LWCE Bits and Pieces

Well, we've gotten a massive number of submissions with the haps at LWCE. I've distilled some of the good ones below: Chanc_Grokon wrote to us with the press release from Ximian about the monthly charges for Red Carpet, their installer. He also raises the "Why not just use apt-get?" point. A number of people wrote pointing out LinuxLookup.com's Day 1 coverage and Day 2 coverage. Of particular interest to Daeslin was Larry Lessig's attack on overly strong intellectual property laws. A number of people, Krismon included, have voiced some disappointment at the excitement of the show - not being there, I make no judgments. Sun has unveiled more details about StarOffice 6. Compaq's CTO also made comments about Linux improving in the enterprise. jrbw sent in Linus' thoughts (dismissive) of .Net/Hailstorm. And KDE has won the "Best Open Source Project" award. Newsforge has also got a round-up and coverage piece. More news as it happens.

I supppose

Kongratulations are in order...

Clarify the charges

"Chanc_Grokon wrote to us with the press release from Ximian about the monthly charges for Red Carpet, their installer. He also raises the "Why not just use apt-get?" point."

Ximian's charges for Red Carpet aren't mandatory. They give users who are willing to pay for it much better bandwidth. Don't want to pay? That's cool. You don't need to. Just use the free service, and you'll be fine!

RedCarpet Partner Program

> For software vendors, Ximian introduced the Red
> Carpet Partner Program, which allows software
> vendors to create and manage channels to
> distribute their Linux or UNIX software.

This program is on their site for a while.
I was interested in distributing my application
via it and filled the the application form few months ago and nobody ever responded to me. Nowbody even confirmed submission.

Who again?

Linux creator Linux Torvalds told ....

Boy. All those other news outlets have egg on their face now. All this time they have been saying that some guy named Linus created Linux. I guess we could just him how he pronounces his name to get the one true pronouncation.

Lessig on Copyright & Ximian's announcement

First, Ximian: The announcement says tose who subscribe will have "5-% faster downloads durring peak hours". This suggests that they will still ovver the service for free, with some diminished capacity, but the announcement doesn't really say.Can anyone confirm or clarify this?

Regarding Lessig's comments oc Copyright: I'd like to point out that James Madison was on Lessig's side [msnbc.com] regarding Copyright.

--CTH

StarOffice for Mac OS X?

Any chance of Sun porting Star Office to Mac OS X? The platform is fairly receptive to ditching MS Office for another solution (i.e. AppleWorks). Many people on OS X are using AW because MS Office hasn't been ported yet.

Why call it a "tax"?

"Let's assume Microsoft could tax everything on the Internet," Torvalds said "You think the U.S. government would give up monopoly status as taxation man? The government would step in and say, 'No, no, that's what we do.'"

a) Why would Microsoft call it a tax? Just because it's called a tax doesn't mean that what MS is doing is the same as what the government does. What happens if microsoft calls it a "Transaction Fee"? Will the banks step in?

b) If you don't want to use .NET then don't use it. It's not as if it's mandatory or a necessity?

Now I wait for the hordes of /. MS bashers to attack.

(Score:-1, Linus Questioner)

MS File Formats

One of the comments on the StarOffice article mentions that it doesn't import correctly all MS Office files.

The problem actually is that MS Office doesn't export its files correctly.

(Note to corporate document archivers: History suggests that your desktop MS machines won't be able to read your corporate MS Word documents within a few years. "Steve, can you retype these articles of incorporation?")

this is just the attitude I expected

>Chanc_Grokon wrote to us with the press release >from Ximian about the monthly charges for Red >Carpet, their installer. He also raises the "Why >not just use apt-get?" point.

bunch of fucken leeches, completely ignore the benefits of subscribing to a software package and company and describe how you can get it for _FREE_.. as always this kind of attitude will destroy Linux because there is no viable or feasible way to make money from a bunch of leeches, err, i mean Linux users.

