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The State of the Open Source Union, 2004
The biggest non-story of the year was SCO's legal efforts. So far SCO has not been able to make substantial headway with a single one of its legal claims, and indeed has suffered a number of significant setbacks in court.
This is certainly good news for Linux and open source. Going back five or six years, clearly one of the major obstacles to widespread adoption of open source software was the uncertain legal status of both the software and the licenses. While this aspect of open source is still an unfinished saga -- more on that shortly -- the inability of SCO, through either legal or PR channels, to undermine Linux gives reason for confidence about the future.
The real story about SCO in 2004 has in fact been the telling of that story. While mainstream media coverage of SCO has varied widely -- sometimes accurate, sometimes resembling coverage of the OJ Simpson trial -- Groklaw has emerged as a steady voice of reason and objectivity adeptly defusing all attempts at "FUD" PR around the case.
2004 has been, especially as an election year, a controversial year for the phenomenon of blogging. Whether blogging will provide a sustainable alternate voice in journalism is very much an open question. A few blog sites, however, have shown what a handful of dedicated individuals can do in the face of much larger, and better funded PR machines. Groklaw is an outstanding example of the positive journalism effect that blogging can have.
The legal front brought other good news for the open source community. Norway's Supreme Court acquitted Jon Johansen, and the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit opted not to appeal the decision. In the United States the Digital Millenium Copyright Act still remains the law of the land, but the Recording Industry Association of America has made little progress in forcing ISPs to disclose the identities of alleged file swappers.
A more troubling legal trend is the shift in debate about the intellectual property status of open source software. The principles behind the "copyleft" approach have gained continued acceptance, and have even been leveraged as an integral part of some business models. The debate now, however, centers more around patents that copyright.
IBM has been out in front of the patent issue. Their open source license was the first to explicitly address patent licensing as an issue above and beyond copyright, and they've taken steps, even recent steps, to see that open source development is unencumbered by patent concerns. IBM is not the only company putting patents in the open source domain. Sun Microsystems recently announced they will make patents available under their recently approved Common Development and Distribution open source license (CDDL).
All of this would seem to be good news for the open source community, especially given that Poland's objections have put a temporary halt to the Europan Union software patent initiative. Appearances can be deceiving, however. IBM is a supporter of software patents. Sun's gesture is in fact intended to create a competitive advantage for OpenSolaris over Linux, since the patent protection Sun offers applies only to work licensed under the CDDL -- in other words, not Linux. In a recent News.com commentary, Bruce Parens said, "So while claiming to make the patents available to open-source developers, Sun can sue folks who work on Linux rather than Solaris."
The biggest patent concern comes from Microsoft. In a speech in Australia, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed that Linux violated more than 200 patents. While this may be more hype -- or hope -- than fact, it does tip Microsoft's hand in terms of what tactics they are willing to use to meet the Linux competitive threat.
PolicyAll other things being equal, customers prefer an open system to a closed one, and vendor choice over vendor lock-in. In the IT world in general, and between Windows and Linux in particular, all other things are not equal, which makes platform choice complicated. More and more, however, organizations are seeing Linux as a viable platform choice that
- Lowers up-front licensing fees
- Has the support and backing of significant technology vendors, whether small, medium (Red Hat), or large (IBM, Novell)
- Avoids vendor lock-in at both the platform and application level
These claims are independent of the more controversial claims about improving security and lowering total cost of ownership. 2004 has added an interesting additional element to the mix: the desire of government organizations outside the United States to not be dependent on a large, American technology company whose revenues exceed the gross national product of most nations.
This software declaration of independence has taken several forms. Sometimes it seems simply to be a negotiating tactic to force Microsoft to lower prices. India may be an example.
Sometimes, however, price is not the issue. Munich, for example, committed to making the switch to Linux despite direct lobbying efforts by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. In the case of a high tech country like Germany, this decision is probably influenced by the reluctance to be dependent on an American company guilty of monopoly practices.
The situation in the developing world is somewhat different. Unshackled by significant requirements of backward compatibility, emerging economies like Venezuela's have a chance to make a clean start and avoid what they perceive as the pitfalls and inefficiencies in older IT infrastructures.
The policy approach in China is even more alarming to traditional technology vendors. China clearly does not want to build an economy dependent on outside production or services, whether it's factories or satellite launches. In the software world China has made it clear that it can and will build its own platform and application stack leveraging open source components, if that is what it has to do to maintain control of its software destiny.
BusinessThe North American market for computer technology has, in many ways, reached the saturation point. A Pentium 4, to say nothing of a 64-bit processor, is already overkill for most office desktop applications. Older versions of the Microsoft Office suite, and older versions of Microsoft Windows, are often quite adequate for business productivity needs. The problem for traditional technology vendors is aggravated by the fact that Linux, Open Office, and other open source software may now be good enough.
On the one hand this accounts for why policy issues and the international technology market have become so important: this is where technology vendors see the biggest opportunity to grow new business. On the other hand, open source is forcing some significant changes in the software market domestically.
The most visible effect of open source has been the commoditization effect. Microsoft, as we've seen, has been forced to acknowledge the competitive impact Linux is having, and to cut prices overseas in response to this competition. Yet even companies like BEA acknowledge that open source will have an increasing commoditizing effect, meaning that they will cede lower levels of the application stack to freely available open source software and seek to add value further up the stack.
