Practical Technology

for practical people.

November 17, 2006
by sjvn01
0 comments

Ubuntu to add proprietary drivers

Reluctantly, the Ubuntu developer community has decided that with the next version of Ubuntu, Feisty Fawn, it will be including some proprietary drivers. Feisty Fawn’s emphasis on “multimedia enablement” appears to be the culprit.
Feisty Fawn, aka Ubuntu 7.04, is scheduled for release on Apr. 19, 2007. According to Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu’s founder, “The main themes for feature development in this release will be improvements to hardware support in the laptop, desktop and high-end server market, and aggressive adoption of emerging desktop technologies. Ubuntu’s Feisty release will put the spotlight on multimedia enablement and desktop effects.”

To accomplish, the Ubuntu developer community has decided that it must use, for now at least, proprietary drivers.

It’s not that Ubuntu’s developers like proprietary drivers. The developers felt that given that, “A large proportion of people using Ubuntu — including 70%-80% of people with new computers — need a non-Free driver for reasonable performance from their graphics card, wireless card, or modem, because there is no Free driver available, they had little choice in the matter.

In particular, the Ubuntu developers are working on adding binary ATI and NVIDA graphic card drivers to the distribution. This is because, “Currently, Ubuntu does little to enable 3D acceleration on cards that support these features. Composite support is enabled by default on X.Org since Ubuntu Edgy, but various video boards need specific options to support either Composite or 3D acceleration correctly, or have them explicitly disabled, in case these technologies are not supported.”

So it is that Ubuntu has “chosen to install non-Free drivers by default.” Specifically, it has been decided that “Both NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers will be installed by default, on Ubuntu Feisty.” That does not mean, however, that they will be enabled for all video boards. For example, since ATI proprietary drivers do not support Composite graphics, this “driver will only be enabled by default for users whose video boards are not supported by the open source ‘ati’ video driver.”

In addition, work has started on bringing proprietary drivers into Ubuntu for the so-called Win-modems (fritz isdn/dsl modules, lt-modem) and the Atheros (ath_hal aka madwifi) and Intel 3945 Intel wireless chipsets.

The developers are well aware of the problems with using these drivers. For example, there are the simple technical problems that support for the drivers is completely dependent on the hardware vendor. And, then, when the vendor does make a bug fix, that “improvement” will require careful testing, since the developers won’t know what was changed in the update. Of course, on top of that, there are the philosophical objections to using binary drivers in Linux.

Many public comments about this decision object to Ubuntu’s decision. One writer said, “We should not give up our freedom for a short term advantage.”

A public poll, on the Ubuntu forums, however, reveals far less outrage and far more desktop pragmatism. As of the evening of Nov. 17, on the question, “Should binary NVidia/ATI drivers be automatically installed & activated in Ubuntu?,” the answers were:

  • 32.62 percent — “Yes, while informing the user of the relevant issues, etc.”
  • 54.63 percent — “Users should be given a choice about this during installation”
  • and only 12.75 percent voted for “No, such drivers can stay in a non-free repo, just like now”

In any case, Ubuntu is moving forward with incorporating proprietary drivers. At the same time, though, Ubuntu will be trying to educate users about the issues around non-free drivers. The plan, now, is for this to be done by “using a notification bubble on login, an extra section in the Device Manager, and a CGI script on Ubuntu.com for providing up-to-date information about alternative hardware.”

Thus the goal is that while Ubuntu will be shipping “proprietary drivers in the short term, we should take steps to improve the situation in the long term. We believe the best way to do this is to convey the problem to people using Ubuntu – explaining why we distribute non-Free drivers at all, what the risks are, and what people can do to avoid such hardware in future.”

A version of this story was first published in Desktop Linux.

November 17, 2006
by sjvn01
0 comments

Ballmer rattles intellectual property saber at Linux

What a surprise! What a shock! Ballmer thinks Linux rips off Microsoft intellectual property.

According to Eric Lai in Computerworld, Ballmer said Microsoft was motivated to sign a deal with SUSE Linux distributor Novell because Linux “uses our intellectual property” and Microsoft wanted to “get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation.”

Isn’t “Microsoft innovation” an oxymoron like “military intelligence?” But I digress. Basically, Microsoft is SCOing us again.

SCOing? Mark Webbink, Red Hat’s deputy general counsel, tells me that it’s a verb from the Middle English, which in turn is from the Old English “screw,” that is, to stick it to some one, and in the modern vernacular it means to threaten your customers with IP (intellectual property) infringement.

You would have thought that by now Ballmer would have learned his lesson. After all, it was Microsoft that fueled up the SCO IP rocket, aimed it at Linux, and then watched as SCO’s anti-Linux lawsuits have blown up.

SCO’s IP claims against Linux have been proven time and again to be nothing more than bad jokes. Is there any reason to think that Microsoft’s IP claims wouldn’t be more of the same?

