Slashdot Mirror

jones_supa writes: Microsoft is announcing that PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) for Linux is available for download in form of RPM and DEB packages. DSC is a new management platform that provides a set of PowerShell extensions that you can use to declaratively specify how you want your software environment to be configured. You can now use the DSC platform to manage the configuration of both Windows and Linux workloads with the PowerShell interface. Microsoft says that bringing DSC to Linux is another step in the company's "broader commitment to common management of heterogeneous assets in your datacenter or the public cloud." Adds reader benjymouse: DSC is in the same space as Chef and Puppet (and others); but unlike those, Microsofts attempts to build a platform/infrastructure based on industry standards like OMI to allow DSC to configure and control both Windows, Linux and other OSes as well as network equipment like switches, etc.

An anonymous reader writes "Mac OS X Leopard is now officially Unix, according to the Opengroup." I know everyone out there was really worried about this one. Welcome to the August news vacuum!

lkcl writes "The Open Group announced 12th January 2005 that they are releasing DCE/RPC 1.2.2 as a Free Software Project - under the LGPL. This is a major coup for Free Software: the Distributed Computing Environment is known to be involved in some major projects. There is a mirror at opendce.hands.com which runs rsync, ftp, and there is also a dce122.tar.bz2.torrent bittorrent running as well."

lkcl writes "The Open Group announced 12th January 2005 that they are releasing DCE/RPC 1.2.2 as a Free Software Project - under the LGPL. This is a major coup for Free Software: the Distributed Computing Environment is known to be involved in some major projects. There is a mirror at opendce.hands.com which runs rsync, ftp, and there is also a dce122.tar.bz2.torrent bittorrent running as well."

Hobart writes "Last Wednesday, IBM's AIX was the first to receive the UNIX 2003 certification from The Open Group, beating out Sun, HP, SCO and the rest. No mention anywhere in the branded products register of any Linux/BSD distribution, or Mac OS X. Are any companies still developing software to this certification, or requiring it?"

Hobart writes "Last Wednesday, IBM's AIX was the first to receive the UNIX 2003 certification from The Open Group, beating out Sun, HP, SCO and the rest. No mention anywhere in the branded products register of any Linux/BSD distribution, or Mac OS X. Are any companies still developing software to this certification, or requiring it?"

prostoalex writes "Linux Standard Base 2.0 has been released by the Free Standards Group. The release will allow application developers to ensure their product works on multiple flavors of Linux. FSG keeps a list of compliant distributions on its Web site."

An anonymous reader writes "The question isn't whether Linux can be certified as Unix. At least some distributions no doubt can. But who would pay for it? And is it worth the trouble? Jem Matzan asks these questions on NewsForge, and reminds us that the Open Group, not SCO, owns the Unix trademark,"

An anonymous reader writes "The Open Group, along with IBM, has published a 500-word document that it hopes developers will endorse. The 'Developer Declaration of Independence' enjoins corporations, governments, organizations, and individuals to adopt and protect open standards in order to promote interoperability among all vendors and give IT customers freedom of choice. The Boston-based Open Group promotes the POSIX open standard and sells compliance testing to OS vendors. It has not yet organized a 'Boston IT Party,' however."

inc_x writes "GROKLAW has a compelling analysis that shows that SCO's claims that it owns the UNIX operating system are not very truthful. The Open Group confirms this position: "Statements that SCO "owns the UNIX operating system" or has "licensed UNIX to XYZ", are clearly inaccurate and misleading." It seems that SCO finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish facts from fiction. Last week SCO claimed 'This IP battle is only one part of SCO's business and is an add-on component. The core of SCO's business is profitable,' not bothered by the fact that they had claimed the opposite in their SEC filing: 'If we do not receive SCOsource licensing revenue in future quarters and our revenue from the sale of our operating system platform products and services continues to decline, we will need to further reduce operating expenses in order to maintain profitability or generate positive cash flow.'"

inc_x writes "GROKLAW has a compelling analysis that shows that SCO's claims that it owns the UNIX operating system are not very truthful. The Open Group confirms this position: "Statements that SCO "owns the UNIX operating system" or has "licensed UNIX to XYZ", are clearly inaccurate and misleading." It seems that SCO finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish facts from fiction. Last week SCO claimed 'This IP battle is only one part of SCO's business and is an add-on component. The core of SCO's business is profitable,' not bothered by the fact that they had claimed the opposite in their SEC filing: 'If we do not receive SCOsource licensing revenue in future quarters and our revenue from the sale of our operating system platform products and services continues to decline, we will need to further reduce operating expenses in order to maintain profitability or generate positive cash flow.'"

