07.19.11
Posted in Microsoft, Mono, Novell, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 3:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Closed-source risk
Summary: A new PR offensive portrays an endorsement from SUSE as an elixir to Mono’s problems
WE ALREADY know that Mono is a patent risk. Nothing has changed since 2009 when Microsoft provided clarifications that only reinforced our scepticism. Well, it seems like SUSE, now a subsidiary of a Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner, decided to show love for Mono again [1, 2]. “In addition to the intellectual property license, SUSE is also partnering with Xamarin to provide customer support,” says this article. Just as someone people started to hope (perhaps wishfully) that SUSE had cut ties with Microsoft deals, the sad realisation dawns upon Fred Williams, who writes, “so much for trying SUSE”
He clarifies in the body of his comment:
After Attachmate’s purchase of SUSE I was going to try it. But not if their going to push this Mono rubbish.
If Microsoft wants there language (C#, their version of Java) and .Net IDE to be available, let them license it so every one can use it. Why are intelligent developers chasing a moving target that contains portions of code that contain patent issues?
Rainer Weikusat responds by saying that this happens “[f]or the same reason Mono opponents are apparently incapable of understanding that the US patent systems is fubarred enough that ‘code without patent issues’ does not exist in ths USA: They are not really intelligent. That’s why they seek to imitate the not exactly glorious Microsoft designed technology to begin with.
Another reply says:
They may be intelligent in regard to software, but not in other areas, such as law, or English.
In our Xamarin wiki page we provide a lot more background. Some Mono boosters entered our IRC channels recently, playing ball for Microsoft’s interests. Well, “how is that good news,” asked our contributor Oiaohm. “Nowhere is Xamarin getting funding out of that.”
“Also you are forgetting what Miguel de Icaza has systematically done to mono. [...] Basically wherever he can see profit [he] ends up closed.”
–OiaohmThe operation is still funded by Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza and it is a company which de Icaza admits is an "open core" (i.e. proprietary software) company. So what’s to celebrate here? Here is the press release from Nuremberg (also in Novell’s site, which is mostly inactive these days). “SUSE today announced it is partnering with Xamarin,” says the press release, “to bring products to market faster and to more effectively support customers using Mono®-based products. The agreement grants Xamarin a broad, perpetual license to all intellectual property covering Mono, MonoTouch, Mono for Android and Mono Tools for Visual Studio. Xamarin will also provide technical support to SUSE customers using Mono-based products, and assume stewardship of the Mono open source community project.”
They use the vague term intellectual property without saying if it’s copyrights or trademarks (or both). This does not actually cover the area of patents, which are mostly held by Microsoft, so how much of a reassurance is the above? Phoronix says “Xamarin gains rights to the IP surrounding Mono.” What is “IP”? What is it then? Patents, copyrights, or trademarks? These are all very different. In our latest IRC log there is a longer discussion of these points. It was initially a Microsoft booster who brought to our attention the news right from the horse’s mouth, only to face dismissal from Oiaohm who wrote: “Xamarin does not get Novell license with MS by that. So Xamarin only has the bless[ing] of 1 party when it needs 2 [the Novell PR, by the way, does not change much]. Also you are forgetting what Miguel de Icaza has systematically done to mono. People forget the visual studio plugin started as open source. Migual de Icaza systematically convert that from GPL to MIT… Then from MIT to closed source. [...] MIT license allows you to change to closed source without approval. So as long as you are silver tongued enough to convince people that converting from gpl to mit will give more freedom you can pull it off. Monotouch also started open source as well. Basically wherever he can see profit [he] ends up closed.” █
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Posted in Microsoft, Patents at 3:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Collaborators left high and dry
Summary: The untold story about origins of the Kinect and how it relates to patents
THE i4i case is a classic story where Microsoft approaches someone with a good idea, pretends to be a partner, copies this someone's idea, and then throws this 'partner' to the dogs. Over the years we have covered several stories like this (sometimes the goal is to hoard patents) and there is a new one in last week’s news, alleging that Microsoft probably ‘stole’ the Kinect:
After hearing of the HiE-D, Microsoft courted [Carlos] and requested a prototype. He gave Microsoft a prototype of the HiE-D, and according to [Carlos], it was taken to Redmond in February of 2007 – more than two years before the announcement of Project Natal. After meeting with Microsoft two more times that year, he was told by Microsoft that a patent on his invention wouldn’t be a bad idea.
While any action on Microsoft’s part would be speculation, we will say that the Kinect is remarkably similar to the HiE-D. Both use a ‘constellation’ of infrared dots projected on the user, and both can are able to detect the ‘skeleton’ of a user for motion control. The image below, from the HiE-D patent, shows how the movement of a face can be tracked.
