The Open Source Advocate

Is ZipTie a good candidate for a fork?

2009-09-13T14:51:00.000Z

I have followed the ZipTie project ever since it's first release . If you have not heard of ZipTie, it is an incredibly powerful open source network management tool that allows you to discover and manage hundreds of network devices, all with an easy to use interface. Does that sound too good to be true?

First, I'll give you some background. The project was created in November of 2006 and was sponsored by a company called Alterpoint. This was great because they funded four developers to work on ZipTie for over two years. Here is a link to my first review of ZipTie:

I started using ZipTie on a university network that contained hundreds of network devices. ZipTie automatically discovered my devices by crawling the network. Then it automatically made a backup of my configs, and kept a history of revisions that I can use to recover from. Additionally, I can send commands to hundreds of devices at once, saving me countless hours of time. The amazing thing about ZipTie was that I could accomplish all this with just a few clicks using the well-designed graphical interface.

Things were going great, and ZipTie continued to improve by adding more features, support for more types of equipment, and better stability. ZipTie also created the ZipForge, which is a place for network engineers to upload scripts to perform specific actions or to support additional device types.

Problems started to appear when the company sponsoring ZipTie, Alterpoint, decided to change the project from the Mozilla Public License (MPL) to a proprietary license that they created. At the same time, they changed the name from ZipTie to Network Authority Inventory (Yes, from two syllables to ten!). You can read my opinion of these changes on a previous post.

The most recent news about ZipTie is that the entire development team was laid-off, and Alterpoint was purchased by Versata this spring. Since that time, there has been no mention of what will happen to ZipTie. Judging by the fact that they fired the development team, it doesn't look good.

Is ZipTie a good candidate for a fork?

When discussing the benefits of open source software, it is often mentioned that the code can continue to live on, even after the sponsoring company fades away. Is this possible with ZipTie? In my opinion the value of the code is very high, so it would be a shame to see it simply wither on the vine. So what will it take for ZipTie to live on as a new project?

Does the MPL license allow ZipTie to be forked? If so, what is required? I'm assuming that we may need to rename the project, since the name is probably trademarked. Here are some possible names that I have come up with:

NIZ = NIZ Isn't Ziptie
NINEZ = NINEZ Is Not Exactly Ziptie
PUNT = Powerful Uncomplicated Network Toolkit
VUNE = Virtual Unpaid Network Engineer

Please provide feedback on what the next steps are in this process. I am not a developer, so I will not be able to contribute progamming skills, but I bet that there are programmers who are interested in working on this project. If you are interested in helping with this project in any role, please post a comment.

Thanks Interweb!

Random Ubuntu Planet Spam?

2008-12-09T04:35:00.004Z

I just wanted to share that I have no idea why a random selection of my older posts decided to jump on the Ubuntu Planet again. I know that this sort of thing happens when I edit an old post, but I had nothing to do with this recent incident.

When is it wrong to fix a typo? On the planet

I apologize for all the noise, and I'll try to figure out what happened. Thanks for your understanding! :)

ZipTie: New features, new name, new license?

2008-11-15T08:50:00.002Z

Introduction

It has been over a year since I last posted about an exciting open source project called ZipTie. We use ZipTie to automatically discover our network devices, backup their configurations, and perform a variety of functions related to these devices. Many things have changed with ZipTie since my last post and I want to share those with you. I'll start with the positive changes first, because I am a positive type of person.

New Features

The most obvious improvement is the slick web interface that replaces the previous Java fat client. This interface is powered by Adobe Flex, so it has a great look and feel to it. Having a web interface also simplifies deploying ZipTie, because you don't have to worry about installing a Java application and all the required dependencies. Check out the screenshots:

ZipTie has also added a great community resource called ZipForge, which is a place where anyone can publish custom tools that perform specific functions on network devices. This forge makes it easy to create these tools, without forcing the contributor to learn a lot about ZipTie internal functions.

The new release also adds the ability to gather information about end nodes on a network. This means that I can find out which port a device is plugged into simply by entering the IP address (or MAC address) into ZipTie.

I am not going to list all the improvements in this post, but I will tell you that these developers have been hard at work making ZipTie into an incredibly useful tool.

New Name: NetworkAuthority Inventory

Alterpoint has funded the development of ZipTie from day one. A handful of full-time programmers have been working on ZipTie for over two years, funded completely by Alterpoint. The ZipTie open source community has been growing steadily as this application matured, but most community contributions were in the form of beta testing and ZipForge tools. In the last year, Alterpoint began using ZipTie as the core engine inside their proprietary applications. In case you can't make the connection, these products are the ones that make the money that is used to pay for the open source developers working on ZipTie.

I have often wondered why Alterpoint decided not to advertise their products alongside the ZipTie project. Indeed, their name and commercial branding was almost non-existent on the ZipTie website. The Alterpoint folks must have been thinking the same thing as me, because they have completely overhauled the ZipTie website and changed the name of the project. ZipTie will now be called NetworkAuthority Inventory. The new website has Alterpoint branding and provides information about their commercial offerings and what features you will get if you buy them.

I strongly feel that it is appropriate for Alterpoint to push their products, given the fact that they are paying for ZipTie to be developed. It is important for people to realize that Alterpoint needs to make money if they are going to continue spending resources on this project.

Regarding the new name, I personally don't like it because has five times more syllables than "ZipTie".

New License: No longer open source?

Here is a message from the lead developer of ZipTie regarding the license change:

ZipTie has, up until 10/28/2008, been licensed under the MPL. Now that ZipTie has moved into our NetworkAuthority brand of products, we wanted to put a GPL license on it. Unfortunately, our use of EPL software prohibited us from using the GPL. To get around this, AlterPoint is licensing NetworkAuthority Inventory under the Open Technology License (OTL). It basically reads like a GPL.

This is the area that I am most concerned about. Alterpoint has changed the licensing of this project from Mozilla Public License to a custom license created by Alterpoint. I am not a lawyer, but my conclusion is that this license severely limits the rights of users. Because of this, I do not think it can be considered an open source license. Alterpoint has taken an open source project and turned it into a closed freeware application.

Now, I think I understand the reasoning behind this decision. Alterpoint needs to find ways to make money if it wants to survive. Using ZipTie as the core of their product stack is a great way to benefit from open source development and introduce users to their commercial products. However, changing ZipTie into a proprietary application is not required to accomplish this!

The business model that accomplishes what Alterpoint is trying to do has recently been named "Open-Core Licensing". This model works by building core functionality as open source software, and then adding proprietary features on top of that core. As I will discuss in a future post, a successful open source business provides many benefits to the community and the project.

What can we do about this?

What can we do to encourage Alterpoint to continue using an open source license? There is always the possibility of forking the previous version of ZipTie that was released as MPL. However, forking a community should always be considered a last resort after all other options have failed. Even if ZipTie was forked, I don't know how successful it would be because 99% of the development is being done solely by Alterpoint employees. In theory, the threat of a fork is supposed to prevent software vendors from mistreating open source communities.

I think the best thing we can is do at this point is educate Alterpoint about the benefits of using an open source license for their core product. If the community really cares about this issue, perhaps Alterpoint will re-evaluate their licence.

I think we also need to address their concern with the GPL being incompatible with the EPL. I believe that the Alterpoint wants to use the GPL license because it offers the most protection from other businesses using ZipTie code inside their products without contributing their changes to the project.

