Category Archives: free software
Gits
How come I’ve not yet commented on the announcement that Microsoft is buying Github? OK, pure laziness. Same reason so much else slips by unblogged. You’ve got me bang to rights there.
Actually I have commented, albeit elsewhere and not in public. The question posed to us was whether we had any reaction to it, and the answer was No. Or at the very least, not yet. A change to the terms and conditions would call for a reaction. A change to the user interface and APIs likewise, especially if it involved loss of functionality such as, for example, any tie-in to the new proprietor’s choice of tools. But a change in ownership doesn’t in itself call for a reaction.
Of course, this is not no-change. It is a change to the risk profile of using github. In the past it was VC-backed, and their business was to build a business of real value in the market. To do that, they had to develop a service of real value to its users (i.e. us), which they did over the years. But an eventual buyout by some bigco was always on the cards, and in retrospect Microsoft was indeed a likely candidate. With Microsoft the risk is that it could fall victim to a hostile or misguided corporate agenda.
Microsoft itself has assured us of its good intentions. I believe those assurances are meant sincerely: the value of Github is its developer community, and they have nothing to gain by alienating us. They know that a proportion of the userbase will abandon them in a knee-jerk reaction: I guess they factor that into their plans. On the other hand, no matter how good their intentions, a company the size of Microsoft inevitably encompasses multiple views and Agendas, both good and bad, and internal politics. I can’t quite dismiss the conspiracy theory that the intention of setting back the github community and a lot of important projects exists somewhere within MS!
On techie discussion fora (e.g. at El Reg), a lot of folks are taking a different view: MS will destroy github as we know it. They cite MS acquisitions such as skype and linkedin, and others going further back. Skype is indeed a troubling example, as they have abandoned so many platforms and users: a course of action that would certainly sound the death-knell for github. But skype was always closed and proprietary, and it’s likely the whole thing was also thoroughly unmaintainable long before MS acquired it. MS may have been facing an unenviable choice with no satisfactory options (abandoning the whole thing would also create unhappy users, though it would shorten the pain all round).
Taking the longer history, back in the 1980s I was reasonably happy with MS stuff. Word seemed good at what it did. MSVC had the huge virtue of decent documentation, in a world where the existence of TFM was a rare thing! They first really p***ed me off around the turn of the decade, in part with Windows, but much more so when I found myself the victim of proprietary and closely-guarded software[1]. The zenith of their evilness came later in the ’90s with “Embrace and Extend”, the deliberate breaking of published standards, subversion of the ‘net, and unleashing the first great wave of malware on their own users. Around that time they were not merely a company without innovation (they acquired new things by buying companies from Autoroute to Hotmail after others had proved an idea), they were actively smothering it. Some think they were also behind the world’s most preposterous software company SCO’s attack on Linux, although they weren’t the only company linked to that by circumstantial evidence. A track record that left them very short of goodwill or trust among developers.
But that was then. Again from uncertain memory, the first indication I had of the winds of change was in 2006 when a senior MS man gave a presentation at ApacheCon in Dublin. This was someone seeking to build bridges and retrieve something from the ashes of its reputation. Open Source was now on the agenda, and MS – or at least some within it – genuinely wanted to be our friends. Signals since then have been somewhat mixed, but it seems clear at least that MS is no longer the deeply Evil Empire of twenty years ago. Indeed, I’m sure that if it had been, such great people as my Apache colleagues Gianugo and Ross would never have joined them.
From that seed (one hopes) was born the company that is now buying Github. This will be a real acid test for their relationship with open source. I don’t think they want to fail this one!
[1] As I recollect it, an upgrade left me with some important Word documents that simply couldn’t be loaded, and even transferring to another machine with the old version was no help. I couldn’t even do what I’d do today: google for any discussion of similar problems, or for relevant tools.
Open source, closed process
I just tried to report a bug to Ubuntu. Nothing major, just a missing package dependency: aptitude installed libnids-dev for me without installing libpcap-dev. My configure script then insists that nids.h was not found, whereas it is in fact clearly visible in /usr/include/nids.h. Turns out the test program fails because nids.h #includes pcap.h, which is not installed. Whoops!
OK, let’s do the Right Thing for a change: don’t just ignore it, report it. How do I report a Ubuntu bug? Aha, it’s at launchpad.net. Search for nids: nope, none of the 16 bugs listed is this one. OK, time to report a new bug.
