Sm@rt Partner reports that peer-to-peer devolpers, at a P2P work session this week, denounced Intel as authoritarian and told the chip maker to revamp its plans in that arena.

Maximum Linux asks the question and answers that being LPI certified can give you connections with big companies.

From a column at Linux World: “I asked for a
comprehensive self-hosting sample implementation of an LSB-compliant Linux distribution. In plain
language, that means I want a standard Linux distribution anyone can install and run. Every
commercial and nonprofit Linux distributor would start with this standard, and then add the unique kind
of value that does not cause incompatibilities.”

Maximum Linux reports on ALS, Day Two: “Tim O’Reilly has a new project up his sleeve called Peer-to-Peer. A conference for the project will take
place in February in San Francisco discussing Peer-to-Peer networking.”

There’s a format bug in the logging code of the mod_php3 module.
It uses apache’s aplog_error function, passing user-specified
input as the format string. The advisory is posted at LWN.net.

ZDNet has a short story about the number of downloads of the Open Source version of Sun’s StarOffice crashing the server Friday afternoon. Can you say Slashdotted? The Register adds this commentary: “Little by little Sun is getting religion, and when it comes to productivity
apps there’s not actually a great deal of choice, even before you
consider that Microsoft just bought a slice of the other contender.”

LWN.net has an advisory: “The version of curl as distributed with Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 had a bug
in the error logging code: when it created an error message it failed to
check the size of the buffer allocated for storing the message. This
could be exploited by the remote machine by returning an invalid
response to a request from curl which overflows the error buffer and
trick curl into executing arbitrary code.”

From Reuters: Scour Inc., an Internet file-swapping service a la Napster whose investors include Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz, said on Thursday it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

An eWeek story reports on an SEC filing that claims Corel will be able to port Microsoft’s .Net to Linux. But does Linux want it? The Ottawa Citizen adds: “Corel has become the insurance policy that Microsoft needs to ensure it
won’t be left behind if the Linux operating system takes off.”

By Grant Gross
Managing Editor

Perhaps it is appropriate that the Atlanta Linux Showcase and Conference is being staged on the second floor of a shopping mall. The show, in some ways a smaller version of the Linux World conferences, is a shrine to the commercial possibilities of Linux.

But hey, it’s a trade show, and that’s what trade shows are all about. If you wander the show floor, you should expect to have someone try to sell you something, whether a stuffed Tux, a development toolkit for Linux, or a magazine.

One group working hard to pitch their product, and getting a large crowd at the booth, was PocketLinux, an application platform aimed at embedded systems such as PDAs, cellular phones, and digital TV sets. ALS attendees were drooling over PocketLinux installed on Compaq’s iPAQ Pocket PC, the VTech Helio and other PDAs. Minimum system requirements for PocketLinux include a 75-megahertz processor and eight megabytes of RAM.

Tony Fader, PocketLinux’s vice president for marketing, was busy handing out T-shirts Thursday, and sticking little fuzzy penguins with sticky feet on people’s shoulders. In between dealing with customers oohing and ahhing over the half dozen PDAs in the booth, Fader explained that PocketLinux works with Kaffe, an Open Source Java-compliant programming platform, and XML to run on PDAs and other “small resource-constrained devices.”

It should be noted here that you can download PocketLinux for free. The company was selling its product on handhelds at ALS.

The iPAQs at the PocketLinux booth included applications to play music files, to check email, to store addresses, and to write on a notepad. The speakers aren’t great, of course, but you can play MP3s.

PocketLinux’s goal is to provide Linux for all kinds of emerging markets, from powering cell phones to home appliances that could give users reports on their performance. Ean Schuessler, with the PocketLinux partner Brainfood.com, gave the example of home heater, which because of PocketLinux’s use of device-networking standard XML, can than give a report on how its functioning to your handheld or desktop computer.

“The same XML infrastructure we use on the handheld is virtually the same XML standard we’re running on a server,” Schuessler said. “PocketLinux is scalable — it’ll go small and it’ll go big.”

Also at ALS, Epitera announced AbsoluteX, a new Open Source development toolkit based on C++. Booth workers were demonstrating AbsoluteX, and the company plans a full release later in the year. Epitera is calling AbsoluteX “Linux with a twist,” and the company says it’s the answer to existing toolkits for the X-Window platforms that are complex and hard to manipulate.