Python Trademark At Risk In Europe: Python Software Foundation Appeals For Help

The open source programming language Python -- named after the British comedy series "Monty Python" -- became popular in the 1990s, along with two other languages beginning with "P": Perl and PHP. Later, they formed a crucial part of the famous "LAMP" stack -- the GNU/Linux operating system + Apache Web server + MySQL database + Python/Perl/PHP as scripting languages -- that underpinned many of the most successful startups from this time. 

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Python in Peril - Please Help

Trademarks are a problem for free software, because there is a tension between a desire to encourage sharing of the software, and a need to ensure that people are not misled over what exactly that software is. For example, you don't want people distributing modified copies of your code claiming that it is your code, or that it is approved by you - in the worst cases, it might contain malware, for example.

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Wrestling with Google's Python in the Cloud

Here's Google App Engine, part of its cloud offering:

Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain: You just upload your application, and it's ready to serve your users.

You can serve your app using a free domain name on the appspot.com domain, or use Google Apps to serve it from your own domain. You can share your application with the world, or limit access to members of your organization.

App Engine costs nothing to get started. Sign up for a free account, and you can develop and publish your application for the world to see, at no charge and with no obligation. A free account can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month.

During the preview release of Google App Engine, only free accounts are available. In the near future, you will be able to purchase additional computing resources.

Here's the fun bit:

Google App Engine applications are implemented using the Python programming language. The runtime environment includes the full Python language and most of the Python standard library.

Although Python is currently the only language supported by Google App Engine, we look forward to supporting more languages in the future.

A big boost for the open source Python, then - no surprise, given that its creator, Guido van Rossum, works for Google. But I wonder what languages it will support in the future?

Enter the (Komodo) Dragon

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Microsoft Buys Open Source (Talent)

I predict we'll see much more of this:

Microsoft has hired the creator of the SubSonic tool set and plans to use SubSonic as a key part of an upcoming platform.

...

SubSonic will remain under the same MPL (Mozilla Public License) 1.1 license it always has and will remain as completely open source as it always has, he said. "Nothing will change at all," he said. "I'm just getting paid, essentially, to work on it."

Conery said he had been working under contract with Microsoft for about eight months before the company hired him.

He is not the first developer of open-source technology hired by Microsoft to boost its developer division. The company hired John Lam, a Ruby expert, and Jim Hugunin, who delivered an implementation of Python for .Net, among others.

This is a shrewd move for Microsoft, which is following in the footsteps of Google. As Chris DiBona told me recently:

Google has been very public in the fact that we have three primary languages, and that's C++, Java and Python. So as part of that we try to bring on staff people who are the world leaders in those projects - Josh Bloch and Neil Gafter for Java, Guido on Python, Ian Lance Taylor and Matt Austern. We do that because having those people on staff, those projects can continue to move forward, and that's good for us; and also our use of the projects informs the directions sometimes where these projects can go.

So, seeing Linux in an environment like Google informs the direction of Linux in a lot of ways, because you get to see it in an extremely high-load, high-availability environment that you don't really see that often, and you see it on commodity hardware here. So that's really good for the outside world that Andrew [Morton] gets to see that, and that Andrew can really code whatever he wants.

You can't buy love, but you can certainly buy influence.

Enter the Open Komodo Dragon

I've always been struck by how little known the company ActiveState is, given that it's worked with many open source languages such as JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Tcl. Now it's opening up its multi-platform, multi-language IDE:

With the Open Komodo Project, the focus is on dynamic languages and the open web. Open Komodo is developed on top of many open source technologies including Mozilla, Python, and Scintilla. The primary development technologies used include XUL, JavaScript, Python, and C/C++. The Open Komodo platform will be entirely open source and licensed under the same terms as Firefox: Mozilla Public License (MPL), GNU General Public License (GPL), and GNU Lesser Public License (LGPL).

The Open Komodo Project aims to create a full-featured web development tool for client-side web development integrated with Firefox, Mozilla's free, open source web browser, and based on the award-winning Komodo IDE. This new tool, codenamed Komodo Snapdragon, will be developed in collaboration with the open source community.

Sounds good, particularly the integration with Firefox.

The Penguin Goes to Redmond

Well, to Redmond Magazine, that is....

The Coming Java Tsunami

I think this is just the first of many such decisions, all born of Sun's enlightened choice of the GNU GPL for Java:

Python was originally the language of choice for OLPC [Open Laptop Per Child] but with the announcement of the open sourcing of Java, Blizzard said that the OLPC may move to Java as it is close to native speeds thanks to Java's jit (Just in Time) compiler and Python's interpreter being rather slow. One imagines that with the restricted hardware available that a slow interpreted language is the last thing you want, even if it is an exceedingly easy and powerful one. This is also the first impact I have seen from the open sourcing of Java.

