Friday June 22, 2007
Thursday June 21, 2007 links for 2007-06-21
-
Open source web services stack.
-
The ZFS on FUSE project gets some more coverage.
-
Case settled - good.
-
eWeek's reviewer loves the new release of OpenOffice.org
Wednesday June 20, 2007 Got to China
I've reached Guangzhou in China ready for the China Open Source World conference tomorrow where the organisers have arranged a stunny line-up of speakers. The journey here was pretty ugly - Lufthansa cancelled my flight, put me on Air France via Paris and then the connection was delayed too, making it touch-and-go right up to midnight. I'll be pretty busy here and in Seoul on Friday for LinuxWorld Korea so my apologies if I'm not very responsive in the busy thread here and on OSNews.
Tuesday June 19, 2007 links for 2007-06-19
-
"The Scientific Advisory Board and the executive board of the SATW support this standard [ODF] and its introduction to wide circles in the Swiss private and public sector as well as in education."
-
We had a wonderful meal here on Saturday evening, recommended.
-
Congratulations to the top analysts listed, especially my friends at Redmonk.
Monday June 18, 2007 Hardware Archaeology
One of the running themes of Free/open source software has been how easily drivers for chipsets in old (and often not-so-old) hardware can be created. Some semiconductor vendors keep a tight hold on the details of their chips, and discourage F/OSS developers strongly. The recent news that Open Sound is available as Free software under both GPLv2 and CDDL is a great step forward, and the availability of drivers for R500-family AMD video cards is also fantastic.
As a long-term manufacturer of fantastic hardware, Sun is frequently approached by groups of developers looking for documentation for the chips used in its products. These days, Sun's newest chips are open source already, and there's a good web-site for documentation for current chips. This has already resulted in great things.
More of an issue, though, are the older systems. In plenty of cases, rather than using I/O chips sold on the open market by companies like Broadcom, nVidia, and ATI, Sun's engineers have actually designed chips specifically for the work at hand. Unlike those companies which sell I/O chips for a living, and thus have a moral duty to provide complete, externally presentable documentation for their chips, Sun's engineers often had no business need to document the chip design for public consumption (or, in quite a few older cases, at all!) Even worse, in some cases the chips Sun has made use designs and ideas acquired from third parties as a 'trade secret'. In those cases, public documentation just can't be made available.
So what happens when people ask for documentation? Well, there are at least five cases:
- The product in question may be past it's end-of-life date and there's actually no team anywhere in Sun that can answer the question.
- The documentation may not exist. Writing it would require costly reverse engineering (even if people with the skills to do so are still at Sun).
- It may exist for internal use, but releasing it outside Sun would need legal review to check for 'trade secrets' belonging to others. That legal review is time consuming and costs real money. And the answer may turn out to be "can't release, can't name the company that's obstructing us".
- It may exist and it may be possible to release it. Doing that, though, is actually a non-zero cost since usually the documentation is in an old format of some kind.
- It may actually exist in an online-ready form.
The question has once again been raised (over on Jonathan's blog) of whether Sun is acting in bad faith over interface documentation for older systems. I've done a cursory check and I believe answers of "no, we can't help" fall almost exclusively in the first four classes above and mostly in the first two. But I do understand why passions are raised and scepticism is rife.
Jonathan asked me to look into this, to ensure we're pursuing an open path across all of Sun, not simply the software group. We take all input seriously, and we can't solve all problems for all parties, but we're committed to doing our best to faithfully engage with all the communities we serve, in the same spirit as the existing Open Source Ombudsman Scheme. With the support of my team and others in the community I'll try to build a new scheme that is fair and transparent. Watch this space!
links for 2007-06-18
-
Good to hear at least one distro isn't going to cave.
-
In Texas.
Friday June 15, 2007 links for 2007-06-15
-
Jim has done a great job cataloging the growth of the community, take a look.
-
"Open Sound System is a cross platform audio architecture that provides drivers for most consumer and professional audio devices and comes with an API that allows applications to be simply recompiled on any of the supported operating systems."
-
Putting authority in the hands of inflexible, sociopathic bullies is a recipe for creating a real crisis one day. It's not just the USA; Heathrow employs a bunch of bullies in orange jackets specifically to humilate and annoy travellers.
-
The first project proposed from outside Sun.
-
Another appliance. I detect a pattern...
Thursday June 14, 2007 links for 2007-06-14
-
Jonathan invites Linus for dinner.
-
Interesting points here relayed by Gordon, well worth reading.
-
TBL gets another gong.
-
Sees request to share equally as a "gotcha" but this is progress...
Wednesday June 13, 2007 links for 2007-06-13
-
Excellent developer review of NetBeans - seems it's a great experience on Ubuntu and continues to get better.
-
Polly has a new album, downloading now.
-
Turns out that Blackbox is more robust than even Sun anticipated.
-
"To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians . . . would have disastrous consequences for the constitution -- and the country"
-
Yes, an open source driver for the R500 made by a crack reverse-engineering team. Well done, guys.
-
That's better.
-
Something tells me that LHR would get a really high Misery Index.
Tuesday June 12, 2007 links for 2007-06-12
-
At last we have found the limits to the competence of politicians. Is it stem cells? Is it war in the Gulf? No, it's deciding whether future generations should be able to read source documents. That, apprently, is Just Too Hard To Understand.
