Open Source
February 14, 2006
Oracle Buy Sleepycat
Oracle announced that they are buying Sleepycat, the maker of the DbXML database I use in several projects. This is good for Sleepycat, but might mean trouble for MySQL. I blogged about it at Between the Lines.
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January 05, 2006
Software for Starving Students
Jordy Gunderson alerted me to the 2006.01 release of Software for Starving Students or SSS. SSS is a collection of free and open source software all on one convenient CD ROM (actually, it’s an ~500Mb image that you download using BitTorrent). The images come in versions for Windows and Mac.
I tried it out and it’s well done and very convenient. Each package has a description of what it is, links to the Web site for the package, and an install button.
Getting it via BitTorrent is problematic at BYU because of port blocking. I had to grab it at home. It’s freely copyable, though, so someone could make CDs from the image and hand them out or even mirror it on a BYU server for BYU students.
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October 04, 2005
Government OSCON
GOSCON, the Government Open Source Convention, will be held in Portland on Oct 13 and 14, 2005.
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August 08, 2005
Howtoons
One of the fun things I discovered at OSCON was Howtoons, a collection of cartoons that teach kids how to do things. I’ll definitely be showing it to my kids.
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August 05, 2005
Linux on the Desktop (OSCON 2005)
Asa Dotzler wrote an essay a while back called Linux Not Ready for the Desktop. It was controversial enough (surprise) that Nat asked him to come present at OSCON. Here are his main points:
For regular people to see the value of Linux on the Desktop, it will have to install alongside Windows and bring over all their settings from bookmarks to wallpaper.
API stability is an important story. You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to install packages that you don’t get from your distro. On Windows, one Firefox installer installs on every Windows version.
Complexity and choice scare regular people. There are too many distro choices, there are too many desktop choices, there are too many applications, there are too many application settings, etc. Then there’s clipboard madness.
Linux must feel comfortable to users. Don’t mess with the expectations of Windows users. This includes keyboard shortcuts, button positions, and even th panel position. Its foolish to deviate from what people expect when the value of that deviation isn’t high or the cost is.
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August 03, 2005
Rock On OSCON!
Gibson brought in a band for the Wednesday night reception.
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Somebody at O’Reilly talked Gibson Guitars into being one of the sponsors of the conference. They’re giving away Gibson guitars at sessions and Gibson even has a booth (with guitars you can try out) in the exhibition hall. Tonight at the reception, Gibson brought in a band (70 Proof). They were playing my kind of music. It was great.
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Open Source Software at Yahoo!
Jeremy Zawodny works for Yahoo! and knows MySql inside-out. He’s speaking about open source and Yahoo!
There are several reasons Yahoo! uses open source:
- Flexibility - Yahoo! customizes lots of OSS for its needs
- Documentation is better in open source software.
- Availbility for the platforms that Yahoo! cares about
- Support is good and getting better.
- Cost is an issue, especially at Yahoo! scales.
Jeremy lists out many of the open source products in use at Yahoo!:
On the server side, Yahoo! uses FreeBSD/Linux, Apache, C++ (and GNU tool chain), PHP, APC (caching and acceleration), Perl, and mdbm/MySql.
On the development side: Bugzilla, CVS, Request Tracker, Valgrind, Emacs and VIM, gcc/gdb, PhpMyAdmin.
Others include Python, Ruby, rsync, BIND, Qmail, Squid, ImageMagick, SSH, zlib/gzip, NNagios, rrdtool, Boost (C++ libs), Many CPAN modules, PEAR, and many more.
Yahoo! is also working on opening up APIs including RSS feeds, Flickr, and Konfabulator (Yahoo! Widgets), and the Yahoo! development network.
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Testing as the Open Source Killer App
Kim Polece, from SpikeSource, is talking about software testing in open source software. She starts by talking about the architecture of participation. This architecture is characterized by:
- Commoditization of software
- Network-enabled collaboration
- Software customizability
and the shift from an “egosystem” to and open, thriving ecosystem.
Kim shows a power curve and talks about pahses in open source adoption. In the first phase, we buit and buit with, the tall end, left end of the power curve (Linux, php, Python, Mozilla, etc). In the second, phase, further to the roght on the tail of the curve, countless new building materials are piling up on the curve. Kim shows a list of these from just onee company that they talked to. There were dozens of build tools, runtime and class libraries in the list.
