Microsoft Corp. has replaced its controversial anti-Linux “Get the Facts” Web site with a kinder, gentler site explaining how its Windows Server operating system compares to open-source Linux as well as other competitive OSes.
The new WindowsServer/Compare Web site provides information about how Windows Server stacks up in total cost of ownership, reliability, security, manageability and interoperability with Linux, Unix and IBM Corp.’s mainframe architecture.
Microsoft has posted customer information, feedback from industry experts, white papers and resources about the capabilities of Windows Server on the site. It also offers information for developers building applications on Windows Server.
Microsoft said the new site is an evolution of its Get the Facts campaign, launched in mid-2003 and seen by many as a direct slam against Linux and open source.
The campaign compared Windows Server favorably against Linux and other technologies in terms of some of the same factors handled on the Compare site. Get the Facts was panned by Linux proponents. Their ire in part may have been due to the outspoken swagger of then Microsoft rising star Martin Taylor who led the campaign. After 13 years at Microsoft, Taylor abruptly left the company in June 2006 and no explanation was given for his departure.
Since Taylor’s departure, Microsoft has appeared on one hand to be more friendly toward Linux and open source while on the other continuing to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about those technologies, according to the open-source camp. Linux proponents gained fuel for their side when Microsoft executives earlier this year made bold claims that Linux and other open-source software violate more than 230 of Microsoft’s patents.
At the same time, Microsoft has put former IBM Linux executive Bill Hilf front and center stage as its open-source advocate. The vendor also recently launched a new open-source Web page that explains how the company views its relationship with the open-source community.
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Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux, has said that compromises of most of its local community servers this week do not reflect on the distribution’s security or enterprise-readiness.
The company said such criticisms were wide off the mark, since the affected servers were running old, unpatched versions of Ubuntu as well as a number of insecure web applications.
The compromises affected five of the eight Local Community (LoCo) hosting servers, which are sponsored by Canonical for the use of local-area Ubuntu developer communities but hosted outside the company.
Canonical was at pains to point out that the servers did not host downloadable software, but mainly news pages, blogs and localized documentation.
The problem came down to the fact that responsibility for the security of the machines didn’t clearly belong to either Canonical or the communities using the servers. The systems were all located outside Canonical’s own data center.
The problem first came to light on Monday evening, when Canonical received reports that one of the LoCo servers had been compromised, and an investigation found four more of the servers had been hacked.
“Since it was reported that they were actively attacking other machines… the decision was taken to shut the machines down,” said James Troup, head of Canonical’s system administration team, in a report on the breaches which was published on Ubuntu newslists.
The systems could have been breached in several ways, Troup said, since they were being accessed using FTP without SSL and were running more than a dozen web software packages, all of which were out-of-date and missing security patches.
What’s more, the systems were running a version of Ubuntu Linux that is no longer receiving security updates from Canonical, meaning there was no way of fixing more recent security issues.
That’s because more recent versions of the operating system failed to work with the servers’ network hardware, Troup said.
“This probably allowed the attacker to gain root,” Troup said.
The communities affected will have the choice — of moving their servers into the Canonical data center, where they’ll be kept up-to-date but will have stricter limits on how they’re used, or sticking with outsourced servers but taking on the full responsibility for administration.
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The nonprofit Linux Foundation has unveiled the Linux Weather Forecast, a Web site aimed at giving people a better sense of the status of specific Linux kernel projects.
The Foundation created the forecast site by teaming up with Jonathan Corbet, a Linux kernel developer and writer, who’s also executive editor of the LWN.net Linux and free software news site.
The forecast, which will be officially announced on Wednesday, is already live and tracks work in the Linux developer community likely to be included in the operating system’s kernel and in major distributions of the open-source software, or both.
The Linux Foundation was formed earlier this year through the merger of the two leading evangelizers of the operating system, the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group consortiums. The organization has two main tasks, according to Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation, to build on Linux’s existing strengths and to buttress its weaknesses. “Now that everyone gets that open source works and it’s a mainstream technology, how do we up our game?,” he said.
As Linux looks to compete more and more on equal terms with proprietary operating systems like Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, the open-source software has to have equally rich support mechanisms in place. Already, the Foundation offers the Linux Developer Network, a resource site for programmers, similar in thinking to the Microsoft Developer Network.
The creation of the Linux Weather Forecast is a way to improve on one of the operating system’s key strengths — its open-source development model, which allows many people to both contribute to and refine Linux, leading to rapid development, Zemlin said. He estimates that every day developers add 2,300 lines of code to the Linux kernel. On average, a new version of the Linux kernel appears every three months, while fresh desktop distributions of the operating system debut every six months and enterprise distributions become available every 18 months.
The downside of all that rapid development is that it’s been no easy task for Linux users, vendors and developers to get a handle on what’s going on, Zemlin said. Previously, trying to get status updates on the plethora of kernel development projects involved pouring over many mailing lists. “A lot of developer support for Linux is Google,” he added, as people cut and paste lines of code into the search engine in the hopes of finding answers to their software problems.
The aim of the Linux Weather Forecast is to provide a central repository of accurate information presented in an easily understandable format. Over time, the foundation may look to incorporate graphics as a way of making the data more simpler to process and digest, Zemlin said. A typical user of the forecast would be the technical lead at an embedded systems company, he added.
The forecast provides summaries on work in areas including core Linux kernel development, virtualization and containers, file systems, security, networking and support for hardware.
In keeping with the analogy of a weather report, each summary is split up into current conditions reflecting the technology that’s available now as well as short- and long-range forecasts for the release of upcoming development work. Looking further out, the summary has a climatological timeframe segment to examine what developments may appear beyond 2007 as well as a list of “weather events that may never occur,” indicating previously announced technologies that might not see the light of day.
The forecast also includes a discussion page for suggestions on existing information and additional development tracks to keep tabs on.
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