Fedora as Basis of Russia's Operating System?

An interesting conversation took place recently:

Несколько дней назад в Минкомсвязи России прошла встреча с участием главы Минкомсвязи РФ И.О.Щёголева и директора европейского подразделения, вице-президента корпорации Red Hat Вернера Кноблиха. В ходе встречи было объявлено, что развитие свободного программного обеспечения в России – одно из главных направлений работы Министерства.

[Via Google Translate: A few days ago in Minkomsvyazi Russia held a meeting with the head of the Russian Federation Minkomsvyazi IO Schegolev and Director of the European division, vice-president of the corporation Red Hat Werner Knobliha.During the meeting it was announced that the development of free software in Russia - one of the main directions of the Ministry.]

It's good news that Red Hat has had the opportunity to talk to senior government officials about open source - in this case, at the ministry of communications - but what's much more important are the specifics mentioned in the story:

На встрече обсуждался широкий круг вопросов, касающихся развития рынка свободного программного обеспечения (СПО) и его практического применения в действующих системах. Отдельно отмечена важность создания российского сообщества разработчиков Russian Fedora, которое может послужить одним из шагов навстречу создания отечественной операционной системы. Министр отметил: «Мы считаем, что интеллектуальный потенциал российских специалистов таков, что в России можно вести не только сборку, но и полноценную разработку кода».

[The meeting discussed a wide range of issues related to market development of free software (ACT) and its practical applications in existing systems. Separately, the importance of establishing a Russian community of developers Russian Fedora, which could serve as a step toward the creation of the domestic operating system. The Minister noted: «We believe that the intellectual potential of Russian experts is that Russia can not only build, but a full-fledged development of the code».]

This seems to be a reference to the call for an independent Russian operating system, based on GNU/Linux, that I wrote about last month. The suggestion in the above post is that a step towards such an operating system would be establishing a Russian Fedora project, which would then allow Russian coders to contribute on a much larger scale than hitherto.

The fact that these talks have taken place is an indication that the idea of a national operating system for Russia - dismissed by some as fanciful - is under serious consideration. Let's hope Red Hat responded positively to the overtures.

(NB: For fast updates on this and similar stories, you can also follow me on Twitter at glynmoody.)

Open Access Astro-Observatory Runs GNU/Linux

Montegancedo Observatory is the first free open access astronomical observatory in the world. It is located in Building 6 of the School of Computing. The dome is equipped with a computer-automated, robotized 10” telescope, and several computers operating as a web applications server. The observatory also links and broadcasts images and videos captured by the webcams arranged around the dome... All servers run on GNU/Linux systems.

Providing open access to facilities, mediated by the Internet; providing (presumably) open access to the results in real-time; using free software to run the whole thing: this is the future of science. (Via Open Access News.)

Is Google Running Short of Hackers?

How hard can it be porting Chrome to GNU/Linux? Hard, apparently:

The 2.0 version of the browser was released to developers and includes a number of new features including the begins of an extension strategy for the browser.

Senior Google staffers said, however, that Linux and Mac versions of the browser would only be made available later this year. CNet quotes Brian Rakowski, Chrome’s product manager, who said that the Mac and Linux versions of the browser were now at the “test shell” stage which meant that they could show web pages but are still in a very raw format.

Rakowski said that versions of Chrome for Linux and Mac would likely be made available by the middle of 2009.

Things getting a bit tough in the Googleplex, chaps?

Latvia Spreads a Little Light on Openness

Ever wondered what those Latvians are up to with free software? Wonder no more:

Latvia's Minister for Electronic Government Affairs Signe Bāliņa says open standards are key to improving efficiency and transparency in government.

Open technology and open standards are fundamental to efficient communication with the government, the minister argued in her opening address at the Latvian Open Technology Conference in Riga on 12 November. She said the government needs to use open IT systems to allow citizens and businesses to communicate easily with the government. "We think it is very important these systems are open and based on open technologies and open standards."

The conference in Riga, organised by the Latvian Open Technology Association (LATA), drew more than 250 participants from the central government, municipalities, IT firms and universities. LATA wanted to update the attendants on open source developments in the country and the region.

Several Latvian businesses and institutions described their use of open source software. The telecoms company Lattelecom for example presented on the use of open source in their data centres and the Latvian University showed how it uses the open source e-learning system Moodle to offer on-line education. The university also employs open source for its data storage and to create grid computing services.

There's also interesting stuff about Russia - somewhere I've long believed is set to emerge as an open source leader:

Marat Guriev, a representative of IBM in Eastern Europe and Asia, gave an overview of developments on open source software and open standards in Russia. He described how the Russian military has been working on its own version of GNU/Linux, parts of which have recently been declassified by the All-Russian Scientific and Research Institute of Control Automation in the Non-Industrial Sphere (Vniins). According to Guriev, many specialised version of GNU/Linux distributions are produced, often in response to requests by local governments. In three Russian regions, most of the PCs in use in about a thousand schools have been switched over to GNU/Linux. Moreover, Russian science institutes are publishing their work on open source systems, he said, for example on the web site Linux Testing.

I've written about the activity in Russian schools before. If you read Russian, you can read Guriev's presentation here - it has plenty of useful detail about free software in his country.

I'm *Not* Linux

One of the most powerful aspects of free software is that its entire approach and mindset is orthogonal to proprietary software. It's not just better, it's profoundly different. That's one of the most important reasons that *everything* Microsoft has thrown against free software has not just failed, but failed dismally. The company can fight and win against more or less any conventional rival, since it has spent years honing its attack methods. But the latter are simply inappropriate when trying to compete against projects that are profoundly non-commercial: the community cannot be bought off or out; nor can it be undercut by selling goods at a loss against it. In fact, it is striking that along with undeniable strengths, the increasing commercialisation of open source has also brought with it vulnerabilities - notably legal ones - as some of free software's angularity has been smoothed down to make it more "acceptable" to enterprises.

On Open Enterprise blog.

NYT Has Clue about Malware

Following my post below about malware, here's an example of how it might be done:

Internet security is broken, and nobody seems to know quite how to fix it.

Despite the efforts of the computer security industry and a half-decade struggle by Microsoft to protect its Windows operating system, malicious software is spreading faster than ever. The so-called malware surreptitiously takes over a PC and then uses that computer to spread more malware to other machines exponentially. Computer scientists and security researchers acknowledge they cannot get ahead of the onslaught.

Macintosh is mentioned, but GNU/Linux is not, so the piece isn't perfect, but it's a start.

Stars of the Screen(shot)

One of the wondrous things about free software is that there is so much of it. One of my favourite hobbies is using Synaptic to look at all the amazing goodies out there - and then download stuff, just because I can. But this richness is also something of a problem: it's hard knowing whether something is really what you are looking for.

Enter the screenshots.debian.net:

This is a public repository of screenshots taken from applications contained in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. It was created to help getting an impression of what a certain software will look like on your desktop before you install it. Everybody can take screenshots and upload them. Our admin team will just review your changes before they become publicly visible.

I'm sure there must be some interesting mashups to be had with this resource.

Do the Maths: GNU/Linux's Discovery

Westfield State College senior mathematics majors Jeffrey P. Vanasse and Michael E. Guenette, working under the direction of Mathematics Department faculty members Marcus Jaiclin and Julian F. Fleron, have made a significant new discovery in the mathematical field of number theory. They have discovered the first known example of a 3 by 3 by 3 generalized arithmetic progression (GAP).

And how did they do that?

An algorithm to check the necessary cases – still easily hundreds of trillions of cases – was programmed using a Linux version of the computer language C++.

Nothing extraordinary there - except that it's not extraordinary....

The Super Windows That...Couldn't

One of the more bizarre accusations flung by Microsoft at GNU/Linux over the years is that it doesn't scale. This is part of a larger campaign to portray it as a kind of “toy” operating system – fine for low-end stuff, but nothing you'd want to run your enterprise on....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Cloud Computing Dispels the Fog of FUD

One of the anomalies of the currently-fashionable cloud computing is that people tend not to talk about the underlying operating system – presumably because they tend to think the cloud *is* the operating system. The fact is that both of the main cloud computing systems – from Amazon and Google – have been running on GNU/Linux. In other words, not only is open source running vast swathes of the Internet, but now it's holding up nearly all the clouds, too....

On Open Enterprise blog.

The True Value of Nothing

How much is GNU/Linux worth? Well, its price is zero, but it's clearly incredibly valuable: what to do? Here's what a new paper from the Linux Foundation did....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Respect, Nathive

In the world of closed-source software, it's hard to get a project going in a sector with established players. Since everything must be built from scratch - no building on the work of others *here* - it requires considerable financial backing.

Of course, that's not the case with free software, where the archetypal person in a bedroom can just start hacking for the sheer love of it - like this, for example:

Unfortunately I do not have much help... in fact I'm not a Gnu/Linux Expert, I'm not a superstar programmer, Simply one day I promised myself to do this, life is something strange... Born in 1985, like FSF, I became Gnu/Linux user in 2007 (never too late) and this is my first C program. I love to learn!

I would like to form a working group and continue learning more and more quickly.

The project is Nathive:

Nathive is a libre software image editor, similar to Adobe Photoshop, Corel Photo-Paint or The GIMP, but focusing on usability, logic and provide a smooth learning curve for everyone. The project run over Gnome desktop and everyone can colaborate in it with code, translations or ideas.

The project is in alpha phase, so it is an incomplete work, the intention is to achieve progressively a professional graphic editor without giving up the initial usability. It's a made from scratch code, with C programming language and GTK+, simple, lightweight, easy to install and use.

I particularly liked the first statement of the following:

Nathive Philosophy

* Show respect and gratitude to GIMP community.
* First make it easy, then make it powerfull.
* The user don't need to see every options all time.
* If it seems absolutely absurd, might work.
* Everything should be obvious.

Respect and gratitude begets the same.... Good luck, Nathive.

Cracking the GNU/Linux Security Cliché

One of the jibes about GNU/Linux from the closed-source crowd is that the only reason there so few security exploits against it is that its market share is too small for crackers to care. Against that background, the following development must represent some kind of milestone....

On Open Enterprise blog.

What Comes After the Windows Era?

On Linux Journal.

Dell Builds on GNU/Linux

Interesting:

Dell’s Latitude On works by bypassing the Windows operating system so that you get immediate access to things like your calendar, email, Internet, and contacts. It’s a fully integrated technology that will appear later this year on the Dell 4200 and 4300 Latitude series notebooks, and is powered by a Linux OS, sort of as a secondary operating system.

The Sun Shines on Asus

What struck me about this article in the Sun about Asus was how it took its readership's acquaintance with GNU/Linux for granted:

Interestingly, it runs Windows XP as an operating system to keep the costs down rather than Vista and a Linux version is on the way.

If that is laid out in menu terms like the Linux EEE laptops, then it's well worth a punt on one as a second PC in a bedroom.

Signs of the times....

Big Blue is Back

On Open Enterprise blog.

How Much is Free Worth?

Chris Anderson bravely tries to put a figure on the value of the "free economy" - those businesses that use free as part of their model. What struck me is the extent to which the ecosystem that has grown up around GNU/Linux dominates everything else in this admittedly back-of-the-envelope calculation: $30 billion out of a rough $50 billion. Which confirms the extent to which open source continues to be the bellwether in this area - the first and still best example of how to make money by giving stuff away.

Time for the Firefox Tablet?

For all its faults, TechCrunch is arguably the leading tech blog. But it has been content to remain on the sidelines - commenting rather than jumping in. Until now:

I’m tired of waiting - I want a dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web. Nothing fancy like the Dell latitude XT, which costs $2,500. Just a Macbook Air-thin touch screen machine that runs Firefox and possibly Skype on top of a Linux kernel. It doesn’t exist today, and as far as we can tell no one is creating one. So let’s design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them.

What's interesting about this - aside from the fact it marks a major shift for TechCrunch - is that it takes for granted that GNU/Linux and Firefox will be the foundation of such a system. Indeed, it is remarkably close to the story I posted below.

As for the name "Firefox Tablet", I say: go for it, Mark....

Come On, IBM, Pull Your Socks Up

On Open Enterprise blog.