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 From : Sergey Lentsov                       2:4615/71.10   06 Apr 2002  00:34:35
 To : All
 Subject : URL: http://www.lwn.net/2002/0404/letters.php3
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    April 4, 2002
 From:    Oliver Neukum <oliver@neukum.org>
 To:      letters@lwn.net
 Subject: close() and the kernel
 Date:    Thu, 28 Mar 2002 12:45:38 +0100
 
 Hi,
 
 the subject is not as clear cut as you indicate.
 close() does not directly map to release(). close() maps to flush(), which
 does return error values just fine. release() is really just internal kernel
 operation which tells a filesystem/driver that an object is no longer in use.
 While it is bad in principle to discard error messages, the errors from
 release() cannot be reliably delivered to the right process. Suppose that you
 flush buffers on release() and get an error. You'd report that error to the
 last process happening to close the device, not necessarily the process which
 wrote the data.
 The device in question happened to be a device that can only be exclusively
 opened by one process. In encouraging such practices in the kernel we get
 device drivers which fail to work in a multithreaded enviroment.
 This is the reason Alan Cox introduced flush() in late 2.1.x in the first
 place.
 
         Regards
                 Oliver
 From:    Tom Wu <tom@arcot.com>
 To:      letters@lwn.net
 Subject: iSCSI and SRP
 Date:    Mon, 01 Apr 2002 18:12:07 -0800
 
 In the March 28th article entitled "iSCSI and patented technologies",
 LWN made a few points that require clarification.  The article discussed
 the IETF IP Storage working group's efforts to standardize a password
 authentication mechanism.  SRP was chosen because it belongs to a class
 of cryptographic technologies known as "strong password protocols",
 which protect even easily-guessed passwords from password-guessing
 attacks carried out over the network.  As the inventor of SRP and the
 author of RFC 2945, one of the reasons I decided to make the technology
 royalty-free was the growing importance of OSS/Free Software. Without an
 unencumbered royalty-free strong password technology, OSS
 implementations would at a disadvantage compared to commercial
 implementors, who could afford to license such technology if it were
 incorporated into any standards.  Strong password technology is too
 important to be left exclusively in commercial hands.
 
 LWN's article says that SRP "appears to be covered" by three separate
 patents, which is not entirely correct.  Stanford has a pending patent
 on the technology, which is licensed on a royalty-free basis as
 described in the article.  The other patents, held by competitors in the
 space, need to be examined a bit more closely.  Lucent has not actually
 asserted any claim that any of their patents are relevant; although one
 might hope for an explicit disclaimer, it might be more realistic to
 assume that no statement will be made one way or another, and act
 accordingly.  Phoenix claims that its patent "may" apply to SRP, but as
 with any claim, it is up to the individual to examine the patent and the
 circumstances surrounding it in order to determine exactly how valid and
 supportable the claim is.
 
 For anyone interested in using (or just learning about) strong password
 technology, regardless of whether their implementation is commercial,
 OSS, GPL, etc., the SRP distribution is available from:
 
    [13]http://srp.stanford.edu/
 
 The distribution is available under a BSD-style Open Source license.
 
 --
 Tom Wu
 Principal Software Engineer
 Arcot Systems
 From:    jimd@starshine.org (Jim Dennis)
 To:      letters@lwn.net
 Subject: "The Way Out"
 Date:    Mon,  1 Apr 2002 12:38:39 -0800 (PST)
 
  Hi,
 
  Regarding the amusing Unisys/Microsoft joint venture in to marketing
  stupidity I have this response: (Posted as "comments" to an otherwise
  vacuous "registration" form on their site).
 
         Jim Jones had "the way out."  The Heaven's Gate cult offered
         "the way out."  I see that someone in your marketing department
         drank the Kool-Aid(TM) and managed to blow away tens of millions
         of dollars to declare that Microsoft and Unisys can offer
         sysadmins a roughly similar "way out."
 