grahamlee writes "It may be a case of 'do as we say, not as we do' over at the Santa Cruz Operation. The Netcraft statistics meter says that for the last year, SCO's web site has been served by Apache on Linux. Indeed, it's been more than a year since the site was ever served from a SCO Unix machine. So what is the possible reason for this? Your humble author suggests that SCO found themselves requiring a multithreaded web server, and as SCO UNIX is based on an ancient version of The UNIX spec it just couldn't cope ;-)." Read on for one of the strangest-yet turns to the SCO story, and several merely insipid ones.

An anonymous reader writes "SCO have made much of how their claims about UNIX code being improperly copied into Linux were verified by 3 teams including 'MIT Mathematicians.' However, MIT can't seem to find the mathematicians concerned!"

(SCO's explanation is that the company is talking about a team made up of people who formerly worked at MIT, rather than a group still associated with the school, but "due to contractual obligations, we cannot specifically name the individuals.")

kuwan writes "SCO has responded to the massive debunking of their 'evidence' last week. Chris Sontag claims that the BPF code was 'not intended to be an example of stolen code, but rather a demonstration of how SCO was able to detect "obfuscated" code.' That, however is a flat-out lie. If you look at their Obfuscated Copying slide (#15), it clearly states 'Obfuscated System V Code Has Been Copied Into Linux Kernel Releases 2.4x and 2.5x,' and then the slide labels the BPF code on the left as 'System V Code.'

At this point I think they realized that their case has been severly weakened and they need to spin it any way they can. And in their case this means more lying."

Captain Beefheart writes "According to this story over at The Inquirer (crediting a special edition of Terry Shannon's Shannon Knows HPC newsletter), SCO has officially announced that HP is safe from their infringement lawsuit brigade ... This leads one to suspect that HP is the Fortune 500 company that SCO claimed recently had paid for a license."

Maybe HP just wants to avoid Microsoft/BSA-style hassles: FatRatBastard writes "According to an article on Commentwire.com SCO has started sending invoices to Linux users. If a company signs up for SCO's 'Intellectual Property License for Linux,' they allow the possibility of being audited at SCO's expense to ensure that the user has been truthful about the number of Linux installations it has. Should the audit reveal that the user has underpaid SCO by 5% or $5,000, whichever is highest, the user also agrees to pay the price for the audit."

Blacklantern writes "The SCO lawsuit has made it into "Halloween Documents" gallery. Eric Raymond takes on the contents of the lawsuit point-by-point. "

An anonymous reader writes "The OpenGroup has published a detailed list of the conflicts between the Linux Standards Base and Posix ^? that is accessible through their website. "

Ashcrow writes "SCO UNIX has long boasted its 'true UNIX' code base, but is that really the case? A story running at The Jem Report looks into SCO's claims and holds it up to other UNIX variants to try and find validity for SCO's claims." The author has a bit of a chip on his shoulder, but worth reading for the comparison of various *nix's.

Bruce Perens writes "The Open Group hasn't always had the best reputation in the Open Source community, mostly because of their handling of Motif, which remained proprietary for much too long. But there's no arguing with the success of our community, and now the Open Group leadership understands that their organization must be fully involved in Open Source... or it's time for them to change their name. To that end, the Open Group contracted me to develop an Open Source strategy for their organization. The draft strategy has been published and they are requesting comment. - Bruce"

Jerrry writes "CNET News reports The Open Group is suing Apple over unlicensed use of the Unix trademark, after Apple used the term in conjunction with its Mac OS X marketing. Apple, meanwhile, is countersuing to have the Unix trademark declared invalid because the term has become generic."

An anonymous reader writes "ISO/IEC and The Open Group announce international approval of the joint revision to POSIX® and the Single UNIX® Specification. More info here."

