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In an earlier look at LDAP, we set up a simple LDAP-based authentication system. We configured client machines to retrieve authentication information from a server running OpenLDAP. Now let's go further by enabling encryption and looking at how to make user modifications through LDAP.

Last week, Microsoft announced a set of new Shared Source licenses. Normally, new Microsoft licenses wouldn't be cause for the open source community to pay attention, but the new Shared Source Licenses have gotten praise from open source proponents such as Tim O'Reilly, and even the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has weighed in with positive comments.

The Copyright Office of the US Library of Congress has formally announced an open comment period to solicit evidence from "interested parties" regarding whether the prohibition on circumvention clause of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has an adverse effect on legal, non-infringing use of copyrighted works. Anyone may submit comments via forms on the Copyright Office Web site between November 2 and December 1. All comments will be made public.

Journyx is a closed-source, proprietary software vendor with a business model that embraces -- albeit at arm's length -- open source. How can that be? The paradox results from a unique business model that attempts to provide a free-as-in-beer product for the majority of users, support and use open source software projects, and still turn a profit. I recently spoke to Journyx founder and CEO Curt Finch to learn more about that business model, and about TimeSheet, the software Journyx produces and (mostly) gives away.

Slackware is old-school Linux. Back in the day -- before Red Hat seized the throne -- Pat Volkerding's Linux distribution was the undisputed king of the hill. Many still use it today. By the time I started playing with Linux in 1995, or running my Web server with it in 1996, Slackware's slump in market share had already begun. I've tried a lot of different Linux distributions during the years since then, but until recently I had never tried Slackware. Here's what I've learned about Slackware while installing and using the recently released Slackware 10.2.

Louis Lesko came up with the idea for Blinkbid invoicing software for photographers after scribbling notes on a napkin at a cocktail party. Though Blinkbid itself is closed source, it was built using open source tools, so it's no wonder that, after its success, Lesko chose an open source customer relationship management package (CRM) to keep track of contacts and payments.

With news settling in that the makers of the network vulnerability scanner Nessus will not open source the next version of the software, the team behind the soon-to-be-renamed GNessUs project is growing fast and attracting attention.

What do you look for in an email program? You may find it in Mutt, an easy-to-use text-based messaging client. Here's all you need to know to get started with Mutt.

Open source software developer and musician Richard Bown wanted to make Rosegarden, a popular MIDI sequencer for Linux, available to all people, even if they weren't fortunate enough to be using an open source platform. That was the genesis of Studio to Go, a Knoppix-based CD that allows Windows users to access a wealth of open source music creation and notation software without installing Linux.

When faced with a pay-now or wait-for-functionality choice, several companies that use PostgreSQL recently pooled their resources and paid for development of faster, deeper indexing capabilities in the open source database.

Google may be taking the Internet by storm, but in the process they are raining on the Linux parade. Google has clearly presented The Community a middle finger salute. The technology that paved their streets with gold is now being cast away like a pock-marked leper.

Welcome to this year's 43rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly. Several interesting new distribution releases appeared during the past week. LG3D LiveCD deserves a more detailed look due to its unusual desktop and amazing 3D visual effects, while the newly renamed RR4 Linux live DVD is probably the easiest way yet to install Gentoo Linux on a hard disk. Also in this issue: a brief history of Red Hat prompted by the resignation of the company's co-founder Bob Young, a comment about the unusual Internet security guidelines published by a local government in the state of New York, and a few signs that our readers do love and appreciate DistroWatch. Happy reading! Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch

Despite its recent announcement of servers based on AMD64 CPUs, Sun Microsystems is still gung-ho about its 64-bit UltraSPARC computers. The newest addition to Sun's workstation array is the portable Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation. At first glance you might think it's a fancy-looking notebook system, but on closer inspection you'll discover that it's got all the power of a Sun Blade workstation in a fraction of the size.

Last week's CLI Magic column was about Trojan Scan, a useful tool -- still in alpha development phase -- for warding off the bad guys. I noted then that the utility was based on the lsof command -- actually, based on just one of the hundreds of combinations of arguments used to tell lsof exactly what it is you want from it. This week we're going to take a longer look at lsof, and see a few of the other mysteries it can solve.

The OpenOffice.org (OOo) Project released the long-awaited OOo 2.0 suite yesterday, completing a testing process that lasted more than a year.

When you install an application package in a Debian-based system, sometimes prerequisite application packages are unavailable. These missing packages are known as broken dependencies. Left unresolved, they can cripple your system's ability to install new packages. They're a disaster that isn't supposed to happen in Debian, thanks to the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) and the scripts contained in Debian packages. That makes broken dependencies all the more devastating when they happen. Some users have even been known to reinstall the whole operating system, despairing of otherwise having a functioning package management system. However, depending on how the broken dependencies arose, you have several options to try before you consider reinstalling.

After roughly 12 years of work, the Wine Project is about to take its widely used Windows translation layer to a place it has not been in all that time: beta.

Novell may lay off 10 to 15 percent of its staff as early as Monday, according to sources close to the company. It appears that one or more of the larger shareholders in the company are becoming worried about Novell's future.

This week, advisories were released for Ruby, hylafax, Mozilla, module-assistant, Lynx, phpMyAdmin, AbiWord, netpbm, gdb, xloadimage, and openldap. The distributors include Debian, Gentoo, and Red Hat.

Part of what makes open source software thrive is code sharing and reuse. The Create initiative at freedesktop.org targets this issue by bringing together developers from Inkscape, Scribus, Krita, the Open Clip Art Library, and the GIMP, among others, along with interested individuals. Together they are collaborating on a set of specifications they believe will simplify work for developers and distributions, and usability for end users.