Category Archives: Open Source

Second life goes open source

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CNN report…

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Aiming to take advantage of its already-impressive momentum, San Francisco’s Linden Lab, developer of the Second Life virtual online world, will announce Monday that it is taking the first major step toward opening up its software for the contributions of any interested programmer.

The company will immediately release open source versions of its client software for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. In order to enter and move around the Second Life service, users must download and run this software on their computer desktop. But now, says Linden CEO Philip Rosedale, independent programmers will be able to “modify it, fire it up and sign on with it.” The company gave Fortune exclusive access to executives in advance of the change.

While this initial step will open up what is essentially the user’s window into Second Life for modification, it will leave Linden Lab in control of the proprietary software code for all Second Life’s backend services – the server software that makes the world exist. However, executives say that the company’s eventual intention is to release an open source version of that software as well, once it has improved security and other core functions. They say they have been preparing for the open source move for about three years.

The client, or viewer, software now being open sourced is what enables users to control their avatars, or digital in-world personas, as well as communicate with other users, and buy and sell virtual goods and services.

“We think that if we open source Second Life its product quality will move forward at a pace nobody’s ever seen,” says Rosedale.

The piece goes on to review the numbers claimed for Second Life:

Interest in Second Life – which is free for basic use – has grown dramatically with a quickening pace of press coverage in places like Reuters, Business Week, Time, Wired and The New York Times, as well as consumer publications and Web sites worldwide. New registrants were arriving at a rate of 20,000 per month last January but by October the number had soared to 254,000. But many were apparently thwarted by how difficult the service is to use. Only 40,000 of those October registrants were still using Second Life 30 days after they first joined, according to figures recently provided by Rosedale.

Linden Lab claims 2.5 million “residents,” meaning people who have registered for Second Life. But the service has only around 250,000 active members who still sign in more than 30 days after registering. Nonetheless, that group of active users is currently growing at about 15 percent per month…

Thanks to Tony Hirst for the link.

The phone conference

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A phone conference in the Ndiyo office/lab this afternoon. Michael Dales (left) and Quentin are talking to Andy Fisher of Displaylink (whose disembodied voice is emerging from the handset held by Quentin). The conversation (about NIVO protocols, among other things) is largely incomprehensible to ordinary mortals. Fortunately, however, a representative of this latter category was present, and capable of operating a camera.

Compatability, Microsoft style

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From Tech News on ZDNet…

Microsoft has pledged to make its new Office 2007 file formats accessible within the company’s other products, but the timeline for that support varies widely.

Although the company already has converters available for older PC versions of Office, the Mac translation tools are still in development. Microsoft now doesn’t expect to have the tools available until late March or April, the company said Tuesday.

“We realize this will be an inconvenience for some of you,” Microsoft acknowledged in its Macmojo blog. Folks in the Mac software unit at Microsoft say they have experienced the pain firsthand, now that a good percentage of Microsoft employees are using Office 2007.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile unit said in an e-mail on Tuesday that its PocketPC and Smartphone devices won’t be able to read and edit the new formats until the middle of next year….

This won’t stop Microsoft executives dissing OpenOffice for its alleged inability to read MS-formatted documents, though. Monopoly isn’t just a social and economic problem; it’s a state of mind.

Justice vs. Wisdom

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From Eben Moglen’s Blog…

The United States Department of Justice announced today that it would be making a radical purchasing decision: stop dealing with the firm it considers an illegal monopoly. No more Microsoft Word at Main Justice. So they will spend $13 million to acquire Word Perfect licenses from Corel. Did they consider OpenOffice at $0? Why bother—Let’s just cut Social Security benefits instead.

Ndiyo on ZDNet

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Andrew Donoughue’s piece about Ndiyo and the digital divide is now on the Web. The nice thing about it is that it sets our work in the wider context.

An alternative to both the refurbished PCs and the OLPC approach has been developed by two UK academics. Ndiyo, the Swahili word for “yes”, is a project that aims to allow multiple users access to the same PC. Rather than trying to push more bespoke devices on countries with meagre IT budgets, Ndiyo allows one PC to be shared by five to 10 individuals by turning it into a mini-server networked to a series of thin clients.

