Freespire and the Proprietary Software Debate

May 11, 2006 Leave a comment

At the recent Desktop Linux Summit, Kevin Carmony announced the release of Freespire. From the site:
Freespire is a community-driven, Linux-based operating system that combines the best that free, open source software has to offer (community driven, freely distributed, open source code, etc.), but also provides users the choice of including proprietary codecs, drivers and applications as they see fit. With Freespire, the choice is yours as to what software is installed on your computer, with no limitations or restrictions placed on that choice.
I think everyone knew this was Open Source dynamite waiting to happen and Kevin admitted that Linspire had been planning this for years, but didn't think the Linux community was ready until now. Reaction to the announcement was what you'd expect and included this vitriol response from Groklaw. A response from Kevin is available on LXer. This of course is a topic that I've discussed here ad nauseum. Kevin does make one good point. 10 years has really made little difference when it comes to vendor support. Now, in that 10 years Linux has improved so much that it's hard to believe, but US hardware manufacturers haven't really come around. Either have many of the software vendors. Photoshop, current versions of flash, Dreamweaver, Quicken – none of them available for Linux and no announcement that it will become so. Does that mean we should give up the fight? Hell no, but a different approach might not hurt. It's hard for a group the represents 1% of the market to demand something, whether we're right or not. Does Open Source produce better software? Undeniably, yes. Should we all value our freedom? Absolutely! the thing is, the majority of the computer users don't care about “better” software nor freedom in the context of software. Yeah – it is sad, but it's reality. Education is part of the key here of course, but so is getting people to try Linux. Right now, too many people just don't care. Us insisting that religion be part of the package certainly isn't going to change that. Now sure, I'll keep trying to educate. I'd like to think I've enabled more people to drop non-free software than most. Someone focusing on the other parts may not hurt though. The problem is, it's a slippery slope. “A Doomsday scenario” by Arjan van de Ven could legitimately become a reality. So could Linux never gaining any discernable market share on the desktop. I'm starting to think that may not be so bad. The server poses many less problems on this front (no MP3, no 3D cards, no DVD, etc.) and those of us who want to run Linux on the desktop because of the libre reasons I suspect have been for a long long time. I doubt companies will see it that way (there's just too much money involved), and someone giving Microsoft real competition is just too compelling for the rest of us to ignore. Something has to give though, and at this point it looks like it's going to give soon. Something tells me it might be ugly.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Introducing TreoQuestions.org

May 10, 2006 1 Comment

I'm proud to announce that we've added a new site to the LQ family. TreoQuestions.org is in many ways modeled after LQ, but is a 100% separate and distinct entity that will have a flavor all its own. The site has a Treo forum, a download section and a Treo Wiki already. Once we have worked out the bugs and the site is out of beta, we'll be adding more – including developer tools and whatever else the community wants. Going from LQ which consistently has 2,000 people online at any given time to a new site is going to be interesting, but I'm looking forward to the challenge. Many people have asked where the idea came from. Well, first I have a Treo and really like it. If anyone is looking for a smartphone, I highly recommend you check the Treo out. The passion is there, and for me that's a critical component. The thing that set me over the top though, was really LinuxWorld Boston, where LQ was in the .org Pavilion. The Platinum Sponsor of the show was none other than PalmSource (promoting their Linux Access Platform). With rumors that Palm may also be working on a Linux platform, it seems clear that Linux is the future platform (or at least one of the platforms) for the Treo. That was the deciding factor there. They're going where I already am (and have been for a long time) – Linux. As we've done with LQ, I hope to work closely with the Treo and Palm communities. We've already started on that and the response has been outstanding. We already have people like Sammy from Palm Addicts recommending us (I'd like to extend him a huge thanks BTW) and the feedback from others I've contacted has been similar. So, check out the site and let us know what you think.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Treo

Will Sun Open-Source Java?

