Debian is the internal development platform. Released products are targeted to all LSB-compliant systems. This one is a little unusual, because it's a full Linux distribution. The target customer for this product wanted it on RH first - we asked.
This product is just begging for someone to take the GPL component and run with it. It could be on Debian tomorrow, without the $3000 fee. Consider that a challenge.
HP does internal development on Debian and has contributed two Debian ports: PA-RISC and IA-64, both have been accepted for the upcoming Debian release. The secure Linux system will appear on more distributions than just Red Hat.
Thanks
Bruce
Re:Low confidence in anything from HP
on
HP-LX 1.0 Secure Linux
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I agree that the HPUX folks do sometimes seem to lose sight of the fact that there is an outside world that, for the most part, doesn't run HPUX. But fortunately I work on Linux. HP has contributed a lot to free software: the IA-64 port of the Linux kernel is led by David Mosberger of HP and is all GPL, of course. HP spends about 1/2 Million per year just on salaries, benefits, and overhead for 4 of the key Samba developers. And a number of HP projects like Cooltown have come under the GPL. And of course they pay for all of my political efforts on behalf of free software - working on software patent issues, speaking, writing, etc.
The kernel component of HP's secure Linux is GPL-ed. Get it here.
The user-mode component is not GPL, but given the kernel API, it's pretty easy to make up the user part.
CCL maps Guitar chords to common Linix commands and a subset of the ASCII character set. By playing a sequence of guitar chords, you can set up commands, pipes, and filters. Output is delivered by speech synthesizer. While the speech synthesizer text is from Linix, the frequency and other parameters are computer-driven to harmonize with, or improvise upon, the chords of your input. Visual output similarly turns mundane text into a rock video.
I'd accept "Algol68". I came on the Unix scene in 1981, but we still had V6 systems, and a commercial application (the Images paint system from NYIT Computer Graphics Lab "CGL Inc.") that lived on V6 until 1988 or so. I actually ported the 2.8BSD segmentation overlay loader back to V6, along with fsck, etc.
Only people who refuse to Open Source their own applications pay a license fee. So, this, and also Namesys (Reiserfs) finance Open Source by charging proprietary software vendors. It works.
OK, coming in at 1994 you're going to miss a lot, although you could have been around a lot of projects that had excellent collaboration before SourceForge and its ilk. I ran some collaborative projects on USENET before there was an Internet that mere mortals could access, and in fact released important Free Software like Electric Fence that way. Debian's main method of collaboration was in 1994, and continues to be, email and simple file transfers. The web is fun, but not essential - but some means of digital communications is essential.
So, we did get some hype, yes, but IBM's spending more on Linux hype today than has ever been spent before.
I'm going to write a commentary on CNET to reply to Steve.
Because the high-flying VC money and gold-rush speculation that drove those fat boomtime salaries are what really paid for open-source.
Gee, where have you been? We've been working on this, if you count from the start of the GNU project, since the early eighties (and some would say longer). VC and stock money was fun, hey, I got two years employment out of it, but it was a blip in a continuing history. Most of the good work has been, and continues to be, done without it.
The Bourne shell is written to interpret an Algol-like language. Think about that. The original source code had very ugly preprocessor tricks to make C look like Algol. Steve Bourne had Algol on the brain, it was really ugly.
Who uses Algol today? We now have much more elegant shells like "rc", either the "rc" clone that is shipped with most Linux systems, or maybe even the original Plan 9 "rc" designed and written by Tom Duff.
There is some room for improvement in the art here. It bothers me that the first goal is to be compatible with something that ran in 1971.
I attended the last W3 patent policy board meeting, which was 3 days long, and am now in Europe where I will be speaking at a presentation to the W3 advisory board. W3 has also heard from Eben Moglen and Daniel Weitzner has met with Larry Rosen of OSI. So, they are getting our message. Hopefully they will decide in favor or RF-only, but even then the terms of the patent disclosures may not always be compatible with our licenses, especially the GPL. So, this will be a continuing problem. If things go badly, we'll probably have to increase our presence in the standards business beyond what we do today through the Free Standards Group, by branching out into interoperability standards in general. That may be a good idea in any case.
But the fundamental problem is not with W3, it's with software patents. At my talks here in Europe I'm always pointing out the problems with them and encouraging Europeans to continue to reject them. We need to take action in the U.S., better action than we've been able to muster so far. I think the best approach would be to lobby for a "safe harbor" for Free Software from attacks by software patent holders - something that I think would be acceptable because of the pro-bono nature of Free Software. If the proprietary software businesses want to mess themselves up with software patents, that's their problem - but software patents simply aren't compatible with Free Software and we need to become more assertive about that.
I think this means we need a real lobbying organization. This is not EFF, because EFF's agenda is digital rights in general, while we need to represent Free Software developers over other interests. I think it also needs to be more inclusive than FSF, although of course FSF should be involved.
