Irfan’s Corner on the Web On Mac, Linux, Grid, Virtualization and Software Technology

Why Redhat could be in trouble

The recent announcement by Oracle to provide Linux support, should be alarming for Redhat. Redhat makes its living from providing support services for its Linux distributions. But the announcement certainly was not unexpected. The countdown to Oracles entry into Linux was started with the purchase of JBoss by Redhat earlier this year. The acquisition put Redhat into direct competition with Oracle and IBM, precisely it put Redhat's JBoss into competition with Oracle's Fusion Middleware. Since Linux support is Redhat's lifeline it only made sense to attack Redhat by cutting off its lifeline, weaken the company so that it is in a weaker position to compete with Oracle in other domains such as middleware stack. However Redhat is not going anywhere soon, they have immense credibility, and expertise to provide support and patches for their Linux products, Oracle has yet to prove itself in this domain. Oracle has deep pockets and can establish itself in this domain relatively quickly.

In general the move by Oracle will be good for Linux. It could fuel adoption of Linux/Open Source by enterprises and companies, because Oracle one of the largest software companies, and has immense reputation and credibility with large corporations. I have earlier mentioned in this blog, that a one of the impediments to Linux adoption is the lack of support. Oracle being a global company, hopefully will fill the vacuum and fuel Linux adoption internationally. Eventually the user base will increase so much that new competition will be born, and more companies will be able to get a piece of the larger pie.

Great Site to find Open Source alternatives

I remember that when I was new to Linux, I used to go internet forums time and again to look for various equivalents to common software which I used to use on Windows.  Now there is a great site for this purpose  http://www.osalt.com/.

One feature which I would like to see on the website, are user-defined ratings, where users can rate a specific software, so that new users can directly use the best open source alternative.

I also think that the website has too much advertisement, even if its Google AdWords. Such a site is a help to the whole community and should be supported via donations.

First Post from Firefox 2

This is my first post to my blog with Firefox2.

Using Firefox 2 has been nothing short of a blast for me! Its excellent. I've used IE 7, but it didn't appeal to me, because the main thing I like about Firefox, which I blogged about before, are its myriad extensions.

There are numerous enchancements in Firefox which appeal to me greatly.

1. Reduced memory foot print

Firefox 2 is more efficient with memory and runs more smoothly with a large number of opened tabs. I read somewhere, that someone comparing the memory footprint of IE7 with Firefox2 found that Firefox 2 took 30 MB less with a large number of tabs. Although IE 7 took less memory with less than 3 opened tabs. Since I always open a lot of tabs during browsing Firefox2 is for me!

3. More 'cleaner' GUI

The icons in Firefox 2 look more clean, and the entire GUI has been streamlined to have a "modern" look and feel. This is a great improvement over the previous look and feel, which resembled that of Motif's, and looked boring.

4. "List all Tabs" button

I would recommend people to use foXpos to get an easy thumbnail based overview over all opened tabs. However for those you require something simpler Firefox 2 adds a button at the top right corner below the search bar, which lists all the opened tabs, so that users can directly go to the required tab, . Its more productive especially is you have a large number of tabs open.

5. Built in Spell Checker

This features is probably not of much use, if you dont write much in the web browser, but for someone like, me you regularly blogs and uses Google's Doc & Spreadsheet for some word processing, this is a great feature. Although many websites like webbased email clients, blogging software etc. have spell check options, but they mostly have bloated interfaces, the Firefox2 spell checker is very simple.

6. Search Suggestions

Another great feature which I discovered in Firefox2, are the search suggestions. Like Google Suggest, where you type a word, and it displays all the relevant searches you might want to do. This feature has been integrated into the Firefox2 Search bar

7. Extreme customizability

Just look at this website to see what I mean. EVERYTHING in the firefox interface is customizable, you can remove anything, any menu, any toolbar icon etc. IE7 does not allow you to customize the interface to the extent that you can remove menus.

So these are just some of the usability features which I've discovered during my first use of Firefox2. With Firefox2, the open source community proves that it is capable of providing quality software which not even the biggest corporations can match! I fear that Microsoft will try to clone Firefox2 features into IE, so we must get the word out quickly, before Microsoft clones the features, and people start thinking that IE is "innovative"!

