Slashdot Mirror
Public Software Fund's First Project
Russ Nelson writes "The Public Software Fund's first project has been funded for two months worth of development. Tom Jennings (of Fidonet fame) will be writing software to do peer-to-peer file sharing of free software RPM packages, improving the existing free software packages up2date, /current/, and BitTorrent. This will keep new distro releases from being slashdotted."
The perfect chance for P2P to redeem itself from being label as illegal activity only. Unfortunately, it won't appeal to 90% of users, so it won't. The idea is still nice.
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
Story I submitted that got rejected follows. Yeah, it's off-topic. Bite me.
The New York Times tells us (after we register for free) that Gnutella developer Gene Kan has committed suicide. Let's see, he was young (25) and just over a year ago saw the company he started bought by Sun Microsystems. It would be wrong to jump to conclusions here. It would also be wrong to not start asking questions.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
If I'm not mistaken, N'Sync has a little-known song named "apache.tgz". Also, Brititany has done "kernel-2.4.19.tgz".
;)
Oh, well...it was a nice idea while it lasted.
The "slashdotted" link has an interesting link about another name for the /. effect... the "flash crowd"
Larry Niven's 1973 SF short story "Flash Crowd" predicted that one consequence of cheap teleportation would be huge crowds materializing almost instantly at the sites of interesting news stories. Twenty years later the term passed into common use on the Internet to describe exponential spikes in website or server usage when one passes a certain threshold of popular interest (what this does to the server may also be called slashdot effect).
If the RIAA/MPAA hears about this, we're doomed. Not only will they accuse people of "stealing" copyleft material. It's free, as in beer, you can't steal it. This is what P2P was meant for. Let's hope that this takes off.
There's no sig like SIGSEG
"Tom Jennings" .. is he related to "Peter Brokaw"?
HAW HAW HAW I MADE ME UP A FUNNY!
Before everyone starts screeming, "Why only development for Redhat!" you may note that John Gilmore (evidently a Redhat guy) donated the money for this project. I don't know why Redhat didn't just hire the guy.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
Why don't they fund the original authors and
contributors to provide the desired enhancements
instead of locking them out? Sure. Screw the
innovators and featherbed your pals. This is just
corrupt, and there's no way any of my companies will
be contributing to that fund. Cronyism pretending
to be public service. Pffft.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
GNU favors the consumer over the retailer.
Which you prefer depends on whose freedom which you consider is more important. Linux follows the GPL, thus it favors the consumer. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, "God must have loved the consumer because he made so many of them."
This be it.
He has done a lot more than FidoNet - take a look at some of the artwork he's done recently. ( I suggest taking a look at the Story Teller - very very cool...)
/. articles on nixie clocks from a few months back).
He also has lots of info on Nixie tubes and builds some cool looking clocks with them (to tie into the earlier
We are currently running a BitTorrent load test at:
http://66.139.73.165/
If you would like to help out an open source content distribution network we would greatly appreciate it!
n/t
OMG. It really is porn. I figured it'd be a huge advertizement for them or something. Thumbs (yes, thumbs) up to BitTorrent for actually putting some truth in advertizing.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
What does the packaging format have to do with p2p ?
The required metadata fields to uniquely identify a package (i.e. package name and version) are similar in all packaging schemes.
The only significant bit that would be distribution dependent would be dependeny handling.
From PubSoft's funding page:
"Our funding comes from the public. From people like you, who would like to see more and better freely available software.
We have received our first donation, of $35,000, from John Gilmore. Will you be next? He is funding Tom Jennings to work on peer-to-peer sharing of free software RPMs."
I don't know about the typical public software user, but I don't have $35K to spend. On the other hand, I don't need any software that I don't already have. The $35K donation does not come from a typical user and I would hardly call the project typical. Anyway, it will be fun to see if PubSoft's idea catches on.
Hahah. What a great idea.
"Hmmm, how can we can get at least 100 people to download a file at once?" "I know, lets offer them free porn!"
Seems to have worked, since I'm getting a whopping 1.5k/b a second....
now... if you just bounced onto that company online -- what goes on in your mind?
1) public fund open source software company
2) beer related software company
3) beer
my reaction was somewhere between 2 and 3 above, leaning strongly toward 3...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I do work for a company that donates significant (and published) portions of its sales (mostly Open Source compatible computer hardware) to Open Source projects and organizations of the user's choosings.
