Oracle To Bring Siebel CRM To Linux

October 10, 2006 Leave a comment

Furthering its commitment to Linux, Oracle has announced that the newest version of Siebel CRM will support Linux. From the article:
The independent Siebel Systems, bought by Oracle for over $5 billion last year, had not pledged to support Linux. It had, however, worked with IBM to ensure that Siebel CRM could work with DB2 database running on Linux.
Still, this news is kind of a no-brainer for Oracle watchers. The Redwood Shores, Calif. company has said it has moved the bulk of its internal systems to Linux already. It has also said it is moving its internal CRM system to Siebel. Ergo, Siebel had better run on Linux.
A spokeswoman confirmed that the company is now implementing the nascent Siebel 8 CRM internally and that Siebel 8 will support Linux. It is likely Oracle executives will talk about this development at Oracle OpenWorld kicking off October 22 in San Francisco.
No mention of which distribution(s) will be supported, nor was there any further rumors about an Oracle-supported Linux release. One has to guess that at a minimum RHEL and SLES will be on the support list. It's good to see Linux continuing to move up the chain, further and further into the enterprise space. Oracle is obviously a huge player in this space, and the fact that they are moving more toward linux internally says a lot.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Microsoft on warding off the Linux threat

October 5, 2006 1 Comment

Wow. The hubris in this ZDNet interview is astounding. While some people at Microsoft are certainly adapting to a shifting business landscape, Nick McGrath, Microsoft's head of platform strategy in the UK, is a shining example of what is wrong with the Microsoft corporate culture. Reading the interviews it becomes clear that factual information and reality are of no concern. At times, you almost expect him to say something along the lines of “nah nah nah, I can't hear you”. Items like:
Q. Presumably you accept that there is more Linux in businesses than a few years ago?
A. No, I don't accept that at all.
show that either he is purposely being deceitful, or he's painful unaware of reality. Neither are good for a “head of platform strategy” IMHO. This interview is something I would have expected a couple years ago, but not today. Whether you like Linux or not, it should be obvious that there is more of it in businesses than a few years ago. Even if it's a small amount when compared to what Microsoft sells, it's still more on a comparative level with itself over time (especially where times is measured in a duration of a few years). It's clear that some people still think Microsoft is invincible, despite thousands of years of human history that categorically tell us that nothing of human origin is invincible. From the greatest of dynasties to the mightiest of companies, every one has a downfall eventually. Putting your head in the sand and denying that will only bring about your demise faster.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

The Truth About a Claimed Firefox Exploit

October 4, 2006 Leave a comment

I'm sure most of you heard about the recent Firefox security issue. The one claiming Firefox is “critically flawed in the way it handles JavaScript” and that over 30 unreleased vulnerabilities exist. It turns out, the whole thing was a hoax. That's right, a ruse. From the Mozilla Developer Center:
We got a chance to talk to Mischa Spiegelmock, the Toorcon speaker that reported the potential javascript security issue referenced earlier. He gave us more code to work with and also made this statement and agreed to let me post it here:
The main purpose of our talk was to be humorous.
As part of our talk we mentioned that there was a previously known Firefox vulnerability that could result in a stack overflow ending up in remote code execution. However, the code we presented did not in fact do this, and I personally have not gotten it to result in code execution, nor do I know of anyone who has.
I have not succeeded in making this code do anything more than cause a crash and eat up system resources, and I certainly haven’t used it to take over anyone else’s computer and execute arbitrary code.
I do not have 30 undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities, nor did I ever make this claim. I have no undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities. The person who was speaking with me made this claim, and I honestly have no idea if he has them or not.
I apologize to everyone involved, and I hope I have made everything as clear as possible.
Somehow I don't think Window is laughing. While it's great to see that most of the info was fictitious (there is a legitimate flaw that can be used to crash the browser), in reality tangible damage has been done to the reputation of Firefox. Of course, now the rumors are swirling. Of the two people on stage at the time, one works at Six Apart (which owns LiveJournal) and the other recently claimed responsibility for a fairly high-profile Javascript attack against close to a million LiveJournal users. In addition, there's even a picture of him floating around eating with a bunch of Microsofties. As you can guess, the conspiracy theorists are having a field day. No word on what the fallout of this will be yet, but I'd guess there will be some. As for the real security track record of Firefox, well that's still being decided. My guess (as you may have presumed) is that while it will have problems, they won't be as consistently unpatched as IE ones have been.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