This is where the problems go from straightforward to too difficult. To report a bug, I need to log in to launchpad. To log in, I need to create an account (it waffles on about OpenID, but it won’t accept my wordpress OpenID as a login). And to create an account, I need to solve a captcha. That is, one of those nasty eyesight tests.
I can’t do it. This one is nastier than ever.
Cycle the thing a few times, they’re all as bad. Try the audio version, but it’s silent (this is on a ubuntu machine). Looks like I can’t report a bug! 😮
I look on freenode, find #ubuntu-devel. Try asking there:
Just trying to report a bug (missing packaging dependency), but I can’t because I can’t even guess the launchpad captcha
any advice?
The bug is, libnids-dev requires pcap-dev as a dependency
After a few minutes silence, start to blog this. But a few minutes more and someone replies:
first, I think you meant “libpcap-dev” instead of “pcap-dev”;
second, both these packages come unchanged from Debian, so it’s better to report this bug to bugs.debian.org
Ok, that looks like someone who knows what he’s talking about. Try a bug report to Debian. This fortunately turns out to be a much simpler process: their bug reporting site mentions a “reportbug” tool I can install with apt, and which appears to work nicely.
Ubuntu must be effectively in a bubble isolated from the big bad world!
Modules move home
When I first released some Apache modules, I was not yet part of the core development team. I released modules based at my own site, for whomsoever was interested. More recently, most new modules I’ve developed have gone straight into the core distribution from apache.org. I’ve discussed the issue of in or out in this blog before, and this post could be considered a case in point.
One of those earlier modules, mod_proxy_html, turned out to be the solution to a big latent need, and rapidly became my most popular single module. Since first release in 2003 it’s seen a number of significant improvements, including one for which I had direct sponsorship. More recently, the advanced internationalisation support that had developed over the years was separated out into a new module mod_xml2enc, so that the same code could be shared with other markup-processing modules without having to duplicate it and maintain multiple copies.
These modules were released as open-source, but without the infrastructure for substantial collaborative development. At first there wasn’t even a change control repository, though that was introduced fairly early. There was no bugs database, no general developer forum. Anyone wanting to participate had the choice of mailing me (which various people have done – sometimes with valuable contributions) or ignoring me and forking their own project (as in mod_proxy_content).
That’s imperfect. In ideological terms it falls short of an open development model: someone wanting to make more than a minor contribution would have to work with me taking a lead role (hire me? dream on) or fork. A bug report or enhancement request would usually but not necessarily get my attention, and if it related to a scenario I couldn’t reproduce, that could present difficulties. Whoops! Bottom line: it’s a fine model for a one-man project and somewhat workable as it grows, but lacks infrastructure support for the community that drives major open projects like Apache’s successes.
Announcement
I can now announce that I’ve donated mod_xml2enc and mod_proxy_html to Apache. They will feature as standard in webserver releases from the forthcoming 2.4.0.
This gives them a platform to grow and flourish, even if I take a back seat – as inevitably happens from time to time when interest has passed a certain point. It also has some further implications for developers and users:
- Both modules are now relicensed under the Apache License. They continue to exist under the GPL (or, in the case of mod_xml2enc, dual-licensed) at webthing, so third-party developers and distributors have a choice.
- However, there is no guarantee, nor even expectation, that the two versions will remain in step. It is likely now that the version at apache will be the more up-to-date in future. That’s where it’ll get the tender loving care of a broad developer community. My own further work may happen in both places, but is more certain to happen at Apache than WebThing (unless in the unlikely event that a paying Client dictates otherwise).
Libxml2 Dependency
This may be of particular interest to packagers. Most obviously it relieves them of the need to distribute mod_proxy_html as a separate package, but with one proviso. If these modules are packaged in a standard Apache/HTTPD distribution then libxml2 becomes a dependency of that.
Not a big deal for anything-mainstream (though in the distant past it was considered a reason not to accept mod_proxy_html into the core product), but it invites another change. If you switch from expat to libxml2 for APR’s parser (as described here) you can eliminate expat, and standardise on libxml2 for all markup parsing needs. One might consider this a good move in any case, as libxml2 is not just more powerful, but also has the more active development community of the two. The downside then is that you’ve introduced a bigger dependency for any APR users who have no use for HTTPD or libxml2.
