Redflag and RedOffice Day

Good news from the Middle Kingdom:

Sun Microsystems, Inc. , the OpenOffice.org community and Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Co., Ltd., today announced a joint development effort that will focus on integrating new features in the Chinese localization of OpenOffice.org, as well as quality assurance and work on the core applications. Additionally, Redflag Chinese 2000 made public its commitment to the global OpenOffice.org community stating it would strengthen its support of the development of the world's leading free and open
source productivity suite.

Under the provisions of the agreement, Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000, which produces the popular OpenOffice.org-based RedOffice, will add to the open source project approximately 50 engineers, some of whom have been working on the OpenOffice.org project since the second half of 2006.

(Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)

The Joy (and Utility) of FUD

As I've written elsewhere, Microsoft's FUD is more interesting for what it says about the company's deepest fears than for its overt message. This is certainly the case for the latest example:

Coverage of the debate on the new version of the GNU Public License (GPLv3) has focused on the differing opinions among three groups: Project leaders like Linus Torvalds and other top Linux kernel developers; Foundations like the Free Software Foundation (FSF) led by Richard Stallman; and Large Technology Companies such as Sun, HP, IBM, and Novell. While these three groups are certainly all affected by revisions to the GPL, open source developers are also affected, but have been significantly under-represented in the discussion. In this paper, our objective was to give developers a voice and bring their opinions into the debate. What does this fourth constituency think about open source licenses, the upcoming release of the GPLv3, and the philosophies surrounding open source software?

Actually, I lied: the results in this particular case, although predictable, are so hilarious that they deserve wider airing:

Thus our results suggest the actions of the FSF may only be favored by approximately 10% of the broader community and leads us to ask, should a committee be created with a charter to create and revise open source licenses using a governance model similar to that of the open source development model? Is it contrary to the spirit of the open source community, which relies on the wisdom and view of the masses, to have the governance of licenses controlled by a few individuals whose views run contrary to the objectives of potentially 90% of the people affected by their actions, especially when the community members are the very creators and developers of the software under discussion?

Hello, people: those "few individuals" you are talking about are essentially Richard Stallman, as in Richard Stallman who single-handedly started this whole thing, fought most of the key battles, and even wrote some of the most important code, alone. And you're questioning his right to revise the licence that he - as in Richard Stallman - devised and then gave to the world?

But of course the main takeaway from this is that Microsoft is really, really worried by precisely those new provisions in GPLv3 that are designed to limit its ability to subvert free software, to the extent that it would even contemplate publishing a sponsored report of this kind based on - wait for it - a massive 34 replies out of 332 requests; talk about "few individuals".

Thanks for the info, chaps.

A Ray of Sunshine

Here's a fascinating post about software patents from Greg Papadopoulos, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development at Sun. He has lots of surprisingly sensible things to say on the subject (i.e., he more or less agrees with me), together with the following comment that offered a truly fresh take on the subject (not something that happens often):

Patents are a far more blunt instrument than copyright, and tend to teach far less than code. I just don't know of any developer who reads patents to understand some new software pattern or idea. Remember, the limited monopoly we grant a patent holder is in exchange for teaching others how to do it so that when the patent expires everyone is better off (the length of time of the grant is another issue. How long is two decades in software generations?)

Of course! This is the real test of a patent: if it doesn't teach anything to people who ought to be hungry for knowledge it reveals, it's almost certainly trivial or obvious.

Brilliant, Greg. (Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)

Sun Joins Mac Port of OpenOffice.org

Further signs of Sun's broad commitment to open source and OpenOffice.org:

I'm excited to let you all know that as of now Sun engineering will add its support to the ongoing Mac/Aqua porting effort.

The MacOSX porting history is basically as old as OpenOffice.org itself. Practically from the start there was the plan to have a native version for Mac, however as a first step the community decided to produce an X11 port which - since OOo already had several X11 ports from the start - seemed to be a good way to get a version quickly as temporary solution. As usual the "temporary solution" tended to be quite long lived (year 2000 bug anyone :-) ?).

...

Some may ask: Why is Sun joining the Mac porting project? If you look around at conferences and airport lounges, you will notice that more and more people are using Apple notebooks these days. Apple has a significant market share in the desktop space. We are supporting this port because of the interest and activity of the community wanting this port.

(Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)

(Not So) Mysterious Asia

Simon Phipps has some interesting numbers relating to open source in Asia:

It seems that a few years ago, more than 95% of the software market in China was foreign-sourced. Last year, however, 70% of the software their government was using was open source. That means a market over which western software companies were rubbing their hands with glee in 2003 (presumably awaiting the payout from the first hit that was free) now see the market potentially evaporating.

No Progeny for Progeny

Progeny's metabolic processes are now history. It's off the twig and has kicked the bucket, apparently. With its founder, Ian Murdock, safely ensconced at Sun, this represents the end of a chapter in the story that is the rise of GNU/Linux as a popular platform. Meanwhile, another chapter begins.

McNealy Calls for Merger of ODF and UOF

Readers of this blog may recall mentions of the third document format, China's UOF (click on UOF tag below for more on the subject). Well, here's an interesting idea from Sun's Scott McNealy: merge UOF with ODF.

Murdock Joins Sun: Watch Out GNU/Linux

I've noted in a number of places the impressive and continuing rise of Sun to become pretty much the leading defender of the GNU GPL faith. Anyone who had any doubts about its ultimate intentions might like to read this post from Ian Murdock, the -ian in Debian, and one of the senior figures in the GNU/Linux world:

I’m excited to announce that, as of today, I’m joining Sun to head up operating system platform strategy. I’m not saying much about what I’ll be doing yet, but you can probably guess from my background and earlier writings that I’ll be advocating that Solaris needs to close the usability gap with Linux to be competitive; that while as I believe Solaris needs to change in some ways, I also believe deeply in the importance of backward compatibility; and that even with Solaris front and center, I’m pretty strongly of the opinion that Linux needs to play a clearer role in the platform strategy.

Watch out little GNU/Linux, there's a big OpenSolaris heading your way....

The Other Open Source Java

Sun's Java is not the only one going open source:

In spite of a deal with the U.S.-based software giant Microsoft, the government pledged Wednesday that it would continue promoting the use of open-source software.

State Minister for Research and Technology Kusmayanto Kadiman said that open-source software would greatly benefit Indonesia's technological development.

Sun's Darkstar Joins the GPL Light Side

Sun continues its progress through the ranks of open source supporters, hurtling fast towards top-spot as Richard Stallman's Number 1 friend. The latest move is the open sourcing of its Project Darkstar:

Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced plans today at the 2007 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to open source Project Darkstar, a ground-breaking online game server platform written entirely in Java technology, at the 2007 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The company also announced the opening of registration for the Darkstar Playground, which will enable developers to create a wide variety of games that can be provisioned through a single server platform.

...

"Project Darkstar is proving to be an important technology foundation in the exploding multiplayer online game marketplace," said Chris Melissinos, chief gaming officer, Sun Microsystems. "By open sourcing Darkstar technology, we will help enable the widest possible market for online game developers and remove their burden of having to build enterprise-grade server solutions, leaving them to do what they do best—build great game experiences."

Game developers can download the latest version of Project Darkstar at www.projectdarkstar.com. This new release of Project Darkstar features a simpler programming interface for increased productivity; plug-in APIs to facilitate integration of third party extensions; and enhancements for scalability , robust performance, and fault-tolerant operation. The source code for Project Darkstar will become available under a GPL license in the coming months

Aside from underlining Sun's support for the GPL, this announcement is also interesting for the light that it shines on the increasingly mainstream nature of online games. The fact that Sun has such a project is surprising, but open-sourcing it makes a lot of sense in an increasingly competitive market. For one thing, it bolsters Java, which stands at a critical juncture in its development. If Sun can build up enough momentum behind it, Java could well enjoy something of a second coming.

You Wait Ages for a Bus...

...and then three come along at once.

Once upon a time, people looked down on ODF because it seemed the Cinderella of formats: rather poor, and with nowhere to go. Today, it's looking much richer, and with three format conversion tools - one from Microsoft, one from Sun and a new online service from Lettos - it's no longer looking so isolated. And the nice thing is, it's going to get even better. (Via Bob Sutor's Open Blog.)

Information Always Outlives Technology

Nice to see Sun's boss-man getting it about both open standards and ODF:

Imagine you're a legislator that writes a law, or a doctor that drafts a patient's record, or a student that writes a novel. And that five years or fifty years from now, you want to return to review your documents. Except the vendor that created the application used to draft those documents, the company that created the word processor, has either gone out of business, or decided to charge you $10,000 for a version capable of reading old file formats. Either scenario makes the point: Information always outlives technology.

As I've said elsewhere, I really think that the ODF bandwagon is chugging away unstoppably now, and that 2007 will be the year not of the GNU/Linux desktop, but of OpenOffice.org on the desktop. Schwartz's post is further evidence of that.

A Doubly-Poisoned Chalice?

I'm not sure about this:

Probably most of you have heard or read about Novell's effort to provide VBA support in OpenOffice.org for better interoperability with a well known competitive office suite. On the other hand Sun has a similar VBA migration story in place for StarOffice. Sun's solution is designed as an extension which is 100% optional whereas Novell's solution prefers the integration directly in the code base. So we have two similar solutions which overlap in many areas. This is a sub-optimal situation and probably nobody would disagree here. The good news is that both companies have come to an agreement that it makes sense to share their resources and work together on one common OpenOffice.org VBA story.

First, anything to do with Novell while it is engaged in its pact with the devil seems dodgy to me; and secondly, it is well-known that VBA is essentially a toolkit for security problems. Yes, it will be possible to turn it off, but frankly, it seems a bit perverse to aim for full compatibility with even the really dangerous bits of Microsoft Office. (Via heise online.)

Sun Shines Again

Further to my general encomium on Sun, here's more good news:

Sun Microsystems... today announced the upcoming availability of the StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology Preview plug-in application for Microsoft Office 2003. The early access version of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) plug-in, available as a free download, will allow seamless two-way conversion of Microsoft Office documents to ODF.

...

The StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology Preview is primarily based on the OpenOffice.org platform, the open-source office productivity suite developed by the OpenOffice.org community including the founder and main contributor Sun Microsystems. Sun offers distributions and configurations of and support for OpenOffice.org under the StarOffice brand. The initial plug-in application will support the conversion of text documents (.doc/.odt) only, but full support of spreadsheet and presentation documents is expected in April. The conversion is absolutely transparent to the user and the additional memory footprint is minimal.

This is particularly welcome since there are already noises that Microsoft's ODF plugin for Word is not as faithful in the translation process as might be desired.

And if that isn't enough, here's news that an OS/2 port of OpenOffice.org 2.0 is nearing completion. What more do you want? (Both via Erwin Tenhumberg.)

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.

Blog Perdurability and the Information Commons

Simon Phipps raises an important point: what should be done about corporate blog pages when their owner has, er, passed on (as in to another company)? Sun's solution:

When we started blogs.sun.com, we had a long discussion about what we should do when employees left. The conclusion we all reached, supported strongly by Jonathan Schwartz who attended the meeting, was that they should simply be left in place, merely closed for further changes. Our view was that, if the blog text had been acceptable when it was published, there was no reason a change of employment status should vary that. Not to mention the desire by Tim to preserve URIs. Interestingly, one of Jonathan's motivations for this was also so that people could pick up where they left off when they rejoined Sun!

But I'd go further. I think that companies have a responsibility to maintain the availability of any materials that they make public. This is because of the changed nature of information these days: it's inherently interconnected, and snipping out a weft here and a warp there isn't good for the rest of the data tapestry.

Publicly-available information forms a commons; removing it constitutes a destruction of part of that commons. Ultimately there should be laws against it, just as there are against chopping down historic trees that form part of the landscape commons.

Fortress: Sun's Open Fortran

Ayo, this brings back too many memories of punched cards at midnight:

Sun Microsystems took a new open-source step this week, enlisting the outside world's help in an attempt to create a brand-new programming language called Fortress.

On Tuesday, the company quietly released as open-source software a prototype Fortress "interpreter," a programming tool to execute Fortress programs line by line. "We're trying to engage academics and other third parties," Eric Allen, a Sun Labs computer scientist and Fortress project leader, said about the open-source move.

Fortress is designed to be a modern replacement for Fortran, a programming language born 50 years ago at IBM but still very popular for high-performance computing tasks such as forecasting the weather.

Still, another good move for Sun.

Update: Sun's Simon Phipps has some more details.

Those who Cannot Remember the Past...

...are condemned to release again it ten years later.

I was interest to read that Sun has launched its Looking Glass interface. Not just because it's yet another 3D-ish approach, with some interesting applications coming through. But also because Sun seems to be blithely unaware of the history of the Looking Glass moniker. As I wrote in Rebel Code:

Caldera was set up in October 1994, and released betas of its first product, the Caldera Network Desktop (CND) in 1995. The final version came out in February 1996, and offered a novel graphical desktop rather like Windows 95. This "Looking Glass" desktop, as it was called, was proprietary, as were several other applications that Caldera bundled with the package."

Caldera, of course, eventually metamorphosed (hello, Kafka) into SCO....

Energy Worries: Not Just Virtual

Following the recent excitement about Second Life's energy consumption, it seems that people are beginning to realise that it's not the only one with problems:

The nation's biggest technology companies sat down with federal regulators Wednesday to assess the industry's thirst for power amid fears that volatile and expensive energy could hinder the growing sector.

The fierce competitors at the table -- including Google, IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard -- rarely gather to talk strategy. But they were lured by the chance to influence the development of national energy standards.

"I think we may be at the beginning of a potential energy crisis for the IT sector," Victor Varney, a vice president for Silicon Graphics, told the regulators. "It's clearly coming."

(Via Slashdot.)

Sun Opts for GNU GPL v2.5

I've written elsewhere about my pleasant surprise at Sun choosing the GNU GPL for Java. But an obvious question that follows on from that news is: which GPL? B

This is a highly political question, with no easy answer. And yet Simon Phipps, Mr Open Source at Sun, has given a good 'un:

the very first question Richard asked me about OpenJDK was "GPL v2 or later" or "GPL v2 only"? I explained that Sun could not in good faith commit to using a license sight-unseen for such an important code-base. It's used on 4 billion devices, there are more than 5 million developers dependent on it for their living, and the risk - however slight - that the GPL v3 might prove harmful to them can't be taken. So while we are very positive about the GPL v3, committing to using it when it's not finished does not seem responsible stewardship. I hope we can use it, but I can't express that hope by committing in advance. So for now, the Java platform will be licensed under just the GPL v2.

Sounds fair enough to me.