The most dramatic concession to commoditization in 2004 has been the announcement that Sun is open sourcing Solaris. Said one Sun executive who asked to remain anonymous, "Do you think we'd be open sourcing Solaris if we had any other way to compete with Linux on price? Of course not."
If anything, the opening of Solaris reinforces that Sun has been unable to find a business model built around Linux. Given that competitors like IBM and HP have, with varying degrees of success, been able to integrate Linux into their business models, one suspects that there are deeper problems at Sun than the opening of Solaris can solve.
The bottom line is that Sun is still trying to compete with, rather than embrace Linux. The CDDL doesn't extend patent protection to anyone working under a different open source License, and the CDDL is incompatible with the GPL, meaning none of the Solaris code can be used to benefit Linux.
This move, of using a license as a competitive tool, is one of the more subtle but more important business trends to emerge from open source in 2004.
The most common approach is a dual-licensing scheme, utilized by Trolltech (for Qt), Sleepycat (for Berkeley DB), MySQL, and newcomer db4objects, among others.
In each case the company makes its core product available under the GPL, or else under a similar viral-type license. Since each of these software products is intended to be embedded within or combined with other software to create a derivative product, companies are forced to make their own product available as open source, or to approach the originating company about separate licensing under proprietary terms.
The result is a very low-cost distribution mechanism for the open source companies, as well as a cheap in-bound sales channel of pre-qualified leads.
Of course, to be able to dual-license, you must have created all the code in question, or have full rights granted to you for all the code in question. Thus this very successful open source business model is incompatible with the open source development model; each of the companies using the dual-license approach does all, or nearly all of their software development in-house.
TechnologyWhat then of the open source development model? Has it enjoyed the growth and widespread acceptance that open source business models have?
Certainly 2004 saw a number of significant releases for open source projects. GIMP 2.0 was finally released, as was Gnome 2.6. Large companies as well as individual projects made strides. IBM announced the release of its Java database, Cloudscape, as open source. Novell released SUSE Enterprise Server 9.
The year's most significant releases were the 2.6 series of Linux kernels, and the 1.0 release of Mono. With 2.6, Linux now has many of the features needed to compete as an enterprise-class server: better multiprocessor support, failover and hot-swap support, better journaling file system support.
Mono is absolutely critical if the open source community is to compete in the application development market. C# and .Net will be important application building blocks for the forseeable future, and Linux and open source need to be viable approaches.
The Debian Project has undergone an interesting evolution in the last year. Long-time Debian users have often complained about the slow pace at which Debian moves, favoring security and stability over feature growth. The result is a very solid server system, but one that, for the end user, often lacks support for advanced hardware.
The solution, which seems so obvious now, is independent distributions that leverage Debian as a base but target the end user with ease-of-use features and hardware-support features that have yet to make it into Debian. Two successful projects heading down this path are Ubuntu, which follows the Gnome approach to usability, and Mepis, which follows the KDE approach to usability. Either distribution will give you an easy install, access to Debian packages and apt-based network updates, but with more advanced hardware support and an improved UI over stock Debian.
By far the biggest development story of the year, however, has been Firefox, the browser component of the Mozilla project.
Timing is everything. Security, privacy, and spyware have become major concerns in 2004. Microsoft has refused to significantly update Internet Explorer (IE) until Longhorn is released, which could be in 2006 (as in "Santa Claus could be real"). The Mozilla Foundation capitalized on this opportunity with a major fundraising blitz for the foundation and PR blitz around Firefox; this included a full-page New York Times ad.
In November, Firefox 1.0 was released, and to date downloads exceed 10 million. Mozilla has raised over $250,000 in its fundraising campaign. While IE's market share still hovers around 90%, Firefox has rapidly grown to 5% market share, and put a dent in IE's market share for the first time in years. Industry analyst Gartner Group has looked at the results of 2004 and declared the browser war open again.
Looking ahead to 2005, it's interesting to ponder the tech sector's differing response to open source business and open source development models. The business models are reasonably well understood and generally accepted now. Not everyone is leveraging open source as a business play, but everyone understands it is one viable strategy to pursue.
On the development side, however, the results of open source continue to confound the establishment. Why did no one see the Firefox phenomenon coming? Equally important, why isn't anyone (AOL) attempting to leverage Firefox's market success and technology advantages?
With Solaris, it's interesting to note that even supporters of OpenSolaris admit it sees no real development savings to opening Solaris; the benefits are all on the marketing side. Ben Rockwood blogs "It's going to take Sun more work to maintain it open source than it will to just leave it closed."
Yes, open source has become mainstream. But that mainstream presence needs to be more than a commodity benefit to companies willing to leverage the results of open source. Will mainstream technology companies figure out how to anticipate and collaborate with open source development as a deep part of their technology strategy? That's a big question that 2005 may answer.
Mark Stone is an open source consultant and freelance writer living in the Sierra Nevada region of Northern California. He can be reached at mark.stone@gmail.com.
It would have been nice to include a link to the material, so us non-subscribers could have perused the material while waiting for the 'please move along' dialog to go away...
