● 10.21.09

● Links 21/10/2009: Fedora 12 Beta is Out, Ubuntu Turns 5 and Gets IBM Support

Posted in News Roundup at 4:11 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Frankly, given what I’m looking for there’s really no compelling reason to shell out cash for a new OS when Ubuntu can do what I need (minus the games, which I must say I don’t spend as much time playing as I used to and I must admit that if I was younger and single I might opt for using Windows 7 more for the gaming factor but that’s not a good enough reason these days).

Kernel Space

• Q: What code management does NVIDIA use and are team members allowed to keep private branches in order to target specific issues (like new kernel or X.Org support)?

• We use Perforce for source control. Large new features are generally implemented in development branches, and then that code is promoted to our main line of code once it passes an internal quality bar. Release branches are then created off the main line of code.

• For miscellaneous hacking or experimentation, we’ll generally use private branches in Perforce. Occasionally, individual engineers might track private changes using quilt or git before submitting their changes to Perforce.

• Q: Which text editors or IDEs do NVIDIA Linux developers use?

• Most of the engineers on the Linux driver team use emacs and/or vim for their day-to-day development work.

• This page is an attempt to track ongoing developments in the Linux development community that have a good chance of appearing in a mainline kernel and/or major distributions sometime in the near future. Your “chief meteorologist” is Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor at LWN.net. If you have suggestions on improving the forecast (and particularly if you have a project or patchset that you think should be tracked), please add your comments to the Discussion page. There’s a blog that reports on the main changes to the forecast. You can view it directly or use a feed reader to subscribe to the blog feed. You can also subscribe directly to the changes feed for this page to see feed all forecast edits.

• The attendees of the 2009 Linux Kernel summit, October 20, 2009, in Tokyo, Japan.

Distributions

• The Puppy Linux project has released a 4.3.1 bugfix upgrade for last month’s major 4.3 release of the popular, lightweight GNU/Linux distro. Puppy Linux 4.3, which has been rebuilt with a new “Woof” build system and PPM package manager, has received a number of positive reviews.

Red Hat Family

• Fedora is a leading edge, free and open source operating system that continues to deliver innovative features to many users, with a new release every six months. We have reached the Fedora 12 Beta, the last important development milestone of Fedora 12. Only critical bug fixes will be pushed as updates leading up to the general release of Fedora 12, scheduled to be released in mid-November. We invite you to join us and participate in making Fedora 12 a solid release by downloading, testing, and providing us your valuable feedback.

• Analysts say that while Red Hat’s share price has been higher than today what is important is that actually it is worth the figure.

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that it has received the highest rank among software vendors in Ziff Davis’ 2009 “CIO Insight Vendor Value” study, which polls IT executives on the value of their vendors’ product and service offerings. This is the fifth time the company has received the top rank among software vendors. In addition, Red Hat received the highest rank among software companies on the overall list of IT vendors across software, networking, hardware and security.

• For years, Red Hat sat unopposed at the top of the CIO Insight Vendor Value study. In 2008, however, Google pushed Red Hat aside with its low-cost, easy-to-use enterprise applications. This year, Red Hat has come roaring back to share the top ranking with Google.

• Could this be a sign of CIOs’ restive relationships with traditional vendors and an increasingly insatiable appetite for the cost and ease-of-use advantages of open source and software as a service/cloud computing?

Debian Family

• As major PC makers prepare to introduce Windows 7 systems on Oct. 22, upstarts like System76 are maintaining their focus on the Ubuntu market and preparing to preload Ubuntu 9.10 on a range of PCs starting Oct. 29. Here’s a preview of what’s to come.

• Canonical, the business arm of Ubuntu, has one of the most promising business models in the Linux world, and also the most misunderstood. First of all, Ubuntu is in a market termed by economists as a perfectly competitive market. This means that it cannot charge any price beyond that which is determined by the market. The only way to make profit, as has rightly been identified by Canonical is to create an ecosystem of products and services around Ubuntu, which would complement the functions of the OS.

• Karmic is rocking, and Ubuntu One is just another great reason why. Good work, Ubuntu One folks!

• Five years ago today, the first ever Ubuntu (Warty Warthog) was released. Back then I was an Open Source Consultant working for the government-funded OpenAdvantage and had a (more) stupid beard. Five years later, I am working on my seventh release since I joined Canonical three years ago, and a more refined beard.

• The Ubuntu community has a lot to celebrate this month: on October 16, 2004 the German ubuntuusers.de went online for the first time and October 20 of the same year saw the release of Ubuntu 4.10, alias Warty Warthog.

• Today, 5 years ago, on October 20th the very first version of Ubuntu was shipped – Ubuntu 4.10 “The Warty Warthog”.