I for one will be subscribing to ximian gnome to support their efforts and all the great software they write. I wont be locked in to some sort of twisted masochistic licencing agreement like I might be with Microsoft. Why ? Because even after the subscription runs out, if it does, I still have my software, that software still functions, I have the source for that software and most importantly it wont stop working after 30 days of "Trial use."

So all you Linux users out there taking a free ride: Its free today, it will be free tomorrow, but dont expect great software like ximian has produced if your not willing put up the bucks.

For christs sake, its only two packs of cigarettes a month, or two fucken happy meals at mcdonalds, or 5 quarts of oil.. Get a grip and stop complaining.

Recognition

The article says that people get involved in open source with recognition as one of the primary motives. It even has a quote from a panelist: Who knows who wrote the paper clip in [Microsoft] Word? But everyone knows Linus,this is part of why you do open source.

This is a terrible analogy, and IMHO it is even worse for the point of open source. First off, comparing the creator of linux to the creator of the Word paper clip is a bit off. The significance of the development of a free OS and an animated piece of metal are totally different. Besides Linus, there are 1000s of people who do open source that don't get nor seek any recognition. For example, who is the guy who wrote the Gnome Calculator? Can you name the members of the Mozilla team?

More importantly though, this panelist (Dirk Hohndel, former CTO of SuSE) makes a very disconcerting assertion that if you get into open source, you are going to get tons of recognition from the endeavor. This is certainly not that case. I think that most of the benefits of open source come from collaboration between diverse groups, and the vast amounts of knowledge that can be gained just by *looking* at someone elses code. The idea that open source will get you a lot of recognition is ludicrous. True, people may say "X application is great!", but they will probably not know the person behind it or ever send a thank-you note. A lot of people say the same about commercial software.

Just a rant, but open source should never be about recognition--if it becomes about that, the movement will fade rather fast.

Gates' wife wrote the paper clip

Who knows who wrote the paper clip in [Microsoft] Word?.

Bill Gates' wife was responsible for the paper clip. Really, it's true. Melinda French Gates was a project lead on MS Bob [post-gazette.com] (you have to remember MicroSoft Bob [strategymag.com] -- it was that cartoony software that slowed your machine to a crawl and insulted you while balancing your checkbook or reading email). When Bob was revealed to be the complete and utter turkey that it was always destined to be, guess what got some of the "usability and human interface" stuff? Office. Guess who happened to also be, ah, "seeing" The Boss? Melinda. Why wasn't Bob just canned, like any other project that wastes millions and failed completely? You have to wonder if Bill G wasn't getting pillow-talked into something. In fact, MS Bob was the first consumer product Bill Gates released personally. People do the strangest things for love.

Anyway, a lot of what Bob had to offer didn't get canned (as it should have). It got repuposed and wound up in other MS products. Take a look at the screenshot on this page [gratefuldad.com]. See that dog in the lower corner? That was Bob's dog Rex. (I wish they had a picture of the dragon named "Java"; I wonder if McNealy every knew about that?) Looks like that paper clip, eh? Bob's ghost is in other stuff, too. MS Agent had a re-incarnation [wired.com].

Well this is all way OT. But I think the Bob fiasco sheds some light on what goes on at MS. There's really no reason to wonder about the pape clip. I'm sure Melinda will insist on touchy-feely stuff being included in every MS product. I love it when someone thinks for me...

-B

Precedent

From the CNN article:

"Let's assume Microsoft could tax everything on the Internet," Torvalds said "You think the U.S. government would give up monopoly status as taxation man? The government would step in and say, 'No, no, that's what we do.'"

I hate to have to disagree with Linus, but I'm not so sure the government would step in. There is already an oligopoly that essentially taxes all transactions on the internet - the credit card companies. Practically all online transactions are made with credit cards and for each transaction made the credit card company collects a small percentage of the sale from the merchant. Why would the government treat Microsoft any differently? Well ok, they might if Microsoft uses its desktop monopoly to gain a network information clearinghouse monopoly (I say if because although Microsoft is certain to try this, it is not certain to succeed). My point is, I don't think the government would have a problem with a single company taxing all internet transactions at the information clearinghouse level as there already companies doing it at lower levels, with the caveat that this only applies to the point that the company seeking to do this works within the law (including anti-trust laws).