Keep this in mind when Microsoft screams “innovation” in relation to Kinect (which we sometimes call “KINect” because of KIN). █
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Posted in Google, Microsoft, Search at 2:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft eliminates choice and controls its opposition
MICROSOFT LOVES to kill competition because it’s a lot easier than to actually create competing/compelling products. History has many examples like this and the Yahoo hijack is one of the more recent ones. In the case of Yahoo, Microsoft resorted to proxy fights and other questionable tactics which include AstroTurfing. Well, after a history of systematic crime Microsoft realises that it has a well-deserved reputation problem, so it hides behind brands of other companies and keeps re-badging its search, trying to somehow trick people into using Microsoft thinking that they are fighting “bad”, “evil” Google. As we experimented with some alternative search engines today (or meta-search) we came to discover the above in DuckDuckGo (from screenshot), taking the user to this FAQ page. Does DuckDuckGo really want to market itself as a substitute to Google by sporting Microsoft? Suffice to say, this is very disappointing.
“Do not let Microsoft pretend to be of both sides, both open source and proprietary, both Windows and Linux, both Microsoft and the “anti-Microsoft”.”In similar news of interest, amid a lot of Microsoft “open source” PR this week (e.g. trying to portray the company as open and as a contributor to a kernel it attacks with lawsuits, among other things) we discovered that Microsoft is top sponsor (i.e. passing money for placement) in an open source “Think Tank”, as before. The sponsorship is for Microsoft and friends to shape opinion and position of its competition. Do not let Microsoft pretend to be of both sides, both open source and proprietary, both Windows and Linux, both Microsoft and the “anti-Microsoft”. It’s a known technique for removing choice. Coca Cola uses similar tactics to ensure it gets paid even by those who hate Coke. █
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Posted in America, Patents at 8:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
(ODF | PDF | English/original)
Resumen: La reacción en contra de las patentes de software llega a niveles sin precedentes, ya que incluso algunas empresas preparan sus maletas y dejan a los países que permiten las patentes de software.
La toma de conciencia acerca del problema con las patentes de software es cada vez mayor. Personas en todo el Internet parecen haber formado un consenso en torno al desdén por las patentes de software y hoy en día en el gimnasio me di cuenta de que incluso las personas que no están en la tecnología han tomado conciencia del problema de las patentes de software (que en general, escribo el 80% del blog Mensajes – este incluido – en el gimnasio en estos días, debido a la falta de tiempo). El aumento de la cobertura de la materia debe ser el catalizador, aunque la sátira de esta pieza titulada[http://www.muckwatch.com/news/7] “USPTO tendrá que pagar 3 billones en daños sobre patentes no válidas”.
Asatya, una empresa de Silicon Valley base con sede en la India se ha ganado una demanda en contra de la USPTO (Oficina de Patentes y Marcas de los Estados Unidos). El tribunal ha impuesto una multa USPTO 3 billones de dólares EE.UU. por patentes de software no válidas pasadas por el cuerpo controversial sin un examen adecuado.
Las patentes fueron considerados para un nuevo examen cuando un fabricante de pequeño adminículo brillante demandó Asatya, el principal jugador de Android, pidiendo a la corte un embargo judicial de sus dispositivos. La USTPO encontrado todas las 7 patentes reclamadas por el fabricante de dispositivo no válidas o habiendo previas técnicas. El brillante fabricante de dispositivos fue la búsqueda de un daño de $ 3 billones.
Esto es por supuesto una broma sobre como el sistema que está costando mucho a los Estados Unidos, todo para el beneficio de unos pocos muy ricos las personas y sus abogados. John Perry Barlow, cofundador de la EFF (Fundación Electrónica de la Frontera), escribe: [a través de Pranesh Prakash]
Es “demasiado peligroso para hacer negocios” en los EE.UU. debido al riesgo de demandas por patentes de software.
Prakash escribe [http://twitter.com/pranesh_prakash/status/92446728535547905]:
Me encanta el troll de patentes de software Kootol de Mumbai.
Michuk dice que “la abolición de las patentes de software probablemente haran aumentar el crecimiento económico (mientras que matarán a unos pocas empresas buitre en el camino)” y Henrik Ingo [http://openlife.cc/] afirma que [http://twitter.com/h_ingo/status/92465845372076032]:
Pocas #swpats llegarán a su conclusión lógica: No se permite la importación de teléfonos inteligentes en EE.UU., y nadie venderá aplicaciones allí. #Telodije
Esto fue enviado por alrededor de un montón de gente, todos ellos más o menos se basan en un informe o un conjunto de informes sobre empresas que se mudan fuera de los EE.UU. (o al menos los desarrolladores), debido a la ley de patentes EE.UU.. Se escribió acerca de esto últimamente [http://techrights.org/2011/06/21/empire-strikes-back-vs-nz/] y lo mismo hizo The Guardian [http://techrights.org/2011/07/16/uspto-crushes-economy/] (pieza muy citada).