Russ Nelson writes: "In our monthly board meeting this past Wednesday, the Open Source Initiative approved three new licenses for use with OSI Certified Open Source Software: the W3C license, the Motosoto license, and the Open Group Test Suite License. In other action, one license was voted down because it violated the discrimination clause of the Open Source Definition. Another (the RTSP) was withdrawn because the license-discuss mailing list convinced the submittor that it wasn't ready. And one (the DSPL) goes back to license-discuss because we disagree with their analysis and want to re-negotiate it with them. Several people have suggested that we post the licenses that we have turned down, and explain just why they don't comply with the Open Source Definition. We don't want to discourage people from submitting licenses, knowing that their license might be held up for public notice. We'd rather encourage people with non-compliant licenses to fix them so they are compliant."

tjansen asks: "In 1998 Open Group released X11R6.4, which introduced two nifty features called LBX (Low Bandwidth X) and RX (Remote Execution). LBX reduced the bandwidth needed by the X protocol, and RX made it possible to embed a remote X11 application securely into a Netscape plugin. Since version 4.0 both are also included in XFree86. Together they look like a nice and platform-independent solution for Application Service Providers (there are Windows clients, of course) and I wonder why I have never seen anybody using this."

green pizza asks: "In looking at the license for Open Motif, I noticed the clause that prohibits its use on non-Free OSes. While I realize that this is for their own licensing reasons, I couldn't help but wonder how such a clause could help Linux and other Free OSes. Just imagine, the large proprietary commercial empires wouldn't be able to roll a truly Free piece of software into their commercial apps and claim their own innovation, or worse, try to snuff out a grass-roots open project. I think such a clause would be a win-win situation for Linux." I can see arguments both for and against such a clause in free software licenses. How do you feel on the subject?

My major problems with such a clause is that it prevents interoperability. Just imagine: if most of the standard GNU tools had this clause, Cygwin would not exist, and Mozilla would not have the impact that it does today...neither would BIND or Apache. I feel that such a clause would do more to limit the ability of Open Source to penetrate new markets, and it won't help get Open Source into the enterprise where Closed Source software reigns supreme.

Janon writes: "There's a rather interesting interview with Antony Fountain, a Motif developer and reference manual author at O'Reilly. He makes some rather well-founded (or at least it seems so to me) claims that Motif has some rather important advantages over the likes of GTK+ and Qt, such as an open and superior component model." It's a great illustration of the split between open and closed development, too -- fans of the Bazaar may see only waste in Fountains assertion that "Millions of lines of Motif get written and not one word about it leaves the company doors."

martin writes: "It seems RMS is not impressed by the Open Group's recent release of Motif into the community, according this email sent out on Saturday."

Mark Hatch writes: "The Open Group has released the source code of Motif to the Open Source community. The Open Group Public license will allow the release of the Motif source code for use, reproduction and distribution on Open Source platforms such as Linux and FreeBSD, without the payment of royalties. The source of Open Motif is available now now available."

Wiggly asks: "I would like to program distributed systems using the same code base on multiple platforms and multiple languages therefore I am asking around..." And he's asking Slashdot. You've only read the tip of the iceberg, however. There's much more to digest if you decide to click on thru.

"I will firstly say though that none of this is meant as flamebait, or to detract from what any of the projects/products mentioned here have achieved. I just have a wishlist and I am looking for answers and opinions, not a holy war. I am sure that people use many of the things mentioned here on a regular basis for heavy duty apps quite happily and with great results.

There are a whole bunch of distributed programming frameworks around. RPC, ILU, CORBA, DCE, Java RMI and DCOM to name but the most common. Many of these are available on multiple platforms and there are a whole slew of interoperability tools to get them to talk to each other with varying degrees of success. Right now I will focus on CORBA as it is getting much more press than any other recently, and because it is the system that I personally know more about than the others..

Commercially there are a few good ORBs but they are terribly expensive. Developer kits for 'a well known brand' with good CORBA compliance start around 1500 - 1900 UK Pounds, for developer kits. Redistribution costs are around 1700 UK Pounds per processor. These kinds of costs don't really let people play with systems before buying although I know that most comercial ORB vendors will give you trials if they think you are a good bet to buy. Additionally most of the commercial ORBS support as few platforms as they possibly can.

On the Open Source side of things there are many, many implementations of CORBA to choose from, with their own special focus. CORBA compliance, speed, interoperability or whatever else that project's maintainers view as the most important goal(s). There is some great code out there, and a load of people spending every waking hour making it better.

