April 29th, 2008
Open source going from strength to strength
However you feel about Hans Reiser, his fate should not distract us from the good news of today.
Open source continues moving from strength-to-strength.
This is especially true in international markets, where skeptics once believed pirated Windows would dominate.
- ApacheCon Europe grew 40% this year.
- Open source trade groups are growing across Asia, driven by support from big vendors.
- Open source is extending ever-further outward, to storage, training and (as we’ve seen) moviemaking.
There are always hiccups. But the trend remains clear. Technology is growing, and open source is growing even faster.
This is especially true in international markets. Double good news for American vendors, given the weak dollar.
Oracle’s attempt to roll-up the database market failed, thanks to open source. Regardless of how Microsoft treats Yahoo, open source will continue moving forward.
Bloggers die. Programmers can kill. Don’t let the fall of a tree cause you to miss the forest. (Hey, there’s a musical group by that name.)
April 29th, 2008
What One Laptop Per Child lacks
An entrepreneur. (Read to the end for the story of this picture.)
Nicholas Negroponte is a brilliant man, a futurist of high rank, an idealist, and an all-around nice guy.
He is not an entrepreneur.
Neither, for that matter, is Walter Bender, the very worthy man who succeeded him as head of the MIT Media Lab and with whom he has now fallen out at One Laptop Per Child.
Successful companies of all types, whatever their industry, all have one thing in common. A single strong man (or woman) at the helm.
The attributes a founder or CEO brings to a company, both positive and negative, determine whether it will fly. There are many tools a great entrepreneur brings to this party, but the life of a college professor does not equip him (or her) for it.
Neither, I should add, does the life of a journalist. The great publishers, the men whose names adorn the fronts of our journalism schools, were not journalists themselves. They were entrepreneurs. Bill Ziff (the Z in ZDNet) was an entrepreneur.
I have known many fine entrepreneurs over the years. I have listed some of the atttributes the best had in common below:
- Drive. An entrepreneur works harder than anyone else in the room.
- Vision. An entrepreneur knows where their company is heading and how to get there.
- Motivation skills. An entrepreneur knows how to lead people.
- Ruthlessness. An entrepreneur can make hard choices. They can fire people.
- Flexibility. An entrepreneur can make lemonade from melons.
- Humility. An entrepreneur knows what they don’t know and gets people who do.
- Distance. An entrepreneur is not married to their business. They won’t hesitate to sell or close it when necessary.
April 29th, 2008
Untangle deal gives Kaspersky fruits of OEM business model
Untangle announced an OEM agreement with Kaspersky Lab, whose Kaspersky Anti-Virus won last summer’s Anti-Virus Fight Club.
The deal lets Untangle customers deploy the Virus Blocker Powered by Kaspersky with just 1 click.
The deal is yet another proof of an important open source business model — the OEM model.
Most people are familiar with the support model, in which a program author seeks support dollars from heavy users. There’s also the SaaS model, in which a hosted version charges users a monthly fee.
The OEM model is also powerful. You get someone else to re-sell a branded version of your open source product — essentially selling in bulk.
A press statement from Untangle says this may be just part of a trend. “We’re always looking for the best apps to offer our community,” said CTO Dirk Morris.
Kaspersky is known in the development community for running Viruslist.com and its associated blog, a great resource for security professionals.
April 28th, 2008
Reiser found guilty of first degree murder
Software developer Hans Reiser was found guilty today of first degree murder in the death of his wife in late 2006, a conviction that carries up to 25 years in prison and a possible death sentence for the Reiser4 file system. [Techmeme]
The verdict, delivered Monday afternoon by an Alameda County, Calif. jury, concludes a five-month-long trial. Reiser was separated from wife Nina Reiser (and engaged in a custody battle for their two children) at the time of her disappearance, which occurred in the fall of 2006. Her body has never been found.
ReiserFS (File System) is incorporated in the Linux kernel and is used in many top Linux distributions, although EXT3 has succeeded it a the leading file system. The Reiser4 open source project, the successor to ReiserFS also conceived by Hans Reiser, continues to be developed and supported by a group of open source programmers. In an e-mail interview over the weekend, Edward Shishkin, a top developer of Reiser4, said work continues on the file system but the fate of the open source project long term is uncertain.