  At least this isn't another "Astroturf(TM)" campaign, or another case
  of Mindcraft "bench-marketing."  Ahh! The acrid smell of FUD on a
  Monday morn.  Welcome to IT in the new millennium.
 From:    Duncan Simpson <dps@io.stargate.co.uk>
 To:      letters@lwn.net
 Subject: Programming and security...
 Date:    Thu, 28 Mar 2002 23:48:54 +0000
 Cc:      "jacob navia" <jacob.navia@wanadoo.fr>
 Jacob Navia suggests the right fix would be making calling free with the same
 memory twice safe. Indeed there are some implementations of malloc(3) that have
 this property and one of them might be used by MS windows (subject to unknown
 dependencies on the exact versions of an unknown set of dlls). Calling free
 with the same memory twice, or memory not obtained via malloc, is a BUG. If
 your application dumps core as a result, or causes a herd of flying pigs to
 emerge from your nose, that this within the documented behaviour.
 
 There are other goals in software design in addition to robustness in the face
 of bugs elsewhere, including scalability and performance. Every test for
 voilation of the assumptions a function makes, for example that a pointer is
 not NULL, wastes cycles protecting many applications against bugs which do not
 exist. Some "facts" are very expensive to test. Often when such tests are
 implemented they are not included in production binaries for performance and
 code size reasons.
 
 The malloc implementation in glibc 2.x, which dies when free is abused, is
 designed to be fast and scalable. Very few implementations of malloc which
 tolerate double free could claim to be scalable, and some are relatively slow.
 Also note that 99% of the code uses shared zlib and a single update fixes all
 of that 99%.
 
 P.S. Security standards have significnatly improved. Most programs how include
 very few buffer overrun bugs, which were endemic in older programs. M$ software
 is a dishonourable exception :-(
 
 --
 Duncan (-:
 "software industry, the: unique industry where selling substandard goods is
 legal and you can charge extra for fixing the problems."
 From:    jimd@starshine.org (Jim Dennis)
 To:      linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
 Subject: Nominations:
 Date:    Mon,  1 Apr 2002 13:22:28 -0800 (PST)
 Cc:      letters@lwn.net, editors@linuxtoday.com
 
  Hi Linus,
 
  I must commend you on the timing of your decision to step down
  as "Benevolent Dictator(TM)."  However I'm extremely disappointed
  by your nominations for your successor.  I think the time for
  *benevolence* is over.  If we are to usher in a new era of Linux
  kernel development we must consider a broader, darker range of
  candidates.
 
  I'd like to nominate Senator Hollings!  He's the obvious choice
  since he clearly intends to usurp the role of Grand Software
  Source Code Dictator for *all* software and firmware (open or closed).
  Indeed, regardless of whether you select him and even if he declines
  the title I think that we should all immediately add him to our MUAs
  for automatic copies of all source code submissions, patches and
  related discussions (for his legislative approval, of course).
  (Of course we should also appoint a special "technical advisor" to
  assist the Respected Mr. Hollings, William Gates III should be
  considered; surely chairman Bill could see "the way out" of any
  conundrum offered by the development community).
 
 --
 Sincerly,
 Jim Dennis, "The Linux Gazette Answer Jester"
 From:    Thomas Hood <jdthood@mail.com>
 To:      letters@lwn.net
 Subject: Re: The SSSCA under any other name
 Date:    02 Apr 2002 12:11:43 -0500
 
 One way to make the SSSCA issue comprehensible to the
 general American public might be to draw an automotive
 analogy, as follows.
 
 "Passing the SSSCA is like putting a regulator on every car
 preventing it from breaking traffic regulartions.  Pull up
 to a stop sign and it slams on the brakes.  Pull onto the
 highway and the accelerator pedal blocks at 55 mph.  The
 proponents argue: Only a criminal wouldn't want such a
 device built into his car!  The regulator also controls the
 radio, making sure that you listen to commercials.  The
 proponents say: Only a pirate would listen to the radio
 without listening to what the advertisers, who paid for the
 programming, have to say!  The proponents say: This doesn't
 restrict your freedom at all---you can always choose not to
 drive your car on public highways!"
 
