Linux Solutions

Browsers have been making the headlines over the last few months. Mozilla’s Firefox 3 release exceeded all expectations when it had over 7 million first day downloads, Google launched its Chrome beta, Opera have just launched a mobile browser, and Internet Explorer 8 is on its way soon. My question is this: What happened to just going to a website?

It’s almost a challenge these days for the average computer user to go to a website, and see it the way it was meant to be seen. How many times have you looked at something through your shiny new Firefox browser and thought to yourself, this site looks fine, but as soon as anyone looks at it using IE7 it looks terrible, with its shoddy changes in resolution and its joy in mucking about with a nice CSS stylesheet.

And are we getting to the point where its style over substance? Firefox looks great I have to agree, and I’m using it right now but with updates every day, multiple add-ons available, what happened to just plain old back, stop, and refresh?

Many people would argue that Internet Explorers simplicity is the reason for its success. Yes, we all know about the security flaws, and I do think that it has the ability to make any website look terrible, but the vast percentage of users just want to point and click, and be happy with it.

I do like Firefox, and the new version has some funky features, but when I let my brother use my PC he was caught out by the fact it was different and it was giving him suggestions as he typed into the address bar, and do you know what – it really put him off it.

It seems that while my brother saw the benefits, there was just too much going on for him to feel comfortable using the browser. I tried to explain that it is simple, but that’s because I’m used to it by now. He said “you shouldn’t have to learn how to use a browser”, and you know what, he’s entirely right.

The reason for IE’s success is that its second nature to many users, the first time I used Firefox 2, I played around with the features for a bit, but if I’m being honest, I switched around between it an IE for a couple of weeks before I choose which one to continue using. There was no instant click as a new user. I had been told the benefits, but like my brother, I didn’t see the problem in sticking with what I know.

I took to the newest version of Firefox like a duck to water, its innovative features rock and I am pretty happy with everything, but the reason for it not quite reaching the front of the pack with regards to new users, is perhaps because of “the unkown”.

I’m probably one of the only open source fans looking forward to the arrival of IE8, but its mainly so I can have fun picking apart its flaws, but (and it’s a BIG but) if it works well, and has the improved security I may turn my back on Firefox for a while. Let battle commence!

iPod inventor Apple yes I’m aware they have something to do with computers at one time or another has had its attempts to stop an app that allows iPod/iPhone users to use non-Apple software such as a Linux OS brushed aside said the Electronic Frontier Foundation said earlier this week.

Earlier in the month, one of Apples lawyers from its legal counsel, O’Melveny & Myers, managed to force the removal of an open source project called iPodhash from Bluwiki, a free website that allows users to create Wiki pages. They said that the project was illegal under the U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Bluwiki complied with the request after the sites founder, Sam Odio, received this request from the lawyers:

“It has come to our attention that a website you operate, www.bluwiki.com, is disseminating information designed to circumvent Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management system.”

“FairPlay is considered anti-circumvention technology under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA explicitly prohibits the dissemination of information that can be used to circumvent such technology.”

Odio said that iPodhash’s developers were not trying to break Apples copyright protection: “He’s not developing software to unencrypt the songs,” he said. “What he’s actually doing is unencrypting the database.”

Senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann explained the situation on his blog

“In September 2007, Apple introduced new software into iTunes and the iPod that runs a cryptographic operation on iTunes data, creating a special number called a checksum hash. The number is used to ensure that the iPod is talking to Apple’s iTunes software, rather than other programs such as Winamp or Songbird.”

“Although it doesn’t appear that the authors had yet figured out the new iTunesDB hashing mechanism, Apple’s lawyers nevertheless sent a nastygram to the wiki administrator,” he said.

Von Lohmann said in an interview that Apple was using the DMCA protection to stop free speech. “Apple is essentially saying here that people can’t even talk about the mechanisms that Apple uses to lock in its music to the iTunes software,” he said.

He said that checksum mechanism does not actually protect the copyright on iTunes music – it’s just meant to confirm that iPhone is communicating with iTunes.

“Nobody has ever suggested a purpose of this other than forcing iPod owners to use Apple’s software,” he said. “It’s an anticompetitive tie-in device.”

