11.28.13
Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel at 7:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Programmable devices running GNU/Linux are selling well and spreading to many areas of computing
Linux has been a star in embedded systems for quite a few years, but rarely were devices with Linux (and sometimes GNU utilities/toolchain on them) hacker-friendly; they were inflexible and locked-down to the point is being single-purpose machines.
Raspberry Pi et al. represent an exciting trend [1]. They are tied to Free languages [2], they are definitely programmable, they enjoy diversity and competition [3], and they do a variety of interesting things, from simple [4] to complex [5] (whole desktop operating systems), impacting every aspect of computing from servers [6] to robotics [7]. Raspberry Pi, which is a British product, is selling very well [8-11] and attracts funding [12], so this trend of affordable hackable computing will hopefully not fade away. The more freedom-respecting devices are out there, the more ethics-aware software will be run in our society, benefiting all. When devices are running secret code that cannot be changed we are simply left with back doors and security holes. █
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Whereas Raspberry Pi was the pioneer of very small Linux systems, the Arduino is the 800-pound gorilla in the micro-controller arena.
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We’re pleased to announce PyPy 2.2, which targets version 2.7.3 of the Python language. This release main highlight is the introduction of the incremental garbage collector, sponsored by the `Raspberry Pi Foundation`_.
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The Gertduino expansion board for the Raspberry Pi computer is now available. Created by Gert van Loo, the Gertduino is a Raspberry Pi add-on and it includes the same functionality as an Arduino-Uno but with some extra features like dual Atmel Atmega MCUs, -328 and -48.
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Pets are great company to have, but they need looking after when you are away. That’s what the Raspberry Pi-powered open-source PetBot aims to do, never leaving your precious pooch alone.
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As a result of the prior musings about crowdfunding and the rather shaky VAT status of the whole sector I have been thinking quite a bit about crowdfunding and where it might be useful and how we could get involved in some way. For our normal consultancy business we have no need of capital investments and we don’t produce anything that lends itself to the crowdfunding model, however I did come up with a project I have been wanting to do for quite a long time. Allow me to introduce it by way of a little video . . .
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A startup called the Citizen Web Project has raised over $23,000 in crowdsourcing funds for an alpha-stage fork of Arch Linux intended for hosting easily-administered web services on low-end hardware. Initially available for the Raspberry Pi, ArkOS is designed for securely self-hosting websites, email, social networking accounts, and cloud services via an open source “Genesis” server gateway application.
In the same spirit of self-reliance behind ArkOS itself, chief developer and Citizen Web Project founder Jacob Cook is hosting his own crowdsourcing campaign. So far, the project has raised over $23,000 on the way to a goal of $45,000, with 21 days left.
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RobotBits.co.uk has begun selling an open source mobile robotics kit from Frindo.org available with an Arduino Duo, or as an under-$100 model that lets you add your own Arduino and/or Raspberry Pi. The Frindo robotics platform, which appears to be about 100mm in diameter, is billed as being more robust than most low-cost educational robots, and is optionally available with a motor controller board and sensor bundle.
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It took us almost exactly a year to sell the first million Raspberry Pis. Going on that basis, we calculated that we might, if we were lucky, reach the second million around January 2014, or slightly afterwards – we were confident we’d get there by the end of February 2014. So it was a bit of a shock at the end of last week when we got the latest sales figures and discovered that the 2,000,000th Raspberry Pi was sold in the last week of October. We don’t know who owns it – if you bought one between October 24 and October 31st, it might be yours. (It could even be the one we gave to Prince Andrew when he visited on Halloween.)
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When the Raspberry Pi was developed, founder Eben Upton envisioned that the low-cost computer would do its finest work in the classroom, teaching kids about computing. But as more units sold, Raspberry Pi developed a strong, distinctive niche among adult makers, a fruitful group that nonetheless doesn’t really have much in common with a younger age bracket that can be hard to reach.