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I hope Hillary Clintons bill does go through. Although Diebold and the GOP will stonewall it, I think that this would be the PERFECT environment for OSS. Get a university to write it.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
We the People of the United Open Sourcers, in Order to form a more perfect Code Base, abolish FUD, insure programmatic Tranquility, provide for the common security, promote the general technological Welfare, and secure Blessings of Library to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United Open Sourcers of the World.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed that Linux violated more than 200 patents.
Honestly, how do you take such a claim seriously??? If M$ wasn't such a financial juggernaut, this would be hilarious. As it stands, it's depressingly sobering...M$ has the financial clout to do a lot of damage in court, event if the cases are ultimately thrown out.
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But it leaks quite a bit of memory. If you want corporations like AOL to pay attention to a product like Firefox, more attention needs to paid to minor details like this.
Been attempting apt-get install plone to work with no success.
So some freelance writer makes a store for /. and all of the sudden it's the offical F/OSS "State of the Union".
CmdrTaco, guys, nice try, but you need to quit stroking your egos now.
This is probably the worst article ever.
This is just a technicality, but it should be noted that the 2.6 branch of the Linux kernel started with 2.6.0, which was officially released December of 2003, _not_ in 2004 as mentioned in the article.
Well at least there weren't 68 clapping breaks and 22 uses of the word "Freedom".
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
1775-1783: The British crown presents a bill to American settlers who must now pay for their protection. Ungrateful settlers who are already allergic to taxes go on a rampage and attack tea boxes on a ship; several Americans are wounded in explosions. Americans win their sole victory in Saratoga when general Burgoyne realizes that Canadian merchants sold him ragweed instead of tea before his departure. Facing a mutiny he decides to surrender. In the following years Americans will lose most of their battles due to their lack of discipline and massive desertions. In 1781, 30,000 French soldiers & sailors accept to integrate 11,000 American mascots who will play music from afar while the French win the Battle of Yorktown.
1812: The American army is crushed by an army of spear hurling natives and drunken Scotsmen trying to invade Canada, and abandons annexation plans. During the 19 the century, several raids are led against Indian women and babies with the US troops achieving some victories, but fail in their effort to ethnically cleanse the Indians. Nevertheless, some successful slaughters will lead them to believe that they are mighty and courageous warriors.
1861-1865: Americans win an impressive victory against themselves but it took a while. The Civil War as it comes to be called, will turn out to be the only war Americans ever win. Mind you they beat themselves, but why digress.
1898: The Spanish succeed a master coup and get rid of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines at the expense of the Americans, leaving them the impression that they won the war. Soon the US discovers that there is no oil there, and that their new possessions are a wastebasket, more than anything else.
1900-1950: A series of military interventions against banana republics in South America and the Caribbean against people armed with slingshots and spears has a beneficial effect on the American ego.
1918: The Americans arrive just on time to see the victory of the French and the British against the Germans. They then turn around, and try to claim the high ground by sabotaging the peace treaty and stabbing France in the back when it tries to enforce reparations and prevent Germany from rearming, thus setting the stage for WWII.
1941-1945: While as many as 20 million Russians die bleeding the Wermacht to death, the US wait until the Germans are left with the Hitler Youth, a children's' force comprised of 14 year old soldiers to launch their assault. They are still saying today that they suffered heavy loses at their hands. In the whole Normandy Campaign they suffer less casualties than the French did in the first six months of 1940, and inflict less damage on the Germans, yet this is enough for them to claim they liberated Europe. That claim alone is the biggest piece of historical myth in history.
1950-1953: The US fails to beat North Korea, in 1953 the borders are still roughly what they were three years earlier.
1963-1973: Americans suffer cruelly from the lack of AC and marijuana of a poor quality in Vietnam. When they realize that their soldiers can be killed in a war, they retreat.
1983: The combined aviation, navy and ground troops apply an audacious plan and succeed to beat a bunch of Cuban workers armed with shovels in Granada. The celebrations go on for weeks with parades and chants of USA, USA.
1991: Americans align more soldiers than the French or the British combined and succeed in crushing an army of barefoot shiite drafted against their will who are armed with empty rifles and have barely had a thing to eat in months. But even this so-called victory is hollow as it is actually led by the Daguet division from France which leads the charge while American soldiers console themselves by rounding up prisoners for TV crews.
2003: Iraq. Unable to totally defeat resistance elements on its own...America is now shamelessly begging Third World Nations to pull its fat out of the fire.
But it's good to see Open Source is on the march...
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
It's interesting that the writer would describe Munich's adoption of more OSS-ish stuff as due to an urge not to be dependent on big bad Redmond (a political decision) where as he credits Venezuela (described as an "emerging economy") with embracing a clean start without being weighed down by the "pitfalls and inefficiencies" of traditional systems (implying policy making by technologists, something that doesn't really resonate with current events in that country).
Venezuela, of course, is suffering more from self-inflicted wounds than anything else, and certainly the companies doing business there (or trying to, without getting nationalized) are likely to be making their own IT decisions based on low-friction extensions of how they already do things. It seems more likely that to the extent Chavez' government is making any thoughtful IT policy decisions, it's going to be driven by simple cash, or the lack of it.