But why put up such a fight, Apple are a big shark in this pond? iTunes does not run on Linux, the iPodhash project is important to the Linux community, Odio said.

He wants to be allowed to put the iPodhash project back on his site. “I regret having to do this,” he said. “I may be able to put the site back on-line, but quite honestly it’s unlikely because I can’t afford a legal battle with Apple.”

After a few weeks of beta testing, Opera Mini 4.2 for mobile phones has officially been released, and with the recent news that Opera have opened a brand new server park, US users will see a 30 percent boost in speed.

The new release is the first version officially available for the Google Android mobile platform, and is also the first web browser alternative to the current browser on the open Android platform.

The new lightweight browser is pretty darn fast as it cuts out parts of pages that are not essential, and the new version adds more language versions and a choice of browser themes/skins to give it a more personable feel. Opera’s remote servers are set up to pre-process web pages, and the content is compressed to reduce the size of data transfer –enabling faster browsing. Although the main bulk of the speed increase will affect US users, Opera says that users worldwide should notice the difference. The browser will run on a multitude of java-capable handsets, including Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, and Windows Mobile.

The Opera browser is the most popular mobile browser in the world according to Opera Software, who said that 21 million unique users browed 5 billion pages in October 2008 alone.

Avi Greengart, research director of wireless devices for Current Analysis was interviewed by LinuxInsider and said that Opera, “is without question the world’s most popular aftermarket mobile Web browser,” but he couldn’t tell if it was the most used overall.

“Nokia sells an awful lot of phones with mobile browsers,” he added.

But is Opera Mini browser any good? I’ve personally used versions of Opera in my recent mobiles, and had Opera 4 beta on my Sony Ericsson W810i before I moved on to iPhone, but I liked how it worked on a handset that was never really designed to surf the web.

Greengart likes it too: “For devices with small screens or limited connectivity, no question – Opera Mini does the best job of quickly modifying the site for your tiny screen on its servers, and then sends just that data on to your phone. It is certainly my mobile browser of choice for feature phones,” he said.

Opera tried to convince iPhone to let users have Opera Mini 4.2, however the company were shown the door by Apple because the Opera browser was perhaps to close to Apple’s own Safari browser that’s built in to the phone. Of course other stories say that Opera had never actually submitted the browser to Apple’s App Store for approval, and as of yet there are no alternative browsers for iPhone users to download – highlighting the difference between the open source nature of Android, and the closed door of iPhone.

“As a general rule, Apple likes to control the user experience as much as possible. While Apple has opened up the App Store to all comers, there are a number of ill-defined gates to getting programs onto the iPhone. This appears to protect Apple’s own software development efforts for the platform, which means that users get a consistent Apple experience across major functions, but miss out on potentially disruptive innovations from others,” Greengart said.

“Google is taking the opposite approach, hoping that the development community can smooth over Android’s rough edges, fill in missing functionality, and potentially tinker with the OS itself,” he added.

“Right now, Android is mostly potential, and while I can reasonably know what the iPhone experience will be like a year from now, I can’t predict whether Android will be a whole lot better … or just the same,” he concluded.

In the meantime, you can get Opera Mini 4.2 in the Android Market as well as directly from opera.com and operamini.com. I might just have to get it and cram it on to my old W810i for fun – expect a review shortly.

A federal judge has ruled that SCO owes Novell a little over $2.5 million, after insisting that the software company was given a financial boost from a 2003 licensing agreement with increasingly-doomed looking Sun Microsystems.

Judge Dale Kimball issued his final statement on the case on Thursday of last week, effectively ending the long-running battle between SCO and Novell. Kimball has waived SCO’s attempt to waive certain claims then resurrect them on appeal, and finalises the ruling back in July that ordered the sum of $2,547,817 to be paid to Novell by SCO for unilaterally agreeing to amend Sun’s license for the UNIX SVRX copyrights. They must also pay over $900,000 worth of interests on top of the figure. Ouch.

This leaves SCO with two choices: Stump up and pay the fine, or drag the case out for another few months. However, it’s not likely that an appeal would make a difference. The company doesn’t sell anything worth mentioning, and in September 2007, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

In February, a private equity firm agreed to breathe new life into the organisation with a $100 million cash injection, but the firm saw sense and dropped out of the deal, meaning SCO can’t afford to pay the ever growing bill to Novell.