Can anyone answer that question? Both Eclipse and Wikipedia state that the licenses are incompatible. However, Ed Burnette from ZDnet points out that EPL code is found within Red Hat Linux:

Take, for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. RHEL contains both free and non-free programs. It contains programs covered by GPL, EPL, Apache, BSD, and every other conceivable license. The last paragraph in section 5 says this is OK even though they’re conveyed as a single aggregate.

Is there another OSI license that would be a good fit for this project, and still be compatible with the EPL?

The evolution of open source software

2008-11-15T08:47:00.000Z

Introduction

If you have followed this blog for a while, you will know about my passion for open source software. I have always predicted that open source software would revolutionize the software industry, but I didn't quite understand how this would happen. My initial views expected that open source would disrupt traditional software companies so much that it would eventually put them out of business. I am now realizing that the future of open source software looks much different than I first expected.

Proprietary software will be quietly built on open source software

One of the primary benefits of open source software is that it reduces the cost to produce software. Gartner agrees with this point; open source software is the most efficient method to create software. Traditional proprietary software vendors are realizing this fact, and are beginning to quietly build their closed software products using lots of open source software.

I say "quietly" because these companies are not going to announce that they are using open source software. In fact, they will prefer if this fact is not known by their customers. There will even be some software companies who choose to use open source in violation of its license, and it is important for us to detect and prosecute this exploitation. However, most companies will abide by the open source licenses.

Gartner has predicted this trend of building closed software with open source elements:

By 2012, 80 percent of all commercial software will include elements of open-source technology. Many open-source technologies are mature, stable and well supported. They provide significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment.

Ignoring this will put companies at a serious competitive disadvantage. Embedded open source strategies will become the minimal level of investment that most large software vendors will find necessary to maintain competitive advantages during the next five years.

Re-using code is not a completly new idea to software companies. These companies have developed internal libraries of software that they can use in multiple products without having to re-write the entire application from scratch. Open source simply expands on this concept. Rather than being limited to an internal software library, open source software provides an enormous global library of software that is worth $25 billion dollars!

Another way to look this is with the example of building a car. Open source software can provide the wheels, frame and engine of a car. This allows a proprietary software vendor to simply add the final touches that make the car unique to them. This development method greatly reduces the cost to build the car, because the software vendor does not have to "re-invent the wheel".

I see open source software being used all the time when I look at closed products on the market today. Let's look at the example of a DNS appliance. You can bet that over 90% of the code used to create the appliance is likely to be open source code. The operating system is Linux, the DNS server application is Bind, and a variety of subsystems are probably open source. The DNS appliance vendor adds their 10% of value and then sells it to you as it they created the entire thing! This is not necessarily a bad thing, I just want you to realize what is happening.

Open source software vendors will become more closed

There are many open source companies who have formed to meet the need of supporting open source software. These companies are experimenting with various business models that take advantage of the large user base of open source software. Most of these models started by simply offering support services, and the software project remained 100% open source. As the global economy goes through hard times, I believe that these types of business models are not sustainable.

What we are going to see are open source vendors who continue to contribute to a 100% open source project, but they will also add some special value that is only available to paying customers. This is already being done successfully by companies like Digium, the creators of Asterisk. Their Switchvox appliances are based on the open source Asterisk PBX, but it adds proprietary features that give customers a reason to buy the product.

Both Savio Rodrigues and Matt Asay have predicted this evolutionary trend of offering proprietary elements to an open source project. Savio Rodrigues has even gone as far as saying "that proprietary is going to be the savior of the OSS business model".

Before you get upset about proprietary software tarnishing open source, please look at the bigger picture. Open source vendors have paid for enormous amounts of new development to open source projects that would have taken many years of volunteer work. These resources were paid by venture capitalists who invested funds to develop open source businesses. If these business do not succeed, they will no longer be able to employ full-time programmers to work on open source projects. Hopefully you can see how this would have a negative impact on open source.

In my opinion, open source vendors and open source communities provide mutual benefit to each other. The community gets free development resources, while the open source vendor gets money from the subset of paying users. This relationship needs to thrive to realize the maximum benefit to both parties.

So, is this change good or bad?

My prediction is that proprietary vendors will use more open source, and open source vendors will become more closed. The line between these categories is going to become very blurred as they converge around a common middle-ground.

While this evolution of open source is not what I had predicted, I feel positive about these changes. If you are an open source advocate, you should be excited. In the future, not only will you have the same access to open source software that you do now, but successful companies will hire full-time programmers to daily improve upon that software.

If you are a proprietary software user, you should also be excited. This is because open source software will reduce the overall cost of developing software. In the long-run, competition will force these cost savings to be passed to the consumer.

What do you think?

Do you agree with my predictions? Do you agree that this is a positive change? Either way, please let me know with a comment below.

DimDim 4.0 is here!

2008-08-11T02:35:00.007Z

I blogged about open source web conferencing software a while back, but I wanted to share this significant update of the DimDim project. They have justed released version 4.0 of their software which adds significant functionality and makes DimDim a serious competitor to proprietary web conferencing solutions like Webex and GoToMeeting.

Because there are so many new features, I am only going to list my favorite ones below. For a full-list of features, go visit the DimDim website.

Recording and Archiving
Any Dimdim session can be recorded and made available with the click of the mouse. Simply press the record button. You can email the recording URL or grab an embed code and paste it on your blog or website. You can even upload your recording to YouTube or Blip.tv.

Mac Screensharing
Mac users can share their desktop with other Mac (and even Windows) users - even if they aren’t using Dimdim. With Mac live screencasting you can share your desktop with anyone (it’s like iChat within a browser.)

Multiple Presenters
With a single click you can let any attendee share their desktop, whiteboard, webcam or documents. You can always grab back control of the meeting with another click.

Free Conference Calls
While we’ve improved our free VoIP microphone sharing, many users asked for a conference dial-in so more people can use their traditional phones. Now every user gets their own unlimited free conference call account.

Single click to Start or Join Meeting
Start or join a meeting in seconds with a single click. All you need is the meeting room name or the meeting URL.

Zero Install
You don’t have to install any software even to host a meeting, share your webcam, whiteboards or PPTs. The first time you choose to share your desktop you’ll be prompted to install our live screencasting software. It’s a tiny 1.8MB install and comes with an uninstaller if you ever want to remove it.

Easier to Use
Based on user feedback, we’ve removed confusing tabs, popups, dialog boxes and links. Now Dimdim is not only faster and more powerful - it’s actually even easier to use. A single click is all it takes to share your desktop, your whiteboard, or your PowerPoint presentation. Click to share. Click again to stop. The item being shared is clearly indicated with an eye icon and darker background.

What is the DimDim business model?

DimDim is a great option for anyone who prefers to use open source software. The source code is always available on their website if you want to host your own web conferencing that includes all of the features of DimDim. They even offer a virtual appliance that can be used for a painless install of DimDim. If web-conferencing is a critical part of your business, you might consider purchasing services from DimDim.

For those who don't want to worry about installing and managing a DimDim server, DimDim offers several hosted options.

As you can see from this diagram, DimDim offers free hosted web conferencing for meetings with up to 20 users. If you need more web conferencing capabilities, they offer hosted services at very reasonable rates.

If anyone is using DimDim, please write a comment and share how it is working for you.

