Free Republic

GPLv3 will help FreeBSD take some users away from Linux, according to the founder and vice president of The FreeBSD Foundation. Writing in the FreeBSD Foundation's August newsletter, Justin T. Gibbs said "GPLv3 is a critical concern for many current commercial users of open source software. "Against the backdrop of GPLv3, the stark difference between the BSD licensing philosophy and that of the Free Software Foundation are only too clear," he said. One difference Gibbs saw was future-proofing the licences. "A GPL proponent might argue that a licence for free software must be upgraded periodically since we cannot anticipate what...

Core Security is reporting a remote buffer exploit for the OpenBSD operating system. This is also being reported on /. Title: OpenBSD's IPv6 mbufs remote kernel buffer overflow Class: Buffer Overflow Remotely Exploitable: Yes Locally Exploitable: No   Advisory URL:http://www.coresecurity.com/?action=item&id=1703Vendors contacted:OpenBSD.org   Vulnerability Description The OpenBSD kernel contains a memory corruption vulnerability in the code that handles IPv6 packets. Exploitation of this vulnerability can result in: 1) Remote execution of arbitrary code at the kernel level on the vulnerable systems (complete system compromise), or; 2) Remote denial of service attacks against vulnerable systems (system crash due to a kernel panic)...

Be careful what you ask for An unscientific poll of posters at a Democratic Underground discussion board yields a result that maybe isn’t so surprising: 72% of those responding say they are “dealing with severe mental illness in their home.” Based on the URL, this appears to be genuine, not a spoof. Whether DU posters are reporting on themselves or close relatives remains an open question. Of course, Sheldon Drobny of Air America probably thinks that Karl Rove is the sinister force behind Democratic Underground.

What is happening is that the CD purchase FTP ratio is out of control. People pretty much stopped purchasing CDs in quantities they used to and use the FTP mirrors instead. This lack of sales is what is causing the project to turn a small loss for the 2nd year in a row. To fulfill most development goals OpenBSD should be generating about $100K USD. With that amount of money the project can finance 1 large and 4 small hackathons per year. Pay the bills and a part-time developer to mind the shop when Theo isn't around. In an ideal...

I am a little acquainted with some of the xNIX (UNIX-like) O/S's out there, having used Corel Linux, Fedora Core, Mandrake, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and HP-UX to some degree. I am not afraid of command-line work, but I have a major gripe about all the xNIX's when it comes to non-X work: vi sucks. ed blows. Have any xNIX gurus out there ever used the MS-DOS text editor (edit.com)? For a long-time PC user, that is the standard by which all others are judged. The text editors in Gnome and KDE work very much like Edit.com, but I can't seem to...

Successful assaults by viruses and other malware on the Mac operating system are rare as it has better security and attackers are less keen, says Stephen Wildstrom of BusinessWeek. "There is endless debate among security experts about whether the paucity of successful assaults on Apple's OS X is attributable to better security or attackers' lack of interest in an operating system whose share of the market is in single digits. I think it's some of both." Wildstrom says one reason Mac OS X offers inherently better security is that it was designed with relatively little concern for compatibility with earlier...

Some nice screenshots Here..

Have you ever wanted to take a look at FreeBSD without having to actually install anything on your hard disk? FreeSBIE, developed by Gruppo Utentia FreeBSD Italia, is a live CD based on the FreeBSD operating system, similar to the Knoppix and Mandriva Move Linux live CDs. The current version 1.1 is based on FreeBSD version 5.3. It works directly from the CD without altering any data on your hard disk, but version 1.1 also offers the option of a hard disk installation using a feature borrowed with permission from the BSDinstaller team. FreeSBIE support several types of desktop environments....

NEW YORK - Theo de Raadt is a pioneer of the open source software movement and a huge proponent of free software. But he is no fan of the open source Linux operating system. "It's terrible," De Raadt says. "Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'"

Apple's Mac OS X has been declared one of the world's safest operating systems by London-based security experts, mi2g. The security firm's Intelligence Unit has run a comparitive study of the variety of operating systems available today. It states: "The world's safest and most secure online server Operating System (OS) is proving to be the Open Source family of BSD (Berkley Software Distribution) and Mac OS X based on Darwin." It's also claimed that Linux has become the most breached online server OS in the government and non-government spheres for the first time, while the number of successful hacker...

