Microsoft to Open Windows to Please EU

January 25, 2006 Leave a comment

So says this article in Forbes. Now, that's fantastic, but that's not what the EU wanted and is mostly useless. From the original EU press release:
As regards interoperability, Microsoft is required, within 120 days, to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers. This will enable rival vendors to develop products that can compete on a level playing field in the work group server operating system market. The disclosed information will have to be updated each time Microsoft brings to the market new versions of its relevant products.
To the extent that any of this interface information might be protected by intellectual property in the European Economic Area(6), Microsoft would be entitled to reasonable remuneration. The disclosure order concerns the interface documentation only, and not the Windows source code, as this is not necessary to achieve the development of interoperable products.
That's right, they specifically said they didn't need source code. What they want is accurate interface documentation. Why? Because in this context, the source code is not of use due to patents. If one of the Samba developers so much as looked at the code and then added a related fix to Samba, both the code and the developer would be legally tainted. What does that mean? That they wouldn't look at the code, of course! What would help, and what was asked for, was something that would be both useful and not legally encumbering. Full and accurate interface documentation. No more undocumented API's, hidden hooks and other measures that don't allow fair competition. What Microsoft has done here (and brilliantly so, from a PR standpoint) is appear to the average person to be offering more than what was asked for, while at the same time offering much less. There are still more details to come on this, so who knows – maybe the only code delivery methods will be braille and/or microfeesh. I've seen no official response from the EU yet and I notice a court date of April 24-28 mentioned, but I hope this move isn't allowed to satisfy the Remedy section of the case.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

PHP 5.1.x and APC Problems

January 24, 2006 Leave a comment

A quick update, since there seems to be more interest than I had anticipated asking for our experience with the upgraded LQ infrastructure. Apache 2.2.x has been absolutely rock solid as well as slightly faster (anecdotally) than the old 1.3.x. Nothing too substantial, but based on the CHANGELOG and the last month running it for LQ, I'd suggest the 2.2.x branch to anyone that asks. PHP 5.1.x has also been solid and some of the new features when compared to 4.4.x are fairly handy. If you're not tied to 4.x for BC reasons, I'd say go for that upgrade also. One HUGE caveat is that APC has been extremely unstable for us. I'm not sure if it's PHP5+APC or just that we are running different code, but we have seen consistent APC-related segfaults. There are many bug reports about it in the PECL bug tracker, so hopefully it'll be addressed soon. In the meantime, if you need to use APC for performance reasons, you'll definitely want some kind of watchdog on Apache to make sure things are running smoothly.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Added a Little Social Networking to LQ

January 23, 2006 Leave a comment

With the number of registered members that LQ has (over 200,000), I though it made sense to add a little social networking to the site. Some of the bare basics were there, but the data was hard to get at. You could add someone to your buddy list, for example, but you couldn't easily view the network. As of a couple minutes ago, that changed. The feature is still in beta and is really in its early concept phase, but you can view the network starting at any arbitrary point now. Here's my network as an example (Yes, I really should add some members to my friends list). I can see some other items that would make this more interesting and it's not fully integrated into the site yet, since it's in beta. I'd also envision some other changes on the horizon to help you find other members with similar interests for example. Like I said before, the redesign was only the beginning – we have some cool stuff on the horizon (and we'll continue to fix bugs and make those small usability improvements along the way too).
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page

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

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