Reminder: Physical access = Root access

2008-07-10T04:04:00.006Z

Today I needed to reset a password on an Ubuntu system. While doing this, I was reminded of just how simple it is to get root access on a default install of Ubuntu. I wanted to share these steps on this blog to remind people that if someone has physical access to your Ubuntu system, they can get root access in just a few seconds.

Boot up your computer
When asked, hit "Escape" to enter the GRUB menu
Select the option that displays "recovery mode"
Select the option labeled "root prompt"
You are now logged in as root with the ability to change anything

It is really just that simple. This root console is great for advanced users who need to reset a password, but the average user will have no idea what to do. For instance, here is how I found the main user of this system:

root@laptop:~# cat /etc/passwd | grep 1000:1000
tristan:x:1000:1000:Tristan Rhodes,,,:/home/tristan:/bin/bash

This output shows that there is a user named "tristan" who is the main user of this system. Next I needed to reset the password for that user. So I entered this command:

root@laptop:~# passwd tristan
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
root@laptop:~#

Next I was able to reboot the system and login as "tristan" using the new password I created.

Can this process be improved?

Like I mentioned above, the root command prompt is not the most user friendly interface ever invented. At best, it is confusing to new users and at worst it is very dangerous. So how can this be improved? Well there are already some great ideas floating about, and thanks to the powerful Ubuntu Brainstorm website you can see what people have said about this topic. One of the more popular ideas is a Graphical Recovery Mode. If you want to help make Ubuntu better, please vote on the ideas you want to see implemented or even post your own ideas on the Ubuntu Brainstorm website.

Is there any way to prevent root access?

Many people may choose to give up the simple password recovery in the interest of securing their system. There are many different ways to do this including:

Use a BIOS password that prevents the computer from booting
Use a GRUB menu password that prevents the computer from booting
Use an encrypted file-system that requires a password to use

I'm sure there are other ways to do this, so please provide your input in the comments below.

Stop the press: Watch the news with Linux!

2008-06-22T23:47:00.006Z

For the past three versions of Ubuntu, I have tested seven news websites to find out if I could watch their video feeds using Ubuntu. You can read the results for 6.10 and 7.04, and 7.10. Each time, I was disappointed to learn that a majority of the video feeds did not play correctly on Ubuntu Linux. This time, however, something amazing has happened.

I don't know which stars aligned to cause this, but every single news website that I tested with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS now has a correctly working video feed! I wasn't expecting this great of an improvement when I began this series of tests. I always knew that it would happen eventually, but never this quickly.

So what is the reason for this change? The video news sites have obviously realized the value of having a cross-platform video player. Market share gains by Linux are still small, so it is more likely the growth of Mac OS that led to this change of thinking. Be sure to thank your local Mac OS user for their help in forcing these news websites to stop using Microsoft-only video players and providing a way for Linux users to watch the news!

ABC News

Sound: YES (Improvement!)
Video: YES (Improvement!)

BBC News

Sound: YES (Improvement!)
Video: YES (Improvement!)

CBS News

Sound: YES
Video: YES

CNBC

Sound: YES (Improvement!)
Video: YES (Impovement!)

CNN

Sound: YES
Video: YES

Note: You can skip advertisements by clicking on the video you want to watch as soon as the advertisement begins to play. This currently only works in Linux, and they will probably patch this hole eventually.

FOX News

Sound: YES
Video: YES (Improvement!)

Note: FOX News has a volume problem that causes the advertisement volume to be MUCH louder than the story volume. If this tactic is intentional, they should know that this is a great reason NOT to watch their news videos.

MSNBC

Sound: YES
Video: YES

Vyatta: Growing up quickly

2008-05-18T14:59:00.024Z

For those of you who don't know, Vyatta is an open source network appliance that functions as a router, firewall, and VPN device, all running on a customized version of Debian Linux. I have been following the progress of Vyatta for over a year now, and things are looking very promising. The latest release is called VC4 (Vyatta Community edition) and it includes a bunch of useful new features:

New command shell allows you to modify Linux settings and network settings from one common interface
Redesign of routing protocol offers greatly improved stability and performance
Role-based user access
Equal-cost multi-path routing
Remote access VPN
Support for IP tunneling protocols
PPPoE support, commonly used with DSL connections
WAN load balancing of outbound traffic across two or more WAN-facing interfaces
Quality of Service policies provide congestion management and traffic conditioning

As you can see, a lot of exciting changes have been made in the short six months since the previous release. The routing improvements are related to the change from XORP to Quagga. The added QoS capabilities will make Vyatta a good fit for VoIP deployments. The only negative to this release is that Vyatta had to temporarily remove the GUI web-interface until they can integrate it, which is scheduled for July, 2008. Overall, Vyatta is becoming a a compelling option for replacing some of your over-priced network equipment.

Where does Vyatta fit in my network?

Vyatta can be deployed in several places on a network. The most obvious function for Vyatta is to replace your WAN routers and branch routers. Vyatta has made it easy to compare their products versus similar Cisco routers by funding third-party studies. You can read the results versus a low-end Cisco router and a high-end Cisco router. I am hoping that their next report will be a comparison with a security device like the Cisco ASA, which has similar functionality to Vyatta (router + firewall + VPN).

Another way to deploy Vyatta is within a virtualized infrastructure like VMware or Virtual Iron (which uses the open source Xen hypervisor). These technologies are often found in data centers, and are becoming more and more popular due to the advantages of virtualization. Vyatta can take advantage of the virtualized infrastructure because it runs on the same hardware as the data center servers. This means that you can install dozens of Vyatta network appliances in your server farm using standardized hardware, as opposed to buying proprietary network gear that is severely overpriced.

Keep in mind that Vyatta will not soon replace switches with high-density ports and high-speed backplanes. In these cases, hardware ASICS are required to achieve high performance at an efficient price.

What is the Vyatta business model?

The Vyatta open source project is sponsored by a commercial entity named Vyatta. All of the source code used to create Vyatta is freely available under the BSD or GPL license. Vyatta releases a community edition once every 6-months that is completely free to use. This community edition works great for testing environments, small deployments, and budget-starved projects. However, most serious businesses using Vyatta will require access to security updates and bug fixes that come out in between the community edition releases. These businesses will want to purchase a Vyatta subscription which provides software updates, along with two levels of technical support. Vyatta also sells a few hardware appliances that include Vyatta pre-installed and certified.

The future of Vyatta

Based on the tremendous improvements Vyatta has made over the past year, it is likely that they will continue to add new features, higher scalability, and more stability to their product. Planned improvements are listed in a public road map, and users can even vote for their favorite features. Customers with paid subscriptions get more votes than non-customers.

The road-map shows that Vyatta is going to focus on security and simplicity for the next release. The security improvements include adding intrusion detection and prevention (Snort), anti-virus (ClamAV), and SSL VPN connections (OpenVPN). The simplicity improvements will include an updated web-interface, and perhaps a cross-platform, clientless, remote-access VPN using SSL.

Disclaimer: My company sells Vyatta products and services.

Utah Release Party: Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenBSD

2008-05-04T20:16:00.006Z

Yesterday we held a release party in Salt Lake City, Utah to celebrate the release of several open source operating systems. The original announcement only mentioned Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and Fedora 9, but we realized during the party that OpenBSD 4.3 was released on May 1st.

We were all happy to celebrate the goodness of open source, without arguing over which distro was better. The Fedora guys showed us some cool improvements, and the Ubuntu guys also demonstrated some neat improvements. The great thing about open source is that all of these improvements will be shared by both distributions in a future release.

