Published on
7 July, 2009 in
FOSS.
Tags: .net, c#, cli, development, floss, FOSS, free software, Linux, microsoft, mono, programming.
Peter Galli has written on his blog that he was informed by Scott Guthrie (the Corporate Vice President for the .Net Developer Platform) that Microsoft will include C# and CLI under their “Community Promise“.
Peter writes:
It is important to note that, under the Community Promise, anyone can freely implement these specifications with their technology, code, and solutions.
You do not need to sign a license agreement, or otherwise communicate to Microsoft how you will implement the specifications.
Just when (or if) this will happen is not yet clear, nor is whether it will hold any water. Still, it could be the one step to help ease the current patent issues in Mono in relation to C# and CLI (the rest of the Mono implementation of .NET remains under threat however).
Gotta laugh at this from Microsoft’s promise, though:
This promise by Microsoft is not an assurance that either (i) any of Microsoft’s issued patent claims covers a Covered Implementation or are enforceable.
Anyway, interesting to see where this goes.
-c
I’ve been reading around the Internet for a while now about folks asking why some people don’t like Mono.
I have written an article which expresses my opinion on the situation as it relates to free software.
By all means, let Linux run Windows .NET applications through Mono, but let’s not make our own software dependent on this proprietary programming framework.
The article itself is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia license.
The New Zealand Python conference, KiwiPyCon, is on the way in November and recently had a competition to design a logo. I’m happy to say that the winner (with a Kiwi modification to the Python logo) was friend and fellow Canberra Linux User Group member, Jason Nielsen! He admits that his work is “Blatantly influenced by Jonathan Harkers design.” Never-the-less, it looks great! Simple and effective.
Congratulations J!
-c
Published on
24 April, 2009 in
FOSS.
Tags: checksum, commercial, data integrity, encryption, file system, FOSS, gpl, Linux, oracle, raid, sun, zfs.
Linux Magazine has a pretty nice little article about Btrfs, a new enterprise level file system developed by Oracle which recently entered the Linux kernel.
The article has a comparison with ZFS, Sun’s (well, now Oracle’s) file system which is not Linux compatible, as well as some benchmarks. It’s an interesting, short read. The Btrfs file system does look very, very promising.
-c
Red Hat has announced the results of a survey they sponsored showing the amount of open source activity around the world. An activity map shows the level of open source activity happening today, while the environmental map is based off more speculative factors to determine whether the environment is favourable for open source to take hold.
Out of the 57 countries included in the survey, the top 5 were:
France
Overall=1
Government=1
Industry=25
Community=3
Spain
Overall=2
Government=2
Industry=22
Community=10
Germany
Overall=3
Government=4
Industry=19
Community=5
Australia
Overall=4
Government=14
Industry=4
Community=11
Finland
Overall=5
Government=19
Industry=1
Community=18
So, Australia comes in at number 4 overall. Our Industry was quite high, while our Government continues to let us down (I wonder whether Universities were considered Government or Industry?).
Anyway, interesting numbers. The Open Source Index is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.
-c
I’m sure many are familiar with the general substitute method of sed for replacing something in a file, i.e. sed -i s/this/that/g ~/myfile but recently I wanted to replace an entire line in a file, using bash.
I wanted to modify the localhost entry in /etc/hosts to include the static hostname too, all tab delimited. This is how I did it.
sed -i /^127.0.0.1/c\127.0.0.1\\t`hostname -f`\\t`hostname`\\tlocalhost.localdomain\\tlocalhost /etc/hosts
Find the line that begins with 127.0.0.1 and replace it with itself, plus the result of the hostname commands, etc. This gives me a line like so:
127.0.0.1 pc.fqdn pc localhost.localdomain localhost
I’m sure someone else knows a much more efficient way of doing this, but oh well, it works 
-c
I bought a D-Link DNS-323 NAS box a while ago with the mind to put Debian on it (it already ships with Linux, but I wanted more control). Previously I installed Debian under a chroot environment which activated itself on boot, but it wasn’t really clean or nice.
I came across a blog post by Martin Michlmayr where he talks about getting Debian working on a CH3SNAS, and mentions he might write an installation guide. I emailed him encouraging him to do so, and that I’d be happy to test it for him and provide feedback. He replied with his information once it had started to take shape. Today I finally had a chance to test it out.