Open source developers say Reiser, now 44, is a brilliant software programmer who dropped out of school at 14 and fast tracked to UC Berkeley where he focused on file system development for Linux. His genius notwithstanding, Reiser was said to have interpersonal problems and exhibited anti-social behavior that aliented some members of the Linux kernel project and the judge in the murder case against him.
Ted Ts’o, a top linux kernel develop and fellow at the Linux Foundation, heads up the ext3 file system and ext4 open source project that competes with Reiser’s file system. Ts’o contends that Reiser is a talented programmer whose work was overshadowed by his temperament but whose file system technology may have a better shot under new management.
“Hans was not the easiest person to work with and and it’s ironic that that having some of these folks [who now work on the Reiser4 project] interact with the Linux comunity allows Reiser4 to make more of a focus toward mainline inclusio simply because hans was his won worst enemy and questionable social skills,” Ts’o said. “Hans was technically brilliant but socially not at quite the same level.”
April 28th, 2008
Verdict in Hans Reiser murder case — and fate of Reiser4 — imminent
The fate of the Reiser4 file system for Linux may well depend on a verdict rendered by a California jury this week.
As an Alameda County jury continues to deliberate the fate of Hans Reiser, the designer of the Reiser File System for Linux who is accused of murdering his wife in late 2006, a key developer on the Reiser4 project acknowledged he is uncertain about its future.
The trial ended last week and a verdict is expected imminently. The jury resumed deliberations on Monday morning.
“Reiser4 is a concern,” said Edward Shishkin, a top developer on the open source project who responded to my questions via e-mail. “It depends on my future work. I am unemployed for now [and] Reiser4 project requires not less than 20 percent of my working time.”
“On the one hand, it would be a pity to drop it, as I’ve spent a lot of time for this. Also it is hard to find really interesting projects like Reiser4,” he said. “On the other hand, I should think about money.”
Ext3 is a leading file system for Linux but ReiserFS is incorporated in the mainline Linux 2.4 kernel and continues to be supported in most Linux distributions, including the recently released Ubuntu 8.04.
Shishkin said that “many” open source developers continue work on and support the file system’s development exactly as they have in the past. He confirmed that Reiser4 patches for the recently released Linux kernel 2.6.25 were posted on April 18, he pointed out the Reiser4 lab is still up and running.
Yet the project is not the same without its lead developer and may not be able to survive long term. Reiser has been incarcerated during the course of his trial. “Hans is a project leader and the single manager, so with or without him is a great difference,” said Shishkin. “I wish this infinite trial with no body were ended, as the development process lacks his opinion.”
Reiser is charged with the murder of his wife, Nina, but no body has ever been found.
Open source developers on the Linux kernel and Xen.org are not optimistic that Reiser4 will survive long term — regardless of the verdict.
“There are a lot of interesting ideas in that file system, but even before the [legal] issues, there’s always been tension between Reisr4 and the Linux kernel folks,” said Ian Pratt, chairman of Xen.org, an open source virtualization project. “I’m not hopeful.”
For now, the project is alive and well, Shishkin points out.
Novell’s openSUSE switched to ext3 as the top file system but continues to support Reiser4 and Canonical’s popular Ubuntu supports Reiser as well.
“Reiser Filesystem 4 is part of Ubuntu 8.04 main repository and as such will benefit of our maintenance for the next 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the Server. There is currently no plan to remove ReiserFS support in upcoming versions of Ubuntu, but, as for all packages, that largely depends on the upstream community continued development,” said Nick Barcet, a server project manager at Ubuntu.
April 28th, 2008
Windows or open source is not the question
Over at another publication an entrepreneur asks a rather silly question, whether his server-side application should be developed with Windows or open source.
This is not even a question. Windows or Linux, that’s a question. Closed source or open, that’s a question. (Picture from Boycott Novell.)