What I cannot find at the moment is a system that targets multiple platforms and multiple languages. Want to use Perl to talk to C++ back ends? Well MICO/COPE is coming along. Want to use the same code on Windows NT as well? Too bad, NT support is very flaky (I have spent too many hours trying to get it working). Want to use Java Applets to talk to C? You have problems. Pick your favourite front/back end language combination and platform then try to find a solution. Problematic at best, and probably not possible at the moment.

Are these very strange requirements/wishes or would other people be willing to sacrifice ratified standards compliance and possibly performance for orthogonality of language/platform availability? I would like to be able to write code for Linux/Unices/Windows in my languages of choice (for me this would be Perl, Java and C++) without having to use multiple implementations on the different platforms.

The way things are shaping up I am thinking hard about rolling my own, because right now I have a need that I cannot fulfill from outside sources. Yes, not Invented Here strikes again, but I can't find a solution. Am I alone in this? What do you think? Do you have any solutions?"

EmilEifrem wrote in to tell us that 32BitsOnline review where CDE vs Gnome duke it out. Not sure why exactly KDE isn't in the shuffle, but I'll spoil it for you: GNOME wins.

xose sent us a link to the MkLinux OSF Page which has the following message: " Status as of November 1998 This page is no longer being maintained, since the MkLinux development is no longer active "

Mark Spencer writes "The Open Group has changed the license for X11R6.4 back to the previous free license of before. This is a big win for free software certainly, and it's good to know that the potential split between the XFree86 and X11R6 distributions will no longer be necessary. "

Mark Spencer writes "The Open Group has changed the license for X11R6.4 back to the previous free license of before. This is a big win for free software certainly, and it's good to know that the potential split between the XFree86 and X11R6 distributions will no longer be necessary. "

jhpb wrote in to send us a link to the Open Group's jdk. Why do we care? Well, because this version just happens to use Linux Threads. Very cool.

Jim Knoble has written us an editorial on the recent situation involving the OpenGroup and their new cost structure related to X11 6.4. I'd say if Netscape was the biggest Open Source success of the year, this situation may very well be the biggest failure. Fortunately XF86 will remain free, and will very likely define the future of X. Anyway check the link below and read Jim's take on the situation. The following is an editorial by Slashdot reader Jim Knoble Why the Hue and Cry? Thoughts on the Recent X11R6.4 `License' (or: What Can Public Radio in the United States Teach Us About Free Software?)

I've been spending far too much of my time recently following the ``Licensing charges for X11R6.4'' thread on comp.windows.x (at the time of this writing, over 227 articles in the thread, plus several spinoff threads).

In case the distinguished Slashdot readership isn't aware (uhh ... right), the Open Group, current stewards of the X11 copright, have announced a new licensing scheme for the recently released X11R6.4. Any one who makes money from selling X11 is required to pay a per-copy license fee. There is also a non-commercial use license which does not require the license fee.

According to the Open Group, ``We are unable to continue to support this technology without the participation of those companies who build business from re-selling this technology.''

That sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Those who make money from selling X11 ought to pass on some of the dough to the folks that make it available ... right?

Two questions pose themselves from the above:

1. Isn't ``selling'' X11 a rather broad term? What does it mean to ``build business from re-selling this technology''? Some of the Usenet discussion has centered around clarifying this point (especially because the license and other info on the Open Group's site are somewhat unclear). Does it mean that companies or organizations such as Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, Debian, Walnut Creek, CheapBytes, etc., who were to distribute X11R6.4 as part of a Linux distribution which is sold on CD-ROM would have to pay the license fee? (According to a somewhat vocal member of the Open Group, they would). What about the XFree86 Project? (They're covered by the `non-commercial' license). What about folks who press CDs of archives which contain `non-commercial' X11R6.4 source code and sell them? (They'd have to pay). Et cetera.

This is not what i'm here to talk about. But it leads to the second question.

2. Is it necessarily obvious that the folks who make money from selling X11 ought to be the ones to support its development? This is what i'm here to talk about. I don't think it is.

Back for a moment to Usenet. Why is there so much uproar about this new `arrangement' for supporting development of X11? I think there are three reasons:

1. Change.
2. Surprise.
3. Uncertainty.

The announcement of a `commercial-use' license for X11R6.4 caught more than a few folks off guard. We've been so used to X being free software for so long that we didn't much consider the possibility that it might change. Many folks find change uncomfortable. Why fix what we didn't perceive as being broken? This change is one that potentially affects quite a few folks in the Linux community.

