Slashdot Mirror

hypnosec writes "Developers over at Red Hat are busy porting OpenJDK to ARM's latest 64-bit architecture — the ARMv8, also known as the AArch64. The current OpenJDK ARM situation is rather unsatisfactory: for the current 32-bit ARM processors, there are two versions of the HotSpot JVM for OpenJDK — Oracle's proprietary JIT, and a less sophisticated free JIT that performs poorly in comparison. To avoid a similar situation for the 64-bit platform, the developers are working on an entirely Free Software port of HotSpot to 64-bit ARM."

lkcl writes "The GitTorrent Protocol (GTP) is a protocol for collaborative git repository distribution across the Internet. Git promises to be a distributed software management tool, where a repository can be distributed. Yet, the mechanisms used to date to actually 'distribute,' such as ssh, are very much still centralized. GitTorrent makes Git truly distributed. The initial plans are for reducing mirror loading, however the full plans include totally distributed development: no central mirrors whatsoever. PGP signing (an existing feature of git) and other web-of-trust-based mechanisms will take over from protocols on ports (e.g. ssh) as the access control 'clearing house.' The implications of a truly distributed revision control system are truly staggering: unrestricted software freedom. The playing field is leveled in so many ways, as 'The Web Site' no longer becomes the central choke-point of control. Coming just in time for that all-encompassing Free Software revolution hinted at by The Rebellion Against Vista, this article will explain more fully some of the implications that make this quiet and technically brilliant project, GitTorrent, so important to Software Freedom, from both technical and political perspectives."

lkcl tips his in-depth article up at Advogato on the difficulties for the MVC programming model that are introduced by Javascript and AJAX, and solutions for them. He writes: "This article outlines how the MVC concept is made incredibly awkward by the gradual but necessary introduction of Javascript and AJAX. A solution is found in the form of Javascript Compiler Technology such as GWT or Pyjamas (PyPy's JS backend or Rb2Js could be used, with some additional work). The article outlines how and why the traditional MVC patterns are fragmented by Javascript and AJAX, advocating that if a site is programmed purely in a high-level language that is then compiled to Javascript for the Web Browser sections, the same high-level source code can be executed either client-side on the browser, or server-side, or even both, depending on the requirements. The implications of this approach are discussed in depth."

polar_bear` writes "A lot of developers are angry at Novell for its deal with Microsoft, but is it fair game for other vendors to try to capitalize on dissatisfaction with Novell? Apparently, Mark Shuttleworth thinks so. Shuttleworth sent an invitation to the openSUSE developers list inviting developers 'concerned about the long term consequences' of Novell's deal to participate in Ubuntu Open Week and consider jumping ship to Ubuntu. OpenSUSE and Ubuntu developers are not amused."

PaaChhaa writes "The GNOME Foundation membership and elections committee has announced the preliminary results of this year's elections for the board of directors. There are a few new faces this year, and Miguel de Icaza, whose candidacy was rejected last year due to late submission, is back. The run up to this year's election saw a threat of boycott, which ultimately resulted in the online publication of the foundation's financial records. Also, a heated discussion followed the posting of the list of ten questions, and the opinions of the candidates and other foundation members on these issues can be found in the foundation-list archives for the months of November and December. A notable exclusion from this year's board is GNOME's release manager Jeff Waugh. who didn't run at all."

Douglas Hunter writes "Africa Source 2004 has wrapped up and the last of the stragglers have packed their bags and headed home. Africa Source 2004 was a gathering of pan-African Free and Open Source software developers held in Okahandja, Namibia. Organized by Tactical Tech, All Africa and Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), Africa Source was a mixture of structured and semi-structured discussions with loads of good 'ole hacking thrown in to boot. With workshops ranging from i18n to wireless hacks to running a MOSIX cluster, there were plenty of hands-on sessions for folks to attend. The first ever Kiswahili spell checker was developed and released during the conference, a testament to the activity of those involved. For more information about Africa Source 2004, visit one of the blogs."