Red Carpet vs. apt-get

I think it's easy for us geeks to forget why such things as Red Carpet are needed.

I will always argue that apt-get has to be one of the best linux app installers, but a huge part of apt-get is command-line oriented. Red Carpet, although using rpm's, is graphical and is much easier for a gui-oriented linux user to handle. I've used Red Carpet and I like what I see so far, it goes a long way of making linux newbie-friendly. (...and all you CLI die-hards, please just hush. ;)

As long as they price it right, I think a service like Red Carpet would be worth the money, just for ease of use, point-n-click, user-friendliness of installing new software and updates -- something that will bring *nix further along, because right now, I see two things holding us back: a really kick-ass office suite (coming along nicely, really) and ease-of-use software installation.

I, for one, am willing to pay money for *good* software and services...

"Why not just use apt-get?"

Hard as this may be to believe, not everyone uses Debian. If Linux is ever going to make inroads against MS, it's got to have pretty graphical frontends. Sure, apt-get is nice for the hardcore Linux fans, but Joe Average experimenting with Linux doesn't want to fool with the command line; he wants his point and click.

AJS

...why not?

"why not just use apt-get?" seems to be one of the reasons that Linux companies are doomed to failure. Not that there's anything wrong with it, or that I'm suggesting it be changed, but there is always going to be (either before or after) some free alternative to what a commercial company can produce.

With this I suppose you have to look at the other benefits... most importantly, I guess, is someone to blame if things go wrong. Then again, services like 'support' with companies that deal with Free/open-source software never seem worth the money to Linux users.

-vl

KDE lessons

Congrats to KDE on the award.

I think its time to analyze why KDE manages to sustain such a high quality open source product. I dont have much knowledge of the modus-operandi of KDE developers, so I am not sure what contributing factors lead to such success.

Is it:
- A commitment to a good core design, and core API's. ie, solid foundation.
- A willingness to throw away a component that doesnt work to expectations (not matter how big or ingrained the components\ is). eg CORBA for inter process communication.- Perform more testing than other projects ?
- Some unique development process/philosophy ?
- Better desingers?
- Better coders ?

What makes KDE as good as it is ? Perhaps a KDE'r can shed some light that other projects would find helpful.

MS @ LWCE

I submitted this a story but apparently it's not interesing enough--MS's director of competitive strategy for Windows at LWCE, talking about lessons they've learned from Linux. Read it here at CNET [cnet.com].

Microsoft and South Park?

Is it just me or does Microsoft's recent about face on OS ("linux is a cancer/virus" Oh you don't like that.. "we've learned a lot from OS") remind you of that "I can change" song in the South Park movie.

I CAN CHANGE
Bill Gates singing to ESR

Some people say that I'm a bad guy
That can't be right
That can't be right
But it's not as if I don't try
They just don't see
Try as I might

But I can change, I can change
I can learn to share my source code
I swear it.
I'll open up my code
And I will share it
Any minute now
It will be born again

Yes, I can change, I can change
I know I've been a dirty little bastard
I like to borrow, I like to steal
Yes, it's lame, but it's OK
Cause I can change

It's not my fault that I'm so selfish
It's the money, the money
You see IBM was sometimes selfish
And it made a prick of me

But I can change, I can change
I can learn to share my source code
I know it.
I'll open up my source
And I will show it
Any minute now
It will be born again

Eric Raymond:
But what if you never change?
What if you remain a code hording little butt-hole?

Saddam Hussein:
Hey Raymond
Don't be such a twit
Linus Torvalds won't have shit on me.
Just watch
Just watch me change
Here I go I'm changing
Hey Raymond Look! SHARED SOURCE!