Claudio, un estadounidense diatriba [http://twitter.com/claudiom72/status/92222936194359296] de la siguiente manera:
Este es el resultado de la emisión de patentes de software en la actualidad. Espero que los políticos y las corporaciones codiciosas sean felices.
Bueno, cuando las grandes empresas comienzan desertar a otros países y una gran cantidad de trabajadores estadounidenses pierden su empleo, tal vez entonces la reacción contra la USPTO se convertirá en un tremendo lo suficiente como para dar resultados. Como un nuevo informe [http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Kootol-joins-Lodsys-as-a-patent-troll/?kc=rss] dijo, “los trolls de patentes desalojan a los desarrolladores de aplicaciones fuera de los EE.UU.”
Kootol Software Ltd. ha enviado un “aviso” a Apple, Faccebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Twitter, y varias docenas de otras compañías de tecnología con respecto a un pronto-a-ser-concedió la patente sobre una “tecnología básica”, al parecer, la participación de redes sociales. Mientras tanto, los ataques legales por “patente troll” Lodsys están causando los pequeños desarrolladores de aplicaciones a retirarse de los EE.UU. por completo, de acuerdo con un rodeo 15 de julio por The Guardian de Londres.
Con sede en Mumbai Kootol emitió un comunicado de prensa 15 de julio, diciendo que “ha enviado una notificación a las empresas en el [sic] para llamar su atención acerca de la tecnología de base que están utilizando para sus diferentes servicios y productos, para lo cual la empresa tiene en exclusiva derechos de patente.”
Esto es lo que un desarrollador notable que tenía que decir sobre el tema [http://furbo.org/2011/07/13/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-independent-developer/]. La gente está harta y también lo están las empresas en la cara de ella.
Cualquier nación que rechaza las patentes de software ofrece un lugar especial para los desarrolladores y pone en sí en una posición de ventaja frente a los Estados Unidos. No es de extrañar que países, como Nueva Zelanda, por ejemplo, esten corruptamente (“lobby”) cabildeado muy fuertemente por las multinacionales de los EE.UU.. Ellos quieren las bombas de tiempo de patentes de software en todo el mundo. █
Traducción hecha por Eduardo Landaveri, Administrator of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
Translation produced by Eduardo Landaveri, the administrator of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
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Posted in Patents at 8:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
(ODF | PDF | English/original)
Resumen: El jefe de la USPTO celebra la noticia de los retrasos del retroceso y Peer to Patent está aparentemente igualmente júbiloso.
EN EL mundo extraño de los abogados de patentes, las patentes buenas son patentes amplias que pueden hacer que todos los demás sean demandados. En el mundo de la OIN (Open Invention Network) una “buena” patente es una que sería muy difícil de anular. En la USPTO (Oficina de Patentes y Marcas de los Estados Unidos), las patentes son “buenas” porque son una fuente de ingresos. En principio, la USPTO bajo la dirección de Kapos es una causa perdida[http://techrights.org/2011/07/10/david-kappos-disappoints/] y de acuerdo con este nuevo post de Kappos[http://www.uspto.gov/blog/director/entry/first_office_action_backlog_dips], a pesar de la recesión/depresión, ellos están acelerando la tramitación de las solicitudes de monopolio. Esto es lo último que Estados Unidos necesita en estos momentos, sobre todo teniendo en cuenta lo duro que los trolls de patentes y los carteles de las patentes están golpeando. La reacción de los Peer to Patent es un disparate por decir lo menos. La persona que maneja su cuenta de Twitter dice[http://twitter.com/peertopatent/status/91168647116107777]:
Parece que hay signos de progreso en la USPTO! Cartera de retroceso!
A menos que sea sarcasmo, esto es malo, porque por lo general, vemos que el número de patentes aumenta con el tiempo. Así que la noticia de arriba puede ser indicativa de la situación está cada vez peor, no mejor, a excepción en el punto de vista de la USPTO, ya que las patentes son sólo negocios para estas personas. El presidente de la FFII (Fundación para una Infraestructura de Información Libre) respondió por escrito [http://twitter.com/zoobab/statuses/91171077337788417] “Más patentes!”
Sí, esto es probablemente lo que la USPTO considera como “éxito”. Si el Departamento de Justicia quiere limpiar el desorden anti-competitivo, un buen lugar para empezar sería un replanteamiento de la USPTO. Como una persona señaló hace unas horas[http://twitter.com/integgroll/status/91849928506216449]:
La USPTO sólo aprueba las patentes hoy en día, son un agujero enorme de dinero. Dejan al litigio probar la validez de las patentes.
Claudio desde el Linux Basement respondió [http://twitter.com/claudiom72/statuses/91852565653889024] con:
Hable de una pérdida de dinero en el pago de esos salarios si no van a hacer su trabajo de manera adecuada aprobando patentes.
