Just Added FOAF Support to Your LQ Profile

January 22, 2006 Leave a comment

We all know that one of the benefits of OSS is the ability to avoid vendor lockin. One thing that often gets overlooked, however, is data lockin. As “Web Services” get more and more popular, the importance of data lockin will become more clear. One project that aims to help in this regard is FOAF, or Friend of a Friend. Based on RDF, FOAF allows the expression of personal information and relationships in a standardized way. I'm happy to report that as of today, you can get FOAF info for any LQ member via their member profile page. I'm still polishing things up a bit, but everything is working as of now. We probably should have supported this a while ago, but better let than never…
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

LinuxQuestions.org is a Sponsor of the Upcoming OSBC

January 19, 2006 Leave a comment

As I announced first on the LQ Podcast, LQ is a sponsor of the upcoming OSBC. The Open Source Business Conference is brought to you by IDG, which also puts on the LinuxWorld Expo. The OSBC is in San Fransisco on Fed 14-15. I haven't bought my plane ticket yet, but I do hope to attend the conference. If any of my blog readers will be going and want to touch base, do drop me a line.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source, podcast

What do the HoTMaiL Admins Think of the Windows Gui?

January 17, 2006 3 Comments

From this article:
BF: Are there scaling reasons to think about the benefits of a command line for managing over a GUI, or are there other things to think about?
PS: Our operations group never wants to rely on any sort of user interface. Everything has to be scriptable and run from some sort of command line. That's the only way you're going to be able to execute scripts and gather the results over thousands of machines.
I really don't know how Windows admins consistently deal with the limitations of the Windows GUI. While a GUI may be fine, and even preferred in a desktop environment, a GUI in the server environment is nothing short of crippling for a variety of reasons. The lack of easy scripting, the limitation of only being able to access features that are exposed via the GUI, the added overhead of actually running the GUI; the list goes on, but I'll stop there. I also find it interesting that there is an allusion to the fact that some customizations were needed in parts of the Windows stack to scale so far. Of course, the only way that would be possible, would be if you were part of Microsoft (which 99.9999% of the world is clearly not) and had access to (some of) the code, like HoTMaiL does, being part of MSN. There is there power of Open Source – 100% of the world has access. The ability to scratch your own itch is something that I'd not want to be without, especially in an environment that's so conducive to itching.
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—jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

First Draft of GPL Version 3 Released

January 16, 2006 Leave a comment

The first draft of the GPL V3 was released earlier today. I found this HTML diff of v2 vs. v3 useful for quickly seeing what has changed. I am not a lawyer, and the GPL sure does contain a lot of legalese. Of course, as a legal document that hopes to stand up in court it actually has to be written in that language, but the “human readable” version of the CC is always something I've liked. It gives the average person the ability to see what the legalese means, while keeping the full version for lawyers, judges and masochists. A cursory glance at the text and I noticed a couple valuable additions. The anti-DRM clause, the “Licensing of Patents” section and the fact that this version seems to have slightly more hope of being compatible with other open licenses. The one thing I didn't see but expected, was clarification of how the proliferation of web services impacts the GPL. What I mean by that is, if someone takes a GPL'd program, edits the source and then only offers it as a web service – are they required to release their modifications? I don't see that addressed in any way – but if someone with more legal knowledge than me does, please do drop me a line. The one thing that I've always found interesting about v3 of the GPL is that the Linux kernel itself will probably never use it. The kernel includes this:Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.
It's my understanding that the above means that anyone who has contributed code is doing so only under GPL v2, so moving to v3 would require every person who has ever submitted code to agree to the upgrade, which seems like an unsurmountable barrier to me. I've always found the auto-upgrade by default clause odd anyway. I can see how it's useful – you always get the latest and greatest without too much hassle. But what if the latest version contains a clause you'd not have released your program under?
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

An Answer from the Blogosphere

January 16, 2006 Leave a comment

Gotta love the blogosphere. I asked a question about full referrer info in Google Analytics a while back, and just noticed that someone linked back to my post with an answer …Or almost an answer that is. While that is much closer than I was able to get on my own, it's still not full info. It will give you a list if domains (which is oddly available elsewhere also) and a list of files from that domain (which is new info to me) but it strips all parameters. This makes a lot of the information useless unfortunately. Let's take Distrowatch as a referrer. With the striping of parameters, 100% of the traffic comes from table.php. It would be much more useful to be able to see which distros actually referred the visitor, for a variety of reasons. I'd say it's more than useful actually – it's critical. In the end it means that I also have to run an additional tool if I want to see what's really driving traffic to LQ. It sure would be convenient if I didn't have to.
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–jeremy

Filed under Main Page, Open Source

Use of Linux at NASA

January 12, 2006 Leave a comment

A different perspective on Linux use, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. Contrary to what you'll see almost anywhere else, they use and love Linux on the Desktop, but don't consider it viable for the server. From the article: “Our personal view is that Linux, period, is only for the desktop. We don't run our main servers on Linux, because there are too many flaws in main Linux kernel,” he said.
 I must admit that Linux stability is not what it needs to be in a certain context for some applications. I'm not talking stability as far as crashing (although I still see more cases than I'd like, Linux is rock solid if you configure it correctly on known good hardware). What I am talking about is from a life-cycle standpoint. RHEL and SLES have done a ton in this regard, but they are both relatively new and still have a little to learn. They both will get there though, it's just a matter of when. What is truly exceptional about Linux is that it's scaling in two nearly diametrically opposed directions (big iron vs. embedded) at the same time. Not only that, but it's doing a good job in both directions. Awesome.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Sun and Apple Almost Merged Three Times