One of the beautiful things about Open Source is that the barriers to entry are next to non-existent, and the adage "have compiler, will travel" embodies this fact well enough. However, as projects grow in size, they will soon face financial stumbling blocks, not to mention a need for increased visibility. How does one best market an Open Source project? What can Joe (or Joni) Coder do to increase their project's financial stability? Have the financially minded people of the Free Software community thought out the possibility of an Open Investment firm? Read on for Slashdot readers who are asking these exact questions!

An Open Investment...
Luke asks: "Open Investment is a concept whereby Open Source principles are applied to making money. Open Investment is inspired by recent articles and diary entries, on Advogato, lamenting the lack of funding of strategic projects. Eric S. Raymond's 'Cathedral and the Bazaar' papers describe how Open Source projects get off the ground by starting as a programmer's itch turning into something useful to other people.

What if there are strategically important projects that just take too long to ever get off the ground, such as an Open Exchange replacement? With the Economist's recent news on how users expect more and more from IT, how is the Open Source community ever going to keep up? Who is going to pay for it?

The principle behind the Open Investment Initiative is to encourage the Open Source Community to take matters into their own hands, by getting smarter about money. If that happens to mean that programmers become part-time wheeler-dealers and happen to _like_ it better than programming, then good for them! Open source developers (or anybody else for that matter) could even band together to form investment syndicates, with the aim of gaining financial independence.

For the most part, the expectation is that several smart people willing to learn about investing, negotiating and making money get together, and succeed where they would be unable or unwilling to do anything on their own.

Who wants to give it a shot?"

...for a Common Situation?
Yaztromo asks: "I'm the project administrator and lead developer for an Open Source project that brings PalmOS handheld synchronization to Java-enabled platforms, called the jSyncManager.

I started the project back in 1997 for personal use (the full history of the project as available here), and in November of 2002 decided to make it Open Source under the GPL (although parts have since had their license changed to the LGPL to make using our API (especially our plugin APIs) easier for all kinds of developers). After about 8 months we're getting pretty close to final releases of the project for public consumption.

So I've been at this for 8 months, with some success, but am getting to the point where two things concern me:

1. How do I best market my project?
2. How can I raise funds to help continue the project?

I imagine that most Open Source projects of any decent size face these same questions, so I'm hoping that Slashdot's contributors who have been involved in other Open Source projects that have faced similar questions would be interested in sharing their ideas and experiences in these two areas.

How have you raised your Open Source projects public profile (particularly if it isn't something that is of general use), and how have you gone about obtaining funding to help take care of those annoying little costs that creep up along the way?"

One of the beautiful things about Open Source is that the barriers to entry are next to non-existent, and the adage "have compiler, will travel" embodies this fact well enough. However, as projects grow in size, they will soon face financial stumbling blocks, not to mention a need for increased visibility. How does one best market an Open Source project? What can Joe (or Joni) Coder do to increase their project's financial stability? Have the financially minded people of the Free Software community thought out the possibility of an Open Investment firm? Read on for Slashdot readers who are asking these exact questions!

An Open Investment...
Luke asks: "Open Investment is a concept whereby Open Source principles are applied to making money. Open Investment is inspired by recent articles and diary entries, on Advogato, lamenting the lack of funding of strategic projects. Eric S. Raymond's 'Cathedral and the Bazaar' papers describe how Open Source projects get off the ground by starting as a programmer's itch turning into something useful to other people.

What if there are strategically important projects that just take too long to ever get off the ground, such as an Open Exchange replacement? With the Economist's recent news on how users expect more and more from IT, how is the Open Source community ever going to keep up? Who is going to pay for it?

The principle behind the Open Investment Initiative is to encourage the Open Source Community to take matters into their own hands, by getting smarter about money. If that happens to mean that programmers become part-time wheeler-dealers and happen to _like_ it better than programming, then good for them! Open source developers (or anybody else for that matter) could even band together to form investment syndicates, with the aim of gaining financial independence.