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Posted in GNU/Linux at 6:59 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Jolla’s Sailfish OS makes its hardware debut and it looks as good as many of us hoped
IT IS too easy to dismissed phone projects that are small (like OpenMoko or Ubuntu Edge) as non-starters; Phonebloks would know the feeling [1] and Mozilla once experienced it. Well, Mozilla now has some phones out there (running Linux) and so does Jolla [2], the company which came out of the ruins of Nokia (Microsoft destroyed Linux inside Nokia). The official launch was yesterday [3] and it seems relatively freedom-respecting, based on assessments around the Web (many people in Diaspora had legitimate doubts before this debut). Bloomberg, which put a lot of money behind Ubuntu Edge, says that Jolla is a “Challenge to Android” and we sure hope it can kick-start a freer Linux-oriented platform on which to work through tablets, smartphones, etc. Here in our household (Android- and GNU/Linux-dominated) we’ve looked at Sailfish OS and it surprised us for the better. █
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Phonebloks founder Dave Hakkens has batted away suggestions that his “modular smartphone” project won’t see the light of day.
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Jolla Oy, a Finnish smartphone maker founded by former Nokia Oyj (NOK1V) engineers, is stepping up its challenge to Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. after the first batches of its handset were snapped up by consumers looking for change.
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Posted in News Roundup at 6:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Posted in Europe, Fraud, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 6:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s history of bribing government officials teaches us that a chain of accountability is needed if Europe really wishes to emancipate itself from Microsoft/NSA trespassing
A Polish watchdog has just come out in favour of monitored IT procurement [1]. Having watched what happened in France, Quebec [1, 2, 3], and Switzerland, it is easy to see why. To use just Switzerland’s case, recall posts such as the following:
- Microsoft Sued Over Its Corruption in Switzerland, Microsoft Debt Revisited
- Can the United Kingdom and Hungary Still be Sued for Excluding Free Software?
- 3 New Counts of Antitrust Violation by Microsoft?
- Is Microsoft Breaking the Law in Switzerland Too?
- Microsoft Uses Lobbyists to Attack Holland’s Migration to Free Software and Sort of Bribes South African Teachers Who Use Windows
- ZDNet/eWeek Ruins Peter Judge’s Good Article by Attacking Red Hat When Microsoft Does the Crime
- Week of Microsoft Government Affairs: a Look Back, a Look Ahead
- Lawsuit Against Microsoft/Switzerland Succeeds So Far, More Countries/Companies Should Follow Suit
- Latest Reports on Microsoft Bulk Deals Being Blocked in Switzerland, New Zealand
- Swiss Government and Federal Computer Weekly: Why the Hostility Towards Free Software?
- Switzerland and the UK Under Fire for Perpetual Microsoft Engagements
- Lawsuit Over Alleged Microsoft Corruption in Switzerland Escalates to Federal Court
- When Microsoft-Only/Lock-in is Defined as “Technology”
Europe is moving towards Free software [2,3,4], which makes perfect sense amid the NSA scandals. Let’s just hope that the IT procurement steps are totally transparent; without transparency, Microsoft will just carry on bribing government officials in exchange for lucrative deals. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Public procurement of IT solutions must be monitored for violations, the Polish Free and Open Source Software Foundation (FWiOO) concludes in its final report on its public IT procurement project PPPIT, published this summer. After having studied hundreds of procurement procedures by Polish public administrations, the organisation infers that requests and specifications can be formulated seemingly without breaking the rules.
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Isn’t that refreshing? Instead of pouring more $billions into M$’s coffers for permission to run IT, European governments are actually switching to FLOSS and GNU/Linux because of open standards, lower costs and higher flexibility. Good for them! Now, about Canada…
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Neelie Kroes, VP of the European Commission (EC), has a website called Comment Neelie to initiate and maintain a two-way conversation between herself, as a politician, and the public, as citizens. Kroes says that it’s “a channel to communicate, not just broadcast.”
