Linux Solutions

A group of graduate students and professors form the University of Washington an the University of Calafornia, San Diego have developed an open source software service called Adeona, that allows users to track lost or stolen laptops.

Thomas Ristenpart, a graduate student from UCSD, said that Adeona became a search for a truly private system for laptop users.

“The research project at first was initially not about delivering a service for people. We were originally looking at the privacy implications of some of the device-tracking systems now on the market. But as we got into it, we realized we were going to develop a client that people would be interested in using,” he said

“That interest stems from the fact that existing commercial laptop-tracking products involve someone besides the owner having access to personal data.” Ristenpart has no information that any abuse has taken place, he said, but his team understood the concerns some users might have regarding those products.

The program is used byt first instlling Adeona on your laptop. Encypted connectionas to open source OpenDHT storage servers are then established. If you were to mis-place your laptop or have it stolen, another download and a password allows you to track your device via its last known IP addresses and Internet nodes that were used to connect the missing system.

Privacy is maintained as users are the only ones to see the information about their laptops - not outside companies or law enforcement agencies.

“We think that one of the cool contributions of this type of research is not only can you develop a system that successfully tracks your laptop, but it can do so with privacy mechanisms in place. People don’t have to sacrifice privacy to get these kinds of benefits,” Ristenpart said.

“I applaud services like this,” David Perry, global education director for the security company Trend Micro, said. “It takes a village to protect your computer. … I think laptops should ship with this and, in fact, with proprietary devices like iPhones.”

Perry did have questions about whether an open source-based tracking system would itself be secure, since any developer would have access to the source code. “The fact that it’s open source makes the structure of security visible to the bad guys as well. … Corporations don’t open source security for that reason.”

Tracking systems focused on the hardware and not the data itself face challenges, Perry added. “The thieves steal the laptops, and within an hour throw them away like peanut shells. What they really wanted was the data, they wanted the identity on the laptop. … It turns out to be a liability because you can be tracked through it.”

Developers using Google’s Android have created a simple way to install the operating system on to Nokia’s N810 open-source handheld devices.

The development is more of interest to people who want to build applications for Android rather than general users. So what exactly is the advantage of this development?

Well, for developers, the discovery is pretty exciting. “Testing on a physical device is way different than testing in an emulator,” said Mike Rowehl, a mobile developer who has loaded Android on his N810.

“This is an important move that indicates the success of the open-source model. By virtue of building on open-source platforms already well-represented in terms of active projects, developers have been able to get Android up and running on physical hardware,” he added.

The N810 devices run on Maemo Linux, and Android is based on Linux. Since most phones come with closed operating systems, users typically can’t simply remove and replace operating systems, as the developers were able to do. Because Android isn’t yet complete, no phones actually running the software are available.

In April, developers also posted installation information on the eLinux.org Web site about loading Android onto the Nokia tablets. However, the process was pretty complicated. The new installer makes it much easier for people to load the software onto the devices.

The N810 has a larger form factor than a cell phone but is much smaller than a laptop. The initial release of the line of Internet tablets, the N770, by Nokia raised some eyebrows because the devices don’t include cellular connectivity. They have Wi-Fi, however, and users can connect a cell phone to the N810 via Bluetooth for mobile access.

The Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS) and the Linux Mobile Foundation (LiMo) have joined forces in an effort to develop a strong mobile Linux platform and community.

LiPS had been working toward a formal standard for mobile Linux since its formation near the end of 2005. Almost a year later, LiMo appeared and began developing shared implementation practices for an open source mobile platform.

Bill Weinberg, general manager of LiPS and chair of the Mobile Linux Conference said, “One was [working on] standards, and one was focused on implementation. The purpose of the merger is to husband resources in support of practical goals.”

Linux mobile can already be found of quite a few smartphones in the US, and China has been shipping out Linux mobile phones for four years.

“Linux is already deployed in 50 million smartphones. It is clear we are heading to parity - by 2010 according to some analysts - with Symbian and Windows Mobile,” said Weinberg. “Through the LiPS and LiMo union we intend to work towards creating more pull in the ecosystem.”

One major factor that drove the groups to merge is the concern about fragmentation in Linux mobile. “There has been a lot of hand wringing over the fact that there is no single source for a completed mobile Linux standard,” Weinberg said, “which is problematic if you are an application writer.”

LiPS released some specs on a standard last year. But the industry is already wrestling with competitive pressures, and most companies are more concerned with putting products in consumer’s hands and getting money in the bank, than about the creation of a formal standard.

Just this week, Nokia announced it would by the rest of Symbian mobile operating system and open source it under the Eclipse Public License. Google Android should be with us soon too, although reports suggest it’s been pushed back to 2009.

