Archive for the ‘ZD Open Source’ Category
There are some stories at Open Source that are guaranteed to get an audience. Anything with Microsoft in it. Anything with Firefox in it. Any mention of Ubuntu.
But not all stories are of this type. Usually, when I color outside the lines of your chief interests I hear crickets. But sometimes I hear some applause. And this is gratifying.
Today, four of the more off-the-beat stories from 2009 that you liked:
The Linux laptops of 2009 –I wrote this after making arrangements for my June trip to Taiwan for CompuTex, and you named it the fourth most-popular story of the year with over 21,000 page views. It drew 111 talkbacks and a rating of +18.
It was a think piece, looking at the disconnect between what Chinese suppliers saw in Linux and what users like me might want. Chinese is an ideographic language, so maybe they don’t get our thing about keyboards. It was a think piece, concluding that companies were shipping million-unit orders without thinking enough about consumers.
Is Wolfram Alpha overhyped? –I wrote this in May, during the peak of excitement over Stephen Wolfram’s Alpha, an analytics-based “answering engine” now being incorporated into Microsoft’s Bing search engine. It became the 12th most-read story of the year here with almost 15,000 page views. (That’s Wolfram above. Nice hairline. Grass don’t grow on a busy street, ladies.)
I’m a big Wolfram fan. He’s a genius. But there’s a difference between pure genius and business genius, I wrote, a difference between, say, Thomas Edison and Bill Gates. The Wolfram excitement was overdone as a result.
Can VLC 1.0 change the world? –Maybe I was over-exuberant with this July post about the VLC codec going “gold” with Version 1.0. I use it, and like it. You saw it as the 14th most popular post of the year, with over 14,000 page views and a rating of +11.
Most exciting to me was VLC’s use of the Ogg Theora codec, meaning it could duck the proprietary games Apple, Real, and Microsoft had to play with content providers in order to get necessary support. Try it today.
What Asus wants in a Linux — One lesson I need to re-learn is there can be a disconnect between readership and talkback interest. This August story drew 274 talkbacks, a rating of +19, but it was in fact only the 16th most-popular post of the year, with over 13,000 page views.
This was another of my thought pieces, the thought emerging while I was working out before coming into work. It was speculation, based on my visit to Taiwan and interviews with Chinese entrepreneurs. I used Asus because they had sent me two EeePC netbooks running Linux in 2008,. but showed nothing with Linux on it in 2009.
Since then, we have seen the HTC Android phone make a big hit, so even a blind (or near-sighted) squirrel can find a nut once in a while.
It has become something of a running gag.
Whenever I feel a need for traffic, and talkbacks, I just write something with Microsoft or Windows in the title and y’all come running. (This is an April Fool’s image of CEO Steve Ballmer with a Gorbachev-like birthmark.)
This was still true in 2009. Some of our most popular posts were all about how unfair Microsoft was being to open source.
But one thing has changed. It’s no longer personal. It’s no longer Billgatus of Borg. It’s more institutional. (OK, we still love to laugh at the Steve Ballmer “developers” video.)
I know the Gates-hate has died down because this was our 23rd most popular post of the year:
Bill Gates demands open source –An oldie but a goodie. This July 2006 post described the Gates Foundation’s insistence that AIDS researchers share their discoveries as the price of getting its cash. It smelled like open source spirit to me, and apparently to you as well.
Other popular Microsoft posts were more conventional:
Why Android is beating Windows Mobile –This October story drew 33 votes, a rating of +13, and over 100 talkbacks. In it I compared Microsoft’s mobile strategy to that of Symbian. Fighting words, those. And I contrasted it with what Google was doing with Android. Which y’all liked. It was the 19th most popular post of the year.
Netbooks killing Windows faster than expected –This February post was highly provocative, drawing 166 talkbacks and becoming the 14th most-popular post of the year. My point was that Microsoft was not making money on Netbook versions of Windows, and that the rise of low-cost hardware would endanger the company down the road. You disagreed.
Why Microsoft won round one of netbook wars –This April post, on a similar subject to the one above, drew 196 talkbacks and became the 10th most popular post of the year with over 15,000 page views. It described my trip to Fry’s seeking a laptop with Linux, and my discovery that there was no such thing.
