At a hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday, weeks of technical and philosophical debate came down to one basic issue: trust. Washington Post reports.

Infoworld.com reports that Inprise/Borland this week announced JBuilder 4, the latest version of its Java-based cross-platform development environment.

“The smell of money was so strong at the most recent LinuxWorld conference & expo that the stench of suits was still with me nearly a week later.” From LinuxWorld.com.

by Emmett Plant
NewsForge Columnist
When I was growing up in Doylestown, we used to play a game in the snow
called king of the mountain. Basically, someone would run to the top of
a snow-covered hill and scream “king of the mountain!” Then the others
would do their best to dethrone the king by knocking him off the top of
the hill. The Linux industry is playing now, and it’s much too soon.I blame business. To play the modern business game, you need to play king
of the mountain, and play it really well. Not only do you need to fight
everyone to become king of the mountain, you also need to convince
shareholders that you’re going to be the king of the mountain. Investors
make money from betting on the bigger kids. Companies position themselves
on the hill to make sure they’ve got a clear path to the kid playing king.

The Linux industry has always been more or less the “let’s build a tree
fort” kid, as opposed to the kid screaming “king of the mountain.”
Microsoft played king of the mountain, and the Department of Justice
sent them to bed without dessert. For the Linux industry to thrive, it
needs to keep the “let’s build a tree fort” ideal of working together and
making things happen through volunteerism. None of the Linux companies are
big enough to play king of the mountain yet. What frightens me is that
it doesn’t seem like it’ll be too long before Linux companies are playing
king of the tree fort.

I’ve said it before, I’m going to say it again. Linux is an incredibly
small part of the computer industry. Talk to an Open Source zealot, and
he’ll tell you that if you’re not a part of the revolution, you’ll be
first against the wall when the revolution comes. Eric Raymond wrote a
paper a while back about the things Microsoft would have to do to stay
afloat in business. Hate to break this to you, Eric, but Microsoft has got
enough money to stay afloat if no one buys their products for
years. Investor revolt? Sure. But don’t think that Microsoft’s business
strategy isn’t a good one. They’re doing what they need to do to stay in
business. Linux is so small, it’s not even worth Microsoft
considering. Linux community people will say that Microsoft’s actions of
late have been inspired by Linux, and they’re dead wrong. Microsoft
doesn’t need to worry about the Linux industry, or the new age of free
software. Microsoft needs to worry about the hardware industry and the
United States government, in that order. Why? Because Microsoft was
playing king of the mountain. Don’t think for a second that Microsoft is
actually scared of Linux. People will still go out and buy crappy
hardware to run Windows, dial in to AOL every night, and be happy as a
clam with that. That’s fine for them.

The Linux industry needs to worry about the Linux industry, and the good
companies in the business are doing just that. One of the reasons that
Caldera is scorned in the community is because they’ve cleanly focused
their target on Microsoft, instead of making Linux a better product. One
of the big reasons the community stands behind Debian as a distribution
is because Debian doesn’t play with the other kids, stays inside, and does
its homework.

Let’s build a great tree fort, instead.

See you in seven.

PC World IDG explains how a t-shirt has landed copyleft.net in hot water.

ZDNet talks of the improvements to the island nation of Tuvalu’s infrastructure and economy with the sale of it’s .tv tld.

Citing restrictive conditions, several universities are refusing to conduct an independant review of the FBI’s “Carnivore” software, because, they claim, it’s not really an independant review, according to the conditions. CNN has the details.

From a press release at Business Wire: In an effort to evangelize the gospel of Linux, PogoLinux.com has announced a program to distribute popular Linux CDs free of charge and offer 30 days of complimentary e-mail installation support. This offer is intended to completely eliminate the cost barriers preventing users from trying the Linux operating system. The free installation support will ensure that users have help available during their transition to Linux.

Two stories about Web site security problems: Home furnishings retailer IKEA closed its online catalog order site last night after a privacy breach made the personal information of tens of thousands of its customers available online, reports CNet. Also, just days after Amazon.com tightened its privacy policy, a bug in one of its Web pages exposed numerous email addresses of the site’s Affiliate members. Again, the story is at CNet.

From a Linux Today story: In early July there was a lot of excitement about the SPECweb99 results of two almost identical Dell machines, one running Tux 1.0 on Red Hat Linux and the other running Internet Information Server 5.0 on Windows 2000. The results showed the Linux machine with over 2.5 times the performance of the Windows 2000 machine. A reader noticed that recently another Dell machine has been added to the SPECweb99 results page. Interestingly enough, this machine has 8 processors.