Goals for the new formation, which one can only assume will be called ‘LiMoLiPS’ – or something to that effect – is that they want to build better middleware for the applications that have already been developed.

“There are silos of functionality that need to be defined and integrated with one another. The challenge today is to be timely and relevant in a fast moving market,” Weinberg said.

The community, it would seem, are supportive of this approach. Jim Ready, founder and CTO of MontaVista Software, a contributor to the Linux community and an active LiMo member said, “One of the doubled-edged swords about the success we have in working with key customers to bring out Linux-based phones was the number of groups that were forming.”

Michel Gien, cofounder and executive vice president of corporate strategy at VirtualLogix, was also in support of the partnership. “We don’t want to have two groups basically working towards the same goals but through a different approach,” he said

“By focusing their energies collaboratively,” Gien said, “members of the two groups can strengthen the ecosystem around Linux mobile phones and build greater momentum for development.”

The two groups’ combined focus “will help Linux move into the lower end of the mobile phone market,” Gien said, which is likely to be the next big competitive battleground.

NETGEAR has launched an open source wireless-G router, which will allow Linux developers and hackers to create Firmware for specialised applications.

Open Source Wireless-G Router (WGR614L) delivers higher processing power an has more memory for a wide variety of customised applications, and is supported by a dedicated and at acting open source community.

The WGR614L, which is Windows Vista certified, features a 240 MHz MIPS32 CPU core with 16 KB of instruction cache, 16 KB of data cache, 1 KB of pre0fetch cache, and boasts 4 MB of flash memory and 16 MB of RAM.

In addition to an external 2 dBi antenna, the WGR614L comes with an integrated internal diversity antenna, which will provide enhanced performance and range. The router supports free open source Linux-based Tomato and DD-WRT firmware, and will soon support OpenWRT.

The router features include; Hotspots – the ability to install any firmware, guest access via separate SSID, and Upstream and downstream QOS, and intelligent bandwidth monitoring.

The WGR614L includes one 10.100 Internet WAN port and a four-port 10/100 LAN switch, an 802.11g access point (54 Mbps), and Static and Dynamic routing with TCP/IP, VPN pass-through (IPSec, L2TP), NAT, PPTP, PPPoE, DHCP (client and server) and Bigpond.

A Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) firewall, and support for 40-, 128- and 152-bit WEP encryption, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), WPA2-PSK, and Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) is also included.

Additional security features include DMZ, MAC address authentication, URL content filtering, logs, and email alerts of Internet Activity.

The NETGEAR Open Source Wireless-G Router is available at a retail price of $69US.

When Bill Gates hangs up his hat at the end of today, you have to wonder if Microsoft will grow to accept Open Source now that he’s gone.

Observers from both sides of the fence (that’s the open and closed source fence) say the exit of Microsoft’s number one won’t change the computer giant’s attitude to open source communities overnight, but it may accelerate the changing attitude in Redmond.

“We already see quite a different approach to dealing with OSS and OSS companies from Sam Ramji’s group doing a great job in establishing dialog,” said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange and a former marketing exec at SUSE Linux. “With Gates’ departure, the only mammoth remaining is Ballmer. With him away in a near future, Microsoft will definitely open up. They have to.”

Barry Crist, CEO, Likewise Software said, “For much of Microsoft’s history, its primary strategic initiative has been Windows everywhere. Bill Gates was the primary architect of this and it has served the company well in reaching the $50 billion revenue mark. To get from $50 to $100 billion, however, they will clearly need to embrace the non-Windows world. I suspect this will be easier for Microsoft to accomplish without Gates. We see substantive signs of this happening already.”

One open source backer, Juergen Geck, CTO of Openxchange, hints that Gates’ early departure from Microsoft signals the beginning of the end for proprietary software.

“Bill Gates figured out how to harvest from software licensing early on in the game, and built the biggest software company on the planet from it. Selling software licenses has become a triviality,” he said

Although no one particularly expects Microsoft to open source any of its main applications, even Microsoft programmers hope to see more openness and source code releases in the future. Guys like Andrew Brust, chief of new technology at TwentySix, a longtime Microsoft partner and developer in New York believs Microsoft will consider all the options.

“I have a strong feeling that Microsoft will consider anew all their options with regard to open source strategy and the open source community. I think that Microsoft will remain much like it is now it will continue to release commercial software and take intellectual property rights very seriously.

“But I do think you’ll see more open source/shared source/community projects on CodePlex, on the model of the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. I think you’ll see Microsoft engage more closely with open source companies, interest groups and enthusiasts, both within the .NET world, and outside of the Microsoft universe.”

