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Though it's been out for more than a year, most people have not gotten a chance to see Revolution OS ; luckily for those who'd like to, a video release is planned for later this year, and for California readers, the screenings page lists four two-night showings over the next several weeks, in Newport Beach, Pasadena, California, Santa Monica, and L.A. Reader AdamBa submits his impressions of the movie (below).

Linux users who wonder why drag-and-drop doesn't always work between applications may find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between Gnome and KDE -- a difference they may not have known existed.

Linux users who watch the documentary Revolution OS will find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between free software and open source software -- a difference they may also have been unaware of.

The film by J.T.S. Moore is about the growth of the free software movement, and its eventual co-option by the open source movement. I don't think that's what the movie was supposed to be about; it was supposed to be about Linux and its battle about Microsoft. But the movie is quickly hijacked by its participants and turned into a theoretical discussion, in which Linux itself is a mere sideshow.

The combatants are Richard Stallman for free software, and Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens for open source. Much of the movie is after-the-fact interviews with them, as well as other notables: Linus Torvalds, Michael Tiemann from Cygnus, Larry Augustin from VA Linux, Brian Behlendorf from Apache. Rob Malda, aka CmdrTaco of Slashdot, even makes an appearance. But the Stallman vs. Raymond/Perens debate forms the core of the movie.

All three main participants come out looking reasonably good. I think when Microsoft executives see photos of typical open source luminaries, they might feel an urge to give them a hug and a bowl of soup, rather than worry about them taking market share from Microsoft (forgetting that Bill Gates created the same impression at age 24, negotiating the deal to license DOS to IBM). But Stallman and Raymond and Perens are not like that; they have spent decades writing software and thinking about writing software, and the intellectual heft of their arguments reflect that. Stallman, in particular, gets a chance to explain at length his feelings about software and how these led to the Free Software Foundation and the GNU public license, which may be news to viewers who only know about Linux.

Heavy with interviews, the movie lacks the staple of documentaries: scenes with multiple people that are later analyzed individually by each of the participants. The main characters almost never appear together, and when they discuss the rare events at which two or more were present, they contradict each other as often as not. This is an artifact of distributed development: there are not a lot of scenes where they are together because they do not need to be together a lot.

The movie also lacks a villain, a battle of good vs. evil. Nominally Microsoft is the bad guy, but except for Bill Gates' quarter-century-old "Open Letter to Hobbyists" and a snide comment from Bruce Perens about intellectual property, it isn't clear why Microsoft is disliked. Nobody explains why Windows is worse, or Linux better. In fact, the movie demonstrates that GNU and Linux began as alternatives to expensive and proprietary hardware and software from Sun, not from Intel and Microsoft.

Even the open source vs. free software debate is presented from both sides. Since more people have heard of open source than free software, the fact that Stallman gets equal time is in a sense a victory for him over Raymond and Perens. But all three are shown acting both profound and petty, combining smugness with "aw, shucks" modesty, and attempting to claim their rightful credit without being obvious about it.

* * *

An outsider might come away from the movie with the inaccurate impression that open source is the commercialized cousin of free software. Digging a little deeper, he or she might find the Free Software Foundation's web page that attempts to clarify the issue. "While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas. The term 'open source' quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable." However, after kicking the ideas around a bit, the article doesn't come up with any concrete differences. The site also provides a handy chart, but the "free software" and "open source" boxes intersect completely (except for the small space allocated to their names).

The two movements do have different grounding philosophies. Free software is based on four freedoms, open source is based on nine criteria. The freedoms are more general -- they could be applied to almost any creative work -- but in practice, when it comes to software, the four freedoms generate a set of rules very much like the nine criteria. Linux, the standard-bearer for open source, was released under the GPL, a license that came from free software.

While the Free Software Foundation's site devotes significant verbiage to the difference between free software and open source, the Open Source Initiative doesn't talk about free software. Its history begins (somewhat guilelessly) on February 3, 1998, the day the term "open source" was coined (an event whose location is pointed out by Larry Augustin in the movie).

This gives some insight into the difference between the two movements. The Open Source Initiative has a more pragmatic attitude, and I think this rankles the Free Software Foundation. Of course, OSI has to please various people, while the moral compass of the FSF is inseparable from that of Richard Stallman, making it easier for it to stay the true course. In the movie Eric Raymond describes the term "free software" as "lousy marketing," which if it was intended as an insult, I fear will miss the mark. As Stallman puts it, free software is "important for quality of life and the good of society." What worries the FSF about OSI is not so much the nine criteria that exist and whether they conflict with the four freedoms, but whether the tenth criteria would conflict with the fifth freedom.

In computing, with its thousand ways to do the same thing, such arguments are often termed "religious," and the comparison is not inapt. In his book What is a Jew?, Rabbi Morris Kertzer writes, "[Jewish] tradition pictures God as saying, 'It would even be all right if my children forgot me, as long as they keep my commandments.'" That is an open source attitude: who cares what is motivating you to release the source code; just release it. Free software is different. To do free software right, you gotta believe.

In the movie, neither side is completely frank during its interviews. As part of the GNU project, the FSF created every part of a working Unix system except the kernel, a gap that was filled by the Linux kernel. Linux would not exist without the GNU code (particularly the compiler), lending credence to Stallman's claim that the system should be known as "GNU/Linux," but it is disingenuous of Stallman to portray the kernel as just one part of the whole system, on par with a text editor.

Stallman appears annoyed by a lack of purity in the Linux project. Linus Torvalds had the temerity to start writing software without first working out a detailed philosophy that governed all aspects of his life. Furthermore, he used a simpler approach to kernel writing (a monolithic kernel) than what GNU was planning for its Hurd kernel (a microkernel), and more gallingly, got it working sooner and wound up having the name of his kernel be used to refer to the whole thing, a synecdochic slap in the face to Stallman.

Open source has done such a complete job of embracing and extending free software that we are treated to the sight of Richard Stallman receiving an award named after Linus Torvalds, when historical events seem to dictate the other way around as more appropriate. Stallman, to his credit, shows up to accept the award at LinuxWorld, but he cannot resist haranguing the crowd about the GNU/Linux name (a premise that Torvalds elsewhere labels "ridiculous"). Linus gets the last laugh, however, since during Stallman's rant he is being upstaged by Linus' two adorable toddlers, scooting around on the back of the stage.

* * *

Revolution OS does unearth some good background information on a few aspects of open source. We learn about Cygnus and VA Linux, two of the first companies to attempt a business model based on free software. The movie goes into some detail on Netscape's decision to open-source its browser

But Linux itself is rarely seen, missing from its own movie. The product is merely an adjunct, a manifestation of the battle between open source and free software, with both sides claiming moral ownership. When two dogs fight over a bone, you don't see the bone fight. We are never shown anyone using Linux, except for unhappy users at an Installfest. The rise of Linux is chronicled only in occasional titles, superimposed over footage of cars zooming down a road, showing the impressive rise in the numbers of users through the years. Important issues, such as what a distribution is and why there are different ones, are never addressed.

Tiemann and Augustin discuss how Linux can help customers, but they are too polished to make much of an impression amidst the geekosophical debate. Stallman and Raymond and Perens care more about the abstract fight than the market battles, and their passion drives the movie. If they developed their software to scratch an itch, it's clear they gave the interviews for this movie to scratch a different itch, the nagging feeling that someone else was trying to steal their glory.

This leads one to wonder about the movie's target audience. Open source navel gazers will enjoy matching names to faces, but the average non-technical user will probably fail to grasp the significance of most of the issues discussed. They will be left with an entertaining story, peopled by colorful characters who obviously disagree about something they feel passionate about, but the gist of the arguments will likely elude them. An executive watching the movie may also be puzzled; the term "open source" was chosen over "free software" partly to avoid the non-commercial associations that the old name evoked, but watching the internal bickering may cause some to wonder if the software is ready for prime time, or if it is best reserved for zealots willing to accept certain tradeoffs because of the feeling of moral superiority that the software engenders.

The organization that screened the movie in Seattle, the Northwest Film Forum, has two theaters, one seating 70 and one seating 48. They chose to show it in the little theater (called, in fact, the Little Theater), which seemed to me a mistake in tech-savvy Seattle, at a theater just a few miles from the University of Washington campus. Yet, despite being hyped in the Friday "What's Happening" section of the paper, only 19 people showed up for the show on a Saturday night -- mostly Linux users and their tolerant dates, as far as I could tell.

Others may have to wait a while to see the movie. It has been showing at film festivals since last year, and is now starting limited runs in some cities. Luckily, the film is planned for DVD and video release in the second half of 2002.

The filmed part of the movie ends on a positive note, first with LinuxWorld in 1999 coinciding with the Red Hat IPO (featuring Rob Malda commenting on what the unevenly divided influx of money will mean to the Linux community), and then the VA Linux IPO in December 1999, where the stock rose 698% the first day, a record. Check out the NASDAQ stock ticker crawling by on the CNBC footage from that period! Of course in retrospect we know what is coming, and the movie finishes with a couple of intertitles explaining that VA Linux and Red Hat are now trading below $5 a share.

I think this leaves the average viewer a little puzzled. Did Linux peak in 1999? Now that the money that fluxed in to Linux has fluxed out again, is the community closer to its pure roots, moving away from the open source movement and back towards free software? The movie doesn't say, but you get the feeling that somewhere, Richard Stallman is smiling.

Though it's been out for more than a year, most people have not gotten a chance to see Revolution OS ; luckily for those who'd like to, a video release is planned for later this year, and for California readers, the screenings page lists four two-night showings over the next several weeks, in Newport Beach, Pasadena, California, Santa Monica, and L.A. Reader AdamBa submits his impressions of the movie (below).

Linux users who wonder why drag-and-drop doesn't always work between applications may find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between Gnome and KDE -- a difference they may not have known existed.

Linux users who watch the documentary Revolution OS will find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between free software and open source software -- a difference they may also have been unaware of.

The film by J.T.S. Moore is about the growth of the free software movement, and its eventual co-option by the open source movement. I don't think that's what the movie was supposed to be about; it was supposed to be about Linux and its battle about Microsoft. But the movie is quickly hijacked by its participants and turned into a theoretical discussion, in which Linux itself is a mere sideshow.

The combatants are Richard Stallman for free software, and Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens for open source. Much of the movie is after-the-fact interviews with them, as well as other notables: Linus Torvalds, Michael Tiemann from Cygnus, Larry Augustin from VA Linux, Brian Behlendorf from Apache. Rob Malda, aka CmdrTaco of Slashdot, even makes an appearance. But the Stallman vs. Raymond/Perens debate forms the core of the movie.