For the most part, the expectation is that several smart people willing to learn about investing, negotiating and making money get together, and succeed where they would be unable or unwilling to do anything on their own.

Who wants to give it a shot?"

...for a Common Situation?
Yaztromo asks: "I'm the project administrator and lead developer for an Open Source project that brings PalmOS handheld synchronization to Java-enabled platforms, called the jSyncManager.

I started the project back in 1997 for personal use (the full history of the project as available here), and in November of 2002 decided to make it Open Source under the GPL (although parts have since had their license changed to the LGPL to make using our API (especially our plugin APIs) easier for all kinds of developers). After about 8 months we're getting pretty close to final releases of the project for public consumption.

So I've been at this for 8 months, with some success, but am getting to the point where two things concern me:

1. How do I best market my project?
2. How can I raise funds to help continue the project?

I imagine that most Open Source projects of any decent size face these same questions, so I'm hoping that Slashdot's contributors who have been involved in other Open Source projects that have faced similar questions would be interested in sharing their ideas and experiences in these two areas.

How have you raised your Open Source projects public profile (particularly if it isn't something that is of general use), and how have you gone about obtaining funding to help take care of those annoying little costs that creep up along the way?"

An anonymous reader writes "There's an interesting article on Advogato about the world of computing that kids today find themselves in compared to the world that kids in the 80's found themselves in. Learning to program in the 80's was simpler because the machines were more limited, and generally came with BASIC. Now we have Windows, which typically comes with no built-in programming language. What can be done to improve the situation?"

bergie writes "There is an interesting article on Advogato on why it is so difficult for Open Source projects to interoperate or support common standards. Often cultural differences between projects, egoes, and many other issues stand in the way. The article outlines some practical ways for improving the situation, based on experiences from OSCOM efforts to get support WebDAV, SlideML and other standards into Open Source CMSs. Examples of successful interop projects include freedesktop.org, the cooperative effort between GNOME and KDE."

bergie writes "There is an interesting article on Advogato on why it is so difficult for Open Source projects to interoperate or support common standards. Often cultural differences between projects, egoes, and many other issues stand in the way. The article outlines some practical ways for improving the situation, based on experiences from OSCOM efforts to get support WebDAV, SlideML and other standards into Open Source CMSs. Examples of successful interop projects include freedesktop.org, the cooperative effort between GNOME and KDE."

Pivot writes "Keith Packard wants to fork the XFree86 effort. 'It has been brought to the attention of the XFree86 Core Team that one of its members, Keith Packard, has been actively (but privately) seeking out support for a fork of XFree86 that would be led by himself. He is also in the process of forming a by-invitation-only group of vested interests to discuss privately concerns he has about XFree86 and the future of X. He has consistently refused to even disclose these concerns within the context of the XFree86 Core Team, which makes his membership of that team unviable. As a consequence, Keith Packard is no longer a member of the XFree86 Core Team.' The XFree86 team is trying to become more open, to combat the fork. Keith is a capable developer, having worked on FontConfig, Xft, the X render extension etc. Meanwhile, All is not good in how XFree86 drivers are being developed. Anyone remember the GGI initiative a few years back, and the uproar it caused?"

Andy Tai writes "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has launched an associated membership program. Support Free Software by becoming an FSF associated member. From the FSF website: On Monday 25 November 2002, we launched the FSF Associate Membership program. Now, you can support FSF by becoming a card-carrying associate member. You can find out about the rates and benefits of membership, sign up to be an Associate Member, login to edit your membership options, and even read briefly about some current projects of FSF. " Seems a little odd to me, but what do i know ;)

bergie writes "Advogato is running a thought-provoking article on whether open source content management systems should interoperate. This is a big question involving social issues inside the projects, but also promising huge benefits to developers deploying open source CMSs and to desktop projects like Mozilla, OpenOffice and Xopus wishing to connect with a collaborative backend. This discussion will also be a major topic on the upcoming OSCOM conference."