I want to say thank you to our excellent sponsors who made this party a success. First, the amazing location was provided by the web-development company Code Greene. Second, the delicious Chipotle burritos were donated by the Utah Open Source Foundation, ran by Clint Savage. Lastly, thanks to the Fedora project who contributed funds, and Ubuntu/Canonical who contributed swag (including hundreds of 8.04 CDs).

Here is a picture of the three Ubuntu babies! This is the second release party for my girl Chloe (on the right).

We had an estimated 50 people at this party, but there is not one shot that includes them all. We do have physical evidence that 32 burritos were eaten and many people did not get one.

Here is Clint Savage doing his best impression of a good speaker. Just kidding Clint, you did a great job! Thanks for helping foster open source communities in Utah.
Notice the Fedora posters and foosball table in the background. This web-development company also has a kitchen, ping-pong table, an air-hockey table, a gigantic over-sized chess set, and a high-def theater that was playing the original Star Wars. Sounds like a great place to work!

Synching the open source release schedule

2008-04-25T13:00:00.017Z

Introduction

Both Mark Shuttleworth and myself have discussed this idea before. Because Mark brought it up again in a recent interview, I feel compelled to developer this idea further.

The main concept is that Linux distributions, and open source in general, have a lot to gain by synchronizing their release schedules.

Positive impact on the image of open source

Can you imagine the news articles that would be written if Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSuse all released a new version on the same day? Every six months, the world would see that open source has successfully delivered a new version on schedule. Mark Shuttleworth made a great point when he stated:

"We know when the next LTS will be probably with better confidence than we know when Windows 7 will ship. I would take that bet."

Once the distro releases become synchronized, it would create a huge incentive for upstream projects to synchronize on the same schedule.

Currently, we have upstream releases happening all over the calendar. For example, the newest version of Ubuntu includes a beta version of Firefox 3. It also includes OpenOffice 2.4, which is soon to be replaced by OpenOffice 3.0. With the power of a synchronized release, these upstream projects would work hard to get their newest versions into the distributions so that their users can start using the code sooner.

Creates efficiencies in software development

Open source is a very unique software development model, in that the code is freely shared between anyone who wants to work on it. This usually leads to great productivity from the worldwide development team that is formed.

However, there are some friction points in this model. Specifically, this friction happens when Linux distributions are working on different versions of an open source application at the same time. Mark addressed this point in his interview:

"Timing your releases drives a whole bunch of things. It means a greater ability to collaborate on bug fixes. If we are on the same versions of the Linux kernel, it is a lot easier for us to say, 'Hey, here is this patch to make this device work. Do you know any reason why we shouldn't put it in?'

You could just get so much more done at an engineering level between the teams. My engineers regularly collaborate with Novell and Red Hat and, of course, Debian. Barriers to that sort of collaboration are sometimes ideological but, in most cases, are just practical things. We are just on a different version so someone else's patch isn't going to apply. There's a bit of friction there."

How do we accomplish this?

I agree with Mark's short answer to this question. Simply set a hard date and modify your goals to make that release date. That greatly oversimplifies things, but it demonstrates that the long-term benefits of a regular release schedule greatly outweigh any negatives caused by postponing a feature into the next release.

In reality, there are a number of questions that need to be answered before this can happen.

1. On what date will the releases happen? Does it have to follow the current Ubuntu schedule of releasing every April and October?

Mark answered this question in his interview:

"We would be quite willing to revisit the elements of our release schedule in order to make that synchronicity possible, if the fact that we happen to do April and October wouldn't work for the majority of the distros. We would be flexible in that regard."

2. What amount of time should there be between regular releases?

Periodic releases every six months has worked very well for Ubuntu, but not all distributions are currently following that schedule. Six months also works great from a marketing perspective, because the release would always happen in the same months every year. Lastly, the open source motto is to "release early, release often". Six months is an attainable goal that balances the need for incorporating new features with the need for stability and quality assurance.

Call for civility

I understand that a post like this could lead to a distro war in the comment section. Please keep your comments civil and always show respect for other people's ideas. Hopefully, we can come up with some great ideas on how to improve open source software!

Win the desktop, and you will win the server

2008-04-17T11:41:00.004Z

Or, "Why Red Hat is pursuing the wrong business strategy"

Red Hat has recently announced that they have "No plans for a traditional consumer desktop". Let me explain why I think Red Hat needs to change their business strategy.

First, a short history lesson. Before the arrival of Windows NT Server, Novell Netware claimed 90% of the market for PC based servers. However, Netware made a near fatal mistake when they did not provide a GUI interface soon enough. This comes from the same Wikipedia page linked above:

While the design of NetWare 3.x and later involved a DOS partition to load NetWare server files, this feature became a liability as new users preferred the Windows graphical interface to learning DOS commands necessary to build and control a NetWare server.

So server administrators became familiar with Windows 95 on their desktop, and they naturally preferred Windows NT 4.0 which included the same interface.

Challenged by Ubuntu

Red Hat is in a similar position to what Novell faced, in that Red Hat is facing a time when server administrators will choose to run their desktop operating system on their servers. Specifically, I believe that Ubuntu will soon become the de facto Linux desktop. This means that server administrators will become familiar with Ubuntu and develop a trust for the brand. Eventually, they may choose to migrate to an Ubuntu standard on servers and desktops.

Most people agree that the real money is in server operating systems. If Red Hat wants to keep capturing that server money, they must provide a supported, free desktop operating system as part of a loss leader strategy.

Fedora is great, but it doesn't solve this problem

Don't misunderstand me, I know that Fedora is an excellent piece of software, but it has two fundamental problems. First, most average computer users do not know that Fedora is sponsored by Red Hat. This means that the Red Hat brand is not directly benefiting from the popularity and success of Fedora.

Secondly, Red Hat does not provide any support for Fedora. This means that many business cannot seriously consider running it on their desktops. How will these business get support if a problem comes up? How will they know that their applications are certified to run on Fedora? What if they want long-term support for older versions, without having to upgrade all the time? All of these questions are being answered by the Ubuntu ecosystem.

Red Hat, let me give you a hint. (If you want more hints, I am always available for consulting). Here it is: Change the name of Fedora to "Red Hat Enterprise Desktop" and begin to sell support for it. If you are lucky, it may not be too late to capture a large percentage of the desktop operating system market.

Remove the need for CentOS

Red Hat, I will even give you one more hint for free. Why do let CentOS steal your thunder? You have already published 99.999% of CentOS (everything except the branding). You graciously publish the source code to RHEL to abide by the GPL, but then you let another brand take credit for your work. How can you fix this? Easy! Simply provide a free version of Red Hat Server that is compiled and ready to be installed. Now your users will see even more of RedHat. RedHat on their desktop, RedHat on their servers, and they can buy support for all of it if they so desire.

Most embarrasing meme ever...

2008-04-15T15:40:00.008Z

What if this was your response to the command history meme?

$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn
2184 dir
1631 copy
560 edit
486 type
430 makedir
343 move
281 ipconfig
273 deltree
201 erase
164 format

And how come we never see a meme like this?

cat /etc/passwd;sudo cat /etc/shadow;netstat -plunt;ifconfig;sudo iptables -L

Note: Please do not post funny memes if they have destructive commands. The meme above will display private information about your system that should never be posted online.

Why do people make software for free?