Many noted there were many available via mail order, and Linus Foundation head Jim Zemlin later showed me hardware identical to what I bought, which he’d had loaded with Ubuntu Linux.
Fight Windows tax with a penguin stick –I wrote this in the wake of my trip to Taiwan for CompuTex, finding an enormous supply of USB sticks and not enough good uses for them. (Making them look like sushi doesn’t count.) So why not distribute Linux on USB sticks and give them away at trade shows, I suggested.
I got 205 comments, 18 more thumbs-ups than thumbs-down, and it was the 7th most popular post of the year. It turns out an outfit called Pendrivelinux has productized this solution.
Christmas is still a few days away. You can run this Linux under Windows, so if you feel real Grinchy load it onto a teen’s game machine on Christmas Eve and leave it turned-on until they wake up.
Firefox 3.6 is moving closer to release.
On Thursday, Mozilla announced the fifth beta release of the forthcoming browser update.
Beta 5 offers improvements in performance, support for third party applications and user interface choices.
In the words of a Mozilla rep, here are the key new features and improvements to test:
- Support for the HTML5 File API.
- A change to how third-party software integrates with Firefox to increase stability.
- The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times.
- Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
- Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
- Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
- Support for the WOFF font format.
- Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
- Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.
Mark Shuttleworth will step down as Canonical’s CEO in March of 2010 but his commitment to the Ubuntu Linux project is expected to remain strong.
Shuttleworth will continue to be active on the Ubuntu Community Council and the Ubuntu Technical Board and will focus his attentions on the Linux distribution’s development, partnerships and customers.
Effective March 1, Jane Silber, currently COO of Canonical, will become CEO of Canonical. Canonical, based in Europe, is the commercial arm of the Ubuntu project. Silber has been with the company for five years and has helped establish and manage Ubuntu One, OEM Services, Corporate Services, Marketing, Finance, Legal and other roles. She started her career as a software developer and before coming to Europe for an MBA at Oxford she served as a vice president at General Dynamics.
Shuttleworth and Silber aim to establish a strong commercial industry for Ubuntu and a separate open source community. “One thing this move will bring about is a clearer separation of the role of CEO of Canonical and the leader of the Ubuntu community,” said Silber. “It will be two different people now, which I think will be helpful in both achieving their joint and individual goals more quickly.”
Shuttleworth will be the technical guru, much the way Linus Torvalds runs the Linux kernel and others run the Red Hat and Novell commercial distributors of the Linux operating system. He will continue to serve at Canonical but only in a technical capacity, he noted.
“I will focus on my passions of product design and development. I want Ubuntu to succeed as the open platform of choice for almost all use types whether on netbook, notebook, desktop, server, embedded device or wherever people compute,” Shuttleworth wrote on his blog today. “That is an large undertaking and being able to focus on that, thanks to Jane, is a great privilege. I will also spend more time talking to and visiting partners and customers about what they demand from an open platform and feeding that back into the product through the community and Canonical.”
Canonical was founded in South Africa in 2004.
Microsoft’s ability to hold off open source rivals is weakening.
Even as its proprietary browser market share is dropping hard, execs agreed to offer support for competitive browsers with its Windows operating system in exchange for an end to its legal nightmares in Europe.
It’s a win for the community in Europe but I’m not sure the open source rivals need the help. According to Net Applications’ statistics, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer market share has dropped more than 5 percent to 64 percent since January of 2009. Its share was roughly 70 percent at the start of the year, and it was at 75 percent in mid 2008.
Its share has fallen mostly to the two leading open source browsers, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Google’s Chrome has increased to 4 percent market share from 1.5 percent at the start of 2009. Google’s browser — whose use will no doubt increase after the release of the complementary Google operating system late next year — was first released in September of 2008. Not bad for 14 months on the market.
Meanwhile, market share of the leading open source browser, Mozilla Firefox, climbed to roughly 25 percent over the past year, also up 3 percentage points to 24.72 percent in November. Its share was 22 percent at the beginning of this year.
Opera, the other open source browser, stayed roughly the same with two percent market share, according to Net Applications.
The days of Internet Explorer’s dominance appear to be waning. Of course, Microsoft’s Windows operating system monopoly still owns the market, but we’re not sure how long that will matter, especially as software-as-a-service models take off and Google’s web-focused operating system is prepped for release.
