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 From : Sergey Lentsov                       2:4615/71.10   13 Dec 2001  17:11:04
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 Subject : URL: http://www.lwn.net/2001/1213/
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 Leading items and editorials
 
    A new proposed Microsoft remedy. Unhappy with the Department of
    Justice's remedy, nine holdout states have put forward a proposal of
    their own in the Microsoft case. The full proposal is available to
    those who are interested [37]in PDF format. Here we'll look at a few
    aspects of this proposal that are of interest to the free software
    community.
    
    One, of course, is the requirement that Internet Explorer (actually,
    "all browser products and browser functionality") be released under an
    open source license. The license to be used is not specified, but it
    includes "a royalty-free, non-exclusive perpetual right on a
    non-discriminatory basis to make, use, modify, and distribute without
    limitation products implementing or derived from Microsoft's source
    code." In other words, it looks like something BSDish.
    
    Is this helpful? One can imagine a belated release of code, missing
    many important parts which, while necessary to build IE, are not,
    according to Microsoft, "browser functionality." An open source IE
    could help to create some browser diversity on the Windows platform.
    It's not clear how much it would help on free systems, where numerous
    free, capable browsers are finally becoming available.
    
    More to the point, perhaps, it is hard to see how an open source
    Internet Explorer will help mitigate Microsoft's monopoly power in the
    future.
    
    The proposal requires Microsoft to distribute Java for the next ten
    years. This seems pointless. No doubt enough little glitches could be
    caused to remain in the Java virtual machine that the "debug
    everywhere" nature of the language would persist. Do we really want
    the government to start regulating which languages should be present
    on our systems?
    
    Then there's the porting of Office. The proposal requires Microsoft to
    auction licenses for ports of Office to three other operating systems.
    It's worth noting that nothing says which systems are to receive
    ports; it would appear that Microsoft could offer licenses for ports
    to, say, CP/M, Plan 9, and VxWorks. Nothing in the proposal requires a
    port to Linux.
    
    How useful would such a port be, if it were to happen? The
    availability of Office might help drive a few corporate desktop
    deployments. But, then, if people really want to run Office, there is
    probably little reason for them not to run it on Windows. If the port
    included a separate library for the reading and writing of Office file
    formats, other Linux applications could have an easier time with
    proprietary files. Except, of course, those licensed under the GPL,
    which could not be linked with that sort of closed source library.
    
    Section 4 of the proposal requires "disclosure of APIs, communications
    interfaces, and technical information." This seems like a good idea:
    much effort in the free software community goes into reverse
    engineering of Microsoft's protocols and formats. The proposal does
    not require disclosure to the free software community, however, or to
    the public as a whole. Disclosure is limited to "ISVs, IHV, IAPs, ICP,
    OEMs and third-party licensees." This information would remain
    proprietary, only with a larger group of companies allowed access.
    It's not at all clear that the information so disclosed could be
    incorporated into free software products.
    
    In summary: this proposal is stronger than the remedies put forward by
    the Department of Justice, but it still does little for the free
    software community. Free software developers are not given the sort of
    access to information that is mandated for proprietary vendors. And,
    of course, this proposal does little to prevent a future Microsoft
    monopoly based on .NET and HailStorm.
    
    The best course of action remains as before: create the best software
    we can and let it speak for itself. Free software continues to make
    great strides, even in the current economic climate. Rather than
    counting on the government to hobble the strongest proprietary
    competition, let's work on keeping free software strong and making
    that competition obsolete.
    
    (See also: [38]Robert X. Cringely's take on the proposal, which
    includes information on how to submit comments, and [39]Dan Kegel's
    proposed modifications to the proposal).
    
    Worth a look: OpenOffice. The [40]OpenOffice project seems to be
    keeping a deliberately low profile. OpenOffice developers, perhaps,
    are fearful of the criticism that Mozilla has taken over the years;
    they, too, have taken on a hefty chunk of newly freed corporate code,
    and are working to turn it into a proper free application. Rather than
    risk disappointing the community, OpenOffice is keeping relatively
    quiet about what it is up to. No press releases, no weekly summaries.
    
    Then again, maybe they just do not want to draw attention away from
    the upcoming StarOffice 6.0 commercial release.
    
    It is, however, time that the world began to notice OpenOffice. The
    project has, quietly, produced a capable and fully functional office
    productivity suite. Recent builds of OpenOffice are very similar to
    the StarOffice 6.0 beta recently released by Sun (and [41]reviewed by
    LWN), but without the weird licensing. All the important features are
    there.
    
    Not long ago, there was no free office suite for Linux, and the
    proprietary ones left users disappointed as well. Now we are blessed
    with a number of free alternatives. An MS Office power user would
    likely find reasons to complain about all of them, but most others
    should find all the capabilities they need. The widespread deployment
    of Linux on desktops may be closer than we think.
    