Yes, there is one key difference. Microsoft, if it actually had anything to show, would likely be relying on patents rather than copyrights, against Linux. However, there’s just couple of wee little problems with that approach.

First, let’s assume that Microsoft isn’t filled with morons. So, instead of threatening to sue customers — and we all know how well that worked out for SCO, don’t we? — they’ll have to sue a big Linux vendor. Let’s say, they decide to pick on Red Hat.

Now, as it just so happens, Red Hat isn’t the only company that distributed RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). There’s this other company named Oracle, which recently got into the RHEL business. Larry Ellison may call his version “Unbreakable Linux,” but Oracle makes no bones about it: Unbreakable Linux is RHEL.

Microsoft might think it could break Red Hat down with a long enough lawsuit, but Oracle? Do the boys in Redmond really want to spend the rest of the next decade locked in battle with Larry Ellison? I don’t think so.

Besides, does Microsoft think IBM will stay on the litigation sidelines, if it decides to play the patent card? IBM makes a lot of its billions from Linux, and I can’t see Big Blue paying Microsoft off to continue using its favorite operating system.

Now, I have no doubt that some way or another, Microsoft can find some kind of way to attack Linux with patents. After all, OSRM (Open Source Risk Management) back in 2004 found in a study that 283 issued, but not yet court-validated, software patents could conceivably be used in patent claims against Linux.

The patent law in this country is completely and totally broken. Earlier this year, a patent troll company named NTP squeezed $612.5 million out of Blackberry maker RIM using patents that had been rejected!

NTP, like the other patent trolls, however, doesn’t produce anything. Its only purpose is to leech onto successful businesses and drain them of cash. NTP, in short, could care less about what people think about them, they just want the money. Microsoft, on the other hand, does have to care that if it attacks Linux, it will also be attacking a lot of its own customers and partners.

Finally, leaving aside all of this, open-source software like Linux has one trump card against patent violations. If Linux violates a patent, Microsoft, unlike SCO, will have to spell out exactly what it is that Linux has violated. That being done, the Linux developers can simply rewrite around the patent problem.

So, from where I sit, if Microsoft really wants to try to slug it out with Linux in the courts, it will first have to deal with other industry heavyweights. It will also have to deal with all the negative PR that will result from taking on a much smaller company. And, after all that, Microsoft will still have the problem that trying to hit Linux on patents will be like trying to give the north wind a good punch in the jaw — it simply can’t be done.


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

November 13, 2006
by sjvn01
0 comments

D-Bus 1.0 offers desktop Linux app interoperability

D-Bus 1.0 seems at the same time to be both such a simple and such an esoteric thing. On the one hand, it’s simply another IPC (interprocess communication) system. On the other, it may prove as important for Linux desktop developers as ActiveX has been for Windows programmers.

The importance of this first release of D-Bus from the FreeDesktop.org project is that D-Bus will go a long way toward improving interoperability between Linux desktop applications. D-Bus has already been adopted by the Portland Project for its forthcoming DAPI (Desktop Application Programming Interface).

In practice, besides providing an easy way for programs to talk to each other while running, D-Bus helps coordinate the process lifecycle. For example, it makes it simple to code a “single instance” of an application or daemon, or to launch multiple instances of them when they’re needed.

Underneath the hood, D-Bus supplies both a system daemon and a per-user-login-session daemon. So, for example, a D-Bus system daemon can provide a single common way for any Linux desktop to check for when a new USB device is attached. A user session daemon, on the other hand, could help automatically transfer data from a spreadsheet to a report.

The D-Bus message bus is built on top of a general one-to-one message passing framework to speed IPC interactions. So, for example, the data can run from the spreadsheet to the report without needing to go through the message bus daemon. In this first version, this one-to-one application passing can only work on applications that are either on a single computer, or, for the security unconscious, over unencrypted TCP/IP. Programmers are already working on adding other, more secure, network protocols, so D-Bus can also become a safe network IPC.

Many Linux desktop projects are already using D-Bus. These include the Beagle search tool, the GNOME power manager, and CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System).

KDE core developer Daniel Molkentin writes that “D-Bus has completely replaced DCOP (Desktop Communications Protocol) as the IPC System of choice for KDE.”

With programs already in place using earlier versions of D-Bus, plus strong support from Portland, GNOME, and KDE, D-Bus seems to be well along the path of becoming one of the foundations of tomorrow’s Linux desktop.

D-Bus 1.0 source code and documentation are available from the FreeDesktop D-Bus Wiki.

November 13, 2006
by sjvn01
0 comments

Sun GPLs Java

First, Sun Microsystems Inc. wouldn’t do it. Then Sun teased us with it. Now, on Nov. 13, Sun will finally open-source its implementations of Java under the GNU GPLv2 (General Public License version 2).