”A good harbinger of this is Moonlight, the Novell-sponsored, open source, Linux-based implementation of Silverlight, and the fact that Microsoft worked with that team to help them get the product built. “Scott Guthrie is largely responsible, as far as I can tell, for this kind of constructive engagement with the open source world, and I think his influence will grow,” he said

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation can’t predict what Microsoft’s new top brass will do but believes open source will continue to put enormous pressure on the company’s margins and closed source ways.

“That depends on Ballmer and Ozzie and the results of what I imagine are some interesting debates internally. There is no doubt that Microsoft has no choice but to acknowledge that the closed development model for building software doesn’t work any more,” he said

“The future of cloud computing and Web 2.0 application development will be built on Linux and open source.”

Others say that Bill gates has set out plans for the next few years, and that his vision will be maintained.

Per Werngren, president of IDE, of Stockholm, Sweden and president of the Internal Association of Microsoft Certified Partners said, “Bill Gates has planned his departure well and today Microsoft is led by so many great leaders. He is a powerful symbol and an icon that we all will miss. But being Chairman is also an important position in Microsoft so he will still oversee long term strategy,”

Openmoko has started to ship out its Linux-based, Neo Freerunner phone to five newly announced distributors in Germany, France and India. Completely open source, the phone allows users are free to modify the operating system as much as they like.

Up-till now, Openmoko phones have only been available in limited quantities, mostly to open source phone software developers. With this announcement would seem that Openmokos’s technology is aimed at the mass market. The company had originally wanted to ship out the phone last October but numerous hardware problems caused the delay.

The Neo Freerunner (GTA02) is an updated version of Openmoko’s earlier Neo 1973 model. As with the Neo 1973, which shipped last year, the Freerunner is billed as a completely open, hackable hardware platform, which allows users to install and run new operating system firmware.

Compared to the Neo 1973, the Freerunner now has WiFi, 3D accelerometers, improved graphics, and a faster 500MHz Samsung S3C2442 system-on-chip (SoC) processor. Other features include:
Samsung S3C2442 500MHz processor, 128MB RAM, 256MB Flash, a 4.3-inch diagonal 640×480 VGA colour TFT LCD Screen, SMedia 3362-based 3D graphic acceleration, 2×3D accelerometers, 1.1 USB Socket, 2.5G tri-band GPRS/GSM (900MHz or 850MHz, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth v2.0 and AGPS (assisted global positioning system).
The Neo FreeRunner uses the open source mobile phone software stack maintained by the OpenMoko project, along with the open source Jalimo JVM (Java virtual machine), which is maintained by German software development company Tarent GmbH.

Steve Mosher, Openmoko VP of marketing said, “We have moved beyond the early adopter stage and are now ready to release the next generation Neo Freerunner to markets where we are seeing early traction.” Mosher added that the distributors could provide “software and exterior customization” for the phone.

The Openmoko Neo Freerunner will have go on sale for roughly $400. In addition to being offered by the new European and Indian distributors, it will continue to be sold direct, online.

Mobile phone giant Nokia has bought all the remaining parts of the Symbian OS it didn’t already have and is releasing it to the open source foundation, along with the S60 UI layer. They are not alone with Sony giving UIQ and DoCoMo throwing MOAP(S) in to the mix.

Symbian has always been the underlying OS, allowing companies to develop different graphical layers on top in much the same way that Windows (previous to 95) used to sit on top of MS-DOS.

Nokia had S60, originally intended for button interfaces, Sony Ericsson had UIQ, designed for pen-control, and DoCoMo had MOAP(S), intended fro Japan.

The difference between the UI’s were becoming pretty blurred, with developments such as S60 adding touch control and UIQ 3 offering pen-less interaction. Now, all three are to be combined and given away royalty-free to the Symbian Foundation’s members as a single UI.

Each of those members will have to pay $1,500 a year but that won’t break the bank for companies like AT&T and Vodaphone, who have both come on board to endorse the open Symbian platform.

This move by the companies does remove the advantage Google’s Android platform has; the fact the code is free. The move also removes a large portion of Nokia’s revenue. The company is paying €264m for the privilege of giving away its software.

HP has announced that its Tru64 Unix Advanced File System (AdvFS) source code will be open to the Linux community. According to HP, access to this code will provide capabilities that increase uptime, enhance security and help ensure maximum performance of Linux file systems.

The AdvFS source code will provide the Linux community with reference implementation for an enterprise Linux file system. This includes design documentation, test suites and engineering resources.

