● 10.21.10

● Links 21/10/2010: Launchpad Conflict, FossAlliance Debut

Posted in News Roundup at 3:02 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Intel is not just a chip maker, but also a peddler of Linux and VxWorks operating systems for embedded devices thanks to its $884m acquisition last year of Wind River. This week, the semiconductor giant’s Wind River subsidiary rolled out Wind River Linux, which has a Linux kernel that is so fresh that the heat from Linus Torvald’s fingertips can still be felt on its bits.

• Well, almost. Wind River Linux 4 is based on the Linux 2.6.34+ kernel, which is a variant of the kernel created by Wind River that sits between the 2.6.34 kernel that came out in May and the 2.6.35 kernel that Torvalds approved in August. Wind River Linux 4 runs on x86/x64 chips from Intel as well as ARM, Power, and MIPS processors and supports the GNU GCC 4.4 compiler set and GDB 7 source-level debugger and the EGLIBC 2.11 compiler, which is a variant of the above-mentioned GNU C that has been tuned for embedded system and which offers better support for cross-platform compiling.

• I think this is a huge improvement in variety of products and search. It pays to advertise and to do so without annoying the customers.

Ballnux

• Well, we finally have a price on this thing! America’s largest carrier has announced plans to sell Samsung’s Galaxy Tab for… $599.99.

Kernel Space

• The new kernel version is notable because it hasn’t grown in size – yet it contains hundreds of advancements which will be obvious to end users, who don’t often notice changes in their Linux distribution’s kernel.

• After 80 days of development Linus Torvalds has released Linux version 2.6.36. It got the name “Flesh-Eating Bats with Fangs” with the eight pre-release; Torvalds was inspired by a bat that recently found its way into his house. The new Linux kernel is no larger than its immediate predecessor – a rarity, as over the past few years the kernel sources have grown by several hundred thousand lines of code with every new version released in the main development branch.

Applications

• My favorite open source instant messaging (IM) client is getting an important update this week with the release of Pidgin 2.7.4.

Proprietary

• Opera users can already extend their browser with Unite and userJS. You have also our standalone web applications Widgets. But now we’re making it even better. Opera extensions allow you to easily equip your Opera browser with extra features. You can get them from our extensions catalog at https://addons.labs.opera.com/ With the Opera 11 alpha, you can personalize your browser with all your pet features and functionality. From now on, it is you who defines the best experience with the Opera browser.

Instructionals/Technical

Desktop Environments

• Funny how time seems to just fly by. Below is a list of themes for OpenBox that I created nearly a year ago and I’ve been meaning to post them on Box-Look.org all this time. The one called “Studio-2″ is the theme that I primarily use on a daily basis, and “Sage” comes in as my second favorite. The other themes are not ones that I use much (if ever…), but perhaps someone might like them.

GNOME Desktop

• Back in 2008 it was decided GNOME 2.32 would turn into GNOME 3.0, but earlier this year it was changed to delay GNOME 3.0 to March of 2011 while letting GNOME 2.32 live on. With GNOME 2.32 having arrived last month, it’s now time to get all excited for GNOME 3.0 and this morning the first development release of this desktop has arrived.

Distributions

Red Hat Family

Fedora

• The stated mission of the Fedora Project is to advance the state of free software. To meet this challenge, Fedora incubates open source technology projects in which anyone in the community can participate. To support this participation, Fedora offers a feature process to alert contributors to new technology, connect them to community test days where they can try out the feature and report issues, and track progress of the technology into the latest release.

Debian Family

• For quite a while now there has been work towards bettering the Debian source package format, in particular with more effective handling of Debian packaging files, and this resulted in a new source format coming about: 3.0 Quilt.