    What the insiders are up to. One fun bit of information available on
    the Yahoo site is data on insider stock trades. This trading
    information can give an insight into what people are up to. Here's a
    couple of examples:
      * When the company now known as Caldera International and the
        company now known as Lineo split apart, each maintained a
        substantial holding in the other. A look at [42]the insider
        trading data for Caldera shows that Lineo has been selling off its
        holdings - over 1 million shares for almost $1.3 million since the
        beginning of the year. Caldera's stock fell to a low of $0.22
        while this was happening. One could say that Lineo is showing a
        lack of faith in its sister company's future, but the truth is
        probably more straightforward: Lineo has been financing its
        operation by selling its Caldera stock.
      * A pattern stands out immediately in [43]Red Hat's data: co-founder
        Bob Young has been selling roughly 10,000 shares daily since the
        middle of July. Proceeds will be in the millions of dollars.
        Either Bob is looking to buy a house in co-founder Marc Ewing's
        neighborhood, or he has some other scheme in the works...
        
    Holders of stock in VA Software, instead, [44]are standing pat; there
    are very few insider trades on record.
    
    Inside this LWN.net weekly edition:
      * [45]Security: Governments choose Linux, security reports &
        updates, AES standard published.
      * [46]Kernel: Memory pools; bigger device numbers; dueling
        schedulers.
      * [47]Distributions: Got KRUD?; Installing Debian Linux on a Dell
        Laptop.
      * [48]Development: Bochs x86 emulator, Quanta 2.0, OpenCV 2.1,
        Crystal Space 0.92, Open CASCADE 4.0, Guikachu 1.0.0, Osimpa macro
        assembler, PHP 4.1.0, Ruby/FLTK 0.5.0.
      * [49]Commerce: Caldera and VA financials, Red Hat's Szulik to
        testify before senate, VA name change, Covalent Apache 2.0 Zone.
      * [50]History: Debian 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2; 2.4 is imminent; VA Linux
        goes public.
      * [51]Letters: MS Remedies; Mutt and Evolution; SourceForge.
        
    ...plus the usual array of reports, updates, and announcements.
    
    This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
      * [52]Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor
        
    December 13, 2001
    
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    [56]Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright Л 2001 [57]Eklektix, Inc.,
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    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/2001/1213/security.php3
    4. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/kernel.php3
    5. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/dists.php3
    6. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/devel.php3
    7. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/commerce.php3
    8. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/press.php3
    9. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/announce.php3
   10. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/history.php3
   11. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/letters.php3
   12. http://lwn.net//2001/1213/bigpage.php3
   13. http://lwn.net/daily/
   14. http://linuxcalendar.com/
   15. http://lwn.net/stocks/
   16. http://lwn.net/Reviews/
   17. http://lwn.net/Gallery/
   18. http://lwn.net/archives/
   19. http://lwn.net/op/headlines.phtml
   20. http://lwn.net/op/Contact.html
   21. http://linux.tucows.com/
   22. http://news.tucows.com/ext2/
   23. http://unixthemes.tucows.com/
   24. http://lwn.net/2001/features/oreilly2001/
   25. http://lwn.net/2001/features/OLS/
   26. http://lwn.net/2001/features/MandrakeSoft.php3
   27. http://lwn.net/2001/features/KernelSummit/
   28. http://lwn.net/2001/features/Singapore
   29. http://lwn.net/2001/features/djbdns.php3
   30. http://lwn.net/2001/features/linuxworldny/
   31. http://lwn.net/2001/features/JHaas/
   32. http://lwn.net/2001/features/LarryWall/
   33. http://lwn.net/2001/features/Momjian/
   34. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Timeline/
   35. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/
   36. http://lwn.net/2001/1206/
   37. http://www.naag.org/features/microsoft/ms-remedy_filing.pdf
   38. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20011206.html
   39. http://www.kegel.com/remedy.html
   40. http://www.openoffice.org/
   41. http://lwn.net/2001/1011/
   42. http://biz.yahoo.com/t/c/cald.html
   43. http://biz.yahoo.com/t/r/rhat.html
   44. http://biz.yahoo.com/t/l/lnux.html
   45. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/security.php3
   46. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/kernel.php3
   47. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/dists.php3
   48. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/devel.php3
   49. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/commerce.php3
   50. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/history.php3
   51. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/letters.php3
   52. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
   53. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/buttonpos=lwnbutton125top
   54. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/buttonpos=125-001-016
   55. http://lwn.net/2001/1213/security.php3
   56. http://www.eklektix.com/
   57. http://www.eklektix.com/
 
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