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Germany’s upcoming government coalition of CDU, CSU and SPD is to encourage the use of open source software in public administrations. In its coalition treaty, leaked last Monday evening, the government describes open source is an alternative to ‘closed digital ecosystems’ and says it will commit itself to open source at a European level.
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Posted in FSF, GNU/Linux at 6:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Thanksgiving reminder for those who want to receive freedom-respecting presents or wish to give freedom-respecting presents
EARLIER TODAY we wrote GNU/Linux devices or computers that can be purchased on Black Friday. Well, the FSF has a new “Giving Guide”, which basically highlights the need to avoid DRM-laden products and other such malicious ‘gifts’ [1] that can merely imprison their receiver. One must remember that GNU/FSF advocates abundance, which in itself is a gift [2]. There is no need to buy and sell stuff when something can be shared for free [3]. When Richard Stallman created Emacs he wanted to share his work, not necessarily profit from it; that’s where the GPL licence comes from. Emacs continues to develop to this date (a WYSIWYG GUI might be coming [4]) along with essential low-level GNU libraries [5] which make up the basis for a lot of those “Linux” gadgets that are on sale this Black Friday. We oughtn’t forget that if it wasn’t for the foundations laid out by GNU, Linux would still be proprietary and probably never take off. █
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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced its 2013 Giving Guide, a resource for conscientious shoppers looking for geeky gifts that respect users’ freedom. Many holiday shoppers will be turning to gadgets and online services as gifts for friends and family, but these gifts are often rife with proprietary software, anti-features, or Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), all of which restrict how the gift can be used.
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It is 30 years since Richard Stallman announced that he was going to write a complete UNIX-compatible software system called GNU, pioneering the idea of free and open source software, but the struggle continues
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Marco Fioretti answers a TechRepublic member’s questions about charging fees for software that’s made available under the GNU GPL License version 2 or 3.
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GNU daddy Richard Stallman seems to have found an old To-Do list behind the sofa, because he’s posted a message on the GNU forums reviving an old ambition for the venerable EMacs text editor.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, GPL, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 4:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: How the General Public License can help fight the likes of Microsoft, whose only answer to GNU/Linux domination is now taxation of GNU/Linux (through patent extortion)
THE TABLET on which I’ll record Richard Stallman tomorrow dons a GPLv3 sticker. We wrote about the GPLv3 quite a lot back in 2007 when it was new. We needed the GPLv3 because of patent deals such as Novell’s. Microsoft was rapidly signing (or looking to sign) more extortion deals against Linux and in the middle of 2007 it announced a large-scale campaign to shake down all GNU/Linux vendors.
Towards the end of 2013 we have this moderate view from Dr. Glyn Moody. He explains today: “A theme that has re-appeared on this blog many times over the years is that of software patents. As I’ve noted before, they are perhaps the biggest single threat to free software, especially since the decline of Microsoft. Indeed, it’s not hard to see software patent lawsuits being filed by Microsoft in the last, desperate stage of that decline in order to inflict the maximum damage on open source.
“That’s already manifest in its Android licensing strategy. Note, in particular, that it refuses to discuss what exactly Android allegedly infringes upon. This means that it can sign secret deals with companies willing to go along with this ploy, giving the impression that there is a problem, without offering the slightest proof to that effect…”
“Indeed, it’s not hard to see software patent lawsuits being filed by Microsoft in the last, desperate stage of that decline in order to inflict the maximum damage on open source.”
–Glyn MoodyMoody’s analysis then proceeds to explaining how the GPLv3 relates to all this. Now that Microsoft’s super-trolls and other trolls such as Erich Spangenberg [1, 2, 3, 4] are going after legitimate companies we must recognise that fighting patents with patents (like OIN does) is not a solution. Trolls cannot be confronted by a reactionary lawsuit and here we have a story of a patent troll winning again. To quote TechDirt, where Moody is a writer: “There’s a reason why patent trolls love east Texas — and big part of that is that the juries there have a long history of favoring patent holders, no matter how ridiculous or how trollish. That was on display last night, when the jury in Marshall, Texas sided with patent troll Erich Spangenberg and his TQP shell company over Newegg. As we’ve been describing, Newegg brought out the big guns to prove pretty damn thoroughly that this guy Mike Jones and his encryption patent were both not new at the time the patent was granted and, more importantly, totally unrelated to the encryption that Newegg and other ecommerce providers rely on. Having Whit Diffie (who invented public key cryptography) and Ron Rivest (who basically made it practical in real life) present on your behalf, showing that they did everything prior to Jones’ patent, while further showing that what Newegg was doing relied on their work, not Jones’, should have ended the case.”
