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."

Comments

please no more

[mike13down]

cjb links.. my eyes are burning

Re:please no more

[mike13down]

slow night

Re:please no more

[Anonymous Coward]

I just farted.

Re:please no more

[Anonymous Coward]

Mister, you're eating a candle.

Finally...

[URoRRuRRR]

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.

lalala

[on by]

Lameness filter encountered.
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.

Re:lalala

[TrollBurger]

Important Stuff:

Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)

Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal.

Re:lalala

[on by]

What'sup withflat/threaded/nested comments?
These are justdifferentways ofdisplaying whatcanbe a ratherlong listof comments. Here'stherundown:

* Flatmode displaysallthecomments inonegigantic list, without showing anythingin the way ofrelationshipsbetweencomments.

FlatMode
* Threadedshowsahierarchyof responses,with replies aslinksto new pages.

ThreadedMode
* Nesteddisplays the samehierarchyof responses,butdisplays all ofthecomments.(Thiscanbe a bitch ofapage torender onweaker platforms and inlonger discussions.)

NestedMode

Updated by: Robo
LastModified:01/02/02
Willyoudelete mycomment?
No. Webelievethat discussions inSlashdot are likediscussionsin reallife-youcan'tchange whatyousay, you onlycanattemptto clarify bysaying more. Inotherwords, you can't deleteacommentthat you'veposted,youonly can postareplyto yourselfandattemptto clarify whatyou've said.

Inshort, you shouldthinktwicebefore you click that'Save' buttonbecauseonce you hit it, wearen't going toletyouUndo it.

Answeredby:CmdrTaco
LastModified:3/28/02
Why did mycommentgetdeleted?
The onlytime weever deletecomments isif the comment containsmalformedHTML thatis somehow causing Slashdotto failto display properly. Commentsarenotdeletedon the basis ofcontent. Atthis point,however, itshouldn'tbe a big worry.Thecommentengine isreasonably bulletproof,andit's prettytoughto postacommentthat breaksNetscape.

Ifyouposted a comment and you don't see itnow, itmayhave beenmoderateddown below yourthreshold(see below). Ifyousetyour threshold to-1,youshould beable toseeit again.

Answeredby:CmdrTaco
LastModified:6/12/00
Why did ittake solong for mycommentto appear?
Ifthesystem toldyouthat yourcommentgotsubmitted, it'll showup.Becauseof the way datagets cachedin our system, itcouldtake asmuch astenor fifteen minutes (although itdoesn'tusuallytake thatlong).

Answeredby:CmdrTaco
LastModified:6/12/00
What'sup with"First Post" comments?
"FirstPost"comments are one ofthoseoddlittle memetic hiccups thatcome out ofnowhereandrunamok.Basically, peoplewith altogetherfartoomuch spare timesitandreload Slashdot, hopingthat theywill get the "FirstPost"in a discussion. Thisis one ofthosethings thatthemoderation systemwasdesigned tocleanup,andforthemost part, itworks. "FirstPost"comments usually get moderated downas off-topic almostinstantly.

Answeredby:CmdrTaco
LastModified:6/12/00
Itseemslike the quality ofcommentpostsis declining.Areyoudoinganything about it?
Wehave a moderationsystem.

One oftheunfortunateside-effects oftheincreasing popularityof Slashdotis thatthenumber oftrolls,flame-warriors and all-aroundlamers increases aswell,andit onlytakesarelatively small numberof themto makealotof noise.Keepingthis noise toaminimumis one oftheprimarygoalsof the moderationsystem (whichis explained indetail elsewhere inthis FAQ).

Since thissystem isessentiallyan experimentin tryingto solve the problemsinherent inmass communication,onewouldexpect its success tobe variable, and indeed, thisis the case. Somedays itworksgreat, and somedays itdoesn't.

Answeredby:CmdrTaco
LastModified:6/12/00
Moderationseemsrestrictive. Isit reallynecessary?
Inshort, yes.

Asyoumighthave noticed,Slashdot getsalotof comments. Thousands a day.Tens ofthousandsamonth. Atanygiventime,thedatabase holds 50,000+ comments. A singlestorymighthave a thousandreplies- and let's berealistic: Not all ofthecomments are thatgreat. Infact,some are downrightterrible,butothers are truly gems.

The moderationsystem isdesigned tosort the gemsandthecrap fromthesteady streamof information thatflowsthroughthepipe.Andwherever possible, ittriesto makethereadersof the sitetake ontheresponsibility.

The goalis thateach readerwill beable toread Slashdotat a level thatthey findappropriate. The impatient can readnothingat all but the originalstories. Somewill onlywant toread the highest rated ofcomments,some willwant toeliminateanonymousposts, and otherswill wantto readeverylast dripof data, fromtheFirstPosts! tothespam.Thesystem we've created herewill makethat happen. Orat least,it surewill try...

