I’m heading overseas to Hong Kong tonight for my second wedding reception for that side of the family. As such posts will be few and far between!
-c
Monthly Archive for October, 2009
Gentoo is awesome, but it’s not without its issues. I talked with a representative of the Board of Trustees to find out what they’ve been doing to repair damaged image. While I’m at it, I compare stable package versions in Gentoo with other distros such as Arch, Fedora and Ubuntu.
Jeremy Allison has spoken up about Mono, Novell’s implementation of Microsoft’s heavily patented .NET platform. He recommends that it be put into “restricted” repositories until the licensing issues can be sorted out.
Mono is controversial as it is a re-implementation of Microsoft’s .NET technology, in much the same way as Samba is a re-implementation of Microsoft’s Server Message Block (SMB) file sharing protocol. The genesis of each project and how they have developed over the years is somewhat different however…
But my basic issue with the Microsoft Community Promise is that Miguel doesn’t have to depend on it like everyone else does. Miguel’s employer, Novell, has a patent agreement with Microsoft that exempts Mono users from Microsoft patent aggression, so long as you get Mono from Novell. Miguel takes pains to point this out. This is not a level playing field, or software freedom for all. This is a preferred supplier trying to pretend there is no problem. Sure there isn’t a problem, for them. If it isn’t good enough for Miguel, why is it good enough for other developers?
If .NET is not a risk to free software, then why did Novell get patent cover from Microsoft for their clients?
Had Novell arranged a royalty-free agreement with Microsoft for everyone (and not just their clients) like Andrew Tridgell did for Samba, then Mono would not be a problem.
Of course, once software patents come crumbling down this won’t be an issue at all. Until then it is wise to play safe..
Still aren’t convinced that Mono is a trap which ultimately only benefits Microsoft?
Take a look at this “Highly Confidential” document from Microsoft (from Comes vs Microsoft case) entitled “Effective Evangelism” and decide for yourself. It exposes Microsoft’s game plan for dominating the market with their platforms (which we already know, but some choose to ignore).
Here are a few beauties from the included slide show:
“We’re Just Here to Help Developers[, Not]“
“We Are Here to Help MICROSOFT”
“Mission: Establish Microsoft’s platforms as de facto standards”
Our mission is to establish Microsoft’s platforms as the de facto standards throughout the computer industry. Our enemies are the vendors of platforms that compete with ours… The field of battle is the software industry… Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat. Total victory…is the universal adoption of our standards by developers, as this is an important step towards total victory for Microsoft itself..
James Plamondon, Microsoft Technical Evangelist., from his “Highly Confidential” paper “Effective Evangelism“.
Think about that next time you’re programming your .NET applications with Mono..
Mike has an interesting post on his blog about Azureus (now called Vuze) which might be violating the GPL.
The source code is available via the website and appears to be licensed under the GPLv2.
The program itself however, has additional terms of service which would appear to be in stark contradiction to the license itself, vis-à-vis:
BY USING THE VUZE PLATFORM YOU AGREE NOT TO:
8.10 use the Vuze Platform if You are under the age of eighteen (18) years old;
8.12 reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of the Vuze Platform or any part thereof, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation;
8.13 modify, adapt, translate or create derivative works based upon the Vuze Platform or any part thereof, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation;”
I guess the question is, what is the “Vuze Platform” exactly? If it’s build on GPL software then they simply cannot do this.
Wikipedia has this to say:
Up to version 2.5.0.4, Azureus was distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL); beginning with the version 3 distribution, the license presented upon installation changed. While it still states that the “Azureus Application” is available under the GPL, completing installation requires the user to agree to the terms of the “Vuze Platform”, which include restrictions on use, reverse-engineering, and sublicensing. As with many similar licenses, the Azureus licence includes a prohibition on use of the software by people “under the age of 18″. Allegedly, the TOS only applies to the website, vuze.com, and not the software, however the actual TOS include the application as part of the platform.
Interesting..
The Linux Foundation has just uploaded a video of Linus’ keynote at the Plumbers Conference – An Advanced Git Tutorial.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Sure, except that the person taking the video never captures the screen, so it’s effectively useless.
This happens all the time, including at Linux Conference Australia, and it’s dumber than a hat full of dumb things.
We appreciate the effort, but if you’re filming a presentation that’s not a circus act, we don’t always need to see the person giving the speech. We can hear them thanks to the magic of microphones. What we would like to see, is what the hell they are talking about.
Ideally you’d have two cameras, one constantly on the screen and the other on the speaker, then you can clip them together and switch between the two. That’s a lot of work however and no-one at a conference has time for it. Fair enough.
So use your brain. Film the presenter talking, then when they show something, pan across and show us the screen. Then, pan back to the speaker. Use a view finder so that you can see when the best time to switch is.
The magical thing about video is that we can pause it. So you only need to capture the screen momentarily at the least. And while you’re at it, make sure you zoom right into a decent depth so that when it’s encoded at a low resolution we can actually read it.
Do this and when Linus says:
Here’s the most awesome Git command in the universe..
..we actually get to see what the flipping thing is!
Gentoo just turned ten. So what’s this distro all about, and why has it stood the test of time? I take a look in my latest article.
Jeffrey Layton has written an interesting overview of schedulers under Linux.
When the change in scheduler is performed the “old” scheduler completes all of it’s requests before control switches over to the new scheduler (ain’t Linux grand?).
Of course you can only change to schedulers which are included with the kernel.
Don’t mind me, just posting something on my blog for later retrieval, that is how to create patch in unified format. I always forget.
diff -uNr file1 file2 > patch
Don’t know why I can’t remember, it’s so simple; “u” for “unified”, “N” for “new file” and “r” for “recursive” (if needed). I always get stuck with capital Urn.. it’s not an Urn, it’s not an Urn. Now that I’ve forced myself to blog it, it’s ingrained in my brain!