J_K9 @ Linux

En Passant…

Published today, I’ve come across a good article titled “13 Reasons To Celebrate The New Microsoft-Novell Pact” which offers a substantially different viewpoint on the matter compared to articles or opinions of others such as, I don’t know, Bruce Perens’ statement on Novell being “the new SCO.”

On another note, I have been getting Bluehost’s “CPU Quota Exceeded” page quite a lot recently, so I’m considering hacking together my own CMS and writing a script to port the data in Wordpress’ database to my CMS. I think what is causing this error is an excess of database queries, as Wordpress performs about twenty queries per page load (if I remember correctly), so it’s no wonder that the CPU limit is surpassed and my account is suspended for a few minutes whenever there are too many concurrent connections. Bluehost is a great webhost, but since they lowered the CPU limit (or so it appears) I am getting these errors far too frequently, and I am contemplating moving this website to a more powerful server on another webhost such as Media Temple. We’ll see

[edit] Fourteen queries on the front page, in fact.

Alleluya! Ubuntu To Include Extra Drivers

It looks like the Ubuntu team has been listening to the community: Ubuntu has decided to ship some proprietary drivers with their next release, Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn.

There are problems with this, such as the possibility of a violation of the GPL and the general immorality of using closed source drivers in an open source OS, as well as a host of practicality issues such as the simple technical problems that support for the drivers is completely dependent on the hardware vendor.” However, this is a huge leap forward for Linux (in my eyes): I do not like closed source drivers, but I do recognise the fact that they are the only good solutions we have at the moment and so they are fine as a short-term improvement to the situation. As I expressed in my previous post on this topic, there are many graphics, sound and wireless drivers which are closed source but without which the OS is too impractical to use as either a home or office OS.

I am extremely glad that Ubuntu has made this step. I don’t think this is encouraging closed source software at all - the Ubuntu team are just doing their best to provide the best end-user experience possible, and that means that it must include closed source drivers at this stage in Linux’s development, then so be it. They may have gone a bit too far by offering the drivers during the installation from the CD itself rather than educating the user and asking them whether they want to download the drivers, but I still respect their decision. This is an incredibly bold move.

Who knows - I might just be able to get past the splash screen when I try to install Ubuntu 7.04

A New Category: Realistic Ideas

I’ve just added a new category called “Realistic Ideas,” and I plan to add some content under that category fairly soon. What I would like to do is share my views on FOSS and Linux in particular, and where I think we shall need to take it in order to penetrate the enterprise desktop and home desktop sectors.

More to come

Open Sourcing Java: More News

Sun, after much deliberation, has settled on the GPL as one of the licenses under which the Java code will be released.

For more information on what code is being released and when you can expect to see it, see this internetnews article.

SFLC And Samba Team Against Novell’s Deal

Bradley Kuhn, the CTO of the Software Freedom Law Center, wrote an open letter to the FOSS community last Thursday about Microsoft’s patent promise in its deal with Novell, and that developers should not succomb to a false sense of security - the threat of Microsoft patent lawsuits is as great as it ever was. From the letter:

In short, the pledge applies precariously to developers who work in a vacuum: those who write original software in their spare time, receive no payment for it, and do not distribute it to anyone under the GNU GPL. It’s worse than useless, as this empty promise can create a false sense of security. Don’t be confused by the illusion of a truce; developers are no safer from Microsoft patents now than they were before.

Not only that, but the Samba team has asked Novell to reconsider the deal, stating that they “disapprove strongly of the actions taken by Novell on November 2nd.”

It looks like Novell have dug themselves into a fairly deep hole this time… Let’s see how they cope with pressure from both sides.

Yet Another Daniel Wallace Case Dismissed

This guy just doesn’t give up, does he? The GPL causes predatory pricing? Hah! If anyone does that in the software arena, it’s Microsoft.

Read more.

100% Free Distributions: Will They Get Linux Anywhere?

‘Completely free’ distributions spring up every once in a while, and they tend to get a substantial amount of coverage from the Linux press. The last one to be added to the FSF’s ever-growing list of free distributions is GNewSense, which is Ubuntu stripped of its proprietary software and given a (bad) makeover. As one might expect, it has received the usual spike of popularity: NewsForge, LWN, etc.

While I admire the efforts of the GNewSense team, I can’t help but wonder why they are wasting their time on this when that time could be much better spent improving a distribution that is actually going somewhere, like Ubuntu.

Continue reading 100% Free Distributions: Will They Get Linux Anywhere?…

Adobe Helps To Improve Flash Player Integration Into Mozilla Firefox

“Adobe Systems Inc. is contributing some of the computer code behind its widely used Flash player to the Mozilla Foundation so that it can be improved upon and blended into an upcoming version of Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser.”

“The code covers the scripting language in Adobe’s Flash software, which millions of people use to view online media and other dynamic applications delivered over the Internet.”

“Mozilla has set up an open-source project called “Tamarin” to manage the future contributions to the scripting language code from Adobe. The project will be jointly managed by developers from Adobe and Mozilla.

“By working with the open-source community we are accelerating the adoption of a standard language for creating and delivering richer, more interactive experiences that work consistently across PCs and mobile devices,” said Kevin Lynch, Adobe’s chief software architect.”

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/07/AR2006110700251.html

Is this the preface to the complete open sourcing of Flash Player?

Well, one can dream, can one not?

Mozilla’s announcement has more information.

Red Hat Strikes Back

In the past two weeks, Oracle and Microsoft have fired salvos across — and some would say into — Red Hat’s bow.
 

The Novell/Microsoft partnership had the desired short-term effect both companies were looking for: Red Hat stock went down, said Red Hat general counsel Mark Webbink in today’s interview with SearchOpenSource.com. On the other hand, Webbink said, the hype surrounding the announcements from Oracle, Microsoft and Novell will be short- lived. In the end, Red Hat’s high customer satisfaction ratings will allow his company to ride the tide. In one year’s time, Webbink said, Red Hat will be the only Linux commercial vendor left standing, Microsoft support or not.

[..]

These companies are trying to do both. I can at least respect Microsoft, because they don’t pretend to be an open source company.

Ouch. Read the interview of Red Hat’s general counsel Mark Webbink here.

But the digs at Novell are still deeper: Novell is Now the New SCO:

Take the second highest ranked distribution of Linux on the planet. Show the community that your developers actually care about desktop Linux. Show your attention to detail. Show your sense of duty to the community by offering that desktop for free. Develop a robust community surrounding that distribution you offer for free. Now throw it all away in one swift, idiotic motion.

The different views on this deal are quite interesting, and those two are contrary to my first thoughts on it… However, as I’ve said before: we just have to wait and see what happens. That second article is extremely persuasive, though.

Linux and Windows: Can They Coexist In Harmony?

Linux users are well aware of the complexities associated with multi-platform environments, particularly in cases where one tries to connect a Microsoft product to a Linux distribution or service in one way or another. Windows has no native filesystem drivers for anything other than FAT16/32 and NTFS - that is, Linux’s main filesystems (ext3, ReiserFS, and ext2 to a certain extent) are not recognised by Windows, so third party drivers have to be used to access Linux partitions from Windows. This is just one example of how difficult Microsoft have made it to use Linux on the same system for the use, or even as another platform on the network.

However, Microsoft and Novell (the company which owns the rights to and develops SUSE Linux - one of the most prominent Linux enterprises, in fact, for those of you who may never have heard of them) appear to have been collaborating over the past few months, and have released a joint letter proposing the end of Windows-Linux warfare as we know it.

Continue reading Linux and Windows: Can They Coexist In Harmony?…