Goals

Re:lalala

[TrollBurger]

Sweet sixteen is beautiful Bess, And her voice is changing -- from "No" to "Yes"

Yes, you see, young Bess has discovered masturbation and orgasm. And as a result, she wants some serious deep dicking so she can get bigger and better orgasms. This has resulted in her saying "Yes" to any guy with a dick who wants to fuck her. However, fortunately for her, Bess has not discovered Slashdot, or otherwise, if she did, her mantra of "yes yes yes!!" to any guy who wanted to pop her one would quickly change to "get the fuck away from me you flabby pallid white linux nerd, go recompile your kernel and jack off to pictures of Sarcasta's big goofy face.".

Thankyou, and yes, your post looks like fonts under X11. That is one of the main reasons why we won't be seeing *nix on any desktops that don't belong to uberdorks for a long time. (excluding OSX of course - but only apple graphics designer hippies use OSX).

Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[corebreech]

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.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[Anonymous Coward]

IT TASTE SLIIEKA BARNING

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really no surprise that such a person would choose to commit suicide. Many criminals are seriously troubled souls. Many of these turn to alcohol and become the bums you see on the street. Others turn to drugs and street crime. Others like Kan turn to pursuits like criminal hacking because being able to control the computer gives them a sense of God-hood and exhilaration.

People who have these criminal thoughts always seem to turn inward eventually. Some find spirituality, others find nothing. Kan found nothing and that's what we have today. Sometimes there is something to be said for early identification and mandatory treatment for those who exhibit criminal behavior. It would save us all a lot of heartbreak.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[buzzbomb]

It would be wrong to jump to conclusions here.

What if I have a mat specifically built for this purpose?

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember the movie Anti-Trust?

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[ceejayoz]

Asking questions? About what? Suicide is, unfortunately, not an unusual occurance. What, do you think RIAA had him assassinated? They may be one bastard of an organization, but killing people is pretty damned far-fetched.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been much speculation over on the Free Republic that the MPAA or the RIAA might have had him whacked. Or perhaps one of the Hollywood moguls had him whacked.

I seriously doubt the kid really killed himself. I believe it was murder.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you're right. Nobody has ever killed anybody over dollars before.

Especially not billions and billions of dollars.

Only crackheads kill for personal gain.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[edhall]

The mean-spirited and outright nasty comments that have gotten attached to every post mentioning Gene Kan's death remind me of why I cringe every time Slashdot announces that someone has died. Although it would be nice for Slashdot to provide a place for those of us touched by this tragedy to pay our respects, I'm actually relieved that they haven't. It would be painful to see all the trash that some of the miscreant AC's who hang out here would post.

Goodbye, Gene.

-Ed

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from the idiotic conspiracy theories, which posts do you find mean spirited and nasty?

This one?

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[TrollBurger]

this make me laugh. thank for makeing me the happy.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[josh crawley]

(whatever score) : Offtopic

LIKE HELL. The guy, Gene Kan, is one of the original people to create P2P for the masses. Simply calling him "offtopic" is meaning the _oh_so_great_editors_ are offtopic, and we are on.

Now, it's just a pride issue. And they have more -1:shut_up power. (Insert Slashdot censor head)

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[Anonymous Coward]

no

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[Anonymous Coward]

It boils down to guilt. According to his friends, Kan was obsessed with his own indirect role in the theft of millions of dollars of copyrighted material. Kan suffered unbearable pangs of guilt as a result of his criminal behavior. He saw no honorable way out other than suicide.

This is how the oriental mind works. Honor and "saving face" are very important in that culture. The only way for Kan to "save face" was to make things right again by taking his own life. It is an honorable tradition as old as China itself.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[Anonymous Coward]

Mean spirited??? You mean THIS...

mmmmmMMMMMMMMmmmmm

Glug glug glug.. Draino sure tastes MMMmmm MMMmmm GOOD

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[corebreech]

But surely you don't mean to say that this isn't news for nerds. That this isn't stuff that matters.

All stories have mean and nasty comments associated with them. Why do we not cringe at the sight of a new story. OK, maybe we do, but does that mean we shouldn't be posting new stories?

Peer-to-peer is seen by many to be a threat to their very way of life. Gene was working on JXTA (why is this site down?) which could easily have threatened to become an unstoppable peer-to-peer toolkit that would've let anyone easily write P2P software that would run atop of anything.

The powers that be may shut off access to this port or this service, but with JXTA, you could easily piggyback over whatever existing channels they leave open via some kind of tunnelling protocol thing. JXTA was about figuring out how to deal with the Network Address Translation and firewall issues that prevented P2P from being ubiquitous.

I can't imagine a technology more hated by the status quo than what Gene was working on.

We have every right to ask questions about his death. I'm sorry, but his privacy has to take a backseat here to what it might mean for our future should this turn out to be foul play.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[rob-fu]

While it may be straying offtopic even further, I thought it was interesting that Kan had a weblog entitled "This place sucks." Underneath the title, he added, "Earth sucks. Let me enumerate the ways." The last entry is dated at June 28th. It's eerie -- the posts, which Kan philosophized about various subjects -- religion, US-Israel relations, etc -- get shorter and shorter in length until the last one.