!Qué pérdida de productividad¡ y lo que es un peaje en todo el mundo. Los ciudadanos de los Estados Unidos se levantarían en armas si entendieran las ramificaciones que se mantienen ocultas de los mismos (como los costos artificialmente elevados en todo el mercado). Los retrasos solían ser un síntoma y un argumento para el reacondicionamiento de la USPTO, lanzando a más personas en el problema, la USPTO ayuda a asegurarse de que sigue haciendo sus cosas rancias, otorgando aún más monopolios en muchas cosas más sin embargo. La gente tiene que levantarse y protestar. █
Traducción hecha por Eduardo Landaveri, Administrator of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
Translation produced by Eduardo Landaveri, the administrator of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
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Posted in Patents at 7:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Por Craig Hockenberry
Original en: http://furbo.org/
(ODF | PDF)
Soy lo suficientemente viejo para recordar la vida antes de Internet. Yo sé lo que es el desarrollo de software con y sin una red en todo el mundo.
Poco ha cambiado con el proceso de desarrollo de software desde la década de 1980. Por supuesto que ha habido mejoras en nuestras herramientas y técnicas, pero el acto de básico de la creación de productos de software es muy similar. Lo qué ha cambiado dramáticamente en los últimos 30 años es la forma en que distribuimos nuestras creaciones.
En los días en que el software era distribuido en medios magnéticos, como los rollos de cintas, casetes o discos, costaba MUCHO dinero hacer llegar el producto a un cliente. Como resultado, las grandes empresas y fabricantes de software fueron los únicos con los recursos financieros para conseguir estas aplicaciones en un canal de distribución. Había muy pocos desarrolladores independientes de software, y los que sí existian tenían operaciones muy pequeñas.
Entonces llegó Internet y lo cambió todo. La distribución fue de repente barata.
Recuerdo una conversación con mi buen amigo Cabel Sasser [http://panic.com/] hace unos años. Él y yo estábamos recordando nuestra primera incursión en la distribución en línea y se sorprendieron de que hemos tenido la misma reacción inicial: “!Ay Carajo! !Podemos poner nuestro software en el Internet y la gente realmente va a comprarlo!”
Muchos otros desarrolladores tenido esta misma experiencia y comenzaron a salir de las grandes empresas para trabajar por su cuenta. Hacían una buena vida, mientras que contaban con la libertad de trabajar en su pasión fue una gran vida[http://daringfireball.net/2005/10/the_life].
Ahora va la corriente principal de distribución es con la App Store. Y ya está empezado a cambiar las vidas y los negocios de los desarrolladores de software independientes. En la superficie, todo se ve bien. Hay más clientes, mayores ingresos, y muchos grandes productos nuevos.
Sin embargo, esta mayor distribución también está poniendo en riesgo nuestro negocio: hay gente en este nuevo mercado que afirman el derecho a una parte de nuestro trabajo. Ya sea por una patente [http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/patent-lawsuits/texas-eastern-district-court/76009/lodsys-llc-v-combay-inc/summary/] o una infracción de los derechos de autor [http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/copyright-lawsuits/new-york-southern-district-court/69655/kevin-harper-v-iconfactory-inc/summary/], los desarrolladores están descubriendo que este nuevo costo de los litigios llega a ser oneroso.
Lo peor es que estas infracciones puede suceder con cualquier parte de nuestros productos o sitios web: cosas que usted nunca [http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=100387] se imaginaría [http://www.widgetpress.com/defense] ser una violación de la propiedad intelectual de otra persona. Se siente que la codificación es un campo minado.
Desde nuestra experiencia, es muy posible que TODOS los ingresos de un producto puede ser consumido por los gastos legales. Después de años de verter su corazón y alma en este producto, es devastador. Te hace preguntarte ¿por qué diablos estás en este negocio: cuando no pueden pagar los salarios con las ventas de tus productos, no tiene sentido su construcción en el primer lugar.
Por lo tanto, al igual que en los días de los medios magnéticos, el desarrollador independiente ahora se encuentra consigo mismo en un punto donde se vuelve a convertirse en muy caro para distribuir sus productos a un mercado masivo. Esta vez, el canal de distribución en sí es muy barato, pero los gastos accesorios, tanto económica como emocionalmente, son MUY altos.
Y, por supuesto, sólo las grandes empresas y los editores pueden correr con estos gastos. Mi temor es que es sólo cuestión de tiempo antes de que los desarrolladores encuentren los riesgos y gastos prohibitivos y van a refugiarse en la seguridad de una organización mayor. Vamos a comenzar de nuevo en el cuadrado uno.
Con los años muchas de las aplicaciones más vendidos han sido creados por desarrolladores independientes, a partir de Steve Demeter y Trism [http://articles.cnn.com/2008-11-18/tech/iphone.game.developer_1_trism-iphone-app-store] en el lanzamiento de la App Store, y continuando hasta nuestros días con títulos como Tiny Wings (Alitas) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_wings] de Andreas Illiger.