 Etc.
 From:    David Neto <DNeto@altera.com>
 To:      "'letters@lwn.net'" <letters@lwn.net>
 Subject: CBDTPA: definition of a digital media device
 Date:    Thu, 28 Mar 2002 06:46:37 -0800
 Regarding the CBDTPA and its definition of a digital media device.
 
 Digitial components don't distinguish between copyrighted works
 or any other set of bits.  That's the beauty of the universality of digital
 machines.  So am I to understand that an ethernet cable is a "digital
 media device"?  How about a 128MB DIMM memory bank?  How about just 1024
 bits
 of SRAM?  1 SRAM bit?
 
 Sure, that's a debate about definitions.  I'd expect that the
 government might be willing to let the courts interpret the law on this
 one.
 
 Whether the intent of the law is good or bad is an entirely different
 matter.  For that fight you've got to do you politicking.
 Best of luck from a Canadian,
 David
 (These are my views, not my employer's....)
 From:    Don Carter <don.carter@rogers.com>
 To:      letters@lwn.net
 Subject: Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act
 Date:    Sun, 31 Mar 2002 22:09:40 -0500
 Regarding the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act,
 you say:
 
 "So how can free software function in this legal environment? ...  A
 source-available system, where users can remove the corporate big
 brother code at will, can never be "reliable" or "resistant to attack"
 in the eyes of CBDTPA supporters. If that interpretation holds, Linux
 systems become illegal whether or not they include the security code."
 
 A source-available system can implement the CBDTPA if and only if the
 CBDTPA is implemented purely in hardware.  Removing the "corporate big
 brother code" (which would simply access the api exposed by the
 underlying hardware) would then merely make the protected content
 unavailable.
 
 This does not mean that computers need to be neutered completely (the
 'don't turn my computer into a settop box' argument).  Protected content
 can be handled specially by the hardware, while all other content is
 treated exactly as it is today.
 
 If Microsoft gets its way, protected content will be delivered through
 proprietary protocols implemented in Microsoft operating systems --
 protocols that would be protected from reverse-engineering by the DMCA
 and protected from clean-room implementations by patent.
 
 As much as I dislike the MPAA and the RIAA, they do have a legitimate
 concern here.  Likewise, consumers and Open/Free Source advocates have
 legitimate concerns (backups for personal use, being able to time- and
 space-shift content the user has legal rights to, making protected
 content available in an unprotected format once copyright has expired).
 
 We can work with them and find a solution that addresses everyone's
 concerns, or we can fight against them.  But if we choose the latter, we
 strengthen Microsoft's hand.  If content-providers decide to go with
 Microsoft's "digital rights management", then we will have successfully
 locked Linux out of any part of the network that transports protected
 content.  Not only will Linux forever concede the desktop market, it
 will eventually lose the server market as well.
 Don
 From:    tom poe <tompoe@renonevada.net>
 To:      letters@lwn.net
 Subject: Commentary by Alex Salkever
 Date:    Sun, 31 Mar 2002 15:05:25 -0800
 Cc:      "DMCA" <dmca_discuss@lists.microshaft.org>
 
 Hi:  Your posting about Guard Copyrights, Don't Jail Innovation, by Alex
 Salkever highlights some interesting support for NOT passing the DBDTPA law:
 [14]http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2002/nf20020327_2364.htm
 
 There is a growing school of thought that recognizes the significance of
 Lawrence Lessig's Creative Commons Project [see:
 [15]http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/ ] as providing a key ingredient to change
 within the Music Industry.  Here's just a taste of what this marvelous
 project does for consumers.
 