McAfee, Symantec Think Vista Unfair

October 3, 2006 Leave a comment

It seems that both McAfee and Symantec are unhappy with some of the new security features in Vista. McAfee has gone as far as taking out a full page ad in the Financial Times. The issue at hand is PatchGuard, which Microsoft describes as a facility that protects the operating system kernel against being patched or rewritten by an outside, unauthorized source. From the article:
McAfee, Symantec and other security software companies argue Microsoft's new Vista operating system will make it more difficult to protect customers because for the first time, they have been denied access to the core of the operating system.
Neither company has filed a formal complaint and so far the European Commission has taken no formal action on the matter.
It should be noted that Sophos has specifically said they don't have a problem with PatchGuard, and Trend Micro already has a Vista beta product available. Symantec seems to assert that these companies must have had some unfair access to information. A couple comments here. First, McAfee and Symantec (indeed all Windows based anti-virus companies) had to see this coming. They had a sort of symbiotic relationship with Microsoft, at best. As Microsoft attempts to both secure the OS and move in on the money made by the various enterprise security suites, the other vendors were bound to lose market share. While Microsoft and Windows enabled McAfee and Symantec to become the huge companies they are, Microsoft has a sordid history of pummeling business partners when the time is right. The following quote comes to mind: “It's a funny thing being taken under the wing of a dragon: it's warmer than you think.” The lesson here should be that when you only offer products for a closed platform that you don't have any control over, you are 100% beholden to the company who makes that platform. Second, one question I haven't seen answered is whether the Microsoft security suite, Defender, will have access to things that competitors products won't. You'd think Microsoft would be smarter than that, given past history, but who knows. If the answer to that question is yes, that to me is 100% monopoly abuse. Lastly, I'll admit to not having used McAfee or Symantec products too much in the recent past, but my experiences along with what I read in various places leads me to believe that most of the newer products are universally regarded as bloated garbage. While harsh, the companies may want to look back at their products and focus on what's important which is providing a service that your customers want. Is this move by Microsoft really preventing that? I remember Symantec fondly from the days of Norton utilities. Most times I see comments about the newer products today are either in regard to them blowing up badly or not uninstalling properly. That's the problem I'd want to focus on.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Why Torvalds is sitting out the GPLv3 process

September 30, 2006 Leave a comment

A follow up to this post, Linus recently commented further on the GPLv3 issue. From the article:
At the same time, he suggests that his opposition may have been distorted or exaggerated. “GPLv3 is not 'evil,'” he says. “It just doesn't stand up to the great licenses out there, like the GPLv2.”
The current version of the GPL (GPLv2), Torvalds says, is “something where the open source people can meet with the free software people in perfect harmony. People from all over, regardless of their background, belief systems, or whether they are rabid about it or not, can happily agree about the GPLv2, and that's one of the reasons it's been so successful.”
By contrast, Torvalds says, “I think the GPLv3 is expressly designed to not allow that meeting. Exactly because the FSF considers us open source people 'heretics.'”
Once the GPLv3 goes from draft mode to live, it will be interesting to see if other GPL licensed projects simply move to the new version (remember the stock v2 GPL has the “or (at your option) any later version” clause, or do something similar to the Linux kernel and specify v2 only. I'd guess it depends heavily on what the final v3 ends up looking like. Also in the article was a comment from Linus about the supposed increased compatibility that GPLv3 has with other Open Source license, such as the Apache license:
In fact, Torvalds worries that one of the goals of GPL3 is to absorb part of the open source communities. For example, he notes that “one of the stated goals of the FSF with the GPLv3 was to expressly design the new license to be compatible with the Apache license. That sounds like a great thing, doesn't it? It sounds nice. 'Compatible' is such a nice word. Let's just all sing songs about it around the camp-fire.
“But if you actually look behind all the nice words, it's just a polite way of saying, 'We want to hijack the code of those projects that use the Apache license, too, and turn that code into GPLv3. Because the definition of 'compatible with the GPLv3' is strictly one-way compatibility. You can convert Apache-licensed projects into the GPLv3, but not the other way. Doesn't sound quite as much as a “Kumbaya” moment any more when you put it that way, now, does it?”
Speaking for himself and the Linux kernel, Torvalds says, “I don't need to try to hijack somebody else's project. I did my own. It stays GPLv2.”
Fairly harsh words. While there is certainly no love lost between Linus and RMS, hopefully this won't turn into a situation that further fractures the Open Source community. We already have enough of those situations.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Mozilla Firefox trademark and Debian