Thanks
Bruce
Re:Small Unix utilities written in assembly
on
Tiny Apps
·
· Score: 2
The lineo site for Busybox seems to be broken. Erik Andersen is still maintaining busybox. If Lineo can't get the site back together we'll move it elsewhere.
Bruce (original Busybox author but it's much bigger now)
Nah, you're just trying to get a rise out of me. The Open Source community protests something, the big ugly corporation actually sees that they are right and changes their mind, and that gets you annoyed? Nah. Go try to bait someone else.
Thanks
Jon Katz... uh, I mean Bruce. I'm not really Jon Katz, I swear!
This is what happens when you leave the operating system design up to a pencil-necked geek from Helsinki. Everyone knows that Finns can't play football. And look at this guy, he's married to the 3-time women's karate champion of Finland. What do you think it does to a guy to get up in the morning, knowing that his wife could beat the tar out of him any time she wants to?
So, now we've got IBM and other big companies on Linux development, and those guys only know from golf! There they go, yapping about "enterprise Linux", and still they can't mount a good defense. Ah heck, we might as well go back to DOS. Now, there's an operating system with a strong offensive.
I don't have the slightest idea why you got a +5 "insightful" for this very mediocre posting.
Your posting is mediocre because you provide no justification whatsoever for your claims. For example, you could have said that the Linux SCSI implementation is very poor, or that it's based on the 30-year-old Unix paradigm. And in the case of SCSI, you would have been right, in the case of Unix, you would have had to demonstrate how something else works better, which would not have been easy, and too many people who try only show their lack of grounding in operating systems design. But you didn't even try.
Eben Moglen (attorney for the FSF) is on board too. We'll try. From my first direct communication with W3C, they've expressed an extremely good attitude - they want to understand what Open Source / Free Software need, and they want to help.
I liked the "halt and catch fire" opcode. When I was interviewing at Pixar, they asked if I'd programmed a RISC machine and I said I did 6502 assembler:-) The rest is history.
Slashdot Mirror
This product is just begging for someone to take the GPL component and run with it. It could be on Debian tomorrow, without the $3000 fee. Consider that a challenge.
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
The user-mode component is not GPL, but given the kernel API, it's pretty easy to make up the user part.
Bruce
Bruce :-)
Bruce
Bruce
So, we did get some hype, yes, but IBM's spending more on Linux hype today than has ever been spent before.
I'm going to write a commentary on CNET to reply to Steve.
Bruce
Gee, where have you been? We've been working on this, if you count from the start of the GNU project, since the early eighties (and some would say longer). VC and stock money was fun, hey, I got two years employment out of it, but it was a blip in a continuing history. Most of the good work has been, and continues to be, done without it.
Bruce
Who uses Algol today? We now have much more elegant shells like "rc", either the "rc" clone that is shipped with most Linux systems, or maybe even the original Plan 9 "rc" designed and written by Tom Duff.
There is some room for improvement in the art here. It bothers me that the first goal is to be compatible with something that ran in 1971.
Thanks
Bruce
I attended the last W3 patent policy board meeting, which was 3 days long, and am now in Europe where I will be speaking at a presentation to the W3 advisory board. W3 has also heard from Eben Moglen and Daniel Weitzner has met with Larry Rosen of OSI. So, they are getting our message. Hopefully they will decide in favor or RF-only, but even then the terms of the patent disclosures may not always be compatible with our licenses, especially the GPL. So, this will be a continuing problem. If things go badly, we'll probably have to increase our presence in the standards business beyond what we do today through the Free Standards Group, by branching out into interoperability standards in general. That may be a good idea in any case.
But the fundamental problem is not with W3, it's with software patents. At my talks here in Europe I'm always pointing out the problems with them and encouraging Europeans to continue to reject them. We need to take action in the U.S., better action than we've been able to muster so far. I think the best approach would be to lobby for a "safe harbor" for Free Software from attacks by software patent holders - something that I think would be acceptable because of the pro-bono nature of Free Software. If the proprietary software businesses want to mess themselves up with software patents, that's their problem - but software patents simply aren't compatible with Free Software and we need to become more assertive about that.
I think this means we need a real lobbying organization. This is not EFF, because EFF's agenda is digital rights in general, while we need to represent Free Software developers over other interests. I think it also needs to be more inclusive than FSF, although of course FSF should be involved.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce (original Busybox author but it's much bigger now)
Thanks
Bruce
So, now we've got IBM and other big companies on Linux development, and those guys only know from golf! There they go, yapping about "enterprise Linux", and still they can't mount a good defense. Ah heck, we might as well go back to DOS. Now, there's an operating system with a strong offensive.
Bruce
Your posting is mediocre because you provide no justification whatsoever for your claims. For example, you could have said that the Linux SCSI implementation is very poor, or that it's based on the 30-year-old Unix paradigm. And in the case of SCSI, you would have been right, in the case of Unix, you would have had to demonstrate how something else works better, which would not have been easy, and too many people who try only show their lack of grounding in operating systems design. But you didn't even try.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce Perens
Bruce
Bruce