January 12, 2006 1 Comment

So says the legendary Bill Joy in this Register article. There are some definite similarities between the companies. Both produce higher cost, slick products (note that for Apple slick means styling and for Sun slick means something different). Both are California based companies with a focus on UNIX-related technologies. Apple has a strong desktop showing and is trying to get into the server market. Sun has a strong server showing and has tried multiple times to get into the desktop market. So, there are some obvious synergies (although I cringe just typing that word) between the two companies. I see one huge problem that would prevent them from merging though. Steve Jobs and Scott McNealy are both high profile CEO's that have lengthy ties to their respective companies. They are both founders in fact. Who would the CEO of this new company be? Since it's clear they both have differing vision of future direction, what direction would this new company follow? Do you think either of these two are ready to split the limelight? Additionally, having to maintain two UNIX-based OS's would be a huge expense but getting rid of either one would alienate way too many people. In the end, I just can't se it happening (although these days you never know).
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–jeremy

Filed under Main Page, Open Source

While on the Topic of Google

January 11, 2006 3 Comments

While on the topic of Google, I ran across this interesting read from Jason about his predictions for Google for 2006. He was lucky enough to be backstage after the recent Google keynote at CES. He foresees a calendar (which I think most people do) and an office suite, but goes a huge step further by prophesising: by the end of the year they will come out with a Linux-based OS and offer it for free to PC makers. Those PC makers will love Google for giving them a free OS and Google will love extending the reach of their money maker: google Adsense.
Now that would be extremely interesting, although I'm not sure 2006 is the right time frame for a Linux-based GoogleOS. I think at some point one is nearly inevitable though. One bit of news that already did come from Google in 2006 is that they released their own DRM. Isn't that borderline evil? I still have never seen an argument that lead me to think that DRM was anything but extremely bad for consumers. According to this article, Google Video is only going to work on Windows, so not only are they creating yet another silo for video options, they're creating yet another silo that we can't even check out. Not exactly how I had hoped they'd start the year out.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Google Pack Released

January 11, 2006 1 Comment

Contrary to many of the rumors that were swirling, Google did not announce a cheap PC at CES. What they did announce was the Google Pack. Am I the only one this doesn't make sense to? Let's put aside the “Google Pack is only available for Windows XP” requirement for a moment (although it's actually worse than that… it's Windows XP with Administrator privileges). A cobbled together mix of unrelated software (some of questionable stability) from a variety of vendors with no integration seems like an uncharacteristically poor decision for Google. Add to that the fact that Norten is actually a time limited product and it gets even stranger. Some of the products focus on some segments and some focus on completely different ones. Firefox is a great decision, but no gaim when they recently hired the projects lead developer? What is the vision for this product and where is it bringing Google and the consumer? I have no idea. What's worse, this actually would seem to help one of their biggest competitors (Microsoft) in multiple ways. Strange indeed.
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–jeremy

Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Linux/Unix Vulnerabilities Outnumber Microsoft Windows' 3 To 1

January 6, 2006 4 Comments

Or do they? This is a fantastic example of numbers not meaning anything if you're just throwing something against the wall. Actually, these numbers are less than useless, they're just plain silly. The original stats are from the US-CERT site, but that fantastic headline came from this article. From the article: Tallies kept by the U.S. government's computer security group show that Linux and Unix operating systems faced nearly three times the number of vulnerabilities in 2005 than did Microsoft's often-maligned Windows.
In the US-CERT (United Stated Computer Emergency Readiness Team) year-end vulnerability summary, Linux/Unix accounted for a whopping 2,328 vulnerabilities, about 45 percent of the 5,198 total.
Now, before you get worried… let's dig into this numbers a bit. First, why are they lumping Linux, UNIX and OS X into a single group and then comparing it to a single vendor? Would you lump Lexus, BMW, Infinite, Toyota, Honda, Porsche, Volkswagen, Saab and Volvo into a single group, compare them to Chevy and then say that Chevy's are safer? I'd hope not. It gets worse though. They note only include things that are in no way related to the OS (GNU GNATS Gen-Index Arbitrary Local File Disclosure/Overwrite, Yukihiro Matsumoto Ruby Infinite Loop Remote Denial of Service (Updated), and Yapig Cross-Site Scripting & HTTP POST Requests Validity are three good examples, but you'll need to take a look at the full list to get a real appreciation) but they include multiple reports from different *NIX vendors about the same issue as different bugs. A bzip vulnerability is on there 10 times! The disturbing reality is, someone giving this a cursory glance might believe these asinine numbers. Never mind that they include safari in the *NIX number, even though that can't possibly impact you if you run Linux. Complete junk. Beyond the stupidity of the numbers though, there is a bigger issue. Security issues in Open Source actually get spotted and fixed on a regular basis. This is a *good* thing and it makes you much more secure in the end. The security by obscurity and closed source aspect of Windows means that a bug is only acknowledged and fixed when Microsoft decides to do it. Remember those png/jpeg issues from a couple years ago? They are just getting fixed now in Windows, where the Open Source world addressed them in 2003. You decide what is more security, but always look into the numbers you are given as opposed to just reading a headline that is meant to get readers. I look forward to the day when journalism like this just doesn't happen. Why do I think I'll be waiting a while?
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

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