The writer's comments on China are also somewhat puzzling. He indicates that China clearly doesn't want to be dependent on outside entities - but that doesn't lead directly to open participation in the OSS-sphere. They (as a matter of government policy, anyway) seem more inclined to establish their own proprietary standards, aimed at making more people dependent on their own industry players' wares and standards. Whether China leverages OSS and plays along, or simply uses that low-cost foothold to build their own stuff and then become MicroChina - we shall see! I think the writer is looking back (and forwards) through a rose-colored monitor on some of this stuff.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Microsoft exists as a business entity. They offer an OS with arguably the most exposure of any OS, one many folks associated directly with general computer use. They offer a number of other products which tie in to, add to and build upon that OS and it's market share.
Why then shouldn't they go ahead and pursue a patent attack strategy in order to crush what they see as the competition? They are bound only to act within the confines of the law. There is no legal reason why they should play nice.
I'm not saying this because I like the possibility, but rather because if Linux supporters can come up with a cogent response to the question and present it to Microsoft in a manner likely to be received without substantial hostility (i.e. something different from "Don't use patents you m!@#$!@# a$$hatz"), then perhaps Microsoft would avoid this approach.
inevitable uncertainties
They've finally set a date - it's going to coincide with the release of Duke Nukem Forever.
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
Isn't this typical...
I point out (correctly) that non-subscribers couldn't even see the material until they were cleared to post to it, and suddenly I'm a 'troll'.
Last time I try to be helpful.
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Oh, wait, never mind.
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
While thinking philosophically, we see problems in places where there are none. -Wittgenstein
I'm going to JBoss World tomorrow and Wednesday.
Four yearas ago, if I'd said you could generate enterprise-level solutions with open source code, I'd have been laughed at.
Now, with JBoss, and all that goes into it, I can deploy an all-singing, all-dancing J2EE application, for only the cost of the hardware.
Drop in OpenReports, and you've got the complete package: Servlets/JSP/etc..., for the webby bits, JNLP and Swing for the interactive bits, and OpenReports for the bar-chart crowd.
Add in Eclipse as your IDE, and you're good to go.
The next challenge, will be to place this all in a neat little iconified environment so more-naive users can do really powerful things.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Groklaw was objective about SCO? You're joking, right?
/. thinking that for news to be objective, it has to follow your opinions...
Of course, this follows with the stereotypical
-DMZ
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
has been subjugated to the world's most dangerous and inarticulate leader
Thanks for nothing,
Kilgore Trout, CEO
You are right. As is often the case, seemingly "mean" or even "unethical" business practices should highlight not that companies are 'evil,' but rather that the laws should be reconsidered.
MS has the ability (in terms of money and laws) to pursue these kinds of strategies. But if we the people do not like these strategies, we should strongly consider pushing for laws that force companies to act ethically.
I think many people (including me) would take offense to this guy packaging Opensource in with Free Software. He also takes the libery to call witness to the greatness of the opensouce development model.
I realize that to many people, OSS and Free Software are synonymous. To those who fall squarely within either camp, the differences are meaningful enough to warrant the existence of two separate groups. This guy seems to fall into the OSS camp, which is fine and well, but one can't have their cake and eat someone else's.
There are fundamental differences.
guess you never heard of being nice.
i guess its okay to shove old ladies out of the way as long as you dont break the law.
Given a particle of which you have perfect knowlege of it's position, you can have no knowlege of it's velocity. This uncertainty is inevitable.
"Why then shouldn't they go ahead and pursue a patent attack strategy in order to crush what they see as the competition? They are bound only to act within the confines of the law. There is no legal reason why they should play nice."
I think they would be afraid of the fall out that could possibly occur. Linux has gained enough support that an all out attack on it would very possibly bring about an all out attack on software patents and copyright law, as well as more antitrust suits. Their empire would slowly crumble if either of these two things were pushed very hard.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I predict that Open Source will come into its own in 2005. While it has hit some bumps and trouble along the way this year and in recent years, especially with microsoft's flagerant abuse of a number of linux patents, there is no question that the whole concept in general is gaining mass acceptance.
I work in Washinton for one of the senators from Virginia and its interesting to see how even the legislature is starting to look at open source seriously. My boss, who sits on Ways and Means (the committe which is in charge of the budget) and a few of his friends have been talking amongst themselves and they are planning a number of hearings this year to discuss open source in general and more specifically as a way to save goverement money from going to huge software companies like M$ as a way to help cut some goverement spending.
2005 will indeed be an interesting year to watch.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
from m-w.com:
inevitable: incapable of being avoided or evaded
uncertain: not certain to occur
Yup, and citizens^H^H^H^H^H^H^Honsumers only exist to make the good people richer. They could have made Civics Class 5 minutes long and still been 100% truthful.
MS has the ability (in terms of money and laws) to pursue these kinds of strategies. But if we the people do not like these strategies, we should strongly consider pushing for laws that force companies to act ethically.
We can't even push for laws that keep companies from buying the legislators they need in order to do whatever they want, and you want us to write to our congresscritter to ask them kindly to not vote in favor of the big business interests that put them in power? Most of the letters probably wouldn't even make it past the staff without liberal amounts of cash in the envelope, and even then the letter will still wind up in the shredder.
So do you think that OpenUsability will NEVER achieve success?
Always is such a long time...
