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"Even some open source software runs so poorly on BSD that it's not worth using -- like MySQL."

Hogwash and Boulder dash,
http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12 /27/1243207

Even some open source software runs so poorly on BSD that it's not worth using -- like MySQL

Not worth using? I've been using FreeBSD with Apache, MySQL and PHP on my webserver without any problems.

At a job I held in college, I set up a network with FreeBSD and a database-driver website that used PHP+MySQL. This website received significant amount of traffic and ran without any problems.

*Some* software may run poorly, but MySQL is not one of them. It may not run as well on *BSD as on Linux, but it does run (and runs pretty well on some *BSD's).

Check this out.

It all comes down to what you want... if you want a good server, then maybe you want FreeBSD.

But in general, I agree with your point - Linux is much more widely used and hence has better support as a general purpose OS.

Comically enough, it's been done.

Perhaps if we can work with what viruses we have, and get THOSE running under Wine...then the rest of the layer will fall into place?

I'm not saying Windows is a virus....just that...well, viruses are one of the things I WOULD use windows for...heh.

It seems one of the first companies to jump on the Tor bandwagon is VPM. They are selling a Linux desktop on a 128MB USB stick with everything preconfigured to connect using Tor. Sounds like a neat idea even though you could make it all yourself without paying $45.

Looking at these images (LVS and WLBS) it seems with LVS there is a single point of failure with the load balancer box. With Windows load balancing there is no "balancer box" and if any one server fails the cluster continues without missing a beat.

How does LVS work if the balancer box fails?

Since Keepass is windows only, I suggest Linux readers Gringotts or this article for other ideas. Also have a look at FSF's suggestions for encryption here.

Newsforge interview

It's a really tough line, sure, we have lost maybe 3 customers as a result in 18 months (average spend per customer is $34 per month), out of 20,000. But it is far, far cheaper that the cost of just letting it happen unchecked.

All the reports say the spam problem is worse "over there", with "over there" being decided by the report writer. Rather than falling for the distraction let's look at the common denominator: MS still needs constant tinkering, it's not for amateurs or home users. Use OS X, BSD or Linux instead.

MS is like the old style Harleys. You know the ones from decades ago, before the retooling, where you had to have your toolkit with for any serious road trips. Neither is practical for your casual user.

Even recent versions like XP, still aren't ready for the desktop. Though some claim that XP about even with KDE. For home users that surf, check e-mail, listen to music, watch DVDs and maybe edit a few digital images, there's no need to waste time and money on a system which required esoteric knowledge and constant tinkering. A machine with a pre-installed and pre-configured Linux distro or OS X will save home users AND their ISPs weeks of headache per year. And, unless your time is free, this means substantially less burden.

For businesses you get economy of scale. Plus, zombies are not your only threat. If MS can read your business files and mail so can your competitors.

For the uninitiated, what exactly is the Swedish Conspiracy? I did a quick Google and found this post on a Passepartout release notice. There's also this Newsforge post on the Swedish influences in Open Source Software.

It is much easier to give librarians the choice and ability to lend them out in libraries, says this article:

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/12/14/1 545216&mode=thread&tid=132&tid=151&tid=82

it's cute
it's genuinely funny

Same as his other column describing his Windoze experience:
A week of Windows (Migrating from Windows to Linux)

gewg_

...Bill's bluff. He had to get better at snowing people, so now the computer market is flooded with crap software.

-AT

This article speaks of MySQL serving ~1TB in real life, and links to a benchmark which has MySQL scaling as well as Oracle (just one benchmark, but I think it makes the point).

MySQL has a number of features, restrictions and peculiarities which I find irritating, but in terms of raw performance, especially on reads, it doesn't seem to stop when your database gets seriously large. I find PostgreSQL much more pleasant to use, and this article speaks of Fujitsu helping to add Table Spaces to make management of data "into the hundreds of gigabyte" easier, with the implication being that people already have PostgreSQL databases that large, and the feature is basically a bonus. This article also mentions a PostgreSQL database of over a terabyte.

