● 09.18.09

● Links 18/09/2009: Sugar Labs Joins Forces with FSF

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

• No chief technologist wants to deploy unproven open source software, risking the operational integrity, revenues and reputation of his or her enterprise. Yet just as certainly, no CTO wants to be left behind as technologies such as the open source LAMP software stack ripen, leaving the field open to its innovative use by nimbler competitors. To help technology decisionmakers assess the tipping point, Nashville-based Remarkable Wit, LLC has invited global leaders in open source development to an Enterprise LAMP Summit to make their case that LAMP-Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python and Perl-has proven its ability to provide performance that CTOs at the world`s largest enterprises can rely on for global deployment.

Desktop

• Two network rooms are based on the tiny but powerful Acer Revos which run KDE 4.3.

• Clearly, taking a $50 cut from a $300 netbook is something that most OEMs would probably find to be disadvantageous, which would make one think that alternative operating systems such as Ubuntu would have the upper hand. But Microsoft seems to think that it would be happy if it could score five percent from every new PC sale, particularly with the increased range of PC prices with the advent of netbooks and $300 laptops at Wal-Mart.

Server

• Although Red Hat promised its customers to retain Xen in the OS through at least the end of RHEL 5 and to provide support for several years thereafter, Red Hat said its future development would focus on KVM. Today, KVM is included as a hypervisor along with Xen in the latest RHEL 5.4 release. Customers are free to choose one or the other as part of the installation process and, essentially, encouraged to experiment.

• While some say the cloud doesn’t perform well enough and isn’t stable enough, others say it is perfect for their usage model. Why not take advantage of such a scalable architecture? It can make a great place to “stuff” data, such as backups.

Kernel Space

• The Linux Plumbers Conference is happening for the second time. The first was a great success – by most accounts, one of the very best technical events of the year. Quite a bit of serious work got done there, with effects being felt throughout the development community. This year – which has just sold out – looks to be just as good.

Applications

• In an earlier article I demonstrated how to get started with Money Manager Ex, a versatile budgeting and checkbook managing software from Codelathe. I showed how to handle transactions involving “cash back”, that are a little less than obvious. This article will demonstrate a similar technique for handling credit card transactions. While I am using MMEX as an example, any good accounting software should adapt to the technique. An actual event will be used for the tutorial.

Desktop Environments

GNOME

• After taking 2008 off, I’m happy to say that 2009 is turning into a banner year for GNOME Journal, and 2009 has seen more issues published than any year other 2005, and we’re on pace to break 2005’s record of five issues.

• Here are some new pictures of the current in devlopment GNOME Activity Journal (GNOME Zeitgeist)

KDE

• Since we now all know that Kate is holy (thanks to rms. By accident, he obviously confused Kate with emacs, though) let’s have a look at what’s going on. In the last months Kate development is quite active, so here is a quick update:

• * new: on-the-fly spell checking thanks to Michel Ludwig. Highlights include e.g. spell checking in comments of source code or latex parts. Also, constructs like sch\”on work in latex. * extended scripting support in the command line, more on that later

Distributions

• This week, the User Interface Freeze for Ubuntu Karmic Koala took place meaning no major changes will be made from the appearance point of view.

• Alfresco on Ubuntu

• The Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is for Alfresco 3.2 Community Edition. It is built on Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 4, leveraging the Alfresco package from the Canonical partner repository.

Devices/Embedded

• Wind River announced that Wind River Linux 3.0 for MIPS now complies with the Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 4.0 networking equipment specification maintained by the Linux Foundation (LF). The CGL 4.0 support extends to MIPS64-based multi-core processors from Cavium Networks and RMI Corp., says the Intel-owned company.

Phones

• Things are looking increasingly bad for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system, and they may be looking bad for Palm, too. As GigaOm notes: “Like a desperate gambler down to his last few chips, Palm is ditching Windows Mobile and going all in with its own webOS.” That will leave the Pre as Palm’s big bet in the smartphone arena, and the company has said that the Pre now accounts for the vast majority of the smartphones that it sells (823,000 units in the most recent quarter, in line with analyst’s expectations).

• Technically, both Maemo and Android run on Linux kernels. However, Maemo is a full Linux distro, based on Debian, while Android is a sole kernel with a few programs on top of it (namely, Dalvik virtual machine and Sqlite database). On Adnroid all applications run within Dalvik virtual machine, which is heavily optimized and modified version of Java virtual machine (JVM). I tried to analyze the benefits of each platform from the perspective of a software developer, as well as platforms’ current “strategic position”. If you are too busy to read all the details, there is a short summary paragraph at the end of each chapter.

Sub-notebooks

• ARM has set the stage for 2GHz processors aimed for devices like set-top boxes and netbook computers. In netbooks, Intel’s Atom leads, and since ARM’s design does work well with Windows, Intel’s Windows netbook market shouldn’t be threatened by this. However, ARM’s chips do mix with Linux.