According to HP, their code contribution provides Linux kernel developers with a comprehensive foundation to improve today’s Linux file system functionality. HP is making the source code available under the terms of General Public License Version 2 for compatibility with the Linux kernel.

Doug Small, director of global alliance marketing for HP said, “a lot of work is going on to bring the Linux operating system to the next level.”

HP developed AdvFS as a file system that has been used for over 16 years by enterprise all over the world. HP say’s it simplifies file and storage management, enables online system backups and increases data availability.

The integration of key AdvFS features also accelerates the road map of future solutions deigned to strengthen Linux for enterprise customers. Small believes this will be a “big advantage to core operations at data centres.”

“To ensure the highest levels of data security and availability, Linux customers need full and immediate access to established technology,” said Martin Fink, senior vice president and general manager of business critical systems at HP. “We continue to invest our engineering resources in the development of that technology while working with the open source community to ensure accessibility and seamless integration.”

Over the years, HP has made several contributions to the Linux community, Small explained. For example, HP engineers worked on scalability and management issues. In January HP launched its software governance initiative to help companies address the legal, financial and security risks faces when adopting free and open source software (FOSS).

“HP’s contribution of the Advanced File System code, coupled with its overall resource commitment to Linux, will greatly accelerate the development and commercial availability of improved system functionality for Linux,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of Linux Foundation. “The technology and engineering resources being made available for next-generation file system projects are proof that HP is a true open source community leader.”

“Business demands are driving the Linux kernel development community to focus on the advancement of file system functionality. Currently, file systems are being developed through an open community process. HP’s contribution expedites these efforts,” said Small.

Bdale Garbee, chief technologist for open source and Linux at HP said, “The existing file system matches many of the workloads used in enterprise today. But many more workloads are more demanding and need a more advanced open source file system associated with Linux.”

“For example, increasing the size of the partition and volume can let users do tasks with one command instead of having to use several,” he said. There is an ever-increasing demand to increase the size.

“Improvements to the file system will benefit more than just high-end enterprise Linux users,” Garbee said. “For instance, some of these enterprise features - like taking a snapshot of the file system while the application is still running - can be useful on the desktop.”

“We hope that this will bring overall functionality for desktop users as well. Our target is the enterprise user at this point,” said Garbee.

Finally after 15 long years of development, the first stable version of Wine is available.

For those who are unaware, Wine is an open source implementation of the Windows application programming interface (API) on top of X, Open GL and Unix that allows Windows apps to run on other operating systems, including Linux and Mac OS, without having to run Windows as well.

He developers have released the software’s source code for free and have said binary packages are in the process of being created. Although compatibility is “not perfect yet, thousands of applications have been reported to work very well,” they added.

Wine’s origins can be tracked all the way back to 1993, when the growing ubiquity of Windows began to make it clear that support for Windows applications was becoming a necessity. A Usenet hierarchy was created in 1994 for development discussion.

Microsoft’s changes to Windows required frequent modifications, including the addition of Win32 support in 1995. In early 1996 Word and Excel were reported to run on the software, and by the end of 1997 the Win HQ web site was created.

Corel and CodeWeavers were among the vendors involved in the project, which now boasts more than 1.4 million lines of C code and features the contributions of more than 700 volunteers.

“It’s amazing that Wine has finally released a stable version after 15 years of development,” Adam Kane, a Linux blogger said “The Wine developers have fixed an enormous amount of bugs over the years - especially recently - and it’s great to see them confident enough to call this a stable release.”

On Tuesday, CodeWeavers announced the release of its own customized, commercial versions of Wine for both Mac and Linux.

Offering tech support and additional features, both the Mac and Linux versions of CrossOver 7.0 feature support for Microsoft Office 2007 (including Outlook 2007), and newer versions of Quicken, and the Adobe CS and CS2 line of products, including Photoshop.

“CrossOver 7.0 contains many of the fixes that Wine 1.0 has, and will give users a great taste of what of the new version of Wine is capable of,” said Jeremy White, CodeWeavers’ chief executive officer. “We really feel that 1.0 will be a major step toward making Wine an application that will run all Windows applications, and we’re excited for its release.”

Wine has significantly enhanced support for ActiveX controls within Internet Explorer, White added.

“A recurring theme we hear is the ability to use CrossOver to access ActiveX-intensive Web pages,” he explained. “This upgrade takes a giant step forward by expanding the Web sites that can be used on a Linux or Mac system.”

“Wine got a lot of attention about a decade ago, and the vision was running Windows apps on Linux without the use of the Windows operating system,” Raven Zachary, senior analyst and open source practice head with the 451 Group, told one Linux web site. “I think it’s been compelling for a lot of people because there are so many apps on Windows.”