All three main participants come out looking reasonably good. I think when Microsoft executives see photos of typical open source luminaries, they might feel an urge to give them a hug and a bowl of soup, rather than worry about them taking market share from Microsoft (forgetting that Bill Gates created the same impression at age 24, negotiating the deal to license DOS to IBM). But Stallman and Raymond and Perens are not like that; they have spent decades writing software and thinking about writing software, and the intellectual heft of their arguments reflect that. Stallman, in particular, gets a chance to explain at length his feelings about software and how these led to the Free Software Foundation and the GNU public license, which may be news to viewers who only know about Linux.

Heavy with interviews, the movie lacks the staple of documentaries: scenes with multiple people that are later analyzed individually by each of the participants. The main characters almost never appear together, and when they discuss the rare events at which two or more were present, they contradict each other as often as not. This is an artifact of distributed development: there are not a lot of scenes where they are together because they do not need to be together a lot.

The movie also lacks a villain, a battle of good vs. evil. Nominally Microsoft is the bad guy, but except for Bill Gates' quarter-century-old "Open Letter to Hobbyists" and a snide comment from Bruce Perens about intellectual property, it isn't clear why Microsoft is disliked. Nobody explains why Windows is worse, or Linux better. In fact, the movie demonstrates that GNU and Linux began as alternatives to expensive and proprietary hardware and software from Sun, not from Intel and Microsoft.

Even the open source vs. free software debate is presented from both sides. Since more people have heard of open source than free software, the fact that Stallman gets equal time is in a sense a victory for him over Raymond and Perens. But all three are shown acting both profound and petty, combining smugness with "aw, shucks" modesty, and attempting to claim their rightful credit without being obvious about it.

* * *

An outsider might come away from the movie with the inaccurate impression that open source is the commercialized cousin of free software. Digging a little deeper, he or she might find the Free Software Foundation's web page that attempts to clarify the issue. "While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas. The term 'open source' quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable." However, after kicking the ideas around a bit, the article doesn't come up with any concrete differences. The site also provides a handy chart, but the "free software" and "open source" boxes intersect completely (except for the small space allocated to their names).

The two movements do have different grounding philosophies. Free software is based on four freedoms, open source is based on nine criteria. The freedoms are more general -- they could be applied to almost any creative work -- but in practice, when it comes to software, the four freedoms generate a set of rules very much like the nine criteria. Linux, the standard-bearer for open source, was released under the GPL, a license that came from free software.

While the Free Software Foundation's site devotes significant verbiage to the difference between free software and open source, the Open Source Initiative doesn't talk about free software. Its history begins (somewhat guilelessly) on February 3, 1998, the day the term "open source" was coined (an event whose location is pointed out by Larry Augustin in the movie).

This gives some insight into the difference between the two movements. The Open Source Initiative has a more pragmatic attitude, and I think this rankles the Free Software Foundation. Of course, OSI has to please various people, while the moral compass of the FSF is inseparable from that of Richard Stallman, making it easier for it to stay the true course. In the movie Eric Raymond describes the term "free software" as "lousy marketing," which if it was intended as an insult, I fear will miss the mark. As Stallman puts it, free software is "important for quality of life and the good of society." What worries the FSF about OSI is not so much the nine criteria that exist and whether they conflict with the four freedoms, but whether the tenth criteria would conflict with the fifth freedom.

In computing, with its thousand ways to do the same thing, such arguments are often termed "religious," and the comparison is not inapt. In his book What is a Jew?, Rabbi Morris Kertzer writes, "[Jewish] tradition pictures God as saying, 'It would even be all right if my children forgot me, as long as they keep my commandments.'" That is an open source attitude: who cares what is motivating you to release the source code; just release it. Free software is different. To do free software right, you gotta believe.

In the movie, neither side is completely frank during its interviews. As part of the GNU project, the FSF created every part of a working Unix system except the kernel, a gap that was filled by the Linux kernel. Linux would not exist without the GNU code (particularly the compiler), lending credence to Stallman's claim that the system should be known as "GNU/Linux," but it is disingenuous of Stallman to portray the kernel as just one part of the whole system, on par with a text editor.

Stallman appears annoyed by a lack of purity in the Linux project. Linus Torvalds had the temerity to start writing software without first working out a detailed philosophy that governed all aspects of his life. Furthermore, he used a simpler approach to kernel writing (a monolithic kernel) than what GNU was planning for its Hurd kernel (a microkernel), and more gallingly, got it working sooner and wound up having the name of his kernel be used to refer to the whole thing, a synecdochic slap in the face to Stallman.

Open source has done such a complete job of embracing and extending free software that we are treated to the sight of Richard Stallman receiving an award named after Linus Torvalds, when historical events seem to dictate the other way around as more appropriate. Stallman, to his credit, shows up to accept the award at LinuxWorld, but he cannot resist haranguing the crowd about the GNU/Linux name (a premise that Torvalds elsewhere labels "ridiculous"). Linus gets the last laugh, however, since during Stallman's rant he is being upstaged by Linus' two adorable toddlers, scooting around on the back of the stage.

* * *

Revolution OS does unearth some good background information on a few aspects of open source. We learn about Cygnus and VA Linux, two of the first companies to attempt a business model based on free software. The movie goes into some detail on Netscape's decision to open-source its browser

But Linux itself is rarely seen, missing from its own movie. The product is merely an adjunct, a manifestation of the battle between open source and free software, with both sides claiming moral ownership. When two dogs fight over a bone, you don't see the bone fight. We are never shown anyone using Linux, except for unhappy users at an Installfest. The rise of Linux is chronicled only in occasional titles, superimposed over footage of cars zooming down a road, showing the impressive rise in the numbers of users through the years. Important issues, such as what a distribution is and why there are different ones, are never addressed.

Tiemann and Augustin discuss how Linux can help customers, but they are too polished to make much of an impression amidst the geekosophical debate. Stallman and Raymond and Perens care more about the abstract fight than the market battles, and their passion drives the movie. If they developed their software to scratch an itch, it's clear they gave the interviews for this movie to scratch a different itch, the nagging feeling that someone else was trying to steal their glory.

This leads one to wonder about the movie's target audience. Open source navel gazers will enjoy matching names to faces, but the average non-technical user will probably fail to grasp the significance of most of the issues discussed. They will be left with an entertaining story, peopled by colorful characters who obviously disagree about something they feel passionate about, but the gist of the arguments will likely elude them. An executive watching the movie may also be puzzled; the term "open source" was chosen over "free software" partly to avoid the non-commercial associations that the old name evoked, but watching the internal bickering may cause some to wonder if the software is ready for prime time, or if it is best reserved for zealots willing to accept certain tradeoffs because of the feeling of moral superiority that the software engenders.

The organization that screened the movie in Seattle, the Northwest Film Forum, has two theaters, one seating 70 and one seating 48. They chose to show it in the little theater (called, in fact, the Little Theater), which seemed to me a mistake in tech-savvy Seattle, at a theater just a few miles from the University of Washington campus. Yet, despite being hyped in the Friday "What's Happening" section of the paper, only 19 people showed up for the show on a Saturday night -- mostly Linux users and their tolerant dates, as far as I could tell.

Others may have to wait a while to see the movie. It has been showing at film festivals since last year, and is now starting limited runs in some cities. Luckily, the film is planned for DVD and video release in the second half of 2002.

The filmed part of the movie ends on a positive note, first with LinuxWorld in 1999 coinciding with the Red Hat IPO (featuring Rob Malda commenting on what the unevenly divided influx of money will mean to the Linux community), and then the VA Linux IPO in December 1999, where the stock rose 698% the first day, a record. Check out the NASDAQ stock ticker crawling by on the CNBC footage from that period! Of course in retrospect we know what is coming, and the movie finishes with a couple of intertitles explaining that VA Linux and Red Hat are now trading below $5 a share.

I think this leaves the average viewer a little puzzled. Did Linux peak in 1999? Now that the money that fluxed in to Linux has fluxed out again, is the community closer to its pure roots, moving away from the open source movement and back towards free software? The movie doesn't say, but you get the feeling that somewhere, Richard Stallman is smiling.

Russ Nelson writes "The Open Source Initiative turned down four licenses this week. Not to name names, but one license had a restrictive patent grant that only applied to GPL'ed operating systems. Another was more of a rant than a license. Another was derived from the GPL in violation of the GPL's copyright. And the fourth had insufficient review on the license-discuss mailing list (archives). The one license that did pass was the Python Software Foundation License."

Russ Nelson writes "The Open Source Initiative turned down four licenses this week. Not to name names, but one license had a restrictive patent grant that only applied to GPL'ed operating systems. Another was more of a rant than a license. Another was derived from the GPL in violation of the GPL's copyright. And the fourth had insufficient review on the license-discuss mailing list (archives). The one license that did pass was the Python Software Foundation License."

Russ Nelson writes "The Open Source Initiative turned down four licenses this week. Not to name names, but one license had a restrictive patent grant that only applied to GPL'ed operating systems. Another was more of a rant than a license. Another was derived from the GPL in violation of the GPL's copyright. And the fourth had insufficient review on the license-discuss mailing list (archives). The one license that did pass was the Python Software Foundation License."

Josh Coalson asks: "I am the author of FLAC, an open-source lossless audio codec. The core of the project is a reference encoder/decoder library currently licensed under the LGPL. As the format grows more popular I am being been approached by third parties about implementation in proprietary hardware systems. This is natural and I don't have anything against it, but several people are voicing concerns that the LGPL is too strict for use in embedded systems. I want the codec to remain Free, but then again, wide adoption of a format makes it more useful to all users."

"More specifically, the nature of many embedded systems force them to be bound by the stringent requirements of Section 6 the LGPL. In some cases, dynamic linkage is not possible, ruling out 6(b), or causing the terms of the FLAC library to come into conflict with other proprietary libraries. In other cases, it simply is not possible to provide an environment, according to 6(a), where the user can re-link with a different copy of the library.

What are my options? I could stick to my guns, which might limit the adoption of the format, or change the license. I know Vorbis uses the BSD license, but I feel strongly about modifications that are useful for others going back into the free code base. Perhaps there is another middle-ground license that could preserve the Freedom of the code in these cases? Or maybe I am not interpreting the verbiage of the LGPL correctly? Can't I have my cake and eat it too?"