I followed the installation instructions on his website and it worked perfectly! I now have Debian running natively on my little ARM box and it’s very, very awesome.
Although the box has a gigabit network card, it never transferred anything fast enough to prove it. Copying a 4GB ISO file took 31minutes, averaging around 2.2MB/sec rate which is not even 100Mbit speed. So don’t expect to be serving up high definition movies to your network from this box.
Anyway, if you have one of these boxes, then I highly recommend that you give this a shot. Debian on a tiny little appliance.. it doesn’t get much better than that!
-c
Update: There are some things which don’t work, most of which I didn’t care about, except one. Fan control. I figured this meant the fan couldn’t speed up and slow down based on internal temperatures, but it actually means “fan doesn’t work at all”. The result is that drives can run hot, damn hot in that little box without any air flow. Something to think about if you’re going to install native Debian.
Update #2: The fan issue is now solved.
At work we develop two open source Java applications, Xena and DPR, both of which we host on Sourceforge under CVS. I’ve been pushing to move away from CVS for quite some time now, but it hasn’t gained much traction. This has been mostly due to the lack of a decent Eclipse plugin and partly because of developer apathy. The other day I noticed that Sourceforge enabled support for Git, my favourite SCM system. Today I came across an article saying that they will now provide support for Bazaar and Mercurial also. Sweet.
Truly happy Linux people couldn’t care less about Microsoft whatsoever. Instead, they just get down to business and make things work. Whether it’s for desktop, laptop, media center use or what-have-you, instead of bickering about Microsoft they’re getting things done, which of course is what matters the most…You can find happy Linux users that say nothing of Microsoft because it simply doesn’t matter.
I agree.
I think some of us are too busy trying to convert the world and unless we scream and shout about how bad Microsoft is, we feel we can’t change anything. But we can, just by doing what we do. You can still talk to people about Free Software, still compare it to Microsoft, but it’s the childish antics that no-one appreciates.
Ash Pringle from zmogo has posted his final day and conclusion to his New Year Linux Resolution.
What I like:
* The speed: This is something I haven’t really mentioned before, but Linux is fast. I didn’t even notice until I went back and used my stupid Windows PC, which apparently confers to an international committee that must perform an arduous deliberation about whether to open Firefox every time I click the icon. Every operating system should run this fast.
* The comprehensive antivirus software: Which doesn’t exist because Linux doesn’t need it! Half the reason my Windows PC is so slow is because my antivirus software performs an unwarranted anal cavity search on every program I even think about running. It defeats the purpose of even having antivirus software, since it makes my computer run just as slow as if it were bogged down with all the junk it protects me from. With Linux there are no worries about that sort of thing, and it brings quite a peace of mind.
* The fire-writing desktop effect: How did I not notice this earlier? There is nothing more potent than the ability to write on your desktop in pure fire. Although I kind of half expect my computer to start sending me creepy messages about unsolved murders if I leave this effect on.
* The cost: Nothing! It’s, like, totally free! Like, free as hell, man. Its free-ness is akin to the freedom of not wearing pants when you’re home alone. If it were any free-er it would probably give you money.
* The clock: It lets you show you the calendar date, and even the weather! I could never understand why XP and the Mac OS never let you show the calendar date next to the time. It’s a little thing, but it’s those sorts of little details that make an operating system that much nicer. I mean, I don’t have to double click on the calendar hanging on my wall to check the date, do I Microsoft? Get with the times! (Pun totally intended, even though it’s really not very good.)
* File name-changes: When you change a file’s name Ubuntu doesn’t highlight the file’s extension. This is another detail that just shows the developers’ attention to usability. Give me one reason why I’d want to change the extension of a file every time I changed it’s name, XP. What’s that? That’s right, you can’t give me any reasons. Now go to your room!
* The pre-loaded software: Every operating system ought to come with basic office tools and programs. It just makes sense.
* The Add/Remove Programs application: Another feature that just makes sense. Hey other operating systems, why not include the option to quickly and easily obtain useful applications? Are you trying to hide something from us? Now go to your room!
* The soft purr of Sir Alphonso, my incredibly fat cat: As it eats three-day-old cheetos off my floor. Aw, you probabwy have diabwetes. Yes you do! Yes you do!
-c