Practical Technology

for practical people.

April 4, 2008
by sjvn01
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XP Home Lives, and So Does Linux, on UMPCs

When I thought Microsoft was going to extend XP’s lifetime to better slug it out with Linux on Ultra Mobile PCs and Mobile Internet Devices, I was afraid Linux was going to have to fight hard for the low-end of the desktop.

Now that we know that only XP Home is going to have a longer life and Microsoft is going to have to contort itself over what systems can and what systems can’t get it, I’m much happier. XP Pro was much more troublesome in my mind.

You see while XP Home will keep, well, the home users happy, XP Home has always been useless for businesses. It all comes down to one simple fact. You can use XP Pro on a business network, but not XP Home.

As my colleague Joe Wilcox over at Microsoft-Watch put it: “Ultra low-cost PCs and MIDs aren’t Windows PC companions, they’re replacements—for many end users. And Linux will deliver the enterprise capabilities lacking in Windows XP Home.”

Exactly.

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April 3, 2008
by sjvn01
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Another SCO buyout stumbles

Like the 11th chapter of a bad horror movie, the SCO zombie keeps stumbling forward moaning “Linux,” instead of “Brains.” This time, however, there may not be another movie left for SCO. SCO’s most recent would-be buyer, Stephen Norris & Co. Capital Partners LP, no longer wants to buy SCO.

SCO has staggered on since August 2007, when the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City ruled that Novell, and not SCO, owned UNIX’s intellectual property Thus, with the legs cut out beneath all of its Linux cases, SCO filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in mid-September 2007.

In late October, SCO claimed it had found a buyer, York Capital Management. That proposed deal fell apart barely a month later. By year’s end, SCO had dropped off the Nasdaq.

You’d think that would be the end wouldn’t you? No case, no money, no buyer, and no more stock market presence. You’d think that would be the end wouldn’t you? Alas, no. On Valentine’s Day, SCO showed that even it could still get a little fiscal love—up to $100 million worth if you count the credit line—from Stephen Norris & Co.

In return for $5 million in cash, and loans of up to $95 million, Stephen Norris would buy SCO, move the company out of bankruptcy, take it private, and, of course, continue its seemingly endless and pointless Linux litigation.

It wasn’t a done deal, although SCO’s ownership agreed to both sell the company and fire long-time CEO Darl McBride. First, the proposed sale had to pass the scrutiny of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

The deal didn’t make it that far. At the Bankruptcy Court on April 2, according to a report by Steven Church of Bloomberg News, SCO attorney Arthur Spector said that now the Stephen Norris deal was off. “We don’t have a new deal. But, when we get the deal that we think we are going to get, it’s going to be better.”

Instead of buying SCO, the company, Stephen Norris & Co. now wants to buy the Lindon, Utah’s business assets. Of course, the largest remaining question in both Novell’s lawsuit in Utah and in the Delaware bankruptcy court is what assets, if any, the company has left and who legally owns them.

In short, what could SCO possibly have left to sell that could, according to a report in Groklaw, leave SCO with “plenty of cash to pay their creditors with interest and have cash or cash reserves for paying future debts”?

There were no details given about this latest proposed deal. The Groklaw on-the-scene report continued that SCO’s attorney said he was “waiting until the deal is done before making full disclosures. He’s not going to leave any loose ends this time. He mentions that SCO may need an extension to get everything prepared and do due diligence.”

The Groklaw report also stated that, Joseph McMahon Jr., an attorney with the U.S. Trustee’s office, said “that the former York deal was basically a plan to sell IP that they [SCO] didn’t own and he wants to make sure that this new deal is clear about what is being sold since it is an asset purchase.”

So it is that, now without a deal in place, SCO continues to stumble forward. Whether the company will still be around to make its next court date remains an open question.

A version of this story was first published in Linux-Watch.

April 1, 2008
by sjvn01
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LPI to offer security training with LPIC-3 certification

There are Linux certifications, such as the RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer). There are security certifications, like the CCSP (Cisco Certified Security Professional). Now we have the first certification that combines Linux and security: the Linux Professional Institute’s LPIC-3 with its new “Security” exam elective.

The LPI certification, unlike the Red Hat and Novell certifications, is vendor-neutral. The long-delayed, top-level LPIC-3 arrived in 2007.

To obtain this certification, roughly equivalent to the RHCE or the NCLE (Novell Certified Linux Engineer), a Linux administrator must have already achieved the LPIC-1 and LPIC-2 certifications. In addition, he or she must pass the enterprise-level core certification exam (LPI-301) and a “Mixed Environment” elective (LPI-302). According to the LPI press release, “In 2008 LPI will develop a ‘Security’ elective (LPI-303) to accompany this level of the program. The introduction of this advanced-level ‘Security’ elective follows extensive consultation with industry leaders and enterprise customers on priorities for the LPIC-3 program.”

While Linux is known for being secure, security is not an operating system, it’s a process. While recent major security breaches such as the Advance Auto Parts network break-in and the Hannaford credit card heist have nothing to do with Linux, it can be expected that companies will want more security training for their administrators.