The new licensing scheme also casts some doubt on the future of X. Although the license fees are currently somewhat reasonable for a large volume of sales ($0.15US per unit for 50,000 units for non-Open-Group members), who is to say that the Open Group won't raise `prices' later? Or that X will remain `free' (think beer) for non-commercial use?

Here's the point: The Open Group's announcement of licensing fees for commercial redistribution of X11 is amounting to a public relations fiasco in the open source community ... especially on the heels of Netscape's official open-source-ification of Communicator 5.

Why is that? What did the Open Group do wrong? I think their biggest mistakes were the following:

1. They did not consult with the open source community.
2. They did not consider alternative methods of supporting the X Project Team.

1. They did not consult with the open source community. I am not a conspiracy theorist; i leave that to those who are better at it than i am. For whatever reason, the folks who make open source software obviously did not have much input into the decision to license commercial redistribution of X ... that goes against the very core of what open source software is. Had the Open Group consulted with the open source community, at the very least, the words ``reluctantly'' or ``We regret that'' would have appeared somewhere near the words ``There is a fee associated with...''. At best ... well, that brings me to the second mistake.

2. They did not consider alternative methods of supporting the X Project Team. Had the Open Group considered for a moment the importance of the relationship between the X Window System and the open source software community, they would have scrambled to look for alternatives to implementing per-unit redistribution license fees. Similar license fees are the reason almost no open source software is written using Motif or CDE. Putting license fees together with software that has historically been available without commercial redistribution fees is just asking for bad press.

What could the Open Group have done differently to avoid the slew of bad press they're getting now? I believe that they could have used a more collaborative approach rather than the authoritative one they chose. I also believe that the open source software community can learn from their mistakes. Let me explain.

First, a bit of background for the Slashdot readership outside the United States (if you know the significance of the words `National Public Radio', you can skip this paragraph). In the United States, besides the `regular' privatized commercial radio stations that broadcast thirty minutes of music and thirty minutes of advertisements per hour (or so it sometimes seems :), we have what are called `public' radio stations, whose broadcasts consist almost entirely of programming without advertisements. These radio stations used to be heavily funded by both the federal government and some state governments (this ought to sound familiar to residents of many countries in Europe and elsewhere, where such public broadcasting is the norm). In recent years, funding for public radio has gotten slimmer and slimmer, as state and federal governments have been required to `balance budgets' and `cut spending'. Many public radio stations now raise a large percentage of the money they need in order to operate by holding seasonal `on-air fundraisers', where regular programming is surrounded by the local radio staff asking listeners to donate money to the radio station.

Anyone who has heard their local public radio station announce that 70 percent or more of their yearly operating budget comes from listener donations knows how effective the seasonal fundraisers can be. The importance of this fundraising model is that it involves the listeners. Not only do the listeners get a chance to `feel good' about supporting public radio, but sending in their donation often gives them a chance to give feedback to the station, and the fundraiser suddenly becomes a two-way channel of communication. The listeners get a chance to collaborate in the work of the radio station.

I believe a similar fundraising model might have worked in the Open Group's favor. Instead of imposing an authoritarian license fee, they could have opened up the development of X as a collaborative effort: ``We're doing the main development ... can you help support us?'' Suddenly the whole view of the situation changes. And, X would not have distribution restrictions caused by silly license fees.

Then again, perhaps such a fundraising model would not have worked for the Open Group. Perhaps some other alternative (such as dissolving the X Project Team and donating X11R6.4 to the open source software community at large) would have worked instead, or would have worked even better. The point is that they acted without consulting the fastest-growing group of folks that would be affected, and without considering alternatives to the outdated `build once, license many' paradigm.

We are in the middle of a time when alternatives to the traditional methods of distributing and supporting software are not merely available, not just fashionable, but increasingly necessary. We need to find ways to maintain freely distributable software that benefit both ourselves and the community, otherwise we lose the support of the community, who are also our customers. Let's all learn from the Open Group's mistakes.

Jim Knoble has written us an editorial on the recent situation involving the OpenGroup and their new cost structure related to X11 6.4. I'd say if Netscape was the biggest Open Source success of the year, this situation may very well be the biggest failure. Fortunately XF86 will remain free, and will very likely define the future of X. Anyway check the link below and read Jim's take on the situation. The following is an editorial by Slashdot reader Jim Knoble Why the Hue and Cry? Thoughts on the Recent X11R6.4 `License' (or: What Can Public Radio in the United States Teach Us About Free Software?)

