Blackmoor Vituperative

Red Hat’s JBoss division is planning to move in June to a model similar to that used by RHEL/Fedora model, said sources close to the company.

The move would mean that JBoss would deliver a Fedora-like community edition of its core software that only looks forward. As with the Fedora Linux project, no backward compatibility is guaranteed — Fedora is focused on the future and new features.

Typically, a Fedora release is targeted as the next Red Hat Enterprise Linux release. RHEL forks or branches a specific Fedora release. The RHEL team stabilizes the Fedora code tree it branches, productizes it and certifies it for a number of different platforms.

However, the difference with the JBoss Fedora-like offering will be that the JBoss source code control system will be public, sources said. RHEL’s source code control system is private and not available to the community, although the source code itself is published. And RHEL binaries are only distributed to subscription holders.

According to sources, JBoss will follow the same model except that the source control system will be public. And community releases — JBoss’ Fedora equivalent — will have binaries distributed.

(from eWeek, Red Hat’s JBoss to Adopt Fedora Model)

I’ve been working with Vista since its beta days, and I started using Linux in the mid-’90s. There may be other people who have worked with both more than I have, but there can’t be many of them. Along the way, I’ve formed a strong opinion: Linux is the better of the two.

(from eWeek, Leveling the Playing Field)

Interesting. Academic, since I have no intention of buying Vista at any price, but still, it’s interesting.

I have changed my mind on GPL v3. After doing more research and reading more about it at Opinions for the second discussion draft of GPLv3, I think the new terms are a good idea, and address real concerns.

Last week saw the end of most of The SCO Group’s claims that IBM contributed Unix code to Linux.

Now, Novell has filed a motion that undercuts all of SCO’s contract claims against IBM, based on a “silver bullet” clause in the original sale of Unix to SCO.

In its latest legal move against SCO, Novell on Dec. 1 filed for partial summary judgment against SCO in its own case. In this motion, Novell is asking the U.S. District Court to rule that the Unix APA (Asset Purchase Agreement), which sold Unix from Novell to SCO, gave Novell the right to waive SCO’s contract claims.

(from eWeek, Another Day, Another Knockout Punch Aimed at SCO)

Let’s hope this is the stake in the heart for SCO.

France’s gendarmes and Ministry of Culture and Communication have done it, and now members of the country’s parliarment are about to switch to open source.

Starting in June 2007, PCs in French deputes’ offices will be equipped with a Linux operating system and open-source productivity software.

The project, backed by parliament members Richard Cazenave and Bernard Carayon of the Union for a Popular Movement party, will see 1,154 French parliamentary workstations running on Linux, with OpenOffice.org productivity software, the Firefox Web browser and an open-source e-mail client.

(from ZDNet, French parliament dumping Windows for Linux)

The French have gotten a lot of bad press ever since they criticized the violent international misadventures of the USA. Maybe this will help remind people that France was the Western technological power for centuries. With any luck, it will remind the French, as well — they seem to have forgotten.

Vive la France!

I wonder why this anti-French sentiment is not publicly condemned. Other nationalities are also sometimes the butt of jokes, but not to the extent the French are. No one with any sense seriously thinks that the Irish are all wife-beating drunks, or suggests replacing “nachos” with “freedom Fritos”. Why is it that the mainstream culture accepts angry, even hateful comments about the French, where the same comments about Mexicans, the Irish, the Japanese, or — heaven forbid — Africans would elicit a stern and righteous response? Why are we willing to demonize France, and not (for example) China? Are we (Americans) really so insecure that we’ll attack anyone who disagrees with us, even when many of us know that we’re wrong?

I don’t get people, sometimes. Make that “most times”.

The Oracle move may give Linux a little more credibility in enterprise shops, but realistically its credibility is pretty high already. Expect Red Hat to feel some pressure to reduce prices, make more frequent releases, and try to out-innovate Oracle in ways that are not easily copied. Customers will benefit no matter who comes out on top.

