● 04.22.09

● Links 22/04/2009: Danish Success Story with Free Software

Posted in News Roundup at 7:46 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• So, if you’re like me and have voided the warranties of all the other electronics in your house, but have yet to sink your teeth into your poor little Western Digital MyBook World – likely cowering in the corner pleading for you to put down the screwdriver – here are some helpful resources on getting the most out this handy little NAS box that just so happens to be running BusyBox linux.

• Things move quickly in the world of open source, and I like this. With my particular favorite flavor of Linux, Ubuntu, I get a new release every six months. I don’t have to wait a couple of years. Ubuntu is particularly aggressive in its release cycle, but–with a handful of notable exceptions–it’s rare for other distros to take more than 12 months to make a new release.

• What this means is that I get the latest and greatest software that’s on offer. I can ride the wave of the very latest technology. Because the updates are gradual, rather than step-changes, the actual process of updating is much easier than you might expect it to be.

• We all know how secure an operating system Linux is when compared to the more widely used Windows. So I think one of the best ways to achieve an extra-reliable hard-to-hack automated polling system is simply to use Linux.

• Installing games on a Linux distro like Ubuntu can be quite adventurous, regarding dependencies. The Playdeb project tries to simplify this.

• Both Sun and Oracle are members of the Linux Foundation, with Oracle a prominent supporter of the Foundation with its platinum membership. We look forward to working with the combined company to further the growth of open source, open standards, and Linux.

• Try Ubuntu first. There are multiple versions offered at any one time, but for those seeking stability, look for the “LTS” label. Never allow yourself to be tricked into using the most current just because it’s the latest and greatest. Six months from now you’ll have to update, and it will surely break things. If you don’t consider your computer a hobby, stick with the LTS releases, because they are good for a couple of years. Next, join the Ubuntu forums; it’s the best and cheapest support system you’ll ever find for installation and initial setup. Be prepared to explain every time you aren’t a hobbyist and LTS is essential to your purpose. Don’t be drawn into discussions which revolve around why “you just gotta run the latest”. Those who actually can help you the most will understand.

• Ian Ralph, an IT manager at a private school in Sydney, called Sceggs, became a fan of open source technologies and Linux twelve years ago when he built the school’s first web server using Linux.

• Undoubtedly the biggest upset in the world of tech over the last ten years has been the demise of Microsoft. However, the end had been obvious as early as 2009. The corporation narrowly fought off an antitrust judgment under the (first) Clinton and Bush administrations. But it also developed fatal issues with its product line.

• It was the vintage Windows XP operating system that caused the rot to set in that brought down the company. XP had proved a best-seller in its day, but became a significant thorn in Microsoft’s side when it attempted to introduce new products.

Kernel Space

• ZFS may be locked into the Solaris operating system but “Butter FS” is on the horizon and it’s boasting more features and better performance.

Applications

• Foxit Software today is announcing the official Linux version of Foxit Reader 1.0, a freely downloadable PDF viewing application. With this release, it now supports the ability to reliably view and print PDF files across all major operating systems in the enterprise.

• Wyse Technology released a utility that allows administrators to “instantly restore” their Linux- and Windows-based thin client devices in case of damage or misuse. The “Wyse USB Firmware Tool” (left) saves device configurations to USB memory sticks, which can then be used as needed, says Wyse.

• While it’s true that Abiword doesn’t have all the features of MS Word or OpenOffice.org Writer, it does have all the features I have ever wanted in a word processor, and the small footprint works out really well for my new Dell Mini 9. For an interesting interview with the developers of Abiword, including more on the Collaboration Plugin and ODT support, and more on AbiCollab.net, check out this article from Red Hat Magazine. And if you didn’t know, Abiword is Free Software and it can be downloaded at no cost here.

Desktop Environments

• Seigo is aware of his celebrity (or notoriety) in the free software community, but not altogether comfortable with it. “I’m not a huge believer in the cult of personality,” he said over a large bowl of vegetarian Pho. “You look at Apple: Steve Jobs goes away because of illness and stock prices go down. I don’t think that’s fair to the other people in Apple, who put their hearts and souls and lives into it. And that’s not really in the spirit of KDE. But that’s what you get with the cult of personality.”