I've been spending far too much of my time recently following the ``Licensing charges for X11R6.4'' thread on comp.windows.x (at the time of this writing, over 227 articles in the thread, plus several spinoff threads).

In case the distinguished Slashdot readership isn't aware (uhh ... right), the Open Group, current stewards of the X11 copright, have announced a new licensing scheme for the recently released X11R6.4. Any one who makes money from selling X11 is required to pay a per-copy license fee. There is also a non-commercial use license which does not require the license fee.

According to the Open Group, ``We are unable to continue to support this technology without the participation of those companies who build business from re-selling this technology.''

That sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Those who make money from selling X11 ought to pass on some of the dough to the folks that make it available ... right?

Two questions pose themselves from the above:

1. Isn't ``selling'' X11 a rather broad term? What does it mean to ``build business from re-selling this technology''? Some of the Usenet discussion has centered around clarifying this point (especially because the license and other info on the Open Group's site are somewhat unclear). Does it mean that companies or organizations such as Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, Debian, Walnut Creek, CheapBytes, etc., who were to distribute X11R6.4 as part of a Linux distribution which is sold on CD-ROM would have to pay the license fee? (According to a somewhat vocal member of the Open Group, they would). What about the XFree86 Project? (They're covered by the `non-commercial' license). What about folks who press CDs of archives which contain `non-commercial' X11R6.4 source code and sell them? (They'd have to pay). Et cetera.

This is not what i'm here to talk about. But it leads to the second question.

2. Is it necessarily obvious that the folks who make money from selling X11 ought to be the ones to support its development? This is what i'm here to talk about. I don't think it is.

Back for a moment to Usenet. Why is there so much uproar about this new `arrangement' for supporting development of X11? I think there are three reasons:

1. Change.
2. Surprise.
3. Uncertainty.

The announcement of a `commercial-use' license for X11R6.4 caught more than a few folks off guard. We've been so used to X being free software for so long that we didn't much consider the possibility that it might change. Many folks find change uncomfortable. Why fix what we didn't perceive as being broken? This change is one that potentially affects quite a few folks in the Linux community.

The new licensing scheme also casts some doubt on the future of X. Although the license fees are currently somewhat reasonable for a large volume of sales ($0.15US per unit for 50,000 units for non-Open-Group members), who is to say that the Open Group won't raise `prices' later? Or that X will remain `free' (think beer) for non-commercial use?

Here's the point: The Open Group's announcement of licensing fees for commercial redistribution of X11 is amounting to a public relations fiasco in the open source community ... especially on the heels of Netscape's official open-source-ification of Communicator 5.

Why is that? What did the Open Group do wrong? I think their biggest mistakes were the following:

1. They did not consult with the open source community.
2. They did not consider alternative methods of supporting the X Project Team.

1. They did not consult with the open source community. I am not a conspiracy theorist; i leave that to those who are better at it than i am. For whatever reason, the folks who make open source software obviously did not have much input into the decision to license commercial redistribution of X ... that goes against the very core of what open source software is. Had the Open Group consulted with the open source community, at the very least, the words ``reluctantly'' or ``We regret that'' would have appeared somewhere near the words ``There is a fee associated with...''. At best ... well, that brings me to the second mistake.

2. They did not consider alternative methods of supporting the X Project Team. Had the Open Group considered for a moment the importance of the relationship between the X Window System and the open source software community, they would have scrambled to look for alternatives to implementing per-unit redistribution license fees. Similar license fees are the reason almost no open source software is written using Motif or CDE. Putting license fees together with software that has historically been available without commercial redistribution fees is just asking for bad press.

What could the Open Group have done differently to avoid the slew of bad press they're getting now? I believe that they could have used a more collaborative approach rather than the authoritative one they chose. I also believe that the open source software community can learn from their mistakes. Let me explain.

First, a bit of background for the Slashdot readership outside the United States (if you know the significance of the words `National Public Radio', you can skip this paragraph). In the United States, besides the `regular' privatized commercial radio stations that broadcast thirty minutes of music and thirty minutes of advertisements per hour (or so it sometimes seems :), we have what are called `public' radio stations, whose broadcasts consist almost entirely of programming without advertisements. These radio stations used to be heavily funded by both the federal government and some state governments (this ought to sound familiar to residents of many countries in Europe and elsewhere, where such public broadcasting is the norm). In recent years, funding for public radio has gotten slimmer and slimmer, as state and federal governments have been required to `balance budgets' and `cut spending'. Many public radio stations now raise a large percentage of the money they need in order to operate by holding seasonal `on-air fundraisers', where regular programming is surrounded by the local radio staff asking listeners to donate money to the radio station.

