Gates vs GPL

"There's free software and then there’s open source," he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries. With open source software, on the other hand, "there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with." Open source, he said, creates a license "so that nobody can ever improve the software," he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business. (Yes, Linux fans, we're aware of how distorted this definition is.) He went back to the analogy of pharmaceuticals: "I think if you invent drugs, you should be able to charge for them," he said, adding with a shrug: "That may seem radical."

Full article at Ars Technica.

We do just fine "improving our software"... Linux continues upward while Microsoft's latest blunder is an expensive one. It looks more like GPL is promoting the jobs and opportunities he speaks of tenfold, while a stagnant business model is slowly killing Microsoft. There is no intention nor desire to give up on free software from the members of the community... but Microsoft is feeling the pressure... they are slowly giving way to our model.

Ubuntu 8.04 Released

The new version of Ubuntu affectionately codenamed Hardy Heron has been officially released. It's a Long Term Support release (the second that Ubuntu has had), which means three years of security updates for the desktop (5 years for the server). You might want to hold off for a few days to upgrade as I'm doing because the servers are naturally, quite busy.

The Ubuntu community provides an easy walkthrough for upgrading and they've got a very smooth screenshot walkthrough for Kubuntu as well.

The new Ubuntu provides the latest software versions from the open source stream, like X.org 7.3, 2.6.24 Linux kernel, and GNOME 2.22. The PolicyKit framework has been integrated into Ubuntu's administration windows, allowing the assignment of fine-grained administration permissions to normal users. This way, if you need your friend to change, say, your display settings, you won't need to enter your password for him or divulge it outright in plain earsight of your mortal enemies.

Kubuntu is offering both KDE 3.5.9 (commercially supported by Canonical) and KDE 4.0.3.

Announcing Slicker#

I have written the basis for a new version of Slicker, an idea for a new kind of panel system which uses cards that sit at the screen edge. Originally designed by 'fop' and posted at KDE-Look.org, the design entails using "cards" as the basic unit of the panel. These cards can be moved along any edge of the screen, and can be stacked on top of each other. Clicking on a card results in it "extending" outward away from the edge and revealing it's applet, that provides the card's functionality. A smaller "miniview" can always be seen on the head of the card when it is retracted, and can provide a bit of information about the status of whatever it is the card is doing.

I was one of the original developers from Slicker, but life took me elsewhere when I decided to stop developing C++ code and start developing C#. Shortly after I left, Slicker disbanded in favor of Plasma, the newly announced kicker+kdesktop replacement for KDE4. When I heard about it I didn't much agree (the information on Plasma was sparse and said nothing about using the cards concept)-- but I figured I'd wait it out until Plasma came out. If it had provided the card concept which I was so enamored with I would've been content with that but it didn't. So, I guess it has come full circle because now one day I will have a Slicker implementation to use on my own desktop, and the idea will be realized.

Mono in Ubuntu

Being someone who is heavily invested in C#, the CLR, and Mono, I find myself driven to keep my finger on the pulse of Mono-related discussions and community sentiment. So, when I came across this blog post from Lost Midnight, I couldn't pass up spending a few minutes to read the article and comments.

The article talks about removing Mono from the main Ubuntu CD distribution so that they can fit some more nifty applications on it.

This comment put things in perspective a bit:

Mono is an implementation of c# runtime which is an ecma and an iso standard. So it is not a patent violation. You're main argument is that little else on the cd uses it so we should chuck it. I dont think much on the cd uses the java runtime so the same argument would apply. There are probably many libraries or runtimes that have little "use" with other apps on the cd. should we get rid of all of them and replace them with your fav apps?

It's true. Mono implements the Common Language Runtime, as defined by the ECMA-335 specification. C# is ECMA-334. And it is there as a support system, not as a user-visible "feature" per se.

Another comment outlined more closely what this meant for Ubuntu.