Asking whether to develop under Windows or open source is like asking whether you should draft a quarterback or a cheese sandwich.
But this does give me the chance to bring up an important point. We are moving away from an age where code’s status is based on the operating system it runs under. We’re even moving away from absolutism regarding code status.
There’s lots of good Windows code offered with open source. This is not always the same thing as having an open source license. You can have code visibility under a EULA if you like. Many open source projects are offered this way.
There is a lot of Linux code offered which is closed source. One of the leading hospital software outfits, McKesson, offers a Linux-based proprietary system. Nothing wrong with it.
My guess is this trend will continue. I expect to see many Windows projects offered under completely open source licenses — not just applications like Firefox but server-side products, because it’s a great way to make a splash fast.
I also expect to see many more Linux applications sold closed source. Mobile Linux applications are bound to be closed source.
When we speak of a “mixed environment,” then, we mean mixed in every way possible. Mixed in terms of operating systems, in terms of license terms, mix and match any way you want.
Which brings me back to the story posted just a little while ago — the growth of Black Duck Software through the addition of Koders.
Any shop without this kind of solution, in a few years, is going to look very primitive.
April 28th, 2008
Black Duck buys Koders
Black Duck Software has acquired Koders, the open source code search engine.
(A Black Duck spokesman says a picture of a hungry black duck would work well here. Rob Fergus of Birdchasers says black ducks like this little guy are threatened.)
Those looking at questions of profit should know that the press statement says Black Duck “acquired the assets of Koders.” That’s usually code for they didn’t take the whole business, or its debts.
A statement in the release from Koders CEO Darren Rush seems to confirm this. “Black Duck is the ideal company to take over the Koders technology and our developer community,” he said.
In addition to maintaining the Koders Web site, Black Duck said it will incorporate its search technology into the rest of its portfolio.
In his statement, Black Duck CEO Doug Levin says Koders’ code search will integrate well with Black Duck’s existing component and fragment/file search capabilities.
Black Duck Software is a code management company, able to distinguish code under various licenses so companies stay in compliance with their licenses.
The last time I looked at merger activity in this space, back in October, I asked whether things were getting a bit frothy. This deal indicates the froth has been blown away.
April 25th, 2008
Is Stiglitz the official economist of open source?
If anyone may be deemed the official economist of open source, it’s probably Joseph Stiglitz (right).
Stiglitz, 65, was a co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics for work he did on the impact of asymmetric information.
His paper said markets can be distorted if one side has more information than the other, implying intervention may be needed to restore fairness.
Think of the Internet as a non-government form of intervention. Think of open source as another form.
More recently Stiglitz made headlines by putting the cost of the Iraq War at $3 trillion. But a far more important work may be his 2006 book Making Globalization Work.
Why is he the official economist of open source? Because his main point supports the open source thesis, which is that breaking monopolies on information is essential for free trade and economic growth .
April 25th, 2008
Star Wreck says it’s the real open source thing
I got a call from Finland this morning, where Stephen Lee has set up the open source Star Wreck Studios outside Helsinki.
His message is this is the real open souce thing.
“It’s like Sourceforge. Some people create crap and some create really good stuff. Everyone can participate and that’s a new experience for film making. This allows niche films to be created and not go through the blockbuster mentality system.”
On the site’s main page, each community contributor gets recognition in the hours after their contribution is accepted. All sorts of things are accepted — individual shots, post-production help, props, you name it.
Lee noted that in the battle scenes for his first film, Star Wreck, all but the main rebel ship were models donated by individuals to the project.
“We had 3,000 people in the community at the time of the release of the first film in 2005, leading to 700,000 downloads. Now there are over 8 million. It still gets 30,000 downloads a week. This led to the opportunity for these guys to start Iron Sky.”
The result is a completely upside-down economic model, one with a long tail. The film debuted online, for free, and only later came out in paid versions.
The producers gave the film to the community for free to watch. They made it available for download. That wound up being the best marketing.
