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 From : Sergey Lentsov                       2:4615/71.10   14 Oct 2001  14:16:26
 To : All
 Subject : URL: http://www.lwn.net/2001/1011/
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    Here is the [36]permanent site for this page.
    
    See also: [37]last week's LWN.
    
 Leading items and editorials
 
    A note for LWN's readers LWN.net was formed as a result of discussions
    between Liz Coolbaugh and Jonathan Corbet almost exactly four years
    ago. In those years, it has been our privilege to report on the
    explosion of Linux, and, in our own small way, to be a part of the
    success of Linux and free software in general. We would like to
    continue doing so for a long time.
    
    Unfortunately, that may not prove possible. Tucows, which has
    generously funded LWN's operation since acquiring it in early 2000,
    has had to [38]cut back on expenses, due to the well-known
    difficulties in the current economic environment. Tucows's support for
    LWN has been strong beyond the call of duty, but the company is no
    longer able to continue that support.
    
    An immediate result is the loss of Senior Editor Michael J. Hammel.
    Michael has brought a lot to LWN, including his unique "On the
    Desktop" page. He will be much missed.
    
    Things may not stop there, unfortunately. The online advertising
    market is difficult, to put it mildly, and attempts to turn up
    corporate sponsorships have not been successful. Unless we can come up
    with a way of paying salaries soon, LWN risks dropping off the net
    entirely.
    
    The biggest reward from writing LWN has, from the beginning, been the
    quality of our readers. So we are now asking our readers for
    suggestions on how we could keep LWN going in this environment. To
    that end, we have created a new mailing list to host a discussion
    between our readers and ourselves; subscription information can be
    found [39]here (note that you can send comments to the list without
    subscribing - at least until the spammers find the list). If LWN is
    valuable to you, and you have some thoughts on assuring its future, we
    would be most interested in hearing from you.
    
    Playing with StarOffice 6.0. Your editor, wishing for a distraction,
    decided to download the beta version of StarOffice 6.0 to see how it
    looks. Having sworn mightily at several previous versions of
    StarOffice, we felt well qualified to disparage this one as well.
    
    Lest you be confused into thinking you're dealing with free software,
    Sun's [40]download page starts off with an intrusive registration
    process - requesting even a mother's maiden name (to help with
    forgotten passwords, of course). The license agreement is also
    interesting; it states:
    
      Sun Microsystems, Inc. grants to Licensee, a non-exclusive,
      non-transferable, royalty-free and limited license to use Licensed
      Software internally for the purposes of evaluation only. No license
      is granted to Licensee for any other purpose....
      
      Licensee shall have no right to use the Licensed Software for
      productive or commercial use.
      
    Proprietary software often comes with strange licensing, but it's a
    rare package that forbids doing anything useful at all. The agreement
    also obligates the user to provide feedback to Sun on the software.
    Finally, it requires:
    
      Upon termination or expiration of this Agreement, Licensee will
      immediately cease use of and destroy Licensed Software and any
      copies thereof and provide Sun Microsystems, Inc. a written
      statement certifying that Licensee has complied with the foregoing
      obligations.
      
    It's not clear just how many people have downloaded this beta; one
    presumes, however, that Sun will be staffing up heavily to deal with
    all the written notifications it will receive in 90 days when the beta
    license expires.
    
    Some things have not changed with StarOffice. For example, it's big.
    The program comes in a 120MB self-extracting executable; the 69-page
    installation guide is an extra, 570K download. Oh, and if you want the
    full functionality, you also have to go get a suitable version of the
    Java runtime environment and the Adabas server - but it will function
    without them.
    
    Don't be trying to run much else on your system when you run the
    installation - it thrashes the system pretty hard. It's interesting
    that the single-user/network installation distinction still exists.
    One would think it could simply be installed and run from anywhere
    that can see it.
    
    Another thing that has not changed: StarOffice is a monster program,
    with a virtual memory footprint of over 100MB.
    
    StarOffice 6.0 is, however, nicer to use than its predecessors. The
    "do everything in one place" philosophy is gone and unlamented; if you
    ask for a word processor, it's just another window on your screen. We
    note with pleasure that printing has become more reasonable -
    StarOffice 6.0 actually looks at your printcap file and finds the
    queues by itself.
    
    Importing of old StarOffice files works nicely, as does importing from
    various proprietary formats. Imported files, in general, work far
    better than with version 5.x. The spreadsheet is not able to import
    gnumeric files, though.
    
    And, of course, there is the new, XML file format. Actually, a
    StarOffice document is now stored as a compressed Zip file; unpacking
    that file turns up a set of XML files containing the document content,
    metadata, images, etc. There is a modest size penalty over older,
    proprietary document formats, but it is less than a factor of two and
    well worth it. Proprietary data formats are one of the greatest evils
    of the software industry; moving to something more transparent can
    only be a good thing.
    
    In summary, a StarOffice 6.0 beta user will not encounter a great deal
    of new features. The effort, instead, has gone into making a lot of
    things work better. In other words, the priorities seem to be in the
    right place, and development is headed in the right direction.
    StarOffice 6.0 will be a useful tool in many environments.
    