The LPI-303 Security exam development has already begun. The focus will be on dealing with real-world security threats, according to LPI. After the exam has been developed to an alpha stage, LPI and its corporate partners will give it a “global Job Task Analysis survey” during the summer of 2008.

This will be followed by a series of beta exams from October to November 2008. If all goes well, the course will be published and made part of the LPIC-3 certification in February 2009.

April 1, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Q: Who Really Creates Linux? A: The Enterprise

Some people are still under the delusion that Linux is written by unwashed hackers living in their parents’ basements whose only social life is playing D&D and having flame wars over IRC (Internet Relay Chat) about whether vi or EMACS better and debating Picard versus Kirk. Nothing, nothing could be further from the truth.

The LF (Linux Foundation) has just released a new report, “Linux Kernel Development: How Fast It is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It.” This comprehensive study of the last three years of Linux kernel development, from version 2.6.11 to 2.6.24 releases, reveals that the average Linux developer is being paid by a major corporation to develop Linux.

To be exact, between 70 and 95 percent of Linux developers over the last three years have been paid to work on Linux. According to the report, “More than 70 percent of total contributions to the kernel come from developers working at [such companies as] IBM, Intel, The Linux Foundation, MIPS Technology, MontaVista, Movial, NetApp, Novell and Red Hat.”

Over the years, the number of Linux developers has been increasing. Version 2.6.11 had only 483 programmers whose code actually made it into the kernel. The latest kernel, 2.6.24, had 1,057 developers. Over the last three years, 3,678 programmers have had their work included in Linux’s core.

That said, the report also stated that “despite the large number of individual developers, there is still a relatively small number who are doing the majority of the work. Over the past three years, the top 10 individual developers have contributed almost 15 percent of the number of changes and the top 30 developers have contributed 30 percent.”

In fact, the top five developers, Al Viro (1.9 percent of the total percentage of changes to the kernel); David Miller (1.8 percent); Adrian Bunk (1.7 percent); Ralf Baechle (1.6 percent); and Andrew Morton (1.5 percent), alone accounted for 8.5 percent of Linux’s recent code changes.

Of all the developers, 74.1 percent work on Linux for their companies. Of the rest, many programmers?12.9 percent with unknown employers?made 10 changes or less to the kernel. Only 13.9 percent of developers were clearly working on Linux as a hobby.

So, while Linux does have a substantial contribution being made to it by amateurs, the vast bulk of it is being written by corporate programmers. The companies that are building Linux, in order of their contributions to the kernel, are:

1) Red Hat, 11.2 percent
2) Novell, 8.9 percent
3) IBM, 8.3 percent
4) Intel, 4.1 percent
5) LF, 3.5 percent
6) SGI, 2.0 percent
7) MIPS Technology, 1.6 percent
8) Oracle, 1.3 percent
9) MontaVista, 1.2 percent
10) Linutronix, 1.0 percent.

In addition, consultants’ efforts have counted for 2.5 percent of the total work on Linux.

The authors of the study, Linux kernel developers Jonathan Corbet and Greg Kroah-Hartman, and Linux Foundation Director of Marketing Amanda McPherson, also note that, “What we see here is that a small number of companies are responsible for a large portion of the total changes to the kernel. But there is a ‘long tail’ of companies which have made significant changes.”

They also point out in the study that “none of these companies are supporting Linux development as an act of charity; in each case, these companies find that improving the kernel helps them to be more competitive in their markets.”

Besides Linux distributors, like Red Hat, Novell and MontaVista, where the profit motive is clear, the study also finds that “companies like IBM, Intel, SGI, MIPS, Freescale, HP, etc. are all working to ensure that Linux runs well on their hardware. That, in turn, makes their offerings more attractive to Linux users, resulting in increased sales.”

Other businesses that work on developing Linux, “like Sony, Nokia, and Samsung ship Linux as a component of products like video cameras, television sets, and mobile telephones. Working with the development process helps these companies ensure that Linux will continue to be a solid base for their products in the future.”

It’s not just IT companies these days that are working on improving Linux. For example, the study’s writers state that “The 2.6.25 kernel will include an implementation of the PF_CAN [Controller Area Network] network protocol which was contributed by Volkswagen. PF_CAN allows for reliable communications between components in an interference-prone environment?such as that found in an automobile. Linux gave Volkswagen a platform upon which it could build its networking code; the company then found it worthwhile to contribute the code back so that it could be maintained with the rest of the kernel.”

So since your typical Linux developer is more likely to be a full-time, upper-middle class software engineer, why does the FUD about Linux developers still hang on? McPherson believes it’s because “it’s difficult for most people to get their minds around competitive mass collaboration. It’s obviously a huge shift from the command and control models of old. Most people seem to have a hard time understanding that companies will pay people to work on software that their competitors use and profit from.”

McPherson continued: “People are still stuck in the zero sum game of the past. But now, with papers like this, they can see that companies who support open source actually profit through a shared R&D cost. The myth persists but as open source is becoming more common than proprietary development; I think you’ll see a shift in understanding.”