• This new system integrates a patch system into dpkg-source, which ended up being based upon Quilt. Besides the 3.0 Quilt format there is also a 3.0 Native format being worked on that is more similar to the original 1.0 source package format.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Installing Ubuntu via the Windows Wubi installer sure is convenient if you are just thinking about toying with an Ubuntu Linux desktop for the first time, but if you plan to use this Linux desktop on a routine basis or the file-system performance and integrity is of any importance to you, the best path is to just perform an Ubuntu installation to a true disk partition. The disk performance via this disk image on the NTFS file-system was not affected in all benchmarks, like with IOzone, but when it came to running Gzip compression or PostMark there certainly was a slowdown. With SQLite, PostgreSQL, and FS-Mark the Wubi setup was dramatically faster, which does raise concerns over data integrity with some operations likely being carried out a-synchronously or batched. The state of our Wubi installation was also rather ideal with the testing having been done on a clean Microsoft Windows 7 installation where the NTFS file-system was not fragmented, which would further slow down the Ubuntu Wubi-ized installation.

• For some time now, we’ve been gearing up to begin development on Ubuntu 11.04. While some folks have been putting the finishing touches on the 10.10 release, and bootstrapping the infrastructure for 11.04, others have been meeting with Canonical stakeholders, coordinating community brainstorm sessions, and otherwise collecting information about what our priorities should be in the next cycle.

• Ubuntu 10.10 is an incremental improvement that continues to bring Ubuntu into alignment with Canonical’s long-term design vision. The new Unity environment is a particularly striking manifestation of that vision, though it still lacks the maturity it needs in order to make it a truly compelling environment for day-to-day use.

• The solid enhancements to the Software Center and the installation process reflect the efficacy of Canonical’s ongoing efforts to bring competitive usability to the Linux desktop. The Software Center is particularly impressive, and it sets a new standard for usability in package management tools. It’s one of the clear differentiators that sets Ubuntu apart from some of the alternatives.

• Lion is where the interesting part lies, in that one of the new features is named ‘launchpad’ or ‘the launchpad’. Now what does this mean for Launchpad, the web application by Canonical? I don’t know…probably nothing. What I have seen is a lot of people commenting on what Canonical may or may not do.

• Having already previewed the Ubuntu 10.10 beta with good results on more than one system, I felt safe upgrading my primary desktop system from v10.04 to v10.10 once the new version went gold. To my astonishment, neither my keyboard, mouse, nor display were functioning following the upgrade.

• Ubuntu is an impressive operating system and can be incredibly rewarding once you’re comfortable using it. People keep asking me for suggestions on how to get started with this OS so I’ve decided to write up my suggestions, which will hopefully ease a few more people towards adoption.

• This release of Ubuntu is a solid one and deserves much praise. While I could give or take on some of the default included software, but then again who couldn’t, I do think that this release has an overall polish that simply hasn’t been as strong in previous releases. This is what Ubuntu 10.04 should have been from the start and makes me look forward to what is still yet to come.

• Linux is probably the most customizable of all mainstream operating systems. There’s an incredible amount of options, tools, themes and steps you can take to make the time you spend in the company of your PC more aesthetically pleasing.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• Following on from the earlier post (read first if you don’t know what this is about), you can now try an alpha release of the software. There’s a lot of planned functionality still missing, but it’s fully functional and useful.

• Winamp is an immensely popular and widespread Windows music player that was released by Justin Frankel in 1997. It was one of the first great MP3 players for Microsoft’s OS, and I’ve personally used it devotedly ever since its release. Yesterday, Winamp dropped an official Android app in the Market – and it’s good. In fact, after trying the mobile version for a while, I’m pretty sure Winamp will be my only music player for Android, as well as for my desktop.

Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

• In the midst of the announcements and the media storm surrounding the Document Foundation, I forgot to elaborate on a quite different type of news : The birth of FossAlliance. What’s FossAlliance ? FossAlliance is a strategic partnership between several consultancies and practitioners in the fields of Free & Open Source Software and Open Standards. This alliance allows each of our customers to benefit from the range of expertise of the entire network, and not just the one from one company.

Events

• The linux.conf.au 2011 organising team is proud to announce Vinton G. Cerf as a keynote speaker for lca2011.

Web Browsers

• Not long ago, we mentioned that we’d be releasing a new stable version of Google Chrome approximately every six weeks to get bug fixes, improvements, and new features in the hands of our users quickly in the spirit of speedy innovation. With that in mind, we’re happy to bring you a new stable version of Google Chrome today.