May 5, 2006 Leave a comment

An age old question, will Sun Open Source Java? With a new CEO in Jonathan Scwhartz and the JavaOne Conference around the corner, the topic is getting quite a bit of attention at the moment. Keep in mind though, to Sun, “Open Sourcing” Java would almost certainly mean CDDL and not GPL. With Scwhartz being on of the proponents of Open Sourcing Solaris, the chances for Java are probably greater than before, but there are still clearly some major debates going on within the company. Will the move benefit SUNW and the stockholders? With rumors of up to 30% layoffs, does the new CEO have more pressing issues on his plate? At a company the size of Sun, 10% of the workers are probably superfluous…but losing 30% would be devastating. He's not in an enviable position, that's for sure.
Back to Java for a moment, one of the major gripes has always been the redistribution verbiage. Open Source or not, that really has to change. One of the common cons I see for potentially Open Sourcing Java is that it will surely cause forks and confusion. There are already a bunch of forks around, and I don't see a lot of confusion there. So, will Sun reverse its long time thinking on the topic and go Open? If they do, will companies like IBM (who has a massive middleware investment in the language) jump in and participate with Sun?
In the bigger picture, will Jonathan be able to turn around a company that contributes a lot to both Open Source and the computing world in general (NFS, much of XML, Java and more) but hasn't turned an annual profit in 5 years? No easy task. As usual, there is some irony here. For some of the major misjudgments Scott made in the past (network computing as the major example) he seems to have been pushed out now by wall street for the products not scaling vertically at a time when most people are scaling horizontally (that is, most companies are not buying huge high end machines, but scaling out with many cheaper ones). The lower end Sun product offering is actually looking very good right now. Odd.
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page, Open Source

The Microsoft Malaise

May 4, 2006 Leave a comment

In his usual style Dvorak mixes rational thought with wild speculation to get readers attention. But let's look into the topic, as it's an interesting one. Microsoft is clearly finding it difficult to compete. As mentioned, that will not stop them from making piles of cash for the foreseeable future, but in this industry it's possible for the giants to fall remarkably fast. So what is Microsoft doing right now. It looks pretty clear that Vista is going to be a large disappointment. It will gain some traction on new PC's, but I don't see any kind of immediate must have upgrade potential in the enterprise. The product is so late and the feature list so cut, that if Microsoft didn't have the market share they do, this would have been absolutely disastrous. Second, at a time when OOo is finally coming into its own, Office decides to completely redo the UI from the ground up and release seven versions. This is a bold move to take with one of their two cash cows and with ODF an ISO standard now, this will be fascinating to watch play out. So, with the writing on the wall, Microsoft has started to diversify. The problem is, they are going in too many directions at once, and not doing any of them outstanding. The Xbox360 is nice, but they failed to gauge demand and way under produced, which in the console industry is a killer (just ask Nintendo). MSN has failed to gain any ground in the search space as has most of of the online attempts Microsoft has made. I think all these from Vista to MSN share a common thread though. Microsoft has lost touch with their users. They're concentrating on everything except what their users want. That's a dangerous thing to do.
This brings us to one of the points I partially disagree with in the article. John says Microsoft is preoccupied with Google, who is not even a competitor. That's shortsighted. Google is a competitor. They are slowly proving that the web can be the OS, at least for a large portion of users. Nothing could be more detrimental to the Microsoft bottom line. The partial part comes in because I do think their complete preoccupation has become a problem. It seems every app Google comes out with, Microsoft throws a me-too copy out sometime later. They're losing focus. The irony here is that one of the only innovations to come out of Microsoft in some time, XMLHttpRequest, is the base of AJAX which may plant the seed that finally displaces them. What an odd type of justice that would be.
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Desktop Linux Summit Update

April 26, 2006 Leave a comment

Now the Desktop Linux Summit update. The show is a little shorter than some (only 2 days) and has three tracks, but the tracks were pretty jam packed. No longer at the fair grounds, DLS has upgraded to the Grand Hyatt. Doc Searls had an extremely interesting and funny presentation on the first day and I was lucky enough to be able to catch up with him and a bunch of other people (Arne, Geo, Steve, etc) for a couple of drinks later. You often learn as much after the conferences as you do during ;) Also on the first day was a preview, by Nat Friedman, of what Novell has in store for the desktop. Some nice eye candy on the way, that's for sure. The second day held the main Keynote by Geoffrey Moore, where he covered Linux on the Desktop in relation to the chasm. I didn't agree with 100% of what he said, but he is an outstanding speaker and raised some excellent points (ie. it got you thinking). Ian Murdock and Michael Robertson also spoke on day two. Probably one of the most anticipated talks of the summit came when Rob Enderle got on stage (Google if you're not familiar with Rob). While he's still certainly a bit misguided on some things, I have to admit that he actually made some points on multiple different issues (I'm as absolutely shocked as you). Either he now has one toe in reality, or he was afraid of getting lynched (which Arnie seemed ready to do). All in all a great show and one I'm proud that have the LQ name associated with. I hope to attend again next year.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