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
What's viral is copyright law. Mixing anyone's code with yours "infects" your code because it creates a derivative work. The only way you can legally do that with any copyrighted material is if you have permission from the owner (or fall into a Fair Use category).
Some open source licenses grant a blanket permission to do that without any strings attached. Many (like the GPL) do not. Few commercial licenses provide that permission, and many of those that do require some sort of royalty payments.
The GPL isn't viral, it just doesn't allow you to ignore the viral nature of copyright.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Can't they write even one sentence without bashing China? Even in an article meant for an international audience?
To respond to folks who seem to think I'm in favor of Microsoft "not playing nice" and basically crucifying any and all competition, I personally think it's not nice to compete on other than the merits. I can't say it's immoral or unethical, but it certainly doesn't pass muster as nice, and I think in the long run, maintaining such a posture will hurt their image enough to be a bad strategy.
The point of my original post, however, was not to outline what I thought they should do, but instead to point out that a) Microsoft acts as a corporate entity out to protect its interests and b) anyone wishing to change their behavior has to provide Microsoft a reason to want to change.
Most folks discuss how it's wrong of them to do what they do, they heckle and deride them for their actions, but in the end Microsoft doesn't care what Linux users have said about them. They care about what affects their bottom line. They might even care about long term factors or unquantifiable factors. But until they are convinced that they want to act differently from how they currently act, they will continue to act as they have always acted.
And Monodevelop is not, at it's current point, usable.
.NET. I actually managed to convince the brass that we avoid WinForms, and use GTK# to build our GUIs. I actually convinced them that we can support Sybase as well as SQL Server, being as the T-SQL is similar enough it won't involve any rewriting for us.
It works fine for little "Hello World" apps, but once my project got to a small-mid size (6 or 7 files, about 1000 lines each), it slowed to a crawl. It took minutes to register each keystroke. I turned off the command-completion engine, thinking it was to blame - it wasn't. It seems to be whatever code that constantly rebuilds the class tree?
Whatever it is, it's unusable. I had to migrate my project back to Windows-land and do my work in SharpDevelop. Now, for whatever reason, Monodevelop won't even open my SharpDevelop cmbx file.
This is a big, BIG deal. My company, like so many others, has tons of old VB/Delphi and other Windows-RAD based code, all powered by SQL Server backends.
It's time to migrate most of this stuff to
Did TFA mention FREE (beer) Sybase ASE for linux? A SQL Server killer - heck it is SQL Server - is HUGE. I've worked with MySQL, PostgreSQL, firebird, and they are all toy databases.
Sybase+Mono= a whole hell of a lot of people, and a whole lot of source code that was once very MS-specific, that can now be opened up to other platforms.
Anyhow, the brass were impressed when I showed them how the same executable runs under Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc, etc - and unlike Java, it looks and feels like our old application, not a kludgy pile of crap (Java evangelists need not reply, I've yet to be convinced. AWT sucks just like Swing. We simply have no use for the platform, get over it.)
The brass were blown away when I mocked up a little box, with Sybase built in, to run as a terminal server via NX - NX is cool as hell. Blows MS Terminal Services and Citrix right out of the water. When I told them the machine they were using was sitting at my home, and they were working over my home connections measly 128k upstream, hell - you just can't help but be impressed.
So now I'm at the point where they're actually considering linux. All of our apps on a linux-based self-contained blade server, complete turnkey for clients. It's about giving the client what they want, after all, and that's what they want. A box they plug in and does its job. (With a quarter mil per annum support agreement, and as we all know, once properly set up, there ain't shit to support).
So now I'm tasked with putting together an environment with which to work with the stuff/crosstest under linux. And I'm short one IDE.
It'll get there eventually, I'm sure. Just get your ass back to work Miguel. Actually, scratch that, finish your GTK# documentation first - or at least fix the goddamned hyperlink to it. There's plenty of great stuff in those namespaces (gtk, pango, etc), but to someone like me with no real prior experience with GTK, figuring it out can be a real bitch - though not impossible, but so far the process has been for me to read some C documentation, figure out the C# binding by way of autocompletion, and guess at the parameters.
This year was big, but IMO, Mono and Sybase were the two biggest things to hit the scene. I don't know if NX counts as this year or not, but if it does, it's a big thing too.
Note to any Gentoo users fighting to get Sybase to work: Nothing I found on google helped, installing Red Hat 7.2 under UML and installing sybase on that didn't work. ASE did nothing but segfault until I switched to NPTL, now it runs like a champ. (emerge unmerge linux-headers; emerge --oneshot linux26-headers; emerge glibc; reboot). This is probably applicable to other uncertified distros too.
Also, anyone know of any good free as in I'm-broke SQL Server->Sybase ASE migration tools? For years the flow has been 100% the other way, people ditching their big proprietary uni
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
He was using it in the sense of "risks". Inevitable risks.
With the number of government organisations, military, schools etc already using OSS, Microsoft would have a real shit-fight on their hands.
They'd also go down in history as being Very Bad People and attract even more ill-will, from regular computer users in above organisations.
Before they ever attempt a patent attack, they have to win over the hearts and minds of the public to their view of software patents. I guess Gates' stabs at 'Communism' among the OSS movement were an early step in this direction.
You're correct. This is exactly why business must be regulated and restricted by the government; corporations by design use law as a surrogate for ethics.
