Practical Technology

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April 15, 2010
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Is Linux graying?

The Linux kernel panel at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is usually a glimpse into Linux’s future, but this week, it was also a reflection on how far Linux has come and how its leadership is growing older.

This annual panel was, as usual, chaired by Jonathan Corbet, editor in chief of the Linux Weekly News, the best hardcore Linux techie news site. During the course of the conversation, Corbet, looking around at the group of top Linux kernel developers, asked "Is the Linux kernel developer crew getting too old?"

Too old is, of course, a vague term. After all, Linus Torvalds, Linux’s creator and leader, is just 40. Still, it is a clear that Linux’s top kernel leaders aren’t kids anymore.

Greg Kroah-Hartman, a Novell engineer and head of the Linux Driver Project, replied, "Turnover at the upper level is not happening." James Bottomley, another Novell engineer and the Linux Foundation‘s Technical Advisory Board Chair, agreed that: "There are more gray beards. The graying of the Linux kernel is going to continue until people start dying."

Kroah-Hartman added, "The rate of change still keeps going up." In part that’s because, Bottomley noted that the "effective code wisdom is going up in Linux."

Andrew Morton, a Google software engineer and possibly the Linux kernel’s top developer and manager after Torvalds, remarked, "Yes, we’re getting older, and we’re getting more tired. I don’t see people jumping with enthusiasm to work on things the way that I used to." Bottomley, with tongue in cheek, replied, "I’m not ducking work, I’m giving other people a chance to work in the community." New developers are coming into Linux, but they’re just not arriving as quickly as they once did.

Morton noted that that’s in part because "The code is more complex. We have stuff getting in now that we would have run away from 10 years ago." In addition, Christoph Hellwig, a top Linux kernel developer, notes, "There is new blood trickling in, but it does seem that it’s slowed down… [because] a lot of other cool projects are pulling in new talent."

That said, Kroah-Harman observed that many Linux kernel projects, such as his own Linux Driver Project, require little from developers to start, except that their device drivers have the right open-source licensing and that their software will compile. Specifically, there’s "No barrier to entry into getting code in the staging-tree kernel."

In addition, the Linux Foundation and many of the top developers are going out of their way to help teach people how to work on Linux. Besides helping Linux advance it’s also good news for the developers. As Corbet reminded the audience, "75% of Linux developers are getting paid for working on Linux." Corbet added that this is old news but it still shocks people.

That’s because, Corbet said, it’s "counter to Linux’s upstart image." He added that the image of hackers in basement was formed "before IBM came along and put a necktie on Linux." Kroah-Hartman added, "If you can show competence in working on the kernel, you’ll get hired." And, why not? "Wouldn’t you do this if you got paid for your hobby?" asked Kroah-Hartman.

With a quarter of people submitting patches to the Linux kernel still doing it purely on their own time, it seems to me that new blood is still coming into Linux and we aren’t going to need to worry about Linux developers becoming old fogies and stuck in their ways anytime soon.

A version of this story first appeared in ComputerWorld.

April 14, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

How Adobe might take on Apple in the courts

Since I wrote about Adobe considering taking Apple to court over the new iPad/iPhone SDK (software development kit) licensing restrictions, Adobe hasn’t officially added anything to the story. And, neither have my sources. That said, I have spoken to several prominent attorneys about what Adobe might try to do and here is what they told me.

Before going into that though I’ve heard from some people asking why Adobe and Apple are at such loggerheads. It’s true that historically the two companies have worked well together. You could argue that the pairing of the early Mac and Adobe Photoshop is what made both the Mac and Photoshop so popular. Over the years, though, the companies have also often not seen eye-to-eye. For example, Adobe has sometimes delayed Adobe software releases for the Mac platform in favor of Windows.

The immediate cause though is that, as a Slashdot commentator put it so well, “Apple changed the rules without telling Adobe. It’s as if you worked for 2 years on a shiny sports car only to be told, 3 days before you’d be able to take it on the road, that its category had been banned from using the roads ever again. I don’t think Adobe would’ve been that p**sed off had Apple told them BEFORE they started working on their Flash exporter.” By handicapping Adobe in the already lucrative iPhone/iPod Touch software development market and the remarkably hot iPad market, Adobe has apparently decided that enough is enough.