2008-04-07T17:22:00.012Z

When I first tell people about open source software, one of the most common questions I get is this:

"I just don't understand why people would create software if they don't get paid for it! How does that work?"

This question makes sense, because we all know that people need to make money to provide for their families. And every good capitalist knows that the profit incentive is what drives people to create and innovate. This is true for many industries, but it does not explain why open source software is created. Here is how I answer this question:

The birth of an open source project

Most open source software projects were created by a programmer who needed a piece of software to accomplish a certain task. Rather than purchasing a commercial software product (assuming that one existed), this programmer decided to create the software from scratch. This programmer might have been paid by their employer to create the software, or the work might have been done on personal time. Instead of hording the newly created software, the programmer decided to share it with the world by publishing it under an open source license.

The birth of an open source community

This is where the open source story gets interesting. It is likely that somewhere else in the world, a second programmer has a need for some software that provides the same functionality. Rather than starting from scratch, this second programmer discovers the open source project that was recently created. This second programmer uses the source code to add new features and fix some bugs that they found in the application. This second programmer then submits these improvements to the first programmer, who gladly accepts them and incorporates them into the original project.

This cycle continues as more and more people start using the software. Most people will simply use the software, but a small percentage will contribute to the project. These contributions will be made by programmers, documentation writers, translators, beta testers, artists, web administrators, and many other important roles.

The birth of an open source business

As the community of users grows into the thousands, the size of the community eventually reaches a critical mass. This happens when a need develops for a commercial entity to provide professional services related to the open source project. This need is driven by businesses who require a support contract before they will use open source software. The commercial open source company is driven by a profit motive, but their success is directly beneficial to the open source community.

The future of an open source project?

I hope this post explains how many open source projects were created, matured, and became supported by open source businesses. Not all open source projects followed this particular evolution, but I think it is the most common life-cycle for open source projects.

What does the future hold for open source? It is always hard to predict the future, but if you have been watching closely you will see that traditional software companies have been investing in or purchasing these commercial open source companies. This means that in the near future, your traditional software vendors will actually be developing open source software, and trying to implement a successful business model based on open source.

Dual License model: Future of open source?

2008-01-27T22:10:00.000Z

I have noticed a trend developing in the business models of successful open source companies. These companies are implementing a business model that is based on dual licensing their software.

This press release provides an excellent summary of what dual licensing means.

The guiding principle behind dual licensing is "quid pro quo," or a fair exchange. Under this model, vendors offer their products under both an open source license and a commercial license. This allows open source projects to use the software at no cost, which contributes to widespread use and testing of the software and the fast growth of a large installed user base. Companies redistributing the software as part of commercial products can also get the benefits of the open source software by purchasing a commercial license, which releases them from requirements to publish their source code. Commercially-licensed customers generate revenue for the open source vendors, which contributes to the rapid development of high-quality software.

In an recent blog post titled "Giving and Taking", Asterisk creator Mark Spencer explains why dual licensing can be a good thing for open source.

The dual licensing model that Digium has chosen introduces an explicit monetary cost to choosing the proprietary route, thus providing greater direct incentive to people to choose to open their changes, and further allowing people who do not choose to open their changes to subsidize the work that Digium does with Asterisk by allowing us to add more open source resources (think Green Energy Credits here). In fact, our staff of open source dedicated programmers has more than doubled in 2007 alone!

The only people with a real reason to be upset feel that way because they cannot choose the proprietary route without paying a fee. In other words, it gets in the way of their desire to make money through proprietary add-ons without having to share in the cost of development of the underlying technology.

Alfresco explains why they prefer a dual license model.

Alfresco is an open source software company. We license 100% of the source code of our products – Alfresco Enterprise and Alfresco Community – under the GNU General Public License (“GPL”). This does not mean that Alfresco has released its software into the public domain – like any software creator, we own and retain copyrights, trademarks, and patents. Rather, it means that we author software like any software company, but license our software under an open source license that permits and encourages access to our source code, modification of this source code, and redistribution thereof.

For developers or organizations who wish to embed Alfresco into proprietary software products, we can accommodate this with a commercial license to our software (“Alfresco Enterprise”), which provides the benefits of our software without the requirements of the GPL. While we encourage everyone to use the GPL, we recognize that some prefer not to. For this purpose, we can provide a commercial license to Alfresco Enterprise.

The popular open source database MySQL (soon to be part of Sun Microsystems) also follows a dual license business model. They do a great job of briefly explaining the different license options on this page, and they also have an excellent FAQ on this subject.

MySQL's dual license model supports the company's mission: to make superior database software available and affordable to all. The dual licensing creates a circle that sustains both innovation and growth: MySQL channels the revenue from this viable open source business model back into support for its open source user community that, in turn, supports MySQL AB's commercial business.

The dual licensing business model is a "win-win" for all parties:
MySQL's open source community gets superior software for no cost
MySQL's commercial customers have the option of using reliable, community "battle tested" MySQL software for a relatively low cost
MySQL's business is healthy and viable, which also strengthens the open source movement

Open source legend Eben Moglen speaks highly of dual license business models.

"Dual-license products give customers who redistribute a choice in license terms," said Eben Moglen, professor of law at the Columbia University Law School and recognized as one of the world's leading experts on copyright law as applied to software. "Proprietary commercial licenses can offer customers fewer restrictions on inclusion in closed source products and enable open source software developers to grow strong businesses. This model is a win for the free software movement too, as it ensures that dual-licensed software products will be developed and supported by viable companies, and also remain available for free copying, modification and redistribution for the long-term."

Funambol is another open source company that believes in a dual-license business model. In fact, CEO Fabrizio Capobianco has blogged about why they selected this model.

My epiphany with dual licensing happened in London some years ago. I met Marten Mickos and I decided that was the way to go. I loved the "quid pro quo" concept: you either give back code to the project or you give back cash, so we can put it back in the project itself. That's being honest.

Conclusion

It is my strong opinion that open source software will become the dominate model for software development in the future. The only question left to decide is just how long will it take for open source to replace the traditional software model? The dual license model provides incentives for open source businesses to protect open source and at the same time allows them to make money from selling proprietary licenses. This model creates strong businesses that provide a lot of value to end users. Therefore I believe that the dual license model will accelerate the adoption of open source.

So what do you think about the dual license business model for open source companies? Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Status Quo: Can't watch the news in Linux

2008-01-21T19:26:00.000Z

For the two previous versions of Ubuntu, I have tested seven news websites to find out if I could watch their video feeds using Ubuntu. You can read the results for 6.10 and 7.04.

Now that Ubuntu 7.10 is out, it is time for me to test these websites again.

ABC News

Sound: NO
Video: NO

BBC News

Sound: NO (Worse!)
Video: NO (Worse!)

CBS News

Sound: YES (Improvement!)
Video: YES (Improvement!)

CNBC

Sound: NO
Video: NO

CNN

Sound: YES
Video: YES

FOX News

Sound: YES
Video: NO

MSNBC

Sound: YES
Video: YES

As you can see, we had one site that improved (CBS News) and one site that has actually gotten worse (BBC News). Congratulations to CBS news for joining the 21-century. I am not sure what to say about BBC News. Apparently, the BBC is now using a new video player called the "BBC iPlayer", which only supports Microsoft Windows operating systems. Because of this, there was a lot of controversy about the highly restricted player, including this petition.

I still consider it difficult to watch the news on Linux because a majority of the sites I tested (4 of 7) did not provide working video and audio.