<p>Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark is looking for a few good programmers, designers and technical writers.</p> <p>Clark's technology team announced Monday the launch of Clark TechCorps, an initiative to build a suite of free, open-source applications for campaigns and elections.</p>

Wolf Blitzed: But aren't the people of Iraq so much better off now with Saddam Hussein on their back?Dean: We don't know that yet. We don't know that yet Wolf.We still have a country whose city is mostly without electricity. We have tumultous occasions in the south where there is no clear governance.We have a major city without clear goverance. We don't know yet, and until we do..Wolf Blitzer interrupts-..(obviously incredulous even for a liberal) You think it is possible--excuse me for interrupting-- that whatever emerges in Iraq could be better than what they have had for decades under Saddam...

<p>Howard Dean: ``I don't know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I've heard so far -- which is nothing more than a theory, it can't be proved -- is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now who knows what the real situation is?''</p>

BSD developers speak out on SCO campaign Thursday November 20, 2003 - [ 08:00 AM GMT ]       Topics: Linux , Software , Operating Systems By: Chris Preimesberger and Joe Barr In view of the latest SCO lawsuit news conference, we have been talking to BSD professionals to get their opinions, including one of the principals in the AT&T vs. Berkeley Software Design, Inc. lawsuit settlement of 1994; a disillusioned former SCO employee; and several other BSD developers. At issue is the charge SCO has made in a court case against IBM that copyrighted UNIX code has been incorporated...

LAS VEGAS -- The man who claims there are Unix copyright violations within the Linux open source operating system is taking his fight to the Berkeley Software Design (BSD) (define) community, which maintains an open source "genetic" version of Unix (define). SCO Group (Quote, Chart) CEO Darl McBride said his company is currently comparing source code awarded in a 1994 settlement between AT&T's (Quote, Chart) Unix Systems Laboratories and BSD, in which Berkeley's version of the Unix source was severed from the proprietary version. The Lindon, Utah-based SCO claims its copyrighted Unix code was incorporated into Linux without authorization or...

MIDI - BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM click on the WHITE title for the midi 1. We will post the message, Eagle, then post it once again. The GPL does not mean freedom. And well post it through the hillsides, the cities and the plain. The GPL does not mean freedom. (CHORUS) It' chock full of landmines, and poison pills to! That is the way of, Tux and GNU. If you want to keep code free, then go with BSD. The GPL does not mean freedom. 2. Coral Snake sprang to the call, Of three other posters more. The GPL...

The ruckus erupted when SCO showed its "smoking gun" to delegates at its conference in Las Vegas yesterday. A German journalist photographed some of SCO's presentation slides, despite attendees being required to sign non-disclosure agreements before attending the event. The slides then came under the full scrutiny of Linux advocates, with one, former Hewlett-Packard open source strategist Bruce Perens, publishing a damning analysis online. Perens claims the code can be traced to AT&T, which developed the Unix code eventually sold to SCO, and was written as far back as 1973. Since then it has been released under varying licences as...

DEAR SIR/MADAM: I AM MR. DARL MCBRIDE CURRENTLY SERVING AS THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE SCO GROUP, FORMERLY KNOWN AS CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, IN LINDON, UTAH, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I KNOW THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOUR BECAUSE WE HAVE HAD NO PREVIOUS COMMUNICATIONS OR BUSINESS DEALINGS BEFORE NOW. MY ASSOCIATES HAVE RECENTLY MADE CLAIM TO COMPUTER SOFTWARES WORTH AN ESTIMATED $1 BILLION U.S. DOLLARS. I AM WRITING TO YOU IN CONFIDENCE BECAUSE WE URGENTLY REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE TO OBTAIN THESE FUNDS. IN THE EARLY 1970S THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CORPORATION DEVELOPED AT GREAT EXPENSE THE...