• At any rate, such celebrity is often misguided. Seigo insists, for instance, that his role of president is not nearly as important as many people imagine. “To the outside, the role matters,” he says. “But, really, it is just added responsibility, with no ability to dictate or anything of that nature. It’s not so much an empowerment of the individual as the individual serving the community and how to make sure that the community processes that need to be engaged actually do get engaged.”

• When I took this job it was agreed that part of my job, but not all of it, would be fundraising. However, because of the economy I find myself thinking about fundraising more often than not these days.

• For example, take hackfests.Hackfests are events where you get all the key developers for a project together in one place and they spend a few days or a week discussing issues, planning future releases and writing code. As most open source work happens virtually, hackfests are great opportunity to meet in person and make a lot of progress on things like planning a new release or a particular issue.

Distributions

• I’ve been researching concepts of minimalism as it applies to computing and personal productivity, and I’m convinced that in many cases, a minimal setup can really help you get more done. Trimming the unnecessary applications and eye-candy from your computing setup can help your focus and find the most efficient workflow. I offer four truly minimal Linux distributions here…and to me minimal doesn’t necessarily imply small, and small does not mean minimal. Take PuppyLinux, for instance. Small, yes. Minimal? Hardly. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad thing (I’m a Puppy fan); it’s just not really minimal. So, not all of these distros are super tiny, but they do all embrace minimalistic principles: simple but pleasing design, just the applications you need, and an emphasis on performance.

• This is a great way to get to know Linux and it really is very easy to do. All you have to do is download the Linux ‘iso’ Image file and use it to create a bootable CD, pop that into the drive and follow the prompts. As an added bonus Linux usually runs a lot faster than Windows on the same hardware, plus it is virtually bullet-proof, almost immune to viruses and malware. It’s generally more stable than Windows and these days really quite civilised; connecting to networks and the Internet, for example, is usually a lot easier.

• Versions or ‘distributions’ of Linux, such as Mandriva and Ubuntu look and work a lot like Windows so the learning curve is quite gentle, Linux versions of many popular applications are available or there is a free ‘Open Source’ alternative, so who knows, you might even end up liking it so much that you abandon Windows altogether.

Puppy

• I’m an Ubuntu linux user, as it’s widely supported, easy to install, and a breeze to update software using Synaptic. I do admire other distros (I’ve a soft spot for the vehemently Free multi-media dynebolic, the audio-rich pure:dyne (made by goto10), the minimalist ubuntu-based #CrunchBang) and since acquiring the snazzy Acer Aspire One netbook, I’m always on the look out for lean and mean linuxes.

• Sun Microystems, which announced Sun Cloud in March, is taking a different tack than the Java clouds from Google, Aptana, and Stax because it wants to be more than just a Java provider. The new cloud will create new clusters of machines from any disk image, including some of the most popular versions of Linux and Solaris. Java, of course, will be found in most of these images, but you don’t need to use it if you want to, say, run some emulated version of Cobol on a version of Puppy Linux. Unless Sun Cloud is interrupted by Oracle’s acquisition, it should be available in a few months.

Red Hat

• CentOS is based on Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux source packages and shares in recent RHEL virtualization, application development, security and storage improvements. Many of the enhancements in CentOS 5.3 come in the area of virtualization, targeted largely at scalability on large host machines.

• CentOS, the popular community-supported clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, reached Version 5.3 in March, some three months after its parent distribution, RHEL 5.3, began shipping.

• And to that end, rPath – founded several years back on the promise of open-source appliances and an application packaging environment – is shifting gears with version 5.0 of its rBuilder, to manage software appliances on local virtual machines or remote ones running on clouds.

• Red Hat today published a new study together with Georgia Tech mapping open source activity across 75 countries. Officially called the Open Source Index (OSI), the final score is made of a number of factors including policies, practices in the Government, Industry, and Community. Topping the list current is France with a score of 1.35. Spain is second at 1.07, Germany third at 1.05.

Ubuntu

• In case you were concerned that Linux didn’t have enough of a presence in pop culture, you can now read English translations of Ubunchu, a Japanese Manga comic series about three students in a sys admin club who are getting into Ubuntu.