Lets hope that BBC News, Fox News, CNBC News, and ABC News will realize the error of their ways and create a multi-platform video player. The "Best of Class" award goes to MSNBC for their new video player which is extremely fast and responsive and provides excellent video quality.

Open source web conferencing

2008-01-16T14:55:00.000Z

Introduction

Have you ever wanted to attend a webinar but quickly discovered that the web-conference service doesn't even support your operating system? This has happened to me several times and it irks me greatly! I always make sure to tell the company that they should switch their web-conferencing service to one that supports multiple platforms including Linux.

It is somewhat hypocritical when an open source company offers a webinar about their open source product, but they don't allow customers with open source operating systems like Linux to attend. I ran into this ridiculous issue when trying to attend a Zimbra webinar. I told them that it was wrong for them to have such great multi-platform support in their product and at the same time only allow Windows users to participate in their webinars. We'll see if they take that advice to heart.

Fortunately for us, there are companies that offer cross-platform support for web-conferencing. Even better, there are a small handful of open source projects that provide the features of a web-conference service. This means that you can host your own web-conferences without having to pay for a service. I am going to briefly describe three such open source projects.

DimDim

DimDim is probably the most advanced of the open source projects I have found. This could be related to the fact that they have commercial sponsorship. They offer a free hosted version if you do not want to download and run DimDim on your own server. I definitely recommend that you give DimDim a try.

WebHuddle

What are the main benefits of using WebHuddle?

Simple - The client runs in your web browser, through firewalls and proxies, and requires no installation. The user interface is intuitive and requires little or no training.
Secure - The industry-standard HTTPS protocol secures all network communication.
Small - The client applet weighs in at only 75 to 175 kilobytes, depending on platform and features used.
Standard - WebHuddle works on Java-enabled Linux, Windows, Unix, and Mac operating systems. WebHuddle uses the same protocol as web browsers, HTTPS, so your IT department doesn’t need to get involved.
Open Source - Leverage the many benefits of open source software, including value, transparency, and flexibility. If you find WebHuddle useful you may download it and freely install it on your own hardware.

OpenMeetings

Features:

Video/Audio
See Desktop of any participant
Multi-Language and Customizable
Whiteboard with drawing, write & edit, dragNDrop, Resizeing, Images (DragNDrop from Library), Symbol(s)
Conference while drawing (4x4 or 1xn modus)
Safe Drawings / whiteboard and load it next time, edit and resave
Import Documents
Send invitation and direct Links into a meeting
Moderating System
User-/Organisation-/Moderating- System
Backup and Language Module (LanguageEditor, BackupPanel)
Private and Public (Organisation only) Conference-Rooms
Technologies used, see TechnologyPortfolio

The benefits of a regular release schedule

2007-12-22T04:02:00.000Z

I have recently read the announcement that Kubuntu 8.04 is NOT going to be an LTS release, thereby deviating from the release schedule of all the other Ubuntu variants. I believe that it would be more beneficial to synchronize the LTS releases between the official Ubuntu variants.

First of all, Ubuntu needs to solidify its public image as much as possible. This is even more important while it has such a small mind-share in the overall technology market. Most computers users have no idea what an LTS release is, and they could be confused by mis-matched numbers. "Why is Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and Kubuntu 8.04 not LTS? Why is Ubuntu 8.10 not LTS and Kubuntu 8.10 is LTS?" Some IT departments might choose to only support LTS releases of Ubuntu. Now they must work with their KDE users who would need to upgrade on a different schedule than their Gnome users.

I understand why Kubuntu wants to delay their LTS release. They have a shiny new version 4.0 that provides many new features, but it is not quite ready to be considered for an LTS release. Historically, the last LTS release (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Dapper Drake) included primarily minor changes that focused on stability and polish. For Kubuntu 8.04 to be an LTS release, it would need to stay with KDE 3.5. No major changes should be made during an LTS, which I think everyone agrees upon.

The unfortunate timing of a moving KDE 4.0 release date is a problem that can be corrected. Mark Shuttleworth suggested at the last aKademy conference that KDE should change its release process to a hit a regular schedule. You can view the video of Mark's keynote address on the web. The idea is a simple one: Set a hard date and modify your goals (features) to match that timeline.

This sage advice was not well received, but it should be taken to heart by KDE. I believe that it would tremendously benefit KDE to create a regular and predictable release schedule. See the benefits that this has had for Gnome and Ubuntu. When open source projects have dependencies with each other, a regular release schedule allows them to plan their releases better. For instance, Ubuntu trusts Gnome to hit a stable release on time so Ubuntu provides them more time before freezing changes.

Now consider the negative aspects that an unpredictable release schedule brings. The best example of this is how users left Debian for Ubuntu so that could get an OS that provided regular releases. Another example is how the release of Microsoft Vista slipped multiple times, throwing off the plans of IT departments, software development companies, and computer vendors. A predictable release allows external parties to prepare and plan for the release. If KDE does this, they too will reap the rewards that Ubuntu has seen.

Proactively defending the GPL

2007-12-22T03:59:00.000Z

I keep hearing people talk about the need for a legal test case against the GPL. This has not happened yet in the US, and some people think it is necessary to legally legitimize the GPL license. These GPL-supporters hoped that the recent Busybox vs Monsoon Multimedia issue would satisfy this requirement. This turned out not to be the test case because it settled outside of court.

After hearing much debate and concern about how and when this all-important test case will take place, a very simple idea entered my mind. Why don't we just create this test case ourselves? Start with two pro-GPL parties, and have one party infringe against the GPL license. Then have the other party sue the first for its violation of the GPL license. Of course the specifics can be determined in advance to make the decision most favorable to defending the GPL. I expect that the legal costs for this case will be minuscule compared to the value it would bring.

Once the case has been decided in favor of the GPL, it would become the legal test case for GPL. Any future cases against the GPL can refer to the successful defense from this artificially created case. Is this a valid method to get a legal test case in the US? Or is it it a ridiculous idea that needs no further thought?

Ubuntu Utah release party

2007-11-02T16:05:00.000Z

On October 20th, the Ubuntu Utah team held a "Gutsy Gibbon" release party in Salt Lake City. It was a cold and rainy day, and some people decided to stay home where it was warm and dry. Even so, we had around 20 people in attendance, including many new faces. This was a great time to meet people and ask them, "Why Ubuntu?".

Here are two Ubuntu laptops, but the guy at the end was using Windows. I tried to convince him to give Ubuntu a try, but he was too busy working on his resume. Need I point out that in this case, (Using Windows) = (Looking for a job). Nothing like anecdotal evidence, right?

Please ignore the Fedora guy who came to crash the party. Just kidding Clint! I believe he was actually running Ubuntu in a virtual machine.

This is my Ubuntu baby, and her name is Chloe. She hopes to become a member of the Ubuntu Women team even though she is only 6 months old. Isn't she the cutest Ubuntero you ever did see? :)

Ubuntu 7.10 should make Dell happy

2007-10-08T14:25:00.000Z

I have just upgraded my new Dell computer that came with Ubuntu 7.04 to the pre-release version of Ubuntu 7.10 (Beta). Please read my initial review of this system.

After a large download and subsequent reboot, this computer came up in much better shape than it was in 7.04. Most notably, it detected the correct resolution and came up in 1680x1050. I also had many more resolutions to choose from. Instead of the three resolutions I had before, I now have six choices.