I think you'll find that the limitation is not the software, the limitation is that precious few MySQL DBAs are familiar with databases larger than you can squeeze into a desktop machine (the machine in front of me will take 4x250GB IDE disks for a total of 1TB of storage, for example, and if you had matching SATA drives as many controllers do, put in a new PSU and double that).

The developer.com article mentions that Oracle was harder to tune for larger databases than MySQL, so perhaps this is changing, perhaps we will see more people asking if it's worth spending the extra money for a database that's harder to operate, and no faster. Perhaps it would be cost-effective to spend the money on more servers instead (you can get a pair of jaw-droppingly impressive servers for the price of a single high-end Oracle licence), and rely on redundancy rather than expertise. PostgreSQL supports replication, and there are bolt-ons to do the same for MySQL, kinda-sorta, so it's not an unreasonable proposition and can only get more attractive as these features are improved.

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

1. I have several e-mail accounts to deal with
2. I chat on IRC daily
3. I follow several USENET news groups
4. I routinely post on a variety of message boards
5. I subscribe to Mental Floss, SysAdmin Magazine and Columbus Monthly
6. I read /. and technocrat and fark and El Reg and Something Awful and Google News and Groklaw and The Onion and Maddox and Ars Technica and USA Today and NewsForge every single day
7. I use Stumble Upon to find random, new and interesting web sites
8. ...AND I CAN'T GET ENOUGH!!!

If I can ask an honest question, what was the last Java GUI you used?

I've tried various applications like IM and P2P clients, but don't remember which ones because they never stay installed. IIRC, the last Java GUI I used for any serious length of time was the Nokia J2ME SDK that I was using to develop Java apps for mobile phones. Technically, I've been writing Java in one form or another on and off since 1998, but it simply doesn't appeal to me enough to use it for anything serious.

As far as I can interpret the license, there is no issue with bundling it with Linux OSes. However, the upper-echelons of the OSS community have demonized the JVM and have found a few nits to pick.

Compliance with copyright law is not nit picking. And the same issue exists on FreeBSD too (I mostly use Linux and FreeBSD). If multiple Linux distributions and the FreeBSD team say one thing, and you say another, I'm going to assume your reading of the license is inadequate (I assume you aren't a lawyer?).

For example, we've heard from both Stallman and de Icaza about how "evil" Java is.

Really? Read the Java Trap, written by Stallman. He has every opportunity to say "don't write Java programs, avoid Java". But he doesn't. He says things like "avoid the proprietary JVMs", "avoid using APIs that only have proprietary implementations", "we are trying to rescue Java programs" and so on. So where is he saying that Java is evil? I've seen countless people put words into his mouth that he simply hasn't said, and you seem to be the latest one to do so.

Sorry, but he is the leader of the FSF. AFAIK, blame rests squarely with him.

The FSF isn't a military organisation, and the people hacking on the HURD don't answer to him.

when you contrast it to the FSF's policy of "set it free" (i.e. "give it to us") you have to wonder why they think they'd be a better custodian?

Since when are the FSF asking to maintain Sun's Java implementation? Sounds like another straw man.

If that were true, we wouldn't be talking. We'd be using GCJ/Kaffe and everyone would be happy.

What I mean is, the GNU project has multiple implementations of libraries, syntaxes and compilers. Your claim that they can't produce something as complex as Java is false because they already have implemented something as complex as Java.

You don't hear people complain about Python, PERL, or TCL performance.

Actually, I was just reading a thread elsewhere where Java aficionados were ranting about how Python was such a sloppy language and couldn't be as fast as Java.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

"the Lug radio guys are paid for what they say, and even canceled their show because they didnt get enough money."

You're thinking of The Linux Show. Completely different to LUGRadio.

According the article: "The problem, according to some free software voices..."

The Stallman viewpoint is here under The Java Trap. Interesting.

While I agree with him on his, "Everyone needs to be slowly dragged out of the not-free-as-in-beer arena, one finds it tough to imagine that rewriting these basic data-interaction Java classes is going to be easy to get done. The Access mirroring probably requires extensive use of this kind of API, and err.... Not the most glamorous of tasks... Since SUN's stuff is currently Free- As-In-Parking, one might think that getting people to do the redevelopment might be tough to motivate until really necessary.