• “I’m not slowing down just yet,” Shuttleworth told InformationWeek. “We’re seeing a real groundswell with Linux on the desktop, which makes it a pleasure when I talk to other executives about their strategies.”

• Shuttleworth may not need to do much in the way of convincing corporate America (or the rest of the world) that Ubuntu Linux is a stable operating system capable of displacing Microsoft Windows. Announced Monday and available for download on Thursday, April 23, the desktop and server operating system brings with it improvements to network connectivity and user interface, and a quick and easy way to tap into cloud computing services.

Devices/Embedded

• Amazon announced that it has upgraded its Video on Demand service to HD (high definition) video. The service supports a number of Linux-based IP STBs (set-top boxes), including various TiVo HD DVRs, Sony’s Bravia Internet Video Link, and Roku Netflix Player (pictured), according to eWEEK.

Sub-notebooks

• Intel’s Moblin 2.0 platform could be well-named, with the chipmaker hoping its open source Linux OS will deliver a two second boot time.

• This new 1.1 version of Easy Peasy brings a lot of bugfixes and upgrades to most applications. There is also a new icon theme (inspired from the “Victor Castillejos Gnome Colors” one), a new wallpaper to fit the visual style and new splash and login screens.

Free Software/Open Source

• The Danish municipality of Gribskov has saved two million DKK, about 270,000 euro, over the past two years by switching the public administration and schools to OpenOffice, Michel van den Linden, responsible for IT in the municipality says in an interview with the Danish IT news site Computerworld.

• Over 70% of the people that participated said they had donated time, money, or both to open source. This is encouraging news for most open source projects, especially given the uncertainty of the current economic climate.

• There is one big difference between proprietary and open source support. Proprietary support systems are just another, often charged for, service the companies provide to identify and fix problems in their supplied software. Open source support systems are in place because the developers want to fix and improve their programs and are interested in getting feedback directly from the users. In other words proprietary systems have a business interest in support and open source programs have a personal interest. To me this puts open source support ahead of proprietary support. What do you think?

• Open source is key to how Tap In builds its platform, according to Loh.

• ONStor, Inc., a leading provider of clustered NAS solutions for enterprises and content-rich organizations, today announced a new addition to its Pantera line of integrated storage systems, the Pantera LS 2100 series. The Pantera LS 2100 series is a family of unified IP storage solutions that provides both iSCSI and NAS support in a single system. Targeting small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs), the Pantera LS 2100 packs an impressive array of data management features, self-healing capabilities, and advanced storage management to deliver significant cost savings. Expanding on its track record of deploying open storage technologies, ONStor has incorporated the industry-leading Zettabyte File System (ZFS) and open source technology into the Pantera LS series systems.

• The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) – developers, stewards, and incubators of leading community-driven Open Source projects – announced the newest release of Apache Open For Business (OFBiz), a leading non-commercial enterprise software framework.

• OpenSplice.org now hosts the forge supporting the OpenSplice DDS development Community, providing access to the source code repository, pre-built binary distributions for key platforms, such as Linux, Windows etc., and also providing hosting for other Open Source projects related to OpenSplice DDS.

• Gold and open source do not normally go together, but at BullionVault, the combination of both has created an innovative way of trading in the precious metal

• Carbon Mountain LLC today announced a revolutionary new Open Source Platform for building next-generation data center solutions called inVrastructure. The inVrastructure solution provides a true bridge between the traditional data centers of today and the fully virtualized data centers of tomorrow. Based on proven Open Source technologies, inVrastructure runs on any AMD or Intel platform supported by Linux. With today’s announcement, Carbon Mountain is challenging Cisco, VMware and their partners by providing customers with a true Open Source Unified Computing solution.

Healthcare

• Misys Open Source Solutions, a division of Misys plc (FTSE:MSY.L), today announced the Business Advisory Board members for OpenCarbonWorld.com (OCW), the company’s carbon planning and information portal designed to help organizations establish clear policies towards reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

• Proprietary vendors, especially in the health care space, are experts at creating Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) concerning open source. They will offer government “proven solutions” while open source advocates will offer tools the government might build on.