Secondly, the Ubuntu Restricted Driver Manager correctly detected my NVIDIA video card and prompted me to enable the driver for it.

Once I told Ubuntu to enable the NVIDA driver, it downloaded the driver and requested that I reboot my computer. After the reboot, I was saddened to see that it came up again in 1024x768. I opened the screen resolution tool and found that my optimal resolution was no longer a choice. In fact, while I still had six resolutions to choose from, 1024x768 was the highest one.

Any ideas why the "nv" driver correctly auto-detected my optimal resolution of 1680x1050 and the "nvidia" driver does not even offer this? Shouldn't it be the monitor detection tool that determines what resolutions should be offered? Is there any way to fix this other than manually editing xorg.conf? I thought Ubuntu had progressed past that unfriendly requirement. :(

UPDATE: I think I have answered my own question. If you look under "System -> Administration -> Screens and Graphics" you will find a tool that allows you to configure your monitors and video card.

Under the screen selection menu, I simply hit "Detect" and then clicked on "Widescreen". This selected a generic "Plug-N-Play" monitor. Why isn't this detection done automatically? By default it had chosen a monitor called "Custom 1" which had incorrect settings. I think I will create a bug for this behavior.

I am also going to create a bug report for the "Screen Resolution" tool that recommends adding a button that links to the "Screen" configuration tool. Read the comments for follow-up on these bugs.

Note: It looks like Firefox has reset the spell-check language to "de_AT" again. How strange! Has anyone else rand into this? I think I will perform a fresh install of Gutsy (7.10) when the final release is out to determine if this is a Dell or Ubuntu bug.

Review: My Ubuntu PC from Dell

2007-10-07T22:34:00.000Z

Introduction

Ever since Dell announced that they would be selling computers with Ubuntu pre-installed, I have wanted to buy one. This is not because I was unable to install Ubuntu myself, but because I wanted to reward Dell for choosing Ubuntu. I also wanted to make a statement that there was consumer demand for Linux to be pre-installed on computers.

Secondly, I have read Walt Mossberg's review of his Ubuntu laptop from Dell and I wanted to see how my experience compared to his. It is important to keep in mind that both Dell and Ubuntu have stated that the current versions of Ubuntu are intended for advanced users only.

This is the reason why Dell does not advertise Ubuntu more on their website. Dell knows that advanced users will be able to find the place to order their Ubuntu computer, while main-stream users are simply offered Windows operating systems. I have a feeling that Dell will promote Ubuntu more once the 8.04 LTS release comes out in April of 2008.

Ordering the computer

I want to share one minor issue that I ran into while ordering my computer. This probably happened only because I was ordering the computer through a special employee-discount program on the Dell website.

While walking through the configurator to select my hardware and software, I was offered many different Windows-only applications. It made me laugh as I imagined a Dell employee trying to install anti-virus, graphics, and productivity software on my Ubuntu machine.

I didn't take of screenshot of this, and it looks like you can't duplicate this by configuring an Ubuntu computer from Dell.

Screen Resolution

I ordered my computer with a 22-inch LCD screen from Dell. While waiting for my computer to arrive, I wondered how Dell would handle the drivers and settings for this monitor. I had heard that Dell includes some additional software that is not part of a default Ubuntu install, so I assumed that they setup my computer to handle this monitor correctly.

However, once I booted up my computer it came up with a resolution of 1024x768. This was not right, since the monitor came with a large label that said to use a resolution of 1680x1050. I pulled up the screen resolution settings (System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution). This tool showed that I only had three resolutions to choose from.

"That's strange", I thought. It appeared to me that Ubuntu was not using the proper NVIDIA drivers. To confirm this, I fired up the Ubuntu Restricted Drivers Manager. This tool quickly told me that "Your hardware does not need any restricted drivers."

Wow, did I miss the news that NVIDIA had released their drivers as open source? If not, then why doesn't Ubuntu offer to install the NVIDIA drivers? My monitor is plugged into the NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT card that came with my computer. Has anyone else ran into this problem? I am going to search Launchpad for bugs associated with the Restricted Drivers Manager.

Installing Updates

Soon after booting up, Ubuntu had automatically connected to my network using DHCP. I opened Firefox to verify that I had access to the internet. Within a few minutes, Ubuntu notified me that there were updates to be installed.

As it turns out, I had 164 updates to install which required downloading 198.4 MB of files. This may sound like a lot to Windows users, but you must keep in mind that Ubuntu updates are not just for the operating system, but they also include all of the applications and utilities that are installed on your computer.

I want to point out the amazing download speeds of Ubuntu updates. Can you imagine getting a download speed of 500+ kB/s from Microsoft updates?

Firefox using the wrong language

The first thing I did on this new computer was creating this blog post. I started typing the post using the Blogger interface and I noticed that Firefox was marking every word as misspelled. I started second guessing myself, thinking that I had typed the words wrong. I soon realized that Firefox was using the wrong language to spell-check my post! It appears that Firefox was set to the "de_AT" language.

Where should I report this bug? Is it a Dell or Ubuntu problem? Does Dell even provide a place to report bugs?

Conclusion

I have not spent any of this post talking about the plethora of things that worked correctly on my Ubuntu computer from Dell. If I had, this post would be dozens of pages long. Instead, I have listed the few issues that came up. These issues were few, but I can understand the frustration that Walt wrote about.

Can you imagine what a new computer user would think if they bought a nice video card and never realized that Ubuntu wasn't even using it? I hope these problems are being taken care of and will be corrected in the new version of Ubuntu (7.10) that comes out in 12 days.

In fact, I am currently upgrading this system to Ubuntu 7.10 Beta to see if that version will correctly detect my hardware. Take a look at the size of that download! I would hate to try to upgrade this over a dial-up connection! I wonder if the download would complete before the next version of Ubuntu came out, six-months later? :) I guess that is why Ubuntu provides free CDs!

Advantages of open source: Revisited

2007-10-07T20:06:00.000Z

I feel that is important for me to further analyze the benefits of open source software. In a previous post, I highlighted the cost-savings of open source and did not mention any of the other advantages that it provides. This post should provide a more balanced view of open source and the intrinsic benefits that free software provides.

Low Cost

This is the benefit that I focused on in my previous post. Cost is the most obvious benefit when people compare it to proprietary software. How does open source achieve this low cost?

I believe that the open source development model is the most efficient way to create software. With proprietary software development, each software company creates an isolated software silo. Meanwhile, their competitors are spending resources to create software that does almost the exact same function! Compare that to the open source model, where worldwide resources can be shared to develop an application.

Some people claim that while open source software may be free to acquire, it has a higher Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). These studies have been quite controversial because they are usually funded by Microsoft. Talk about a conflict of interest!

Even if Linux currently has higher integration costs, you can expect these costs to only become smaller with time. This is due to the fact that open source software is becoming more widely deployed and easier to manage. This means that there will be less training and maintenance costs to be accounted for in a TCO study.

Security

Open source software is usually considered to be more secure than proprietary software. I believe this can be attributed to two driving factors. The first factor is that the source code of the software is publicly available. This means that if the community is large enough, there will be many programmers analyzing the code. This has been stated as "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."

The second factor is very closely tied to the first. If programmers know that their code will go through a worldwide peer review, it provides an incentive for them to create high-quality code.