A lot of parallels between this situation and the BitKeeper one, but rather than it being a third party tool it's a completely integrated API. One might think that this could be a problem in the future larger than the BitKeeper problem, were Sun to take a completely weird turn on things.... Suddenly needing to mirror an API's functionality - especially one as big as the entirety of the JVM's data-processing infrastructure.

So it seems Stallman has a very good point here. Can you imagine trying to, say, re-implement DirectX if Microsoft suddenly wasn't going to let you code using it? I don't know if this is a comparable task, but it's the only thing I can think of in my terms....

You can run virii with Wine ;)

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

I remember SGI did its own comparison of SystemV and Linux source code, and found only trivial similarities.

Does anyone know of a similar comparison by IBM comparing AIX and Linux?

If they haven't done one, perhaps it's time for one. While they couldn't publish examples of the code, but they could do a similar comparison and post the results only.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Linux fails in small business market

Nearly One-Third of All Small and Medium Sized Businesses Have Already Switched to Linux

Where did you get the idea this agreement exists? What exactly does this agreement say? What evidence is there to show that Tridgell agreed to its terms or did something that required complying with such a clause or be liable for losing a copyright infringement lawsuit?

I'm suspect that Tridgell, who appears to be quite dedicated to software freedom, would realize the implications of agreeing to such a thing and therefore not agree to it.

As it stands, Tridge has said he was not a licensee of the Bitkeeper program. Furthermore, I have no reason to believe he's lying.

I find it astonishing when a person revels in their own ignorance.

And later you say you don't like ad hominem attacks. Tsk, tsk.

Do you understand why RMS professes the things he does? If you don't, why debase him? If you do, why debase him?

Um, I haven't talked to him. But I have a pretty decent idea. Mix of ideology and ego. I don't think I debase him. Gently poke fun, maybe. All I said was it's fun to see him get pissed, don't know why you're going nuts on this.

The fact that RMS has the courage to speak for his convictions despite the masses ridiculing him for it endlessly is worthy of admiration.

That's one possibility. Or it could be a measure of his arrogance. Replace "RMS" with "Hitler, 1930" and you get the same result. Certainly spoke out about his convictions in the face of ridicule. I don't think that's a virtue in itself.

Do you have that strong conviction in anything?

No, because I'm open-minded. My ideas aren't based in ideology and leap-of-faith. I don't consider my ideas to be inherently better to anyone else's, so I actually listen and change my mind on issues. I consider that a sign of flexibiltiy and a strength.

Furthermore... have you any cogent argument for why RMS's arguments for GNU/Linux are wrong?

I think that's kind of a taste/opinion issue, not really a fact-based right/wrong sort of determination. Furthermore, I don't care. That he does is funny. It also shows that he cares more substantially about credit for things than with propogation of information, which seems a tad at odds with his supposed beliefs.

I should mention, that I am yet to one say "GNU/Linux" and have probably typed it for the first time here... but that does not change matters of course. (Just want to preempt moronic "zealot" ad hominem attacks.)

Um...sure. Though if you aren't an RMS acolyte (see? I didn't say zealot:>), I wonder why you defend him so vigorously. Since I really didn't hammer him.

Put it this way - he's fun to poke because he takes himself FAR too seriously. There's also a certain amount of self-righteousness, arrogance, and holier-than-thou-ness to him. For a good example, try here: http://www.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=04/12/08/222 9209. To the simple question of "what's your favorite beer," Stallman responds:

I do not like beer. It tastes bitter. In the AI Lab hacker community of the '70s, people did not like alcohol in general. We wanted to make our minds sharper, not duller. When our community was more or less wiped out in the '80s (see "Hackers," by Steve Levy), this and many of its other cultural traits were not adopted by the new hacker community. In this case, the foolish majority's influence triumphed over the wiser minority.

I mean, come on. This guy seems to have a problem with having any sort of a balanced life. He doesn't seem to have the confidence to relax and trust that he can let his guard down and have people take him seriously. Ironically, the result is actually the reverse.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter to me. As long as his proposal for GPL 3 doesn't materialize, because that could torpedo OSS. Although more likely it would make the FSF completely irrelevant, so it's his choice.