For more information, check Open Soars
Red Hat Pornography Manager
I think this program is a really great concept... I eagerly downloaded the client and started the download of the test file, when I was quickly reminded of what ruins every P2P program I've tried. As soon as people start downloading from me, my incoming connection grinds to a halt. It literally just took me 5 minutes to get back to this page in order to write my reply. Once all of my upstream bandwidth is used, my download speed drops to almost nothing, leaving me with virtually no connection the entire time I'm trying to download whatever it is I'm getting, which takes even longer because my connection is so slow. Isn't there any way to make P2P software play nice with the connection and only use the unused outgoing bandwidth?
Posting as AC because I'm too lazy to login...
That BitTorrent is not Free as in speech and is not even completely free as in beer.
My experience, (as of a few minutes ago.)
.torrent links, click "Advanced", navigate to, and select the executable. Click OK. Then choose "Open using", browse, select the executable again, OK, click the "Open using" radio button again, (some kind of bug makes the final "OK" deselected somewhere.) And click the final OK. Everything seems to be configured.
The installer simply says that "BitTorrent will now work under Internet Explorer", or words to that effect. No status screen, no readme, no "install to directory". Just a simple dialog box. Well, it turns out, BitTorrent is automatically installed to "%programdir%\BitTorrent" with the executable named "btdownloadprefetched.exe". So, click on one of the
Interesting algo. Lots of interesting side effects. Accurate download stats for who and how many times. Upstream connections only during a flash crowd, (or so it seems).
Using the standard client-server system for file transfers, only the server (ie those producing cheap software) and the client (ie those consuming cheap software) suffer from poor transfer speeds when a popular file is released. Using a peer-to-peer system, everyone suffers, (since the system is distributed amongst every peer) including those who could not care less about the hot new apache patch. I don't feel it is fair for the rest of us to suffer to support linuz dorks.
As soon as people start downloading from me, my incoming connection grinds to a halt.
This is a good point, especially with highly asymmetric systems like cable connections (asymmetry can be as high as 1:40 on these beauties). Some of the uplink capacity is needed for TCP protocol acknowledgement packets. If the uplink becomes congested, the downlink clogs down as well.
Isn't there any way to make P2P software play nice with the connection and only use the unused outgoing bandwidth?
It's possible but it requires support from the OS. A quality-of-service implementation like DiffServ can help solve the problem. Packets belonging the P2P traffic could be assigned to the lowest service class so that precendence is always given to other traffic.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
As far as I can tell, there's nothing Red Hat specific about the project. Linux clients not already using up2date can, as far as I see it, still install up2date and use Current servers to provide their packages rather than Red hat network.
Linux clients who can't install RPM packages (there aren't many) aren't compliant with the Linux Standard Base.
BitTorrent works absolutely perfectly.
Somebody has more money than sense. Just reward the BitTorrent author, if you want to splash money around.
It's nice and all to have a P2P RPM network, but the money would have been better spent improving RPM's.
.... P to be installed where RPM's D-P are obscure features that no-one ever uses.
RPM's need to be made far more granuler this would sort out all thoes evil dep problems which in my experiance are.
RPM X requires RPM's A B C D E
No if all RPM's were in nice sized chunks you would only have to install the chunk you wanted/required. This would keep the install base down, and force packagers/programmers to do things in a nice modula way.
Also... Why can't I use source RPM's that optionally compile themselfs after install...
Why don't RPM's seem to be signed!!!
RPM's should have "where can i get updates / security patches etc.. from" properties.
Now if they sotred that out then maybe you wouldn't need each distro to build there RPM's and each RPM to be so huge an bloaty (especially when you take deps into account!!)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I had my first kernel panic in a production server last week. The system ran fine for nearly a year, within a week of running up2date, and having it automatically building a new kernel, I got a kernel panic in the middle of the night.
So far no problems with packages, just build your kernel yourself!
BT
I agree, without signed packages and verification this could turn into quite a security breach.
Installing unknown binaries from a random source is BAD
I peaked at 620K BYTES per sec on my cable modem!
:)
:)
Nearly 5 megbits per sec! Yahoo!
This program ROCKS!
And thank you Cablevision!
After it completes downloading it leaves up the window with a "finnish" button and keeps uploading to other people. Just leave it up while you watch the movie and you improve other people's download speeds
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Erm... I don't know about you but when I'm running ed2k and tell it that it's max upload limit is 19kbyte/sec then it's upload limit is 19kbyte/sec and nothing more. Granted, it will somethimes peak over the given limit a little, so I just substract another kbyte/sec to get the 'reserved upload capacity' that I need for browsing et al...
Distributing software via p2p-network is.. umh.. dangerous. Without crc/md5-sum/hash/whatewer authentication user can not be sure what he/she has been downloaded. And installing that kind of binary, no way Jose. And even with hashs user must verify the binary. How many of us (and what about the rest of the world) have strenght enough to verify every binary? Well great way for distributing troijans and viruses.