Brilliantly, this legal battle was started by SCO, who decided to sue Novell in January 2004 for ‘slander of title action’, accusing Novel of stealing the claim t the UNIX SVRX copyrights.

Around a decade previous to these shenanigans, Novell sold its UNIX trademarks and other assets to SCO, and they assumed the deal included the UNIX copyrights as well. Fair enough, but they didn’t, so when SCO started to enter licensing agreements with companies like Sun Microsystems, and started to sue companies like IBM for breaching copyright, the result could be seen coming a mile off, not unlike a Lesley Neilson joke.

In August last year, judge Kimball ruled that the copyrights were actually Novell’s, killing off SCO’s case. This final verdict should be the nail in SCO’s coffin.

The release of Internet Explorer 8 beta has been pushed back to a 2009 release. The “standards-compatible” upcoming edition of the browser will appear in beta form in the first quarter of the year, followed by a final release, according to IE8’s general manager Dean Hachamovitch on his blog.

Hachamovitch didn’t specify an exact release date for the new browser, but said that (for once) Microsoft is planning “to deliver the final product after listening for feedback about critical issues.”

“We will be very selective about what changes we make between the next update and final release. We will act on the most critical issues. We will be super clear about product changes we make between the update and the final release.”

Bill Veghte is the senior vice president of the Windows business group. Back in July, he promised Wall Street investors at Microsoft’s yearly Financial Analysts Meeting that IE8 was due out by the end of this year, but Hachamovitch said that although the beta is pushed back to early 2009, he stressed that the release candidate will be the final product.

The company is clearly worried about how the updated browser will be perceived. With some interesting features in the update such as the introduction of a tag that allows older websites – the ones designed to work in earlier IE versions – to be viewed correctly. This is a worry, as websites face a real possibility of being un-viewable to the user, as IE8 updates it legacy layout engine with CSS 2.1 and HTML 5.0 support.

Hachamovitch said the technical community “should expect the final product to behave as this update does.”

“We want them to test their sites and services with IE 8, make any changes they feel are necessary for the best possible customer experience using IE8, and report any critical issues (e.g., issues impacting robustness, security, backwards compatibility, or completeness with respect to planned standards work).

“Our plan is to deliver the final product after listening for feedback about critical issues,” Hachamovitch said.

For sure, the open source community will be keeping a watchful eye over proceedings, and I must admit that I am curious to find out what the IE8 team will come up with. Its going to have to be impressive after the previous versions was not all that and a bag of potato chips. More news when we have it.

Its not every day that I get to write about Mozilla, but with yesterday’s story about the non-profit organisation and its tax dodging efforts, today’s news that the organisation is warning Firefox users about rogue add-on’s just adds to the weeks problems.

Mozilla say that users should be wary of what they class as “experimental” add-ons, as they can cause some pretty major computer problems.

The reason for the Firefox browser’s success has to be down to not only the sleek and well balanced layout, but for the customising capabilities that other browsers just don’t have. Some of the add-ons make brilliant additions to your browsing experience, and give users more reasons to stay away from the epic fail that is Internet Explorer.

However, many of the problems lie in third-party development of these add-on’s. Take the recently released ‘China Channel’. This add-on allows users around the world to know what it feels like to surf the web in China, and got a ton of press when it was announced due to the sheer nature of the add-on. Now, why you would want to surf around a highly censored internet is beyond me, but I digress. The fact is that this browser add-on lets you roam around in fake China for a while, but when you invariably get bored and want to leave…you can’t.

The add-on’s pitch says on the Firefox add-ons page, “Take an unforgettable virtual trip to China and experience the technical expertise of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry” – and so far over 1000 users were sucked in by the…er…hype?

vnunet.com ran a test on the add-on and found that the ages the China Channel were trying to restrict appear to be lost for good, even when the add-on is turned off. One other tester said that he had found an “uninstall bug”, and that all proxy settings were lost when he shut the browser down. “Unforgettable”, indeed.

Mozilla has small print to deal with this kind of situation:

“This add-on is meant for advanced users to test add-ons before they are made available and reviewed for general use. Many add-ons may be in prototype form. Experimental add-ons may be alpha, beta or pre-production in quality, performance and features. Caution should be used when installing experimental add-ons, as they have not been tested by an editor and may harm your computer configuration.”