F2F writes "Plan 9 from Bell Labs Fourth Release was announced yesterday marking a major overhaul of the entire operating system. VMware images are now supported, together with hoards of new hardware. The operating system now sports a new security model (on top of the old one, which was already quite secure), new network-resident secure storage system and improvements in the thread library, among others. See the release notes here: release4 notes or simply go to the download page at: plan9 download." T. adds: erikdalen sent in these links to critiques of the Plan 9 license from Richard Stallman and Nathan Myers.

mpawlo writes: "I think you would be interested in a story on Advogato submitted today, discussing the digital divide and the role of Linux: "With respect to locating parts with lowered cost on software. There is one candidate the would evenly fit the requirement. As of this writing, there are several OS out there having those properties, but there is only one having a large developer base and community scattered around the globe that can act as support contacts. The name is called GNU/Linux. ... Bridging the Digital Divide requires an enormous amount of work for the techonology sector. A huge responsibility is placed on those who wish to take up the challenge. Current technologies in software, specifically, the Linux OS is a good candidate to play the role." Read the entire story."

GroundBounce writes: "An article at Advogato uses the recent resignation of Christoph Pfister from the Fink project to analyze and highlight the ways in which the free software community often alienates its leaders, and the differences between the Mac shareware and the greater free software communities."

Motor writes "It seems that (as everyone suspected), the 2.5 Linux kernel tree is close to opening. However, contrary to expectations, 2.4 will not be maintained by Alan Cox, but will instead be handled by Marcelo Tosatti. Thanks to Alan for all his hard work on 2.0 and 2.2."

hub writes "One of the pilot-link main developers states on Advogato and on his site that Sony is violating GPL by distributing binary only version of POSE that has been customized for their Clie (their new Palm compatible device)."

hub writes "One of the pilot-link main developers states on Advogato and on his site that Sony is violating GPL by distributing binary only version of POSE that has been customized for their Clie (their new Palm compatible device)."

An unnamed correspondent writes: "At least, that's the rumor on the street. Wonder what this will mean for Apple's Darwin project?" The rumor is confirmed, boys and girls, Wilfredo Sanchez has indeed left Apple. A statement is on his Advogato page; apparently he has gone to KnowNow. Sanchez says on that page too that he'll still be involved with Darwin maintaining Apache and Perl for that platform.

BrightIce writes "Advogato has an interesting article about GUIs on Unix. The basic message is that it is wrong that the command line is "a completely seperate world" and proposes some interesting ways CLI and GUI could cooperate." The feature actually isn't all that long - but I'm sure the discussion can get going from there.

BrightIce writes "Advogato has an interesting article about GUIs on Unix. The basic message is that it is wrong that the command line is "a completely seperate world" and proposes some interesting ways CLI and GUI could cooperate." The feature actually isn't all that long - but I'm sure the discussion can get going from there.

Pierre Phaneuf asks: "The XPLC project, an open source, portable component system focused on high performance, is looking at leveraging the open source community to do a peer-review of its design. An article on Advogato describes the design of XPLC. What do you see there that you like? What do you think is wrong? Any ideas or suggestions?"

Alowishus writes: "Open Projects Net, the IRC network which is home to Debian and other open source projects, has been suffering DoS attacks from a disgruntled customer of one of their server sponsors. Lilo, their sysadmin describes the attacks here, and asks for assistance." It's pretty terrible when a kid goes bananas and can damage the volunteer efforts of many people working really hard to create and support something so many of us use and enjoy. The sad part is that whoever is doing this feels self-righteous and justified in his actions, so nothing any of us say will matter. I hope they catch him. DoS attacks just aren't cool, ever.