September 30, 2006 Leave a comment

Quite a battle is currently raging on the Debian Bugzilla about the status of the Firefox package. The dispute is over the use of the trademarked Firefox logo. From the article:
When most people think about the Mozilla Firefox browser, they think of it as being open source and free.
The truth is, while Mozilla Firefox is open source, it is not entirely free, and it may not even be legally compatible with Debian GNU/Linux, one of the most popular community Linux distribution bases.
The Firefox logo is trademarked, so Debian doesn't consider it to be Free and will not include it as part of its distribution. Mozilla claims that using the Firefox name without the official branding is a trademark violation.
Furthermore, Mozilla claims that if Debian runs any patches to the version of Firefox included with Debian distros, it has to run them by Mozilla first for approval.
The end result of all this appears to be that the branding and name are going to be completely removed before Etch is released. It's not yet clear whether derivative distributions such as Ubuntu will follow suit. Mozilla has certainly stepped up it's enforcement policy recently, but the reality is that they have to. Not defending your trademark means losing it. They have a specific idea of what Firefox is, and if you want to use the name you need to abide by that idea. If you don't, you are still 100% free to use the code, just not the name. I'd say calling it “not open” is a bit disingenuous, but it's easy to see both sides here. It puts Firefox in a tough place when anyone can add any code to the product and still call it Firefox. After all, if it crashes the user will not care (or in many cases even know) that a custom patch caused the problem. All they know is that FF crashed. The flip side here is that having to run every patch though Mozilla does add an extra burden. In the end, it's a burden they need to bare if they want to use the name. Since it's fairly clear it's something they are unwilling (and due to the social contact probably unable) to do, out goes the name. In the end, the sad part is that there are 3 losers and no winners. “Firefox” gets less market share, Debian doesn't ship (by name) with a browser people expect and the users get nothing but confusion.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

IBM Adopts Open Patent Policy

September 28, 2006 Leave a comment

I.B.M., the nation’s largest patent holder, will publish its patent filings on the Web for public review as part of a new policy that the company hopes will be a model for others. From the NY Times article:
The policy, being announced today, includes standards like clearly identifying the corporate ownership of patents, to avoid filings that cloak authorship under the name of an individual or dummy company. It also asserts that so-called business methods alone — broad descriptions of ideas, without technical specifics — should not be patentable.
and
I.B.M. is not the only institution interested in using Internet collaboration to help improve the patent system. Last month, the patent office agreed to try a pilot project of soliciting outside comments on patent filings, including claims of prior art and originality.
I.B.M. is one of several companies that have agreed to submit some patent applications for open peer review as part of the project, beginning early next year. The others include Microsoft, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Intel and Red Hat.
Great to see IBM stepping up and attempting to address what is a growing problem. They cite the delay in the legal system, specifically mentioning Congress, as one reason for moving ahead on this. I thought it was interesting to see Microsoft on the list of names of Technology companies participating in the more open USPTO pilot project. While I doubt we'll see then end of software patents any time soon, getting rid of business methods patents is a good first step. That fact that large patent holders such as IBM are admitting there is a problem with the system and actively doing something about it may give Congress the push they need to move forward on the issue. Let's just hope they get things right this time.
–jeremy
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Munich Begins to Switch Windows Out for Linux

