for package and, if found, install it on your machine.

Debian packages and distributions go through a rigorous testing process prior to moving from unstable to stable. You can feel very certain that any packages installed from the server above will work as promised without problems.< p> Admittedly, the process of debugging and upgrading a package from unstable to stable can be a bit slow. Debian is, after all, maintained by committed volunteers. Though the end result is ultimately worth the wait, sometimes you just want to live on the edge. If, like me, you're willing to trade a bit of risk in order to experience the latest and greatest, you'll probably want to add a line like the following to your /etc/ap/sources.list:

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free

Notice the word unstable. This line will instruct apt to look for any packages on the server that have yet to garner the full stable blessing of the Debian review team. In other words, the program in question may or may not work on your system. If you're not risk averse (or have a spare testing machine) the packages denoted as unstable by Debian can reap great rewards.

"Living on the bleeding edge" and "I'm a Debian user" are not phrases many Linux users would couple together. Debian is known for conservatism in its approach to package testing. However, using the unstable packages(at your own risk, of course), you can both have and eat your own cutting-edge Debian cake.

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GnomeCORE

Get your favorite Linux flavor on CD: Pick your favorite Linux flavor and get it on CD for as low as $1.95. Find Linux gear, books, and software for Linux at Linux Central . Check out the selection today!

And you thought libraries were places that stored books under the watchful eyes of quiet librarians. Little did you know how much libraries contribute to the operation of your Linux system.

Linux libraries are, at their essence, the epitome of reusable code. These libraries contain code that can and will be used over and over among many applications. It's a great idea to write this code once, utilizing a standard, and make it available for other programs that will require similar functionality. libgtk.a is a great example. These libraries provide the graphics functions to many of your X Window apps. Chances are, the libgtk libraries have touched many of the graphic apps currently running on your system. Reusability is, indeed, the focus of Linux libraries.

Libraries in Linux come in two flavors. Static libraries are tied directly to the executable of the program you're running. Dynamic libraries are loaded and used only as needed. The /lib/ld.so file is responsible for finding and linking the necessary dynamic libraries from those on your system.

Dynamic libraries, in fact, may or may not need to loaded. ls.so looks to its own cache at /etc/ld.so.cache to find out if the dynamic library is already loaded in memory. If so, a program utilizing dynamic libraries can be significantly faster than one using static libraries.

On the other hand, a program utilizing static libraries is a fully self-contained entity. The code from those libraries is bound directly to the executable. This makes such a program more portable, as it contains everything necessary to run. Static libraries do, however, increase the size of the app's executable. The decision to use static vs. dynamic libraries is a decision that's influenced, to a large extent by the use of application itself.

So, libraries in Linux do serve a function as unvaluable to your OS as the public library to your community. They loan critical code to applications, either in a dynamic or static fashion. By this scheme of lending, the code only needs to be written once and can be used any number of times with ld.so serving as the librarian, checking code in and out as necessary.

Even better; Linux libraries will never collect overdue fees.

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GnomeFILE

Moodss
Unearthed by Moke Norton

http://jfontain.free.fr/moodss/index.html

"Moodss is a graphical monitoring application. It is modular so that the code accessing the monitored objects is completely separate from the application core. The core takes care of managing modules (loading and unloading), displaying modules data through sortable tables and diverse graphical viewers, handling user set threshold conditions with email alerts.

"The graphical user interface is complete with context sensitive help (through balloons and a message area) and features a thorough and very intuitive drag'n'drop scheme for ease of operation.

"Finally, dashboards created with moodss can also be used by the companion moomps daemon, for storing module data cells history over time in a database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, DB2 and ODBC compatible), threshold and UNIX syslog monitoring in the background."

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GnomeVOICE

Debian Conversion
Scribbled by Robert Novickas

"After reading your article about the commercial arm-twisting of RH, I ordered a set of Debian disks from agileos.com, and installed it, obliterating my RH8. So, I no longer have a 'demo' os, but the real thing.

"However, I'm not a techie gearhead (more's the pity!), and I possibly would not have been able to execute the install if it hadn't been for a note from agileos that I could [get] a great step-by-step article on installing Debian at OSnew.com. There, I met the Mr. Rogers of Linux geeks who made the experience almost as easy as slipping on a cardigan and sneakers. His name is Clinton DeYoung, and he's a software development manager. Near the end of the install, he introduces the reader to a program called Synaptic, which performs miraculous automatic installs and configurings.

"I can probably look forward to problems ahead, computers being the pesky things they are. But I now have a solid, stable GNULinux system with which I can pick and choose what I need, when I need it. Cheers to you and most especially to Clinton DeYoung."

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GnomeCLICK

New Zealand Open Source Society
Unearthed by Jeremy Naylor

http://www.nzoss.org.nz/portal/index.php

"Open Source is an ideology and a process. It is changing the way software is developed, from being based on products and restrictive licences, to being based on services with free licences. For many organisations this change will mean a potential for huge reductions in licence and upgrade costs.

"The New Zealand Open Source Society exists to advocate use of Open Source software. We are a nation-wide organisation that is committed to advocating Open Source software in government, education and business.

"The society will be promoting several specific projects. While there are a few Open Source operating systems the society will primarily be concentrating on promotion of the Linux operating system. We will also be supporting Open Source applications such as OpenOffice, Samba, Apache, Sendmail, and many others that provide users choice from being locked into proprietary solutions."

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