That leaves the expat-based module mod_xmlns somewhat orphaned. I’ll probably get around to switching that one to use libxml2: it’s pretty-much a drop-in replacement. Or maybe I’ll drop it altogether in favour of Joachim Zobel’s mod_xml2, which was (I understand) originally inspired by mod_xmlns but offers an alternative and probably superior platform for XML applications.
OpenOffice at Apache?
Today’s buzz: talk of OpenOffice being donated to the Apache Software Foundation.
Wow! That’s a Very Big Catch, isn’t it? Perhaps the biggest since Hadoop? Or???
Well, maybe. As of now it’s a long way from a done deal, and it’s by no means clear that it will happen. To become an Apache project, OpenOffice will have to be accepted into the incubator where it will have to demonstrate suitability before it can graduate to an Apache project. Apache media guru Sally Khudairi has written about the incubation process here in anticipation of a wave of interest.
The first question is whether OpenOffice will enter the incubator in the first place. Before the LibreOffice split there’s little doubt it would’ve been warmly welcomed, but now there’s a questionmark over why Oracle should prefer the ASF to TDF, and whether Apache folks want to make ourselves party to a legacy of that split. But if this reaction from the LibreOffice folks represents a consensus then I for one will be happy to accept OpenOffice.
Intellectual Property should be straightforward (because Oracle owns all the rights, inherited from Sun), so the question then becomes how the community will fare. How much room is there for both projects to thrive? Who will give their loyalty to ASF in preference to TDF, or equal loyalty to both? Could separate competing projects become a Good Thing and foster innovation, or will it just add duplication and confusion to no real purpose?
There is a likely driver for an Apache version: contributors who prefer the Apache License over the GPL. That could drive interest particularly from companies like IBM who maintain their own derivative products. Whether that will give rise to a thriving community, and perhaps a development focus distinct from that of LibreOffice, remains to be seen: that’s part of what incubation will tell us.
Anyway, if OpenOffices enters incubation at Apache, I’d expect that to be make or break for it. If it thrives then we could see “Apache OpenOffice” at some future date. If not, then it pretty clearly cedes the future to LibreOffice. If only they could find a better name …
Forking
An entertaining talk at FOSDEM was Michael Meeks, on the fork from OpenOffice to LibreOffice[1]. At the same time as delivering the now-popular message of community and open development, he was taking some quite partisan potshots at other FOSS models that unambiguously share those very values. Hmmm … good entertainment, but perhaps unduly provocative. Interestingly OpenOffice and LibreOffice both had stalls at FOSDEM, separated by only one independent exhibitor! 😮
From an outsider’s viewpoint[2], there was one thing I found reassuring. Namely, the tensions that led to the split had existed during Sun’s time, before the Oracle takeover. Thus whatever mistakes may have happened are not new. I like to think Oracle is building on what Sun did right and drawing a line under what was wrong. It would’ve been sad to hear that Oracle had damaged something Sun was doing right, and Meeks’s talk reassures me that hasn’t happened in this case.
The open-source-but-owned-and-controlled development model such as (most famously) that of MySQL can work, but seems to have fallen comprehensively out of favour with FOSS communities. It’s at its best where third-parties are minor contributors, but is likely to lead to a fork if outside developers are taking a major interest. And it’s never good to send mixed messages to the community: they’ll remember the big claims when you back-pedal.
[1] How is anyone supposed to promote a program the pronunciation of whose very name is a stumbling-block? Shot in the foot there, methinks. Is that the laughter of Redmond I hear?
[2] I’m a user of OpenOffice but have never contributed to its development, nor am I familiar with its community.
Furthering the interests of Free Software?
Or not.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has gone public with a statement on the Oracle vs Google litigation. The FSF is of course free to do so, and since it’s also a campaigning organisation we should not be surprised when they do. But does the statement itself stand up to scrutiny?
Before going any further, I should make it clear: this is a comment on the FSF’s position statement. No matter where this appears aggregated, I don’t represent anyone or anything other than myself. Any views I may have on the FSF itself, on Oracle or Google, on Java implementations, Android/Dalvik, on patents (software or otherwise) or on anyone/anything else, fall outside the scope of this posting. Nor should this be taken as comment on the FSF beyond this single document: as it happens, I am in general terms an admirer of the FSF.