Several people have submitted stories about the author of Mplayer accusing Warpvision of, err, "borrowing" their code for Warpvision's OS/2 player. I have two reactions - one, someone still uses OS/2? And two, something about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery...Update from CD: Hold on there, everyone. I downloaded the WarpVision source and lo and behold the GPL is there in all its free software glory. I think Mplayer spoke too soon, too rashly, or alternatively, WarpVision was just too slow to update thier site. I'd love to hear both sides of this before we all freak out. Further Info: It was pointed out to me (CD) that the MPlayer program itself is not Open Source software (it calls itself Basically GPL, which, BTW, hasn't been approved by the OSI), so in the end this might just be proprietary software piracy. (Yawn)

Frabcus asks: "I founded an Open Source project TortoiseCVS, a Windows Explorer shell extension for using CVS, but now I'm looking to hand on project management to someone else. When I started out, I had an itch to scratch. We started using CVS at work and I didn't like the interface for WinCVS, so I made a better one. Now it's a year and a half later and TortoiseCVS does everything that I want it to, so I'd like to move on to other things and let someone else take it on. There have been over 20,000 downloads, so I have quite a large user base, but not many people are active in supplying patches. Do you guys have experience of handing on an Open Source project? How did you find someone who has similar goals that will fit in with the existing code?" The thing to do is to start asking around in development circles. The best starting place, of course, is among the existing user-base. For those of you who have transferred Open Source projects, how did you go about finding your successor?

Another well timed submission on this same subject, mrgrumpy follows up with this query: "Quite some time ago (around 1997-1998) I built a Java based adventure game called World. Developed with Java1.1 (and at the time it was fairly leading edge, it now looks a bit tired), you run around, collect treasure and kill things. As with all my great projects (hey, I won a Sparc5 for this), I had always intended to finish it, but never did. Now I want to give it away to a good home where developers will continue to work on the code and bring my ideas to completion.

Every now and then I sit down and have a look at the code but I don't really have the energy left to complete it (most of my energy was soaked up with my Masters degree). Other projects have taken over now, and I'm planning to go overseas for 12-18 months, so I know I won't get back to it for a very, very long time in any serious way.

I am happy to give the code away if a team of developers want to continue developing it. I can act as a grandfather figure to the project to give guidance and wisdom, and to clarify what my vision was, and what the code does. I'd prefer it to be GPL'd or a similar license that won't shut the code up.

There was another project similar to this one called White Orb, which seems to have gone the way of the dodo, a shame because it had a lot of potential, so I don't want to release this one and have it gather dust. I could set the project up somewhere like SourceForge, but as I said I'd rather just hand it all over to someone else and just look after it.

If you're interested, you could email me, or just leave a comment below. I want to pick either a team, or an individual who I can be confident in that they'll get the project up and running."

So here are two projects looking for good homes. What's the best way of giving up control of an Open Source project (with the potential of varying degrees of continued project development by the original maintainer) in the hopes of it continuing on in good health?

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."

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."

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."

Russ Nelson writes "OSI has approved four new Open Source licenses. The X.Net is BSD with jurisdiction specified (note that RMS says that the GPL is not compatible with such licenses,) the New Artistic, currently that used by Perl (one paragraph added), the Sun Public License is Mozilla 1.1 with minor differences, and the Eiffel Forum License. We also modified the rationale for Open Source Definition clause 9 to remove the word "contaminate" referring to the action of the GPL."

Russ Nelson writes "OSI has approved four new Open Source licenses. The X.Net is BSD with jurisdiction specified (note that RMS says that the GPL is not compatible with such licenses,) the New Artistic, currently that used by Perl (one paragraph added), the Sun Public License is Mozilla 1.1 with minor differences, and the Eiffel Forum License. We also modified the rationale for Open Source Definition clause 9 to remove the word "contaminate" referring to the action of the GPL."

Russ Nelson writes "OSI has approved four new Open Source licenses. The X.Net is BSD with jurisdiction specified (note that RMS says that the GPL is not compatible with such licenses,) the New Artistic, currently that used by Perl (one paragraph added), the Sun Public License is Mozilla 1.1 with minor differences, and the Eiffel Forum License. We also modified the rationale for Open Source Definition clause 9 to remove the word "contaminate" referring to the action of the GPL."

Russ Nelson writes "OSI has approved four new Open Source licenses. The X.Net is BSD with jurisdiction specified (note that RMS says that the GPL is not compatible with such licenses,) the New Artistic, currently that used by Perl (one paragraph added), the Sun Public License is Mozilla 1.1 with minor differences, and the Eiffel Forum License. We also modified the rationale for Open Source Definition clause 9 to remove the word "contaminate" referring to the action of the GPL."

Russ Nelson writes "OSI has approved four new Open Source licenses. The X.Net is BSD with jurisdiction specified (note that RMS says that the GPL is not compatible with such licenses,) the New Artistic, currently that used by Perl (one paragraph added), the Sun Public License is Mozilla 1.1 with minor differences, and the Eiffel Forum License. We also modified the rationale for Open Source Definition clause 9 to remove the word "contaminate" referring to the action of the GPL."

Russ Nelson writes "OSI has approved four new Open Source licenses. The X.Net is BSD with jurisdiction specified (note that RMS says that the GPL is not compatible with such licenses,) the New Artistic, currently that used by Perl (one paragraph added), the Sun Public License is Mozilla 1.1 with minor differences, and the Eiffel Forum License. We also modified the rationale for Open Source Definition clause 9 to remove the word "contaminate" referring to the action of the GPL."

Andy Murren contributed this review of Richard Blum's Postfix. Powering mail delivery may not be as sexy as programming in exotic new languages, but it sure is important -- Andy gives you the scoop here on how well Postfix (and Postfix) do at the task.

Postfix author Richard Blun pages 542 publisher Sams rating 8 reviewer Andy Murren ISBN 0-672-32114-9 summary Guide to setting up and running Postfix as your MTA.

Postfix is a complete Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) that is meant to be a replacement for Sendmail. Wietse Venema, who works at the IBM Watson Research Center, wrote the program and released it under the IBM Public License. Richard Blum has targeted this book at Intermediate to Advanced users, but he has enough basic information so that even an MS Exchange administrator with no Unix background can get Postfix running quickly.

The book is broken into three sections:

1. Introduction to E-Mail Services and Postfix
2. Installing and Configuring Postfix
3. Advanced Postfix Server Topics

Part I is a nice overview of email, how to use Postfix, how Postfix works and a comparison of Postfix and Sendmail. In chapter 3 'Server Requirements for Postfix' an overview of Unix and Unix commands are covered along with an introduction to bash, gcc and make to bring the non-Unix user up to speed with the tools that they will need.

The chapter on DNS starts by covering the origins of DNS and the basics of how it works. Blum then gives us an explanation of DNS records and how to set them up, including the all-important MX (Mail Exchanger) record. He then gives a brief discussion on how to set up the resolv.conf, hosts and hosts.conf files. The chapter concludes with a quick look at the host, nslookup and dig programs. This chapter serves as a quick reference on getting DNS up and running on a Unix box.

Part II is a detailed section that is the heart of the book. How to set up Postfix is laid out in detail from how to install (both from an RPM file and from source), to configuring it, to logging and blocking UCE/UBE.

One of the sections of the book I was drawn to was on how to set up Postfix as an internal and external mail server for the Small Office environment. This could be for branch offices of a large company (such as insurance offices) or for a Small Office / Home Office (SOHO) that does not have a full time Internet connection. Blum explains how to set up the server for dial-up to send and retrieve mail, and how to run the mail server on the same box as your firewall.

The chapter 'Migrating from Sendmail to Postfix' is a short step-by-step on how and what to convert from Sendmail to Postfix. Since Postfix was designed to do this easily the chapter is shorter than might be expected (only 20 pages).

Rounding out Part II is a chapter on the Maildir mailbox format and a chapter on using an external MDA. The chapter on using an external MDA is a good example of why I like this book. Here is the full Table of Contents for the chapter:

1. Using MDA Programs with Postfix

1. What is a Mail Delivery Agent

1. Automatic Mail Filtering

1. Automatic Mail Replying

1. Automatic Program Initialization by Mail

1. Using an External MDA Program with Postfix

1. Configuring the main.cf file

1. Watching MDA Programs in the Postfix Log

1. The procmail MDA Program

1. Installing procmail

1. The procmail Command Line

1. User-Defined procmail Actions

1. Summary

In this chapter Blum gives a nice quick How-To on procmail. While it is not a full treatment of procmail it has enough information to download, compile, install, configure and run procmail. Coupled with the brief lessons on Unix, gcc, make and bash in the first section, an MS Exchange administrator on their first attempt in the Unix world is provided enough information to get procmail working as the MDA for their new Postfix MTA.

Section III covers advanced server topics including using MySQL, OpenLDAP and Majordomo with Postfix. Like the section on procmail, Blum covers installing and configuring each of these applications and how to make Postfix work with them. Chapter 20 covers POP3 and IMAP, which then leads nicely into the next chapter on SqWebMail. The final chapters are on performance tuning and troubleshooting.

Overall I have found this to be a well-written book that addressed several questions that I had about configuring and using Postfix (such as the SOHO section). It is clear, direct and covers each topic to a level that I found comfortable. For some people this book will be too advanced but that should not be anyone who has a working knowledge of mail servers or of Unix. I would recommend this book for someone who has started to use or wants to migrate to using Postfix.

My major complaint about this book is the price, $49.99. As much as I liked this book, 'Practical UNIX and Internet Security' was more densely packed with information and only cost $39.95.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Introduction to E-Mail Services and Postfix

1. E-Mail Services
2. Postfix Services
3. Server Requirements for Postfix
4. DNS and Postfix
5. SMTP and Postfix

Installing and Configuring Postfix

1. Installing Postfix
2. The master.cf Configuration File
3. The main.cf Configuration File
4. Postfix Lookup Tables
5. Using Postfix
6. Using Postfix as an ISP Mail Server
7. Using Postfix as an Office Mail Server
8. Postfix Server Administration
9. Migrating from Sendmail to Postfix
10. Using the Maildir Mailbox Format
11. Using MDA Programs with Postfix

Advanced Postfix Server Topics

1. Using MySQL with Postfix
2. Using OpenLDAP with Postfix
3. Using Majordomo with Postfix
4. Using POP3 and IMAP with Postfix
5. Using SqWebMail with Postfix
6. Performance Tuning Postfix
7. Common Postfix Problems

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Chip Salzenberg writes "Microsoft's attacks on the GNU General Public License (GPL) prompted me to analyze its technical merits, using insights from the book 'Nonzero' by Richard Wright. Since I'm a fan of Open Source for its pragmatic benefits, my own conclusions surprised the heck out of me." This is an interesting article promoting the GPL, the quintessential Free Software license, coming from a member of the Open Source Initiative.

