AustralianIT.com reports that Microsoft’s .NET internet strategy is not clearly defined, and it seems to be
driven largely by fear of rivals’ similar strategies, according to Forrester
Research analyst Carl Howe.

The software giant is using a variant of its well-known FUD (fear, uncertainty and
doubt) tactics to avoid being “Netscaped”, Forrester’s e-business infrastructure
research director said.

“Okay, so we’re all getting rightfully angry that the tyranny of the majority is taking our favorite platform, the Macintosh, out of schools. We’re angry that our children may not get to use Macs in school or that they might get the impression, through their school, that Macs aren’t used “in the real world.” –Kelly McNeill

By Julie Bresnick
NewsForge Columnist
Open Source people

In 1998 John Kelsey and Bruce Schneier released their Street
Performer
Protocol, “an electronic-commerce mechanism to facilitate the
private
financing of public works.” Jesse
Vincent
was just entering the working world. He read it with interest. About a
year
later, clearly an enthusiastic alum, Jesse went back to Wesleyan University, having
graduated but
a year before, for a reunion event that included a talk by fellow alum,
John Perry Barlow,
and the
thoughts on the discussion inspired by the Street Performer Protocol
advanced.

Now, another year later, Jesse isn’t staying up till 4 a.m. hacking
code
anymore, he’s hacking business plan. Along with his friend and partner
Jessica Perry
Heckman and a five member board of advisors, Jesse is working to
solve
the current clash of new technology and old rules by establishing OpenCulture.org, a service they
hope
will bring distribution of books and music into the digital age, a site
that
Jesse believes will be the free library of the future.

Today’s technology has brought the concept of copyright to the fore
for
judgement. Many now see an exceptional opportunity to renovate a
system
that has long served the large corporations better than the art it is
meant
to protect. Now, the corporate bodies that claim to facilitate an
artist’s
dream of being able to make a living doing what they love, scramble to
maintain a hold on the industry. Granted, in the context of our
hyper-commericalist society, the notion of turning profit from
something
supposedly full of soul seems slightly oxymoronic, but perhaps there
needn’t
be a crossroads for future musicians and their creative brethren.

If
the
concept of OpenCulture succeeds, it will remove the middle-man, long
the
foyer for the devil, entirely.

The idea behind OpenCulture is that an artist sets a price for their
work
and the public is invited to submit donations in an effort to reach
that
price. All transactions occur at the site and the money goes into a
fund
until the set amount is reached at which time it is handed over to the
artist and their work is made available, first to those that made
donations
and two weeks later to the public at large. It is then free and forever
available to anyone who wants it.

OpenCulture takes only 10% of each donation to cover its own
operating
costs. Shunning the gobs and gobs of money he could be making by
signing up
with a dot-com, Jesse hopes to one day make enough money off of
OpenCulture
to pay the rent and fill his belly. Currently running on little more
than
grants from family and money he saved from the last high-paying job his
brand of skills warrants these days, his fulfillment comes from the
idea
that he is acting justly.

The phrase he uses more than any other during our conversation is
“the
right thing to do.” He uses it when referring to what the woman who
interviewed him for his job at Microsoft knew regarding the Internet Engineering Task Force. He
cites
it as the reason for the decision to make OpenCulture a non-profit.
And I’m
sure it’s in his head when he resists my attempt to goad him into
bashing
Microsoft where he worked for his first year out of college. The most
he
offers is an anecdote about finding himself 10 feet from Bill Gates
and
suddenly realizing he had on his Linux T-shirt. Good but admittedly not
deliberate.

In big letters, the OpenCulture homepage reads, “Art should be
free.
Artists should be paid.” OpenCulture is even currently applying to the
IRS to
get 501(c)(3) non-profit status which would make donations tax
deductible,
like when you give to a charity. Though many a starving artist has been
declared a worthy charity, in form, a lot of what Jesse says and
OpenCulture
plans to attempt smacks of idealism, perhaps naivete, maybe even a
touch of
political correctness.

In fact, now that he’s fronting something he believes in, he’s so
concerned about being good that he doesn’t want me to tell you about
the
heavy petting he may have indirectly encouraged through the Open Source
software he developed into a matchmaking site on his college campus.
(It’s
out there, better to fess up now than let it come out as a scandal
later.)