They found it sold on the streets in China and Russell. The back of the Chinese copy claimed it had Russell Crowe and was distributed by Paramount. Then it got picked up by TV and then Universal Pictures – they’ve sold over 15,000 DVDs. Now they’re talking about doing theater release. It’s completely opposite of how things are done.
And the bottom line is the bottom line. “It cost 15,000 Euros to make and they’ve got 200,000 Euros so far.” That money is being plowed back into the studio and the two new projects, Iron Sky (which we mentioned earlier) and Sauna.
It was the long tail aspect Lee wanted to emphasize. “We want to free film from the constraints, both before and after they’re financed.”
If Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were starting out today, do you think they would go open source? More to the point, do you want to be the next Matt or Ben? Here’s your chance.
April 24th, 2008
Drivers highlight Linux Summit progress
The final release on the recent Linux Collaboration Summit is out and the big word is drivers.
No, not like this Big Bertha, available from the World of Golf for just $200. (But she’s a beauty, ain’t she?)
Software drivers.
If there is anything that has kept Linux from the mass market, even more than applications, it is the problem of software drivers.
The idea that you can unplug a Windows box, plug in a Linux one, and then hunt-and-hunt for printer drivers, scanner drivers, or whatever other drivers you already had is maddening to ordinary people.
So it was encouraging that the big OEMs, Dell, H-P, Lenovo, and others, came to the Summit and made a commitment:
A key result from the meeting was that these OEM vendors reported that they will encourage chipset and other component vendors to provide open source drivers for Linux. The companies announced on stage that they will now include wording in their hardware procurement processes to “strongly encourage” the delivery of open source drivers for transparent integration into the Linux kernel.
More important, in the long run, was the creation of a Driver Backporting Group that will aim at simplifying the matching of drivers to components so they can be found and installed more easily.
Fore!
April 24th, 2008
Will Mesh take the Web from open source?
The launch of Microsoft’s Live Mesh has a lot of people asking what this means for key competitors like Google or Adobe.
But what does it mean for open source? After all:
- Use of Live Mesh is tied to a Windows ID.
- A “Mesh Bar” on Windows Explorer controls file sharing between devices.
- While competitors are mainly interested in syncing files (which is as old as LapLink) Live Mesh is integrating other services, like chat and news, into its shared experience.
New chief software architect Ray Ozzie (Elvis has left the building) has big plans for Mesh, seeing it as “orchestrating” the merger of mobile, Web, and desktop worlds.
Once Microsoft is finished orchestrating its own users, pulling them into a Microsoft-centric Web, will there be anything left for the rest of us?
In his memo about Mesh, Ozzie writes:
It’s strategic that we invest broadly in solutions and partnerships that advance our position in current and future generations of content, community, commerce, and search, and also in an advertising platform that’s attractive to advertisers, publishers and developers.
Why does that make me feel like Sigourney Weaver right before the Alien showed up?
April 24th, 2008
Is it too late for open source Java?
Sun says it is working hard to make Java completely open source so Linux shops can use it.
But is it already too late?
Developers who commented on Slashdot recently said it is. They said the company’s previous proprietary attitude caused them to turn to alternatives like Python and Ruby.
The argument is that too many developers are now trained on Python and Ruby, and too much code is now out there, for Java to win on Linux servers.
Java still has a place in the applet area, through AJAX, but that’s not the same thing, even though Java is in the name.
All this could make the upcoming JavaOne conference in San Francisco more than a little interesting, assuming someone brings it up.
Will they? Will you? It might make for good side conversations, over tea.
April 24th, 2008
Ubuntu’s corporate ready 8.04 is released but is three a crowd in Linux server market?
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS was released on April 24 as planned and will be supported until 2011-2013. But is extended support enough to convince ISVs and businesses to support three Linux distributions?
Despite the hoopla around its release Wednesday, Ubuntu’s ambitions in the corporate server space will be frustrated because developers and customers don’t want to support more than two Linux distributions, said one Linux kernel developer and a prominent industry analyst.