 The Internet empowers all of us, as we have the ability to communicate
 instantly across the country, and around the world.  This empowerment
 translates into marketing strategies and audience development for artists and
 musicians that heretofore had to rely on managers, producers, "in-between"
 agents to do that for them.  The stumbling block with the Internet approach
 resides primarily in the legal profession.  Licensing issues, and related
 issues to distribution, and control of one's works is missing.  Without such
 guidance and assistance, many artists and musicians remain "trapped" in the
 present Music Industry's grip.  The Creative Commons Project unleashes them,
 frees them to pursue alternative strategies that will, in fact, bring them
 the fame and fortune the Music Industry refuses.
 
 For starters, there is a push to broaden the base of Public Domain works
 available to the world community.  A model for such a mission can be seen in
 its earliest formation here:
 [16]http://www.studioforrecording.org/   the main site
 [17]http://www.ibiblio.org/studioforrecording/   the Repository Page
 
 The community-based recording studios provide FREE recording services in
 return for the artist or musician to place their works in the Public Domain.
 Related services will assist these individuals and groups to develop and
 follow marketing strategies that will lead to successful careers, without
 reliance on the Music Industry.  One of the premises for this model lies with
 recognizing that tours, concerts, and a blending of Public Domain and
 Copyrighted works is where the "money is".   This gives hope to those
 managers, producers, agents, that they will still have a role to play, but
 the terms may be slightly different. <grin>
 
 I can't wait to see the day this all happens, and we are able to watch ASCAP
 and BMI "eat their 40 copyright-protected 'arrangements' of "Row, Row, Row
 Your Boat".
 
 Thanks,
 Tom
 From:    Leon Brooks <leon@cyberknights.com.au>
 To:      Linux Weekly News <letters@lwn.net>
 Subject: Disney hates baseball, film at 11?
 Date:    Fri, 29 Mar 2002 13:14:23 +0800
 Cc:      Jerry <wa6cvl@sbcglobal.net>
 
 Jerry used the analogy of crime-proof cars to show the clumsy stupidity of
 the CBDTPA. Perhaps a more accurate analogy for Michael D Eisner's statements
 would lie in that all-American favourite, the sandlot baseball game (Aussies
 might relate better to backyard cricket matches).
 
 What Michael is in essence proposing in analogy is that because he wants to
 be able to sell admission to Disney's baseball grounds, the US government
 should legislate that all open spaces possibly useable as baseball grounds
 must have security fencing, sight screens, a ticket office and so on, or be
 illegal to own or use.
 
 The first analogical problem that would confront him in places like Australia
 (and some US states) is that there are so very *many* of these, and lots of
 them are crown land or reserves.
 
 But the real flies in the ointment would be sandlot baseball, public parks,
 and undeveloped land. Oh, yes, and what would happen when the lawyers
 finished with all of these?
 
 Anyone carrying a baseball glove across a vacant lot (or their own backyard)
 would be liable for prosecution. Actually getting together for a baseball
 game would be really asking to be jailed as criminals.
 
 Councils could be prosecuted for making potential baseball diamonds (in the
 form of parks and gardens) available without properly licenced baseball
 fittings. Right-Of-Way laws and baseball control laws would clash.
 
 The ultimate irony would be watching the Disney corporate Christmas party
 being rounded up and herded into paddy-wagons after some of the staff
 carelessly broke out bats and balls.
 
 Carrying the analogy back to real life, Disney's overt goal is control over
 the viewing of their own media. In order to gain this control, they are
 apparently willing to enforce control over every medium, and every viewing
 device, regardless of purpose, location, ownership, cost or anything else.
 
 The kindest thing that could be said about that is `it is very irresponsible'.
 
 It does not appear to have dawned on Disney that many viewing devices exist
 through which Disney footage has never passed and will never pass. Their
 proposal would make these devices every bit as illegal as the ones
 deliberately and carefully used by pirates to clone (for sale) copyrighted,
 commercial DVDs by the thousands.
 