As of yet the Firefox developers claim to be blissfully unaware of the add-on’s press coverage, but say they are going to look into the issue further to ensure no other users are affected.

With the release of the Mozilla Foundation’s 2007 financial report, questions have been raised by the IRS who are due to perform an audit on the non-profit organisation behind the massively popular Firefox browser.

Last year the Foundation received $66 million of its total $75 million revenue (88 percent) from search engine maestro’s Google, so the IRS are looking for blood over the organisations tax exempt status. Back in 2006, Mozilla got $59.5 million from Google – around 85 percent of the organisations revenue.

Google and Mozilla are part of a “you scratch my back, I’ll pay your bills” sort of agreement with the Google search bar firmly placed in the toolbar, and on the default homepage. Things were a bit rocky a couple of months back when Google unveiled the Beta-run of its Chrome browser, but Mozilla and Google hugged it out and sealed a deal that will last for a further three years. That deal will expire in November 2011.

In 2003, Mozilla received tax exempt status, which meant it didn’t pay any taxes in 2004’s revenue of $4,422,674. The organisation said the agreement with ‘a search provider’, “facilitates the dissemination of the Foundation’s browser, thereby increasing the accessibility of the internet.” Do I know exactly what they mean by that? Well not really if you must know.

In 2005, Mozilla created a for-profit operation, whereby multiple search engine contracts were transferred to the new Mozilla Corporation. When they made the change, Mozilla say they have a “tax reserve fund” set aside in-case the IRS come looking for the tax from 2004/05 – which they are.

The IRS has stated that they are launching a review: “We are early in the process and do not yet have a good feel for how long this will take or the overall scope of what will be involved.”

In the finance report, Mozilla claim that its search revenues should be classed as royalties, and therefore not be taxed, however, they are well aware that the IRS could see things differently. Mozilla has a bit of spare cash in its tax reserve - $14,832,000 at the end of 2007.

The report also says that an inquiry into the organisations tax exemption has begun due to Google supplying a large chunk of the Foundation’s revenue.

“While the Foundation did not automatically qualify as a public charity with public support at 33 per cent of total support, it believes that it qualifies as a public charity under the facts and circumstances test with public support over 10 per cent,” said the report

If the IRS finds Mozilla hs not been taxed correctly, the organisation says it will become a private charity, and release around 100,000 in taxes.

In a report released at the start of this week on enterprise open source usage, Gartner’s research director Laurie Wurster made some bold statements, about companies that could face an intellectual property issue because they use software without any understanding of the IP implications of the licensing language.

The Gartner press release that announced the survey results said that 69 percent of the companies surveyed still have no formal policy for evaluating and managing open source software usage in their businesses, which Gartner claim is likely to open up “huge potential liabilities” related to intellectual property violations.

Wurster may have riffled a few feathers when she accused some businesses of having no formal policies in place: “Just because something is free doesn’t mean that it has no cost,” she cried.

“Companies must have a policy for procuring deciding which applications will be supported by and identifying the intellectual property risk or supportability risk associated with using [open source software]. Once a policy is in place, then there must be a governance process to enforce it.”

Having a policy in place is doubtless a good idea, whether you’re using open source r proprietary software, but is Wurster getting a bit over-zealous about the issue?

Pamela Jones from the Groklaw blog spoke about Wurster’s rant. “I think she’s overstating it. It’s hardly news that licenses need to be complied with, and heaven only knows the EULAs and/or agreements on proprietary licenses can be troublesome. Look at the SCO v. Novell 4-year ring-around-the-rosie on what the terms in a 1995 contract meant,” Jones said.

The Gartner survey said that a lack of governance was the biggest challenge for open source users, but Wurster believes while it’s all a bit of a headache at the moment, over time the ‘problem’ will diminish.

“Understanding when and how an alternative may be used is a frustrating process, especially when there are so many license types and forms from which to choose,” Wurster said. “As time goes by, many of these concerns will be addressed, but this continues to be a slow process. Increases in popularity and in the rate of adoption will drive the required changes.”