MySQL User Conference Update

April 26, 2006 Leave a comment

I should probably post a Desktop Linux Summit update first, since that event happened first, but I'm still at the MySQL UC and have a couple minutes before the next session. The conference has been very good so far. It opened with Martin Mikos, the CEO, having some very good things to say about the future of MySQL. They have an alternative storage engine on the way for those worried about the InnoDB future at Oracle and have just renewed their InnoDB contract with a multi-year agreement. The two of these in combination may quell some peoples fears. Next came the Tim O'Reilly radar speech, which is great no matter what conference you see it at. Some presentation issues aside, this one was no exception (and I have to say, Tim did a very good job of covering things for about 15-20 minutes with no slides at all).
The sessions have all been interesting and I learned a few things I should be able to apply to LQ (I've been attending mostly performance and scaling sessions). While asking one speaker about his experience with FULLTEXT, Monty actually stepped into the conversation and took about 15 minutes to literally dig through the MySQL source and see when some changes were applied. The bad news in that the change he was after is present in the version we are running. The good news is that the recently announced falcon storage engine should have a FULLTEXT engine that rocks. After explaining the situation a bit more, we decided that in the mean time a 64-bit MySQL with a ton of RAM is probably the only viable solution. At how many companies would the founder of the company sit down with you (at a conference no less) and start digging through code. Absolutely awesome – thanks Monty! The rest of the session lineup for the day looks interesting and I should have time for at least one BOF before I have to catch my flight home. DLS update coming soon.
–jeremy
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Desktop Linux Summit and MySQL User Conference

April 22, 2006 Leave a comment

Kind of a last minute decision, but I'll be attending both the Desktop Linux Summit and the MySQL User Conference next week. LinuxQuestions.org is a sponsor of both. Getting to both these on such short notice was both easier and cheaper than I'd have thought, but it does mean I am doing a whole lot of flying. Should be well worth it though as both look extremely interesting. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to book either conference hotel, the Hyatt was booked solid. If you'll be attending either event and would like to connect, contact me ASAP. I'll be at DLS on Monday and Tuesday, then MySQLUC on Wednesday. See you in San Diego/San Jose.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Should Linux Allow Proprietary Drivers?