    And, certainly, we are looking forward to seeing much of that good
    work released in a free form via the [41]OpenOffice project.
    
    A couple of positions on RAND licensing. The deadline for comments on
    the W3C's RAND licensing proposal is October 11; those of you reading
    this page shortly after publication will still have time to sound off,
    if you have not already done so. Meanwhile, we have a couple of
    high-profile comments that are worth passing on.
    
    The Open Source Initiative, as represented by Eric Raymond, has sent
    out [42]a detailed criticism of the W3C's proposed standard. According
    to the OSI, a RAND term is acceptable as long as it includes an
    exception for open source implementations. The OSI, it seems, would be
    pleased if proprietary implementers of web standards had to pay
    royalties, while free software got by without.
    
    Without that exception, however, RAND licensing is, according to the
    OSI, bad news. The tone gets strong toward the end:
    
      If the W3C persists in its present course, it risks having its tea
      dumped in Boston harbor as the first move in a revolution that will
      vest effective control of Web standards in open-source groups like
      the Apache Software Foundation and entirely out of the ambit of the
      W3C and its sponsors. OSI would do what we can help lead that
      revolt.
      
    A slighly less polemic comment can be found in [43]HP's position, as
    expressed by Bruce Perens.
    
      HP's policy regarding RAND may have been mis-interpreted by the
      public and the press, because the name of an HP attorney appears on
      the Patent Policy Framework draft. However, that attorney was not a
      major contributor to the draft, and he asserted to the committee
      upon HP's behalf that royalty-encumbered standards would not be
      successful.
      
    The W3C's eventual conclusion remains to be seen. One can hope that
    they have heard the outcry and will act accordingly, but one sometimes
    hopes in vain. It may yet be time for a tea party.
    
    Inside this LWN.net weekly edition:
      * [44]Security: PHP Nuke hole gets worse; a couple of kernel
        problems.
      * [45]Kernel: The state of kernel development; overwriting active
        shared libraries.
      * [46]Distributions: The list moves; Effort Linux.
      * [47]On the Desktop: Moving on: a personal note before leaving
        LWN.net.
      * [48]Development: Apocalypse 3 for Perl 6, Printer paper tray
        selection, Redfoot RDF, Lisa 1.1, Pyro:Python Remote Objects,
        eclipse IDE platform.
      * [49]Commerce: New IBM p690 server, US Navy tests open source,
        MSC.software donates $6M to Kettering University.
      * [50]History: Fall of Microsoft predicted; Turbolinux gets money;
        Great Bridge hires PostgreSQL hackers.
      * [51]Letters: LWN disinformation; RAND licensing.
        
    ...plus the usual array of reports, updates, and announcements.
    
    This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
      * [52]Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor
      * [53]Michael J. Hammel, Senior Editor
        
    October 11, 2001
    
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    [57]Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright Л 2001 [58]Eklektix, Inc.,
    all rights reserved
    Linux (R) is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
 
 References
 
    1. http://lwn.net/
    2. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/pageid=001-012-132-000-000-001-000-000-012
    3. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/security.php3
    4. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/kernel.php3
    5. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/dists.php3
    6. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/desktop.php3
    7. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/devel.php3
    8. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/commerce.php3
    9. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/press.php3
   10. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/announce.php3
   11. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/history.php3
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   13. http://lwn.net//2001/1011/bigpage.php3
   14. http://lwn.net/daily/
   15. http://linuxcalendar.com/
   16. http://lwn.net/stocks/
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   18. http://lwn.net/Gallery/
   19. http://lwn.net/archives/
   20. http://lwn.net/op/headlines.phtml
   21. http://lwn.net/op/Contact.html
   22. http://linux.tucows.com/
   23. http://news.tucows.com/ext2/
   24. http://unixthemes.tucows.com/
   25. http://lwn.net/2001/features/oreilly2001/
   26. http://lwn.net/2001/features/OLS/
   27. http://lwn.net/2001/features/MandrakeSoft.php3
   28. http://lwn.net/2001/features/KernelSummit/
   29. http://lwn.net/2001/features/Singapore
   30. http://lwn.net/2001/features/djbdns.php3
   31. http://lwn.net/2001/features/linuxworldny/
   32. http://lwn.net/2001/features/JHaas/
   33. http://lwn.net/2001/features/LarryWall/
   34. http://lwn.net/2001/features/Momjian/
   35. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Timeline/
   36. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/
   37. http://lwn.net/2001/1004/
   38. http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/011002/nytu145_1.html
   39. http://vena.lwn.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion
   40. http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/6.0beta/get.html
   41. http://openoffice.org/
   42. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/a/osi-w3c.php3
   43. http://perens.com/Articles/HP_And_W3C_Standards.html
   44. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/security.php3
   45. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/kernel.php3
   46. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/dists.php3
   47. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/desktop.php3
   48. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/devel.php3
   49. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/commerce.php3
   50. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/history.php3
   51. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/letters.php3
   52. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
   53. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
   54. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/buttonpos=lwnbutton125top
   55. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/buttonpos=125-001-016
   56. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/security.php3
   57. http://www.eklektix.com/
   58. http://www.eklektix.com/
 
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