The introduction is clear enough:
As you likely heard on any number of news sites, Oracle has filed suit against Google, claiming that Android infringes some of its Java-related copyrights and patents. Too little information is available about the copyright infringement claim to say much about it yet; we expect we’ll learn more as the case proceeds. But nobody deserves to be the victim of software patent aggression, and Oracle is wrong to use its patents to attack Android.
That’s fair: the FSF’s position against software patents is rational and consistent. Oracle vs Google is one of many patent cases currently in the courts throughout the rapidly-growing mobile devices space: some other household names that spring to mind include Apple, Nokia, HTC, and of course the victim of the biggest injustice, Blackberry-maker RIM. But it’s also fair to say Oracle vs Google may have more far-reaching repercussions than the others, insofar as it may affect Free Software in the Android ecosystem.
The second paragraph is more problematic:
Though it took longer than we would’ve liked, Sun Microsystems ultimately did the right thing by the free software community when it released Java under the GPL in 2006. […]
That’s fair as far as it goes, but it’s becoming a partisan statement within FOSS when you implicitly dismiss the ongoing controversy over licensing a TCK. The third paragraph goes on to say:
Now Oracle’s lawsuit threatens to undo all the good will that has been built up in the years since. Programmers will justifiably steer clear of Java when they stand to be sued if they use it in some way that Oracle doesn’t like. […]
Hang on! How is that new? The entire TCK issue is about field-of-use restrictions that are problematic for free software! At the same time, let’s not forget that Java was hugely popular among Free Software developers even before 2006: these controversies matter only to an activist minority.
If the above is nitpicking, paragraph 4 is altogether more suspect. Let’s quote it in full:
Unfortunately, Google didn’t seem particularly concerned about this problem until after the suit was filed. The company still has not taken any clear position or action against software patents. And they could have avoided all this by building Android on top of IcedTea, a GPL-covered Java implementation based on Sun’s original code, instead of an independent implementation under the Apache License. The GPL is designed to protect everyone’s freedom—from each individual user up to the largest corporations—and it could’ve provided a strong defense against Oracle’s attacks. It’s sad to see that Google apparently shunned those protections in order to make proprietary software development easier on Android.
Erm, this really is an attack on Apache! How would IcedTea have helped here? The only valid argument that it might have done is that rights were granted with Sun’s original code. I don’t think it’s clear to anyone outside the Oracle and Google legal teams whether and to what extent such ‘grandfather’ rights might affect the litigation. As far as licenses are concerned, the Apache License is a lot stronger on protection against patent litigation than the GPLv2 under which IcedTea is licensed. Indeed, in separate news, Mozilla (another major player in Free Software) is updating its MPL license, and says of its update:
The highlight of this release is new patent language, modeled on Apache’s. We believe that this language should give better protection to MPL-using communities, make it possible for MPL-licensed projects to use Apache code, and be simpler to understand.
Well, Mozilla is coming from a startingpoint closer to the GPL than Apache. It seems I’m not alone in supposing the Apache license offers the better patent protection, contrary to the FSF’s implication!
Finally the tone[1] of the FSF statement, as expressed for example in the final paragraph, makes me uneasy:
Oracle once claimed that it only sought software patents for defensive purposes. Now it is using them to proactively attack free software.
Hmmm, attacking Android/Dalvik is proactively attacking free software? While it’s a supportable position it’s also (to say the least) ambiguous, and you haven’t made a case to convince a sceptic. Or a judge.
[1] Not to mention the grammar, up on which some readers of this blog will undoubtedly pick.
Fear Novell. Or buy Novell.
Remember SCO? The world’s saddest, most ludicrous software company? Well, if not, Groklaw has a rich and colourful (not to mention opinionated) archive on the subject.
The ghost of SCO has long since joined that of Jarndyce & Jarndyce, the perpetual litigants. But this week, an actual decision by a Utah jury: Novell owns the Unix copyrights.
Some believe SCO’s litigation was inherently doomed: there’s nothing to be had from Unix IP. Yes, there’s value, but that’s long-since been opened to the world, and of course independently re-engineered elsewhere, most importantly in GNU/Linux.