September 24, 2006 Leave a comment

A follow up on a story we haven't heard much about in a while. It looks like Munich is finally moving forward with its plan to migrate most of their desktop computers to Linux. A couple quotes from the article:
Munich has begun its migration to Linux on the desktop, a year later than planned and nearly three years since the city announced its move to open source software.
“There have been some delays along the way but we’re now moving steadily ahead,” Florian Schiessl, manager of the Limux project for the city of Munich, said Thursday by telephone.
By the end of this year, the city of Munich plans to have migrated 200 computers to the open source desktop environment. “Most of these computers are used for relatively simple office communications,” he said.
The configuration is based on Linux Distribution Debian GNU/Linux 3.1, the KDE 3.5 user interface and OpenOffice 2.
It's great to see this highly publicized migration finally come to fruition. While they are certainly behind schedule, a lot of that had to do with some unneeded patent issues and the reality is that most projects of this scope end up being way behind schedule if they're completed at all. The fact that they added one year to the pilot project and still decided to move forward makes it clear to me that they are happy with both their original analysis and their decision to move to Linux. The plan now is to have 80% of the desktops converted over by the end of 2008. With about 14,000 desktops total and some fairly complex processes used by some of the larger departments, this seems like an aggressive but realistic goal. We'll certainly keep watching.
–jeremy
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Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

September 23, 2006 Leave a comment

It's a well know issue that Linus is not a fan of the new GPLv3 (previous GPLv3 coverage here, here, here and here). A group of kernel maintainers have now released a document, entitled The Dangers and Problems with GPLv3, that explains their position. Here is the document preamble:
This document is a position statement on the GNU General Public License version 3 (in its current Draft 2 form) and its surrounding process issued by some of the Maintainers of the Linux Kernel speaking purely in their role as kernel maintainers. In no regard should any opinion expressed herein be construed to represent the views of any entities employing or being associated with any of the authors.
The document is a fairly in depth overview of the current position of many high profile kernel contributors and contains a mix of history, goals and current perceived problems with the GPLv3. They bring up specific issue with “DRM Clauses”, “Additional Restrictions Clause” and “Patents Provisions”. Overall, if this is a topic that interests you I'd encourage you to head over to LWN and read the entire article. As I've stated before there seems to still be some significant resistance to the GPLv3 and we could be in real danger of a situation where some GPL software is incompatible with other GPL software. That's a situation that isn't good for anyone. One hopes these issues can be worked out amicably and things can move forward smoothly. Given how adamant both sides seem in their views, especially with regard to DRM, I'm not sure this is going to be the case. As always, this is a topic I'll be posting updates to as it unfolds. In a related story, a poll of kernel developers was recently posted with the following results (full poll details available here):

Total Votes Cast 29
Average Vote -2.0 +/- 0.7
Lowest Vote -3.0
Highest Vote 0.0
Median Vote -2.0

–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Google testing Sun's OpenSolaris

September 21, 2006 Leave a comment

It looks like Google may be experimenting with OpenSolaris, according to a couple sources. From the article:
Google runs a stripped-down version of Red Hat Linux specially modified by its engineers. But another source, a Solaris systems administrator who recently interviewed for a job at Google, said he was told the company plans to create and test its own modified version of OpenSolaris.
“I am 100% certain that there are literally dozens of people horsing around with OpenSolaris inside Google,” said Stephen Arnold, a technology consultant and author of The Google Legacy. Moving to OpenSolaris, he said, would be a natural move for Google, with its large number of former Sun employees and its never-ending drive to push the performance of its data centers to the hilt. But Arnold said he doubts that Google, which finished rolling out its highly-secret data centers in 2004, is deploying OpenSolaris widely yet. “Will it quickly replace Linux anytime soon? No,” he said.
Now it's clear that Linux is fairly entrenched at Google and literally dozens of people at Google are always “horsing around” with all kinds of projects that will never come to fruition. That being said, what would the implications of Google dumping Linux for OpenSolaris be for the Linux community? I think the loss would be two fold. First, Google engineers put a lot of time and work into various aspects of Linux that end up moving upstream. Losing that would be bad, but in the end other companies would likely take up most of the slack. The other element is the hit to the reputation Linux has. “If it's good enough for Google..” is something you'll here quite a bit at Linux shops. While it wouldn't be a ding Linux couldn't recover from and it wouldn't actually impact the quality of Linux in any way, perception means a lot; especially in the corporate world. “Why did they make the migration” would be the subject of a massive amount of scrutiny, and rightfully so. Google is seen as a technically savvy company with talented engineers that really know their stuff. For them to move would be a huge seal of approval for OpenSolaris and something I think Sun would absolutely love to see happen. All in all, this is just another rumor at the moment, but it's definitely one the Linux world will be keeping a close eye on.
–jeremy
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Filed under Google, Linux, Main Page, Open Source, Sun

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