RE: Linus's thoughts on .NET and Hailstorm

Ok, this is a pet peeve of mine so I'm just going to get it off my chest. .NET isn't Hailstorm. Everytime I see some Open Source person talk about .NET or Hailstorm all I see is a case of Not Invented Here Syndrome.

.NET
.NET the technology (versus .NET, the brand name) is a fairly decent idea. From what I've seen it borrows a lot from the Java platform but improves on it by adding a lot of features that Java should have that Sun has been slow to add plus having better cross language support than Java ever could. After being a Java programmer for about 2 years I think that both platforms are roughly equal in the functionality they bring with them since .NET has some features I think suck and Java has a few I think suck as well. (I'm probably going to write about this and submit to slashdot). Where the .NET platform outshines Java is how XML support is a lot more built into the platform and the tools than anything Java has to offer for now but I'm sure the Java folk will wake up once .NET actually ships.

The way I see it competition is always good. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.

The main issues with the .NET platform are probably the fact that it'll only run on MSFT OSes while Java is a multi-OS development platform. But if you are doing development on MSFT OSes, I think the .NET platform would be a better in a bunch of places than Java although there are a few places I'd probably still stick with Java. If you don't believe this, download .NET [microsoft.com] and give it a shot.

Hailstorm
The main idea behind Hailstorm is a good one and the devil is in the details. I actually would pay money if I could be guaranteed a safe, central repository of all my user information currently floating around on the web especially for two reasons.

1. A while ago CD Now [cdnow.com] announced that they may be going out of business. This filled me with dread because they had my credit card info which would probably have been sold along with my CD listening preferences to the highest bidder as part of the liquidation process. At that time I would have loved it if there was some central place where CD Now got my credit card info from that I could just tell, "Hey, no longer share my credit card info with CD Now."
   
   
2. Also after the above incident I stopped shopping at CD Now and started shopping at Amazon. This meant that all the music preferences I had built up from rating over a hundred CDs at CDNow were lost and the only way to rebuild that relationship with Amazon would be to rate X amount of music or hope Amazon could do similar things with less info (which they have surprisingly enough). Again, some central repository which I could tell,"Stop sharing my music preferences with CD Now and share them with Amazon" would have been ideal.

The way I see it, the Hailstorm idea has merit. The problems I see are

• Guaranteeing security and reliability will be a bitch and a half.
• Websites may resist adopting it since customer info is the one valuable thing they have.
• Without motivation (i.e. marketing blitz) and an easy way to sign up, consumers won't flock to it.
• Entrusting all that information to a single entity would make some peole nervous.

All of the above problems can be tackled one way or the other either socially or technologically. Secondly, I think the time foir this kind of technology has come, whether it will be Microsoft's Hailstorm, the product of some competitor or an Open Source alternative is all that remains to be seen.

DISCLAIMER: I'm an ex-Microsoft emploee (former intern).

why pay for red carpet?

Why would you pay for red carpet when for example, mandrake update (though only for linux mandrake I know) is free?

If I'm going to pay for Red Carpet...

...I'd be more interested in them keeping their packages current than giving me a fatter download pipe. Mozilla is still at 0.9.1 in Red Carpet; I chatted with some team members and they advised against maually installing 0.9.3 over the Red Carpet install because it would break things, and 0.9.3 isn't on the current radar for packaging according to the folks I taked to..

For minor updates, that's not such a big deal, but Moz users know that 0.9.3 is a quantum leap ahead of anything before it in terms of usability and stability, and it's a pretty huge piece of software in the desktop Linux world. I'm stuck at 0.9.1 until they put a package together. I know the guys are busy and doing it for nothing (so far), but take my money and pay someone to keep the packages as current as possible, please, if you want to take it.

MS Trolls?

I never really thought the rumors of MS lackeys were on slashdot posting pro-MS stuff was true, really...just geek paranoia, but after reading through the messages for this story, I came upon these two...and the almost exact phrases makes me wonder...