As Microsoft’s grip on the browser market loosens, opportunities for open source rivals are blossoming. It will be interesting to see which of the two top open source browsers benefits most in 2009.
To many writers 2009 is a year where open source crossed the final frontier of complete acceptance.
Our Doug Hanchard at ZDNet Government believes it was a close-run thing.
In some ways he is right in that. Had a few legal decisions gone the other way, or had John McCain won the Presidency, open source would not be where it is today, especially in the markets Doug covers.
But in many ways open source was inevitable.
- Open source rides on the Internet.
- Open source is global in nature.
- Open source is not FOSS.
Let me talk about each of these in turn.
Open source rides on the Internet — It’s the economics of Internet development and Internet distribution that made open source inevitable.
Since the day I got my first PC, in 1982, we have had shareware, and freeware, and programmers anxious to distribute their stuff for the sake of seeing it run. But floppy disks and even BBSs failed to give open source the universal distribution the retail channel gave Windows and Word.
Once that channel was opened, moreover, these programmers found they could collaborate with colleagues across the planet. Software is math, and a Java program written in Tanzania runs just like one written in China or Atlanta.
Both these factors made it inevitable that the monopoly-like profits enjoyed by proprietary companies would be challenged. Once they were, and companies were free to choose between code they could see and code they could not see, the final triumph was a matter of time.
Open source is global in nature – Global cooperation on development is just part of the puzzle. There is also the lack of a global law. And Adam Smith’s invisible hand.
Suppose the SCO case had gone the other way. Fact is U.S. law is not universal. Europe does not recognize software patents at all. Would Singapore or China have accepted second-rate status in software forever, knowing there was an alternative in open source?
Every state is sovereign, but nations must compete just as companies must. Open source drops barriers to entry for all kinds of software development. This is irresistible to any country, or company, that has fallen behind.
Open source is not FOSS – Whenever I read notes or blog posts from people complaining there is no way to make money from open source, I feel an urge to remind them of this.
FOSS is important. It forces all companies, including those using open source, to keep costs down, and prevents profit margins from getting too fat. But making code visible is not the same as making it useful.
Drupal would probably not be running Whitehouse.gov were it not for Acquia, the commercial arm that lets Drupal users find professional help.
Paid support, SaaS, and all the other open source business models make the code a viable alternative to proprietary alternatives, by creating the infrastructure enterprise buyers need to move forward with confidence.
Open source has much to be thankful for this Christmas. It has breached the citadel. It has achieved a level playing field, in most application spaces, with proprietary alternatives. Customers of all sizes have a choice.
But the market war goes on. The balance among FOSS, open source and proprietary solutions will continue to shift, in 2010 and beyond. I hope to be here to cover it for you.
It is better to give than to receive.
So this year the Software Freedom Law Center is giving the gift of employment to some defense attorneys, filing GPL violation law suits against Best Buy, Samsung, Westinghouse, and 11 other companies over Busybox, the “Swiss Army Knife” of embedded applications originally written by Bruce Perens and now listing Erik Andersen as lead author. (Denis Vlasenko is listed as the current maintainer.)
The case was filed in New York state. (Note to readers. The headline originally read Christmas tree, but Christmas isn’t until a week from Friday. Chanukah started last weekend. Lay that dreidel down, boys.)
Press reaction is muted probably because we have seen this movie before. Past suits have all had the same conclusion. Vendors went “oops” and settled, usually quite quickly.
Given the fact that defendants have had plenty of notice, yet didn’t notice, the hope is that eventually some serious damages might be negotiated so we can move on to something else.
Perhaps the SFLC can make that a New Years’ resolution. Lead attorney Daniel Ravicher (above) can probably use a new car. Or a haircut. Or something. A little Chanukah gelt.
What would you award in this case?
Ask not what open source can do for you. Ask what you can do for open source.
This mangling of John F. Kennedy’s famous inaugural quote is brought to you with some serious intent.
Open source needs your help. Whether you define it as a business model, a development model, or just a good idea, open source has always depended on the good faith contributions of individuals for its success.
Is it communist, socialist, or fascist to join together and cooperate in order to build something new and valuable? I don’t know.