Others take a different view: there’s gold beyond the dreams of avarice in that Unix IP. SCO had a great idea; they just made a hash of executing it. After all, in the real world, pirates have taken such major companies as Blackberry-maker RIM and even Microsoft to the cleaners over IP that is, by any standards, a drop in the ocean set against UNIX.
So when a hedge fund bids for Novell, I expect they’re in the latter camp. They’re not an Oracle, a huge and powerful software company getting Sun, a crown-jewel complementary company on the cheap. They’re a pure money-machine. They have no business to fit Novell’s. So it seems likely they want the crown jewels of Novell’s IP.
That was before the jury declared Novell owner of such an important part of the IP! It must be worth more now, to a cash-rich wannabe-pirate.
Novell under current management has shown itself benign, and hero of the SCO story. Under other management, all bets would be off. The fact that they rejected one bid (or did they?) doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll always be able to do so – that’s up to the shareholders.
How much is it worth to lay that spectre to rest? Are you a shareholder, and if not, why not?
FOSDEM
Yes, I’m planning to be at FOSDEM next month. Traveling by Eurostar Friday and Monday for a full weekend in Brussels.
I’ve booked the Renaissance Hotel, which is the same place I stayed last year. I can recommend it to anyone who isn’t afraid of a bit of a walk: it’s a nice place, and quite a bit closer to the FOSDEM venue than a city-centre hotel. And at winter weekend rates, the room price is vastly more reasonable than is usual in European conference cities! But I don’t know if there’s a bus/tram route for non-walkers.
Anyone keen to meet up, drop me a line (if we’re not already talking about it). Also, don’t forget to sign up for the PGP keysigning.
At FOSDEM
OK, I made it to FOSDEM 🙂
Friday morning at Plymouth station, they confirmed there was no disruption due to the weather. That proved to be half-true: the train was delayed at Exeter waiting for a driver who was stuck on the roads. But nothing too serious, and I was in London in good time to get on the Eurostar at 14:34, which is exactly what I’d planned. That too went smoothly subject to some niggles (my seat was double-booked, and more seriously there was some shit with a “personal” stereo audible throughout the carriage – why can’t Eurostar introduce quiet carriages)? The food was, alas, basically just an airline meal: I guess free booze makes it a supposedly-premium service, but it was too early in the day to enjoy it.
In Brussels, the weather was fine, and after orienting myself (easier said than done[1]) I was able to walk to the hotel. It turns out to be pretty decent: no complaints there, though alas the sport centre/swimming pool have limited opening hours at the weekend, so I may miss that.
The beer event was seriously overcrowded: little chance even to stand still in one place, let alone enjoy a beer and seek out familiar faces. I battled with it for a couple of hours, and when I left I’d lost my Brussels map. Aaargh! Eventually found my way back to the hotel, where I realised I stank of smoke from the beer event. Ugh.
FOSDEM itself is huge: much bigger than any other conference I’ve been to in recent years. There are a few familiar faces, and more half-known people who I’ve no-doubt encountered online. I’ve met a few new folks and had some useful chats, and seen some good talks. But that’ll have to keep for another blog entry, if I get around to it.
[1] I thought I was going to benefit from the GPS on my new phone. But turns out I need a ‘net connection to download the Brussels map data from Nokia, and I need to figure that out before that feature works for me.
Business never healthier?
A lot of mergers and acquisitions when the acquired companies aren’t in serious trouble is strongly correlated with a healthy market, right? I thought that was conventional wisdom amongst economists.
Even as the financial sector and the meeja are crying meltdown, the tech sector is forging ahead. A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the two big deals in a day: Sun/MySQL and Oracle/BEA. Since then we’ve had another two smaller but nevertheless substantial takeovers: Nokia’s of TrollTech, and SpringSource’s of Covalent. And today, the biggest potential deal of the season to date, with Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo. The evident health of the tech sector is a sharp contrast to gloom and doom elsewhere.
I don’t think I can bring any great new insights to the deals. They’re all important in their own ways. TrollTech because of Qt: possibly a little troubling, in that the commitment to the GPL doesn’t seem to preclude a fork and a two-track future. Covalent less so for two reasons: it seems most unlikely that SpringSource would reduce commitment to Apache, and even if they did, Apache is a much broader community. And MS/Yahoo … obviously an attempt to rival Google, but I’ll be somewhat surprised if they succeed, at least if they try to challenge them head-on.
niq's soapbox 