I guess we can only imagine what was going through his mind; it's a shame that he believed things in his life were so bad that the only solution was to end it himself.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was he cremated before news of his death released?

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[rob-fu]

For anyone who is interested, the link to Kan's weblog is here.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[rob-fu]

I've seen this theory tossed about on /. and a lot of other websites but I think this is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in awhile. Perhaps I'll be sacrificing karma by not posting AC but I think that the mere thought of Kan being murdered by the RIAA or the MPAA is incredibly outlandish.

Kan played a part in making P2P what it is today, but why would they have him killed? There were a lot of others who developed Gnutella. WHy not whack them too? It makes zero fucking sense.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[rob-fu]

Read this article.

Kan was severely depressed, i.e. Prozac, suicide hotlines, the whole thing.

From the article:

The signs of impending awfulness were there, Oliver said. Very recently, Gene had changed his resume, which was stored on the University of California at Berkeley's server, to read: "Summary: Sad example of a human being. Specializing in failure."

Sad. I think this pretty much dismisses the conspiracy theory...

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[Cryptnotic]

This is Funny(+1) if you've seen Office Space. On the other hand, it is definately Offtopic(-1). But it is definately NOT a Troll(-1).

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[lightware]

Offtopic, but makes for a highly intelligent read, nonetheless.

yay

[Dreamacyde]

great 3rd post..ill never get a 1st post.screw you jeff../

Wait til the RIAA hears about this!

[buzzbomb]

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.

;)

Re:Wait til the RIAA hears about this!

[ukryule]

Also, Brititany has done "kernel-2.4.19.tgz".
Yeah. But it's not a patch on her more experimental '-ac' work ...

Re:Wait til the RIAA hears about this!

[gazbo]

Yeah. But it's not a patch on her more experimental '-ac' work ...

Why doesn't she create an account?

flash crowd?

[ceejayoz]

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).

Re:flash crowd?

[Anenga]

Oh boy, I can't wait until the definition for the "Slashdotted" gets Slashdotted. What a conundrum that will be.

But you're violating their copyleft's

[muon1183]

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.

wait, isn't he a news anchorman?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Tom Jennings" .. is he related to "Peter Brokaw"?

HAW HAW HAW I MADE ME UP A FUNNY!

*BSD is dying by poopbot

[Anonymous Coward]

It is now official. Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying


- poopbot: news for turds, stuff that splatters

I don't believe these clowns.

[Anonymous Coward]

We serve the Open Source community by funding OSI Certified(tm) Open Source projects.

Yet, they are not supporting BSD, just more of the same Linux shit.

When did Open Soure == Linux and != BSD?

Re:I don't believe these clowns.

[Russ Nelson]

The Public Software Fund would be happy to accept funding for any BSD project. Write a check!
-russ

Re:I don't believe these clowns.

[AmericanInKiev]

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

Re:I don't believe these clowns.

[Russ Nelson]

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

Redhat

[Snoopy77]

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.

Re:Redhat

[magicslax]

I don't know why Redhat didn't just hire the guy.

My best guess is Public Relations: free Slashdotting and an even open-friendlier image. Red Hat wouldn't get to show off quite as much if they just put another employee behind their doors.

Re:Redhat

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat is to be praised for their many, many financial contributions to open source projects. No one, other than IBM, even comes close. IBM of course has funded billions of dollars worth of Linux development, particularly in porting enterprise software to Linux. Linux, as you may or may not know, is the wonderfully successful new operating system which has taken the world by storm.

Re:Redhat

[asobala]

Well, I suppose they could be sharing debs as well as RPMs. But if the whole point is to avoid instant slashdotting of new releases, there's not much point... it couldn't really be argued that debian collapses when a new release comes out, for the simple reason it's not there for a couple of months.

I love debian.

This sucks

[aminorex]

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.

Re:This sucks

[josh crawley]

Could you elaboriate? I'm fairly interested in this, but no links to what you mention.

Thanks.

Re:This sucks

[HeUnique]

Original authors??

Last time I checked - RPM stands for "Red hat Package Management" - so should John Gilmore (from Red Hat) pay Red Hat? ;)

Re:This sucks

[vidarh]

Have you even read their pages? The donor gets to decide who will do the work. This is just a way for private individuals to hire someone to do open source development work and be able to deduct it from their taxes.

If you want the original authors to make money, donate money and specify who you want to do the work.

Re:This sucks

[CorwinOfAmber]

Last time I checked - RPM stands for "Red hat Package Management"

Actually, RPM stands for RPM Package Manager. I forgot where I first saw this referenced, but here is a google cache of a mailing about the name.

Re:This sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Bram Cohen is the (broke) author of BitTorrent, but instead of hiring him to do this project, they hired somebody else.