(from ZDNet, Red Hat: Unfakeable Linux)

The Free Software Foundation has recently clarified “inaccurate” information about GPLv3. The clarification closely follows the release of a position paper signed by top Linux developers, in which they announce their objections to the proposed GPLv3. Linus Torvalds was a noteworthy exception. He recently explained why he didn’t sign the GPLv3 position statement, but why he still supports the GPLv2 open-source license.

As much as I despise the Digital Rights Mafia, I have to agree with two of the points made by the Linux kernel developers. First, adding anti-Digital Rights Mafia conditions to the GPL imposes something that GPL v2 is justly praised for lacking: end use restrictions. You do not have to agree with anyone’s politics or agenda to work with them on a GPL v2 project — all you have to do is agree to share your work. It’s politically and culturally neutral. I don’t think enough people appreciate how valuable that is. Second, the additional restrictions section is a huge problem. The Linux kernel developers declare that this section “makes GPLv3 a pick and choose soup of possible restrictions which is going to be a nightmare for our distributions to sort out legally and get right. Thus, it represents a significant and unacceptable retrograde step over GPLv2 and its no additional restrictions clause.” That’s about as clear as anyone can put it, I think.

So as much as I sympathize with the goals of the people working on GPL v3, I don’t think I’ll be using it, or working on any projects that do. (Not that I am doing much open source programming — or programming at all — now that I am at Circuit City, but I hope that this is a temporary situation.)

The local government in the German city has transferred 100 staff members in the Lord Mayor’s department to a Debian configuration, and it intends to migrate 80 percent of the city’s PCs by mid-2009.

It has not been an easy transition for the government, which first announced its intention to move to Linux in 2003 and which had scheduled the first launch to occur in 2005.

But the project, dubbed LiMux, hit numerous delays after a dispute over software patents, extended contractual negotiations and a 12-month extension to the project’s pilot phase.

“The tests are over. We have fixed the bugs and solved some of the problems,” Florian Schiessl, deputy chief of the city’s Linux project, told CNET News.com sister site ZDNet UK on Monday. “Everything we wanted done for the first release is working at the moment.”

Schiessl said it would be impossible to migrate all city workers to open source, but that 80 percent would move across by between late-2008 and mid-2009.

(from CNET News.com, Munich fires up Linux at last)

It sounds like Munich is taking a measured, common-sense approach to migrating away from expensive, proprietary software to open source and open standards. The up-front cost of migrating is significant, of course, as it would be for any large-scale migration. Migrating their entire infrastucture to XP or Vista would cost as much or more. In the short term, they will benefit from the additional security Linux offers over Windows, as well as being free from Windows’ onerous licensing restrictions, but the real savings from migrating to Linux and open source software is long-term, and I am glad that Munich’s administrators are farsighted enough to realize this.

There are all sorts of stories whirling around the Internet regarding the pros and cons of desktop Linux as well as its chances of adoption (or track record so far) that I thought I’d try to connect the dots to form a more coherent picture (well, perhaps a confusing picture).

(from ZDNet, The skinny on desktop Linux)

This is a really good article that touches on several issues (Linux, the next version of the GPL, DRM, the crashing of Apple laptops, the evil of iPods, and so forth), with lots of interesting links. You should read it.

Companies can, and do, fall from the top rung all the time.

Microsoft is no different.

Remember when everyone bought IBM PCs? IBM isn’t even selling ThinkPads anymore. Are you too old to recall when everyone bought American-made cars? Today, General Motors and Ford keep shrinking, while Toyota and Honda keep expanding. I can also recall when Pan-American Airways was the American airline for international travel. Pan Am closed up shop in 1991.

No, if Microsoft wants to stay on top, the Evil Empire could stand to take some lessons from its most dangerous competitor — and that’s Linux.

(from Linux-Watch, Top five things Microsoft can learn from Linux)