Security

• Updates — Given the fast-changing threat landscape that network administrators have to deal with, any security technology needs constant improvement to remain effective. Well-established open source tools are tested and constantly refined by large, diverse and dedicated development teams, something that commercial vendors may struggle to match, given that they must cope with budget constraints of their own.

• The use of open source software can also be a great place to cut security costs — especially for small and medium-size businesses, says Spire’s Lindstrom. They let businesses get equivalent security tools for less money. “If the product is commoditized enough and your people are skilled enough, it’s not unreasonable at this stage of the game to consider open source applications,” he says.

• For example, the ClamAV anti-virus software and Snort intrusion detection system are two widely used open source anti-virus products, as is the Open Source Security Information Management security event management software.

Databases

• This includes an ISAM like API, cursor and transaction management and query-able indexes. Embedded InnoDB is licensed under the GNU General Public Licence Version 2.

• This week in Silicon Valley, the MySQL Conference and Expo is underway, and there are already questions appearing about whether the speakers will have to perform last minute tweaks to their addresses in light of yesterday’s news that Oracle is acquiring MySQL’s parent, Sun Microsystems.

• New MySQL chief calls for more transparency with the community and is optimistic about opportunities within Oracle.

• MySQL isn’t the perfect solution for all database problems — and neither is Oracle. The reality is that MySQL and Oracle coexist in many organizations. A study done by the IOUG (International Oracle User Group) highlighted this fact when its study (PDF) showed that a third of Oracle shops had MySQL in production, side-by-side with their Oracle databases. And one great benefit of Oracle acquiring Sun is that the InnoDB and MySQL teams will be together in one organization for the first time ever.

Sun

• Sun Microsystems will make its open-source GlassFish application server available on the Amazon Web Services cloud platform on Wednesday.

• Sun also will unveil integration between the MySQL open-source database and the Sun Identity Manager product and single sign-on capabilities for Google Apps.

• Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA) and State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs of People’s Republic of China (SAFEA) today signed a pioneering agreement to support China’s national drive on talents cultivation and significantly improve the quality and capabilities of China’s university administrators, teachers and future technologists by leveraging the power of open source technologies.

Gaming

• It’s taken longer than expected, but Gamepark is on the brink of launching their Linux-based GP2X Wiz handheld gaming system—and they are planning to follow up with an open source app store this summer.

• Ben loves to talk about old games such as Dark Castle. I personally love remembering old Sinclair ZX Spectrum games but also fondly remember Leisure Suit Larry.

Government

• The Election Technology Council, which has given us years of questionable election results with systems that can’t be audited and whose accuracy thus can’t be guaranteed, is out with a white paper saying that, in effect, if code is disclosed only outlaws will have code.

• The Defense Department’s open-source software development tool Forge.mil may now be used for unclassified work in DOD, the Defense Information Systems Agency announced today.

Licensing

• As the best-known free software and open source license, the GNU General Public License, or GPL, has become both a rallying point for the free software and open source (FLOSS) communities and a focus of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) campaigns for those who fear that these movements will destroy their revenue streams.

Open (But No Source Code)

• RepRap is an open source hardware project that aims to create a self-replicating machine or a ‘universal constructor’ by using rapid prototyping. That means the machine can manufacture objects directly including itself, endlessly.

Programming

• Eight Australians and five Kiwis have made the cut for the 2009 Google Summer of Code, announced today.

• More than 1000 students were accepted into the fifth year of the program from 70 countries and will work on about 150 open source projects with mentor organisations.

• Jay Lyman, enterprise software analyst with New York-based The 451 Group, agreed that the 10 per cent estimate is conservative because the use of open source in most organizations is typically significantly underestimated, especially among those at the management level. Leadership may conjecture they are using just several open source components, said Lyman, but then “find they have 140 different open source packages in use either in their business or in their products.”

Censorship/Web Abuse

• Registration requirements like these may sound drastic, but they’re not without precedent in Germany. Politicians have instituted even harsher access barriers for porn sites, and the country is in the process of setting up an official Internet censorship list that would require ISPs to deny access to thousands of illegal web sites.