Re:This sucks

[aminorex]

So it's a tax cheat? A way to avoid paying
payroll taxes to your employees by funnelling the
funds through a non-profit?

Re:This sucks

[vidarh]

No. You would not be able to use this for employees. You could use it for contractors though, but as they point out a business wouldn't save anything doing that as they are taxed on profit, and paying a contractor will reduce your profit, reducing your tax bill regardless.

The purpose is to let individuals enjoy the same kind of tax benefit. Employees are taxed on earnings, not on profit, so if you hire someone to work on open source for you directly it won't affect your tax bill. But if you donate the money to a non-profit that hires the person for you, you can reduce your tax bill.

Considering that this is all within the law, and that it is up to IRS whether or not to accept the validity of what they are doing for the purpose of tax excempt status, calling it a "tax cheat" is certainly not fitting.

This is exactly the same way you can indirectly hire a pastor through a church by donating money, and reduce your tax bill by doing so.

It's all explained on their pages, linked to from the article - why not read them?

BSD is anti-consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD favors the retailer over the consumer.

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."

Re:BSD is anti-consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

You're simplistic statements are incorrect.

Standard copyright favors the IP producer over consumers. i.e. The producer is incentivized to create because the government will protect them in the courts.

The GPL favors consumers over producers. i.e. The incentive to create is minimized because profit from selling software as a product is reduced to almost zero.

The BSD License favors neither over the other. i.e. Consumers can use software in the same way as provided in the GPL, and producers can build upon the software without jeopardizing their intellectual property.

Re:BSD is anti-consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU favors the consumer over the retailer.

BSD favors the retailer over the consumer.

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."

Re:BSD is anti-consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU favours irritating, arrogant, self-righteous, shithead hippies. I've met several GNU lusers, and they've all been irritating, arrogant, self-righteous, shithead hippies.

Re:BSD is anti-consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU favors the consumer over the retailer.

BSD favors the retailer over the consumer.

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."

Re:BSD is anti-consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU favors the consumer over the retailer.

BSD favors the retailer over the consumer.

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."

CNN has story on this as well (with pic)

[Anonymous Coward]

This be it.

Re:CNN has story on this as well (with pic)

[CProgrammer98]

So does Gnutella but they didn't mentioned he shot himself.

Very Very sad.

Suck my wideness

[Anonymous Coward]