There are some problems:
- Velocity mismatch. This refers to the release schedules for the multiple open source projects. Coordinating release schedules between components and managing compatibility is difficult to do.
- Dependencies. This is not unique to open source, but its compounded by the variation and number of components. When you patch one component of your stack, does the entire stack get hosed?
The largest independent IT shops formalize their DIY proceses for building with open source. Smaller shops don’t have that luxery.
This leads to phase thre: IT becomes core and outsources the infrastructure tasks, including testing, certification, and so of open source packages. Testing is the biggest single refacoring shift in computig today. Its at the core of managing dependencies and velocity mismatch. We need testing on a massive scale.
Now a word from our sponsor: this is what SpikeSource does.
Testing has been the ugly stepchild of software for as long as people have been writing code. Microsoft has a 1:1 ratio of QA to developers. The run 500,000 test scenarios for any given product line. Thhere are 100,000 open source products already. How can as scale this?
To solve testing on a masive scale, you need participation by the community and automation. This is just one more architecture of participation, going back to Tim’s talk. Testing is just one service among many in the open source market place. Developers and users benefit from a pervasive testing regime.
Testing will do for open source what it did for chip design a generation ago. It made possible chips that couldn’t be built before.
Kim finishes with a plea: “come test with us.”
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August 02, 2005
Plone Sites
Kelly Flanagan went to the Plone tutorial and reports that the government’s 5-a-day site is built on Plone with no code changes (just CSS). I love to see open source tools used on eGoverment sites.
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August 01, 2005
In Portland, @ OSCON
I’m in Portland this entire week at OSCON. This year they’ve moved to the convention center to accommodate the growth. I’m going to a few tutorials and, of course, the convention itself. I’ll be posting about the convention here and at Between the Lines. If you’re at OSCON, look me up and say “hi.”
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June 09, 2005
Open Source's Place in the Sun
Neil McAllister’s column at InfoWorld on RedHat’s challenge to Novell with its open source directory product reminded me that I’ve been meaning to mention Geoffrey Moore’s talk at the OSBC called Open Source has Crossed the Chasm…Now What? Neil talks about how companies are replacing non-differentiating pieces of their product offerings with open source. This is just what Moore was talking about, although he takes it a step further and discusses why it’s a good thing.
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April 22, 2005
Ubuntu: A New Linux Ditro
I wrote about Unbuntu a new Linux distro from Mark Shutleworth over at Between the Lines a few days ago and pointed to some things Doc Searls is saying about it. This morning, Sam Ruby posted about getting Ubuntu booting on his T-40 laptop. I haven’t tried it yet, but the reports are that it’s very easy to get running. Ubuntu isn’t aimed at the enterprise space, but rather the home and hobbyist market.
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April 20, 2005
Quicksilver
Hitting the Quicksilver hot key combo brings up this window which shows the top match on the left and the available actions on the right (launch is the default)
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As I’ve played more with Quicksilver, I’ve come to the conclusion that if you didn’t know about command line terminals and you sat down to design a CLI for a GUI-based machine, Quicksilver’s what you’d come up with. At first blush, Quicksilver is a launcher, but its much more than that. It has an adaptive search that targets almost any data source you can think of. What’s more, it has a nice plug-in architecture that let’s users extend it to apps that might not otherwise get integrated. Some small examples: hitting the hot key and typing “ksl w” let’s me launch the KSL Weather page in Firefox. Typing the start of a contact’s names brings up their contact information and let’s me act on it. I can even select songs to play in iTunes from the keyboard.
One of my personal productivity goals is to reduce the number of times I take my hands off the keyboard and Quicksilver is a big part of making that goal happen. Here are a few resources I’ve found helpful:
- 43 Folders Quicksilver posts
- Dan Dickinson’s Beginning Tutorial
- Dan Dickinson’s Intermediate Tutorial
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March 17, 2005
Google Code
Today Google announced Google Code, Google’splace for open source software. For example, they have functional extensions to Python that they use and have made available to us as well.
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March 19, 2003
Open Source Dominant?
This timely story on open source from CIO magazine says that 54% of the 375 CIO’s they surveyed said that open source software would be their dominant server platform. Saying it doesn’t make it so, but it does indicate an expectation and a level of awareness that I think is unprecedented. The article says:
…for years open source has been dismissed as pie-in-the-sky, a toy for geeks. But today open source is undergoing a business revolution.