“Ubuntu did a very valuable service for the community when it proved you could make a very usable Linux deskop. They went down that path and forced other distributors to do this stuff, “ said Ted Ts’o, a top Linux kernel developer and fellow at the Linux Foundation. “But they’re not in a significant role today in the server markets and that’s because ISVs like Oracle and SAP aren’t interested in supporting multiple Linux distributions.”
George Weiss, an open source analyst at the Gartner Group, acknowledges that the Ubuntu ecosystem is growing. But he agrees that it will be tough for Ubuntu to replicate on the server side what it has accomplished on the desktop side.
And that could make it a hard sell to the corporate crowd.
“As long as Canonical can extend its reach, which is geographically limited in feet on the street, it would mostly be working through partners. Butserver partnerships are still limited (no server ties with HP and IBM),” Weiss said. “Their bottom up desktop to basic server infrastructure could gain them foothold but more will be needed as influence in the CIO’s office. CIOs [will ask], ‘What, another Linux?!
As part of the rollout this week, Canonical announced that Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition is certified on several Sun x64 server platforms, including the Sun Fire X2100 M2, X2200 M2 and Sun Fire X4150 servers.
HP also committed to testing and ensuring compatibility of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition on select Proliant servers – but failed short of offering certification or support beyond that.
In recent interviews, Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth hinted that Canonical is in active discussions with “multinational” OEMs on the desktop and server side. But there was little progress to report on launch day.
That’s not to say Ubuntu won’t grow in use on servers. Ubuntu has been cropping up in very large deployments for single process file servers or DNS servers and at SMB sites and will continue to do so, Canonical executives say.
Gartner’s Weiss Ubuntu’s business approach is similar to the model Microsoft successfully employed against Unix server vendors in the 90s.
“They do represent the prospects of new high volume, low price-structure commodity presence as undercutting the traditional up-the-stack approaches of Novell and Red Hat,” he noted. “If we characterize the market as expansionary, then Ubuntu’s threat to Red Hat and Novell is in the form of lost opportunity rather than direct competitive replacement. A good example might be in massively scalable infrastructures and emerging internet-based businesses that want maximum flexibility at minimal license costs. On the other hand, I wouldn’t look for Ubuntu in many complex, mission critical enterprise workloads and therefore as a benign presence.”
At a recent OSBC panel, Shuttleworth opined that “we’re at a tipping point” in which IT administrators are being questioned by CIOs about why they want to use proprietary software, not open source software, and that’s a big turnaround in five years time.
True enough. Still, Ubuntu’s maturing in the client/server OS market comes at an awkward time in which customers are evaluating a switch to a software-as-service model — even as they move to open source. This could pose additional problems for Ubuntu.
And its big corporate pitch comes shortly after Microsoft released its Windows Server 2008, Windows XP SP3 and has begun banging the FUD drum about the next generation Windows 9.
One open source consultant said for now, Ubuntu likely has a better shot on the desktop and should focus its attentions on that side of the equation.
“I think especially Red Hat should be worried about Ubuntu. Red Hat abandoned the desktop and has been trying to regain it lately, but found that Ubuntu got there first,” said Chris Maresca, founding partner of Olliance Consulting, Palo Alto, Calif. “A common Linux desktop is probably a long road, but the EeePC and the new Atom chipset from Intel are pushing it forward at the low end. Windows does not run on Atom because of no PCI so Intel is pushing Linux hard.”
In spite of the success of open source, Linux on the desktop has a long way to go. Although many had predicted that HP would match Dell’s commitment of last year and prebundle Ubuntu Linux on its PCs, it’s out of the question at the moment, a company spokeswoman said.
“While HP continued to closely monitor demand for pre-loaded Linux PC offerings all of our regions around world, we are not seeing significant customer demand for expansion of our Linux plans to include Ubuntu,” said Tiffany Smith, a spokeswoman for HP Personal Systems Group.
April 24th, 2008
Shuttleworth makes corporate case for Ubuntu 8.04 on its launch
Updated
Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth said version 8.04 features a sexier GUI for consumers but it’s the Long Term Support, Wubi Windows installer, server assets and expanding ecosystem that will make it a rising star in the corporate world.
Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Desktop Edition and Server Edition, developed under the code name of “Hardy Heron,” was released as expected today, on April 24. The third leading Linux distributor made a name for itself on the desktop. But now, with its fourth server release, and second LTS offering for desktop and server, Shuttleworth expects Ubuntu will get more respect from corporate customers.
“Red Hat and Novell both articulated a very specific economic niche and Red Hat in part defined that niche and I expect Red Hat will [continue to] dominate. I don’t expect Ubuntu to unseat Red Hat as the primary provider of shrink wrapped commercial Linux on the server, but I would expect seeing Ubuntu on servers in the market for people who would have bought Unix,” Shuttleworth said in a phone interview on April 1, in preparation for the global launch this week.
Canonical has a viable corporate strategy with this version and is differentiated from Red Hat and Novell in several ways, Shuttleworth said.
First, Ubuntu’s Long Term Support, deemed necessary for corporate adoption, gives customers five years worth of maintenance and security releases for the server and three years support on the desktop. Customers can upgrade to the next upgrade in october of 2008 or stick with 8.04 for the lengthy support contract.
Aside from this, the software is free and open. There’s no unique “enterprise” version for paying customers and lower-end version for users that don’t pay for support contracts. This is a big distinction from Red Hat and Novell, he and other Canonical executives say.
Another big draw for the corporate crowd is the Wubi Windows installer, new to this release of Ubuntu, which allows users to download and test the Ubuntu desktop on their Windows PCs without repartitioning the hard drive. Shuttleworth said getting corporate end users comfortable with a new desktop is critical for its evolution.
“The biggest issue for us [in getting corporate support] is in the evaluation process and this installer for Windows is very attractive,” Shuttleworth said. “It’s a way of reducing the friction of people to try Linux but don’t have the confidence to repartition the drive.”
On the features side, the 8.04 server features enhanced security via SELinux, integration with Microsoft Active Directory via integration of LikeWise Open and support for KVM for hosting virtualization for applications and operating systems out of the box. This is another differentiation from Red hat and Novell, which back Xen in their Linux distributions for open source virtualization.
Ubuntu’s ecosystem of partners is also growing, Shuttleworth pointed out.
Canonical announced, for example, that Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition is certified on several Sun x64 server platforms, including the Sun Fire X2100 M2, X2200 M2 and Sun Fire X4150 servers. Additionally, HP has agreed to ensure Ubuntu runs well on its Proliant servers, Canonical said this week.
“Sun said we’ll certify Ubuntu on their x64 servers and in addition we’re working with all major server vendors to validate and test the platform on their hardware, “ Shuttleworth said.
More than 500 maintained and supported server packages are available for version 8.04 including Alfresco, Bacula, IBM, VMWare, Parallels, Qumranet, Tresys, Zarafa, Zend and Zimbra.
On the desktop side, support from Adobe, IBM, Skype, Zimbra, IBM/Lotus and others is there.
“The most significant feature is the greatly increased ecosystem of hardware and software third party certifying on the platform,” Shuttleworth said. “We’ve seen an order of magnitude jump in third party applications certified on Ubuntu and an order of magnitude increase in companies that provide services, support and consulting. The ecosystem is growing substantially.”
April 23rd, 2008
LSB SDK, aka 4.0, could be panacea for Linux app developers .. and Ubuntu
Increasing use of Ubuntu and other Linux distributions globally puts additional pressure — and costs — on independent software developers.
The Linux Foundation hopes that its fourth stab at a solution, the Linux Standards Base 4.0, will make it much easier and less expensive for ISVs to write a Linux application once that runs on all Linux distributions. “ISVs today only support two distributions and that is a hard reality,” said Linux kernel developer Ted Ts’o.
LSB 4.0, which is a software development kit and toolset, will allow ISVs to support multiple distributions from a single build engine. The SDK is expected to be released into beta testing in September, and released in final form by the end of the year, said Linux kernel developer and Linux Foundation fellow Ted Ts’o.
To date, the Linux Foundation’s approach has been to certify applications that comply with the LSB, but it has proved cumbersome for application developers, he said.