Hope that answers your question. ;)

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

This new reporting feature reminds me of the CIS Security Benchmark which was recently covered by NewsForge. The thing that has always bothered me about CIScan, however, is the mandatory registration process you have to go through before you download it. With Bastille offering similar functionality the need to use CIScan is greatly deminished in favor of a more "open" solution (not to bash CIS, but I don't enjoy having to keep track of yet-another-download-account).

What really makes the CIS benchmark great is the manual it comes with (which I briefly described in a comment here), so I hope the Bastille project doesn't neglect to document the benchmark in a similar way as to inform adminstrators about the various trade-off's involved. I suspect Bastille has modeled the reporting-feature after CIScan, though, so it will probably turn out to be a great replacement.

Great work guys, this new feature is welcomed with open arms.

This new reporting feature reminds me of the CIS Security Benchmark which was recently covered by NewsForge. The thing that has always bothered me about CIScan, however, is the mandatory registration process you have to go through before you download it. With Bastille offering similar functionality the need to use CIScan is greatly deminished in favor of a more "open" solution (not to bash CIS, but I don't enjoy having to keep track of yet-another-download-account).

What really makes the CIS benchmark great is the manual it comes with (which I briefly described in a comment here), so I hope the Bastille project doesn't neglect to document the benchmark in a similar way as to inform adminstrators about the various trade-off's involved. I suspect Bastille has modeled the reporting-feature after CIScan, though, so it will probably turn out to be a great replacement.

Great work guys, this new feature is welcomed with open arms.

http://programming.newsforge.com/programming/05/04 /12/1357202.shtml?tid=48&tid=140

Link

Link

Link

There's more links if you do a google search.

Tridge wanted access to the metadata of the source, which requires Bitkeeper. Instead of agreeing to the license and using a proprietary product, or faced with not having access to the metadata and using cvs instead, he decided to clean-room reverse engineer the client of Bitkeeper, not the Bitkeeper server.

McVoy, on the other hand, has more than just altruistic motives imho.

Some history on McVoy, and more recent on Tridge, so you can read up on the subject and adjust your post once you are informed, because your current post shows that you are talking out of your ass. Unless you have a problem with clean room reverse engineering, in which case you have a problem with Samba, OpenOffice's implementation of compatibility with MS .doc format, and about a few thousand other FOSS (and proprietary including Microsoft and Sun) apps.

that's neat anecdotal evidence.

and then there are actual reports on city, state and federal governments saving money by switching to linux.

I can say 100% firsthand that government offices are only as efficient as the people working for them, no matter how good the tool may be.

McVoy said what the problem with Tridgell's work was. It's up to each of us to believe him or not:

Concurrently we were working with OSDL's management. In this area I pulled in calmer heads than mine and our VP of sales got involved. He negotiates all of our enterprise level agreements, (his strength is finding common ground) so you can imagine he's a pretty reasonable guy. He was unsuccessful in getting anywhere with OSDL's CEO. Stuart's position was that this was not their problem and this is the sort of activity you expect in the open source world. We did get a verbal promise from OSDL that Tridge had discontinued his work and would not begin again as long as we were trying to work things out. We believed we had an uneasy truce, but it ends up Tridge was still working.
We ended up in a no-win situation. OSDL didn't appear to care and we couldn't trust what we were being told. With that we were fairly confident that Tridge was going to release his code. That was a problem for us for two reasons:
a) Corruption. BK is a complicated system, there are >10,000 replicas of the BK database holding Linux floating around. If a problem starts moving through those there is no way to fix them all by hand. This happened once before, a user tweaked the ChangeSet file, and it costs $35,000 plus a custom release to fix it.
If Tridge's tool is out there we are now supporting our code and his code. We couldn't do that.
b) IP loss. If we sat back and did nothing about Tridge then we are implicitly condoning reverse engineering.
Internally, we were looking at ways to best handle this. One option was to have two versions of BK, one that we gave away and another that was commercial only. This had been our course for some time and it wasn't working out. The difficulty with that solution is we couldn't just stop all work on the free version because of future compatibility issues. Trying to maintain compatibility between a free product and commercial version was grinding our development to a halt. Everyone was losing. In order for this to work we had to continuing throwing resources at the problem. We're already up to about $500K/year for the free version and continuing to ratchet that up wouldn't be prudent.
At that point we started looking at what it would be like to discontinue the free BK. Linus strongly encouraged us to do this once he came to the conclusion that the costs of the free version to BitMover outweighed the benefits to BitMover.
OSDL's management was kept informed of what we were thinking and again they seemed rather apathetic about it. Their position was that it was BitMover's problem and we needed to figure out how to fix it. That is until we set the wheels in motion to discontinue the free product. They did make motions very recently that we should work together on this, but it was too little too late.
http://os.newsforge.com/os/05/04/11/118211.shtml?t id=152&tid=2&tid=25&tid=3