La pérdida de ese tipo de talento e innovación a un sistema jurídico es un verdadero crimen. █
Traducción hecha por Eduardo Landaveri, Administrator of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
Translation produced by Eduardo Landaveri, the administrator of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
Please let’s thank Craig Hockenberry & Gedeon Maheux of the IconFactory, for allowing us to translate & publish Craig’s post (“The Rise and Fall of The Independent Developer”)
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Posted in News Roundup at 4:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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An Italian retailer, Monclick, is selling identical eeePC 1215P with “7″ Premium and Ubuntu. The price difference comes to $56 with that other OS costing that much more. Well, they aren’t identical, quite; that other OS comes in red while Ubuntu comes in black, but who cares? They’re both N570 Atoms at 1.5gHz with 2gB RAM and 12.1inch screen so they are, officially, not netbooks.
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Let’s say you want to buy a laptop and install a Linux distro on it. However, you’re facing a sort of a dilemma. Unlike Windows, which often comes preinstalled and configured with all the necessary drivers, you do not really know if your distro will fully support the underlying hardware. You might end up with a non-functioning system that will require a long time fixing and tweaking.
So what do you do? How do you choose hardware that will make your Linux flavors behave without compromising on your actual needs? No worries, I will help you. Today, you will learn how to make the best decisions when it comes to purchasing hardware for Linux.
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So, if you were like me, and curious about Mac OS X, you can see I am not overall impressed.
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Without the Linux CD, I’d have been stuffed.
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Desktop
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Well today I stepped foot inside Howard County Library in Woodbine, MD for the first time and saw that all of their computers were in fact still using Ubuntu. It was so much cooler in real life than what I read about it.
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However, what names come into mind when you think about Desktops? I believe that in this case, the names which feel most like it are Mac, Windows, Android, Meego, BeOS, ChromeOS, JoliCloud, and so on. Some of them are running proprietary OSes, some of them are partly open, and some of them are actually based on a Linux distribution or a Linux kernel and libraries stack.
And finally, what comes into mind when you think about the term ‘Linux Desktop’? Without holy wars and discussion which distribution is better (notice the word distribution here), I believe that it is hard to escape from the names as Ubuntu, Mandrake, Linspire, SLED, and similar solutions.
Some of you perhaps have already got my point. What makes a “Desktop” is not a mere combination of packages, applications, community and artwork; but it is the integration and common feeling among all of its components, and somewhat inherited desire of having a ‘standard’ way of doing everything. And Linux Distributions, on their turn, inherently have the essence of freedom of choice, flexibility and multitude of combinations of applications and goals within, which make them much more flexible on one hand, but much less focused on another.
Why Linux distributions will never (in my humble opinion) beat Windows or MacOS on desktop? By a one simple reason – they are too flexible. They provide too many options and possibilities by default, without a ‘standard’ way of doing things, and while everything works and is usually tightly integrated, this is still a combination of packages and applications, and not a Desktop. This is not a bad thing – by the contrary, I believe that this is awesome! But this opposite to what is expected from a Desktop experience.
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That’s right folks. On 2011-7-17 at 0634 Winnipeg time, items 8 and 9 in notebooks ordered by “Bestselling” are “Chromebooks” from Samsung.
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But, brave soul that I am, I decided to give it a try. This is what I found. I warn you now, it’s a tale of both triumph and tragedy. Well, OK, so it’s really a story of what worked and what didn’t work, but you get the idea.
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Flash drives have had a long-lasting relationship with Linux distributions. These portable storage devices are among the most reliable for out of the box hardware support on the Linux desktop. Clearly, using flash drives to run Linux has its benefits for various types of users.
As luck would have it, I was told of a company that is apparently running individual installations of Linux on flash drives for each of their employees. Apparently cost was a major motivation, but so was the need to VPN into the office from home without needing to configure a separate piece of software for each person.
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Kernel Space
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Last week there was a GNU Hurd status update, which generated a fair amount of attention as it stated there are plans for a Debian GNU/Hurd release in conjunction with Debian “Wheezy” when it’s out in late 2012 or early 2013. After being in development for more than 20 years, the Hurd is finally taking some shape. The Debian GNU/Hurd installer for Wheezy is even now working, which I tried out and ended up porting the Phoronix Test Suite to GNU Hurd. In this article is a brief look at Debian GNU/Hurd along with the first-ever benchmarks of Debian GNU/Hurd against Debian GNU/Linux.
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Graphics Stack
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While NVIDIA yesterday released a new Linux driver, it was quick to be pointed out in our forums that NVIDIA Optimus Technology still is not officially supported under Linux. But that’s not all that’s missing from their proprietary driver.