.I.like.wide.pages.I.wish.all.pages.could.be.as.w .ide.as.this.dont.you.wide.pages.are.much.cooler.t .han.those.narrow.pages.you.are.used.to.reading.be .cause.you.dont.have.to.worry.about.the.lameness.f .ilter.telling.you.that.you.don't.have.enough.char .aters.per.line.that.really.sucks.when.that.happen .s.and.you.have.to.put.some.lame.lameness.filter.d .efeater.text.in.there.i.wonder.how.many.people.wi .ll.read.this.whole.comment.I.certainly.hope.it.do .esnt.annoy.too.many.people.This.is.just.the.begin .ning.because.PAGE.WIDENING.IS.BACKabcdefghijklmno .pI.like.wide.pages.I.wish.all.pages.could.be.as.w .ide.as.this.dont.you.wide.pages.are.much.cooler.t .han.those.narrow.pages.you.are.used.to.reading.be .cause.you.dont.have.to.worry.about.the.lameness.f .ilter.telling.you.that.you.don't.have.enough.char .aters.per.line.that.really.sucks.when.that.happen .s.and.you.have.to.put.some.lame.lameness.filter.d .efeater.text.in.there.i.wonder.how.many.people.wi .ll.read.this.whole.comment.I.certainly.hope.it.do .esnt.annoy.too.many.people.This.is.just.the.begin .ning.because.PAGE.WIDENING.IS.BACKabcdefghijklmno .pI.like.wide.pages.I.wish.all.pages.could.be.as.w .ide.as.this.dont.you.wide.pages.are.much.cooler.t .han.those.narrow.pages.you.are.used.to.reading.be .cause.you.dont.have.to.worry.about.the.lameness.f .ilter.telling.you.that.you.don't.have.enough.char .aters.per.line.that.really.sucks.when.that.happen .s.and.you.have.to.put.some.lame.lameness.filter.d .efeater.text.in.there.i.wonder.how.many.people.wi .ll.read.this.whole.comment.I.certainly.hope.it.do .esnt.annoy.too.many.people.This.is.just.the.begin .ning.because.PAGE.WIDENING.IS.BACKabcdefghijklmno .pI.like.wide.pages.I.wish.all.pages.could.be.as.w .ide.as.this.dont.you.wide.pages.are.much.cooler.t .han.those.narrow.pages.you.are.used.to.reading.be .cause.you.dont.have.to.worry.about.the.lameness.f .ilter.telling.you.that.you.don't.have.enough.char .aters.per.line.that.really.sucks.when.that.happen .s.and.you.have.to.put.some.lame.lameness.filter.d .efeater.text.in.there.i.wonder.how.many.people.wi .ll.read.this.whole.comment.I.certainly.hope.it.do .esnt.annoy.too.many.people.This.is.just.the.begin .ning.because.PAGE.WIDENING.IS.BACKabcdefghijklmno .pI.like.wide.pages.I.wish.all.pages.could.be.as.w .ide.as.this.dont.you.wide.pages.are.much.cooler.t .han.those.narrow.pages.you.are.used.to.reading.be .cause.you.dont.have.to.worry.about.the.lameness.f .ilter.telling.you.that.you.don't.have.enough.char .aters.per.line.that.really.sucks.when.that.happen .s.and.you.have.to.put.some.lame.lameness.filter.d .efeater.text.in.there.i.wonder.how.many.people.wi .ll.read.this.whole.comment.I.certainly.hope.it.do .esnt.annoy.too.many.people.This.is.just.the.begin .ning.because.PAGE.WIDENING.IS.BACKabcdefghijklmno .pI.like.wide.pages.I.wish.all.pages.could.be.as.w .ide.as.this.dont.you.wide.pages.are.much.cooler.t .han.those.narrow.pages.you.are.used.to.reading.be .cause.you.dont.have.to.worry.about.the.lameness.f .ilter.telling.you.that.you.don't.have.enough.char .aters.per.line.that.really.sucks.when.that.happen .s.and.you.have.to.put.some.lame.lameness.filter.d .efeater.text.in.there.i.wonder.how.many.people.wi .ll.read.this.whole.comment.I.certainly.hope.it.do .esnt.annoy.too.many.people.This.is.just.the.begin .ning.because.PAGE.WIDENING.IS.BACKabcdefghijklmno .pI.like.wide.pages.I.wish.all.pages.could.be.as.w .ide.as.this.dont.you.wide.pages.are.much.cooler.t .han.those.narrow.pages.you.are.used.to.reading.be .cause.you.dont.have.to.worry.about.the.lameness.f .ilter.telling.you.that.you.don't.have.enough.char .aters.per.line.that.really.sucks.when.that.happen .s.and.you.have.to.put.some.lame.lameness.filter.d .efeater.text.in.there.i.wonder.how.many.people.wi .ll.read.this.whole.comment.I.certainly.hope.it.do .esnt.annoy.too.many.people.This.is.just.the.begin .ning.because.PAGE.WIDENING.IS.BACKabcdefghijklmno .pI.like.wide.pages.I.wish.all.pages.could.be.as.w .ide.as.this.dont.you.wide.pages.are.much.cooler.t .han.those.narrow.pages.you.are.used.to.reading.be .cause.you.dont.have.to.worry.about.the.lameness.f .ilter.telling.you.that.you.don't.have.enough.char .aters.per.line.that.really.sucks.when.that.happen .s.and.you.have.to.put.some.lame.lameness.filter.d .efeater.text.in.there.i.wonder.how.many.people.wi .ll.read.this.whole.comment.I.certainly.hope.it.do .esnt.annoy.too.many.people.This.is.just.the.begin .ning.because.PAGE.WIDENING.IS.BACKabcdefghijklmno .pI.like.wide.pages.I.wish.all.pages.could.be.as.w .ide.as.this.dont.you.wide.pages.are.much.cooler.t .han.those.narrow.pages.you.are.used.to.reading.be .cause.you.dont.have.to.worry.about.the.lameness.f .ilter.telling.you.that.you.don't.have.enough.char .aters.per.line.that.really.sucks.when.that.happen .s.and.you.have.to.put.some.lame.lameness.filter.d .efeater.text.in.there.i.wonder.how.many.people.wi .ll.read.this.whole.comment.I.certainly.hope.it.do .esnt.annoy.too.many.people.This.is.just.the.begin .ning.because.PAGE.WIDENING.IS.BACK

Tom Jennings

[Pathwalker]

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...)

He also has lots of info on Nixie tubes and builds some cool looking clocks with them (to tie into the earlier /. articles on nixie clocks from a few months back).

Re:Tom Jennings

[Anonymous Coward]

From the link Turing, an extraordinary British homosexual mathematician

Why did they feel the need to mention the guy was homo?

Re:Tom Jennings

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. They already called him a British mathematician.

How rendundant can you get?

Re:Tom Jennings

[taniwha]

don't forget TLG - he helped break the back of the original closed internet run by the big boys by helping make it possible for people to resell packets which lead to the mom&pop isp and lots of little customers rather than a few big ones which had been the 'net biz model up untill then.
And of course one mustn't forget the WPS toilet-cam maybe one of the first web-trolls

hey cool! looks like linux!

[on by]

That looks like the crappy font rendering in X...

Re:hey cool! looks like linux!

[Fucky the troll]

Dear on by,

Please post some recent monotony reports.

Thanks,

Fucky

Re:hey cool! looks like linux!

[flaw1]

I'd like to see an archive of monotony reports. For, uh, statistical purposes.

