Info World reports, Bertelsman’s newly formed eCommerce Group, BeCG, and Napster have developed a membership-based service that will provide file-sharing capabilities that “perserve the Napster experience while at the same time providing payment to the rightsholders,” the company said in a statement. ZDNet reports that Napster will soon be charging fees. The Associated Press talks about how the deal could save Napster.

With the news that the Microsoft Corp’s network had been breached, ZDNet eWEEK reports, security was a hot topic at Monday’s first-ever federal Linux user’s conference.

By Tina Gasperson
News Editor
In Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” playing cards and chessmen come alive, at least in the little girl’s imagination — or the writer’s delirium. In the world of technology, one guy and his band of merry men have personified software, imbuing it with the desire to be free. That guy is Richard Stallman, of course, and everyone knows the Free Software Foundation is full of merry men. The word free, as normally applied to inanimate objects, means without charge (as in beer). But Stallman says his software is free, as in “not subject to the control or domination of another,” or “not hampered or restricted in its normal operation.” That’s proven to be a difficult concept, even for technologically adept people. We hear free, we think “Duff,” to put it in Simpson-ese terms.

Not only that, but there isn’t a ZDNET reporter, dead or alive, who hasn’t called Richard Stallman a member of the Open Source movement — and that chaps his hide a bit, since according to Stallman, Open Source people simply do not see the issue of software free-ness as a matter of principle.

You can’t fault Stallman for expecting hackers to be intelligent enough to grasp the subtleties of the language. But let’s face it, the free moniker just isn’t working out. Perhaps the name needs to be changed. And since RMS is obviously too busy with public speaking engagements to take the time, we hauled out Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Thesaurus for him.

The synonyms for free are much more descriptive and clear for the benefit of bonehead developers. We’re treated to terms like “autonomous,” “independent,” “separate,” “sovereign.” And then there are “unenslaved,” “delivered,” “emancipated,” “liberated.” Two of my favorites are “self-directing” and “self-governing.” Or, we could give software personality and call it “individualistic.”

Dramatically speaking, software could be “unbound,” “unchained,” “unfettered,” or “unshackled” — all these words are especially fit for an impassioned plea to the unwashed masses of disinterested Windows users.

But as I perused the pages of the mighty thesaurus, there was one word that struck me as particularly befitting the nature of freeness as it pertains to software, and that word is “autarchic.”

It means “self-governing,” but it wasn’t just the definition that spoke to me; it was the uniqueness of the word itself. It’s a distinctive word. It’s a cool word. Information wants to be autarchic, doesn’t it? Not only that, but studies have shown it is impossible to think about Duff and autarchy at the same time.

The foundation could even use the Autarchic Creed, a pagan sacred text, almost verbatim. The creed is too long to republish here, but a couple of grafs stand out as particularly applicable to the movement.

“But in this mortal life, greedy, trivial hierophants and mundane
rulers (corporate America?)have perpetrated a fraud upon humanity. They have purloined
for profit and temporal power, our legitimate heritage (source code?), and that of
all society, and have substituted for it shame, despair, and fear (EULAs?),
inventing evil deities (attorneys?) to terrify and to constrain mankind from the
exercise of his own native conscience.

“That is the apocryphal hell and the fabled satan (Bill Gates?); they are of mortal
creation; they are now, not in some remote bye-and-bye; and those who
choose to believe in them perpetuate them in this earth.”

What’d I tell you? It’s perfect.

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our

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Business Wire:This new version uses Microsoft Windows 2000 source code for
updated features such as Windows Common Controls. Important new COM features such as COM
Smart Interface Pointers are included, as well as updated ATL 3.0 and OpenGL 1.2.1.

IBM Japan Ltd. announced it will install its “e
server xSeries,” Linux-based servers, at outlets of major convenience store chain
operator Lawson Inc, reports AsiaBizTech.

Xybernaut Corporation announced today that the Republic of Taiwan has granted the company
its second patent in Taiwan for wearable computing and communications systems, from PRNewswire. The Xybernaut product line features the Mobile Assistant IV, which runs
all major PC operating systems, such as Windows 98/2000/NT, Linux and SCO
UNIX.

Tivoli has started shipping the latest version of its Tivoli
Storage Network Manager, the first to incorporate the new ANSI T11 storage area networking (SAN) discovery
and management standards, and, reports CRN on TechWeb News, Computer Associates is now shipping
NetWare and Linux versions of its ARCserve 7.0
data-protection management suite.

Linux Today article focuses on two examples of
things that can be done more conveniently in hardware than in
software: Specialized/programmable keypads, and removable disk
drive enclosures.

“Good software is rarely the result of brilliant programming, despite the mythos that has grown up around the activity. Most often, good software results from good design, good planning, and strict attention to detail: all those things
programmers find boring and not-fun. So, as developers, we have a choice to
make: have lots of fun producing mediocre (or downright bad) software, or
put up with some tedium and produce good software”, concludes this article from LinuxProgramming.

LinuxPlanet reviews window manager Enlightenment 0.16 and proclaims, “you can quickly see this is no ordinary window manager.”