 Cheers; Leon
 From:    "Charles Hethcoat" <Charles Hethcoat <clhiii@attglobal.net>>
 To:      letters@lwn.net
 Subject:
 Date:    Thu, 28 Mar 2002 21:15:27 -0600
 
 Dear Editor:
 
 Of all the self-serving balderdash floating about in Congress and
 Hollywood, Michael Eisner's article in The Financial Times is just
 about the worst I've seen.  Thanks for alerting us to it.
 
 Eisner shamelessly quotes Abraham Lincoln's words while using them to
 repress the very rights that Lincoln was talking about:
 
      "...The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, FOR
      A LIMITED TIME, the exclusive use of his invention; ..."
 
 The key phrase in this quotation, completely ignored by Mr. Eisner,
 was "for a limited time."  This is the important fact about patents
 and copyrights that is being destroyed by the media moguls.  The
 public interest is only served by (1) a /limited/ period of
 government-protected monopoly (allowing for profit by the copyright
 owner), followed by (2) an /unlimited/ period in the public domain.
 
 The facts in the next paragraph come from the excellent article by
 Neil Weinstock Netanel that appeared in 106 Yale Law Journal 283
 (1996).  This article is MUST READING for you, me, Mr. Eisner, all of
 Hollywood, and the U. S. Congress:
 
 [18]http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/nnetanel/yljarticle.htm
 
 The Constitution demands that copyrights be limited in term.  Congress
 originally (in an Act dated May 31, 1790) limited copyright to one
 14-year term, renewable at most one time.  Since then, reacting to
 commercial pressures, Congress, acting against longer-term public
 interest, lengthened the term repeatedly (in 1831, again in 1909,
 again in 1976).  The 1976 Act gave exclusive rights to the copyright's
 owner for the life of the author plus 50 years.  According to the
 article, another piece of legislation pending would extend this even
 further, to life plus 70 years.  (I am not sure if it passed.)
 
 Where will it end?  Apparently never, for, the Constitution
 notwithstanding, the idea of a copyright has now been replaced by an
 irritatingly wrongheaded notion of "intellectual property"---an idea
 that basically makes a copyright into real property for perpetuity,
 and gives the owner the right to shoot to kill, figuratively speaking.
 (I am from Texas, where trespassers may be shot on sight.)  How bad
 has it gotten?  Now the idea even has an acronym: IP.  I have even
 seen help wanted ads for something called an "IP Manager."
 
 If I could, I would ask Mr. Eisner a question:  How much longer does
 he expect to continue getting richer and richer off of Mickey Mouse?
 He (Mickey) should have gone into the public domain /years/ ago, if
 Congress were doing its job.  And if Mr. Eisner were doing his job,
 Disney would just have moved on to something else even newer, cuter
 and more irresistible with which to lure us into movie houses and make
 us buy DVDs.  Today, it should be perfectly legal for underpaid
 watermelon farmers to eke out a living by making plywood Mickey
 likenesses and hawk them from the back of a pickup truck on the
 roadside.  But it isn't, of course; that is "theft of intellectual
 property" and will be stopped immediately under the protection to
 Disney afforded by Congress.
 
 Eisner, the MPAA, and their storm troopers are the real thieves.  They
 are stealing our money and stealing our way of government, and trying
 to tell us that Abe would approve.  A pox on all their houses.
 