IBM

• A few weeks, back IBM and Canonical (the lead sponsor of Ubuntu Linux) announced a plan to deliver Linux desktops and software to Africa. At the time, I questioned why the offer wasn’t being made available in the U.S.

• For businesses, IBM is pitching the “IBM Client for Smart Work” as a less-costly alternative to a Windows 7 upgrade, particularly for companies that skipped Windows Vista and would be making the upgrade from Windows XP. IBM cites market research estimating the cost of migrating to Windows 7 as high as $2,000 per user, if new hardware is required as part of the shift.

• The IBM Client for Smart Work (http://www.ibm.com/lotus/openclient), based on IBM productivity and collaboration software, helps organizations save up to 50 percent per seat on software costs versus a Microsoft-based desktop, in addition to avoiding requisite hardware upgrades. The package allows companies to use their existing PCs, lower-cost netbooks and thin clients.

• While this far from an attempt to offer a universal Linux desktop replacement for Windows, it is a concerted effort to offer business users an affordable Windows replacement. With Windows 7 Professional Upgrade listing for $199 for Vista users, and XP users facing a situation where buying a new PC is probably their best ‘upgrade’ choice, the Ubuntu-powered IBM Client for Smart Work may well find some customers.

Devices/Embedded

• Spring Design announced an Android-based e-book reader that boasts two displays and full browser capabilities. The WiFi- and 3G-enabled “Alex” offers both the typical 6-inch monochrome EPD (electronic paper display) display for reading, plus a linked, 3.5-inch color display for Android content and multimedia, says the company.

• Linux vendor MontaVista Software is expanding its Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) product offering to include new next generation LTE (define) wireless and networking capabilities.

Free Software/Open Source

• Software had this problem first, by virtue of its non-corporeality. How many people are selling Free Software on eBay? We deride these sellers as “scammers,” but in truth the only time they run afoul of the law is when they attempt to rebrand your software without acknowledgement, or when they fail to abide by some other intentionally inside-out clause of the license that you chose in the first place (e.g. selling GPL’d binaries without offering source code).

• [...]

• So I am grateful for this anonymous soul who woke up one day and said to herself, “You know what I should do today? I should try to sell copies of that Free book that Pilgrim wrote.” Grateful, because it afforded me the opportunity to remind myself why I chose a Free license in the first place. My Zen teacher once told me that, when people try to do you harm, you should thank them for giving you the opportunity to forgive them. In this case it’s even simpler, because there’s nothing to forgive, just explain. She’s redistributing the work that I explicitly made redistributable. She’s kind of the point.

• Free vs. open source, the debate is alive and well, although certainly of a different character, and more subtle than the in the past. During the event, and the five days I spent in Paris, I had numerous opportunities to engage in group and individual conversations, mostly centered on the commercial aspects of free and/or open source software. I’ll use the term FOSS to cover both sets of terminology. My general observations on how the various geographies use the terminology consists of North Americans almost exclusively use the term “open source” which has more of a connotation of commercial software and Europeans mostly, but not entirely, use “free software” as their term of choice.

• “Spring 3.0 makes it even easier for developers to build flexible, high-quality applications while providing a foundation for innovation in other open source projects and commercial products,” said Rod Johnson, general manager of the SpringSource division of VMware.

• Technology companies negotiate a particularly messy obstacle course from the moment of conception — jumping hurdles associated with venture capital, fending off and holding their own with fierce (and worthy) competitors, constantly changing and innovating products and services to meet the demands of the customer base. Open source companies have an additional complicating factor — the business model is mysterious to many potential customers, and competitors (fierce, worthy, or otherwise) are often 800 pound gorillas with names and logos recognizable to CTO, CIO and Luddite alike.

• Standards, like those on Linux, are key here, too–McCormack cautioned in his presentation that customers should avoid vendor lock in. This is exactly the sort of lock in that projects like Red Hat’s Deltacloud are trying to prevent.

Sun/OpenOffice.org

• Automated testing of recent OOO320_m1-OOO320_m2 builds is finished. All Cat0 tests were run on English builds by automation team and have been completed. On OOO320m2 there is 1 warning only in automated tests (105967) except on MacOS we have 2 errors and 3 warnings (generated by issue 105275). Issue 105967 is handled in CWS automation320m2 and issue 105275 in CWS impress178. Green state of automated cat0 tests is expected with integration of those CWS’.

• The last developer milestone ( DEV300m60) of OpenOffice.org has been released. The next version of OpenOffice.org 3.2 has more than 42 features and 167 enhancements . The final version is expected to be available at the end of November 2009.

FSF/GNU

• I am working on a Trance/Club version of The Free Software Song. Here is a instrumental version featuring a couple of Richard M. Stallman (RMS) speech samples, from interviews.

Government

• People in Congress have it tough.