Recently, when big trolls like Microsoft were risking a loss to their patent leverage, lobbying/AstroTurfing from Microsoft paid off. So we are left in a situation where Microsoft’s extortion — not just patent trolls — is a real issue. The GPLv3 is a partial solution to that, if only more projects (like Linux) adopted it… █
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Posted in Bill Gates at 4:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: White-collar criminals controlling schools not a smart idea, neither in theory nor in practice
THE Gates Foundation, a worldwide lobbying organisation, seeks to commercialise schools like Microsoft commercialised information, putting profit before knowledge and depriving many from access to knowledge/source code or even to choice. This is a serious issue here in the UK and fortunately a lot of writers are catching up, gradually realising the seriousness of the matter.
A new article titled “Bill Gates Imposes Microsoft Model on School Reform: Only to Have the Company Junk It After It Failed” came from AlterNet a few days ago. This author says that “New school systems are stuck with a model designed to trash teachers, while Microsoft employees collaborate and work on teams.”
The author explains: “Using hundred of millions of dollars in philanthropic largesse, Bill Gates persuaded state and federal policymakers that what was good for Microsoft would be good for the public schools system (to be sure, he was pushing against an open door). To be eligible for large grants from President Obama’s Race to the Top program, for example, states had to adopt Gates’ Darwinian approach to improving public education. Today more than 36 states have altered their teacher evaluations systems with the aim of weeding out the worst and rewarding the best.
“Some states grade on a curve. Others do not. But all embrace the principle that teachers continuing employment will depend on improvement in student test scores, and teachers who are graded “ineffective” two or three years in a row face termination.”
This is a vision of businesspeople; it’s not compatible with services. As the author concludes: “Big business can turn on a dime when the CEO orders it to do so. But changing policies embraced and internalized by dozens of states and thousands of public school districts will take far, far longer. This means the legacy of Bill Gates will continue to handicap millions of students and hundreds of thousands of teachers even as the company Gates founded, along with many other businesses, has thrown his pernicious performance model in the dustbin of history.”
We have already explained how Gates profits from this privatisation of schools. It’s all about self interest, it’s not about benefiting teachers and students. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux at 3:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another new milestone for GNU/Linux, which is climbing up the ranks of platforms for gamers
THERE’S some reporting about a product and company called iBuyPower [1,2,3]. What it does is not unprecedented, but it does put together a product which can compete with proprietary giants like Sony. This isn’t about some game coming to more platforms (a new example of which is [4-7]); it’s about a whole new platform being created and it is based on GNU/Linux.
Several years ago it seemed like the dream of GNU/Linux as a gaming platform was elusive, especially after Sony had stabbed GNU/Linux users (on PS3) in their backs. Seeing a sort of comeback — where major games are ported to GNU/Linux faster than we can keep track of and consoles are launched which are based on GNU/Linux — is a truly refreshing change that will definitely accompany the ascent of the Free desktop. No more will “gaming” be an excuse for avoiding GNU/Linux as a desktop platform. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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When Valve laid out a range of performance tiers for the 300 Steam Machine prototypes it would be sending to beta testers, the company was clear that other hardware makers would be revealing their own designs for SteamOS-powered gaming rigs in the future. Custom PC maker iBuyPower has now become the first company to unveil a prototype for one of those designs, laying out a $499 white box with a GPU that’s comparable or slightly better than those found in the recently launched PS4 and Xbox One.
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