Linux Solutions

In October it was revealed by Windows chief Steven Sinofsky, that the next version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system was due “early next year”. Vague to say the least, and that was all we had heard…until now.

It seems, according to a Microsoft insider that Windows 7 Beta 1 will be publicly available on January 13th, 2009 according to a blog post by Keith Combs – much sooner than expected. Combs’ post relates to a promotional announcement for the MSD Developer Conference series that said that each registrant is to “receive a Windows 7 Beta 1 DVD”.

The first event of the MSDN series is on December 9th, in Houston, but according to kieth this will not be the public release date of the Window’s 7 Beta 1. Here’s an extract from his post:

“My understanding is that the DVD will not be ready for the first few show dates but will be mailed to each attendee…We are targeting to have the DVD’s in the materials from 1/13/2009 on…So I would imagine the folks attending the Houston, Orlando and Atlanta shows this month will receive their DVD’s around mid January as well. That’s an assumption on my part. Could be earlier or later, but they will get them.”

What this means is that the rumour mill is swirling around Microsoft that the Beta version of the software will be unveiled at CES by CEO Steve Ballmer who will be delivering his pre-CES keynote address on January 7th. Everything points to Ballmer bigging up the new Window’s at CES, ad it’s fair to assume that the company will be issuing a press release to stir up even more interest. As for a public release, I think we’ll be waiting till the 13th for the first Beta.

You’ve got to hand it to Microsoft in a way. They manage to build hype like no other computer company around at the moment, and with such a large base of customers, they can be sure of making their millions. I know that the Linux and open source mob will be intrigued to find out how the new operating system runs, and I’m sure there will be hundreds of damning articles flying around the blog-o-sphere the third week in January.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m actually looking forward to the new release. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of but I can’t help but be curious about the changes it could bring from the load of garbage that was Vista. Half of me wants to see Microsoft drop the ball again, and the other half of me says that it’s always good to have a bad guy in a movie, so we need a bad guy in the IT industry, otherwise all the little distro’s that exist happily together will turn in to snarling over protective beasts, close their code, and ruin it for everyone.

Monty’s had a moment it would seem. MySQL creator Michael “Monty” Widenius has gone off on one about the recent version of MySQL. He says that last weeks version 5.1 still has fatal bugs, and that Sun Microsystems shouldn’t have released the database this soon.

MySQL v5.1 was made generally available last Thursday after months of development, but by the weekend Monty couldn’t hold his tongue any longer and had a bit of a rant about the release, claiming it was not ready for mainstream consumption yet.

On his blog titled, “Oops we did it again – MySQL 5.1 released as GA with crashing bugs”, Monty made it clear to users that they should be cautious before they install the latest version of the database on their live systems.

Monty claimed that the new version has around 20 serious flaws that could cause a crash, and said that users should consider v5.1 as a beta, and even hold off until patches to fix the flaws have been developed.

In a scathing assault on the MySQL team managers at Sun, he said that they had failed to learn from previous mistakes when – he claims – the company released a bug-addled version of the 5.0 database too early.

He quotes one of the developers pushing for the early release of the database: “Quality is not regarded to be that important. To quote Mårten Mickos: “MySQL 5.1 will be release as GA in or before December because I say so”. Mårten’s reasons for this is that he needs something he can sell and a release marked “GA” is much easier to sell than a release marked “RC”.”

Monty says that the reason the company wanted the release out is that it was better that v5.0 when it was declared generally available.

“In my opinion, this is not a good reason to declare something GA, especially as 5.0 GA was in terrible shape when it was released. What is worse is that the new features in MySQL 5.1 are of no better quality than new features in MySQL 5.0 was at the time MySQL 5.0 was declared GA,” he ranted

In his long-winded, and ill-advised venting, Monty recommends that new users should use v5.1 because its superior to the v5.0 community version, “which hasn’t been updated for some time”.

Monty made it clear that Sun, which acquired MySQL in February 2008 for $1bn, wasn’t to blame for what he feels is a premature release of the database.

“The decisions to do a GA release was solely been made by the MySQL management in Sun,” he said. “The only thing Sun can be blamed for is to not start fixing the MySQL development organisation soon enough to ensure that things like this can’t happen.

“I still have some hopes that Sun will come in and fix the MySQL development organisation, but with MySQL server releases like this one my hopes have started to fade a bit.”

However, as you can imagine Monty’s ramblings have not gone unnoticed and database administrator has retaliated at Monty’s efforts to “ambush his colleagues”.

She said: “This is another case of a developer, a brilliant one, mind you, one of the brightest in the open source arena, but a developer nonetheless, who has a non-user oriented mindset and is inflicting his view on the users.”

How long Monty will stay at the company is debatable. He started only in October and was annoyed at having to follow rules laid down by Sun, saying he “hated” how the company did business.

Expect a sacking in the coming weeks…

Monty’s post: http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2008/11/oops-we-did-it-again-mysql-51-released.html
Angry Colleague: http://fakeamelia.blogspot.com/2008/12/monty-rants-or-yet-another-case-of.html

On the fertile battlefield of open source vs. closed source, Nepal has signalled a change as free and open source software such as Linux has been adopted as a serious contender to commercial software, a la Microsoft.

Most people enjoy free things, the word is used by many a retailer to entice customers in to the shops - “buy one, get one free” and the like. However, free and open source software (FOSS) has struggled to make a serious impact when in the ring with commercial heavyweights like Microsoft, because there were so many pirated versions of Windows operating systems, they were cheap and often come free with hardware which making it difficult for FOSS to gain a foothold.

FOSS’s ethos was always one of freedom of use, modification and the ability to share ideas and code. If you look at examples of how well this works you need look no further than Firefox or OpenOffice, which are both community contributed entities that have made that biggest impact on the mainstream computer user.

Closed-source programs can cost and arm and a leg too. A copy of Photoshop for example will cost you a couple of hundred bucks, and as well as being un-modifiable, can only be used on one computer.

Subir Pradhananga, president of FOSS Nepal says that the rights of the software are restricted to the company and the user must comply with their policies.

However, regardless of the cost an limitations of closed software, it is still used worldwide. Pradhananga says this is due to a lack of awareness, and says that there are FOSS alternatives for almost every type of software imaginable.

In Nepal Pradhananga wants to show people the benefits of open source, free software by setting up public programs and recruiting young engineers into backing FOSS.

In southern Asia, Nepal is it the forefront of promoting FOSS. In 2005 a Nepali OS called NepaLinux was created and is currently available ion four versions. This development allowed non-English speaking people in Nepal to use computers.

Nepal has issued FOSS to several rural schools and have had enthusiasts lobby government to adopt free software in to the country’s IT set-up, and in the education curriculum.

Making a switch to FOSS would not be very hard as many of the free applications are compatible with the Windows operating system, and they could install a dual booting system on a computer.

The idea of using open source software is such an easy sell: Developers and users can share ideas across the world to find ways of modifying and improving the software, ensuring ease of use and working out problems together. Ok so open source software won’t give us world peace, but it’s a start.