I find his concern endearing, sweet rather than righteous or wrong.
It’s
definitely to his credit that he was empowering his community, one
traditionally maligned with interminable virginity, to get some. He
was
applying the new technology then in quite the same way he is now, to
achieve
justice, only what the artist is hard up for is cash. The matchmaking
site
was simply Jesse’s first experiment using the Web as a tool for
expediency.

Cash is what OpenCulture will hopefully get artists. Jesse has no
idea
how much artists will ask or be able to get for their work. When I
express
doubt in the ability for this method to earn the kind of riches today’s
successful artists do, he illuminates the fact that with OpenCulture
the
money goes directly from the consumer to the artist (except for the 10%
that
goes to the OpenCulture Foundation).

“The amount of money they’d have to raise to make $500,000 is
so
much less than what they’d have to make selling to record stores.”
True, but
also without any of the marketing prowess or wheeling and dealing of
the
major labels and commercial outlets.

The idea that people will find what they like and then gather to pay
for
it without someone shoving it in their face is so simple and pure.
Along
with the joke about being glad he didn’t learn too much from the
19th
century Russian language textbook he began studying when he was 9
because
later he realized that, “Hey, after the revolution they actually took
out a
few letters and changed the grammar a bit,” this idealism is the only
detail
that authenticates his youthful geekness.

Come to think of it, he was in a fraternity which is an institution
normally credited with geek persecution not inclusion. He attended
Wesleyan, which seems more tweed than dweeb. And he earned a degree in
Russian and East European studies rather than anything scientific or
technical. He even worked for Microsoft. Jeez, on paper he sounds more
mainstream than I am. Heck, people even send him gifts off his Amazon
wish
list in appreciation for his work, and including the wok, they’ve all
been
gift wrapped.

I want a wok.

With this kind of record it’s no wonder that his faith in the public
is
at an all-time high. He’s been involved in the Open Source community
since
elementary school, participating in BBS communities and Apple II user
groups. Turns out that fraternity was a literary society. And he owns
ferrets, a pet traditionally coupled with enthusiast owners. He only
knows
a discerning minority. It’s a good thing he’s not looking to cash in on
this
project because barring a serious overhaul of the impressionable
masses,
it’s likely to stay as niche as the art of programming already is.

Next February, the Russian Mir 1 space station will die a fiery death and its ashes spread over the Indian Ocean, reports the BBC.

TechWeb reports that IBM is increasing its variety of server hardware available, with the construction of its eServer line.

The BBC reports on the measurement of the Solar System’s largest known volcano: 27,000 metres tall, roughly three times the height of Mt. Everest.

Linux Today has an interesting story on the evolution of WINE (WINE stands for ‘Wine Is Not an Emulator’, or the ‘Windows Emulator’). The article explores such questions as ‘what effect will Microsoft investing in Corel have on WINE as Corel has invested heavily in that project’.

By Tina Gasperson
News Editor

Code forking has been a popular topic of discussion in the Open Source community recently, ever since a renegade team of Samba developers announced it was packing up its tools and forging a new programming path. Code forking happens when an Open Source development team splits up, with each group taking the code and making changes independently of the others. This is exactly what happened with the Samba project earlier in October. In case you didn’t know, Samba is an Open Source application that enables Linux and Windows NT systems to co-exist on the same network. According to Samba.org, some of the Samba development team was working on a code branch that would provide complete NT functionality.

They went out on a limb and were “using a architecture that differs considerably from the one that has been established in Samba over the last 10 years of development,” according to an open letter published on the Samba Web site and written by Andrew Tridgell, the originator of the core project.

So the team leaders “encouraged” the renegades to take their side job on the road. They did. The new project is called Samba-TNG, which stands for “The Next Generation.”

Tridgell says he is “delighted” that the split happened, and he looks forward to the innovations that the new team will be able to come up with, now that they are free of the constraints of the more established conservatism of the original Samba team.

Just the word causes panic

So, the code fork is no big deal, and things are good in Samba land. But just the mention of code fork in some circles of the Linux community is like pushing the big red panic button. Some of that fear comes from observing the splits that happened with Unix when companies made their own proprietary changes to the OS that weren’t compatible with the core code.

