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There are two kinds of OSS users: The offensive ones and the defensive ones, writes Jason Norwood-Young.

Michael Kelly reports on handy security uses for four open source tools: WebGoat, Firefox Web Developer, WebScarab, and Ethereal. By combining the tools in easy ways, testers can track down and close the gaping security holes that are often left in applications.

"To most non-technical users, the desktop they see and use is, in totality, what they understand the Operating System to be..."

But the open-source advocacy group that had pushed the effort claims partial victory anyway.

In rich countries, unsolicited e-mail, or spam, is a nuisance, but in poorer countries, it is a threat to development, says Foreign Policy contributor Elisabeth Eaves. According to a report by the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), spam will not stop the development of information technology, but it will severely retard it. In developing nations, bandwidth is expensive and connection speeds are often so slow that spammers can bring a nation's network down -- or reduce it to a snail's pace -- by flooding inboxes. Since local Internet service providers lack the software or a trained staff, they can do little to fix the problem. Moreover, the impact of spam on developing countries is difficult to determine and pin down with a dollar figure, says Eaves.

Mono project founder Miguel de Icaza claims that Microsoft prevented the open source project from holding a meeting at the company's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. Microsoft states on its conference Web site that its 'Birds of a Feather' sessions are proposed and voted on by the community. But the Mono BOF was never listed for voting and therefore received no votes, despite the submission being confirmed, according to De Icaza's blog.

Continuing a push to promote the use of Linux-based products in emerging world markets, IBM on Friday announced an initiative with Red Hat to jointly support third-party developers with technical resources, expertise, and implementation services. IBM announced a similar agreement in March with Novell aimed at supporting product development around Novell's SuSE Linux and IBM platforms. For use within both the Red Hat and Novell efforts, IBM has established 15 Innovation Centers across the world that will be used to provide developers with technical support. Included are centers are in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, China; Bangalore, India; and Moscow. A new center in San Paulo, Brazil is expected by year end , says Todd Chase, program director of IBM Innovation Centers.

Mandriva, the number one European Linux publisher, today announces the availability of a Dell Laptop pre-loaded With Mandriva Linux. The association - a first for the two companies - represents a milestone in Mandriva's effort to make Linux even more accessible to customers, thanks to large OEM deals. Mandriva also counts HP in its portfolio of leading manufacturers.

The South African state technology agency has issued a request for potential suppliers of open source software, applications and services to government. This morning the agency held a briefing for bidders.

There is no shortage of Jabber clients for Linux and other platforms, but that doesn't mean that there isn't room for one more Jabber client with a strong feature set. Gajim is a Jabber client written in PyGTK and released under the GNU General Public License. Despite a few rough edges, I found Gajim impressive.

This week, advisories were released for apache, kdelibs, cvs, mod_ssl, tdiary, squid, mozilla, common-lisp, turqstat, slib, umb-scheme, psmisc, gtk, file, subversion, unzip, e2fsprogs, selinux-policy-targeted, firefox, mozilla, vte, xdelta, tvtime, dhcp, gnupg, util-linux, mc, libwnck, pcre, exim, and squid. The distributors include, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, and Red Hat.

An attempt by the nation's peak Linux body to register the name 'Linux' on behalf of Linus Torvalds has failed. The regulator, Intellectual Property Australia, turned down the application because the word 'Linux' was not distinctive enough to be trademarked.

Open source usually refers to software that is released with source code under a license that ensures that derivative works will also be available as source code, protects certain rights of the original authors, and prohibits restrictions on how the software can be used or who can use it.

One of technology's dirty little not-so-secret secrets is that Microsoft has been using open-source software since the early '90s in its TCP/IP network stack. Now, however, Microsoft has finally confessed to using open-source in a forthcoming product: Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition. The reason why Microsoft uses BSD-licensed TCP/IP for its network stack was the same reason almost everyone does: The BSD TCP/IP works well, and its socket-based API (application programming interface) was already becoming the accepted way for computers to work with each other.

Robert Kaiser writes: "The SeaMonkey Council is pleased to announce its first release, SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha. Developed from the codebase of the previously successful Mozilla Application Suite, SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha contains lots of new features, and numerous enhancements and bugfixes compared to the last Mozilla suite versions. Internally, much of the core code is shared with the current Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 browser, but from the outside, it represents the look and feel that long-time Mozilla and Netscape users have learned to love.

In San Francisco at LinuxWorld a few weeks ago, the newly formed Debian Common Core Alliance promised that it would soon deliver its first beta distribution. The group quietly did so late last week.

Overall usage of the open-source browser continues to climb despite several recent security-related hiccups; Camino 1.0 alpha 1 also ships.

Welcome to Security Alerts, an overview of recent Unix and open source security advisories. In this column, we look at problems in PCRE, the Linux kernel, SILC, Frox, MPlayer, pam_ldap, maildrop, lm_sensors, simpleproxy, backup-manager, Adobe Version Cue, phpGroupWare, and webcalendar

Indonesia's Ministry of Research and Technology Thursday said it will implement a Java Desktop System (JDS) on Linux as a national-standard desktop, customed-designed for its own culture. This desktop software will be a major component of the new Indonesia Goes Open Source (IGOS) program that aims to help eliminate the "digital divide in the world's largest archipelago," the ministry and Sun Microsystems said in a joint announcement.

Local open source association, Open Source Victoria (OSV), has called on Australian state government agencies to join the Federal Government in adopting the OpenDocument XML file format, saying its the only way to preserve electronic documents.