I think there are some other good reasons to leave it in. For one thing, many .Net applications can run unmodified on Mono--and with a significant performance boost at that. There is fantastic potential here for people thinking about leaving Windows, and it's only very recently become mature enough for .Net developers and end-users to start paying attention to it. The real value in its inclusion is probably not the two applications that are bundled with the distro but in the ability to natively execute a growing genre of Windows applications in a much better way than using Wine.

It's been some time since I checked in on the status of the patent issues, but from what I remember, they center mainly around specific libraries rather than the runtime. If anything should be considered for removal, it would be them. The runtime itself is immensely valuable and--though this is just my opinion--I think C# and the platform surrounding it are some of the most exciting things happening in software development. It is possibly the only thing coming out of Redmond today that one could make that statement about.

Also, I think it's quite a feather in Ubuntu's hat to be able to run those applications AND run them faster than Windows. I say, leave it in for long enough to see whether its potential is realized. In two years, if those two apps are the only thing useful running off of Mono, by all means cut it out.

I suspect however that will not be the case.

Unfortunately, the cards are stacked against Mono in this case, because .NET adoption among Windows programs alone is still struggling to catch on.

My favorite comment was this one though:

If you want Microsoft developers and users to adopt Linux, removing the Mono runtime is a step back.

The Mono runtime allows me to develop software in C# that runs on Linux. By having Mono installed by default this means that I can get a wide adoption rate of my software in Linux.

Mono is an extremely strong tool for moving people entrenched in Microsoft over to Linux.

Putting Mono on Ubuntu is a chess move. Taking Mono off of Ubuntu and replacing it with common utilities is a checkers move.

Larry Page and Sergey Brinn for President

It occurred to me today that what our country needs is a blast of innovation. We need a President whose call is to "not be evil". That's why I think the founders of Google will be the best option for our country in 2008. With Google's head boys in charge, our country would probably see the abolishment of software patents, serious work to combat social issues like global warming, health, and poverty.

Net neutrality would be given a serious chance with a President who will put it on Congress' agenda, and maybe, just maybe, the US can drop it's greedy Internet Backbone attachment so we can get control of the Internet into an international body, protecting the Internet's infrastructure from political agenda.

Health care, although conceivably not a main point on the duo's agenda, would be given more than a fair chance, considering the overwhelming evidence available globally that suggests that universal health care is a sustainable system and that it bears no damage to our free market economy.

In summation, we need an innovative President who will offer an ear to the growing progressivist movement in the US. I think Larry and Sergey would do just that, and maybe stop a world war in the process.

Updates

Here's an update on my recent works. Our story left off at enhancing the page allocator and pager code that I've written for the SharpOS kernel. Since then I've spent my time (what time I have between other obligations) doing a number of things:

Extracting ADC from PageAllocator

I've started to work out the logistics for an ADC module. Many things remain unclear. It's obvious that in an ideal situation we'd want each ADC layer to be placed in individual DLLs which can be AOT-compiled-in when we build the kernel. This allows us to only have to build the kernel once for all platforms supported with ADC (:-D). However, at this point in the game the AOT can't do multi-DLL compilation (but I think only a small change is required). Right now I've got two ADCs, SharpOS.ADC.X86 and SharpOS.ADC.Generic. I've posted X86 in my sandbox folder, but the usefulness of Generic (which is really just a 'null' implementation) is shaky.

AOT branch

I also started my own AOT branch which has some nice trivial changes for things like option support and output verbosity. The most notable thing I did was write a few scripts and embed them as resources so the AOT would be able to generate a DOS floppy image for testing, directly after compilation (and automatic :-D). This should speed up the testing process a bit, as creating the image files for testing is a real pain on both Windows and Linux.

Enhancing the Page Allocator

Very much aligned with the fact that the control bitmap technique was wholly unsatisfactory, last night I changed the page allocator I'm working on to use the free page stack technique. I even wrote the code to allocate a range of contiguous physical pages. I still must finish paging and the basic memory mapping API.