 Charles Hethcoat
 From:    JP S-C <jp_sc@yahoo.com>
 To:      letters@lwn.net
 Subject: 2nd Linux Accessibility Conference
 Date:    Thu, 28 Mar 2002 20:51:21 -0800 (PST)
 There was a flurry of activity in the Linux accessibility world at [19]CSUN 200
 2, one of the most
 widely attended, well known, and longest running conferences on technology
 for the disabled.  Accessibility, for those who do not know, is the
 practice of making software accessible or usable by the disabled (e.g.,
 blind or low vision); under United States law, software, including Linux,
 must be accessible for it to be used by the government.  Similar laws exist
 in other countries.
 On Thursday, March 21st, Sun Microsystems presented the UNIX Accessibility
 sessions, which ranged in subject matter from panel discussions about the
 general importance and state of UNIX accessibility, to overviews of the
 structure of GNOME 2 and the GNOME Accessibility Architecture, to
 presentations about new Assistive Technology (AT) for the platform.  Most
 notable were demonstrations of Gnopernicus, a GNOME screen reader,
 magnifier, and Braille outputer and GOK, the GNOME Onscreen Keyboard.  Sun
 also announced that a team of engineers in China is working on making
 Mozilla accessible through the GNOME Accessibility Architecture and that
 several engineers are doing the same for Nautilis.  Overall, Thursdays
 sessions were representative of the great progress made in the last year in
 the Linux and UNIX accessibility world, specifically in the GNOME, GTK+,
 and X Windows arenas.
 The next day the 2nd Linux Accessibility Conference, also at CSUN 2002,
 served as the stage for more in-depth and technical material as well as
 group discussions about the communitys direction.  Presentations were
 given on subjects such accessibility checklists and guides for application
 developers, modifying the Linux kernel to speech-enable console
 applications, and Linux accessibility in the United States
 government. Among the most prominent parts of the conference was a
 roundtable on interoperability and collaboration, which lead to the
 formation of lengthy and detailed [20]TODO list.  As with the
 1st Linux Accessibility Conference, this years meeting allowed developers
 to share their work and plans for the coming months and hopefully better
 coordinate them.
 Overall, in two days at CSUN, UNIX, Solaris, and Linux showed themselves to
 be increasingly capable platforms for disabled users.  The Linux
 accessibility community continues to grow and is looking, now more than
 ever, for new developers and volunteers.  E-mail [21]JP Schnapper-Casteras
 and with your skills and experience (experience with accessibility not
 required) and he will put you in contact with the appropriate people and
 projects.
 URLs:
 
      * [22]TODO items
      * [23]Notes from the conference
      * [24]Free Desktop Accessibility Working Group (FDAWG)
      * [25]GNOME Accessibility Project (GAP)
      * [26]Linux Accessibility Resource Site (LARS)
 
    Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds, Solaris is a trademark of Sun
    Microsystems, Inc. and all other trademarks are property of their
    respective owners. ===== Home Page -
    [27]http://ocularis.sourceforge.net
    [28]Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright Л 2002 [29]Eklektix, Inc.,
    all rights reserved
    Linux (R) is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
 
 References
 
    1. http://lwn.net/
    2. http://lwn.net/2002/0404/
    3. http://lwn.net/2002/0404/security.php3
    4. http://lwn.net/2002/0404/kernel.php3
    5. http://lwn.net/2002/0404/dists.php3
    6. http://lwn.net/2002/0404/devel.php3
    7. http://lwn.net/2002/0404/commerce.php3
    8. http://lwn.net/2002/0404/press.php3
    9. http://lwn.net/2002/0404/announce.php3
   10. http://lwn.net/2002/0404/bigpage.php3
   11. http://lwn.net/2002/0328/letters.php3
   12. mailto:letters@lwn.net
   13. http://srp.stanford.edu/
   14. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2002/nf20020327_2364.htm
   15. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/
   16. http://www.studioforrecording.org/
   17. http://www.ibiblio.org/studioforrecording/
   18. http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/nnetanel/yljarticle.htm
   19. http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf2002/
   20. http://ocularis.sourceforge.net/todo/
   21. mailto:jp_sc@yahoo.com
   22. http://ocularis.sf.net/todo/
   23. http://ocularis.sf.net/events/csun2002/notes.html
   24. http://speechinfo.org/fdwag/
   25. http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/
   26. http://trace.wisc.edu/lars/
   27. http://ocularis.sourceforge.net/
   28. http://www.eklektix.com/
   29. http://www.eklektix.com/
 
 --- ifmail v.2.14.os7-aks1
  * Origin: Unknown (2:4615/71.10@fidonet)
 
 

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