Re:hey cool! looks like linux!

[on by]

Unfortunetly it has a bug in it at the moment. I intend to fix it this weekend and devise a new format as well...so look out for it soon!

Re:hey cool! looks like linux!

[Fucky the troll]

eeexcellent. :)

You can help!

[PureFiction]

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!

Re:You can help!

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the idea about the porn downloads. To tell the truth, I was going to file the page in the back of my brain until I saw that. :)

We are *so* gullible. :) It's kind of cruel to post free porn on Slashdot, especially when it is available via a system that provides fast downloads to everybody. So you can't say "Oh, well I bet it'll be Slashdotted."

Interesting marketing tactic, too! ++ for that. :)

Re:You can help!

[Anonymous Coward]

The 10 meg file came in at about 5 times the rate of the 100 meg file for me. I guess that means more people must be downloading the smaller one. So, as the demand goes up, the speed goes up instead of down. Congrats to the developers, this is very cool.

Re:You can help!

[vsavkin]

Cool stuff. I got 500-1000kbytes/sec download rate and 150-200kbytes/sec upload.

Pleh! Polka!!

[The Porn Count]

THE TROLL POLKA (ARSCHFICKEN MIT ZIEGEN)
By Serial Troller, 2002-06-25

Is das nicht ein early post? Ja! Das ist mein early post! Is das nicht ein Goatse ghost? Ja! Das ist mein Goatse ghost! Early post, Goatse ghost, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Slashdot sucks!
Is das post at minus one? Ja! Das ist at minus one! Is das trolling so much fun? Ja! Das trolling is so fun! Minus one, trolling fun, Early post, Goatse ghost, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Slashdot sucks!
Is das nicht ein big crapflood? Ja! Das ist mein big crapflood! Is it worthless Linux FUD? Ja! Das ist mein Linux FUD! Big crapflood, Linux FUD, Minus one, trolling fun, Early post, Goatse ghost, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Slashdot sucks!
Is das nicht der CowBoiKneel? Ja! Das ist der CowBoiKneel! Is dis nicht his manchode meal? Ja! Das ist his manchode meal! CowBoiKneel, manchode meal, Big crapflood, Linux FUD, Minus one, trolling fun, Early post, Goatse ghost, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Slashdot sucks!
Is das nicht ein WIPO Troll? Ja! Das ist der WIPO Troll! Is das nicht ein Goatse hole? Ja! Das ist der Goatse hole! WIPO Troll, Goatse hole, CowBoiKneel, manchode meal, Big crapflood, Linux FUD, Minus one, trolling fun, Early post, Goatse ghost, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Slashdot sucks!
Is das nicht Jon Katz' slave boys? Ja! Das ist Jon Katz' slave boys! Und are they not Taco's sex toys? Ja! They are Taco's sex toys! Katz' slave boys, Rob's sex toys, WIPO Troll, Goatse hole, CowBoiKneel, manchode meal, Big crapflood, Linux FUD, Minus one, trolling fun, Early post, Goatse ghost, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Slashdot sucks!
Is das nicht ein trolltalk thread? Ja! Das ist ein trolltalk thread! Is it nicht now FUCKING DEAD? Ja! Is really FUCKING DEAD! Trolltalk thread, FUCKING DEAD, Katz' slave boys, Rob's sex toys, WIPO Troll, Goatse hole, CowBoiKneel, manchode meal, Big crapflood, Linux FUD, Minus one, trolling fun, Early post, Goatse ghost, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Oh, du schone, Slashdot sucks!

____________________

Change Log:

• Subtle changes to most verses. It sounded really gay before.
• Removed all references to Taco's pud. May have been high at time. Will investigate further.
• Finally think I have goat sex written correctly in German. I think. Arschficken?

(C) 2002 Serial Troller. Permission to reproduce this document is granted provided that you send all the bukkake porn you can find to serialtroller@hotmail.com.

this sound have been posted on slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very important news, how they denied it I have no idea...

I wouldn't be surprised if he was killed by the movie industry... I am deffinately not going to any more movies now

MOD PARENT DOWN -1 PARANOID DELUSIONAL

[TrollBurger]

Someone's tinfoil hat needs some cleaning i think. What the antiparanoia medication hasnt kicked in yet has it corebreech?

I don't think the RIAA likes my comment

[roalt]

I love open-source...

sed 's/\.rpm/\.mp3/g' *.c

Re:I don't think the RIAA likes my comment

[HiThere]

Well, you left out *.h, *.py, etc. But I wonder how much additional work would be needed. You might be perfectly right.

GOATSE WARNING!

[YourMissionForToday]

mod it down, then mod me up, then do a funny dance to commemerate the 41st anniversary of hit sitcom "Perfect Strangers!"

Don't think the RIAA gives a fuck about your post

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Free Porn

[SeanTobin]

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.

Re:Free Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Sucks for you. :) 20 - 50 KB/s here.