Daniel Lyons (Forbes) vendetta against Richard Stallman

I just read this article in Frobes.com, the article intentionally tries to portray Richard Stallman and te FSF, in a negative light. This became clear to me in the first few paragraphs when the author refers to Stallman and the FSF as "He and a band of anarchist acolytes". At another point it says:

"He hasn't hacked much new code in a decade or more. Instead he travels the world to give speeches and pull publicity stunts, donning robes and a halo to appear as a character he calls "St. IGNUcius" and offer blessings to his followers."
The article not only features rancorous diatribe against the FSF and Stallman, but its ridden with factual inaccuracies, showing the authors limited knowledge about F/OSS.

The article primarily attacks GPL v3, at one point the author says:

"At worst it(GPL3) could split the Linux movement in two--one set of suppliers and customers deploying an older Linux version under the easier rules and a second world using a newer version governed by the new restrictions. That would threaten billions of dollars in Linux investment by customers and vendors alike."
First of all, as any open source guy would know. GPL v3 is just a license, and it is upto the developers to use it or not, even if the FSF rolls out the GPL v3 today, its not compulsory on anyone to use it. The Linux kernel developers have clearly said that they are against the GPL3. So I dont understand how it could be that the older kernel uses gpl v2 and the newer one gpl v3?? The Kernel is going to remain under v2 for some time to come, as many kernel developers are employed by companies such as IBM and Redhat, and if they have reservations about GPL v3, the kernel will not adopt it.

And at another point in the article:

"Stallman and his allies hacked away for nearly a decade but couldn't get GNU to work. In 1991 Torvalds, then an unknown college kid in Finland, produced in six months what Stallman's team had failed to build in years--a working "kernel" for an operating system."

The above quote tries to show that Stallman and his "henchmen" were poor hackers, and tried years and couldn't get GNU to work!! A college kid from finland achieved it within 6 months! First of all this is pure Bullshit!! True the GNU didnt produce a working kernel when Linus Torvalds came with one, but the kernel was not the only focus of the GNU project, they were working on many things over all the years, like Compilers (GCC, which is one of the finest compiles around), Debuggers (GDB, another fine tool), Emacs etc.. The GNU project created a plethora of tools which mimicked Unix, and the relevant development tools, which actually launched the Open Source movement, as nearly all F/OSS software uses the GNU's development tools.

Yet at another point the article states:

"In recent years Stallman and the FSF have been cracking down on big Linux users, enforcing terms of the existing license (GPLv2, for version 2) and demanding that the big tech outfits crack open their proprietary code whenever they inserted lines from Linux. Cisco and TiVo have been targets; Cisco caved in to Stallman's demands rather than endure months of abuse from his noisy worldwide cult of online jihadists."

This quote refers to the GPL violations some companies have done from time to time. Where GPL'ed code, which was produced collaboratively by programmers around the World, was unethically ripped by companies and included into proprietary products from which the community didnt benefit. What Stallman and his "worldwide cult of online jihadists" did was right as the companies in question were not "Big Linux Users" as claimed in the article, but "Big Linux Exploiters". Who exploited open source code for their selfish benefits.

I dont think I need to state any more quotes from the article to prove that the articles sole purpose was to denigrate Richard Stallman, and the FSF, and mostly is not based on factual arguments to prove that GPL3 indeed does pose a threat to the Open Source revolution. It's just sad to see that Forbes, a major publication has a anti-FOSS troll in their payroll!

Firefox vs. IceWeasel; open source is still the winner, or is it??

I just came across this post, which claims that the recent fork of Firefox, by GNU and Debian can only be a good thing because, people who dont like Firefox can go over to IceWeazel!

I dont agree with this, and I think IceWeazel is indeed a bad thing for Open Source, because

1, IceWeazel, as it stands is basically Firefox+security patches+Debian customization, so to claim that people who are fed up with Firefox, will go over to IceWeazel, they won't because IceWeazel IS Firefox.

2, It sets a bad precedent! It basically means that you can fork any project, which actually is doing well, for purely political reasons! The solution to the dispute is NOT to create a new project, and fork firefox with a new logo. Rather I think what should happen, is that Linux Distributions should modify Firefox, only so as to customize it to to their needs, but not carry out any development on it or apply security patches or any other patches which modify the functionality of Firefox. If such patches are applied they should be applied to the main source tree aswell, so that Firefox and all its distribution specific derivatives have all the same functionality. Mozilla should allow distributions to use the Firefox name without the official branding, given that they meet some certain quality requirements, to prevent sub-standard forks in hurting Firefox's reputation.