The GPL: A Technology Of Trust

Society is built on exchange. One particular form of exchange that we're genetically wired for is reciprocal altruism: speculative generosity with expectation of future payoff.

Open Source is a textbook example of reciprocal altruism. But this leaves the Open Source community vulnerable to parasitism. (This term comes from game theory; I'm not trying to insult anyone.) In a small group, trust comes from repeated interactions, and personal experience is adequate to recognize parasites and avoid them. But in a large group, interactions between any two people are often indirect and/or infrequent. Something more than experience is needed to engender trust between people who don't know each other, and who may never even meet.

Therefore, any large group must evolve a technology of trust. If it doesn't do so, it will fall victim to rampant parasitism, which will cause inefficiency, which will eventually bring stagnation and failure to compete -- that is, death.

The GPL is a technology of trust. Contributors to GPL'd projects trust that the GPL -- which depends on law, itself a technology of trust -- will prevent parasitism. They trust that if they contribute to a project, they will have access to the valuable goods built on their own work. So, while GPL'd projects can have forks, they can't have proprietary forks. And that makes all the difference.

This analysis may seem simple or even obvious. But its implications are far-reaching.

1. The GPL will eventually dominate Open Source (if it doesn't already). Both analysis and observation point to the GPL, or something like it, as the destiny of Open Source. More than any other current license, the GPL discourages parasitism; thus it enhances efficiency; thus it helps a culture outcompete rivals whose technologies of trust are less advanced. By making its host culture successful, the GPL -- or some future license built on it -- will finally win out.

2. We must preserve the GPL, for the sake of the community. When Microsoft attacks the GPL, it would be tempting for those of us who don't identify with ``Free Software'' to use as our primary reply that ``Open Source is more than the GPL.'' That would be a mistake. The GPL's peculiar strengths are crucial in the Open Source community's competition with other cultures who would love to see Open Source, let alone Free Software, gone and forgotten.

3. The GPL is good for business. Companies that use the GPL are neither foolish nor stupid. They simply want to trust that other companies won't be able to take unfair advantage of them, and the GPL gives them that immediate security while simultaneously allowing open cooperation. And in the general case, the GPL is a friend of business because it makes new and better efficiencies possible, and economies thrive on new and better efficiencies.

(On the other hand, we can agree with Microsoft that the GPL is bad for their current business. We can then proceed to use Microsoft's favorite word as we reply: Innovation won't stop just because you're not ready for it. The printing press was a good thing, after all, even though it forced professional scribes to change their business model. Adapt or die.)

In summary: We in the Open Source community need to stand with the FSF and defend the GPL against all comers -- not merely as a tactical move, but because the GPL is a valuable technology of trust. To outcompete other cultures, we must adopt technologies that work. And the GPL works.

-- Chip Salzenberg <chip@pobox.com>, member of the board of the Open Source Initiative

Thought the GPL was a nice license for your software project, one that fit with your thoughts about software freedom? Perhaps the BSD license was more to your taste? Well, even if you confine yourself to the ones approved by the Open Source Initiative, you can now choose from a grand total of 23 different licenses. Two new licenses have been blessed by the OSI: IBM's Common Public License Version 0.5, and the Apple Public Source License 1.2. Both may fit the OSI's definition of Open Source, but Free? Neither one uses that word. Richard Stallman isn't kidding when he says Open Source is not synonymous with Free Software. Clearly, there is nothing to stop every software company in the world from writing its own Open Source license. So here we are with at least 23, and rising.

I first ran into Daniel B. Ravicher on the Open Source Initiative's license-discuss email list. He's a rarity: a young lawyer actively interested in and sympathetic to Open Source licensing. In fact, he wrote a detailed article on this topic for the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology last year while he was still in law school. Dan is now an associate at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP, a firm that handles, among other things, business law and intellectual property matters. Who better to ask about Open Source under the law? (The usual attorney disclaimer applies, of course -- that Dan can only answer general law questions, and if you want specific legal advice you must directly engage an attorney yourself.) One question per post, please. Tomorrow we'll forward 10 of the highest moderated ones to Dan by email, and put up his answers as soon as we get them back.

As usual, updates and tangents from previous stories in tonight's Slashback. Read on for more on toys from Pittsburgh, the newest iteration of the Magician-named distro, open source directory entries, and everyone's favorite trademark dispute. So hit the button.

For better, for worse, for what it's worth. Thanks to the people who pointed out reviews of Mandrake 8.0 after I complained about a dearth of these when posting a couple of other reviews

Chris "soup" Campbell, for instance, points to his 8.0 review at Binary Freedom, and the_rev_matt writes: "Timothy was bemoaning the lack of Mandrake 8.0 reviews, so here is one." There's also a pctalk.org review discussed at the excellent Mandrakeforum site, as well as quite a few harsher comments when the release was announced. (I wish other distros would put comments in a forum like this, too.)

You know, 'bouncy bouncy'! Illah Nourbakhsh of CMU's CS lab (the same folks who brought your the Palm Pilot robot kit) writes: "... So here is the newest thing we've done. We make one-legged hopping robots that use an unusual spring system. We wondered what would happen if we scale the hopping robot up so it's much larger than 6 inches-- big enough to carry a human being. Then we can throw away the computer and the human can do the control. The result, the BowGo, enables ordinary humans to jump very, very high into the air and over obstacles. It is a far more powerful Pogo stick. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bowgo - there are both pictures and videos available from there. This is from the Toy Robots Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University."

Please give these people your venture capital, because I want to ride one of these! Mountain pogo-ing looks fun.

How can a jump rope be "open"? An unnamed reader contributes: "I've kept my eye on the guys over at the open source directory since I saw them take a good tongue lashing on /. a few weeks ago. They aren't doing too bad getting some listings, but the ones they have gotten seem to be making some waves. By my math, it looks like they've somehow gotten *two* new open source licenses passed through the boys at OSI (open source initiative) since they started three weeks ago."

Well, my tongue is out of lashing practice, but queries for "nano," "bluefish," "gimp" and "python" all return zero matches, so it doesn't seem like the first place I would go "to find Open-Source applications that are stable." The site still looks like a good idea, but is it eclipsed by existing resources? Maybe if enough people go visit it and add entries ...

A high-security remote terminal app by any other name nodvin writes: "In a Slashdot story on Mar. 22, 2001, it was stated Secure Shell Will Remain 'SSH'. However, the draft documents
now start with the title "draft-ietf-secsh-" rather than "draft-ietf-ssh". The charter is now found at: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/secsh-charter.ht ml and the mail archive is now at:
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf-mail-archive/secsh/ "

Say it ain't so.

The Open Source Initiative has modified their official definition of an open source software license. The change itself is minor, but they're also calling for more input on other possible improvements to the definition - see below for more.

Russ Nelson writes: "We changed the Open Source Definition today. Some people had the idea that "may not" in Section 1 meant that they had a choice. We changed it to "shall not". Other changes may be in the offing. The OSD says nothing about use licenses or patents, for example.

"A use license is largely unenforcable by itself. How can you tell what people are doing with software if anyone is allowed to redistribute it to anyone they want? Some parties have tried to enforce a use license by requiring the non-removal of certain parts of the code. This is, in itself, already prohibited by the OSD, however it's best not to rely on indirection to keep use licenses off Open Source software.

"Patents are a problem that have been anticipated by some licensors. In part the furor over the APSL 1.0 was produced because they reserved the right to revoke the license if it turned out that they were licensing software patented by someone else. A number of new licenses have specifically included terms that require contributors to license any applicable patents. And yet the OSD does not require this. What is the good of an OSI Certified piece of Open Source unless you can use it? And you certainly shouldn't allow someone to sue any contributor over patent infringement and still have a license to use the software.

"Are there other lapses in the Open Source Definition? Send them to me and I'll summarize for the board. Speaking of the board, Brian Behlendorf (Apache/Collab) and Ian Murdock (he put the ian in Debian/Progeny) have resigned, and Guido van Rossum (creator of Python) and Michael Tiemann (co-founder of Cygnus) have taken their place."

The Open Source Initiative has modified their official definition of an open source software license. The change itself is minor, but they're also calling for more input on other possible improvements to the definition - see below for more.

Russ Nelson writes: "We changed the Open Source Definition today. Some people had the idea that "may not" in Section 1 meant that they had a choice. We changed it to "shall not". Other changes may be in the offing. The OSD says nothing about use licenses or patents, for example.

"A use license is largely unenforcable by itself. How can you tell what people are doing with software if anyone is allowed to redistribute it to anyone they want? Some parties have tried to enforce a use license by requiring the non-removal of certain parts of the code. This is, in itself, already prohibited by the OSD, however it's best not to rely on indirection to keep use licenses off Open Source software.

"Patents are a problem that have been anticipated by some licensors. In part the furor over the APSL 1.0 was produced because they reserved the right to revoke the license if it turned out that they were licensing software patented by someone else. A number of new licenses have specifically included terms that require contributors to license any applicable patents. And yet the OSD does not require this. What is the good of an OSI Certified piece of Open Source unless you can use it? And you certainly shouldn't allow someone to sue any contributor over patent infringement and still have a license to use the software.

"Are there other lapses in the Open Source Definition? Send them to me and I'll summarize for the board. Speaking of the board, Brian Behlendorf (Apache/Collab) and Ian Murdock (he put the ian in Debian/Progeny) have resigned, and Guido van Rossum (creator of Python) and Michael Tiemann (co-founder of Cygnus) have taken their place."

The Open Source Initiative has modified their official definition of an open source software license. The change itself is minor, but they're also calling for more input on other possible improvements to the definition - see below for more.

Russ Nelson writes: "We changed the Open Source Definition today. Some people had the idea that "may not" in Section 1 meant that they had a choice. We changed it to "shall not". Other changes may be in the offing. The OSD says nothing about use licenses or patents, for example.