On Monday, Sun will release the first pieces of source code for Sun’s implementation of JSE (Java Platform Standard Edition) and a buildable implementation of JME (Java Platform Micro Edition). Sun will also be making JEE (Java Platform Enterprise Edition) available under the GPLv2 license. JEE had already been available under Sun’s CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License), through Project GlassFish.

Sun states that this announcement represents one of the largest source code contributions under the GPL license, and also that it is the open-sourcing of one of the industry’s most significant and pervasive software platforms.

It wasn’t so long ago that former Sun CEO Scott McNealy said that Sun didn’t see the point in providing an open-source implementation. “We’re trying to understand what problem does it solve that is not already solved,” McNealy said.

Sun is singing a very different tune, not three years later. “By open sourcing Sun’s implementation of Java technology, we will inspire a new phase of developer collaboration and innovation using the NetBeans IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and expect the Java platform to be the foundation infrastructure for next generation Internet, desktop, mobile and enterprise applications,” said Rich Green, Sun’s executive VP of Software in a statement.

“With the JDK (Java Development Kit) released as free software under the GPL, Sun will be working closely with distributors of the GNU/Linux operating system, who will soon be able to include the JDK as part of the open source repositories that are commonly included with GNU/Linux distributions,” he added.

Industry figures, who had been asking Sun to open-source Java since 2004, were pleased with the move, and, in particular, Sun’s choice in licenses. “Everyone has been expecting that one day Sun would open source Java technology, but no one expected just how far they’d go — GPL. A bold move, and a great opportunity both for Sun and for free and open source software,” said Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media.

Specifically, Sun is releasing an implementation of JSE in the Java.net community, consisting of Java HotSpot technology, the Java programming language compiler, and JavaHelp software. The company also expects to release a buildable JDK in the first quarter of 2007, following established free software community practices for licensing virtual machines and their associated libraries.

Java HotSpot technology and Javac are two of the most important elements of Java SE. Java HotSpot technology is the Sun implementation of the JVM (Java virtual machine), and is the core component of the JRE (Java Runtime Environment), which translates Java code to the specific operating system and chip architecture, allowing Java software to run everywhere. Javac is the core of the Java complier.

These first components of the OpenJDK project will allow developers to experiment with the compiler, try out new language features, port the JVM to new hardware architectures and operating systems, fix bugs and contribute new features. Through the OpenJDK project, developers will be able to directly influence the future of the JDK implementation, participate with their peers in an open community, and help take Java technology where it hasn’t been before.

Sun is also freeing the source code for Sun’s feature phone JME implementation. Additionally, the company is making its source code for the Java ME testing and compatibility kit framework available. Later in 2006, Sun will release additional device-oriented source code, including its advanced operating system phone implementation and the framework for the Java Device Test Suite.

Sun is releasing these technologies as open source in order to accelerate Java’s development and evolution. In addition, Sun hopes that it will reduce fragmentation and drive down development costs throughout the Java ME ecosystem. In addition, this move will provide easy access to the latest versions of Java ME platform technologies and, for the first time, enable the whole Java ME community to follow the activities of and participate in the development of these technologies.

As for JEE, Sun is releasing the source code for Project GlassFish (part of the GlassFish Community) under a dual open source license. In addition to CDDL, Project GlassFish will also be available under GPLv2 in the first quarter of 2007. By adding a second license, Sun hopes to make it easier to combine and distribute GlassFish code with other GPL licensed communities.

Also, by offering all the Java platforms under a common license, Sun will make it easier for developers to distribute updated versions of Java SE, Java EE, and Java ME together.

The Java toolkits aren’t being neglected either. The recently announced NetBeans 5.5 contains a variety of new features, including Java Persistence API and JAX WS 2.0 productivity tools, Subversion support, and enhancements to the NetBeans GUI Builder (formerly known as Project Matisse).

Sun states that the NetBeans IDE will make getting started with JDK easier for open-source developers because the open-source components have already been configured as NetBeans projects. Developers can download the source code, open it in the NetBeans IDE, and use the Build Project command to build it. Further information and a step-by-step tutorial are available here.

Sun is also trying to bring new open-source developers into the Java fold, by encouraging them to use Sun’s Developer Services programs and join join the Sun Developer Network Program at no cost.

November 11, 2006
by sjvn01
0 comments

Sun to Open-Source Java Under GPL

First, Sun Microsystems wouldn’t do it. Then Sun teased us with it. Now, on Nov. 13, I’ve learned that Sun will finally open-source its implementations of Java under the GNU GPL v2.

Sun will release the first pieces of source code for Sun’s implementation of JSE (Java Platform Standard Edition) and a buildable implementation of JME (Java Platform Micro Edition).