>Re:windows xp is the shit. (Score:1)
>by stevenbee on Thursday August 30, @08:12AM (#2234385)
>(User #227371 Info)
>I've been running Windows XP for the last couple
>of weeks. It's amazingly fast and stable.
>The interface is clean and intuitive. Can't wait
>to see what developers do with it. The
>drivers and gaming support are awesome. Truly an
>amazing OS, maybe the best yet.

...and...

>Re:On Oct. 25th (Score:1)
>by Waldo_Jeffers on Thursday August 30, @08:19AM (#2234408)
>(User #518590 Info)
>I've been running Windows XP for the last couple
>of weeks. It's amazingly fast and stable.
>The interface is clean and intuitive. Truly an
>amazing Desktop OS, maybe the best yet.

...is it just me or not? Funky.

Ximian

I hope that people actually take time to read Ximian's press releases before passing judgement. But that is probably asking too much. Ximian is offering (in 45 days) two new Red Carpet-based services, ON TOP OF the current *free* Red Carpet updating service they provide as a gift to the community. First is Red Carpet Express, which is basically guaranteed fast access to software updates. A lot of people (including myself) requested something like this. I am happy that they are offering it. The second service is especially cool. The CorporateConnect idea is great. Basically, companies can tailor exactly what software (and in what channels) is offered, and which users can access that software. And it can push updates automatically in the corporate LAN. That is an incredibly useful tool. Ximian is being smart, and focusing on the Corporate desktop (and those customers) rather than end-users. Creating tools and services like these that really add value to a company's IT infrastructure is what is going to make Ximian succeed. End-user oriented business models can come later. Ximian is going to continue to create great software, and develop really useful services that are worth the money.

.Net/Hailstorm

Microsoft's implementation of the Passport service is a conflict of interest. Microsoft sells the desktop Operating System, which will use HailStorm/.Net/Passport. They sell the Server Operating System, which will have proprietary plugs to integrate the Passport system with MS Transaction Server. They charge the customer for the ability to access the server. They charge the server people for access to their database. They also close out alternative online-transaction options.

Let's say you go to GiganticBookstore.com, and in order to buy book X (which you already have listed on your screen), you can either click the "Pay with Passport!" icon, or go through the 5-minute process of creating a user account, putting in your credit card info, your anti-spam-mail preferences, and then finally buy that one book. The convenience is going to lead a lot of online stores to eventually offer access only via Passport, to simplify management of the transaction server.

This convenience isn't simply a market need - it's being forced into the market by the (monopoly) marketholder, as a way to ensure that people will be forced to use their transaction-related products in the future. I see this behavior, regardless of if Passport is free to the end user, as incredibly dangerous and a complete conflict of interest.

MS is putting their hands in everyone's cookie jar at once. You know it won't be long until HailStorm also integrates a PayPal-clone and kills competition there... and then integrates an iBill-clone and puts THEM out of business too. And best of all, if you're not running IE 6.x on Windows XP with your "Automatic Update Notification" turned on, you won't be able to buy things from internet stores with your own real, legal money. Mozilla running on Linux? Why would Microsoft even begin to care about its market share when they control the transaction server OS, the online credit and banking interfaces, and the customer account info for something like 20% of the United States? Market share of a product they've successfully pushed out of the online transaction realm will be of no concern.

Clearing up some confusion

Unfortunately, the press release about Red Carpet Express and Red Carpet Corporate Connect erroneously left an important bit of information. Red Carpet will remain free. Red Carpet Express is an optional service which gives you guaranteed access to the latest updates, even if the main public Red Carpet server is congested. Red Carpet Corporate Connect offers additional features to corporate workgroup users.

The conspiracy theorists will no doubt continue to accuse us of "selling out" at every step of the way; I'm too busy working on adding additional features to Red Carpet to get upset at this point. I hope that anyone with questions regarding Red Carpet or other Ximian products/services will at least contact Ximian directly.

