Apple Opens Up: Kernel, Mac OS Forge, iCal Server, Bonjour, Launchd

August 9, 2006 Leave a comment

After taking a bit of heat for appearing to have closed the XNU source, Apple just announce that XNU and more are being released as Open Source. The projects will be hosted at Mac OS Forge, which will be replacing the OpenDarwin servers and may serve as a home for external (non-Apple) Open Source projects in the future. The one thing I found a bit odd while the previous story was making its rounds was how much heat Apple was taking. They aren't an Open Source company, and the don't really claim to be. They do, however, support Open Source where they feel it's advantageous or beneficial. That's more than can be said for most proprietary software companies. My guess is that the delay was a result of them not wanting the PPC->Intel news to leak too early, or simply that they didn't have sufficient time to cleanup the code for release. It could be something more nefarious though (such as them intending to really close that source and just now changing their mind). The former seems much more likely, but in the end we'll almost certainly never know.
The current list of what Apple is releasing is quite impressive from the brief look I gave it. Especially compelling is the Darwin Calendar Server (also known as iCal Server). This may have the best potential to serve as an Exchange replacement as anything I've seen to date (although it should be noted that Zimbra makes a really good product). Also interesting was the mention of “Apple Teams” on the list of supported clients, which also includes Mozilla Thunderbird. It looks like a wiki-based client that will support team collaboration and shared calendaring. On the topic of licensing, most releases are being done under the Apache license, and in fact some apps that were previous released under the Apple Public Source License have been converted. It's good to see Apple doing their part in cutting down on license proliferation.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Jeremy Zawodny and Ubuntu Linux on his Thinkpad T43p

August 8, 2006 1 Comment

Jeremy Zawodny just tried Ubuntu 6.06 on a recently purchased Thinkpad T43p. His thoughts? WOW! A quote:
Given all that, I'm shocked and amazed. It works. It just works.
I think this is a very good sign that desktop Linux is well on its way. It's not there yet, but we've crossed an important barrier. I see Jeremy and users like him as the next wave of Linux adopters. They're technically savvy and have tried Linux before, only to give up for various reasons. For the most part, those “various reasons” are almost completely a thing of the past. That's significant. I've heard good things about SLED (Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop) as well. One of these days I'll have to try Ubuntu and SLED to see what I'm missing out on. In the meantime, it's encouraging to see users like Jeremy coming back to Linux and liking it.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Couple Quick Followups

August 6, 2006 Leave a comment

I had a could quick followups to previous stories, so I'll lump them together in this post.
– On the topic of Ubuntu still being a fairly new offering in the server market, it looks like they now have a Ubuntu Billboard up in California. It's right near the exit for the Oracle offices, which has at least one Oracle employee wondering what Canonical is up to.
– Newsforge has posted Torvalds' comments on GPLv3 committees refuted which is a response to the piece I posted about here. The GPLv3 issue looks like one that is going to get really heated, which isn't going to be good for anyone (at least not anyone in the F/OSS world).
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Lenovo to Load Linux on ThinkPad Laptop

August 5, 2006 Leave a comment

In a topic that I've covered quite a bit over the years, Lenovo will be announcing a ThinkPad with Linux preloaded at the upcoming LinuxWorld. As I've mentioned many times, OEM support on a large scale is critical to those who'd like to see mainstream Linux adoption. This is the first time in a while that a major OEM has announced something related to Linux preloads. Remember that Dell and others will load Linux as a special order for large clients. Not a lot of details on this deal yet, but I still don't see it as that break through deal. It's specific to a single model and I'd guess that the Microsoft Windows XP Professional [standard] [Lenovo recommended] line on the order page won't be going away. In the end, the deal that we need (and the one that will signal mainstream adoption to me) is one where Linux is an available option across a manufacturers product line. No specific models, no special order – simply a regular option. Unfortunately, we're almost certainly a ways off on this. How long? That remains to be seen.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Why Red Hat will go bust because of Ubuntu