April 20, 2006 3 Comments

I've covered this topic a bit before and it certainly fits into my recent discussion of what are we as a community willing to give up if we want to see mass adoption (latest part of that discussion here). A recent article, entitled New Linux look fuels old debate brings up a long standing point of debate. Should Linux allow and use proprietary drivers? This debate covers a wide spectrum of topics and many of the participants are quite ardent in their view. On one hand, one of the founding principles of Linux is Open Source and freedom. Why should closed drivers be allowed then. They taint the kernel (from a GPL perspective at minimum), allow very low level access to your machine without you being able to see what's going on and make diagnosing problems extremely difficult. Things like a Sony rootkit for Linux would now be possible also. Besides that, they just seem to be fundamentally contradictory to the aforementioned founding principles. On the other hand, if this whole thing is really about choice, shouldn't vendors have the choice to distribute closed drivers and consumers have the choice to use them? Won't free markets decide what's best? Seems like both sides have a point, doesn't it.
The reality, as usual, is that it's just not that simple. There are many factors at play here and to explain them all would be much to time consuming. The first thing that has to be settled is whether or not closed source kernel drivers are even legal. I've seen yes as an answer and I've seen no as an answer, both with logical arguments. Looking at the wording of the GPL, I'd guess probably not legal, but if Linus allows them (and in fact the entire kernel community has indeed allowed them thus far), I'd find it hard to believe that a court would make a ruling against them now. As muddy as the legal issues are, I'm going to sidestep the whole topic and leave that to the lawyers. To me, this is more of a “can Linux allow proprietary drivers” and not “should Linux allow proprietary drivers” question anyway.
So, that brings us back to “should”. Some predict that doing so could equate to a Linux doomsday, while others say not allowing them will result in Linux being a fringe OS forever. So, who's right? As usual, I don't think there is a right or wrong here. It depends on what your vision for Linux is. For most of us that have been in the Linux community for a while, I think the answer is somewhere between binary drivers are tentatively bad but borderline acceptable to binary drivers are insidious. If you're a marketing type or someone who things Linux should do anything it can to get 80% market penetration, then you probably answered that binary drivers should be welcomed. Much different visions. But the kernel is too fundamental to Linux to have it both ways. One side has to give. It's another question of will what has gotten us this far be abandoned (or partially abandoned) in order to get us over the next chasm. Can we convince a company like nVidia, who's current potential revenue for Linux sales pale in comparison to potential closed OS revenue, that Open Sourcing their driver really is better for them? Or, will consumer demand for a working out of the box nVidia experience force one of the major distributions to cave and start shipping? Will shall see.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Microsoft Admits to Hiding Flaw Details

April 20, 2006 Leave a comment

While it's been suspected for some time now, Microsoft has publicly admitted that they silently fix some vulnerabilities with absolutely no disclosure at all. From the article:
“We want to make sure we don't give attackers any [additional] information that could be used against our customers. There is a balance between providing information to assess risk and giving out information that aids attackers,” Reavey said.
We all know that security through obscurity really doesn't offer any level of protection at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for responsible disclosure, but no disclosure at all is just not acceptable. The wrong people will expend the effort to reverse engineer the patches and figure things out. The people that suffer are the helpless Windows administrators. Microsoft has created an admin culture where only the patches that impact an environment are applied by most Windows admins. Part of this is a result of so many patches gone bad. But, if the security bulletin for a patch says it fixes one thing, but really also fixes 4 other things silently, you never know what you're vulnerable to. Now, I'd recommend installing all patches of course, but that's just not reality for most of the Windows world.
This brings up another topic though. A while back I posted about the year-end vulnerability summary that showed Linux/Unix had more vulnerabilities than Windows. So not only did the report include multiple counts for single apps and apps that are not even included in base distros on the Linux side, it also didn't count vulnerabilities that either Microsoft never fixed or ones that they silently fixed during other patches. The worst part of this is that Microsoft uses reports like this in their marketing. So, they don't ever fix some vulnerability, silently fix other and then claim that hey have less vulnerabilities. All in the name of “customer best interest”. Yikes.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Vista won't show fancy side to pirates

April 15, 2006 1 Comment

So it appears that Windows Vista is going to do a piracy check and then disable Aero if you don't have a licensed copy. That's right – it won't refuse to run or even cripple functionality, you just won't get translucent windows or animated flips. You see, Microsoft won't admit it, but they need piracy. It's one of the ways they keep the market share that they have. Keeping that market share is extremely important to their business plan. Of course, they don't want piracy to be completely rampant, so they do things like this. Considering most pirated copies of Windows are the corporate versions that don't phone home anyway though, I think there is more to it. By disabling some features like this, it makes the OS seem less like a commodity and more like something special. Once the OS level has been commoditized (something Linux is driving toward) there is just no way Microsoft could charge what they do for Windows. With the trend toward commoditization consistently growing and the Windows market share slowly being chipped away at, you realize how important Vista really is. Add in the fact that Mac hardware prices are falling along with the improvements in virtualization and emulation and things are looking worse and worse for Microsoft on the Windows front. In the end, the average consumer should benefit from this greatly. Not only will they have real choice for the first time in a long time but all OS's will need to remain more competitive. Most Microsoft products have stagnated recently since they didn't need to improve to survive. Luckily, those days are swiftly coming to an end.
–jeremy
Vista, Microsoft, MSFT, Windows, Aero, Open Source, Linux

Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

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