Munich Set to Approve Linux

September 29, 2004 Leave a comment

It's good to see that Munich is going to move forward with its Linux migration plan. This will be a very public, very watched migration that will give Linux a chance to prove itself in a large government deployment. One thing I didn't like about the article is the “upstart rival Linux” comment. The statement seems incorrect on a couple different levels. First, can Linux really still be considered an “upstart”? With IBM running superbowl commercials, I'd say not. Secondly, “Linux” isn't a company so calling it a rival to Microsoft seems odd. Novell is a rival, Red Hat is a rival, IBM is a rival. Linux is a kernel.
–jeremy

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Microsoft and Open Source II

September 28, 2004 Leave a comment

A quick followup to my last post, it looks like a third project, FlexWiki (site currently down), has been released on SourceForge with an OSI approved license. While the LQ Wiki won't be migrating any time soon, I'm interested to see how FlexWiki compares to the FOSS Wiki software we are currently using.
–jeremy

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Microsoft and Open Source

September 28, 2004 2 Comments

Rob Mensching has some interesting comments about Open Source at Microsoft. He seems to not only have a fair understanding of Open Source, but also seems genuinely interested in making it work at MSFT. He even offers to listen to your reasons why a specific Microsoft project should be Open Sourced and see if he can convince the right people to hear your argument. Now that's a refreshing change. There is one area that I disagree with Rob though, and that is on the “Issue of Trust”. He points out that MS has given the OSS community WiX and WTL, and counts those as steps taken to earn trust. While it's true that both those projects are on SourceForge, with the consistent history Microsoft has of attacking OSS the burden of proof is now on them. While I'm not saying those projects will be used in some sort of patent or IP suit, it may be a bit premature that say that they definitively won't be. The bottom line – can an 800lb gorilla with a history of leveraging a monopoly to unfairly crush competition do an about face? The answer, as IBM has shown, is yes. Can Microsoft pull of that same about face with a different set of strengths, business rules and a product set that relies so much on selling software? We'll have to see…
–jeremy

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Misc Hotmail Musings

September 28, 2004 Leave a comment

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm extremely happy to see Microsoft try to cut down the spamming from Hotmail accounts by charging for WebDAV access. BUT, what they really need to do is eliminate the armies of Windows zombies that are the source of a large portion of the spam these days. Wishful thinking I'd guess. The article also contained another interesting comment though. Seems MSFT underestimated the amount of storage that users would actually use when they bumped the free service to 250M. They underestimated by so much in fact that they are currently bringing more storage online and have delayed the complete upgrade rollout by a full quarter. Makes me wonder just how much space Gmail is chewing through (granted they probably don't have near the 187 Million accounts that Hotmail does).
–jeremy

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Open Office XML Format May become an ISO Standard

September 28, 2004 Leave a comment

Kudos to Sun for going thru the trouble to submit the OOo/Star Office file format as an ISO Standard. This came as a result of a letter from the European Commission to Sun. Adoption of this as a standard will assure that the format is supported for the long term and will help in the fight to make sure data stays in open formats. While Microsoft is big enough to ignore standards, or pull the old embrace and extend, if enough large Governments get the idea that their data is best kept in an open format, Office may need to support the format. This would be a huge win IMHO. The article also has a great snippet that was contained in the letter from the European Commission to Sun.

Transparency and accessibility requirements dictate that public information and government transactions avoid depending on technologies that imply or impose a specific product or platform on businesses or citizens.
–jeremy

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Patch Those Windows Machines

September 28, 2004 Leave a comment

This one looks like it may get ugly. There are just so many possibilities (like a 1×1 gif in an email). What's worse are the reports that the Microsoft scannersmisses many of the vulnerabilities, especially in 3rd party DLL's. Even if you think you're safe, better download GDI Scan from SANS and make sure.
–jeremy

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Open Source/Closed Standards and Sun

September 27, 2004 Leave a comment

Kevin Bedell has posted an article pointing out that Sun is considering releasing code as open source while still requiring that it be compatible with a test suite that must be distributed as part of the code. This started with the following post by Bob Scheifler of Sun Microsystems on an OSI mailing list:
For my personal edification, and hoping this is an acceptable inquiry, I'd like to understand if and specifically how the following informal license sketch conflicts with the OSD. Any and all comments appreciated.
1. The licensed work consists of source code, test suite in executable form, and test suite documentation.
2. A derivative work in executable form that has passed the unmodified test suite can be distributed under a license of your choosing.
3. Any other derivative work can only be distributed under this license.
Any such distribution must include the unmodified test suite and test suite documentation.
One has to assume they are looking into this for Java, so they can “Open Source” it, but maintain 100% control over the API. Sun doesn't seem to get Open Source too well sometimes, and I don't think the community would take this one too well. What happens when the test suite has a flaw for example? What about when different revisions of the test suite have different bugs? What if Sun decides to take Java in a direction that the Java community doesn't like? This license would prevent you from forking and then releasing as Open Source. Even worse it would allow Sun to completely halt a feature they don't like by making it somehow fail the test suite. To me, this seems somewhere in between OSS and something like Microsoft's “Shared Source”. In this case though, I don't think it's going to be enough. Sun seems to be losing a lot of ground while they waffle on these issues. One has to hope they wake up before it's too late.
–jeremy

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It Happened Again

September 26, 2004 Leave a comment

In what is now becoming a common occurrence, every time I seem to be away for a little while, LinuxQuestions.org seems to make Slashdot. Unfortunately this time a couple people thought it would be funny to post utter nonsense in the thread. Didn't take long to cleanup once I was back, but I apologize to anyone who had to read it…
–jeremy

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Interview with gaim Maintainer Rob Flynn

September 26, 2004 Leave a comment

Rob Flynn, maintainer of the gaim project, recently took time out of his busy schedule to do an email interview with LQ. He comments on what it's like to be the maintainer of SourceForge's most active project, how he got involved with gaim and a whole lot more. We gave him a couple followup questions and those will be posted as soon as I get the responses.
–jeremy

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Text Mining Tool for User Forums

September 22, 2004 Leave a comment

Here's an interesting technology that could really apply to LQ. I'd be really interested to see what it would do to the over 1,100,000 posts in the LQ database.
–jeremy

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