Sun will also be making JEE (Java Platform Enterprise Edition) available under the GNU GPL v2 (General Public License version two).

JEE had already been available under Sun’s CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License) through Project GlassFish.

Sun states that this announcement represents one of the largest source code contributions under the GPL license and the open-sourcing of one of the industry’s most significant and pervasive software platforms.

It wasn’t so long ago that former Sun CEO Scott McNealy said that Sun didn’t see the point in providing an open-source implementation.
“We’re trying to understand what problem does it solve that is not already solved,” McNealy said.

Sun is singing a different story not three years later.

“By open-sourcing Sun’s implementation of Java technology, we will inspire a new phase of developer collaboration and innovation using the NetBeans IDE [Integrated Development Environment] and expect the Java platform to be the foundation infrastructure for next generation Internet, desktop, mobile and enterprise applications,” said Rich Green, Sun’s executive VP of Software, in a statement.

“With the JDK [Java Development Kit] released as free software under the GPL, Sun will be working closely with distributors of the GNU/Linux operating system, who will soon be able to include the JDK as part of the open-source repositories that are commonly included with GNU/Linux distributions.”

Industry figures, who had been asking Sun to open-source Java since 2004, were pleased with the move, and, in particular, Sun’s choice in licenses.

“Everyone has been expecting that one day Sun would open-source Java technology, but no one expected just how far they’d go—GPL. A bold move, and a great opportunity both for Sun and for free and open-source software, ” said Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media.

Specifically, Sun is releasing an implementation of Java SE in the Java.net community: Java HotSpot technology, the Java programming language compiler and JavaHelp software.

The company also expects to release a buildable JDK in the first quarter of 2007, following established free software community practices for licensing virtual machines and their associated libraries.

Java HotSpot technology and javac are two of the most important elements of Java SE.

Java HotSpot technology is the Sun implementation of the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and the core component of the JRE (Java Runtime Environment), which translates Java code to the specific operating system and chip architecture, allowing Java software to run everywhere. Javac is the core of the Java complier.

These first components of the OpenJDK project will allow developers to experiment with the compiler, try out new language features, port the JVM to new hardware architectures and operating systems, fix bugs and contribute new features.

Through the OpenJDK project, developers will be able to directly influence the future of the JDK implementation, participate with their peers in an open community and help take Java technology where it hasn’t been before.

Sun is also freeing the source code for Sun’s feature phone Java ME implementation. The company is also making its source code for the Java ME testing and compatibility kit framework available.

Later in 2006, Sun will release additional source code including its advanced operating system phone implementation and the framework for the Java Device Test Suite.

Sun is releasing these technologies as open source in order to accelerate Java’s development and evolution. In addition, Sun said it hopes that it will reduce fragmentation and drive down development costs throughout the Java ME ecosystem. This move is meant to provide easy access to the latest versions of Java ME platform technologies and, for the first time, enable the whole Java ME community to follow the activities of and participate in the development of these technologies.

As for JEE, Sun is releasing the source code for Project GlassFish (part of the GlassFish Community) under a dual open-source license. In addition to CDDL, Project GlassFish will also be available under GPLv2 in the first quarter of 2007.

By adding a second license, Sun hopes to make it easier to combine and distribute GlassFish code with other GPL-licensed communities. Also, by offering all the Java platforms under a common license, Sun will make it easier for developers to distribute updated versions of Java SE, Java EE and Java ME together.

The Java toolkits aren’t being neglected either. The recently announced NetBeans 5.5 contains a variety of new features, including: Java Persistence API and JAX WS 2.0 productivity tools, Subversion support and enhancements to the NetBeans GUI Builder (formerly known as Project Matisse).

Sun states that the NetBeans IDE will make getting started with JDK easier for open-source developers because the open-source components have already been configured as NetBeans projects.

Developers can download the source code, open it in the NetBeans IDE, and use the Build Project command to build it.

Sun is also trying to bring new open-source developers by encouraging them to join use Sun’s Developer Services programs and join the Sun Developer Network Program, at no cost.

A version of this article was originally published on eWEEK.com.

November 8, 2006
by sjvn01
0 comments

I’m dreaming of an HDTV Christmas

Some people are already saying it’s going to be a lousy holiday season for gadget lovers. Only the terminally brave–or is that stupid?–will be buying Intel Duo Core PCs knowing that installing Vista on them will be a horror show. You’ll also have a heck of a time finding a Sony PlayStation III. But, if you want to find an affordable HDTV, this may be a great holiday season.

Wal-Mart, which usually sets the low price boundary, is striking early this year. The company has said that it will be setting its best television prices to new lows. This includes a Panasonic 42″ HD plasma TV (was $1,794/now $1,294) a Polaroid 37″ LCD HDTV (now $1,297/will be $997) and the RCA 32″ LCD HDTV (was $997/now $847).

Continue Reading →