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SOUP is Good for You

Posted by michael on from the waiter,-there's-a-gnome-in-my-soup dept.

raelity writes "CNet is running a story about Ximian, nee Helix Code, planning to bring Web Services a la Microsoft's .NET to *nix operating systems by incorporating "SOUP" (a play on SOAP) into the Gnome user interface. "While tech kingpins such as Microsoft and Oracle have rushed to one-up each other in introducing Web-delivered software, Ximian is doing work behind the scenes to make sure Web services can run on the Linux and Unix operating systems.""

9 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Microsoft... by Isldeur · · Score: 3



    You know, you can mod me down for this little observation - though I don't think it's justified. But isn't it a little interesting that people always mock KDE because it is so Microsoftish and all the "cool geeks" use Gnome when, in all actuality, the lead Gnome man always seems to praise and follow Microsoft openly? Bonobo for instance, then SOUP?

    I'm not making a judgement on all of this, but it always seems so hypocritical to me.

    1. Re:Microsoft... by evand · · Score: 4

      It would be stupid not to take good ideas from your competitors and integrate them into your own system. Where would we be if every interface had to be reinvented? Sure, there would be a lot of innovation, but also a lot of terrible, terrible software.

      In my opinion, KDE looks more like Windows than GNOME does by default, but this depends of course on how your distribution or package maintainer set up the package.

      But would you really expect de Icaza to look at a cool system that Microsoft has worked on or developed and say, "Hey, that's really great and useful, so let's do something different!" Would he be a good developer if he did that? I don't think so.

      Bonobo makes sense and is useful, no matter what its inspiration. SOUP, I hope, is going to be the same way.

  2. Roadmap to the future? by roguerez · · Score: 3

    I'm having serious doubts whether leveraging this technology is the way to go. Considering that Microsoft hasn't a good track record for introducing useful and really open standards, the SOUP-crew might expect too much from .NET.

    Wouldn't it be wiser to continue to create new and enhance existing standards. This would garuantee that new concepts will be available to all platforms, without being dependant on a single vendor which has a track record that isn't too rosy-colored (especially in the open source world).

    Web technology as it exists (ranging from the simple interaction of web server & client, to databases which are integrated in webplatforms and internal information systems) has a lot to offer right now, and we can expect a lot in the future. I don't see why the direction should be altered towards a single-vendor 'solution'.

    The Internet concept is largely the product of inventiveness of academic minds who did not have profit motives. This proofed a wonderful thing. Let's us not part from that now.

    1. Re:Roadmap to the future? by tjansen · · Score: 3

      SOAP is not a single-vendor solution anymore. SOAP 1.0 was, but with the help of IBM and a few others version 1.1 became a very powerful and flexible (read: somewhat difficult to use, at least when you want to do more than just RPC) framework for platform-independent communication, and is now controlled by the W3C. In other words: I like it. You can read the specs here.

  3. Is really SOUP a play on SOAP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    There is something called SOUP, which is something like a SOAP for binary data: The Simple Object Update Protocol (SOUP) specifies an content-transfer model for digital "appliances" like cameras, printers, scanners, picture frames, personal digital assistants, cell phones, machine control systems, and so on. SOUP standardizes simple but important communications between content-rich devices. It uses Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) messages to push content from one device into another. The approach resembles the way web browsers pull content from web servers. SOUP works with only two device "actions": 1)HTTP GET to obtain the device or service object state as a SOAP serialization and 2)HTTP POST to set the device state as well control the transfer of content. SOUP supports simple transfer, transfer with job control, indirect transfer (URL based), and content negotiation. SOUP does not preclude additional actions on devices; it exists to make simple actions simple.

  4. SOAP==the end of free software by lukel · · Score: 5
    I'm going to say something that may appear controversial, but please hear me through.

    While tech kingpins such as Microsoft and Oracle have rushed to one-up each other in introducing Web-delivered software, Ximian is doing work behind the scenes to make sure Web services can run on the Linux and Unix operating systems.

    While web-delivered software seems like a good idea, I wonder what the consequences for free software are. Obliviously free software isn't going to go away - but I see it becoming a less viable alternative. There are several reasons for this.

    (1) If software is delivered via the web, you will require someone else's computing power at the other end of the line. Someone has to pay for this. As the recent experience of the dotcoms shows, business models based on giving stuff away free almost invariable don't work. Software provides will have to be paid for the service they provide. So an end to the free beer aspect of software.