Now the question is how to go about it. No matter what route Adobe chooses, it won’t be easy.

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April 13, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Google open-sourcing VP8 video may change Internet video forever

For a while now, Internet video was simple. You used Adobe Flash, with its 95% plus market share, and that was that. Then things changed. The next Web standard, HTML 5, came along, but it didn’t spell out that Flash or anything else would be the video codec standard. Then, Apple refused to have anything to do with Flash on its ‘i’ family of devices. Now it seems Google may be open-sourcing the VP8 video codec. Internet video is about to get a lot more complicated.

Ryan Lawler reported in NewTeeVee that multiple sources have told him Google will be open-sourcing its VP8 video codec. This is a high-performance video compression codec that its creators claim requires relatively little processor power to decode and display, even at HDTV quality. Google acquired this technology when it bought On2 Technologies, a video codec and publishing company, in February 2010.

According to Lawler, Google will "officially announce the release at its Google I/O developers’ conference [in May], a source with knowledge of the announcement said. And with that release, Mozilla — maker of the Firefox browser — and Google Chrome are expected to also announce support for HTML5 video playback using the new open codec."

Officially, Google’s not saying if they’re really going to do it. A Google spokesperson told me, "We’re excited to be working with the On2 team to continue to improve the video experience on the web, but we have nothing to announce at this time." I’m willing to bet though that Lawler is right and that Google is going to open up VP8.

So why is this important? While fans of Apple and open source may not care for Flash, there’s already H.264, which is used in Apple QuickTime; Ogg Theora, the open-source favorite; and Microsoft’s Silverlight as alternatives. Flash, Silverlight, and Apple’s video technologies all have proprietary elements to them, which make them less than ideal to some Web video producers and users.

H.264 and Ogg Theora aren’t tied to one company, but they have problems as well. H.264 is covered by proprietary patents. Even though its owner, MPEG LA, has said it will let Web browser companies use H.264 without playing any royalties until 2016, Web browser vendors such as Mozilla are still wary of it. There are also patent concerns about Ogg Theora.

But if VP8 were opened up, it might be free of patent, royalty payment, proprietary ownership concerns. That sounds like a win to me.

Kaltura is an open-source video company in charge of the development of the Kaltura HTML5 Video Library, which is being used to add video to Wikipedia. Kaltura senior developer Michael Dale expects Google to open-source VP8 and that it’ll be used in YouTube and on the Android platform, helping VP8 get adopted quickly. Specifically, Dale sees this as being "bad news for MPEG LA’s next codec, H.265, aka H.264+. While the current H.264 profiles are well-placed for the current generation of video across mobile and desktop for at least the next few years, the Google push for royalty-free codecs will eventually make it difficult for a new royalty codec to compete."

Still, Dale continued, "The possible exception is in vertical integrated markets. Principally, Apple, with its vertical integration from devices to software to content distribution, is probably the one company entity that can keep proprietary codecs around for quite some time. The other major players, Microsoft and Adobe, both have lost significant leverage."

Russell Taga, VP of engineering at Howcast, an instructional online video company, also has good things to say about VP8. Taga said, "VP8 offers good video quality and consumes considerably less bandwidth than other codecs. Assuming that Google is able to open source the VP8 codec, it could offer an alternative that will resolve the current divide between different browser vendors on support for the Ogg Theora and H.264 video codecs."

If Google is able to open source VP8, Taga continued, "This isn’t good news for Adobe Flash nor Microsoft Silverlight; however, I don’t think either technology will go away soon. It takes people quite a while to upgrade browsers so there will be eyeballs that companies will want to reach using older browsers that don’t support HTML5."

On a more cautionary note, Marshall Eubanks, CEO of AmericaFree.TV, an Internet video Web site, commends Google’s action, but thinks "VP8 is unlikely to overtake H.264 / H.265." Eubanks reasons that "It takes a long time and a lot of work to change a video codec, and H.264 is embedded in a lot of media and devices. Remember that H.264 is an open standard, but not open source. What this is likely to do is to help keep H.264 an open standard, by helping to keep the license terms for H.264 open and reasonable."