The article’s conclusion?
CIOs who don’t come to terms with this revolution in 2003 will be paying too much for IT in 2004. To avoid getting stung, CIOs should pursue as least some components of this 2003 open-source agenda.
Their recommendations include getting your feet wet with Internet pilot projects.
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March 18, 2003
Transparent Coding
K. S. Shankar (Doc) from IBM just said something which is similar to a comment that Michael Bernstein made via email earlier. Michael said “the knowledge that other people will be reading your code (whether shallowly or deeply) has a significant effect on how you code.” What Doc said is a corollary: when people find a bug that you’re responsible for, its embarrassing and people will work hard to fix them quickly. The point is that it comes down to transparency and the value that it has in many circumstances. I’m a fan of transparency as a tool for driving correct behavior in organizations. When you apply it to individuals it gets trickier. All kinds of privacy questions.
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March 16, 2003
Off to DC for EgovOS
I’m off to DC to attend the Open Source in eGovernment event that Tony Stanco is putting on. I’ll be speaking on Tuesday and I also have some other appointments while I’m there. I’ll be blogging the conference, so read along if you’re interested. I hope they have W-Fi.
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February 12, 2003
Ethics and Fiduciary Duties
I figured that my article yesterday on Linux and IP would generate a little controversy. I was right. Here is an example of the kinds of comments I received:
I disagree. The short version of why I disagree is that if a company insists on doing things that are legal but unethical (or even immoral), the company should not be surprised and cry foul when those laws are then changed and their actions are made illegal retroactively. They will also have generated a lot of ill-will along the way.
While I agree that there are many things that are legal but still unethical, there is no bright line between the two. Consequently, each corporate officer has to make their own decisions. I’ve been in that position and you make them all the time. Its not always easy. People who think it is typically have the luxury of drawing a paycheck for simply producing code or operating a system. Not as much room for ethical controversies there (although there are some).
I don’t agree that protecting intellectual property in and of itself is unethical. I also don’t agree that using the legal or political system to gain advantages for your shareholders is, in an of itself, unethical. There are many action in each of those areas and countless others that are unethical, but that doesn’t taint the whole area.
I love open source projects and have been a beneficiary of them since I started working on the Internet in the 80’s. I also believe that there is significant promise in open source business models. I applaud companies like jBOSS and Jabber for exploring business models that are trying to that show open source is a viable way of creating shareholder value. I do not believe, however, that “information wants to be free” or that open source is inherently good and other models inherently evil.
Here’s what would be unethical in the case of SCO: If the corporate officers of SCO, without the knowledge or approval of the board, were to simply decide, on the basis of their personal beliefs or desires, to ignore SCO’s significant IP claims and open source their significant code base, they would be ignoring their fiduciary duty to their shareholders. However, if they have a real business plan that incorporates an open source strategy and board approves it, that’s different story.
I don’t think that the case of open source is advanced by simply labeling any attempt to protect IP claims “unethical” or “evil.” That’s too easy and doesn’t carry much weight. What does advance it is to show people with the fiduciary responsibility to create shareholder value how they can best do that using open source. I think the juries still out on this one.
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February 08, 2003
Linux Networx
I had the opportunity to meet and speak to Steve Hill, the President of Linux Networx yesterday. Linux Networx builds and sells Linux clusters. They have an impressive client list including the NSA, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. When my students toured the Center 7 data center last year, all they could talk about what the Linux Networx cluster that was being staged and built there. I’m hoping to get out and visit with them soon and find out more about what they’re doing.
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February 03, 2003
Lucene
Unfortunately, I don’t get to program much anymore, but I find that when you’re managing a bunch of programmers, its frequently nice to be able to call their bluff. Consequently, I try to read magazines like the Java Developer’s Journal to keep up with things and it usually pays off. I find something almost every issue that I’m glad to know about. In the December 2002 issue, for example, I found out about Lucene.
Lucene is an open source, text indexing and search tool written in Java. Its not unusual anymore to want search capabilities in an application and Lucene provides one way to do that. The web site claims that is “high-performance” and offers a a page for users to submit benchmarking results for review. No idea, of course, how these compare to other search products from Verity, for example. If you’ve used Lucene in a project and would like to comment on either its reliability, ease of use, or performance, please feel free to drop me a note.