Linux Weekly News for April 5, 2001

Leading items and editorials: Wind River Systems buys into free
software, the Linux Standard Base needs you, the Linux 2.5 kernel
hackers summit, things that upgrade in the night, Microsoft’s
Passport License.

“Wind River Systems buys into free software. Wind River Systems
is well known as the largest vendor of proprietary software for
embedded systems. It has been clear for a while that embedded Linux
is a serious threat to this company’s business; many have wondered
just how Wind River would respond. Now we know. The company has
announced the acquisition of all the “software assets” from BSDi, a
long-time seller of BSD-based systems, and the current home of the
FreeBSD project.”

“The Linux 2.5 kernel hackers summit was held on March 30 and 31
in San Jose, California. It was an intensive two days of [[Kernel
summit]] presentations and discussions on the directions that 2.5
development might take. LWN editor Jonathan Corbet, by virtue of
being a kernel hacker wannabe (and the co-author of the second
edition of Linux Device Drivers, which is due out from O’Reilly
this (northern-hemisphere) summer) was able to be present at this
event; please have a look at LWN.net’s Kernel Summit Report for a
description of what transpired.”

“Things that upgrade in the night. Well-known human-computer
interaction expert Bruce Tognazzini recently posted this rant about
an automatic “upgrade” to his Replay TV box that, for him,
downgraded the value of the system. Bruce thus joins the growing
crowd of people who realize that it is important to have control
over the computers in our lives…”

Complete Story