Eubanks also worries that, "Given the way the patent system works, it is foolish to think that any new video codec will not be patent-encumbered. The only real question is, do you have an idea of what the encumbrances are, or not? With H.264, you have a good idea of this, with Ogg Theora or VP8, you do not. Remember, "green-field" programming without knowledge of a patent does not save you from being patent encumbered, if you should reinvent a patented wheel. Also remember that we do not know how green-field On2 Technologies was in their programming practice. It is quite possible that even Google doesn’t know how encumbered VP8 may be – like the rest of us, they will simply have to wait and find out."

Indeed, we all will have to wait and find out. But I for one am looking forward to seeing this technology roll out as open source. I strongly believe that television, computing, mobile devices and the Internet are rapidly coming together and a strong open-source, open-standard video format will go a long way to making this a smooth merger.

A version of this story first appeared in ComputerWorld.

April 12, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Adobe vs. Apple is going to get uglier

Usually I write about security here, but Apple’s iron-bound determination to keep Adobe Flash out of any iWhatever device is about to blow up in Apple’s face. Sources close to Adobe tell me that Adobe will be suing Apple within a few weeks.

It was bad enough when Apple said, in effect, that Adobe Flash wasn’t good enough to be allowed on the iPad. But the final straw was when Apple changed its iPhone SDK (software development kit) license so that developers may not submit programs to Apple that use cross-platform compilers.

Officially, Adobe’s not talking about such actions, but there’s no question that Adobe is ticked off big time at Apple. I mean how often in print does one company representative say about a former partner, “Go screw yourself Apple,” as Lee Brimelow, an Adobe platform evangelist, did on his personal Web site, The Flash Blog. While Adobe had him retract some of his words, and the blog now has a big disclaimer, “[Adobe would like me to make it clear that the opinions below are not the official views of the company and are entirely my own.]” we can be sure that within Adobe’s offices far stronger words were used to describe Apple’s attitude towards Flash.

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April 12, 2010
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Of patents, open source, and IBM

After covering the war of words over IBM’s use of patents in a business dispute with French start-up TurboHercules and giving my two cents on this open-source family fight, I’d hope the matter would die down. I was wrong.

Florien Mueller, the founder of the European NoSoftwarePatents campaign, who started this most recent open-source internal fuss, has now published an analysis which claims that some of the patents “IBM asserted against Hercules may also read on other major Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects, including but not limited to OpenBSD, Xen, VirtualBox, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite and Kaffe.”

It’s not that there’s any proof IBM is actually considering suing anyone on these grounds, as Mueller admits, but nevertheless Mueller claims that “considering that IBM has already used them in a threat letter to TurboHercules, those patents must be considered particularly dangerous.”

Sigh. All software patents, as far as I’m concerned, are dangerous to all software development.

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April 9, 2010
by sjvn01
4 Comments

Linux’s worst enemies? Linux fans

Do you know why Unix failed to take off as a mainstream operating system? It wasn’t because it was too hard to use. Mac OS X, the universally acclaimed ‘easy’ operating system is built on top of BSD Unix. It’s certainly not because Windows is better. It wasn’t and it isn’t. No, I put most of the blame for Unix’s failure on its internal wars. Unix International vs. Open Software Foundation; BSD vs. System V, etc., etc. For the most part, Linux has avoided this…. for the most part.

That’s not to say that Linux doesn’t have its share of internal battles that don’t do anyone any good. Free software founder Richard M. Stallman’s insistence that Linux should be called GNU/Linux puzzles more people than it does bringing anyone to Linux, or GNU/Linux if you insist. In the last few days though, another Linux family fight has erupted.

This time around, it’s open-source developer and anti-patent political lobbyist Florien Mueller accusing IBM of breaking its promises to the FOSS (free and open-source software) community of not using patents against it. Mueller’s is ticked off that TurboHercules, an open-source z/OS emulator company, over its possible misuse of IBM patents, which includes two that’s covered by IBM’s pledge to not sue open-source companies or groups using these patents.

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