XML file formats

From the StarOffice review:

Not only will XML provide for smaller file sizes, it also opens the door to interactivity

I don't get it. How exactly does XML provide for smaller file sizes? I would think that a verbosely specified tag system is less space-efficient than a binary format.

Passport may be a bigger threat then Windows

This is a conflict of interest. Microsoft sells the desktop Operating System, which will use HailStorm/.Net/Passport. They sell the Server Operating System, which will have proprietary plugs to integrate the Passport system with MS Transaction Server. They charge the customer for the ability to access the server. They charge the server people for access to their database. They also close out alternative options. Let's say you go to GiganticBookstore.com, and in order to buy book X (which you already have listed on your screen), you can either click the "Pay with Passport!" icon, or go through the 5-minute process of creating a user account, putting in your credit card info, your anti-spam-mail preferences, and then finally buy that one book. The convenience is going to lead a lot of online stores to eventually offer access only via Passport, for their own convenience. This convenience isn't simply a market need - it's being forced into the market by the marketholder, as a way to ensure that people will be forced to use their products in the future. I see this behavior, whether Passport is free or not to the end user, as incredibly dangerous and a complete conflict of interest. MS is putting their hands in everyone's cookie jar at once. You know it won't be long until HailStorm also integrates a PayPal-clone and kills competition there... and then integrates an iBill-clone and puts THEM out of business too. And best of all, if you're not running IE 6.x on Windows XP with your "Automatic Update Notification" turned on, you won't be able to buy things from internet stores with your own real, legal money. Mozilla running on Linux? Why would Microsoft even begin to care about its market share when they control the transaction server OS, the online credit and banking interfaces, and the customer acconut info for something like 20% of the United States? Market share of a product they've successfully pushed out of the online transaction realm will be of no concern.

Disappointment

I was really disappointed with this year's show. I didn't think it had the same energy as last year's show in San Jose. I think the number of exhibitors have gone down. I'm sure the economy has something to do with it, probably half the companies that were there last year have gone under. I thought the general mood was: eh.. we're here.. let's TRY to sell something.. whereas last year was: Hey! I've got something new and innovative, this is something you can't live without. There was also a lot more anticipation last year I think, there was the release of Helix(now Ximian) and OSDN, 2.4 kernel, and the economy and the technology outlook was much better. SGI was noticably absent, they had one of the biggest areas last year. There just wasn't the noise and excitement this year.

lessig on copyright litigation for oss developers

Does anybody have a url for that c-net link?

I looked at page source, but didn't see a url for realplayer.

If anybody has the url for the video, please post it.

thanx

Not the thrill it once was

A number of people, Krismon included, have voiced some disappointment at the excitement of the show

...As he says himself just a few posts up from here. This year was just a lot of "same-old, same-old", with very little that was new or exciting. The haul of swag was the poorest yet, too.

Am I the only one who really misses the old ".org Pavillion" they had a couple of years ago? It was a great place to just hang out and get to know people, or hack on your laptop if that's what you wanted to do. Now all the .orgs have their own booths. While I suppose it's nice of LWCE to provide them, it just doesn't make for the same atmosphere.

New Linuxcare BBC and Poster

Come by the booth, new totally cool 2.4 based Bootable Business Card (rescue CD), and a harsh poster mocking community folks... :) See the Slashdot guys in hi-chairs! You have to ask for this stuff- booth staff has been instructed to ignore trick-or-treaters.

MY highlight of the show....

"How long is your penis?" - CmdrTaco. In fact, I think i'll make it my sig.

-Vess

Re:windows xp is the shit.

I've been running Windows XP for the last couple of weeks. It's amazingly fast and stable. The interface is clean and intuitive. Can't wait to see what developers do with it. The drivers and gaming support are awesome. Truly an amazing OS, maybe the best yet.

Re:On Oct. 25th

I've been running Windows XP for the last couple of weeks. It's amazingly fast and stable. The interface is clean and intuitive. Truly an amazing Desktop OS, maybe the best yet.