The brain-child of Quentin Stafford-Fraser, a former research scientist at AT&T Laboratories Cambridge, Ndiyo is based around the untapped ability of the Linux operating system (Ubuntu) to support numerous simultaneous users. Together with his partner, technical author and Open University professor John Naughton, Stafford-Fraser decided that the traditional idea of one machine per user was a model that just didn’t make economic or functional sense for the developing world. Instead, in the Ndiyo model, a Linux PC becomes a server to a series of “ultra-thin-clients” — called Nivos — which allow an extra display, keyboard and mouse to be connected to the computer via a standard network cable.

ZDNet UK caught up with Stafford-Fraser and Naughton recently to find out how their technology works and why it makes more sense than the strategies being developed by heavyweights such as Intel and OLPC…

Novell’s Faustian bargain

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Very good openDemocracy piece by Felix Cohen and Becky Hogge on the implications of the deal between Microsoft and Novell (memorably summarised by Dana Gardner at ZDNet in the headline “Fox marries chicken, both move into henhouse”)…

On 2 November, Novell and Microsoft announced a “broad collaboration on Windows and Linux interoperability and support”. The main aim was to provide reassurance and support to companies that required Linux and Windows to operate on the same hardware, in so-called “virtualisation” environments. But the small print revealed a patent licensing agreement and mutual covenant not to sue over patent infringements. This, many feared, would give Microsoft vital fresh ammunition for its steady fire of unsubstantiated claims that Linux infringes Microsoft’s patents. In effect, Microsoft had asked Novell the classic loaded question “when did you stop beating your wife?”, and Novell had unwisely attempted an answer…

Linux hardware

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One of the most irritating things about the PC market is how difficult it is to buy laptops which do not have Windows pre-installed. When Ndiyo needed a machine to act as a mobile server for demos, we had to buy a Windows-crippled Vaio and then install Ubuntu on it. So despite wanting a machine that would run only open source software, we still had to pay the Windows tax.

It’s always seemed to me, therefore, that there was a market opportunity for a slick operation offering Linux-powered hardware. And lo and behold! — here’s one: :: system76. Looks pretty slick. Pity it only operates in the US.

Oracle, Open Source and Red Hat

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Interesting comment by ex-Oracle insider, Dave Dargo, on Larry Ellison’s bluster about stealing Red hat’s business. Excerpt:

But what about the other part of [Ellison’s] quote, that [Oracle’s] support has to be better. There’s a survey from CIOInsight that shows Red Hat is the number one vendor for value as rated by CIO’s in 2004 and 2005. Where does Oracle fit on that chart? Glad you asked, they ranked 39 out of 41.

The other thing I’m most curious about is the concept of Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN). The claim is that it takes less than a minute to switch from Red Hat’s Network (RHN) to ULN. It’s going to take more than a minute, and a fair amount of cost, to get through the legal agreements and process of switching over. But even with that aside, I’m mostly curious as to why Oracle’s first real support network is for someone else’s product. Where’s the Oracle Database Network and Applications Network and PeopleSoft Network and Siebel Network? Where are the support infrastructure networks for Oracle’s own products to automatically distribute fixes, patches and alerts? It’s amazing that they can provide all that for a mere $399 for a competitor’s products, but not for their own $200,000 product…

Firefox 2.0

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Technology Review describes it as “the Honda Civic of Web Browsers”, which is an interesting metaphor. Here’s what they mean by that:

Tapping once again into the collective talents of the open-source community, the new Firefox 2.0 Web browser is unambiguously a success. Released late Tuesday, the Mozilla Foundation’s latest Net-surfing tool is almost everything Web denizens have come to expect from the popular Internet Explorer alternative. Firefox 2.0 offers a handful of obvious improvements in searching and security and a couple of new features, and it largely keeps doing well what it has done well before.

This said, it breaks little genuinely new ground.That’s not a criticism, particularly given that the Web has long since become as mainstream as microwave ovens. Indeed, developers say their goal for the new browser was decidedly evolutionary, despite high hopes for a few advanced features that didn’t make the final cut.

“We wanted to continue the evolution that started with Firefox 1.0,” says Mike Beltzner, the Mozilla Foundation’s “phenomenologist.” “We wanted to make sure users still have full control over the browser and the full ability to customize it, and make sure they can actually understand those options.”

This continued focus on simplicity and extensibility makes Firefox 2.0 an extremely solid product, with a few flashes of brilliance. It’s suitable for anyone from novice Web surfers to hard-core coders. But this time around, its pathway into the market isn’t quite as clear…

Don’t you just love the idea of an organisation that employs a phenomenologist!

I see that Quentin has downloaded the new version. His view seems to coincide with Tech Review’s.