Oracle/LibreOffice

• Of course, this is all a piece of Oracle’s “my way or the highway” approach to all the open-source programs it inherited from Sun. Oracle may support open source in general, but it’s doing a lousy job of doing what’s best for the its own open-source programs.

• There has been a lot of commentary in recent days about the OpenOffice.org community council decision to ask people who have aligned themselves with The Document Foundation (TDF) to resign their seats on the council. So, of course, what we need is a little bit more commentary.

• First, when reading the minutes, it’s worth noting that this was not a voted decision. At 21:50, Louis Suarez-Potts proposed “that the TDF members of the CC consider the points those of us who have not joined TDF have made about conflict of interest and confusion [and] resign their offices, so as to remove the apparent conflict of interest their current representational roles produce”. He then proposed a deadline of Tuesday “to deal with this” – by emergency meeting of the council. So there was no decision to expel anyone, Louis made a proposal which did not obtain a consensus decision. That said, reading the minutes, there is clear alignment between supporters of TDF on one side and the rest of the council on the other side. And “the rest of the council” is Louis Suarez-Potts, Andreas Bartel, Eike Rathke, Juergen Schmidt, Matthias Huetsch and Martin Hollmichel on behalf of Stefan Taxhet – all Oracle employees.

Government

• The open government/open data commitment is particularly noteworthy since it will apparently include a direction to all federal departments and agencies to adopt an open government principle where the default position is to provide information to the public. The plans for access to information would also be enormously helpful, including restoring the CAIRS database and following the recent UK lead by making all documents released under ATI available online.

Openness/Sharing

Open Data

• What is the basic idea? Well, transit data is in 1,000 weird proprietary formats held by 1,000 different organizations with about 1,000 different attitudes to opening it up. And that’s very boring. So above that there exists a tier of companies who’ll harmonize it and sell it to you along with stacks of software for doing interesting things with it. Like route across it.

• And as you’ve seen, the data is imperfect (like maps), badly licensed (like maps) and you’re not able to change it (like maps).

• Google made at least some headway here by throwing out GTFS, a format for them to suck in your transit data. It’s kind of a funny format, but that’s a side issue. Like MapMaker, Google’s copy of openstreetmap, Google transit is essentially closed in all meaningful senses. You can’t pull the data out, you can’t build your own services. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to have multiple companies building stacks out there each slurping up, harmonizing and then serving out all that data.

Leftovers

Media

• That was not all. Students could not use anything they found on the Internet. They were not permitted even to discuss their assignments with friends, classmates, neighbors, parents, relatives or siblings.

• The union that represents federal government scientists has created a website – PublicScience.ca – to give a voice to the work of its members.

• The move comes weeks after it was revealed that new restrictive rules have been placed on scientists at the Natural Resources department requiring them to clear a number of hoops, including approval from the minister’s director of communications, before they may speak with the press about their work.

Security

Defence/Police/Aggression

• For several months during Bill Clinton’s administration, a former top military officer says the White House lost the card with a set of numbers for opening the briefcase containing the codes for a nuclear attack.

• Anyone who has ever heard me speak about Internet regulation will know of my barely contained scepticism with regards to Barlow’s Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, and all that it represents. In fact, the Declaration speaks of a more innocent time in Internet history, and it is usually considered to be one of the best-known examples of cyber-libertarianism.

• It will allow security services and the police to spy on the activities of every Briton who uses a phone or the internet.

• Moves to make every communications provider store details for at least a year will be unveiled later this year sparking fresh fears over a return of the surveillance state.

• As noted in late September, the FBI is on a charm offensive, seeking to ease its ability to spy on Americans by expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Must-read NCAR analysis warns we risk multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path

• Think of endangered species, and you probably think of Florida panthers or blue whales or California golden condors — big, charismatic animals that easily move the heart.

• But endangered species can be small, odd and unappealing, too. These animals are no less special; they’re still one-of-a kind works of evolutionary art, sculpted over millions of years.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• The Telegraph and Guardian reported yesterday that the government plans to install deep packet inspection kit at ISPs, a move considered and then apparently rejected by the previous government (our Database State report last year found their Interception Modernisation Programme to be almost certainly illegal). An article in the New York Times on comparable FBI/NSA proposals makes you wonder whether policy is being coordinated between Britain and America.