With this ongoing saga, I can only praise Sun Microsystem, for not open sourcing Java. The main advantage of Java is platform-independance, and this is only maintained by having a single JVM specification, and a single vision to drive it forward. Had Java been open source, some group of developers would have said "Java's too slow, lets create a new version FastJava, which takes less RAM, and add some other features to the language", then another group of developers might say "Java's API is too big, lets create a new java version which has a simple API, and hence will be simpler to develop with, JoeJava" etc...

At the end there will be so many different, mutually incompatible Java versions, that the language will be potentially useless.

3, Open source developers dont come in unlimited quantities! Debian and GNU are basically creating more work for the community. Instead of forking existing projects, which are doing well, GNU should be encouraging deploying open source developers to contribute to projects which really need attention, and can have a big impact like open source Flash implementation, GNU Classpath and GNU compiler for Java, DOTGnu etc.

Follow-up on the “Happy Birthday KDE!” Post

I got my first mass digg!

My post "Happy Birthday KDE!" resulted in a digg which directed 10,728 hits to my blog, made my blog the hotest blog on Wordpress, and also the fastest growing! I was completely baffled, I never would have imagined that such a simple post would have such effects.

The Digg discussion that ensused turned into a classic KDE vs GNOME flamewar! I respect others opinions, but I only respect them if they are based on facts! Many comments on Digg where NOT based on facts, and were just trying to spread FUD against KDE. Although some diggers had some cogent points to bring up and I can only agree to them.

First the post by traherom

Personally, I dislike KDE because:
- The look and feel is really pretty goofy. ...

- Too much crap comes with it..you waste a few gigabytes on things you'll never use.
- KDE's C++ "signals and slots" sucks. It really is a good idea, but when you have to use special macros to do non-standard C++ crap and use an extra processor (qmake) just to test develop a simple program...

The first point the reader raises is hard to argue with since perception of art and hence the KDE themes is very subjective, I can only say that they appeal to me greatly, and GNOME looks a bit dull to me.

The second point the digger raises is poor FUD . "Too much crap comes with it", sorry but if you do not like some KDE software don't install it! KDE is very modular, no one is forcing you to install every software. I personally dislike KOffice, so I never install it, same with the graphics packages. I have a complete installation minus KOffice, and it takes 180MB, KOffice is 16 MB download, and probably takes some 40 MB more, so 220MB is the complete KDE size, as compared to "gigabytes" as claimed in the post.

I dont understand that third point, or how it's related to KDE, "signal and slots" was invented by Trolltech and implemented in Qt, KDE was developed on Qt. The fact that there are so many application on KDE, shows that "signal and slots" is a real world proven concept. If it doesnt suite your purpose dont use it!

Another post by entu:

"

My only real problem with KDE is the way that it tries to do EVERYTHING.

Office / productivity apps suck compared to open office
Konquerer sucks compared to Firefox
and the list goes on.

I much prefer the GNOME approach of focusing on building a great desktop, and not building every single application. Most of the KDE apps never get used because you wind up using superior alternatives.

Now, KDE does do some things well (KDevelop and Konquerer *as a file browser* being good examples). I just wish they'd focus on making separate products on not one giant bucket that attempts to do everything.

I really agree with this post, KDE is a HUGE desktop environment, it maybe overstretching it self, by providing KDE alternatives for everything on the planet. As I already said KOffice doesnt fit my purposes, in the original post I already mentioned that Konqueror has troubles with some AJAX functionality. But KDE does have some good software, which may beat other alternatives on alternate desktops.

A majority of the posts in the digging mentioned that KDE is too "bloated", I dont know what they precisely mean with bloat, but if they mean it comes with too much software, yes it does but you can customize. If they however mean that KDE takes too much resources, its true, it does take too much resources. Not long ago I used to run KDE on a machine with 256MB RAM, it used to work fine if you open a limited number of windows, but as soon as the number of opened applications increased portotionally the performance detoriated until it came to a point where nothing would work, and I would have t restart the X-server. But have a look around in the computing world, is software bloat only a KDE problem? I see it everywhere in MacOSX, Linux and on Windows, increasingly softwares demand more resources, but it doesnt make the software less useful!