Nevertheless, most of those angry with Linus like to refer again and again to the unbelievably bad decision he made in 2002 when he chose closed-source BK, and to the pain that all of us could avoid if he wouldn't have chosen BK in the first place. The point of my previous post is that Linus was a good engineer back then, and did the right thing to get results, because BK was a unique tool. Many people feel the current pain, but seem to be unaware of the great results BK made possible, and Linus himself reminds us:

I think everybody saw the split as inevitable _eventually_. I don't think anybody believes that the open-source SCMs wouldn't grow up, and when they would, there would have been obvious reasons to switch over eventually.
But I think it could have been a lot less painful if it happened a year or two down the road, and that's my only real regret. That said, we did get three very productive years out of it, and we not only learnt how S

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

the government uses Linux.

No, really.

http://www.newsforge.com/os/02/07/16/1319244.shtml /

But what did you expect from commies?

Since you seem to be pretty sure of your opinion, perhaps you can explain how he did it?

I'm not being snarky, by the way, I'd actually like to know. My presumption was that he had access to protocol captures because of his OSDL access.

I expect that in the future I will be able to give a more detailed response, but for now I can only tell you the following:

- In late February I wrote a tool that is interoperable with BitKeeper. The aim was to provide export to other source code management tools and provide a useful tool to the community.

- I did not use BitKeeper at all in writing this tool and thus was never subject to the BitKeeper license. I developed the tool in a completely ethical and legal manner.

Honestly, they don't have to give anything to us, and they can decide for any reason or lack of reason to stop giving us anything. Which they did. Now we can complain about it, but I don't see where they owe us a d@mned thing.

Linus. Linus says is that he can't argue "against that". Unfortunately, the "that" makes his statement ambiguous. Hot-heads are assuming that he is referring to an anti-reverse engineering position. Re-read the actual statement. There are three interpretations that are quite possible:

• It can mean that Linus condemns reverse-engineering. Unlikely. Linus isn't stupid and probably realizes (daily) how important reversing is.
• It can mean that he can't argue with the fact that they can define their own license to contain whatever they want. This is perfectly sensible.
• It can mean that he can't argue with the fact that the terms of the license are being broken. As long as there is a reasonable arguement that this is happening, and there does seem to be one whether you agree with it or not, then this also seems to be sensible.

A couple months ago the Sun guy showed up with this desparate look on his face and said "just tell us what we need to charge to beat Dell and we'll make it happen."

This is the most revealing/informative post regarding Sun. That desperate look is no doubt shared by Sun's entire salesforce along with the entire management. Why? Because they aren't hitting their numbers.

What I'd like to see is the

massive discounting and deal-making that went on during the last few weeks prior to the quarter closing where Scott and Jonathan went apeshit trying to boost the numbers to make sure they didn't close the quarter with another quarter of declining revenue. Props. They made it with a couple of million to spare. That's why they make the big money.

That was posted 11/04. Check the subsequent Sun quarter results (revenue) to understand the post.

This is a welcome change in attitude, but I don't see how they can possibly

compete with Dell on price.

They can't. This isn't about competing (profitably) on price with Dell. This is about propping up their revenue numbers until Solaris 10 magically lifts them back to their legendary status. After all, it's Solaris, and it's open. How can it miss?

Sun is hoping for some more million seat deals from China so it can continue the practiced illusion of revenue now, profits later, we're investing in the future of Sun.