"A use license is largely unenforcable by itself. How can you tell what people are doing with software if anyone is allowed to redistribute it to anyone they want? Some parties have tried to enforce a use license by requiring the non-removal of certain parts of the code. This is, in itself, already prohibited by the OSD, however it's best not to rely on indirection to keep use licenses off Open Source software.

"Patents are a problem that have been anticipated by some licensors. In part the furor over the APSL 1.0 was produced because they reserved the right to revoke the license if it turned out that they were licensing software patented by someone else. A number of new licenses have specifically included terms that require contributors to license any applicable patents. And yet the OSD does not require this. What is the good of an OSI Certified piece of Open Source unless you can use it? And you certainly shouldn't allow someone to sue any contributor over patent infringement and still have a license to use the software.

"Are there other lapses in the Open Source Definition? Send them to me and I'll summarize for the board. Speaking of the board, Brian Behlendorf (Apache/Collab) and Ian Murdock (he put the ian in Debian/Progeny) have resigned, and Guido van Rossum (creator of Python) and Michael Tiemann (co-founder of Cygnus) have taken their place."

The Open Source Initiative has modified their official definition of an open source software license. The change itself is minor, but they're also calling for more input on other possible improvements to the definition - see below for more.

Russ Nelson writes: "We changed the Open Source Definition today. Some people had the idea that "may not" in Section 1 meant that they had a choice. We changed it to "shall not". Other changes may be in the offing. The OSD says nothing about use licenses or patents, for example.

"A use license is largely unenforcable by itself. How can you tell what people are doing with software if anyone is allowed to redistribute it to anyone they want? Some parties have tried to enforce a use license by requiring the non-removal of certain parts of the code. This is, in itself, already prohibited by the OSD, however it's best not to rely on indirection to keep use licenses off Open Source software.

"Patents are a problem that have been anticipated by some licensors. In part the furor over the APSL 1.0 was produced because they reserved the right to revoke the license if it turned out that they were licensing software patented by someone else. A number of new licenses have specifically included terms that require contributors to license any applicable patents. And yet the OSD does not require this. What is the good of an OSI Certified piece of Open Source unless you can use it? And you certainly shouldn't allow someone to sue any contributor over patent infringement and still have a license to use the software.

"Are there other lapses in the Open Source Definition? Send them to me and I'll summarize for the board. Speaking of the board, Brian Behlendorf (Apache/Collab) and Ian Murdock (he put the ian in Debian/Progeny) have resigned, and Guido van Rossum (creator of Python) and Michael Tiemann (co-founder of Cygnus) have taken their place."

The Open Source Initiative has modified their official definition of an open source software license. The change itself is minor, but they're also calling for more input on other possible improvements to the definition - see below for more.

Russ Nelson writes: "We changed the Open Source Definition today. Some people had the idea that "may not" in Section 1 meant that they had a choice. We changed it to "shall not". Other changes may be in the offing. The OSD says nothing about use licenses or patents, for example.

"A use license is largely unenforcable by itself. How can you tell what people are doing with software if anyone is allowed to redistribute it to anyone they want? Some parties have tried to enforce a use license by requiring the non-removal of certain parts of the code. This is, in itself, already prohibited by the OSD, however it's best not to rely on indirection to keep use licenses off Open Source software.

"Patents are a problem that have been anticipated by some licensors. In part the furor over the APSL 1.0 was produced because they reserved the right to revoke the license if it turned out that they were licensing software patented by someone else. A number of new licenses have specifically included terms that require contributors to license any applicable patents. And yet the OSD does not require this. What is the good of an OSI Certified piece of Open Source unless you can use it? And you certainly shouldn't allow someone to sue any contributor over patent infringement and still have a license to use the software.

"Are there other lapses in the Open Source Definition? Send them to me and I'll summarize for the board. Speaking of the board, Brian Behlendorf (Apache/Collab) and Ian Murdock (he put the ian in Debian/Progeny) have resigned, and Guido van Rossum (creator of Python) and Michael Tiemann (co-founder of Cygnus) have taken their place."

kossico asks: "For any Mac users that have needed to run Windows(tm) applications, Virtual PC has probably helped them a lot. Does anyone know of any free/opensource projects that attempt this on Mac a la Wine? If not, who wants to start one?"

Erik from IBM wrote to us to confirm that IBM will be a "open sourcing" AFS. What's actually going is that they are forking the code, as not all of the code can be opened for "technical or licensing reason". So, there will be IBM AFS, which they will support, and Open AFS which will be the open code. The license is going to the be the IBM Public License which is an OSI approved license. Overall good news for a very scalable, secure file system.

Adam Brate, Slashdot reader, sent us a review of Cyberselfish: Technolibertarianism, a book which takes a look at the "cyber" culture, and what it means. It sounds interesting, although perhaps a bit off-base - comment below if you've read it. Cyberselfish author Pulina Borsook pages 256 publisher PublicAffairs, 05/2000 rating 8/10 reviewer Adam Brate ISBN 1891620789 summary A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech I heard about Cyberselfish when driving around Vermont Memorial Day weekend from used bookstore to used bookstore. The NPR station was broadcasting an interview with Cyberselfish author Paulina Borsook, a writer who worked for Wired during its glory years. I was put off by the book's wretched title, but engrossed by the subject: the powerful undercurrent of libertarianism that flows through high-tech circles. I have been astounded but not amazed at the deeply adolescent and peevish libertarian attitudes that so many techies cling to, from gun worship to fear of governmental Internet regulation. Listening to Borsook speak intelligently and cogently about technolibertarianism made me want her book very much.

This month I garnered a copy of Cyberselfish, and I'm still appalled with the title (which comes from an eponymous essay for Mother Jones she wrote in July 1996, when such cyberlanguage wasn't so cybertrite). Cyberselfish is a book-length essay, in fact a somewhat thinly edited series of linked essays. There's a rush of immediacy and wit; for a random example, "Polyamory is the preferred term of art; it's gender-neutral, where polygamy and polyandry are not, and allows for all persuasions of partner choice (gay/straight/bi/it depends)." With the freshness and informality comes flaws. There is too much repeated material in the book. It's clear that essays written at different times have been cobbled together. Reading the book straight through is like reading some multi-volume series straight through, in which the characters and history are rehashed at the beginning of each book.

Cyberselfish looks at a few specific examples of technolibertarianism in depth: Bionomics, cypherpunks, Wired magazine, and Silicon Valley's impressive lack of philanthropy. Each time Borsook exposes the compassionless, fearful, posturing, politically myopic core, without dismissing the good aspects of the high-tech culture and individuals. For example, she thinks fighting for privacy rights is good, but obsessing about it and descending into rabid, paranoid ranting on alt.cypherpunks is scary. She moves smoothly from the historical to the academic to the personal, deliberately exposing her own frailities and biases while she examines those of others.

To give a deeper example of the content of Cyberselfish, Bionomics is the use of biological (and particularly Darwinian) metaphors to describe economic processes, as popularized by Michael Rothschild (Bionomics: Economy as Ecosystem) and then the The Bionomics Institute (TBI). Borsook convincingly points out through both empirical observation and reasoned analysis that Bionomics boils down to economic libertarianism, where government involvement is wrong and the most cut-throat, efficient and entrepeneurial businesses are the best. Ecological metaphors are used in Bionomics only when they're useful and sexy: The ecosystem of Hawaii was used as a metaphor for the fragility of protected industries. Under Bionomics logic, Hawaii's beautiful, lush, peaceful ecosystem is to be derided. Bionomics uses metaphors to draw syllogistic conclusions. Doing that can be powerfully convincing but amounts to hand-waving and emotional appeals. Borsook cuts through the smoke and mirrors.

After a few years, the Bionomics Institute conferences were (literally) taken over by the Cato Institute, the premier libertarian think tank in the nation. The annual Bionomics conterences began in 1993. The 1997 conference was the Cato/Bionomics Conference; 1998, the "Annual Cato Institute/Forbes ASAP Conference on Technology and Society." TBI morphed into software-startup Maxager, which intends to offer Bionomical tools to companies. Borsook wonders what meaning can be ascribed to the success or the failure of the company. If Maxager fails, is it because it wasn't Bionomically good enough, or just because of the many uncontrollable factors that cause the vast majority of startups to fail? If it succeeds, does it validate Bionomics, or just the good connections the founder has with Silicon Valley venture capitalists?

The other chapters are just as interesting. Cyberselfish sharply describes all the archetypes of the technolibertarians, from the neo-hippie polyandric Burning Man attendee to the Lexus-driving, 100-hour-a-week, plugged-in entrepeneur with a sprawling bungalow in Santa Clara county.

One of the most crystalline passages in the book describes Eric Raymond's leaking of the Halloween Document, written by Microsoft program manager Vinod Valloppillil. The two clearly have vast ideological differences, the open-source cowboy and the Evil Empire functionary, but they're both hard-core libertarians, an entirely unreported fact. In Borsook's words, "It was rather like discovering that both a liberal and a conservative senator had both acquired their law degrees from Yale: no news here."

As I said before, the book is somewhat haphazardly put together, and nearly every sentence is to some degree contentious; even someone who agrees with her basic position will find reason to quibble. Cyberselfish doesn't come near to answering all the questions it raises. Borsook doesn't really tackle the paradox that "libertarians celebrate the cult of the individual" but Open Source celebrates the collective. What does it mean to be an Open Source libertarian?

I personally think it's somewhat unfair to attack those flaws, as they're inexorably part of Cyberselfish's loose, immediate, opinionated, and conversational style. It's kind of like how Slashdot's open forums allow for a review like this and the inevitable "hot grits" responses.

Purchase this book at fatbrain.

This member, from the voiciferous Clan Anonymous Coward asks: "I work for a fairly large company, and I'm trying to convice the senior management to open source a piece of internally developed software that we rely upon, but that we don't directly profit from. This software enables our business model, but the software itself doesn't offer any particular competitive advantage. (Actually, to be a little more accurate, we would like to develop a system that replaces a commercial off-the-shelf solution that we're less than happy with, and open source that, so if you have anecdotal evidence or other ammunition for that particular argument, I'd be glad to hear it)." And this is something that I think more businesses should look into doing. If you use a piece of software that your business doesn't depend on, commercially, why not free it? (Read more...)

"What I'm really looking for is advice on how to make the project successful as an open source intiative. Specific issues include, but aren't limited to:

• Where/how should we host the project? Something internal? Something like SourceForge?
• What management structures/tools are helpful? At minimum we'll need a source-code repository and a mailinglist/newsgroup, right? Anything else considered critical?
• What are some effective control stuctures? Who should determine what makes it into an official release? By what procedure? Who should be able to add code to the tree? What kinds of resources do we need to commit to this project to make it effective?

