LinuxWorld Canada Visionary Series – John 'maddog' Hall

April 20, 2005 Leave a comment

While I was a tad late to this session by maddog, entitled “Free and Open Source Software: Back to the Future”, the part I did catch was very good. His first point was that, until the early 80's the only way you ever got software was with the source (even though it wasn't necessarily called “Open Source” at that time). Back then software was often owned by the purchasing entity on contract, instead of licenses like it is today. He went on to cover why software patents are evil and how they really stifle innovation. He made the point that in most cases, patents come after software has already been written and are the work of lawyers – not programmers. He explained that since large companies are able to build large stockpiles of patents, they are able to negotiate with each other and avoid problems…while the little nimble companies with no or few patents end up being the losers in the current system. He went as far as to say that given the choice between the Devil, George W. Bush and Patents that he'd pick the Devil. He also wondered why software (an art form in his opinion) has patents but neither music or painting does. He asked, “what if Beethoven had to redo the 9th symphony due to patent infringement” or “what if Michelangelo had to repaint the Sistine Chapel because someone claimed they had patented a brush stroke he had used”.
Finally, he covered some proprietary myths and some advantages of OSS. One example he used was that, Microsoft once touted to him that one of their products supported almost 50 languages. After congratulating them, he explained that, with OSS since anyone who finds a native language missing from a product can contribute to the project, it lead to the first ever word processor supporting Swahili…or all 18 official languages of India plus many of the local tribal dialects, plus – well, you get the idea. Overall a very good session – thanks maddog!
–jeremy

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LinuxWorld Canada – Day 1

April 19, 2005 Leave a comment

I'm back from day 1 of LinuxWorld Canada. The show definitely has a different feel that the other LinuxWorlds, mostly as a result of the expo floor being shared between LinuxWorld and NetworkWorld. The conference is more “suit” than even the East coast US show and vendors such as Cisco are present, which is not something you'd see normally. The expo is similar in size to LWE UK, which is to say a bit smaller than the US counterparts. Most of the vendors I talked to said that while the show was smaller and therefore had less attendees, the people who did attend where highly qualified. What this means coming from a vendor is that there were a large number of decision makers present – Government attendees seemed to be particularly numerous. As always I had some great disccusions and it's always good to be able to sit down face to face and talk. Just by chance when I sat down to grab a bite to eat I ended up next to Brian Proffitt and had a next chat with him. Seems I may end up a judge at one of the future LinuxWorlds. Next, I'll give my take on some of the sessions I attended. Stay tuned.
–jeremy

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The Importance of Open Document Formats

April 18, 2005 Leave a comment

This article, while very short, begins to underscore the importance of open document formats. Without them, your data is locked in and you are beholden to a third-party to get at it. It should be obvious why this is “a bad thing”. Especially for governments and the public sector, who should all be looking *really* closely at moving toward all data they have being in a format that they can ensure will always be accessible (ie. an open format).
–jeremy

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LinuxWorld Canada

April 17, 2005 Leave a comment

Just a reminder that Canada, which is being held in Toronto, will run from April 19th-20th. I'll be making the trip, so if you'd like to meet up for any reason, drop me a line. Remember, since LQ is a show sponsor, I am able to offer you a free pass.
–jeremy

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Tim O'Reilly on Self-publishing

April 17, 2005 1 Comment

Tim has posted his comments on self-publishing. As many of you know, I have a book in the very early stages and I choose not to go the self published route. Reading what Tim wrote reaffirms my decisions, which makes me happy – Tim is smart and I trust his comments.
–jeremy

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Gmail Now Supports Feeds

April 17, 2005 Leave a comment

It looks like now supports feeds. This feature doesn't seem to be enabled for me yet, but a screenshot is included in the linked post. I've still not found a web-based aggregator that I like, maybe this will be it. Is anyone else seeing this yet?
–jeremy

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BitKeeper and Linux II

April 16, 2005 3 Comments

This seems to be getting uglier and uglier. I've still not had the amount of time needed to properly sort out all the info here, but I'm a bit surprised the fallout has been this bad. There is a real danger of the community becoming fractured and polarized here…we need to avoid that. Tridge did what he does (and is damn good at) and it's hard to believe that his intentions were bad or that he was doing something with malice. At the same time, Linus has always been of the opinion that commercial products, even closed source ones, are not inherently evil and that using them, if they are clearly the best, is fine. This annoyed a lot of people, but at the end of the day Linux is still Linus project whether you agree with him or not. You can read more about how Linus feel on the subject, which he calls the real difference between “Open Source” and “Free Software” here. At any rate, what's done is done and we need to get this sorted and put behind us. Linus is writing git for SCM and both sides are clearly a bit agitated here. I for one will continue to watch this *extremely* closely as the impact could be so far reaching.
–jeremy

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Munich Chooses Debian as its Distro

April 16, 2005 1 Comment

Looks like Munich has selected a Distro for its Linux migration. While it was Suse, along with IBM, that did the original year-long pilot, the city choose to go with for the final rollout. One has to wonder if Suse would have been selected if it was still an independent Germany company, and not a division of US based Novell. The Debian distro will be customized for this job and they hope to begin the migration by the end of the year. This is one of the largest government Linux migrations ever and its outcome could have a huge impact on future uptake of Linux in government, so this is definitely something to keep a close eye on. It's so important in fact that it was reported that when the original decision was made, MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer cut short a ski vacation in Switzerland to travel to Munich to speak with the mayor. Clearly, whatever he said wasn't able to sway the decision.
–jeremy

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Windows XP SP2 Now Required to Get Security Updates

April 15, 2005 1 Comment

While it comes as no surprise to me (at least from some of the reports that I have heard) that Windows XP SP2 uptake has been slow, it is surprising that Microsoft made it official that PCs must have SP2 in order for Windows XP updates and security patches to be downloaded. Considering the low percentage of XP machines that currently have SP2, is limiting the ability to install security patches really the way to go? Especially this soon? Seems you don't have a choice though, which makes me glad I don't admin 1000 corporate WinXP boxes. The thing that strikes me as odd about SP2 is that many of the XP vulnerabilities I see seem to effect machines with SP2 installed anyway. Once again…vendor lockin==bad.
–jeremy

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SCO's Revenue Continues to Plunge

April 14, 2005 Leave a comment

Wow, it has been a while since a SCOXE related post here. Almost hard to believe that the case is still going on. It should come as no surprise, though, that SCO's revenue continues to fall. They claim to anticipate that their UNIX business will see a turnaround with the next release, codenamed Legend, but I'll believe that when I see it. Two other interesting bits from the article. 1) McBride accused popular legal news site Groklaw of being a front for anti-SCO parties and that its editor, Pamela Jones, isn't who she says she is. They're currently “digging into who Pam Jones is, and we're close to the bottom.” Bottom of what, I'm not sure. She's someone who got interested in the case and did a lot of hard work to dig into it. 2) McBride also stated that SCO has reviewed Sun's plan to Open Source Solaris and that they are 100% OK with it. They feel that there is “no problem with what Sun is planning to do and that it will not hurt SCO's Unix intellectual property rights”. Seems a bit odd to me, but with all that has been going on with SCO, you really have to expect the unexpected.
–jeremy

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