Continuity

With proprietary software, if the software company goes out of business then the software will simply die with the company. It is also possible for the software company to decide to stop maintaining a piece of software. In both cases, you are out of luck if your business depends on that software.

With open source software, you are not dependent on any one entity for the project to stay alive. If the current developers stop working on the software, anyone can use the source code to simply continue from where they stopped.

Flexibility

With traditional proprietary software, you were at the mercy of the software developer to listen to requests from users. It is common for business needs to dictate the future direction of software. In these cases, the software company will listen to large customers or a majority of their customers. If you are a small customer and have a unique need, it is unlikely that the software developer will be responsive to your requests.

With open source, you can add the features that your business needs and you can fix the bugs that affect you. There is no requirement to work with the developers, although the community benefits when you contribute your changes to the project.

What do you do if the open source developers are impossible to work with? In these extreme cases, it may be best to create a fork of the original project. Open source provides you the freedom to work with developers that meet your needs.

Proprietary software does not offer this freedom; in fact the industry does its best to prevent it. This is often called vendor lock-in, which is a method that software companies use to prevent customers from leaving. Open source companies prefer to simply use good service to ensure customer loyalty. Which method do you prefer?

Comments?

Please share any comments you may have about this topic. I really enjoy getting feedback on these topics. "The more brains the better!" said the Zombie. (Hey, it's almost Halloween!)

Digium is doing things right

2007-10-03T17:50:00.000Z

Background

Digium is the company behind Asterisk, the popular open source PBX. Digium was founded in 1999 by Mark Spencer, the creator of Asterisk. Since then, Asterisk has been deployed around the world on millions on computers. Despite that fact, Asterisk still does not have a large market share of the PBX market. Why is this? In the past, there were many reasons for this:

No brand recognition of Asterisk
No proven track record of successful implementations
Commercial support was needed
No Linux expertise on staff
Afraid to use open source software

These concerns were once valid, but today most of them have been addressed by Digium.

They made Asterisk easy to use

Digium has been working hard to overcome the historically steep learning curve associated with implementing Asterisk. They have accomplished this with two major improvements. First, Digium created an open source software appliance called AsteriskNow! that bundled Asterisk inside a pre-configured version of Linux. Most of the work for this appliance was done by the magic pixie dust known as rPath.

Secondly they have developed a simple web-based interface called Asterisk GUI to configure the PBX. This is a great improvement when compared to manually editing multiple text-based configuration files!

More recently, Digium has acquired a company called Switchvox. This was done so that Digium could take advantage of the advanced GUI that Switchvox had created. The best part about this acquisition is that Digium is going to be releasing the Switchvox code under the GPL license! Check out this quote from Mark Spencer:

So as a contrast right, look at what Fonality did. They bought an open source project [trixbox/asterisk@home] and then turned it into a proprietary product. What we are trying to do is go the other way. Take something that started out as a fully proprietary product and to try to leverage that to bring some additional technologies into open source.

They offer professional services for Asterisk

Digium now offers a wide range of professional services to meet the needs of any organization. This includes consulting, training, and technical support. They also offer a product called "Asterisk Business Edition", which benefits from the usability improvements listed above.

Digium appliances

Digium has also recently started selling a hardware appliance called the Asterisk Appliance. This appliance is designed for deployments of up to 50 users. It supports 8 analog ports, and can process 25 concurrent calls. There are no moving parts in device, which means no hard drive to crash. Instead, it uses an upgradeable flash card to store voice-mail, greetings, configuration settings, and recorded calls. Digium offers three levels of support for the device, including a 24x7 option.

This appliance is great, but it only serves the small business environment. I have heard that Digium is working on a larger appliance that will support hundreds of users. This is a great thing, since it will allow Asterisk to be deployed in a majority of businesses around the world. Only the largest deployments would require more than the this new appliance can deliver.

It was also recently announced that 3com would be selling a 3com branded Asterisk Appliance. This means that Asterisk will reach a much larger audience through the 3com brand. 3com is offering support services for their version of the appliance.

What does the future hold?

Digium has made great strides in making Asterisk both powerful and easy to use. However, one area that I see lacking is scalability. Asterisk works great for a few hundred phones, but how about a few thousand phones, like you might see at a University? The most common way to increase scalability of Asterisk systems is to use a SIP-proxy such as SER or OpenSER. For instance, the University of Pennsylvania is rolling out a 15,000 unit Asterisk-based phone system. To achieve the scalability they needed, they decided to implement SER along with Asterisk.

How does Digium expect to support large Asterisk installations if they require a third-party SIP-proxy that doesn't even offer commercial support? My guess is that Digium will acquire a SIP-proxy like SER or OpenSER so that they can offer a complete solution without needing any third-party software.

Another obstacle that Digium faces is Microsoft. Microsoft is about to enter the small-business VOIP market with a product called Response Point. The biggest advantage of this product is that it includes intelligent IVR, or speech recognition technology. This will allow users to dial anyone in the phone directory simply by speaking their name. This commonly used feature could persuade businesses to choose Microsoft over Digium.

Digium has several options to respond to this threat. First, they can try to create a working system based on open source projects such as Sphinx. I have no clue as to how much work this would be, but I expect that it would be difficult and time-consuming to achieve high-quality IVR. If you know anything about the current status of Sphinx, please leave a comment. How well does it currently work? Can it provide a voice directory feature like Microsoft Response Point does?

The second option for Digium would be to partner with a commercial IVR company. They are already partnered with Lumenvox, but I am not sure what this includes. For instance, I do not know if this will provide the voice directory feature mentioned above. I think it would be a good idea for Asterisk to provide advanced IVR functionality that is integrated with their software. The easier it is to implement the better!

What is the main benefit of open source?

2007-09-27T16:03:00.000Z

The short answer is that open source reduces the cost of software. It is widely accepted that software is a necessary cost of doing business in today's environment. Therefore, it is beneficial for companies to find ways to acquire software that minimizes that cost.

I believe that the open source development model is the most efficient way to create software. In the traditional software development model, each software company creates an isolated software silo. Meanwhile, their competitors are spending resources to create software that does almost the exact same function! Compare that to the open source model, where worldwide resources can be shared to develop an application.

Similar to the "invisible hand" of capitalism, there is an "invisible hand" of open source software. The idea is that when each individual works for their own benefit (fix bugs, add new features), it will benefit the entire community. When you have thousands of people doing this it allows open source software to quickly mature into a stable product, and includes features that are most wanted by users of the software.

So you want to be a software developer?

2007-09-26T17:50:00.000Z

Imagine that you are a software engineering student, with one more year left of school. How do you plan on being hired by a software company, despite the fact that you have no real-world experience? The traditional strategy has been to find an internship with a company. If you can get an internship, it will provide you with a part-time job. The best part of the deal is that you get your real-world experience, which will make you employable after graduation.

What do you do if there are no internships available? I propose that you should get involved in developing an open source project. Look for a project that interests you, and perhaps one that uses the programming languages that you would like to work with.

For example, if you want to be a game programmer, look for an open source gaming project. There is no interview or job application, you simply start looking at the code and seeing where you can help. The development team will provide direction and encouragement of your efforts. What a great way to improve your programming skills!

If you are an extremely good programmer, there is a chance that the open source project may hire to continue working full-time on the project. Here are two examples of community members who were hired by the open source project they were working on.

An additional advantage of an open source internship is that you are improving software that can be used by anyone, regardless of their ability to purchase software. You could even consider your work to be philanthropic.