• After watching Facebook make so many missteps when it comes to privacy over the past couple of years, including how some leading game developers passed along user data to marketers, I’ve come to the conclusion it should just throw in the towel.

• Forget about tweaking privacy settings so they’re easier to control, manipulate, configure or understand. Forget about having to worry if new services make more personal data public so that search engines can discover it so Facebook can serve up more pages to display more ads. Forget privacy settings altogether.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• In 2007, Amazon announced their music store. It would, they promised, deliver DRM-free music to U.S. Amazon users. And they did just that. With much fanfare, they rolled out Amazon MP3, touting music downloads for any device. On their website, they explain what’s special about their music sales. “DRM-free means that the MP3 files you purchase from Amazon.com do not contain any software that will restrict your use of the file.”

• Another issue is ensuring that the data is stored in a format that makes it available in centuries to come. Ancient manuscripts are still readable. But much digital media from the past is readable only on a handful of fragile and antique machines, if at all. The IIPC has set a single format, making it more likely that future historians will be able to find a machine to read the data. But a single solution cannot capture all content. Web publishers increasingly serve up content-rich pages based on complex data sets. Audio and video programmes based on proprietary formats such as Windows Media Player are another challenge. What happens if Microsoft is bankrupt and forgotten in 2210?

• The FCC recently asked for additional comments in its ongoing proceeding regarding Open Internet Principles. In particular, the FCC sought specific input on whether the openness principles should apply to both wireline and wireless networks.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Recently, we’ve been highlighting more and more publicity rights lawsuits, because they’re becoming quite popular these days. Eriq Gardner has an excellent, long and detailed article all about publicity rights, going over the history of it: which involved some common law/case law rulings, and now (more and more) is being driven by state laws (which are often pushed and passed by the industries who are cashing in on these claims). Basically, these are a form of “intellectual property rights” on almost any aspect of a person — their likeness, appearance, voice, mannerisms, gestures, etc. — used for “commercial use,” (which we’ve noted recently is such an ambiguous term these days).

• Few people know more than Indiana attorney Jonathan Faber about the actual worth of being famous these days. He’s certainly been committed to the field work. He’s played guitar in the living room of rock ’n’ roll legend Chuck Berry, dodged paparazzi to meet with representatives of Princess Diana’s estate, and given a presentation to an audience of four- and five-star generals after the U.S. military received an inquiry about putting the image of Gen. George S. Patton in a commercial.

• Faber, whose office is in Shelbyville, outside of Indianapolis, has been involved in making licensing deals on behalf of celebrity clients and their estates that have paved the way to many of the most memorable advertisements in recent years.

• He did the licensing work that led to a Lipton Iced Tea commercial featuring an animated Reggie Jackson, a Johns Hopkins spot with a reanimated Ella Fitzgerald (through existing footage and digital alteration) performing with a modern-day jazz band, and a Chevrolet Silverado commercial featuring Rosa Parks.

• He has also stepped in when celebrity images are used without permission. Faber used to send out a legal warning when someone used images of Marilyn Monroe or James Dean without the permission of their estates. On occasion, he’s also asked to testify as an expert witness in cases where a defendant, usually a company, has used a celebrity in some manner—often in a promotional campaign—and the plaintiff is attempting to collect damages. Faber will give the jury a dollar figure.

• Sarkozy is “pirating” an international conference on online freedom of expression organized by French minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernard Kouchner. Sarkozy is trying to use the conference as a showcase to promote the French repressive schemes and to avoid turning it into a strong statement that online freedom of expression is a condition of democracy. This instrumentalisation of French diplomacy is a coarse attempt to export approaches detrimental to fundamental freedoms, thus despising both republican values and French constitutional jurisprudence2.

• Mises said something I’ve always loved. (Everyone focuses on a few of his statements that other people don’t see, because he has so many great aphorisms and things.) He pointed out that in his view economics is purely deductive reasoning from a priori categories. Plus, then you explicitly introduce certain assumptions to make it interesting. [See my post Mises: Keep It Interesting.] “Interesting” was something I always focused on. So, in other words, we could talk hypothetically about a barter society forever, but it won’t get us that far. So let’s introduce the assumption that there is money in society. It’s not a priori that there is money, but there could be money and, if there is, then certain things follow from it.