Free Software/Open Source

• On 19 September, we celebrate Software Freedom Day. At tomorrow’s Boston gathering, I will have an opportunity to thank the Free Software Foundation on behalf of Sugar Labs for their support. I will also have a chance to tell the story of Sugar, our efforts to help children learn to learn and learn to love and exercise their freedom. I will also solicit your help.

• Sugar Labs (R), nonprofit provider of the Sugar Learning Platform for children, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which promotes computer users’ right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs, have announced joint efforts to collaborate and promote Sugar on the occasion of Software Freedom Day, September 19th.

• It is upon us! Horay! After much planning we have managed to secure a great spot to park ourselves, beg, borrow and get sponsorship to pull this off.

• Hundreds of people all over New Zealand, and in fact the world have been doing this. Why? Because we are sick of paying out massive amounts of cash to companies for stuff we can get for free that’s just as good!

• Maybe they should. Once it acquires Sun, Oracle will be the largest sponsor of open source projects people use every day. We’re talking Java, we’re talking mySQL, we’re talking OpenOffice.org.

• Eric Raymond’s software bazaar is a fantasy.

• What really goes on in open source projects has nothing to do with his “great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches”.

• In his classic “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, Eric calls us “happy networked hordes of programmer/anarchists”. We are hordes alright, but are we anarchists? Workers building pyramids is what we are.

• The Open Innovation Awards’ Jury today announced the list of the top 20 open source innovative startups that will be invited to present at the Open Innovation Summit on the 2nd of October.

• In his first Facebook blog post today, David Recordon has announced the open sourcing of Tornado, FriendFeed’s real-time web services technology. As described by Recordon, Tornado is a “non-blocking Web server framework written in Python”. In addition to open sourcing many of their other technologies, Facebook is continuing to support the open source movement by providing more libraries for developers.

• The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) says its use of open source software is a logical consequence of being a publicly funded organisation. “Open source should be relevant for all public administrations.”

• KnowledgeTree®, an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) provider focusing on affordable document management software that is easily installed and used by business professionals, today announced a partnership with Zend Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of products and services for developing, deploying, and managing business-critical PHP applications.

• Open Sources: What got you interested in Hadoop initially and how long have you been using Hadoop?

• Gottfrid: I’ve been working with Hadoop for the last three years. Back in 2007, the New York Times decided to make all the public domain articles from 1851-1922 available free of charge in the form of images scanned from the original paper. That’s 11 million articles available as images in PDF format. The code to generate the PDFs was fairly straightforward, but to get it to run in parallel across multiple machines was an issue. As I wrote about in detail back then, I came across the MapReduce paper from Google. That, coupled with what I had learned about Hadoop, got me started on the road to tackle this huge data challenge.

• As the current hot platform of choice for a lot of developers, we’re not seeing too many Twitter apps just yet in the Deadpool. But one, TwitApps, will hit it tomorrow, the developer is notifying users.

Mozilla

• Over the past couple Firefox releases, the Mozilla community has proudly shipped a Mongolian localization of Firefox. And, based on the blocklist pings that Firefox makes everyday, we can estimtate that we have between 10,000 and 20,000 active daily users in that locale. That’s a nice accomplishment by the Mongolian community!

• After far too long in development, Thunderbird 3.0 seems to be nearing the home stretch. We take a look at the latest test builds for Thunderbird 3.0 beta 4. Is it worth the wait? Despite the sluggish development cycle, signs point to yes. Read on for how Thunderbird can help you manage your inbox.

• OneWebDay exists to celebrate the awesomeness of the internet. It’s also an chance to remind people that the web is a precious public resources. Your poster and photograph are a part of this. When you poster, you’re helping to keep the web open and free.

Funding

• MMV Financial announced today that it has provided US $3 million in venture loan financing to EnterpriseDB…

• BonitaSoft, the first provider of open source Business Process Management (BPM) software, announced today the completion of a first round of funding of $3 Million from Ventech and Auriga Partners. Chausson Finance acted as advisor for this transaction.

• At the same time, the company marks the arrival of Bertrand Diard, CEO and co-founder of Talend, to its Board of Directors.

FSF/GNU

• Sugar Labs, nonprofit provider of the Sugar Learning Platform for children, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which promotes computer users’ right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs, have announced joint efforts to collaborate and promote Sugar on the occasion of Software Freedom Day, September 19th. The FSF will host an event in Boston featuring Sugar Labs Executive Director Walter Bender, FSF president Richard Stallman, and other speakers. Peter Brown, FSF’s executive director, said, “The Sugar Learning Platform is fast becoming an essential route to computer user freedom for children around the world. The international free software movement is getting behind Sugar, and we want to use Software Freedom Day as an opportunity to help draw community attention, developer resources, and external funders to the important work going on at Sugar Labs.”

• While Linus is responsible for the development of the Linux kernel, Richard is responsible for almost all of the most important foundation on which Linux distributions are based on. I would say that seventy to eighty percent of any Linux distribution can be attributed to Richard Stallman and his efforts.