Also still missing is support for Fermi overclocking (overclocking the GeForce 400/500 series). Last August is when I mentioned that it was missing and NVIDIA confirmed they had it disabled in their Linux driver (but not under Windows) for all Fermi hardware. When testing out the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 last week, I noticed the support was still missing when trying to enable CoolBits. I asked NVIDIA’s Andy Ritger for a status update concerning Fermi overclocking on Linux, but he hasn’t yet responded to that message from five days ago.
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Applications
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Every so often I feel compelled to drop the corporate conspiracy theories and the how-tos and simply offer up kudos to an application and team of developers that work hard to create a piece of open source software that has great functionality and allows the user to enjoy freedom in so many ways. I found one of these programs when l I started creating a podcast (Zombie Radio) to promote my “I Zombie” trilogy of novels. When one of my beta readers came up with the idea, I knew it had to be done…and I knew the open source community would have all the tools I needed to make it a reality.
What I wanted to do was be able to create podcasts that resembled a radio station deejay, so music would be interwoven or added to dialog…a simple task, actually, especially with the right tool. That tool, of course, wound up being Audacity. If you’re out of the loop, Audacity is a free, open source, cross-platform sound editor that not only has an amazing feature list, but winds up being incredibly easy to use. Even for someone who has had limited exposure to sound editing, Audacity can have you creating somewhat complex audio files that are then exported as mp3 files.
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Instructionals/Technical
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I’ve been thinking about the problem of digital artifacts in a physical world. I remember clearly, a fantastic conversation I had with the amazing Jas Dhaliwal about this exact subject when he was up in Manchester recently.
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Games
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I have noticed a new FSF-bulletin-article via identi.ca: The Free Game Lag by Danny Piccarillo.
The article is about the lack of FLOSS games. It neglects the theory that Free Software would be an unsuitable method for game development. Free games will evolve like any other fields of software, but currently it is low-priority, because games are not that important. Seriously, the arguments of that article are null and void, it does not take specific properties of game development into account, I want to explain my thoughts about the issue:
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As part of our effort in giving Linux games category its due share, here is our second post featuring some really good games for Linux. If it was about top RTS games for Linux before, now its time for some fast paced first-person shooter(FPS) games for Linux. Quick collection of 10 FPS games for Linux((in no particular order) every Linux gamer should be aware of.
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Desktop Environments
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Anyway, it had the KDE 3.5X series desktop environment as default. I thought, cool! I’ll like this probably. Then I paused. You all should know that pause, right? It’s the one where our mind is actually being rational for a minute and starts spinning trying to figure something out. Then it’s almost as if a bell gets rung once and the answer’s there. My mind was telling me that it remembered that the last time I looked at a distribution using the KDE 3.5X series I thought it looked antiquated at best.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
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Stuart: At the moment I mainly try to keep KDE’s marketing in good shape. This means working with the promo team to keep up to date with happenings in our community, and spreading the word about events through articles on the official KDE news site, KDE.News. It also means getting involved in writing press releases about the latest software news and doing a bit of people management to get things done on time.
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GNOME Desktop
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I have Ubuntu 11.04 on my laptop but I’ve added Gnome 3 and ditched Unity by adding repositories which have Gnome3. Everything kind of works but there are problems as described before here.
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New Releases
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PapugLinux-11.1 is available for download, this is a major release in term of package update.
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Slackware Family
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Slackware 1.0 was released by Patrick Volkerding exactly 18 years ago in 16 July 1993 in an official release when he was still a student. At that time, it was distributed under 24 disks (yes, floppy disks) and it only has two series, A and X. No one will ever thought that it’s now being the oldest maintained Linux distribution up to now Applause
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My experience with this new CD was a bit worrisome at the beginning. I inserted it and let its automatic boot go…but got the unpleasant error message that the live CD was not found. Since I had nothing else to do, I rebooted the computer and pressed “enter” before the 10 seconds for the automatic boot were over.
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Some days ago, I had said that I was bored since my multi-boot systems were working perfectly. I also said that I wanted to try Kongoni GNU/Linux.
Since booting the live CD wasn’t enough, my quest for knowledge led me to actually installing this Slackware-based distro. Three were my main motivations to add yet another head to my hepta-boot desktop computer:
1. I have not tried a purely Libre distro.
2. I’ve always wanted to try Slackware, but I feel I’m not yet up to it.
3. I felt it was about time for me to see if I could do well with a text-based installation.
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Mandrake Family
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PCLinuxOS Phoenix Edition 2011-07 is now available for download, PCLinuxOS Phoenix Edition 2011-07 features the following updates.