“What ISVs told us was not earth shattering. They said [for customers] it’s not about certification but simply the ability of the sales person to show [customers] that they can make their product work on Mandriva and it will just work,” Ts’o said. “So we’re retooling our tools to make it easier. It will significantly reduce their costs of supporting multiple distributions, where, even if they don’t certify, in most cases, the [applications] will run everywhere.”
Taking somewhat of a stab at Java, Ts’o said the Linux Foundation aims to ensure that the toolset and testing suite is ready before ISVs go out and sign support agreements with customers. “This is the legacy of Java — that people are scared of supporting random Java applications or Java VMs, and making support agreements without testing first. They’ve been burned many times before.”
LSB certification would imply a support agreement, but using the toolset to test would not, he noted. The Linux Foundation will also continue to certify applications, he added.
But he acknowledged that the “write once, run everywhere” promise is difficult for all platforms, especially Linux. “It’s true for Java and it will be true for Linux. It’s a business issue,” he said, noting that the LSB tool isn’t even done yet. “We’re still building it so it’s vaporware.”
April 23rd, 2008
Ksplice automates hot patching Linux kernel with no reboot needed
Ksplice is an interesting open source project out of MIT that automates the process of applying security patches to the Linux kernel without rebooting, and it’s getting notice by the Linux Foundation.
Top kernel developer and Linux Foundation fellow Ted Ts’o said the Ksplice software is much needed by telecommunications providers and anyone who hates downtime. “It allows you to hot patch the Linux kernel with a security update without rebooting the computer. It’s a binary patch capability that is highly automated,” said Ts’o. “Users in the carrier grade linux space have been clamoring for this for a while. If you are a carrier in telephony and don’t want downtime, this stuff is pure gold.”
The best part? It doesn’t require any kernel modifications, Ts’o said.
According to a technical paper released by Ksplice developer and MIT graduate student Jeffrey Brian Arnold, Ksplice was tested against Linux security patches from May of 2005 to December of 2007 and automatically (and successfully) patched 84 percent of 50 “significant kernel vulnerabilities” in that timeframe. Ksplice can handle many security updates but not changes to data structures, the report notes.
It is available under GPL 2 and has been tested on Linux kernel versions from 2.6.8 to the recently released 2.6.25 and on several Linux distributions including Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Gentoo, Arnold writes.
Ts’o does not know if the developer has any commercial plans around Ksplice but notes that the software is free and ready to go. Arnold does point out in his white paper, however, that the software is still in test mode and can cause problems. He also acknowledges that Ksplice could theoretically help “bad guys” introduce bad code into the kernel but maintains those folks already have the tools to do harm.
Update: Mr Arnold wrote and sent along better links (see above) to the project and inform us that he has no commercial plans at this point for Ksplice.
April 23rd, 2008
How big can Ubuntu get?
If you think desktop Linux has a future then Ubuntu is Da Bomb and Mark Shuttleworth is Da Man.
Nearly half the Linux machines checked so far in the Open Source Census are running Ubuntu, and a new, even easier-to-use release comes out tomorrow.
Shuttleworth, meanwhile, is just the kind of high-profile entrepreneur open source needs to move forward. The British press treats him as a sort of Richard Branson for the 21st century and he seems to delight in the attention.
Shuttleworth recently told the BBC that the Microhoo deal is really good, because it will bring thousands of open source advocates to Redmond. Business is great, people are wonderful, the world is beautiful, and has he told you yet about his space flight?
Still there are growing indications that desktop Linux is hitting a ceiling. Bundling applications with the operating system won’t get the share up by itself. There’s the question of whether the desktop metaphor is even worthwhile anymore.
So we have today’s question. Will Ubuntu make Shuttleworth a desktop fortune, or fighting the last technology war?
Loading …April 23rd, 2008
Time and talent are the open source speed limits
The launch of an open source movie studio dovetailed with a recent conversation I had with a West Texas entrepreneur. (Image courtesy Star Wreck Studios.)
Stephen Lee is convinced there is a ton of time and talent which isn’t getting a shot, which is why he’s backing a Web-based studio in Finland and telling anyone who will listen production is free.