-
"With the price halved from its original suggested retail price, now is a great time to pick up this gem that lets you get hands on control on GarageBand mixdowns." On Amazon US
Monday June 11, 2007 links for 2007-06-11
- Problems in Parallels v3 Paradise
Looks like now is not the time to buy Parallels. The v3 seems to be full of bugs, have features only Windows gamers truly need and worst of all not run Java properly. If only the VMWare beta wasn't a privacy train-wreck. - Word Swirl
Great web-only game from Tom Tromey, give it a try (as long as you don't mind being sucked in for hours). - Microsoft Finds Legal Defender in Justice Dept.
New York Times says: "the Bush administration has sharply changed course by repeatedly defending the company both in the United States and abroad against accusations of anticompetitive conduct" - Freedom To Differ: Photographing the Sydney Opera House
Someone has investigated Australian law around the Sydney Opera House photos I took and concl;udes that SOH are blowing smoke. - In which we narrowly save Dare from inventing his own publishing protocol
Looks like Microsoft is planning another "embrace and extend" and the apologia for the unjustifiable has started by their staff. - Verizon Redefines The Word Unlimited
I think we'll see a whole lot more of this sort of sophistry from ISPs and carriers in the future. They know what they are doing is unethical but they also know they need the subscriptions and that most people don't dig into the terms. - Harry Potter and a nightmare for the high street bookshops
All sorts of interesting issues all rolled up into one bestseller here. - Holy War!
"But by storming into the catacombs of doctrinal absurdity ... the atheists are doing us all a favor. They’re turning up the glare of reality. You’d better thank God for them." - Atlas: Where to Gas Up Around the Globe (Or Take the Bus)
Looks like American fuel prices aren't high after all, especially when income levels are taken into account. - OpenJDK Community Cosmology
Mark explains about the interim governance for the OpenJDK community. - Too cute for comfort
Protecting the slow loris.
Sunday June 10, 2007 links for 2007-06-10
- Appeals Court Rules Cops Can Steal Cars and Lie to Victims To Conduct a Warrantless Search
Watch out for your rights, America. It seems Machiavelli's writings trump the US Constitution - as long as the end is flavour of the month (in this case the War On Drugs, it will be Terror or Porn next time) all means are valid. - ZFS: Ten reasons to reformat your hard drives
Wonderful and simple explanation of why ZFS is so revolutionary. - Amazon.co.uk: MAKE: Technology on Your Time: v. 10
New MAKE magazine has made it on to Amazon UK. - A Patent Lie - New York Times
"As more and more lawsuits rock the industry, we should ask if software patents are stifling innovation. Bill Gates certainly thought so in 1991, even if he won’t admit it today." - Impeach Bush: Do-It-Yourself
"We have researched a method for impeaching the President and Vice President using a little known and rarely used part of the Rules of the House of Representatives ("Jefferson’s Manual")."
Saturday June 09, 2007 links for 2007-06-09
- What A Fly Move
Smart and funny approach to deterring fly posting, and even better there's a City Council official involved in the comments under the article speaking in a natural voice with useful information. Way to go! - With Apologies to The Who
Classic XKCD. - Ian Murdock’s Weblog » “Where do I download OpenSolaris”?
Ian's manifesto for a new OpenSolaris distribution - Apache Software Foundation member meeting
Some notable changes on the Board of Directors at Apache. - Stubborn ex-customer takes Gateway to court for defective PC
"Gateway claimed that clicking through the EULA upon bootup eliminated his right to even sue" - and this is on hardware. My goodness, I hope contract terms like that aren't legal in the UK. - Private Islands for Sale or Rent
Dream fodder.
Friday June 08, 2007 links for 2007-06-08
- Computerworld Danmark Podcast publ. May 11. 2007
Quirky 'transcript' created by Steve McGibbon of Microsoft of the podcast interview I gave at JavaOne on the ODF:OOXML issue. - Cool download numbers for our OpenOffice.org API plug-in for NetBeans
Over 10,000 copies have been downloaded. - opendocument - epetition response
"A policy on digital preservation, which includes guidance on the selection of sustainable data formats based on open standards, is being formulated by The National Archives, and will help define the standards for desktop systems." - IcedTea is Live
Awesome work here by the Classpath community, pioneering Java platform availability in Fedora and elsewhere. - Eben Moglen @ Sun Bangalore
Interesting comments from Eben about Sun here. - Project Indiana: The Q&A
"I think Indiana is precisely the kind of change that’s needed to make OpenSolaris an option where it’s not today." Nothing at all I disagree with in this Q & A from Stephen O'Grady. - OpenPortal - an Enterprise-class Portal Open Source Project
Sun's Portal Server goes open source.
Thursday June 07, 2007 links for 2007-06-07
-
Huge news if it's true that RMS no longer opposes the Creative Commons.
-
Congratulations to Apache (who got their TCK free of charge under the Sun scholarship scheme).
-
I'll be giving this a try on the Ubuntu system since our house is infested with Airport Express.
-
Sadly not available from the UK Lego store, I'll have to get some next time I am in the US.
-
Useful data-point which wisdom suggests should be left without evaluation...
-
It's open for business, I just started using mine.
-
"A Superior Court judge today ordered a new trial for Julie Amero, the former Norwich substitute teacher who claims pornographic images on her classroom computer were the result of pop-up ads."
-
The Land of the Free becomes more and more restrictive at every step. How far does this have to go before someone with a voice calls "enough"?
-
Excellent advice if you're developing for Solaris.