What has limited Wine’s opportunity, however, “has been the fact that desktop virtualization has really taken off,” Zachary added. “Companies like VMware and Parallels have provided some solid solutions and to some extent stolen Wine’s thunder.”

As a result, “I think the people in desperate need have already purchased a desktop virtualization product like VMware and an operating system,” which together might total around $300, he explained. “The cost ended up being much greater, but it’s providing a working solution for the people who really needed one.”

The question now, then, is what niche Wine will fill, he added.

“I think you’ll see this will appeal to the casual user - people who want to run simple games or simple vertical applications, but whose pain point wasn’t greater than $300,” he predicted.

Looking forward, “I think Wine’s great, but the challenge will be keeping it up to date,” Zachary concluded. “Microsoft continues to advance its own technologies, so it’s always a matter of playing catch-up — Wine will have to keep moving.”

The Open Source Census is a collaborative project started by OpenLogic with the aim of collecting and sharing quantitative data on the use of open source software, and has revealed that more the 220,000 open source packages and project installations are in use on business hard drives. The census now aims to delve further in to open source products used by enterprise adapters. The project has many sponsors, one of them being Microsoft.

Kim Weins, senior vice president of marketing for OpenLogic, said, “The big push now is working with enterprises to submit data from a much larger sampling of machines in their organizations.”

According to organisers, the ranks of the census membership are swelling as the third phase of the ongoing open source census begins. The first two stages involved drumming up support and framework for conducting a global census and an initial wave of survey reporting by participating companies.

Now the survey is gaining international recognition. Around 66 percent f computer hard drives canned by their owners in the first two months were outside the US. Global participation in the census extended to Europe, Canada and Australia.

“The first wave of program surveying was based on data from only a handful of computers in each participating business,” Weins said “the company representative participating in the software scan would search perhaps his or her own desktop computer or a few in a single location inside the company.”

OpenLogic now wants to dive “deeper to get more detailed data compiled from scans done on hundreds or even thousands of computers within the same organization”, she said

According to the census finding released on Monday, thus far, the top open source packages found installed in business offices – in order – are Firefox, Xerces, Zlib, Xalan and Prototype. The Linux OS Ubuntu is the top Linux Distribution on machines scanned to this point.

Various versions of Ubuntu accounted for almost half of all Linux distributions installed on participating machines. Debian accounted for 14 percent; Suse Linux distributions accounted for 12 percent of install base and Fedora Core with 7 percent.

“As more extensive surveys of installed packages are conducted, higher usage incidents of Red Hat Enterprise Linux should be evident”, believes Weins.

“At the enterprise level, we found 59 different installed packages a bit lower than we expected. This is probably because the census is still in the early stage. We expect to see the number of different installed packages to grow to around 100,” Weins explained.

New members have joined the census organization at various levels, including a new level called “Friends of the Open Source Census.” New participants at the Friends level include ActiveState, EnterpriseDB and OSAlt.com (Open Source as Alternative). New sponsors include Microsoft and Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab.

“ActiveState was built on open source, and we’re excited to support the Open Source Census,” said Bart Copeland, CEO of ActiveState. “Open source software offers enterprises flexibility, community development and increased innovation. The census is going to shine the light on how much enterprises are actually using open source technologies, including languages like Perl, Tcl and Python.”

Jeff Sheltren, the facility’s operations manager says the goal at Oregon State’s Open Source Labs’ is to not only facilitate open source communities but also the development and distribution of open source software.

“One of the main benefits we see with the Open Source Census is that it allows individuals and enterprises to report their OSS usage data anonymously to a centralized location. The census data can be used by open source software developers to see how widely used their applications are, while at the same time allowing enterprises to review their OSS usage and compare it to the aggregate data reported by all census users,” he said.

“Microsoft is participating in the open source census because its customers, partners and developers are working in increasingly heterogeneous environments”, explained Sam Ramji, senior director of platform strategy at Microsoft. “Projects like the Open Source Census are relevant for the ecosystem in which Microsoft participates”, he added.

Microsoft, he claimed, actively participates in open source through Microsoft engineers and product teams and with industry partners and OSS projects.

OpenLogic launched the Open Source Census in April 2008. The goal is to provide improved data on how open source software is used in the enterprise. Sponsors include IDC; CollabNet; Holme, Roberts & Owen; Navica; Olliance Group; Open Solutions Alliance; Open Source Business Foundation; and Unisys.

The Open Source Census also has enlisted advisors from the open source development community, including Jim Jagielski, chairman of the Apache Foundation; and Tony Wasserman, director of the Software Management Program at Carnegie Melon West.