Hmm, status on Desktop Linux is conspicuously missing.
So when are commercial app developers going to release Linux versions of their apps along with Windows versions?
Until that question can be answered, Desktop Linux will continue to be a theoretical possibility with almost zero marketshare. No one cares about operating systems; the applications are everything.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Internet Explorer 7 will be available for Windows XP.
I was looking for "And may Stallman continue to bless Open Source" at the end. And it just didn't read the same without frequant, akward pauses.
SAILING MISHAP
I use it every day. Mostly it's fine with me.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Is there such a thing as a reverse class action lawsuit(RCAL?)?
Imagine this:
RIAA files an RCAL against the class of people who "have traded copyrighted files on the internet without permission". RIAA wins, because they are legally correct. Then you run ads on TV like:
"Have you traded songs on the internet? You may be entitled to compensate up to ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Call Schwarz & Lloyd! (374)867-5309. Call now and gets whats coming to you!"
People call, RIAA laughs until it cries about how stupid people are.
Who thinks people would call?
foon!
Name them.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Objective is the opposite of subjective. Subjective things are those that consist primarily of opinion, in which there are rarely any "right" or "wrong" answers, but things are primarily matters of taste. Objective things are those centered or focused on facts.
So while you would be correct that PJ has long held a subjective opionion that SCO is talking nonsense about the courts, she primarily comes out with hard, objective facts (e.g. the court filings, quotes from SCO, interviews & transcripts) which makes the site, on the balance, objective.
Bias is generally measured by a person relative to that person's own opinion. It is not unreasonable after hearing all the stories to favour one account over another. In that way, bias is not the same as prejudice. Prejudice, being when one forms an opinion before the facts are all in, is bad. Becoming biased against someone because they've constantly lied to you and you can prove it from their own words, can scarcely be considered unreasonable, illogical, or even in bad form.
Therefore, I submit that Groklaw is objective in that its focus is upon providing the court documents whereby one can make up one's own mind, though the commentary is at times subjective, and many readers there (myself included) have become biased against SCO due to its inconsistant statements over the course of this litigation--a great many of which are conveniently documented on Groklaw in a thoroughly objective manner.
At least, that's my opinion.
Perhaps they should. However, a common theme on slashdot is how broken the patent system is. Trivial things are patented every day that demonstrate the system not working the way it was intended. Sometimes companies fight over silly patents and it can be fun to watch one big company screw with another one (which might have done the same if it could) and comment on the system. Free software (and OSS too) are usually not corporate developments, a full Linux distribution is the product of thousands of people working for over a decade to develop. FLOSS represents a lot of different things to a lot of people, so to see it crushed by MS utilizing the broken patent system would be a travesty on a global scale.
My guess is that's one reason MS hasn't tried to actually play the patent card against linux. It wouldn't be money attacking money, it would be very big money attacking the people (really bad PR). This would be unprecedented, so there is great uncertainty with it. Also, with governments and business around the world considering OSS, this kind of attack would make legislators question the very patent system such an attack would rely upon. Imagine using patents to go after Linux, with the result that the rules change - or get repealed - so that you can't use them against other companies either. No one knows what would happen if MS attacked Linux with patents, but all effects other than defeating Linux would likely be negative.
Either that, or they are waiting for legalization of software patents in Europe...
"the open source development model remains a mysterious process on which large technology companies struggle to capitalize."
how do you capitalize on free/open source?
Microsoft patents might be subjected to the same kind of scrutiny that SCO's claims were. To get a patent requires showing a lack of prior art. Microsoft might find all or almost all of their patents tossed based on prior art issues.
That's a real shame because it means that they have genuinely taken in the watered-down message the open source movement promotes--that we should weigh software issues not on ethics or freedom, but on cost of development, distribution, and even (ironically) settle for proprietary software when it is technically more functional than an "open source" competitor. The open source movement pitches this message because they're chiefly speaking to businesses and they believe any freedom talk will interfere with conveying their development methodology message to businesses.
As such, if the US Government is doing what you describe, they're probably just using that talk to get Microsoft to drop its price on the software it licenses to the US Government. Other countries and US states have done this before, and it will be done again. Lowering the cost of Microsoft software is probably the reason why Massachusetts allowed Microsoft's proprietary Office formats to be included as an "open format". There's no part of the open source movement's message a proprietor can't cater to, so proprietors love to frame the issues at hand as the open source movement discusses them.
Better to focus on software freedom, which the free software movement has been pitching for over a decade longer than the open source movement has been touting their message. Those who want software freedom for its own sake never have to settle for stumping for non-free software because the free software message doesn't focus on a development methodology to make development cheaper, faster, and produce less buggy software. The free software movement centers on giving computer users the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify computer software. The open source movement's goals are fine as far as they go, but they don't go far enough. They say nothing about the most important question we can ask: how should we treat other people? This is an ethical question which demands an ethical response.
Digital Citizen
Do you have some figures to show us so we can get a better understanding of what you mean by real time access and how PostgreSQL and MySQL are inadequate to the task? It's information like this that can help us not dismiss your anecdote as you tell us to do ("anectodal data doesn't mean anything").
As it stands, if you're writing a dispatching system for the New York Police Department (which I take you mean by NYPD), most people aren't doing that so I would find it hard to believe that they would be convinced away from choosing a free software or open source database program instead of the proprietary programs you're advocating.