• Each mobile operator will place commercial content classified as 18 behind access controls and only make it available to those customers that it has satisfied itself, through a process of age verification, are 18 or over.

• The mobile operator will also place behind access controls all commercial content chat rooms, unless they are moderated chat rooms.

• [...]

• Mobile operators have no control over the content that is offered on the Internet and are therefore unable to insist that it is classified in accordance with the independent classification framework.

• Mobile operators will therefore offer parents and carers the opportunity to apply a filter to the mobile operator’s Internet access service so that the Internet content thus accessible is restricted. The filter will be set at a level that is intended to filter out content approximately equivalent to commercial content with a classification of 18.

• Amendment 138 was saved tonight in a surprise European Parliament committee vote. It is another political signal of the European Parliament’s disapproval of graduated response / 3-strikes measures. But the problems with the Telecoms Package remain, and users access to the Internet may still be limited or blocked under other provisions and there may be little that ussers can do about it.

• Even if the UK Government are not going to stop Phorm spying on Internet users on privacy grounds, it looks like some of the biggest brands on the Web will.

Copyrights

• CNN has sent YouTube a DMCA takedown notice on a video critical of a CNN reporter for her coverage of a “Tea Party” protest — a video that appears to be a clear case of a non-infringing fair use.

TPB

• Here’s a final, “strategic” point: every time the music industry kills an underground distribution channel, a more efficient one arises in its place. Goodbye mixtapes, hello www. Bye www, hello Napster. Bye Napster, hi BitTorrent. Bye BitTorrent, hi anonymous, ciphered, totally decentralized p2p nets.

• Why? By limiting the supply of interaction, the music industry is only ensuring that each interaction becomes more and more efficient. The endgame is a distribution system where every song in the world in the world can be zapped invisibly and anonymously from me to you in a nanosecond.

• As was easily predicted when The Pirate Bay verdict came out last Friday, the entertainment industry celebrated it as a big win. Amusingly, Arts+Labs, one of many, many entertainment industry lobbying groups (and run by a guy, Mike McCurry, who thinks that Google doesn’t pay a dime for its bandwidth), was quick to praise the decision, with McCurry claiming that this is a turning point and that people will now realize that file sharing is “something both dangerous, criminal, and unfair.” (I’ll let the grammar nazis figure out which two of three things he meant when he said “both”).

• “Google doesn’t call itself ‘The Pirate Google,’” Garland says. “If the number of queries looking for copyrighted works is massive, that’s only because the number of searches on Google in general is massive.”

• Should Medical Studies Be Posted Free for All to See and Learn From?

• Days after four defendants in the high-profile Pirate Bay case were found guilty of violating copyright law, the Web site implored fans to stay calm, not to send donations, and to stay united.

• A study from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download free music from services like BitTorrent are also the biggest legitimate consumers of downloadable music.

• To anyone who knows anything about how music fans like to consume music this will be no shock, but to those at the RIAA (who know nothing about music or culture) hopefully this will be a wake up call.

• Sweden’s Pirate Party says it has had a surge in membership, giving its leaders hope that anti-corporate feeling will translate into electoral success.

• BT and other mobile broadband providers are blocking access to The Pirate Bay, as part of a “self-regulation” scheme.

Leadership/Cronyism

• The president has, in fact, filled out some high-level Justice Department positions with lawyers favored by the copyright industry, including attorneys who have represented the Recording Industry Association of America and the Business Software Alliance. The signatories of the April 2 letter said the Justice Department’s intervention last month in favor of a record label in a file-sharing case heightens their concern.

• “It’s pure theft, stolen from the artists and quite frankly from the American people as consequence of loss of jobs and as a consequence of loss of income,” Biden said, according to a White House pool report.

• The occasion: the second biennial summit sponsored by the industry’s chief lobbying arm, the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

Trademark

• Do me a favour folks – have a look at the screengrabs posted here (do feel free to view them larger by clicking on them) and tell me if any of these images even remotely refer to or is connect in any visual way to the upcoming movie “X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE”?

• Taser International Inc. filed a trademark-infringement lawsuit against the Second Life online virtual world creator over claims it sells unauthorized virtual versions of its electric stun guns.

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