Re:Free Porn

[berck]

Not really sure how it works, but the rates seem to be fluctuating a LOT. Since I posted that the d/l rates have fluctuated from 0.5kb/s to 20kb/s, with an average around 6kb/s, I would guess. Upload rates have been anywhere from 2kb/s to 23kb/s on an aDSL line.

Re:Free Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

120 Kbytes per-second download
0.8 Kbytes per-second upload..

Could be great for some "dpkg" clone where multiple RPMS can exists together to satisfy dependencies. Think "KDE 3.1 Alpha 1" package spread...

why just rpm's

[bug1]

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.

Re:why just rpm's

[aveng0]

I would think that if you dont want to get some modified trojan package, that there would be some authentication or 1 way hash matching... it would have to be integrated into the package itself... i would think

Re:why just rpm's

[bug1]

No, each package (of any type) has a md5sum which is authenticated against the md5sum provided by a gpg signed list of package-md5sums's

On funding

[bentriloquist]

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.

Re:On funding

[3seas]

Who said it had to be large sums of money?

All Pubsoft is offering is to handle some issues and concernes that come
up in regards to dealing with donations to sponsor OSI compliant work. Like
how do you know the developer does the work they are paid for...etc..

The follow is such a situation where the "how" to make this happen hasn't
been figured out (should the developer be offered the 550 Euro).

But here is the solution with PubSoft!!

BTW: this is NOT me though I have offered some. AROS is an Open Source Amiga Clone
project that is almost at the 80% done mark. But it's intended to be better than
AmigaOS, and portable. See AROS @ Sourceforge

I have two months of free time this summer, which I would love to spend
on coding for AROS or AWeb Open Source. The problem is that I have to pay
my bills, and therefore I would need to get some temporary job. This of
course means there would be very little time to code on those projects... :-/

The solution to this would be if someone (or some group of people) were
willing to sponsor me for coding on AROS or AWeb one month or two. I don't
ask for much money, just enough to pay my bills and to buy food. For that
I would code 60 hours / week, that is more than fulltime. In total, this
would mean around 240 hours of work going into AROS or AWeb in a month,
to improve any part you (the sponsor) wants me to.

You can find more information at:
AROS or AWeb Sponsoring

Re:On funding

[Russ Nelson]

If you donate $10 to this project, all of it goes to paying Tom to work that much longer on it. Even $10 will help.
-russ

Free Porn

[berck]

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....

the name needs to change, though.

[lingqi]

lookie here.

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...

Re:the name needs to change, though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's because I don't drink,or maybe it's because people in the U.S. don't usually refer to bars as pubs, but I didn't think of 2 or 3 at all.

Re:the name needs to change, though.

[Russ Nelson]

Heck, if people want to write public software in pubs, that's fine with us. If you don't like pubsoft.org, then use publicsoftware.org.
-russ

Another Way to Fund Open Source Software

[pheph]

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

Re:Another Way to Fund Open Source Software

[ActiveSX]

Eh, what? Did you just say Open Sores?

New meaning for RPM?

[tg_schlacht]

Red Hat Pornography Manager

POO

[anonymous cowfart]

Eat my poo.

Re:POO

[confucio-licious]

I sense fecal overtones. wait. it's just the poo I tasted.

I just remembered the one thing that makes P2P bad

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

I thought...

[Sam Lowry]

That BitTorrent is not Free as in speech and is not even completely free as in beer.

Re:I thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

you're talking about bitkeeper you dumbfuck.

No one CARES what some nigga troll has to say about it, which is why your sweet, sweet candy ass is at -1, while MY BLAZIN' AC hotness resides perpetually at

ZZZZZZ EEEEEE RRRRR OOOO
Z EE R RR OO OO
ZZ EEEEEE RRRRR OO OO
Z EE RR R OO OO
ZZZZZZ EEEEEE RR RR OOOO

Z to tha fuckin' ERO, cuz! AC fo' life!

How to get it working under Mozilla on Win32

[flonker]

My experience, (as of a few minutes ago.)

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 .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.

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).

What do I get?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What do I get?

[Anonymous Coward]

And just how, pray tell, are "those who could not care less about the hot new apache patch" going to be the least bit affected since they aren't downloading it via BitTorrent?

BitTorrent doesn't sit on your system acting as a general server for the whole world for every BitTorrent download. It is only active when you are downloading a particular BitTorrent stream, it only acts as a peer for the particular BitTorrent stream you are receiving, and once downloading is complete it is only active until you close the client.

Teh Pleyar

[flaw1]

It's worth the rental just to see Tim Robbins (fag) trying to look like Big Billy G.

SlashDot Death Announcement

[flaw1]

I just heard some sad news on talk radio...

San Jose Mercury News has stories too

[Anonymous Coward]

Monday's story
Tuesday's story
Wednesday's story

Re:I just remembered the one thing that makes P2P

[Subcarrier]

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.

Not just Red Hat

[Nailer]

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.