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Under the hood PCLinuxOS is still a good distribution. It has a nice installer, the KDE desktop has pretty good defaults and it comes with a wide selection of useful software. It’s the presentation that I feel could use some improvement. I don’t mean the grey theme — it’s not my favourite colour, but at least it’s not purple. No, by presentation I mean, for example, the default icons on the desktop. Most users aren’t going to regularly access their firewall configuration, their localization settings or the LibreOffice Manager. Most users will want to access their web browser and e-mail client on a daily basis, but those icons aren’t on the desktop or the quick-launch bar. The application menu does quite a bit of nesting in some places, even if the sub-menu has just one item in it. Synaptic is a capable package manager, but it’s not as newcomer-friendly as Mageia’s software manager. What it boils down to is that, if we put Mageia beside PCLinuxOS, I think an argument can be made that the latter is more appealing from a technical, “let’s tweak the settings,” point of view, but loses points in presentation and user-friendliness.
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After an extensive discussion with the community on the Mageia developmental mailing list, Anne Nicolas revealed the results concerning Mageia release and support cycles as well as the release schedule for Mageia 2. The consensus was to use basically the same cycle used in Mageia 1.
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Red Hat Family
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CentOS stands for Community ENTerprise Operating System and it exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility with its upstream distribution, in this case Red Hat EL 6.
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Some of the busiest stock exchanges in the region have shown a preference for open source software as indicated by the number of installations of Red Hat, one of the companies providing open source solutions.
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Fedora
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Debian Family
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As you all might be aware Debian is a popular Linux distribution that forms the basis of many other more popular distributions such as Ubuntu. Hurd on the other hand is something you might not be aware of.
While Linux is most popularly considered a family of operating systems, Free Software Foundations purists reserve that name for the kernel, or the very core of the operating system. They prefer to call the resultant distribution of kernel and software running on the kernel as GNU/Linux since it is a combination of GNU software and the Linux kernel. Debian is thus known as Debian GNU/Linux.
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During Debian Day, the conference opens its doors to anyone interested in finding out more about Debian and Free Software, inviting enthusiasts, users, and developers to a full day of talks on several subjects — such as Free Software in government and enterprise, and involvement — as well as a string of talks about the Debian Project and operating system.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Canonical has been doing ads focused on business and it’s business products for at last a few months. But the question was when would they finally start advertising Ubuntu itself? Well that time is getting very near. On July 14th Canonical posted this job ad on it’s career portal.
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The ‘Me Menu’ will no longer be installed by default in Ubuntu 11.10.
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Flavours and Variants
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I installed Linux Mint 11 last night. And this morning. And again this morning. I think I’m done now.
I’ve been using Linux Mint for several years and just loving it. It’s the most stable, most newbie-friendly, most media friendly Linux I know. Release 7 was terrific, 8 even better — and there I happily stayed until I began having browser woes. I knew there could be hassles jumping three versions forward, but Mint is so friendly I wasn’t worried.
Ha!
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In the summer, we like to take a break from all the serious open source applications that we usually cover and take a look at some apps that are just plain fun.
This year, we’ve updated our list of the “funnest” open source applications with more games than ever before. In fact, the 2011 list has 74 games in all, including 46 that we’ve never featured before. At the end, we’ve also included a few apps that aren’t really games, but are still pretty fun.
Notably, the majority of the apps on this list run on multiple platforms, so you should be able to find plenty of games for your system, no matter which operating system you run.
If you’d like to call attention to a great open source game that isn’t on our list, please make a note in the comments section below.
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The not-for-profit Outercurve Foundation’s systems infrastructure and integration gallery has launched a new developer competition.
The open source group’s work with “CoApp” is focused on this community driven “package management system” for open source applications on the Windows Platform.
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Most commercial software today depends on open source software. The commercial software might be using an underlying open source platform, or it might be incorporating open source components, or it might be provided as a commercial open source product itself. Whichever the case, the software firm behind the commercial software needs to ensure that its interests are met by the open source software projects it depends on. This article shows how commercial software firms manage or steer open source software projects to meet their business needs.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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For years, an extension called Firebug has been a powerful tool that kept Web programmers loyal to Firefox.
But now, as browser makers add their own tools geared to attract those who build Web sites and applications, the lead Firebug programmer has taken a job with Chrome, CNET has learned.
“Monday, I start work on next-gen Web dev tools at Google on the Chrome browser team. Consequently I will no longer be contributing routinely to the development and maintenance of Firebug for Firefox,” John J. Barton told members of a Firebug mailing list yesterday.
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There are people who claim that Mozilla does not have the guts to openly challenge Google in the same way the company attacked Microsoft in the mid-2000s. Mozilla’s official competitive strategy can be described as almost being mushy in a time when the company needs to be more aggressive than ever to make its case. But the company gets more confident and its chairman has just told us that, while Google is the lesser of two evils, Firefox will have to evolve to sustain its role as the Robin Hood of the open web.
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Mozilla
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Well, today I want to talk about Thunderbird 5, a recent update to the popular Email client from Mozilla that I believe is worth talking about.