In short, what advice do you have on the mechanics and management of open source projects?

I'm familiar with the standard technical and business arguments for open source software (including:

• various ESR documents from opensource.org
• Tim O'Reilly's "Open Source Revolution" article from Release 1.0 www.edventure.com/release1/1198.html
• Frank Hecker's "Setting Up Shop: The Business of Open-Source Software" from www.hecker.org/writings/setting-up-shop.html

and others), and feel I can articulate them pretty clearly, but that's not really what my question is about."

Porthop points out this "interesting developer.com story regarding the security of open source software, in regards to theories that many eyes looking at the source will alleviate security problems." It ain't necessarily so, emphasis on necessarily. Last week it was discovered that, in some (uncommon) cases, a really stupid brainfart bug makes PGP5 key generation not very random. The bug lived for a year in open-source code before being found. If you generated a key pair non-interactively with PGP5 on a unix machine, don't panic and read carefully; you may want to invalidate your key. Update, next day: several people have pointed out that although PGP5's code is available (crypto requires code review), it can't be used for any product without permission. Incentive for code review is therefore less than for other projects of its importance, and I really shouldn't have called PGP "open-source." Mea culpa.

Kaufmann writes "More news from Brazil... this time it seems to be good news, though; this page describes a law project, already on Congress, which, if approved, will obligate all sectors of the Brazilian Government - agencies, public corporations, et cetera - to use only free (as in speech) software (unless there is none that provides the required functionality). This is rather surprising news, considering the incredible power wielded by Big Software Companies in Brazil (their puppet, the Brazilian Association of Software Corporations, is conducting a massive anti-"piracy" witch hunt, with some success). Email the author of the bill, congressman Walter Pinheiro, and show him your support! (Most links are in Portuguese; you might want to use your favourite text translation tool.) "

ESR sent out the following message to a big old list of folks to clarify the situation regarding the recent announcement that the term 'Open Source' has not officially been registered. Hit the link below to read the whole deal.

The following is an announcement from Eric S. Raymond

On June 15 1999 ZDNet broke the news that OSI's application for an "Open Source" trademark had lapsed, anticipating the public statement OSI had planned to make following its board meeting on 17 June. Subsequently, many people have expressed concern that the phrase "Open Source" might be trademarked by some party hostile to the open-source community.

That's not likely, for the very reason the application was permitted to lapse. We have discovered that there is virtually no chance that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would register the mark "open source"; the mark is too descriptive. Ironically, we were partly a victim of our own success in bringing the `open source' concept into the mainstream.

So "Open Source" is not and cannot become a trademark. The purposes for which OSI sought a trademark, however, are still valid. We believe the open-source community gains much from the existence of a recognizable brand name -- one which certifies to users that software is being distributed under the licensing model best shown to produce high quality software. We believe that software vendors will seek to use an appropriate certification mark to signify that quality.

For this reason, the Open Source Initiative is announcing a new certification mark, `OSI Certified'. When the Open Source Initiative has approved the license under which a software product is issued, the software's provider is permitted by us to use the OSI Certified certification mark for that open source software. The details will be spelled out on OSI's Web site shortly,

In all such decisions, OSI will seek (as it always has) to advance the interests of the community we serve, and to promote the winning combination of open standards, open source code and independent peer review.

Because the phrase "open source" cannot be trademarked, we must rely on market pressure to protect the concept from abuse. When you see software that claims to be "open source," look for the OSI Certified mark as your assurance of compliance with acceptable licensing standards.

If you don't see the OSI Certified mark, please read the vendor's license for yourself to check that it is in conformance with the Open Source Definition. Please encourage software providers to obtain OSI's certification and to use the OSI Certified mark, and do not purchase software if it claims to be `open source' but does not meet the terms of the Open Source Definition. (Issued by and for OSI, 16 Jun 1999. A copy of this announcement is available on the OSI website at opensource.org.)

-- Eric S. Raymond

Russ Nelson writes "The Open Source Initiative voted April 5 to approve the following motion: ``To improve the process of evaluating proposed licenses as OSD-compliant, we will establish an open mailing list where such proposed licenses may be discussed. The names of the companies associated with such licenses may be anonymized.'' That mailing list has been created and is license-discuss. " Interesting - looks like us legal nerds need to be subscribed to yet another list now...Glad to see OSI opening up a bit.

Bruce Perens has announced his resignation from OSI. This was submitted several times by several people. I've attached below the submission from ESR (representing OSI) and the announcement from Bruce himself. Click below to read what they each have to say. This is gonna get hairy. This is from an email Bruce sent to a lot of people It's Time to Talk about Free Software Again

I'm Bruce Perens. You may know me as the primary author of the Debian Free Software Guidelines and the Open Source Definition. I wrote the Electric Fence malloc() debugger, and some pieces of Debian. And you may remember me for having brought the TIGER map database to free software. If you want copies of that, you can get them through Dale Scheetz .

About a year ago, I sent out a message announcing "Open Source". Eric Raymond and I founded the Open Source Initiative as a way of introducing the non-hacker world to Free Software. Well, thanks to Eric, the world noticed. And now it's time for the second stage: Now that the world is watching, it's time for us to start teaching them about Free Software. Notice, I said Free Software, _not_ Open Source.

Most hackers know that Free Software and Open Source are just two words for the same thing. Unfortunately, though, Open Source has de-emphasized the importance of the freedoms involved in Free Software. It's time for us to fix that. We must make it clear to the world that those freedoms are still important, and that software such as Linux would not be around without them.

One of the unfortunate things about Open Source is that it overshadowed the Free Software Foundation's efforts. This was never fair - although some disapprove of Richard Stallman's rhetoric and disagree with his belief that _all_ software should be free, the Open Source Definition is entirely compatible with the Free Software Foundation's goals, and a schism between the two groups should never have been allowed to develop. I objected to that schism, but was not able to get the two parties together. Another unfortunate fact is the certification mark dispute which has gone on between Software in the Public Interest and the Open Source Initiative for a whole year. That was entirely my fault.

Sadly, as I've tended toward promotion of Free Software rather than Open Source, Eric Raymond seems to be losing his free software focus. The Open Source certification mark has already been abused in ways I find unconscionable and that I will not abide. I fear that the Open Source Initiative is drifting away from the Free Sofware values with which we originally created it. It's ironic, but I've found myself again siding with Software in the Public Interest and the Free Software Foundation, much as I did in 1995. I feel that the Open Source Definition, which was copied from the Debian Free Software Guidelines, should still be our touchstone, and I'll be working to promote software that fits that definition, but independently from the Open Source Initiative.

Thanks

Bruce Perens

This is the story submission from ESR

ESR writes "Today, following a recent dustup on the discussion list for the upcoming Open Source Summit in which he described Tim O'Reilly as ``one of the leading parisites (sic) of the free software community'', Bruce Perens resigned from the board of the Open Source Initiative.

Though no formal motion has yet been passed, it seems likely that OSI will shortly replace Bruce and add two more directors in an effort to broaden its base of representation in the open-source community. A shortlist of nominees had already been assembled for the two additional seats.

"

Kragen Sitaker has written a brutal reply to the story Sengan posted yesterday on the The Open Source Acid Test. It goes down and point by point shows the factual errors and fud in the story. It pleases me greatly to post this feature. Check it out. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Kragen Sitaker

I read Ted Lewis's article, _The Open Source Acid Test_, on your web pages.

I was appalled that an organ of a prestigious international society like the IEEE would publish such error-riddled, poorly-researched, deliberately deceptive nonsense. It's as if the _New England Journal of Medicine_ had published a case study of a zombie animated by voodoo!

The author did not cite sources for any of his dubious statistics, and they are therefore hard to disprove. Given the remarkable lack of factual accuracy in the article, I doubt that they have any basis in fact.

To begin with the most obvious errors:

1. Linus Torvalds's name is not Linus Torvold.
2. Applix, Tower Technology, and NewMonics do not sell open-source software.
3. There is no such company as "Walnut Creek Stackware". www.cdrom.com belongs to Walnut Creek CDROM. There is no such company as "Tower Tech JVM". www.twr.com belongs to Tower Technology, which sells a (non-open-source) JVM. There is no such web site as www.debian.com.
4. www.python.org is operated by the Python Software Association, not CNRI, although it is currently hosted on CNRI's network.
5. Several of the "commercial enterprises" listed in Table 1 are not commercial enterprises at all. www.hungry.com, www.python.org, and www.debian.org are all operated by nonprofit organizations. The Corporation for National Research Initiatives, which was incorrectly listed as operating www.python.org, is actually a not-for-profit research organization.
6. It is absurd to say that Unix was the foundation for Hewlett-Packard and IBM, as Lewis does in his introductory paragraph. Both companies had been established for more than thirty years when the first line of Unix was written.
7. On page 126, Lewis claims that the open-source community admits that its organizational structure is weak. The evidence he adduces is a quote from a document published on www.opensource.org. What he doesn't tell you is that the document is *a leaked internal Microsoft memo*. Unless Lewis missed the 115 references to Microsoft in this document and also failed to read the introductory paragraphs, the only reasonable conclusion is that he is being deliberately deceptive.
8. On page 125, Lewis claims that "Currently, Linux's installed base numbers 7.5 million". As usual, he cites no source. However, the most widely-cited source for such figures is Robert Young's paper, Sizing the Linux Market eight different data sources to obtain an estimate of between five and ten million Linux users. However, this paper has a date of March 1998. If Linux's growth had continued to double yearly in 1998, as it did from roughly 1993 to 1998, the number of Linux users would be between ten and twenty million.
9. On page 128, Lewis says, "Windows NT market share smothers all Unix dialects combined". According to International Data Corporation's Server Operating Environment report, Unix and Linux together had 34.6% of the server market in 1998, while Windows NT had 36%. See more information. The actual number of server Linux shipments IDC tallied in 1998 was only three-quarters of a million; that suggests that if you include people installing multiple servers from the same CD and installing from Internet downloads, you would find that Linux's server market share is much greater than Windows NT's.
10. Lewis remarks, "With few exceptions, open source software has never crossed the chasm into the mainstream without first becoming a commercial product sold by a commercial enterprise." Does he think that Linux is not a commercial product sold by commercial enterprises? If not, there are literally dozens of "exceptions" to this statement -- Perl, Apache, sendmail, BIND, Linux, Tcl/Tk, Berkeley DB, Samba, the X Window system, FORTH, GNU Emacs, and trn, for example. Many of these became popular before they were commercially sold at all.
11. Lewis misstates the business case for Linux and "its open source software cousins". According to Eric Raymond -- whom Lewis quotes extensively elsewhere in this article -- a much more compelling business case is founded on the better quality of the software, choice of suppliers, choice of support and maintenance, freedom from legal exposure and license tracking. More details are available at opensource.org/for-buyers.html.