• They’re expected to deal with every new topic that comes down the pike, from regulating securitized credit swaps to beefing up cybersecurity, whether they’ve had any previous experience with it or not. Of course, there’s never a shortage of people who want to educate them, but the “educators” with the greatest access are likely to be lobbyists. And when one paid advocate is promoting one action, political physics dictates that another highly paid individual in somebody else’s pocket will be promoting an equal and opposite action. Soon, all potential solutions become obscured by a fog of business propaganda.

• What’s a poor legislator (and her staff) to do?

• Good question. There’s been plenty of fog on Capitol Hill about free and open source software (FOSS) for a decade now, and that’s hardly surprising. In the beginning, most big software companies were a’gin it, and any government agency CIO allowing a useful bit of FOSS to find a home on the servers she supervised was not likely to advertise that fact.

• ConsortiumInfo.org’s Andy Updegrove urged President Obama to show more public support for free and open source software.

• In a blog featured on the site today, Updegrove said open source has made huge inroads in various government sectors, especially the Department of Defense, but it’s high time that the president give FOSS equal treatment top down.

Programming

Leftovers

• The number of articles and opinions on Goldman Sachs earnings, bonuses, and influence peddling over the past several days is quite stunning.

• Many have pointed out the problems; few have expressed outrage over what is happening in general, not just at Goldman Sachs. Let’s take a look.

• [...]

• With that in mind, one is left to wonder whether Goldman was really worth saving last year. What have taxpayers received for the $50 billion worth of cash and guarantees, for giving Goldman access to the Federal Reserve as its lender of last resort?

• Saving Goldman was largely about saving the derivatives market, which is so big and unstable that the death of one counterparty could mean the death of all. With big commercial banks like JPMorgan Chase in deep, saving the derivatives business was as much about protecting depositors and maintaining the integrity of the payment system as it was derivatives themselves.

• Sequoia Voting Systems has inadvertently released the SQL (Structured Query Language) code for its voting databases. The existence of such code appears to violate Federal voting law. Read the announcement after the jump, just as received on the Open Voting Consortium mailing list earlier today.

• So, following Mirowski, we might say that ‘government 2.0′ is the final realisation of the neo-liberal state. No auditors, no experts, no objective knowledge, no sense of the common good, just maximum freedom for individuals to form opinions and privately process information. As David Weinberger says in triumphant Hayekian style, “transparency is the new objectivity.” In some instances, consumer perspectives may form the basis of action – demanding change if they’re a prominent journalist or campaigner, selecting a different service supplier if they’re a fortunate lay-person, or just mouthing off on facebook if they’re not so lucky.

Intellectual Monopolies

• A Chinese authors’ group is considering legal action against Google over its book scanning project, adding to the list of countries where it has faced opposition.

• [Disclosure: I work for BT; we operate an ISP; our position on this subject has been made clear by CEO Ian Livingston here and by other senior executives here. As clearly stated in the disclaimer at the top of this blog, these are my personal views and not necessarily those of my employer.]

• It now appears that “internet suspension of illegal downloaders could become law”. Before that happens, I thought it would be worth while to share some of my thoughts about this.

• [...]

• Radiohead proved something similar with In Rainbows. Just because people download music, don’t assume that they’re trying to rip artists off. Most downloaders support their artists.

• 3. Downloading is good business for the music industry.

• It’s not just the Amazon MP3 album chart that shows what’s happening. Digital music album sales are growing 32% year on year, while CD album sales are down 14.5%, when you compare 2008 with 2007.

• [...]

• 4. Claims about illegal downloads can be misleading.

• Yesterday, Lady Gaga was announced as the Queen of Downloads. What intrigued me was the others on the Top 10 list. Kings of Leon. La Roux. Leona Lewis. Alexandra Burke. Snow Patrol. Nickelback. Not the kind of stuff I listen to. The kind of stuff my youngest child listens to.

• What struck me was this: young people seem to do the downloading, old people seem to do the anti-download complaining. I’ve seen claims that in the UK alone, £1.2bn is lost to illegal downloads. And I think there’s a fallacy there. It’s a bit like Rolex claiming lost revenues because people are buying rip-off Rolexes for $25. Does Rolex really think that someone who pays $25 for a “Rolex” is actually a potential customer for a $25,000 watch? I saw similar claims made for software purchases in India. So let’s put this in context. Does anyone really think that someone, anyone, downloads Cliff Richard illegally? Puh-leese.

• Plans to force internet service providers (ISPs) to disconnect suspected illegal downloaders have been roundly rejected in a new YouGov poll, the first time public opinion has been tested on the issue.

• Nearly 70% of those surveyed said someone suspected of illegal downloading should have a right to a trial in court before restrictions on internet use were imposed. Only 16% were in favour of automatic curbs based on accusations by copyright holders such as musicians, as is proposed by the business department.

LF Collaboration Summit 2009: Jeremy White, CodeWeaversDigital 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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