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Firefox product manager Asa Dotzler determined that figuring out the 64-bit confusion surrounding Firefox will be “near the top” of his to-do list this summer and fall. One could conclude that Mozilla has no idea at this point what people are expecting from a 64-bit version of Firefox, so Dotzler is asking for some feedback. Considering the advantages and disadvantages of 64-bit – are you ready for a 64-bit Firefox?
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Mozilla has begun collecting feedback on what appears to be a more serious approach to move Firefox for Windows from 32 to 64 bit.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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It was just early June, of course, when Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) decided to donate OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation rather than to LibreOffice — a move at least one blogger equated with a “spiteful child, smashing their toys instead of sharing.”
Well, so much for any kind of lasting quiet since then. Last week, none other than IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced that it was donating its Lotus Symphony office suite to the Apache OpenOffice.org project, thus throwing its own weight behind the Oracle-affiliated project as well.
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Along with that sigh of relief, however, red flags began to fly in the FOSS blogosphere because IBM had a hand in Oracle’s decision. Experience has taught open sourcers to be suspicious, and there was plenty of fodder here to make one wary of Big Blue’s possible motives, mostly revolving around IBM Lotus Symphony, the freeware suite that utilizes OpenOffice code. Since the permissive open source Apache License allows a commingling with proprietary code in a way strictly forbidden by the GPL and its derivatives, it was feared that OOo would be neglected as IBM and Oracle focused their efforts on proprietary add-ons to create non-free versions of OpenOffice.
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Funding
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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The Chief Technology Officer manages all aspects of the company’s technology infrastructure and provides strong leadership in setting the overall technology direction and goals for the organization. Responsibilities are twofold. First, directly managing the staff responsible for supporting the technology needs of staff; managing the organization’s intranet and internet services; directing the organization’s varied development projects; ongoing technical oversight of the company’s products and services; and solving the most challenging of technology development problems facing the organization. Second, the CTO is a visionary, looking beyond the existing curve with respect to opportunities and innovations that Creative Commons can explore and embrace to remain timely and relevant to its broad constituency.
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Licensing
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The month before the Harmony 1.0 release was quiet, and I was starting to wonder if anyone other than the drafting group was even paying attention any more. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see the posts start to appear last week after the Monday release. Some more positive, some more negative, but the most important thing right now is that people are engaging with Harmony, thinking through what the agreement templates mean, and how they fit in the general FLOSS ecosystem. So far I’ve read posts by: Bradley Kuhn, Dave Neary, Jon Corbet, Mark Webbink, Richard Fontana (part 1 & part 2), Simon Phipps, Stephen Walli and a Slashdot mention (glad for links in the comments if you come across others). I’ve observed a few common themes, so I thought it might be useful to take a step back and ponder through them.
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Jos blog post today reminded me that I had a look at the Harmony Agreements and tried to decide for me whether I would consider to sign such a CA. To make it short: signing a Harmony Copyright Assignment is for me unacceptable. I think it could be valuable to others why I would not sign such an agreement. As a note: I have signed the KDE Fiduciary Licensing Agreement, so I am not in general opposed to licensing agreements.
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Security
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Whilst Agnitio v1.0 was only released 7 months ago I announced that I was writing the tool at SecurityBSides Las Vegas last year and that it would be “free for anyone to download and use” (see slides 49, 50, 51 and 53 here). That particular statement makes me think of one thing in particular I learned and I will cover later in this post.
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Finance
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is an influential, under-the-radar organization that facilitates collaboration between many of the most powerful corporations in America and state-level legislative representatives. Elected officials then introduce legislation approved by corporations in state houses across the U.S., without disclosing that the bills were pre-approved by corporations on ALEC task forces.
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Common Cause has asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for possibly violating its tax-exempt status. The request came one day after the Center for Media and Democracy unveiled “ALEC Exposed,” a website uncovering more than 800 model bills created by the corporate-funded organization.
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ALEC’s Annual Meetings and Task Force Summits are held in some of the nation’s top travel destinations, at swanky hotels where state legislators and corporate executives enjoy lavish accommodations and exclusive excursions. A registration form for ALEC’s 21st Annual Meeting in Tampa, Florida invited members to “come and experience endless sandy beaches, sunny days, beautiful sunsets and the cool gulf breezes,” at the posh Hyatt Regency, which features more than 17 golf courses within 35 minutes of the hotel. In fact, a golf tournament and clinic sponsored by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was one of the event’s top activities.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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We’re fairly certain if you take a random sample of folks in their 70s and ask them to describe what BitTorrent is, the majority of them will tell you to hush up because you’re interrupting Matlock. Even folks much younger who aren’t entrenched in the tech world aren’t likely to be all that familiar with BitTorrent, but they’re all fair game for sue-happy firms looking to score quick settlements for big media.
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