Opening Up Open Source

We know it works, and we know why it works, but somebody would like to know exactly how and why it works:

A group of UC Davis researchers has just received a three-year, $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study how open source software such as the Apache Web server is built.

...

The researchers will focus on the Apache Web server, the PostgreSQL database and the Python scripting language. They will collect information from the message boards, bug reports and e-mail discussions to understand how design teams organize themselves and interact.

Am I the only one who finds it slightly ironic that $750,000 is being spent to write some papers about something that is written for nothing? (Via LXer.)

Monty Python's Flying IDE

The last time I programmed was in Fortran, about 25 years ago. The machine I was using had 2 megabytes of memory - not RAM, but "core": it was an IBM 360, as I recall. I've often thought maybe I should learn a slightly more up-to-date language, and Python has always attracted me.

First, because of the name: I grew up on watching Monty Python when it first came out, and it has shaped my entire Weltanschauung; secondly, because I had the pleasure of interviewing Python's creator, Guido van Rossum, who is a thoroughly nice chap; and thirdly, because the consensus seems to be it's a fine language.

Perhaps I should add a fourth reason: the existence of Stani's Python Editor, which looks to be a splendid open source, cross-platform Python IDE, written, with neat recursiveness, in Python. (Via NewsForge.)

How the Stacks Stack Up

The ever-interesting Steven Vaughan-Nichols, who goes back a long way in the free software world, has a fascinating article about a comparison of two application stacks, one open source, the other from Microsoft. The results were surprising:

The tests showed that such vanilla LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/PERL) stacks as SLES (SUSE Enterprise Linux Server) 9, Zope, ZODB, and PHP and a pure LAMP based on SLES, produced "C" results. They weren't bad, but they weren't anywhere near as good as an out of the box .NET stack based on Windows Server 2003, IIS (Internet Information Server), SQL Server 2005, ASP (Active Server Pages), and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

The results mirror those of the Mindcraft tests back in the late 1990s, when GNU/Linux found itself whupped by Microsoft. But the consequence was a range of improvements that soon took free software past Windows. However disappointing the current outcome for the stack tests may be, I'm sure that the same will happen here.

Remember: every bug report makes open source stronger, and the same goes for adverse benchmarks.

Scrying an Oracle

This story has so many interesting elements in it that it's just got to be true.

According to Business Week, Oracle is poised to snap up no less than three open source companies: JBoss, Zend and Sleepycat Software. JBoss - which calls itself the "professional open source company", making everyone else unprofessional, I suppose - is one of the highest-profile players in this sector. Not least because its founder, the Frenchman Marc Fleury, has a tongue as sharp as his mind (you can sample his blog with this fab riff on genomics, Intelligent Design and much else).

His controversial remarks and claims in the past have not always endeared him to others in the free software world. Take, for example, the "disruptive Professional Open Source model" he proudly professes, "which combines the best of the open source and proprietary software worlds to make open source a safe choice for the enterprise and give CIOs peace of mind." Hmm, I wonder what Richard Stallman has to say about that.

JBoss has been highly successful in the middleware market: if you believe the market research, JBoss is the leader in the Java application server sector. Oracle's acquisition would make a lot of sense, since databases on their own aren't much fun these days: you need middleware to hook them up to the Internet, and JBoss fits the bill nicely. It should certainly bolster Oracle in its battle against IBM and Microsoft in the fiercely-fought database sector.

While many might regard the swallowing up of an ambivalent JBoss by the proprietary behemoth Oracle as just desserts of some kind, few will be happy to see Zend suffer the same fate. Zend is the company behind the PHP scripting language - one of the most successful examples of free software. (If you're wondering, PHP stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor" - employing your standard hacker recursive acronym naming convention).

Where JBoss is mostly key for companies running e-commerce Web sites, say, PHP is a core technology of the entire open source movement. Its centrality is indicated by the fact that it is one of the options for the ubiquitous LAMP software stack: Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP or Perl or Python. The fact that Oracle will own the engine that powers PHP will be worrying for many in the free software world.

About Sleepycat, I can only say: er, who? - but that's just ignorance on my part. This article explains that Sleepycat's product, Berkeley DB, is actually the "B" in LAMP. Got that? The Sleepycat blog may throw some more light on this strange state of affairs - or maybe not.

Whatever the reason that Oracle wants to get its mitts on Sleepycat as well as Zend and JBoss, one thing is abundantly clear if these rumours prove true: Oracle is getting very serious about open source.

In the past, the company has had just about the most tortuous relationship with open source of any of the big software houses. As I wrote in Rebel Code, in early July 1998, an Oracle representative said "we're not seeing a big demand from our customer that we support it" - "it" being GNU/Linux. And yet just two weeks later, Oracle announced that it was porting Oracle8 to precisely that platform. This was one of the key milestones in the acceptance of free software by business: no less a person than Eric Raymond told me that "the Oracle port announcement...made the open source concept unkillable by mere PR" - PR from a certain company being a big threat in the early days of corporate adoption.

Open source has come on by leaps and bounds since then, and these moves by Oracle are not nearly so momentous - at least for free software. But I wonder whether the otherwise canny Larry Ellison really knows what he's getting into.

Until now, Oracle has mainly interacted with open source through GNU/Linux - that is, at arm's length. If it takes these three companies on board - especially if it acquires Zend - it will find itself thrown into the maelstrom of open source culture. Here's a hint for Mr Ellison: you don't get to assimilate that culture, whatever you might be thinking of doing with the companies. You either work with it, or it simply routes around you.

Yes, I'm talking about forks here: if Oracle misplays this, and tries to impose itself on the PHP or JBoss communities, I think it will be in for a rude surprise. To its credit, IBM really got this, which is why its embrace of open source has been so successful. Whether Oracle can follow in its footsteps, only time will tell.

But the rumoured acquisitions, if they go ahead, will have one other extremely significant effect. They will instantly add credibility, viability and desirability to a host of other second-generation open source companies that have grown up in the last few years. Free software will gain an immediate boost, and hackers will suddenly find themselves in great demand again.

Given the astonishing lift-off of Google's share price, and the palpable excitement surrounding Web 2.0 technologies (and the start-ups that are working on them), the hefty price-tags on open source companies being bandied around in the context of Oracle have a feeling of déjà-vu all over again: didn't we go through all this with Red Hat and VA Linux a few years back?

You don't have to be clairvoyant - or an oracle - to see that if these deals go through, the stage is well and truly set for Dotcom Delirium 2.0.

Google: Friend or Foe?

"Don't Be Evil" is the company motto: but is Google for us or against us?

I'm not talking about justifable concerns that it knows far too much about what interests us - both in terms of the searches we carry out and (if we use Gmail) the correspondence we send and receive. This is a larger issue, and relates to all the major online companies - Microsoft, Yahoo, even Amazon - that mediate and hence participate in much of our lives. What concerns me here is whether Google can be considered a friend of openness.

On the one hand, Google is quite simply the biggest open source company. Its fabled server farm consists of 10,000s/100,000s/1,000,000s (delete as applicable) of GNU/Linux boxes; this means that anyone searching with Google is a GNU/Linux user.

It has a growing list of code that it has open-sourced; it has sponsored budding hackers in its Summer of Code programme; and it keeps on acquiring key open source hackers like Guido van Rossum (inventor of Python) and Ben Goodger, (Firefox lead engineer).

On the other hand, Google's software is heavily weighted towards Microsoft Windows. Programs like Google Earth and Picasa are only available under Windows, and its latest, most ambitious foray, the Google Pack, is again only for Microsoft's operating system. This means that every time Google comes out with some really cool software, it is reinforcing Microsoft's hold on the desktop. Indeed, we are fast approaching the point where the absence of GNU/Linux versions of Google's programs are a major disincentive to adopt an open source desktop.

This dilemma is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, since Google clearly wants to serve the largest desktop market first, while drawing on the amazing price-performance of free software for its own computing platform.

But there is another area where it has the chance to play nice with openness, one that does not require it to come down definitively on one side or the other of the operating system world.

Another Windows-only product, Google Talk, is the subject of a lawsuit alleging patent infringement. However, closer examination of the two patents concerned, Patent Number 5,425,085 - "Least cost routing device for separate connection into phone line" - and Patent Number 5,519,769 - "Method and system for updating a call rating database", suggests that one of the best ways Google could show that it is a friend of both open source and proprietary software is by defending itself vigorously in the hope that the US Patent system might start to be applied as it was originally envisioned, to promote innovation, not as an easy way of extracting money from wealthy companies.

Update 1: Google has come out with a Mac version of Google Earth. It's a start.

Update 2: There are rumours about Google working on its own desktop GNU/Linux. Frankly, I'll believe it when I see it: it's a poor fit with their current portfolio, and the margins are terrible.

Update 3: Comfortingly, these rumours have now been scotched.