But under the GPL, no one can make proprietary changes to the Linux kernel. Even so, splintering of the kernel is possible, and probably wouldn’t bode well for the desired widespread commercial acceptance of the Open Source OS. And the ultimate fear is that non-compatible versions of Linux would spring up, voiding much of the inherent flexibility of the OS.

But the Linux community should consider its own history before it freaks out over the eventuality of a major code fork. Linux advocates say that the very nature of the GPL encourages the reuniting of forked projects once the branched code is finished.

Bruce Perens, president of Linux Capital Group and chairman of Progeny Linux Systems, says, “When a GPL project forks, each of the forks can take the best code from the other forks, that’s one of the features of the GPL license. Thus, GPL projects tend to re-merge after a fork. Take, for example, the split between GNU LIBC and the Linux LIBC — it went on for years while Linux stabilized, and then the forks re-merged into one project.”

But doesn’t Linux’s lack of a central authority as compared to say, BSD, encourage multiple splintering that could dilute the OS’s power in the software market? Not if you ask Perens.

“Actually, a stronger central authority might be one of the reasons that BSD forks. Linus doesn’t give developers much reason to need to walk off and start their own projects just so that they can get something done.”

So according to Perens, the structure of the BSD license is more likely to cause developer team splits because code has to be reviewed by a core group or director that sets the direction and the goals of each BSD project, whether it be BSDi, FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD. This can cause bottlenecking, leading to developer frustration and unfriendly code forks that don’t tend to reunite.

Little forking in BSD land

Not so, says Pat Lynch, senior systems and network engineer for the Open Source Development Network (which owns NewsForge). “Since Net, Free, and Open BSDs were
started, there has been little to no forking. Where there is a need, it is filled, and the community has more of a say in what goes into a kernel. The core team communicates with us, and in some cases we’ve known these people for years.

“Recently, FreeBSD elected a core team membership from amongst the developer community. If anything, it is less centralized, and not dependent upon one person [like Linux is dependent upon Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux OS]. Linus Torvalds is not a god and can make mistakes … Bruce is blinded by the zealotry that Linux evangelists generally have these days.”

But does Torvalds even claim to be the god of Linux? “Linus actually has no say over what Linux distributions do at all,” says Perens. Which could be a detriment when it comes to the perceived risk of code forking, since anyone can do whatever he wants to with the code, as long as it complies with the GPL.

But Perens says, “If other developers did not like what Linus does, they would not stick with him.”

Hold on, guys

Richard Rauch, Open Source advocate and student at the University of Kansas, takes a more neutral approach. Although BSD accuses Linux of many forks, and Linux does the same to BSD, according to Rauch, they’re both right.

“BSD has forked the kernel several times, with each fork
persevering—but has only forked the overall OS about as many times as
the kernel. Linux effectively has one kernel, but to make a complete OS
it needs a distribution, and distributions are a kind of ‘whole OS
fork’, and so the Linux operating systems can be seen as heavily,
persistently forked.”

And Rauch is all for forking. “Personally, I think that [it] is a good thing.” And he points out that Perens and Lynch both seem to feel that diversity is good. “Perens speaks
of the forks sharing the best features; Lynch speaks of cross
pollenation. And, kernels benefit from diversity as much as anything
else.

“The question then, isn’t to fork or not to fork; it is how much and what.”

Author’s note: I am available to respond to questions, comments, and criticisms. Please post your thoughts in our discussion forum –TG.

The Register reports that “S3 spin-off Frontpath, the maker of the ProGear web pad, says it
has no connection with a company producing an identical product,
but with a BeOS twist.

The mysterious Envivid has announced details of what it calls the
‘eQ ProGear’ GSM-ready wireless web appliance. The Envivid web
site describes a device apparently identical to Frontpath’s ProGear —

like ProGear, is also based on Transmeta’s Crusoe processor — the
difference being that it runs the BeOS operating system and not
Linux.”

LinuxWorld has part 3 of its Linux firewall series: “The idea is simple — let’s get some custom hardware and
software, put them into one easy-to-install ‘black box’ and write
some software to manage the beast. The end user doesn’t need
to know what OS is inside, or how to install and configure the
software.”