Anyone who has heard their local public radio station announce that 70 percent or more of their yearly operating budget comes from listener donations knows how effective the seasonal fundraisers can be. The importance of this fundraising model is that it involves the listeners. Not only do the listeners get a chance to `feel good' about supporting public radio, but sending in their donation often gives them a chance to give feedback to the station, and the fundraiser suddenly becomes a two-way channel of communication. The listeners get a chance to collaborate in the work of the radio station.

I believe a similar fundraising model might have worked in the Open Group's favor. Instead of imposing an authoritarian license fee, they could have opened up the development of X as a collaborative effort: ``We're doing the main development ... can you help support us?'' Suddenly the whole view of the situation changes. And, X would not have distribution restrictions caused by silly license fees.

Then again, perhaps such a fundraising model would not have worked for the Open Group. Perhaps some other alternative (such as dissolving the X Project Team and donating X11R6.4 to the open source software community at large) would have worked instead, or would have worked even better. The point is that they acted without consulting the fastest-growing group of folks that would be affected, and without considering alternatives to the outdated `build once, license many' paradigm.

We are in the middle of a time when alternatives to the traditional methods of distributing and supporting software are not merely available, not just fashionable, but increasingly necessary. We need to find ways to maintain freely distributable software that benefit both ourselves and the community, otherwise we lose the support of the community, who are also our customers. Let's all learn from the Open Group's mistakes.

Jim Knoble has written us an editorial on the recent situation involving the OpenGroup and their new cost structure related to X11 6.4. I'd say if Netscape was the biggest Open Source success of the year, this situation may very well be the biggest failure. Fortunately XF86 will remain free, and will very likely define the future of X. Anyway check the link below and read Jim's take on the situation. The following is an editorial by Slashdot reader Jim Knoble Why the Hue and Cry? Thoughts on the Recent X11R6.4 `License' (or: What Can Public Radio in the United States Teach Us About Free Software?)

I've been spending far too much of my time recently following the ``Licensing charges for X11R6.4'' thread on comp.windows.x (at the time of this writing, over 227 articles in the thread, plus several spinoff threads).

In case the distinguished Slashdot readership isn't aware (uhh ... right), the Open Group, current stewards of the X11 copright, have announced a new licensing scheme for the recently released X11R6.4. Any one who makes money from selling X11 is required to pay a per-copy license fee. There is also a non-commercial use license which does not require the license fee.

According to the Open Group, ``We are unable to continue to support this technology without the participation of those companies who build business from re-selling this technology.''

That sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Those who make money from selling X11 ought to pass on some of the dough to the folks that make it available ... right?

Two questions pose themselves from the above:

1. Isn't ``selling'' X11 a rather broad term? What does it mean to ``build business from re-selling this technology''? Some of the Usenet discussion has centered around clarifying this point (especially because the license and other info on the Open Group's site are somewhat unclear). Does it mean that companies or organizations such as Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, Debian, Walnut Creek, CheapBytes, etc., who were to distribute X11R6.4 as part of a Linux distribution which is sold on CD-ROM would have to pay the license fee? (According to a somewhat vocal member of the Open Group, they would). What about the XFree86 Project? (They're covered by the `non-commercial' license). What about folks who press CDs of archives which contain `non-commercial' X11R6.4 source code and sell them? (They'd have to pay). Et cetera.

This is not what i'm here to talk about. But it leads to the second question.

2. Is it necessarily obvious that the folks who make money from selling X11 ought to be the ones to support its development? This is what i'm here to talk about. I don't think it is.

Back for a moment to Usenet. Why is there so much uproar about this new `arrangement' for supporting development of X11? I think there are three reasons:

1. Change.
2. Surprise.
3. Uncertainty.

The announcement of a `commercial-use' license for X11R6.4 caught more than a few folks off guard. We've been so used to X being free software for so long that we didn't much consider the possibility that it might change. Many folks find change uncomfortable. Why fix what we didn't perceive as being broken? This change is one that potentially affects quite a few folks in the Linux community.