Digital Citizen
- a license issue that prohibits redistribution entirely
- contradictory licensing in the Linux kernel (e.g. a GPL-incompatible license in a Linux driver) that causes a driver to be removed from the Debian kernel
- DFSG issues such as binary-only firmware forcing the package into non-free, even if it was otherwise freely redistributable and had a compatible license with whatever it linked with (since Debian policy requires freely redistributable source code for all programs in the archive)
Other distributions have more liberal policies with respect to software that supports hardware devices, but Debian's conservative stance attempts to guarantee that nobody further down the distribution chain can end up screwed by a license problem. In other words, it's a feature, not a bug.I have had a few problems with the interpretation of Debian policy in the past.
The first was that the proposed firmware loader really sucked for certain applications. I'm not sure if this has changed. Because of this, I was originally really pissed off with the interpretation that the DFSG "program" applied to microcode and firmware because of the technical limitations of the loader interface. Eventually I came to the conclusion that this really was for the better though, but only after the following issue was also resolved:
There was a huge push to eliminate non-free from the archive around the beginning of last year. This sounded like a great idea at first, because then the FSF would endorse Debian as the reference GNU/Linux distribution (aside from the GFDL conflict). Unfortunately, once everyone started moving firmwares and microcode to non-free, it was becoming increasingly clear that if Debian was going to continue to support modern hardware, non-free was here to stay. Certain zealots continued to push for the removal of non-free, even when it was apparent that doing so would not serve the interests of free software in the long term due to the reduced mindshare growth of people not being able to install Debian on their existing systems. Eventually a GR was made, and non-free was kept around. This political decision, coupled with my realization that the long-term benefits of free firmware outweighed any temporary technical difficulties with a crappy firmware loader interface.
The final struggle for me is that certain zealots in the Debian community are still insisting that all strings of bits are to be interpreted as 'programs' under the DFSG, and thus the 'source' must be required. There are two gaping problems with this. The first is the level of abstraction (FA theory) at which one must view things in order to claim that, for example, a video file is a program - I think that's utterly impractical. The second follows from the first - what is the 'source code' for (for example) a video file? Raw DV? Raw uncompressed frames? Who determines whether a particular package is in compliance or not? What if the author deleted the raw source after processing it? What about the effect on the mirrors who suddenly have to host multi-GB raw video files?
There is some practicality to having such high-quality source files for multimedia, because it encourages reuse of the content, so I think making such things available whenever possible should be encouraged. But the idea that a piece of software could be placed in non-free because it included an intro AVI without a raw video source files is ludicrous and counter-productive, IMO.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
At Groklaw, it's obvious when you're getting PJ's opinion and when you're getting facts. And Groklaw reports everything, the good and the bad. They don't try to put a bad spin on good news or vice versa. It just turns out that nearly all of the news about the case has been bad for SCO. If you don't like the apparent bias in PJ's commentary, all the source documents are available at Groklow. Download the court docs and read them yourself.
Of course they are biased against SCO. But let me tell you, I started reading about that case around April of 2003 and I kept an open mind for two full months. It took that long for me to fully accept that SCO had nothing--no evidence, no case, nothing but smoke and lies.
It's hard to be "objective" when one side has all the law, facts and common sense on its side and the other is just putting on stock-pumping scams and unsubstantiated PR blitzes.
Developers have NOT been flocking towards .Net because everyone knows that it was just Microsoft's idea to make a proprietary Java. Since the effort in developing for Java and for .Net are about the same, the end results are pretty similar (slow programs) and since Java is available on multiple platforms from multiple vendors and Java has wider support, better libraries, better documentation, more examples and has been in the market for longer -- there is no incentive to move to .Net.
You completely blew it when you called PostgreSQL a "toy database". Hate to burst your bubble, but PostgreSQL is only barely shy of the features Oracle (the database, not the complete suite) provides.
Join Tor today!
i thought you open source guys were a bunch of raving anarchists. now i find out you actaully have a union to give a state of address. damn.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I was merely quibbling over the use of the term 'objective' as used in the article. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that it managed to get me a +5 Insightful mod. Your comments are dead-on. I too enjoy PJ's site and hope that she keeps up the good work.
While thinking philosophically, we see problems in places where there are none. -Wittgenstein
I am not at ALL sure you can 'get the facts anywhere'. I certainly can't. And even the 'public record' can be censored after the fact depending on the settlement of the case. If you could get the facts anywhere, there would be no such thing as FUD.
I agree with another poster. Objective, and Balanced, and Neutral are not always the same thing. When it comes to facts, I think Groklaw is objective. They present what is there. This is NOT true of most media, especially mainstream media.
When it comes to opinion, they are honest; they disclose their biases up front. This is also not true of most media, especially mainstream media.
Oh, that is Microsoft we are talking about! It
is well known (through court rulings) that
they don't play within the confines of the
law. I am afraid, this empire does not always
care about legal boundaries.
Where I live, voters would receive an invitation by mail, letting them know when an election is held, together with a list of candidates to study in advance. Voters would go to the voting location, present that invitation (and possibly ID themselves), then receive a paper ballot, with all candidates/parties printed on it. Mark a circle next to the desired candidate with a red pencil, drop the ballot in a box, and you're done. How much easier can you make it? But here's the important thing: ANYONE (maybe even non-voters) CAN VERIFY EVERY SINGLE STEP IN THE PROCESS.