Pamela Jones believes that open source licenses are a lot easier to comply with that proprietary ones, and says that Wurster is causing a panic for no reason.

“The license you often see mentioned is the GPL, and it’s really quite simple to stay in compliance,” Jones said.

Jones gives good advice here: If you have concerns about open source compliance, look at a recently published GPL Compliance Guide. Problem solved.

Some mildly exciting news for this morning: Reflecting the growing demand from open source fans, Adobe is set to release a 64-bit version of its Flash 10 player for Linux. The 64-bit version will be an alpha release, and is to be the first in a line of versions for other platforms in the future.

The company said it released this version to the Linux community as it wanted it more, which is why users on other platforms will have to wait.

Tech magazine CNet spoke to Adobe who said:

“[The] release of this alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux is the first step in delivering on Adobe’s plans to make Flash Player native 64-bit across platforms. We chose Linux as our initial platform in response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue management system and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default.”

That’s nice of them right? They continued that Flash Player 10 is, “a full native participant on 64-bit Linux distributions. We are committed to bringing native 64-bit Flash Player to Windows and Mac in future releases. We expect to provide native support for 64-bit platforms in an upcoming major release of Flash Player. Windows, Macintosh and Linux players are expected to ship simultaneously moving forward.”

The good news for pen source fans continues with the results of a survey by IT analysts Gartner, who say that they predict all businesses will be using open source software within the next 12 months.

The study was carried out between May and June this year, and showed that 85 percent of companies are currently using some kind of open source software, with the remaining 15 percent expected adopt open source software within the next year.

274 companies were surveyed across multiple countries across the world including, Asia, Europe and North America. Gartner says companies that took part in the survey varied from small to large and were evenly spread throughout the manufacturing, education, financial and service industries.

Those surveyed were asked to pick the main reasons for using open source software, which included; lower cost and reduction of development costs which made it easier to start new IT projects or software initiatives.

Many of the companies that took part said that they used open source software as a way of keeping all their cards to their chest, as it stopped a single vendor controlling the IT department.

Some other businesses said that by using open source software, they could have a faster time to market, which better positions them to meet the demands of internal and external customers.

It all just shows another step to open source acceptance across business and the world.

A six month survey on the choice of office software has been taken by ClickStream Technologies, and has found that free desktop-based office applications such as OpenOffice are what keep Microsoft on its toes.

The survey was taken by 2400 internet users in America on their preference of both hosted and desktop-based paid-for , and free office applications The survey results showed that although Google Docs and Spreadsheets were a firm favourite as a competitor to Microsoft’s Office software, “OpenOffice is currently the more likely app t take that position”

ClickSteam found that consumers are still not fully convinced of the merits of ‘cloud computing’, and that this was a good indication of, “the value of offline and local processing enabled by installed applications.”

The survey also pointed out that Google had been unable to use the popularity of its Gmail email service to encourage the uptake of its Software as a Service (SaaS) options. Of all of those surveyed, no-one viewed an email attachment in Google Docs using the ‘Open as a Google Document’ button within Gmail.

The survey found that while the use of Google Docs and OpenOffice remains quite low, Microsoft’s Office showed “no signs of declining popularity”, and was still used by around 50 percent of those surveyed.

OpenOffice was the most popular of all the free applications, with 5 percent of those surveyed using the package. The web-based Google Docs was the second most popular free application, used by one percent of the 2400 surveyed. Over the sixth month period, users performed 1797 actions in Microsoft Word. OpenOffice came second with 548 actions used, and Google brings up the rear with just 40.

Other hosted apps didn’t make much impact: “Less than on percent of the sample used Zoho Virtual Office, no use was observed for ThinkFree or WriteBoard,” ClickStream said.

It added that during the study, “Of all participants who used Google Docs or Google Spreadsheets during the study, 68 percent also used Word at least once, indicating that Google Docs has yet to be considered a stand-alone product by most of its users.”

In contrast however, just 26 percent of OpenOffice users, used Microsoft Word over the course of the six months. However, Microsoft word was shown to be the most popular application used by 51 percent of the surveyed users.

ClickStream conducted the survey on 2400 American internet users over the age of 18. They had to install a program called ClickSight that collects entered data, click patterns, and user behaviour across all browsers.