I don’t know what to make of Iron Sky, but I’m guessing that if you liked the mockumentary Confederate States of America you may be up for it. I’m thinking it’s more like Springtime for Hitler, for real this time. No thanks.
But horses for courses, you know? That’s really what open source movie-making is all about, serving niches which previously were not served.
Still, how many “good” ideas like this are there?
Which leads me to the West Texas entrepreneur. He’s found a way to aggregate Internet and energy demand, feeding the former with broadband and the latter with wind, of which West Texas has plenty.
He’s very idealistic and thinks his broadband network could revitalize rural America, down to the last micron. I admire his enthusiasm.
But when I started to take his idea seriously, it became obvious to me that he badly needs a big pot of money to turn that Internet pipe into an economic development tool.
It’s time — time spent learning how to use the resource, applying those lessons to problems, developing talent, then teaching others — which is the ultimate bottleneck.
That’s why PCs never made education better. We couldn’t pay teachers enough to take the time to adapt the resource to their lessons before their systems became obsolete.
That’s the speed limit Star Wreck faces, and it’s the speed limit of open source as well. Time and talent, and the human expectation we can profit from both.
April 22nd, 2008
The truth about desktops and laptops
The failure of One Laptop Per Child (and it is a failure) to mass market its $100 Linux laptops made me realize something important about that market.
There is something cheaper than free. It’s called subsidized, bundled, marketed and supported.
Subsidy comes in many forms. Co-op dollars. Distribution channels. Branding. An applications ecosystem.
Microsoft has spent nearly 30 years building all this. While we in the Linux advocacy business like to dismiss it, in the commodity desktop or laptop market its impact is real.
Nick Negroponte knows it. Walter Bender refuses to accept it. In terms of initial sales, in distribution, in getting the commodity box up-and-running, Windows has won.
But.
This no longer means Windows owns the future, as was once the case. Client PCs are declining in importance year-by-year.
Servers, and the Internet cloud, are becoming more important. Linux dominates there but Windows is competitive. Handheld Internet terminals are becoming more important. The iPhone dominates there but Linux is competitive.
Can Linux make any headway in the desktop-laptop market? There are niches where it’s welcome.
There are increasing numbers of applications that work well on Linux desktops. There are language markets which offer opportunity, where national interests will in time trump the interests of the Windows ecosystem.
But that’s not where we should be looking, and I don’t think it’s where Microsoft is looking, either. Once you’re at a price point of $100-200 your software costs are near zero. The victory over Negroponte begins to look pyrrhic.
What’s far more dangerous to Microsoft is that it has yet to squeeze Windows Mobile into a compelling handheld offering, and the open source ecosystem gives Linux a better-and-better story to tell in the enterprise space.
That’s where the game is now. That game is far from over. It has barely begun.
April 22nd, 2008
Where’s the money in open source?
Our own open source executive, Matt Asay, asks today why he’s not rich.
Maybe because you’re wasting your time on journalism?
First rule of this profession, taught me by the late Prof. George Heitz at Northwestern three decades ago. “If you want to make a good living, get a spouse with a good job.”
Anyhoo. The question is based on a Wired piece speculating on the coming wealth of open source barons. As though the only reason to write software is to cash out.
Fact is there are already plenty of open source billionaires, starting with the founders of Google and their “adult supervisor,” Eric Schmidt. (Since he was previously called the “father of Java,” and Java’s now open source, maybe he counts twice.)
As multi-billion dollar companies move toward the open source paradigm, shouldn’t their CEOs count too?
Of course, as Bernard Golden writes, this is the wrong question. Open source isn’t just a business model or a development model, it’s a paradigm shift. It’s a product of the Internet.
Asking about open source billionaires in 2008 is a bit like asking about manufacturing billionaires in, say, 1760. There’s Matt Boulton (above) and Josiah Wedgewood. No this mass production thing isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.
And, yes, the paradigm shift made possible by the Internet is that important. It has, in fact, just begun to take hold.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for nearly 25 years. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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