• I think that likewise in libertarian theory certain things become interesting at a certain point. In the past, as you mentioned in your talk yesterday here at the Supporters’ Summit, it was not as easy as it is now to replicate information. There was sort of a tie in previous times between a good that was produced, like a book, and the information in it. The information in the book was in the physical copy of the book, so you could easily find a way to sell that. Now, with information being so easy to copy —

• And, of course, as Cory Doctorow mentions in one of his articles and speeches, do we think we are going to get to a point where it is going to get harder to copy and to spread information? No, it’s only going to get easier.

• These things have made people confront the issue of the morality and the politics of sharing information.

Copyrights

• The recording industry has deep pockets, but even RIAA largesse has its limits. Case in point: the Jammie Thomas-Rasset peer-to-peer trial in Minnesota, the first of the file-sharing cases to make it all the way to a verdict. In two weeks, Thomas-Rasset will have an extraordinary third trial, and the recording industry is sick of the expenses it’s ringing up to prosecute someone who (let’s face it) is just never going to cough up much money.

• And then he did a silly thing. Something he shouldn’t have done, but was easy to do with a gadget he already had in his pocket. After paying for a cinema ticket and taking his seat in the auditorium, Emmanuel Nimley held up his mobile phone and videoed the movie.

ACTA

• Observations

• 1. Border control: A known distraction, the issue of individual border searches plays a minor role in the criticism of ACTA. Instead of answering the questions of MEPs De Gucht focusses on border searches. Contrary to what he claims MEPs didn’t express particular interest in the issue. 2. Does not require: The statement is deceptive. While ACTA does not require the contracting parties to enact these mesaures it leaves them the opportunity to opt-out and recognises the right of other parties to carry out such border searches. Read the agreed text. There are different options how to word an exclusion of border searches and the contracting parties chose the worst variant: “Parties may exclude from the application of this Section small quantities of goods of a non-commercial nature contained in travelers’ personal luggage.” 3. The provisions far go beyond the current EU regime. In the case of penal sanctions there is no existing EU acquis and the Commission recently pulled her proposal for an Criminal IPR Enforcement directive due to lack of consensus from EU member states. 4. As indicated above there are other, more common ways to word an exclusion e.g. by not making such cases subject to the agreement. 5. Of course that is not true. The most obvious violation of the acquis is the inclusion of penal sanctions. 6. De Gucht disputes the obvious, that despite at least four requests from the plenary the Commission was unwilling to adhere to Art 15 TFUE openness requirements, and it did hide between an confidentiality agreement with third nations (for which no parliament approval was sought) and the “international relations” exemption of Art 4 1049/2001/EC 7. The ombudsman answered to a complaint by the FFII. 8. De Gucht defends his lack of transparency by arrogance without any merits. 9. In other words, the final version of ACTA is no final text. 10. With the Art 207 procedure (formerly 133 procedure) the Council formally authorises negotiations but even the authorisation text is prepared by the Commission. The Art 207 is a procedure for international trade agreements (tariffs&quota), not international legislation. 11. De Gucht misinforms Parliament about the Acquis. His statement “The acquis communautaire is about substantive law and we are not changing that” is blatantly false. The Acquis comprises adopted EU level substantive and enforcement laws. 12. Improvement of “legal standards” is no objective of trade agreement. The formal objective underlying the WTO TRIPs precedent was not to improve international legal standards but reduce regulatory, non-tarriff trade barriers. 13. The Commissioner does not tell the truth. For instance there is no Acquis for penal sanctions and such penal sanctions, for which the EU has formal competence, would be adopted according to the “ordinary legislative” process. 14. The Commissioner refers to existing EU laws which differ from the ACTA negotiation results. 15. It is not upon a Commissioner to criticize Parliament. The wording “nebulous liberty” demonstrates the degree of arrogance and hypocrisy. The MEP Schaake asked de Gucht for an “impact assessment” on fundamental rights.

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