Releases

• AccesStream, an open source provider of security solutions, is pleased to announce the release of version 1.1 of its identity access management (IAM) solution to the open source community.

Government

• “Recent years show that openness and collaboration is essential to the generation of innovation in the software sector. Technology increasingly means software. In Ireland, we can see that the production of hardware technology in many, but not all, cases is providing ever diminishing returns. Here we outline some key policy recommendations that are crucial to the fulfilling the vision of making the Irish Smart Economy a reality for the software industry through the adoption and encouragement of Open Source technologies.”

• The above extract is from a paper we have produced for the Innovation Taskforce is requesting submissions by the Department of Taoiseach.

• The Danish Competition Authority wants to discuss with the European Commission how to enhance competition in the market for office software. It thinks the Danish public sector is too small to do this by itself.

• An appointment with the Commission has not yet been made. “We have awaited the translation of the report”, says Michael Fibiger, chief special advisor to the Danish Competition Authority.

Programming

• Why noop in particular makes sense to me is that even though the noop language might be different than Java, the final product is complied to run on JVM’s. Which means that even though no one is really actually developing application with noop (yet) when they do, they’ll be able to run where ever there is a JVM (which is nearly ever OS, server and desktop in use today).

• Considering the success that Google has had to date with GWT, I think developers have a lot to look forward to in noop.

Leftovers

• For the first time, the state’s highest court ruled today that the state Declaration of Rights allows police to break into a suspect’s car to secretly install GPS tracking devices, provided they have a warrant before they act.

• The JUSTICE Act would renew two of the three expiring PATRIOT provisions, PATRIOT sections 206 (John Doe roving wiretaps) and 215 (FISA orders for any tangible thing), but would also add strong new checks and balances to those provisions and to the PATRIOT Act in general, especially those provisions dealing with the government’s authority to issue National Security Letters. If passed, the bill would also establish critically important protections for Americans against surveillance authorized under the FAA.

• It’s really quite sad when you think about what kids are missing because of this “worst case scenario” mentality. In this particular case, these kids missed out on the opportunity to potentially hear from an innovative author of popular kids’ puzzle books (Eric Berlin, author of The Puzzling World of Winston Breen.) That’s troubling enough. But just think what other interesting people or topics these and other kids may never get to experience because of this mentality.

• Baroness Patricia Scotland broke the law when she employed a woman who, it turns out, was not legally entitled to work in Britain. A law she should know about: not just because she was one of the youngest ever QCs, nor because now, as Attorney General, she is the government’s own in-house lawyer, but because she was a minister in the Home Office when the law was passed.

Google/Fog Computing

• It could also create major market opportunities for companies focused on the technology like Google Inc. and Salesforce.com, but raises some troubling questions about privacy and security, observers say.

• In these uncertain economic times, people want answers – one reason perhaps why Google’s brand value is soaring and bank brands are plunging.

• This is a huge breakthrough. At the moment, you have to choose between the pleasure of reading an analogue artefact, and the convenience of its digital equivalent. With this new scheme, Google will let you find a particular phrase – or even word – in the book you have in your hands, because the latter is a physical embodiment of the one you use on the screen to search through its text.

• The trouble is, of course, that this amazing facility is only available for those books out of copyright that Google has scanned. Which gives us yet another reason for repealing the extraordinarily stupid copyright laws that stop this kind of powerful service being offered for *all* text.

AstroTurf

• So, long story short, it’s a tale of sad customer service which reached depths of incompetence I have never before seen. No company has ever been this bad at keeping promises and meeting expectations. We’d cancel the contract, but no one comes out to collect the damn thing and we keep getting billed. But then, light! Yesterday an engineer appeared at 9am without any due warning and replaced it. 24 hours in, it’s still working. But then today I get the final straw – in the form of a mass marketing letter from Powwow. “Powwow is pleased to announce the launch of the most exciting website the bottled water market in the UK has ever seen”. I sh*t you not. The most EXCITING WEBSITE EVER (for bottled water). They follow this up with more great stuff. “This is a huge step forward in our company history… join us in supplying any good news you think would be of benefit to Powwow”

Censorship/Web Abuse

• Two days ago I wrote a rather rushed appeal for people to write to Ofcom about a BBC enquiry concerning the addition of DRM to its HD service.

• [...]

• Cynics might even think that Ofcom didn’t really want comments, but was just going through the motions of carrying out a consultation – and a brief one at that – because that’s what the rules say it has to do.

• Although this is the first time I’ve come across Ofcom – or anyone else – trying to staunch the flow of comments it had solicited, I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last time.

Intellectual Monopolies

• The sale of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay has been hit by a further setback after its potential buyer was served with a bankruptcy petition.

• Despite strong opposition from ORG, ISPs and parts of the music industry, Peter Mandelson is still hellbent on enacting laws that would bring internet disconnection without trial to the UK.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the DayJim Hogg teaches GNU Linux to high school kids 09 (2008)Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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