A version of this story was first published in Linux-Watch.

March 31, 2008
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Is Microsoft really any more trustworthy?

Lately, Microsoft has been trying really, really hard to appear as open source’s best friend. All I can say is: “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”

Microsoft has been making all these wonderful promises of opening up APIs and protocols. The company just forgot to mention that it is only obeying the orders of the European Union court system.

If someone stole from you, and the courts ordered them to pay you back, how would you feel about them holding a self-serving press conference to tell you how generous they are? Or, as Michael Tiemann, head of the Open Source Initiative and a Red Hat executive, put it in an OSI blog posting on March 30th, Microsoft’s new weapon against open source: stupidity.

You see some people still believe that Microsoft offering patented protocols under “reasonable and non-discriminatory terms,” or “for free for noncommercial use without fear of lawsuits” is somehow some kind of olive branch to the open-source community.

As Tiemann put it: “A free-of-cost license that prohibits commercial use is useless to open-source developers. And therefore I cannot understand why anybody would think that Microsoft is doing the open-source community any favors.”

He’s got that right.

When Microsoft’s general counsel, Brad Smith, talked about a bridge between Microsoft and open source at the recent Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco, it sounded good. The line that engineers could more done with these issues than lawyers ever could was one calculated to warm the hearts of the open-source community.

There’s just one problem. Microsoft still holds the threat of patents over any commercial use of its intellectual property. Microsoft still won’t say what patents it claims are used in Linux. Microsoft still tries to fog up the fact that it’s been required to open up, for example, its network file protocols to Samba.

Microsoft seems to have pulled every dirty trick in its book to get Open XML turned into an OSI standard. To sum up, Microsoft is still not trustworthy.

I know some people, such as Jason Perlow at ZDNet, believe that you can trust Microsoft, at least as long as you keep a close eye on them, and that Microsoft is beginning to see the advantages of working with, rather than against, open source.

I don’t buy it. I’m certain there are some engineers at Microsoft who would have no problem working together with open-source developers. But I also believe that, so long as Steve Ballmer heads the company, Microsoft will never be a real partner for open source. Or, for that matter, that Microsoft would prove a trustworthy partner to any company not under its thumb.

Perlow compares Microsoft’s relationship to open source with the Soviet Union’s Glasnost period when it was opening up to the West for the first time. It’s a good analogy, but I don’t think it’s an accurate one. Come the day when, say, Mark Shuttleworth cribs from Reagan and demands, “Mr. Ballmer, tear down these patent walls” and Microsoft does so, then I’ll believe that the Evil Empire has changed its ways. Until then, I’m going to trust Microsoft about as far as I can throw Ballmer.

A version of this story was first published in Linux-Watch.

March 31, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

ISO Approves Open XML

Despite alleged voting irregularities, Microsoft’s OpenXML format for office documents seems on its way to standardization.

According to multiple observers, Microsoft’s OpenXML is on its way to becoming an ISO standard.

The three sites that have been following the International Organization for Standardization re-vote on the OpenXML standard—Command Line Warriors, Open Malaysia and ConsortiumInfo—are all reporting that, barring some unforeseen circumstances, OpenXML will become an ISO standard.

Since none of the authors at these sites is pro-OpenXML, it seems a foregone conclusion that Microsoft was successful in its OpenXML standardization efforts.

Voting on the standardization effort closed March 29. More than 80 national standards bodies had the opportunity to vote on the matter.

The ISO already had one vote on OpenXML standardization. In this vote, concluded on Sept. 4, 2007, Microsoft was defeated. However, ISO rules require that groups voting against the adoption of a draft standard also give technical reasons for disapproval. The ISO then edits the standard to reflect those concerns and holds another vote on the revised draft.

In the weeks before this second vote, the corporate fighting between Microsoft and supporters of the ODF (Open Document Format), including IBM and Sun, reached new highs. ODF is a rival document format that has already won ISO approval.

Rob Weir, an IBM performance architect, for example, pointed out that the OpenXML specification stood at 6,045 pages when first presented, which he said was simply too much for any kind of reasonable review. Weir wrote in his blog, “I don’t know anyone who really thinks the five-month review was sufficient for a technical review of 6,045 pages.”

Be that as it may, Andrew Updegrove, in his ConsortiumInfo Standards Blog, predicted on March 29, “Unless thus-far unannounced votes that were formerly ‘approve’ or ‘abstain’ switch to ‘disapprove,’ it appears that OOXML will be approved.”

There is bound to be continued controversy over the OpenXML standardization vote. Pamela Jones, editor of Groklaw, an IP (intellectual property) news site, has reported on numerous accounts of voting irregularities that favored Microsoft. So far, complaints have been raised about how the standardization vote was handled in Norway, Germany and Croatia.

As of the evening of March 30, neither the ISO nor Microsoft has issued a statement about the OpenXML vote.

A version of this story first appeared in eWEEK.