Re:Not just Red Hat

[Anonymous Coward]

"Linux clients who can't install RPM packages (there aren't many) aren't compliant with the Linux Standard Base."

LSB is NOT needed and has nothing to do with p2p systems.

Your a Xenophobe

Re:Not just Red Hat

[Denny]

Your answer has nothing to do with the original question. The comment you replied to did.

What's the point?

[chris_sawtell]

BitTorrent works absolutely perfectly.
Somebody has more money than sense. Just reward the BitTorrent author, if you want to splash money around.

Security

[Rogain]

So what keeps me from tojaning the .rpms you download from me?

They should sort out RPM

[oliverthered]

It's nice and all to have a P2P RPM network, but the money would have been better spent improving RPM's.

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 .... P to be installed where RPM's D-P are obscure features that no-one ever uses.

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!!)

don't use up2date for your kernel updates!

[f_ckthisaddy]

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

Signature/Security

[nuggz]

I agree, without signed packages and verification this could turn into quite a security breach.

Installing unknown binaries from a random source is BAD

620K BYTES per sec! 5mbps!

[Alsee]

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 :)

-

Re:I just remembered the one thing that makes P2P

[Lev_Arris]

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...

P2P and software.

[6odm]

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.

Re:P2P and software.

[dmarien]

exactly what I was thinking... great point. if i had mod points i would have given you one.

cheers!

Re:P2P and software.

[cduffy]

Not necessarily.

Let's say that your ".torrent" control file (which you download through traditional means) contains a md5sum for the entire file -- and perhaps another for the list of block sums (or that could be in the file directly). Your downloads are thus checked, and no network corruption can occur.

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that BitTorrent does some form of verification not entirely unlike what I mention here.

Re:P2P and software.

[6odm]

Yes yes, but one must download ".torrent" file before hand. That is not big problem for me, but I know many ppls who directly opens every email attach, without virus scanning it first. I newer ever do that. So how many check that ".torrent" before installing binary. Those binaries can not carry ".torrent"-file or url or location to, because it can be manufactured allso. Maybe if user first download binary files indexnumber or some identification (generated randomly by distributor) and ".torrent", then search binary by its identification number.

Re:P2P and software.

[cduffy]

Putting safeguards in the .torrent file is entirely effective as far as one understands its goal -- which is to say, making downloads as secure as they would be via a traditional (non-P2P) download of the whole file. Presuming presence of the abovementioned safeguards, Corruptability of the .torrent file in a BitTorrent-based distribution system is effectively equivalent to corruption of the entire download in another system -- they have the same risks, same difficulty levels, &c. If downloading the file via traditional HTTP is considered an acceptable risk, so must be a similar BitTorrent-based download.

That is to say: If people don't check where they get the .torrent file that downloads their installer from, they wouldn't check where they get their installer from otherwise; the risks are equivalent.

What about Mnet?

[haeger]

What about the mnet project? Although in an early phase it should be quite useful for things like this.
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.

.haeger

Same idea

[AeiwiMaster]

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

Why so many offtopic mods?

[shepd]

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.

up2date

[OpenMind(tm)]

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.

Re:up2date

[hunterm]

That's what current does - it allows you to seperate up2date from Red Hat itself. Nobodies done it that I know of, but I don't know why Suse or Mandrake distros wouldn't work with up2date/current.

If you do get it working with one of the other distro's, let me know - I'm the original author of current.

More Funding for OS

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Security / Compromised RPM packages

[Simon Kongshoj]

Which methods are there to allow such a network to deal with the possibility of an attacker who makes compromised RPMs available? P2P package sharing seems to be a brilliant idea (and a very good use for P2P), yet I'm not quite sure how that security problem could be dealt with. One possibility could be to have the system compare MD5 checksums of P2P-downloaded packages with the official ones -- but that has the problems that the user also needs to get a MD5 checksum of the official package, and that it's likely that the packages distributed on a P2P package network wouldn't all have official counterparts (homegrown packages, etc.).

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.)

This is how it is supposed to happen...

[maxconfus]

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.

Gilmore founded Cygnus

[hqm]

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.

Re:Gilmore founded Cygnus

[FattMattP]

He didn't need a job before considering the fact that he was the fifth employee of Sun Microsystems. He made a killing from the stock he had and used that to start up a lot of different things including Cygnus.

That really is a good idea though!

[Mustang Matt]

They ought to use it as a chance to unify packages across all distributions while they're at it.

shape your traffic

[raulmazda]

Run linux and shape your traffic so that an upload can't eat _ALL_ of your outgoing bandwidth.

See wondershaper for a semi user friendly script and the Linux Advanced Routing & Shaping HOWTO for docs if you want to tweak it.

Open Content Network (P2P for open source)

[Orasis]

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.

Easy Money

[AmericanInKiev]

Assuming you have had a job for some of this year - You probably have all the funding you need waiting for you at the IRS.

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

context, please.

[tomjennings]

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.