But a citizen whose nation honors its pilgrim fathers and Founders who pledged to one another their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” has no reason to question it.
Linux PR expert Kim Terca gets credit for these ideas:
- Join the Linux Foundation. There’s a new buy one, get one promotion on their site that can give you and a student discounts on books and other benefits for the cost of a single Cirque du Soleil ticket.
- Ubuntu swag makes a great stocking stuffer, and if a black friend asks what it means you have a conversation starter.
- Make a donation to the open source project of your choice. There are thousands at Sourceforge. Or go the “Hershey bars for kids in Beverly Hills” route and give it to Codeplex. (That’s a joke. Codeplex isn’t rich. But maybe Sam Ramji would like a Hershey bar.)
- Support a developer’s travels. The Linux Foundation has an app for that.
One thing I’m definitely going to do. Throw some coin at the Wikipedia Foundation. Whatever you think of their policies, they have delivered stable links on millions of topics, improving the Web experience for everyone.
Oh, and if you’re at all offended by the Kennedy reference above, remember that open source is not a government movement. So if you believe government is the problem, it’s a good place to stash some cash away from its greedy hands.
It would be better if these were the Russians (although have you noticed the similarity in the flags) but the French have opened up an open source gap on the U.S. military.
It tuns out Thunderbird 3, the latest version of the open source e-mail program (and, full disclosure, the program I use) contains an extension called TrustedBird which was originally contributed by the French military.
(Picture from the Mozilla Foundation.)
The software was quietly released last week. The Trusted Bird project page is here. It was originally called Milimail.
The extension lets someone know when a message has been read, which is important in military matters but can also help you win the corporate wars as well. The software was recently shown to NATO.
Since switching to Thunderbird 2 a few years ago I have personally been impressed with its reliability and extensive list of add-ons, including a calendar. It has always had enough search capability for me.
But the release of a new POP3 client does bring up some general concerns about the space:
- Lack of innovation
- Spam
The two problems are related, in my opinion. I have had to use a front-end program called Mailwasher on my POP3 mailbox for years, due to an avalanche of spam, which slows me down tremendously. This despite the fact that my POP3 host began pre-filtering all my e-mail some years ago.
On the other hand Web-based e-mail systems like Google Mail have excellent spam filters that learn from you and detect false positives.
I will give Thunderbird3 a try, but if you want to know what will make this thing really fly it’s an integrated solution for better canning spam. And if it had a learning heuristic that would move things into the proper folders I might actually get caught up on my e-mail correspondence next year.
It’s an odd week when competitors Microsoft and Red Hat both release software under the GPL.
But the gift giving wasn’t entirely voluntary. Microsoft, for its part, acknowledged that its Windows 7 download tool violated the GPL and released the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (WUDT) under the GPLv2.
As noted by Mary Jo Foley, a “Within Windows” blogger discovered the violation in November. Microsoft speedily removed the tool from its site and began an investigation.
Upon its re-release of the tool and code as open source this week, finally, Microsoft thanked customers for their patience. Microsoft said the testing and localization took longer than expected but noted the project is now hosted on CodePlex.com, Microsoft’s Open Source software project hosting repository.
All is well and good. Still, I wonder if the developers of the code at the center of the controversy mulled some additional compensation. It would seem quite unpalatable to any open source developer that Microsoft used his or her code as a way to distribute and build market share for Windows 7 –Linux’s chief competitor. Bah humbug!
Red Hat also this week announced an open source gift as a way to build market share for its Linux desktop virtualization platform — which has yet to see the light of day.
Red Hat open sourced the SPICE hosted virtual desktop protocol, acquired with KVM virtualization pioneer Qumranet last year. SPICE, or Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment, is a big part of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops, which is in beta testing and due for release in 2010.
Speaking of cause, I’ve always wondered privately how Citrix developers think about Qumranet’s use of the term SPICE, which is very similar to Citrix’s ICA (Independent Computing Architecture. ICA is the code in Citrix’s XenApp used for remote protocol. Yes, Citrix’s open source Xen virtualization technology competes head on against Red Hat Qumranet’s open source virtualization technology. Well, it was the Qumranet gurus that gave the naming. Bah humbug!