August 4, 2006 1 Comment

In this Free Software Magazine article, Tony Mobily gives the reasons why he thinks Red Hat will go under. The main reasons he gives are their departure from the desktop market and Ubuntu. While I also wasn't a fan of the way Red Hat did what they did, i think it's a bit myopic to be calling for their demise. The year of “Linux on the Desktop” has been declared so many times that it's now an industry joke. While it's absolutely true that Microsoft gained much of their dominance by attacking the desktop first, that was a different era that played by different rules. Linux on the desktop is at a very tenuous point right now. From a stability standpoint it is so much better than Windows that it's not even a contest. Same goes for security. But, from a usability and application standpoint it's still not that close. No amount of wishing will make it so. We still don't have out of the box mp3 support. No current Flash and no Photoshop at all. Many things are still a manual configure. What does that mean? The Linux desktop is the desktop of choice for many of us. In reality though, we've not even caught up to the Mac yet, so why some people seem to think it will overtake Windows in a year is beyond me. Red Hat could not attain any semblance of desktop penetration, so they bailed. I think they could have made some different moves, but of course hindsight is 20/20. I think their server offering is of a high enough quality and is entrenched enough that many people will stick with it, at least for the mid term (and by mid term I am talking many many years here). Don't forget, to many enterprises Red Hat is Linux on multiple levels. On to Ubuntu. I have to admit, I really like what they are doing. To be fair though they have very little track record and have not proven what they'll be able to do once the money Mark so graciously donated is gone. They have to build a viable business before that money is gone, or else they're in big trouble. Even if they do build a viable business, I'd be more worried if I was Novell than if I was Red Hat. I have no doubts that the enterprise distro market will heat up, but Ubuntu is still a very new offering. Desktop success doesn't translate directly into server success with Linux. You want Oracle support for Ubuntu? Nope. Well, surely an Open Source company like Zimbra will mention Ubuntu on their downloads page. Also a no (although they do have beta Debian support). Same goes for EMC, Veritas, and most other enterprise products. In the end, I think it's a bit too early in the game to see who will be the eventual dominant player (or more likely, players). It could be Red Hat, Novell and Ubuntu – but realistically it could be something else. Remember though, people no longer want one single dominant player (and for good reason). If I had to guess I'd say all major distributions will be in the picture for the foreseeable future.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

The LQ Bookmarks site is moving

August 3, 2006 Leave a comment

About a year ago, we released LQ Bookmarks, a site for Social Bookmarking, tagging and annotating all things Linux and Open Source. The site has seen decent adoption, but not to the level I'd have liked. I think one thing holding the site back was the lack of integrated logins. We're closing in on 300,000 registered LQ members and we were not taking advantage of that. Also, the site was very functional, but a bit plain even by LQ standards (where functionality trumps design every time). I am happy to announce that we just relaunched the site at http://www.linuxquestions.org/bookmarks/. The new site has an updated look, a unified LQ login, supports the del.icio.us API, has a nice tag cloud and more. If you used the old site you can import your bookmarks to the new site with a single click. The site should be considered BETA, but seems fairly stable at the moment. As always your feedback is welcome. We'll start redirecting tags from the old site to the new in a few weeks.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Ellison Talks Up Red Hat Linux

August 2, 2006 Leave a comment

It seems the rumors that Oracle may offer Red Hat support are intensifying. One thing that seems to be slightly misunderstood by the MSM is that Oracle can't simply redistribute RHEL. What they could do is offer a RHEL-compatible version of Linux, as CentOS does, that is completely devoid of the Red Hat name and any associated logos. This would be a fairly inexpensive thing to do for Oracle, and to be honest it doesn't have a lot of down side to it. Ellison would get the entire stack that he seems to desperately want and customers would get a single neck to choke, which they love. As I mentioned in my previous post on this topic though, I don't necessarily think this would be a bad thing for Red Hat. It would serve to further solidify Linux as the platform of choice for Oracle and really serve to further validate Linux as a server in general (not that it's even needed any more at this point). While RHAT may lose some support contracts to ORCL in the short run, the mind share that Linux would gain would almost certainly benefit Red Hat in the mid and long term. Now, if I were Microsoft and Sun, this would worry me much more. They have the most to lose.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Ballmer Analyzes Microsoft's 'One Big' Vista Mistake

August 2, 2006 Leave a comment

This <a href="http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarchives.jhtml;jsessionid=ZEQ0I0LMYJC1MQSNDLPCKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleId=191600739"CRN article covers a recent meeting Steve Ballmer had with industry financial analysts. From the article we get such Ballmer quotes as:

We made an upfront decision that was, I'll say, incredibly strategic and brilliant and wise — and was not implementable,” Ballmer said.
We've been fortunate. There is nothing that we have undertaken — with a couple of exceptions like Microsoft Bob that I'll cop to in advance — where we have decided that we have not succeeded and let's stop,” Ballmer said. “We've either succeeded, or we're still telling you we're going to succeed.”
I don't understand either quote either. I'd not call any decision that is “not implementable” by admission of the company CEO as strategic, brilliant or wise. If I were a Microsoft employee, I'd be a little worried by that comment. In the end, it seems they may have finally learned a lesson that Joel posted about way back in 2000. It's easy to say hindsight is 20/20, but I guess sometimes foresight can be also. The second quote is equally as odd. Multiple things Microsoft has tried have failed miserably, and in fact he points out one of the most egregious examples himself..in the middle of saying nothing hasn't succeeded. I guess one shouldn't be surprised that Microsoft's stock has stagnated during much of Ballmer's tenure. Still no news on whether he'll follow Bill and step down.
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Second Discussion Draft of GPLv3 Released

July 30, 2006 1 Comment

The second discussion draft of the GNU General Public License version 3 was released on 2006 July 27, along with the first discussion draft of the GNU Lesser General Public License. While the DRM clause has been updated and clarified, Linus still doesn't likeit. From the CNET article:
“Say I'm a hardware manufacturer. I decide I love some particular piece of open-source software, but when I sell my hardware, I want to make sure it runs only one particular version of that software, because that's what I've validated. So I make my hardware check the cryptographic signature of the binary before I run it,” Torvalds said. “The GPLv3 doesn't seem to allow that, and in fact, most of the GPLv3 changes seem to be explicitly designed exactly to not allow the above kind of use, which I don't think it has any business doing.”
The DRM debate here is getting quite heated. Out of my disdain for DRM, I initially disagreed with Linus. As I think about it more though, I am starting to agree with him. Let me explain why. His contention (or at least my interpretation of it) is not that DRM is good, it's that it's not within the rights of a software license to put restrictions on a hardware device. I think that's true and the clause is also a statement that markets don't work. If some hardware vendors out there wants to make a device that only runs software version foo, I can't see a problem with that (as long as the hardware manufacturer is explicit in this requirement). You still have full access to the code and are free to run it elsewhere. You're freedom is not limited and you'd have bought the device knowing full well what the restrictions are. You are free not to purchase such a device and if a sufficient number of people do not, the company will go out of business – ie. the market made the decision. Now, let me go from hypothetical to a situation where I think this would actually be useful. I'd like to see all voting software Open Sourced. The nature of voting in democratic counties is such that we should have full access to the code that decides our leaders. A single bug could be absolutely detrimental and have astounding implications (Bush for a third term anyone?). The more eyes on that code the better. BUT, the voting machines themselves should certainly only run the exact version of the code that has been certified for obvious reasons. The GPLv3 seems to preclude that possibility. DRM aside, it seems like many other large companies, such as HP, have problems with other clauses. All in all, it seems like v3 of the GPL is going to have a very rough time gaining adoption and may serve to further polarize the Open Source licensing landscape, where concerns over proliferation already abound.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Google announces hosting for open source projects

July 29, 2006 Leave a comment

The Google service I mentioned previously has been officially announced. Google Code Project Hosting is a place for Open Source project that fall under an approved license to host their code. While it shares some features with SourceForge, it's a much more minimalist approach (although they do add that it's not yet feature complete). They do specifically state that they do not intend to compete directly with SF:
Stein says, “We really like SourceForge, and we don't want to hurt SourceForge” or take away projects. Instead, Stein says that the goal is to see what Google can do with the Google infrastructure, to provide an alternative for open source projects.
DiBona says that it's a “direct result of Greg concentrating on what open source projects need. Most bugtrackers are informed by what corporations” and large projects need, whereas Google's offering is just about what open source developers need.
While Google does not offer project web site hosting (Google pages isn't integrated, but is an alternative), forums, etc. – many SF projects don't seem to use them anyway. What Google is offering seems to directly target the places where you hear the most complaints about SF, and that's: reliability, search and version control. You have to assume it will be reliable as it's Google. The same goes for the quality of the search (although to be fair the SF search has improved somewhat recently). The CVS support at SF was horrific and they still seem to be ironing out the kinks in their SVN support. Google is offering SVN with their custom Big Table backend, so it should be extremely scalable. The issue tracker the site uses is one developed by Google. I'd guess the long term impact of this on SF won't be clear until we see what the Google offering looks like feature complete. For now, both sides seem to be looking forward to a peaceful almost symbiotic coexistence, which shows the maturity and solidarity of the Open Source community.
–jeremy
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Filed under Google, Main Page, Open Source

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