These minor factual errors, so far, merely indicate that the author knows very little about the topic he writes about and is deliberately trying to mislead his readers; they do not directly undermine his conclusions. However, as I shall show, each of his supporting arguments consist of incorrect facts and lead to faulty conclusions.

One of the author's major contentions is that as Open Source software adds more features and becomes more comparable to proprietary software, it will lose many of its advantages. He cites as examples Linux's supposed lack of video card support, wireless LAN support, and "a good selection of productivity software."; he claims that Unix contains 10 million lines of code, while Linux contains only 1.5 million. On page 126, he says, "Maintenance and support grow more complex, and costs increase due to a scarcity of talented programmers. Success leads to features, and feature creep leads to bloated software."

With regard to video card support, it is true that the Linux kernel does not have video card support in it. That facility is provided by video drivers in other software; nearly all graphical software available for Linux uses X11 for access to those video drivers. Open-source X11 drivers for most video cards are available from www.xfree86.org; the list of supported cards there currently lists 555 different kinds of video cards, many of which include numerous individual models.

For those few cards for which XFree86 support is not available, proprietary X11 drivers are available from Xi Graphics and Metro-Link.

With XFree86, Linux's video card support is better than either Windows 98 or Windows NT, and considerably more extensive than any Unix that does not use XFree86.

To claim that Linux lacks video card support is merely laughable.

With regard to wireless LAN support, it is true that many of the recent wireless LAN products do not currently have support in Linux. However, Linux has had support for packet-radio wireless networking and several kinds of LANs for years, and has supported several wireless LAN products since at least late 1997, including most of the most popular ones:

Lucent Wavelan
DEC RoamAbout DS
Lucent Wavelan IEEE
Netwave Airsurfer
Xircom Netwave
Proxim RangeLan2
Proxim Symphony
DEC RoamAbout FH
Aironet ARLAN
Raytheon Raylink
BreezeCom BreezeNet

This information is readily available on the Web in the Linux Wireless LAN Howto.

With regard to productivity software, there are several office suites available for Linux, and there have been for several years. ApplixWare and StarOffice are the two most common.

With regard to the size of Linux: first, among the utilities tested in the failure-rate study (the latest report on which is entitled "Fuzz Revisited: A Re-examination of the Reliability of Unix Utilities and Services". the quote used on page 125 appears to be from the original paper, which I cannot find on the Web) are the standard set of Unix utilities, awk, grep, wc, and so forth. These utilities have a standard set of functionality common across all Unix systems, except that the GNU utilities tend to have a great deal of extra functionality included. If the GNU utilities really are only one-sixth the size of the corresponding utilities on a Unix system, yet provide much more functionality, and still have one-third to one-sixth of the failure rate, that is not an indictment of the defect rate of free software, but rather a vindication of it -- which is why this study is linked to from the Free Software Foundation's Web pages. The study is unfairly biased in favor of less-featureful proprietary software, and that software still came out way behind.

(From my own experience, I know that frequently, the best workaround for a bug in a Unix utility is to install the GNU version.)

Lewis's claim that this represents "a single-point estimate of defect rate" is incorrect. The paper includes detailed results of the tests on 82 different utilities, along with aggregate statistics by operating system. 63 of these utilities were available either from GNU or from Linux, and were tested in this study.

With regard to the lines-of-code figure: it is not easy to measure the number of lines of code that constitute "Linux", because it is not easy to define what constitutes "Linux" -- or, for that matter, "Unix" either.

If we mean just the kernel, this site has some figures for the sizes of several OS kernels in 1994. SunOS 5.2's kernel is listed as containing 680,000 lines of code, while SunOS 5.0's kernel is listed as containing 560,000 lines of code. If the rate of increase per version remained constant (doubtful, because 5.0 and 5.1 weren't really finished products) then the latest SunOS (the one that's the kernel of just-released Solaris 7) would contain 1,280,000 lines of code.

By comparison, the source code of the 2.2.1 Linux kernel totals 1,676,155 lines of code, including comments and blank lines, counting only .c, .h, and .S (assembly) files.

The Linux project's source code has already reached a level where we would "expect Linux defect densities to get worse". They haven't.

On page 125, Lewis cites Apache as an example of support diminishing when "the hype wears off", saying "it is currently supported by fewer than 20 core members" -- implying that the "cast of thousands" is a thing of the past. The truth is that the core Apache team has never been larger than 20 people, and they *still* receive contributions from many people outside the group. He also says that "Apache is losing the performance battle against Microsoft's IIS." But Apache has never been intended to be the fastest HTTP server around -- it's already more than fast enough to saturate a T1 when running on a puny machine, so its developers have been concentrating on things like adding more features and making it more reliable.

On page 128, Lewis says, "The concept of free software is a frequently practiced strategy of the weak". While free-as-in-price giveaways are common -- Microsoft's Internet Explorer strategy is a perfect example -- they are not related to open-source software, and their patterns of success and failure have little relevance for us here.

jra wrote int to send us a link to another ESR composition, this one humorously titled 'Halloween 4'. It's actually a funny little extrapolation on the recent comments from MS's Ed Muth referring to the Open Source Community as Robin Hood and the Band of Merry Men. It's New Years, It's Funny. Enjoy it.

The OSI has sent us a report on the Open Source discussions they had with IBM. What's cool is that the opening-up of the Jikes Parser has been discussed, which would make Jikes more open, and provide a tool with better error correction capabilities than Yacc/Bison. The report is below, so people know what the fuss is about. update Dave Shields updated us on events at his end. There's a nice hacker anecdote at the end. " IBM staff and I discussed the Jikes license in a conference call on December 10. I brought up all of the problem areas that I found and that people on the net communicated to me, even those that would not effect whether or not Jikes complies with the Open Source(TM) Definition.

They said that some of the license problems are not their intent and expressed a willingness to clear them up. They say they are working on making the parser generator Open Source. Their concerns are not giving away IBM's entire patent portfolio to large companies who incorporate a single line of Jikes in their software, and not fragmenting the Java language. They are going to get more community feedback for several weeks through a Jikes-license mailing list, and they will need some time to discuss what they are doing and to prepare licenses.

Their attorney warned that licenses get longer when you try to make them "friendly" by avoiding legal jargon, but he accepted that the programmers who would contribute to Jikes should not have to consult a lawyer for interpretation before they mail in a patch.

The list of topics I brought up is attached to the end of this announcement. If you want to bring up other topics or discuss these, IBM is creating a Jikes-license discussion forum.

Bruce Perens

By order of the Open Source Initiative Board

Things I brought up:

0. Title: Need a (TM) after "Open Source".

1. Definitions:

Definition of licensed code is over-restrictive in that it limits the license to Java 1.1 compilers.

2. Grant of Rights:

* Paragraph one, the copyright license, appears to restrict the distribution of modified works to the point that those rights are granted _only_ by paragraph two, the patent license. This is because the words at the end of the paragraph, "the Program as distributed by IBM", belong after "prepare derivative works of" and not where they are in the paragraph. This increases the effect of the 60% language in paragraph two to effect the copyright license as well as the patent license.

* Paragraph two last sentence is unparseable and appears to negate the rest of the paragraph.

* Paragraph three last sentence is unparseable and appears to negate the rest of the paragraph.

* Paragraph four gives right to terminate due to any intellectual-property suit at all, even one not related to Jikes or the patents used in Jikes.

5. Termination:

Too broad. Potential for termination due to any frivilous claim exists. There should be a possibility to terminate an individual contribution because of a valid claim without causing all contributions and IBM's initial grant to terminate. IBM should lose right to contributions if it terminates. Is there the possibility of a Contributor losing a significant investment that they have made in Jikes modification in case of termination?

Parser generator: Parser generator used to build Jikes is not Open Source. "

And Dave's report

Jikes News: 11 December 1998 Phone call with Bruce Perens re Jikes License, Jikes Parser Generator

I was a participant in a conference call with Bruce Perens yesterday, along with an IBM manager and attorney. In the words of diplomacy, "It was a frank and open exchange". We discussed Bruce's concerns about the Jikes License and also the question first raised by the Debian group about releasing the source for the Jikes Parser Generator.

At the end of the call, Bruce said he would prepare a report on the call and submit it to slashdot. He graciously offered to send us a preliminary copy for our review. We declined, as we trusted his judgment. We also said we would not write our own report, lest confusion result from two reports trying to relay the same news.

Jikes Mailing Lists

I apologize for the delay in setting up the Jikes mailing lists, and I appreciate the support of slashdot and LinuxToday in posting my notes on their sites, so I could honor my pledge to have all discussions in "full public view".

I ordered a new 6 gig disk for the server machine (100 Mhz Pentium, 32MB memory) a few weeks ago. I had two 1 gig disks. A colleague suggested I should wait for new disk to arrive, as what I had might not suffice to manage the mail lists. The disk arrived yesterday morning. I had a lot of meetings that day, but did find the time to install the disk and did a fresh install of RedHat 5.2.

I've asked for some help in setting up the system. Though I've used Unix for almost two decades, I've hardly ever had the opportunity to log in as root. Indeed, I'm still such a newbie in this area that when I log in as root I still feel a rush -- it's like sitting in a Ferrari and putting the pedal to the metal. Away we go!

Unfortunately, I have proven very adept at doing a great deal of ecological damage to a pristine Linux landscape in a short time. My specialty is reducing /etc/aliases to rubble -- think of the oft-shown TV footage of an old building being demolished by a few pounds of dynamite.

I've asked for help doing things right, and hope it will arrive soon. If not, I'll steam on and promise to be more careful. I will make a best effort to be able to accept subscriptions early next week.

The Jikes Coupon

I drive my daughter Jennifer to school every morning. Ever since the start of the school year, she's been the object of a constant flood of news and concerns about releasing the Jikes source code. She has always been a rapt listener; indeed, I boasted to a friend recently that my daughter was "THE world export in open source licensing issues in the 14-and-under age category".