Files are split up into pieces and published over a lot of hosts, and when you download something you query the nodes closest to you. Should they not have the file but notice that a particular block is in high demand they contact other nodes and get that block so that data that's in high demand is moved to where the demand is.
It looks quite interesting. There is a win32 package availible for download that's functional but not good, and it's quite simple to get it from the cvs and compile it for your favorite platform.
I think there is a new release in the near future.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
I had the same idea some time ago.
I had actuly started to look closely
on a open source napster like server,
so I could change it to exchange RPM's.
But then i swhiched to debian and
concluded that the was no need for
such a system.
Debian rocks.
Knud
Some of the more inquisitive than offensive posts have clearly been modded offtopic by someone who can't stomach the slightest questioning into someone's unusual death.
Why is that? I find that just as insulting as some of the comments desgined to be mean-spirited.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that up2date in its current form is hopelessly married to Red Hat's services, and not a generally applicable piece of software. If I am correct about this, I can hardly see it as a free software victory when development money is going to improve such a limited and vendor specific program. The most obvious effect of this development would be to take the demand off of RedHat's servers, and put it on those of its users. A shrewd technique, but not exactly a public service. BitTorrent development from this project might well be a great help to the community, however.
Thanks to funding from a technology company that prefers to remain anonymous, Benetech has started a market research and planning process to assess the needs of the nonprofit sector and the poor worldwide. They are expecting this to lead to a major project named Libre that will adapt existing Open Source applications and build new ones in an effort to create a viable low cost Linux solution for the people who need it most.
http://www.benetech.org/projects/libre.shtml
Note: I'm not very familiar with how RPM packaging works in the first place, as I have mainly used dpkg and various source package managers. (swpkg, depot, graft, etc.)
Six sick
This is how it is supposed to happen. Independent concerns helping fund Open Source projects they are interested in. Simple, plain, nothing more to say.
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
He founded Cygnus, which was the leading
free software developer until they were
bought by RedHat for $600 million. I doubt
Gilmore needs a job now.
They ought to use it as a chance to unify packages across all distributions while they're at it.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
The Public Software Fund would be happy to accept funding for any BSD project. Write a check!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
See wondershaper for a semi user friendly script and the Linux Advanced Routing & Shaping HOWTO for docs if you want to tweak it.
Another complementary project in progress is the Open Content Network
The OCN provides an important piece of the puzzle with its metadata proxy servers. These servers automatically generate the verification information (SHA-1 hashes) necessary to perform secure P2P downloads.
It would be nice if this project leveraged the significant amount of work going into the OCN to provide a standard way to securely delivery any open source content across peer-to-peer networks.
Check out the OCN specifications here.
If you create a "work of art", have it appraised by an expert, print it on paper, and donate it to a non-profit organization. That org can issue you a tax deduction.
Tax Deductions are worth n+n^2 face value where n is your income tax rate. Say you were at the 50% rate - the Tax Deduction you receive for your artistic contribution to AmigaOS would be 75% of the Appraised Value. I doubt many programmers get 75% of the selling price of their software - so it's really a generous deal.
See IRS Document 561 for official details on donating "Works of Art".
Its true the document doesn't break down "Works of Art" into Books, vs Photographs, vs Original Van Gough vs, Compiled works of highly mathmatical precision, but Art is a big tent, and Software is as like art as anything else.
IANAL/CPA But what an easy place to find the money you need to complete that OS! And We the People will both benefit and pay.
AIK
Rus,
Why Doesn't the Public Software Fund simply accept Donation of Software as "Art" from Programmers - who then receive a Tax Deduction for the appraised amount. This way the People would pay for what they get - OSI compliance Software.
What could be easier or more fair?
AIL
peer-to-peer is a lovely idea, but without authentication it quickly becomes a cesspool.
every up2date client has a certificate to authenticate the connection (to redhat) and a GPG public key to verify each package; you can reasonably assume the packages are what they claim to be.
gnutella (et al) vs. up2date: which do you trust to find (RedHat) kernel updates?
bittorrent minimizes the 'slashdot effect', and it's our intent to build it in.
combined, this hopefully makes distribution of RPMs pretty nice, and a good starting point for a more general file distribution system.
one step at a time, no pushing please.
tomj
PS: no thing solves all problems.
You can already do this. Assign your copyright to the Free Software Foundation. Take the assignation contract and use it as a receipt. The only trick is coming up with a valuation for the software that the IRS will believe. As long as it's a plausible valuation, the IRS won't assess penalties if you get audited. They'll just hit you with interest charges.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist