Underexposed

An open-source project called CoreAVC-for-Linux is back up and running at Google Code after a copyright tangle with a company called CoreCodec.

Google removed the CoreAVC-for-Linux project after CoreCodec said the software violated its copyright in a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) "takedown" letter dated April 30. "We have directly verified by downloading the file from the site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec's copyrighted software," the company said in the letter, available at the Chilling Effects Web site.

Now the project is online again, after the company sent a reinstatement letter to Google on Sunday and posted an apology to project leader Alan Nisota in a forum posting. Apparently, the misunderstanding had to do with reverse-engineering, in which the inner workings of software or hardware are deduced from its behavior.

"The DMCA does allow for reverse engineering for compatibility purposes and hence...the DMCA takedown request was wrongly sent," a company representative said in another forum post.

"Yes, we're back. CoreCodec has given their blessing to this project," a note on the CoreAVC-for-Linux project site said.

CoreCodec sells software for Windows called CoreAVC that lets computers play video encoded with the widely used H.264 standard. The CoreAVC-for-Linux project let existing open-source projects such as MPlayer or MythTV use the CoreAVC.

(Via Dana Blankenhorn.)

Correction 8 p.m. PT: I included the wrong duration for regular Ubuntu releases. It's 18 months.

Canonical plans to release Hardy Heron, its newest version of Ubuntu Linux on Thursday, and Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth isn't being shy and retiring about it.

"This is our most significant release ever," he said in an interview.

Ordinarily I avoid publishing such marketing superlatives, but Shuttleworth is right. Hardy Heron, also called version 8.04 for its April 2008 launch date, is Canonical's proof-in-the-pudding moment that will show whether the company can grow beyond its subsidized roots into a self-sustaining business. Ubuntu has a strong following among Linux enthusiasts, but it's Red Hat and Novell that still dominate the commercial Linux market.

The reason so much weight rests on the skinny legs of Hardy Heron is because it's only the second Linux product from the company to come with long-term support. The first LTS version of Ubuntu, Dapper Drake, arrived when the company was still comparatively immature and unknown.

Long-term support means the company releases bug fixes, security patches, and other updates for five years on the server version and three years on the desktop version, time frames more palatable to businesses than the 18-month life spans of other Ubuntu versions.

On the server, the new version has support for KVM virtualization built in and comes in a stripped-down version called JEOS (Just Enough Operating System) for software "appliances" that run on KVM or VMware. The company has been working on better hardware support--though it no longer supports Sun Microsystems' Sparc processors, Shuttleworth said. Also included are better integration with Windows' Active Directory for corporate users and a certified, downloadable version of Java software.

On the desktop, Hardy Heron now can be installed directly into the Windows file system so people can try it without having to reformat their hard drives. The software also deals better with online music and photo sites such as Flickr, he added. However, because of an upgrade timing disconnect, fans of the KDE user interface software will have to make do with only 18-month support for the older KDE 3.5 or an unsupported developer version based on the new KDE 4.0.

Still not profitable
Shuttleworth, who funded Ubuntu with wealth from his sale of an earlier start-up to VeriSign, cares about business success, but he's also willing to continue spending to help Canonical grow into new areas--such as the mobile version that's beginning in earnest with Hardy Heron.

"Ubuntu will require continuing investment from me and from others. We are on a trajectory that will make the company sustainable," Shuttleworth said. But he wouldn't say when he envisions profitability: "I'd rather not be on the hook...I keep finding additional areas to invest in."

What's a surprise to Shuttleworth, though, is that the desktop Linux is financially more significant than the version for servers.

"The desktop contributes more to Canonical's bottom line than the server," he said. The server business is still Canonical's primary focus for support revenue. But the company has been getting paid for desktop and consumer-electronics work, he said.

"On the desktop, we see strong demand for custom engineering and assurance programs as people look to Canonical to indemnify them against potential copyright or patent issues," Shuttleworth said.

Canonical also works on unbranded Linux for consumer-electronics companies, though Shuttleworth expects they'll eventually opt for something like Ubuntu. "The hardware vendors are leaping at the ability to do their own operating system. I believe over time they'll tire of the costs and risks of doing that," he said.

Regarding engineering work, he added that Canonical has a tight partnership with Intel, an "extensive on-site engineering relationship where we integrate support for latest platforms."

Open-source fans can be a skeptical bunch, but I've seen their collective opinions shift--for example in the gradually diminishing loathing for Sun Microsystems as that company stopped deriding Linux and started moving its portfolio to open-source software.

So it's not a surprise that various representatives had a mixed reaction to Microsoft's move Thursday to share details of its technology with open-source programmers.

The move could make it easier for many projects to work well with Microsoft products and potentially replace them--for example the Thunderbird e-mail software could communicate better with Microsoft Exchange servers and also displace Microsoft Outlook on PCs. But Microsoft also made it clear that a pledge not to sue open-source programmers only applied in "non-commercial" contexts, so open-source fans didn't get everything they want.

And even though Microsoft said it now will share the specific list of patents it says it has on technology it wants to license to others--something open-source fans have sought once Microsoft asserted last year that Linux and other projects violate 235 patents--some see signing licenses as incompatible with open-source license requirements.

For its part, Microsoft is pledging to move beyond its historically adversarial treatment of the open-source realm. "As Microsoft takes this significant step forward into the interconnected world of the future, we aspire to doing so with members of the open source community by our side now and for the long haul," said Bill Hilf, Microsoft's general manager of platform strategy, on his blog. Hilf previously ran Microsoft's Linux lab and was an Linux deployment specialist at IBM.

I surveyed various companies and individuals about the move and received some other thoughts unsolicited. Here are some reactions:

• Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation executive director: "The world of software development has been marching in a steady direction toward being open and transparent. As Linux's use continues to rise, so does the demand for customers to enable it to interoperate with Microsoft products. This announcement by Microsoft seems to indicate they want to participate in that march. Even if some of the announced details still seem less than ideal for open source developers, at least it's a first step."

• Michael Cunningham, Red Hat's general counsel: "Red Hat regards this most recent announcement with a healthy dose of skepticism. Three commitments by Microsoft would show that it really means what it is announcing today:

"Commit to open standards: Rather than pushing forward its proprietary, Windows-based formats for document processing, OOXML, Microsoft should embrace the existing ISO-approved, cross-platform industry standard for document processing, Open Document Format (ODF) at the International Standards Organization's meeting next week in Geneva...

"Commit to interoperability with open source: Instead of offering a patent license for its protocol information on the basis of licensing arrangements it knows are incompatible with the GPL (General Public License)--the world's most widely used open source software license--Microsoft should extend its Open Specification Promise to all of the interoperability information that it is announcing today will be made available...

"Commit to competition on a level playing field: Microsoft's announcement today appears carefully crafted to foreclose competition from the open-source community. How else can you explain a 'promise not to sue open-source developers' as long as they develop and distribute only 'non-commercial' implementations of interoperable products? This is simply disingenuous."

• Miguel de Icaza, founder of the GNOME project and a Novell programmer working on Mono, an open-source implementation of Microsoft's .Net software: "As a chess move, it is a fascinating one...On the surface it looks very good. (There are) lots of things that we want to interoperate with--Office, SQL Server, SharePoint. Getting the documentation to everyone sounds great, and it seems like they are serious about doing more interoperability work...When the full list for patents becomes available, the question is what will open-source vendors do if they find pieces that have historically infringed: will they choose to license and be the recipients of the community wrath, or will they hold their grounds and risk a lawsuit?"

• Jeremy Allison, a founder of the Samba open-source project: "The devil is in the details. If they can follow through with this, the world will be a better place...It doesn't mean any change for us (Samba) as we already had all these documents, and the promise not to sue is only for 'non-commercial' open source, which is a bit meaningless. At least everyone now gets access to the same info, which I'm very happy about. Hey, should we ask for our money back ? :-)."

• Matt Asay, vice president of business development for Alfresco and a writer for CNET's Blog Network: "The really big news is Microsoft's commitment to open APIs (application programming interfaces) and open protocols...It's great news, and it's big news. My company has been seeking this API and protocol information for months (years, really). But Microsoft's pledge doesn't obviate the need to negotiate patent royalties, if required, with the company."

• Andi Gutmans, a co-founder of Zend: "I have no doubt Microsoft is doing the right thing for their business. I believe Microsoft has finally understood that their closed nature has significantly hindered the growth of their ecosystem...Microsoft has had a strong Microsoft-centric ecosystem, but going down this path they are able to extend their applicable market beyond today's reach...I believe the PHP community can only benefit from this move. With PHP being a heterogeneous solution which works on pretty much any operating system, any database and any Web Server; the more interoperability capabilities it has with all open-source and proprietary solutions the better...Microsoft's all or nothing approach has been an accelerator for the adoption of open-source operating systems. While I am a big fan of Linux, I do believe that this is going to put an increasing amount of pressure on the Linux/Unix backers to deliver innovation and value on top of these systems."

Over the years, Microsoft statements toward open-source software have ranged from derision and threats to mollification and even cautious praise.

Microsoft's Thursday announcement of a significantly more accommodating approach to open-source programmers is just the latest refinement of the company's ambivalence. At the same time that Microsoft's new arrangement opens up previously secret specifications and protocols for use in open-source software, it also insists that companies planning on distributing or using that software need a patent license.

So to put the news into historical context, here's a chronology of some of Microsoft's statements and practices regarding open-source software over the years:

• On October 31, 1998, the first so-called "Halloween memo" from Microsoft suggested that some in the company saw open-source software as a major threat. "The intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in open-source software has benefits that are not replicable with our current licensing model and therefore present a long-term developer mindshare threat," the memo said, suggesting that one way to thwart open-source software would be to extend communication protocols with Microsoft-only changes.

• In May 2001, Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie derided the business model of open-source software companies that aim to sell support rather than software licenses, likening the practice to that of failed dot-com companies. "A common trait of many of the companies that failed is that they gave away for free or at a loss the very thing they produced that was of greatest value--in the hope that somehow they'd make money selling something else," Mundie said.

• In June 2001, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates described the widely used General Public License as "Pac-Man-like," referring to the GPL's requirement that software tightly integrated with GPL components must by the license also be governed by the GPL.

• In a June 2001 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said, "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches...The way the license is written (the Linux kernel uses the GPL), if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source."

• A newer "Halloween" internal memo, based on research in 2001, warned that Microsoft's attacks on open-source software and licensing "are not effective" and are backfiring.

• In an October 2002 interview, Ballmer touted Microsoft's shared-source program, which initially emulated some open-source attributes without giving programmers full freedoms. "We're learning...from the Linux world...If you take a look at the Linux world...There are many more communities in the Windows world than in the Linux world. I don't think we have mobilized that community as effectively as the Linux community has."

• In June 2003, Pete Houston, Microsoft's senior director server strategy, said Microsoft had moved beyond its philosophical attacks and had begun trying to show customers the "business value" of Microsoft products. "I don't see the Linux community development model building the integrated offerings we have today," he said.

• A Microsoft executive, Richard Emerson, helped to arrange an October 2003 investment of $50 million in The SCO Group shortly after it began a high-profile but largely unsuccessful attack that argued Linux violated the company's Unix intellectual property, according to the head of BayStar Capital, which made the investment.

• In January 2004, Microsoft launched a "Get the Facts" ad campaign to try to show the cost advantages of Windows and other Microsoft products compared with open-source rivals.

• Midway through the decade, Microsoft softened its attacks and even began launching its own open-source projects.

• In June 2005, Ballmer said Microsoft isn't trying to compete with the philosophy behind Linux, only with it as a software product. "We come to work every day and we compete with products, we don't compete with movements," he said.

• In June 2006, Microsoft launched a site called CodePlex to host shared-source projects.

• In May 2007, Ballmer and Brad Smith, Microsoft's top lawyer, said Linux and other opens-source projects collectively violate 235 Microsoft patents. "We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property," Ballmer said in an interview with Fortune. Microsoft's open-source competitors must "play by the same rules as the rest of the business."

• In September 2007, Clint Patterson, public relations director for Microsoft's Unified Communications Group, said: "The open-source development model has yet to demonstrate the ability to support profitable software businesses that can drive the coordinated research and testing necessary to sustain innovation."

• In October 2007, after Red Hat Linux had declined to enter into a patent licensing-deal the way rival Novell had, Microsoft's Ballmer told an audience that customers using Red Hat Linux need to pay Microsoft for its intellectual property. "People (who) use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to eventually to compensate us."

• In October 2007, the Open Source Initiative grants official open-source status to two Microsoft licenses, meaning that projects governed by those licenses may be called open-source software.

• Finally, here's how Ballmer described Thursday's move: "Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity, and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies."

Fans of Ubuntu, the version of Linux developed by start-up Canonical and its open-source allies, now have a name and a priority for the version due in October: Intrepid Ibex will be designed to make mobile computing better.

"A particular focus for us will be pervasive Internet access, the ability to tap into bandwidth whenever and wherever you happen to be," said Canonical Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth in an e-mail announcement of Intrepid Ibex, also known as version 8.10. "We want you to be able to move from the office, to the train, and home, staying connected all the way."

The mobile priority is part of a general focus on desktop computing for the new version, Shuttleworth said. "Our desktop offering will once again be a focal point as we re-engineer the user interaction model so that Ubuntu works as well on a high-end workstation as it does on a feisty little subnotebook," and performance and productivity also should be better.

The imminent version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron, is due in April. Canonical releases new Ubuntu versions every six months; most are supported for 18 months, but Hardy Heron will be the second "long-term support" version, which means bug fixes and commercial support will be available for five years on the server and three years on the desktop.

For the record, the names of Ubuntu releases thus far are as follows (the alphabetical order arrived a few versions in): Warty Warthog, Hoary Hedgehog, Breezy Badger, Dapper Drake, Edgy Eft, Feisty Fawn, and Gutsy Gibbon.

(Via TuxMachines.)

Google is funding work to ensure the Windows version of Adobe Systems' Photoshop and other Creative Suite software can run on Linux computers.

For the project, Google is funding programmers at CodeWeavers, a company whose open-source Wine software lets Windows software run on Linux. Wine is a compatibility layer that intercepts a program's Windows commands and converts them to instructions for the Linux kernel and its graphics subsystem.

"We hired CodeWeavers to make Photoshop CS and CS2 work better under Wine," Dan Kegel, of Google's software engineering team and the Wine 1.0 release manager, said on Google's open-source blog. "Photoshop is one of those applications that desktop Linux users are constantly clamoring for, and we're happy to say they work pretty well now...We look forward to further improvements in this area."

Google already uses Wine for the Linux version of its Picasa software for editing, tagging, and uploading photos. Photoshop is a larger and more complicated package, however, not to mention updated to version CS3 for nearly a year, so it's likely the CodeWeavers programmers will have a lot of work on their hands.

A survey by desktop Linux advocate Novell found Photoshop is the top non-Linux application that Linux users would like to have. Although Adobe has dipped its toes into the desktop Linux waters, so far it hasn't made any major moves.

And with current technology trends, maybe Adobe never will see the need for Linux ports. With virtualization software from companies such as Parallels and VMware and improving support from chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices and Intel, it's getting easier to run multiple operating systems on the same computer.

(Via Matthew Aslett of The 451 Group.)

Novell has hired Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier to be community manager of its OpenSuse Linux project, the company said Monday.

OpenSuse is a free Linux version Novell uses to test out new features it puts into its supported product, Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server. Brockmeier, who has written about open-source software for many technical publications in recent years, will work on OpenSuse marketing, expanding its developer and user base, and on relaying community feedback to Novell, the Waltham, Mass.-based company said.

On his blog, Brockmeier said he wants to use his position to attract Windows users to Linux. "I'm...going to be focusing my attention on getting the word out about OpenSuse to more potential users, and trying to bring in more new users to OpenSuse Linux. And by 'new users,' I don't mean people switching from another Linux distro--if someone is using another distro and is happy with Linux, that's great. I want to reach the masses of Windows users who are looking for a better computing platform, and find ways to address their needs with Linux."

Brockmeier also said he wants to emulate what Max Spevack has done in helping to make Red Hat's Fedora project more independent from Red Hat.

(Spevack has just left his role as Fedora project leader, with Paul Frields taking over in January.)

Forgive me if I sound skeptical, but during the nine years I've covered Linux, not once have I seen a favorable outcome to the partnership of the type Mandriva and Turbolinux announced Wednesday.

Tokyo-based Turbolinux and Paris-based Mandriva said they'll unify their products to use a common base system in an endeavor called Manbo-Labs. The first software to employ this base will be Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring, the companies said.

"By pooling together common engineering resources, Mandriva and Turbolinux will be able to invest more in technology and product quality," the companies said in a statement. This should help expand the list of compatible hardware and lead to stronger relationships with software and hardware companies, the Linux sellers predicted.

(Credit: Linux)

This sort of partnership makes sense in a world where much of the software that goes into a Linux distribution is already shared. But in the past, such alliances haven't amounted to much.

One prominent example is UnitedLinux in 2002, which pooled the resources of Suse Linux (before Novell acquired it four years ago), Turbolinux (which earlier had aspirations beyond just its current Japanese market focus), Conectiva (which merged with Mandrake to become Mandriva), and The SCO Group (which previously had been named Caldera before it switched from selling Linux to selling Unix and suing Linux advocates). But the effort to provide a collective counterbalance to Red Hat's dominance fell apart, and the UnitedLinux lights went out in 2004.

Then there was the Linux Core Consortium in 2004, which was essentially UnitedLinux reconstituted without Suse and with another company, Progeny Linux. It also didn't amount to much.

More recently, several allies whose products were based on the Debian Linux distribution also tried banding together as the Debian Common Core (DCC) Alliance. Other members of that group included now-defunct Progeny Linux, Knoppix, Xandros, Linspire, Mepis, Credativ, GnuLinEx, Sun Wah, and User Linux.

Namesys, the company run by murder suspect Hans Reiser, has fallen off the face of the Internet, but the file-system software it was commercializing is still under development by volunteers.

Hans Reiser

(Credit: via Stanford University)

"Commercial activity of Namesys has stopped," said programmer and Namesys employee Edward Shishkin. But he and others continue to develop the Reiser4 file-system software.

"It is pretty active. Many people are interested in this project," Shishkin said. "They help a lot," he added, pointing to fixes needed to work with Linux's virtual file system software and other changes.

Reiser himself is accused of murdering his wife; his trial began in November. Although the trial derailed Namesys, the Reiser file system software already was slipping from prominence. Top Linux Seller Red Hat prefers an alternative, ext3, and Reiser's biggest corporate advocate, Novell's Suse Linux operation, switched to ext3 by default in 2006, citing customer preference.

Murder trials are hardly a common reason for a company or project to be derailed, but the Reiser situation does shed light on one interesting attribute of open-source software: interested parties can keep a project alive without having to wait for some bankruptcy court to sell off intellectual property or other assets.

The Namesys Web site is no longer available because of a technical problem, and the programmer who can fix it said he's dealing with family issues hundreds of miles away. However, the Reiser4 source code is still available on Shishkin's Web site.