Alowishus writes: "Open Projects Net, the IRC network which is home to Debian and other open source projects, has been suffering DoS attacks from a disgruntled customer of one of their server sponsors. Lilo, their sysadmin describes the attacks here, and asks for assistance." It's pretty terrible when a kid goes bananas and can damage the volunteer efforts of many people working really hard to create and support something so many of us use and enjoy. The sad part is that whoever is doing this feels self-righteous and justified in his actions, so nothing any of us say will matter. I hope they catch him. DoS attacks just aren't cool, ever.

qbasicprogrammer writes: "Vital Source Technologies is now providing time-limited medical textbooks to universities. Password protected books as predicted in The Right To Read by Richard Stallman are finally becoming a reality." Starting on Oct. 28, (when the other part of the DMCA comes into effect), you could face a civil lawsuit and criminal penalties of up to five years in jail and a fine of $500,000 for reading someone else's textbook. See the NYU FAQ, the Advogato discussion, or the company crowing about new revenue opportunities.

Pointwood writes: "Joakim Ziegler (Webmaster for Helix Code) has written an article about where computer interface design may be heading. It takes a paper called "The Anti-Mac Interface" written in 1996 by Don Gentner and Jakob Nielsen and take a look at where we are now. In the Anti-Mac Interface paper, Don Gentner and Jakob Nielsen explore the types of interfaces that could result if they violate each of the Macintosh human interface design principles." Excellent article.

Schemer writes: "Wilfredo Sánchez, the lead developer on Darwin has posted his usenix paper, 'The Challenges of Integrating the Unix and Mac OS Environments' on the Web. In it he describes the difficulties and solutions to the problems encountered while trying to adapt BSD Unix for use with MacOS X. It's a very good read, even if you aren't a fan of the Macintosh." The OS X team have been dealing with the serious complications of mixing one established, beloved interface with another -- this is a thoughtful look from the inside at how they've dealt with it, and a good explanation of some underlying assumptions and conventions of each OS.

Justin Mason writes "Raph Levien, Advogato builder, GNOME and Gimp hacker, and general graphics guru, has made 19 patents available for free use by GPLed programs." Raph adds: "I hope to see the dithering code used in free inkjet drivers soon." It's great to see that kind of commitment; if a few hundred more people did that, think where we'd be. On behalf of my BSD-lovin' friends, I asked Raph why the GPL specifically and how he felt about about other licenses; for his reply, "read more"...

Raph responded:

For now, I'm only intending for the grant to extend to the GPL. One particular hazard I want to avoid is a potential proprietary licensee for the patent simply creating a "libraphspatent.so" (or "RAPHPTNT.DLL") that's licensed under, say, the X license, and then linking to their proprietary code. That scenario neither compensates me for the patents nor does it particularly help the cause of free software.

That said, I'm not by any means a GPL bigot. I've released quite a bit of code under less restrictive licenses in cases where I've felt the use of the code is more important than the other goals the GPL promotes. I just didn't see a way to make this grant extend to these other licenses without creating a serious hazard. There are some other people working to create patent pools for the benefit of free software generally, and I'm happy to work with them in this direction.

The Advogato article has more details on the grant itself and discussion of the consequences.

The AC crowd were the first to write in with the news. From Wilfredo Sanchez's diary at Advogato, "Today another big milestone has come up. I imported the sources to the kernel into the Darwin CVS repository today, which means that at this point all of the sources needed to build Darwin are available externally for the first time." For those not in the know, Darwin is the foundation on which MacOS X is based. It's a BSD Unix, including significant contributions from the NetBSD and FreeBSD kernel and userland code.

Pretender writes, "Donald Knuth is interviewed here, and the questions have more depth than you usually see in his interviews. Gets into a little nitty-gritty about TeX, fonts, and Crusoe's possibilities with MMIX emulation. The cartoon at the bottom is hysterical. "

This week's Linux Weekly News is reporting that Victor Yodaiken, the developer of RT-Linux (Real Time linux) has been granted a patent on method used by RT-linux. He intends that Linux users be granted a no royalty license, users of closed OS' may have to. It's unclear whether Hurd or *BSD would be granted a royalty-free license. While this could be heralded as the beginning of a new defensive patent trust for free software, it also jars somewhat with the hacker ethic. What do you think? Is Victor's idea one which is technically original, and which would not have been published had the author not had the protection afforded by a patent? Was RT-Linux's status as prior art not sufficient to keep RT-Linux free from other patent claims?