Cutting prices to half of Dell is suicide. But it inflates quarterly revenue numbers. Wall Street has already been conditioned to expect losses in profit. So some more quarters with profit losses don't matter to Sun as much as keeping the revenue numbers inflated even if it means giving away systems at below cost if they are discounting more than 50% below Dell.

Yeah, they're /. comments. But the theme appears to be the same from too many people. Sun is giving away hardware at a loss.

Some companies have said that if Sun was doing three years ago what they are doing now (Solaris 10, OpenSolaris, free licensing), they would not have switched to Linux. Consider that Sun still guarantees binary and source compatibility when migrating to Solaris 10 from older versions, while Linux cannot. Linux is very useful, but there are still things that make long-term deployments awkward at times.

Mod what you will, but it is true.

The most laughable post on this topic so far. If any company was doing what the successful company/industry was doing in its own sector three years later, with 20/20 hindsight, then no company would switch from their product or service. So what's the point? Sun fought Linux and lost. It's that simple. And Sun is still fighting Linux. And as some of the other posts including above confirm, the salesforce still has desperate looks on their faces.

Solaris 10, OpenSolaris, free licensing

Three years ago, there was no Solaris 10. Just as there was no 2.6 kernel. Nor was there OpenSolaris. So they couldn't do it then regardless of any other circumstances. In addition, as late as last year, not only was Sun fighting Linux as they still are, but they were also funding SCO. So you can dream about what if, but don't we all?

Free licensing? You're (the linked post above, not the parent post here) a Sun fan, yet you attempt to suggest that Sun is licensing something as Free Software? Unless you are talking free as in beer, there is no Free licensing. So if they had "free licensing" three years ago, they'd have something they don't even have now. No

BitKeeper and Linux: The end of the road?

Linus doesn't even say that quote.

No, according to the article, Larry McVoy says Linus said that quote. And quite frankly, Larry McVoy is not what I would consider a trustworthy source. I suspect that this quote is either taken out of context or completely made up.

Did anybody think to verify with Linus that what McVoy said he said is correct?

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'. -- Requiem for the FUD

Half of the patents granted to IBM are software patents
They are lobbying the EU FOR software patents

They have patented such novel invention like:
Caps lock notification (granted 2004)
And Web page templates (submitted 1998)

Face it.. as much as you want to praise IBM.. they are a company, and are just doing what's in their best interest -- including patenting some ridiculous crap.

You've just added $10k to the cost of hiring someone.

That's an exaggeration. As this article talks about training costs for a modern linux system release like SuSE are minimal. There are good reasons to be careful about installing Linux on a company desktop but training costs are not one of them. That has been my personal experience also - training on the Linux KDE/Gnome/OpenOffice/Evolution GUI is simply not an issue for standard office work.

Administrators sometimes under-estimate the general intelligence of users (partly because they are over-exposed to the dweebs) and lose sight of the fact that the Linux GUI's for day-to-day work are very similar to the MSWindows GUI.

---

I'm not worried about the use of DRM. I'm worried about the abuse.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Look at how much MS or Apple have given back to BSD as opposed to how much linux has got from IBM. Who has the better dynamic community of sharing?

Wow! I like when people are really openly intelectually dishonest! Do you fail to see that IBM is in the server market, and that Linux OS is just a complement it needs to turn into a commodity to them? OTOH, Apple did give back to FreeBSD (see Since Mac OS X v10.0 was released in 2001, Apple has been filtering BSD code in and out of their kernel, userland, and libraries. This code then makes its way back to FreeBSD. Apple's pattern is to sync every major Mac OS X release with the latest major FreeBSD release. and Apple hires open-source leader.)

Just because you are desinformed, or because you think Leenox is Kewl does not change the facts.
Here are some simple facts of life:
1) A pure open-source software house is a very hard to maintain thing. I'm not the one saying that, Miguel de Icaza of GNOME/Mono fame says it here

2) Because some company incorporates code under BSD license, does not mean the code went away. It's still there. Otherwise, is it envy that moves you, because some people are more technically knowledgeable than you? In that case, your problem is not a license problem, it is a problem only solved by study. Envy only means you've got mental problems, too. For instance, BitMover wrote better code than the open-source guys. Tough luck.