We both share the same birthday -- December 8. My favorite present was a set of six Jikes Coupons. Here is the text of a Jikes Coupon:

Jikes Coupon Value: 10 Minutes

This coupon entitles David Shields to 10 free minutes of Jennifer's undivided attention to talk about Jikes or whatever he sees fit. During this time, Jennifer may not think or say in any way, "Oh, gosh, here he goes again." Even phrases such as, "We're playing with the big boys" will be tolerated with a pleasant nod and smile.

I realized that I had mistaken a pleasant node and smile for keen interest and concern. However, I have learned a valuable lesson and it forms the basis of my new policy when asked about open source licensing issues.

While I had a role in drafting the Jikes License, now that it is out it has become the responsibility of the IBM attorneys, and only they have the authority to effect changes to it. My making statements about it, especially misdirected efforts to interpret it, can only lead to confusion. So from now on, when asked to speak about these matters my response will be silent and simple -- a pleasant nod and a smile.

I have great confidence in our attorneys. I know they want to do the right thing. I have found them to be quite pleasant, and have even seen them smile from time to time.

Congratulations to Rob Malda

I know that all fellow members of the slashdot community join me in congratulating Rob Malda on completing the work for his undergraduate degree. Sengan informs me Rob is getting a B.S. in Computer Science, and also a B.A. (or perhaps minor) in the Arts. I regret that I do not know the name of his college. I know he is eager to resume hacking.

Newest Member of the Jikes Team: Vadim Zaliva

We posted the source for Jikes at 1PM EST on Monday, December 7th. I received an e-mail the same day 9:13 PM from Vadim Zaliva (lord@crocodile.org) that included a patch file. He also posted the patch in the "Discussion Area" for Jikes Source at the alphaworks site.

Philippe is on vacation, and I didn't get a chance to speak to him after we published the source until late Wednesday afternoon. He asked me if I had seen the patch at alphaworks. I said I had gotten an e-mail but hadn't had time to look at. He said he was "flabbergasted". Though the patch contains only a few lines, it shows a good understanding of much of the compiler structure. I view this as our first success story, and I am sure there are more to come; I view it as a joint tribute to Philippe's design and Vadim's demonstrated skills.

At the end of the call, we had the following exchange:

Philippe: Dave, this guy is good. Think he could come work with us?

Dave: Philippe, he already is working with us -- and for free!

I asked Philippe to report in full on the technical knowledge displayed, but he has some personal business, and I have gone ahead here, as I did not want to delay recognizing Vadim's work. We are pleased to welcome him aboard as the first contributor to join our project since we released the source (there are other contributors I wish to name for work done before we released the source, and I'll try to provide details on our web site early next week).

It's hard to express a "pleasant nod and a smile" over the internet. It's also hard to express a hand shake. My daughter Jen designed a great masthead for the Jikes web site using a masthead design tool built by Chet Murthy and others (Chet is the guy who used to do the libc5 builds -- I told him he had done his last build late last week). Unfortunately, IBM requires a uniform look-and-feel on its web pages, and I am not able to use her work, though I will put up a copy elsewhere on the Jikes web site soon, and am enclosing a copy of it along with this note, and hope that slashdot and LinuxToday can find a way to display it as a sign of welcome -- both to Vadim and to all the future contributors that I expect to meet soon via the Jikes mail lists.

dave

shields@watson.ibm.com http://www.ibm.com/research/jikes

Jikes has been released as Open Source today, under the following pretty unrestrictive licence, which has been endorsed by Bruce Perens of Open Source. This is a big step since Jikes is a leading Java compiler and is really fast. It also signals the first Open Source license that IBM has crafted, this being their original code. I hope this will be the beginning of a successful relationship between IBM and the Open Source community. Read below the slashdot exclusive nerd announcement from Dave Shields, one of the Jikes co-authors and the open-source contact for Jikes. Jikes is Now Open Source

On behalf of IBM Research, Philippe Charles and Dave Shields are pleased to announce that the IBM Research Jikes Compiler is now an Open Source Project. You can download the source now.

We will continue to work on the compiler, emphasizing -- as we always have -- strict adherence to the Java Language Specification, and will also continue to seek Sun's guidance on the proper interpretation of the specification where we find the intent to be unclear.

All discussion will be carried out in full public view using mailing lists. You can subscribe here.

We look forward to collaborating with the Java and Open Source communities to make Jikes an even better compiler, and will welcome voluntary contributions early in 1999 -- after we've all had a chance to get acquainted via the mailing list before hacking away, and after the two of us take some vacation time.

We wish to thank the many Slashdot readers who gave of their time to respond to our query "Should IBM Release the Source Code for Jikes?" (see the Comment Summary) , and also thank Sengan Baring-Gould (slashdot), Nelson Minar (MIT) and Bruce Perens (opensource.org) -- they helped make this happen.

End of announcement

Ok here are the pitfalls you may encounter in getting Jikes up and running, so beware: the zipped distribution contains text in DOS-format, so gnu make chokes on it. Make sure you unzip with the -a option. The tar.gz version has the files in *NIX format. Also, some distributions, such as Red Hat 4.2 do not have wchar.h which is needed. I got it to compile by making sure the Red Hat (libc5) entry was the last above OBJECTS in the Makefile and executing touch /usr/include/wchar.h as root. Also you'll need the JDK from blackdown.org to compile anything with jikes.

True story: Dave Shields ate out at a Chinese restaurant Saturday. His fortune: "Very soon, and in pleasant company"! That's us ;-)

Jikes has been released as Open Source today, under the following pretty unrestrictive licence, which has been endorsed by Bruce Perens of Open Source. This is a big step since Jikes is a leading Java compiler and is really fast. It also signals the first Open Source license that IBM has crafted, this being their original code. I hope this will be the beginning of a successful relationship between IBM and the Open Source community. Read below the slashdot exclusive nerd announcement from Dave Shields, one of the Jikes co-authors and the open-source contact for Jikes. Jikes is Now Open Source

On behalf of IBM Research, Philippe Charles and Dave Shields are pleased to announce that the IBM Research Jikes Compiler is now an Open Source Project. You can download the source now.

We will continue to work on the compiler, emphasizing -- as we always have -- strict adherence to the Java Language Specification, and will also continue to seek Sun's guidance on the proper interpretation of the specification where we find the intent to be unclear.

All discussion will be carried out in full public view using mailing lists. You can subscribe here.

We look forward to collaborating with the Java and Open Source communities to make Jikes an even better compiler, and will welcome voluntary contributions early in 1999 -- after we've all had a chance to get acquainted via the mailing list before hacking away, and after the two of us take some vacation time.

We wish to thank the many Slashdot readers who gave of their time to respond to our query "Should IBM Release the Source Code for Jikes?" (see the Comment Summary) , and also thank Sengan Baring-Gould (slashdot), Nelson Minar (MIT) and Bruce Perens (opensource.org) -- they helped make this happen.

End of announcement

Ok here are the pitfalls you may encounter in getting Jikes up and running, so beware: the zipped distribution contains text in DOS-format, so gnu make chokes on it. Make sure you unzip with the -a option. The tar.gz version has the files in *NIX format. Also, some distributions, such as Red Hat 4.2 do not have wchar.h which is needed. I got it to compile by making sure the Red Hat (libc5) entry was the last above OBJECTS in the Makefile and executing touch /usr/include/wchar.h as root. Also you'll need the JDK from blackdown.org to compile anything with jikes.

True story: Dave Shields ate out at a Chinese restaurant Saturday. His fortune: "Very soon, and in pleasant company"! That's us ;-)

ESR writes "Earlier today, Marc Andreesen of Netscape requested from OSI's president, Eric S. Raymond, a perspective on the future of Mozilla in connection with the AOL/Netscape/Sun negotiations.
You can read OSI's An Open Letter to AOL at the Open Source web site."

ESR writes "Earlier today, Marc Andreesen of Netscape requested from OSI's president, Eric S. Raymond, a perspective on the future of Mozilla in connection with the AOL/Netscape/Sun negotiations.
You can read OSI's An Open Letter to AOL at the Open Source web site."

ESR writes "The Open Source campaign now has a nonprofit association chartered specifically to promote and defend the Open Source trademark. The founding directors of this organization include Ian Murdock (Secretary), Russ Nelson, Bruce Perens (Treasurer), Eric S. Raymond (President), Tim Sailer, and Chip Salzenberg. We are seeking qualified directors to widen the composition of our governing board. Please read our at launch announcement."

ESR writes "The Open Source campaign now has a nonprofit association chartered specifically to promote and defend the Open Source trademark. The founding directors of this organization include Ian Murdock (Secretary), Russ Nelson, Bruce Perens (Treasurer), Eric S. Raymond (President), Tim Sailer, and Chip Salzenberg. We are seeking qualified directors to widen the composition of our governing board. Please read our at launch announcement."

talon wrote in to send us a link to ESRs Halloween FAQ, and ESR wrote in to send us a link to A pretty good article nicely summarizing what HI and HII mean. They're worth reading if you're still following this story.

Talon on SlashNET told me that ESR has posted Halloween III on his site. This apparently MSs response to HI and HII, and has been posted along with ESRs commentary on it. Definately worth checking out.

James Morris writes "Greg Stein has just announced the availability of a fledgling open source DAV Apache module. The timing of this is priceless, following the Microsoft Halloween Document, which stated, under the heading "Beating Linux" (read OSS): "Linux's homebase is currently commodity network and server infrastructure. By folding extended functionality (e.g. Storage+ in file systems, DAV/POD for networking) into today's commodity services, we raise the bar & change the rules of the game." And under "Blunting OSS attacks": "DAV is complex and the protocol spec provides an infinite level of implementation complexity for various applications (e.g. the design for Exchange over DAV is good but certainly not the single obvious design). Apache will be hard pressed to pick and choose the correct first areas of DAV to implement." "

terrorist wrote in to send us a link to ESRs followup to the recent Halloween Document. This one has been nicknamed Halloween II. Its a pretty excellent summary of Linux from a Microsoft perspective. I rewrote the comment code since Halloween I. I hope this version can handle the load, but I'm not sure... *grin*.

Mark Wielaard writes "Lat week the Linux Weekly News had an editorial on "How do we come to terms with Richard M. Stallman?". This week a lot of readers wrote letters to the editor about this matter. I for one think it is a good thing for our community to discuss the similarities and differences between Open Source and Free Software. "