Before the election, there's plenty time to correct mistakes like voters not registered (that should have been), arrange to vote at another location, etc. At election day, anyone can verify that the box receiving the ballots, is empty at the start. You can hang around and see for yourself, that every voter drops only 1 ballot in the box, and that voters aren't excluded, harassed, or pressured into voting something other than their own choice. At the end of the day, you can watch the box being emptied, ballots (hand-)counted, re-counted if needed, and see that correct totals are recorded, and reported to city hall. And I'm pretty sure you could verify the totals being calculated at city hall, and verify that national results match the totals recorded for each city/village. In short: convince yourself, that there is not a SINGLE step in the process, where results could be compromised/f**ked up.
AFAIK, using paper ballots and hand-counting, is still:
Using OSS for voting machines doesn't assure you anything. Can you verify the compiler used to turn the source code into binary? Can you verify it is fed the same source code that is published? Can you verify that the machine it runs in, is built according to (published) schematics? Can you verify that IC's used, are what their markings say? Can you verify yourself, that eg. a Flash ROM contains the verified binary? Can you be sure of all that BEFORE elections begin, and be sure that machines will operate 100% reliable until elections are done? And that totals are added accurately, when results are transmitted over wires, and processed in an all-electronic manner? I don't think so, too many variables. For reliable results, ALL these things would have to work flawless, and verifiable.
I never understood why voting machines were allowed to undermine this voter-verification, and IMHO machines do nothing to improve the process, or the results.
If it were up to me, voting machines would never be used, or retired right now as a failed experiment. In fact, a Robert X. Cringely makes a strong case for just that: "Follow the Money: Why the Best Voting Technology May Be No Technology at All".
Sadly, where I live, voting machines were introduced as well... ;-((
The article above is clearly biased against Sun. Sun has said openly they are not out to sue anyone, and that their intents with the CDDL and patent grant is to actually prevent lawsuits. Slashdot really needs to cool off over this.
Also, Bruce Perens has numerous conflicts of interest in the matter, so his opinions should be read in context. For example, he works for OSRM, which is an insurance company who stands to make money from inflating the perceived risk regarding patents. He will say otherwise, but the timing and veracity of his comments surrounding the announcement of OpenSolaris are quite a coincidence. He also has vested interests in two or more Linux distributions, so of course he sides with the Linux fanboys on issues beyond patents.
Groklaw has been more balanced, in that they at least posted articles following up their initial set of questions about the CDDL. Of course, people commenting on the articles at Groklaw generally sound like JFK conspiracy theorists, so don't take them too seriously, either.
Let Sun prove themselves in their actions over the next year. OpenSolaris should be out around June or July, so they need a good year for people to get a feel for how all that will work. If Jonathan Schwartz were to ever pull off a mask revealing a big green patent ogre, then you can say I was wrong. But the likelihood of that is nil.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
I find it annoying that *any* software is required to make sense of our tax laws and forms!
Jack Kemp (whatever else you think of him, and I think about him something close to not at all) used to push the "post-card tax return," and a flat tax, or even a flat-tax-with-simple-deductable could be done that way.
Now, I'd rather see all income taxes eliminated, and what taxes must be raised raised via sales taxes, but Hey, I'll take certain lesser goods over certain current evils.
So, however nice and worthy are all employees such things support, I'd like to the need for tax software go away completely, and that's an approachable goal.
(I noted with some disappointment that GWB tested the waters on this before the election, then quickly clammed up about it, while his circle of advisors paddled backwards to assure everyone that he'd never support such a nutty, fair, easy system. Nearly made me vote for him, that did.) The attack of common sense was too brief, though, and too narrow.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Heh ...
;)
So I have to have a Product?
I can't just sell an idea !!
Blasphomy
Guys, guys, guys, have you forgotten who funded SCO???? Don't you think that Microsoft was just testing the waters to see if they could attack Linux via patents without actually putting themselves at risk should things backfire? Duh!
"2004 has been, especially as an election year, a controversial year for the phenomenon of blogging."
Every year is an election year, somewhere. Just depends where you live.
You might want to take a peek at my paper Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!". Feel free to share it, or quote (attributed) information from it. The paper has lots of useful facts and figures on why people should consider OSS/FS.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
>Slashdot really needs to cool off over this.
>Also, Bruce Perens has numerous conflicts of
>interest in the matter, so his opinions should
>be read in context.
I will admit that one thing that has come to bother me about Debian is the amount of "Debian IS Linux!" groupthink that seems to have sprung up. It is the persistent attitude I see online that Debian and Red Hat's offerings (and maybe SUSE) are the only Linux distributions in existence worth mentioning. To put it bluntly, they're not.
Debian might have as many wonderful benefits as any other distribution in existence (and I don't doubt that it does) but to the lemmings guilty of the above attitude, (and I think you know who you are) you might want to consider the idea of downloading a recent Slackware or Gentoo release and seeing what other people are doing from time to time...if only to maintain your awareness of the fact that said other people are actually there.
You know, I'm not so sure that'd be such a good idea....
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."