    (2) If software is running on remote server's, then even if it is covered by an open source licence, in many cases, the people running the severs will not be distributing binaries, so won't be required to provided source code for any changes they make. Hence an end to the free speech aspect of free software.

    Sure, not everyone will use web delivered software, so open source software will continue to be used by niche users. However, once the mainstream embrace web delivered software (and this is likely since its being pushed by MS and Sun et al), open source software will be permanently confined to the backwaters. This will mean its benefits will only be enjoyed by a select few.

    1. Re:SOAP==the end of free software by Pengo · · Score: 5


      Nahh...

      Think of it like this. I will compare web content to driving a car or using public transportation.

      Public transportation on paper a better idea. Leverage of shared resources hence savings, better for environment, easier to manage, more reliable (arguably).

      Now, why do people choose to still purchase vehicles in conjested city areas?

      ... ownership.

      You can't feel ownership of a remotely managed and remotely owned application. Human nature tells us to achieve to OWN not RENT. (There are soooo many paralells in society that have 'washed' us to believe this.)

      I know this mentality pretty well as I co-own a fairly sucessful ASP business in England (.. but I am an american, btw) . I go to market and I face these same 'issues' every day.. even in dealing with something such as a business-to-business workflow integration system.

      I believe that this could be the big blow for MS that frankly they don't need right now. They seem to have forgotten the most important factor in the tech-market.. the fickle consumer.

      Who knows, maybe Apple will learn from their mystakes..... but believe me. Free software ain't goin anywhere.




      --------------------
      Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?

    2. Re:SOAP==the end of free software by NoNeeeed · · Score: 4
      The other analogy that can be made is with houses. Especially in britain, most people either own, or aspire to own their home. Just as with public transport, renting accomadation *should" be better, someone else looks after the property, if something is wrong, they fix it, and if you want to move, it is much easier. Despite the theoretically reduced hassel of renting rather than buying, the latter is still the idea that people aim for. There are several reasons for this...
      • As mentioned in the parent post people like ownership
      • The total cost of renting is always higher than buying, especially if you rent for a long time
      • People feel that renting is money down the drain, you don't actually get anything, it's why people buy movies that they may only watch a few times, despite renting being cheeper.
      • When you rent (be it a house or software) you have less control over it, while your landlord may pay to have the boiler fixed, chances are that they won't let you paint the ceiling black, or build an extension. when you own you have complete control.
      • People don't always trust (often for good reason) their landlord to do the right thing. Not all landlords are efficient and keep good care of their property. But when you own, any problems are in your power to fix.
      The cost of ownership may be lower for a company to rent software, where the reduction in tech personell can save a fortune, and savings can be made on "mass production" by a service company, those savings are not there for the average home user. They pay more for bandwidth than a large company, and don't have the cost of management etc to make savings on. Also people are unlikely to trust that the companies will always be there. if they buy hardware and software, they have something concrete that no one can take away (ignoring burglars :->), even if the company that made it goes bancrupt.

      Ultimatly I just don't see home users being that bothered about hireing software, business yes, but not individuals. Especially as the power of home computing systems is growing much faster than bandwidth and the kind of applications that will be used at home are likely to be much more processor and media intensive than those used by businesses.
      --
      Paul Leader
    3. Re:SOAP==the end of free software by zCyl · · Score: 3

      (1) If software is delivered via the web, you will require someone else?s computing power at the other end of the line. Someone has to pay for this. As the recent experience of the dotcoms shows, business models based on giving stuff away free almost invariable don?t work. Software provides will have to be paid for the service they provide. So an end to the free beer aspect of software.


      Actually, I see this as a great benefit to free software. The reason is that the remote application market provides a clear distinction between free software and commercial software. Any software which is distributed is easily pirated, simply because by "nature" such software has no intrinsic value or cost overhead to reproduce, other than what we artificially assign to it. Remote applications however are not so much SOFTWARE as SERVICES. And it is this service that people will be willing to pay for, because it DOES have intrinsic value and cannot be reproduced at no cost.

      So while with the exclusion of donations or advertisement funded services (such as, in simple form, we are seeing with freshmeat, google, download.com, etc), remote applications will provide a commercial market in the areas where corporate coordination is necessary, such as say an application that automatically gives you access to almost every academic paper in existence (a service, while the papers themselves have no "intrinsic" value since they can be copied), it still leaves the free software market wide open for all the applications you run on your pc.