The new licensing scheme also casts some doubt on the future of X. Although the license fees are currently somewhat reasonable for a large volume of sales ($0.15US per unit for 50,000 units for non-Open-Group members), who is to say that the Open Group won't raise `prices' later? Or that X will remain `free' (think beer) for non-commercial use?

Here's the point: The Open Group's announcement of licensing fees for commercial redistribution of X11 is amounting to a public relations fiasco in the open source community ... especially on the heels of Netscape's official open-source-ification of Communicator 5.

Why is that? What did the Open Group do wrong? I think their biggest mistakes were the following:

1. They did not consult with the open source community.
2. They did not consider alternative methods of supporting the X Project Team.

1. They did not consult with the open source community. I am not a conspiracy theorist; i leave that to those who are better at it than i am. For whatever reason, the folks who make open source software obviously did not have much input into the decision to license commercial redistribution of X ... that goes against the very core of what open source software is. Had the Open Group consulted with the open source community, at the very least, the words ``reluctantly'' or ``We regret that'' would have appeared somewhere near the words ``There is a fee associated with...''. At best ... well, that brings me to the second mistake.

2. They did not consider alternative methods of supporting the X Project Team. Had the Open Group considered for a moment the importance of the relationship between the X Window System and the open source software community, they would have scrambled to look for alternatives to implementing per-unit redistribution license fees. Similar license fees are the reason almost no open source software is written using Motif or CDE. Putting license fees together with software that has historically been available without commercial redistribution fees is just asking for bad press.

What could the Open Group have done differently to avoid the slew of bad press they're getting now? I believe that they could have used a more collaborative approach rather than the authoritative one they chose. I also believe that the open source software community can learn from their mistakes. Let me explain.

First, a bit of background for the Slashdot readership outside the United States (if you know the significance of the words `National Public Radio', you can skip this paragraph). In the United States, besides the `regular' privatized commercial radio stations that broadcast thirty minutes of music and thirty minutes of advertisements per hour (or so it sometimes seems :), we have what are called `public' radio stations, whose broadcasts consist almost entirely of programming without advertisements. These radio stations used to be heavily funded by both the federal government and some state governments (this ought to sound familiar to residents of many countries in Europe and elsewhere, where such public broadcasting is the norm). In recent years, funding for public radio has gotten slimmer and slimmer, as state and federal governments have been required to `balance budgets' and `cut spending'. Many public radio stations now raise a large percentage of the money they need in order to operate by holding seasonal `on-air fundraisers', where regular programming is surrounded by the local radio staff asking listeners to donate money to the radio station.

Anyone who has heard their local public radio station announce that 70 percent or more of their yearly operating budget comes from listener donations knows how effective the seasonal fundraisers can be. The importance of this fundraising model is that it involves the listeners. Not only do the listeners get a chance to `feel good' about supporting public radio, but sending in their donation often gives them a chance to give feedback to the station, and the fundraiser suddenly becomes a two-way channel of communication. The listeners get a chance to collaborate in the work of the radio station.

I believe a similar fundraising model might have worked in the Open Group's favor. Instead of imposing an authoritarian license fee, they could have opened up the development of X as a collaborative effort: ``We're doing the main development ... can you help support us?'' Suddenly the whole view of the situation changes. And, X would not have distribution restrictions caused by silly license fees.

Then again, perhaps such a fundraising model would not have worked for the Open Group. Perhaps some other alternative (such as dissolving the X Project Team and donating X11R6.4 to the open source software community at large) would have worked instead, or would have worked even better. The point is that they acted without consulting the fastest-growing group of folks that would be affected, and without considering alternatives to the outdated `build once, license many' paradigm.

We are in the middle of a time when alternatives to the traditional methods of distributing and supporting software are not merely available, not just fashionable, but increasingly necessary. We need to find ways to maintain freely distributable software that benefit both ourselves and the community, otherwise we lose the support of the community, who are also our customers. Let's all learn from the Open Group's mistakes.

Several people wrote in to tell us that X11 6.4 will require at least a $5k license to ship a product based on it. You can read more about it here. Alan Cox wrote in to tell us that XF86 will remain free and included the following statement from Dirk Hohndel "XFree86 will continue to be freely available. This is an official statement from XFree86. And I believe that it leaves not all that much room for interpretation or misunderstanding"

Markus Fleck dropped us a note to say that X11R6.4 is available now Here. Those versions are coming fast and furious now...