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Mandrakesoft Gets LSB 2.0 Certification

Franco-American commercial Linux distributor Mandrakesoft says that its Corporate Server 3.0 has been certified by The Open Group as meeting the Linux Standards Base 2.0 certification.

The LSB specification was created by Free Standards Group and is a blueprint for keeping the Linux kernel and the commercial Linux distributions that are based on it from diverging and therefore wreaking havoc among server makers and application software providers. LSB 2.0 was released last August, and at the time The Open Group announced that it would create a mechanism by which it would certify which Linux releases adhere to the LSB 2.0 spec.

So far, Mandrakesoft's Mandrakelinux Corporate Server 3.0 and Novell's SUSE Linux 9.2 (for desktops and laptops) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 are the only Linuxes to get the LSB 2.0 certification. A whole slew of Linuxes have been certified at the prior level, LSB 1.3.

Red Hat Launches Government Biz Unit

In conjunction with the closing of a big contract with the Department of Energy, commercial Linux distributor Red Hat announced last week that it has created a government business unit, which will bring its various contracts with other government units (including the DOE) under the control of a single organization, headed by a single individual, in this case Paul Smith, who has been named vice president of Red Hat's government sales operations. Smith was previously in charge of government sales for file system and software maker VERITAS, which is now merging with security software maker Symantec.

Red Hat is expecting government business to boom when Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 is released in March. Red Hat 4 will be the first commercial Linux with the Security Enhanced Linux (SE-Linux) extensions for heightened security built into the core operating system. Under the DOE contract, the various labs and technology centers it runs will be able to make use of Red Hat Linux and Red Hat Network support services for their parallel clusters, servers, and workstations. The company did not announce the value of the DOE deal.

OSI Rejiggers As Founder, Raymond, Departs

Open Source Initiative, the nonprofit that has been tasked with deciding what is and what is not open source, announced last week that it is rejiggering its organization and that cofounder Eric S. Raymond has stepped down from his post as president.

Raymond is probably best known as the author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, the seminal document that newbies read when they first get into open source. He is also author of The New Hackers Dictionary, perhaps the only funny book ever written about the crufty history of information technology. As open source has commercialized, Raymond is perhaps the most sought-after sage in the realm, and he probably wants to get back into bazaar and stop doing so much paperwork.

"One of the natural growth passages of a successful institution is outgrowing the need for its founders to be running things," Raymond said in a statement. "One of the most important parts of any founder's or leader's responsibility is to know when to step aside and let that growth happen." He will continue to be an ambassador to the open-source community and has the title of president emeritus. OSI has replaced Raymond with its current vice president, Russ Nelson, and has brought in Michael Tiemann from Red Hat as vice president. OSI says it will now focus not only on open-source-software licensing issues but also on the international aspects of software (including patents), software development project practices, and open standards as they relate to open source. To that end, OSI has beefed up its legal team and expanded its board of directors.

IBM Subpoenas Intel in SCO Unix-Linux Lawsuit

The plot thickens. As we went to press last week, IBM had issued subpoenas to executives at Intel in the $3 billion lawsuit that The SCO Group has launched against IBM, alleging, among other things, that IBM illegally released Unix intellectual property into the Linux community.

According to the subpoena, IBM wants one or more executives who were in charge of Intel's relationships with SCO and Canopy Group, the majority shareholder in SCO, to testify in the case. IBM also wants all documents related to discussions between Intel and SCO or Canopy concerning IBM, Unix, or Linux.

What IBM is fishing for is unclear, but this could be as much a delaying tactic as a means of getting the inside dope on what all of these parties thought about the failed "Project Monterey" Unix, which was supposed to merge IBM's AIX and SCO's UnixWare, to run on X86, Itanium, and Power platforms. Monterey was stillborn in early 2000, when IBM caught Linux fever.

MySQL Ports MaxDB to Power-Linux Combo

Open-source database maker MySQL announced that it has ported its MaxDB database from X86 to Power architecture servers running Linux. MaxDB is not to be confused with the real MySQL database, which is also open-source. MaxDB is a product of joint development between ERP software maker SAP and MySQL, which was announced specifically because, a few years ago, MySQL did not have the scalability and features to run big SAP installations on Linux. MaxDB is coded and sold by MySQL, but is based on the Adabas mainframe database, from German software company Software AG. MaxDB is used by about 6,000 companies worldwide. MaxDB 7.5 has been ported to Power servers running Linux, and, specifically, it was tested in IBM's Boblingen, Germany, mainframe labs running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 on a four-way p5 550 Power5-based server. You can download the Power version of MaxDB from the MySQL Development Zone site.

HP, Cisco Deliver Switch for Blade Servers

Server maker Hewlett-Packard and networking giant Cisco Systems announced last week that they have created a 24-port switch that can reside in BladeSystem blade servers from HP.

The switch, said Cisco, is a miniaturized version of its 2970 Gigabit Ethernet switch, which it sells for linking together regular rack-mounted and tower servers. The BladeSystem chassis has enough room for two of the new Cisco switches, which have 16 internal ports for linking blade servers to each other inside the chassis; four uplink ports; two management ports; and two ports for daisy-chaining BladeSystems together. Cisco also said that this is essentially the same switch that IBM announced for its BladeCenter chassis late last year. HP has been pushing its own switches, as well as those from Nortel Networks, inside the BladeSystems, but Cisco has the dominant market share out there in the data center, and if there is one thing Cisco engineers do not need, it is to learn the eccentricities of Nortel gear.

Linux Professional Institute Offers Free Certification Testing At LinuxWorld

The Linux Professional Institute has announced that it will offer free testing for Linux certification to attendees of the upcoming LinuxWorld conference and expo. LinuxWorld is scheduled for February 14 through 17, and the Linux Professional Institute is hoping to significantly boost the number of certified Linux experts at the show. Since 1999, when it was founded, the Linux Professional Institute has administered over 70,000 level-one and level-two certification exams. Conference attendees should report to exam room 205 at the conference hall at 1:00 p.m. each day to take their free test. Exhibitors can take the test for $25. Participants must register on the Linux Professional Institute site to take the free certification tests.