January 31, 2008
Ubuntu Cola...

Yep - it's real:
www.ubuntu-trading.com/
... probably they found out about Ubuntu GNU/Linux five seconds after their product hit the shelf. (The site BTW is pretty poor - seems to be a full-page flash animation, and you need javascript enabled or you don't get nothin!)

It's supposed to have sasparilla (root beer) flavoring added - so this is Ubuntu with root! (The jokes can only get worse from here on...) [caveat] haven't confirmed this... could be confusing with another product. If someone in the UK could send me some: Simon Bridge c/o Orewa Post Office, Auckland, NZ. Thank you.

There's a forum!
... the faq search comes up empty on "canonical" and, indeed, "ubuntu" - suspect the faq is empty.

Droll post:
Enable Wifi in Gutsy? Yep - drink Ubuntu Cola and your Gutsy gets very Wifi.

Unlike Ubuntu Linux, Ubuntu Cola is not open source. But there is an open source Cola project...

OpenCola Project:
Ubuntu Cola should be based on OpenCola, with a sachet of secret (restricted) ingredients that users can add at their discretion when they open the can. There could be a version that contains a wormwood infusion for that extra eye-candy...

...and an XUbuntu version, which contains simpler ingredients, comes in a smaller can, but is a "smoother" drink. Maybe users can add sleaves so it can emulate the "look and feel" of Coke or Pepsi, to help newbies better handle the transition?

(I warned you)
The list goes on, but my own major intestine, in a desperate bid for sanity, lept up my neck and throttled my brain.

I was wondering what Mark Shuttleworth has to say about Ubuntu Cola.

Whois, shows relationship benween ubuntu-cola and ubuntu. There's more than just Canonical using the name. But, I haven't found any official comment from them... yet.

Considering the (light hearted) debate about brand confusion, the following was inevitable:

Narrator: In A.D. 2008, a new Cola arrived.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the soda.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What!
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's you!!
CATS: How are you gentlemen!!
CATS: All your cola are belong to us.
CATS: You taste buds are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say!!
CATS: You branding has no chance to survive make your time.
CATS: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
Operator: Captain!!
Captain: Take off every GNU!!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move OpenCola.
Captain: For great justice.

(If you don't know the reference, you are lucky indeed.)

January 31, 2008
Last night I had a dream of Corwin. I was teaching him to ride a bike... he'd been wanting a bike for a while. Of course, he wanted one of the full size mountain bikes. It wasn't possible to walk past one. So the dream had me on one, and Corwin with a Corwin-sized one. It took a frustrating time for him to realise what to do, then suddenly zoomed off on his training wheels and a determined look. Parents running frantically behind him... there's a steep hill at the end of the drive. Then we'd go for rides in the park, Corwin peddling furiously beside his daddy.

Round about now is when Corwin would start thinking about his birthday. We'd start asking what color cake he wanted. For his first birthday, he wasn't much on colours, but he insisted on a star - so he got one. For his 2nd birthday, he clearly and consistently responded: "yellow and green" (the colors of his swing), and he wanted a dinosaur. For his third birthday he wanted red - which is hard to do. So he ended up with a violent blue with giant red pebbles and, on the day, he loved the blue and didn't want the red. Phew. In the dream, he wanted blue. I suspect we'll be haing a very teary blue cake come May.

January 30, 2008
Sticky hot today. Been watching the DVD of the first season of 24 (Keifer Sutherland et al). It was generally intellegently done with only a few glaring holes. Hopefully Jack Bauer gets some sleep before season two - which I guess I'm watching. If only to find out what happened to the woman who blew up the plane, the fake photographer and so on.

One of the things I found a bit odd was the lax security in CTU (high-tech spies right - but they were always using each others terminals, leaving open terminals unattended... even hospitals have better security). The investigation suggests there is an insider, a mole. Trust noone... but, somebody new walks in and announces "I'm taking over, fill me in" and Bauer spills his guts! How about authenticating the new boss?

A previous management change was heralded by a notice over "secure channels" and she came with documentation and an attitude. This new guy is out of the blue and acts furtive. Puh-lease.

The DVDs come with two endings - the sad ending (default) and the happy ending (nausiating - but actually the one expected). It would be inconsistent for the mole to not execute anyone who could be a threat. OTOH: such inconsistencies abound - cold eyed assassins shoot all the guards, one shot and they are down. But when they get to the main character, they pause for a chat, then miss.

There were also some slips in the "real time" framework - obvious when someone walks into a room twice. Also limits advertising... each episode is 45mins of airtime and is supposed to plaf over one hour with the advertisements. So, space and time is supplied for ads. I wonder how that worked in NZ? There is a tendancy to put 5mins of ads every 10mins... that would add 25-30mins to the format for a 70min hour. And I won't go into the supernatural abilities of computers.

Still, the pace is fast and the plans of all sides (yep, there's more than two) get tangled up in application. All adds to the air of despiration which keeps the show exciting. So I'm cautiously looking forward to season two.

January 28, 2008
Surfing for fun I found MarginalHacks.com/, a site dedicating to share the owner's (David Ljung Madison's) scripts. Mostly CGI and Perl, so they'd be of great interest to free software users, developers, and anybody who runs a webpage. Some of them are quite good: I've even used some of it - ogg2mp3, for eg, so I could get my music to play in a cheap media-player. This was before I got my iRiver.

So I check the license. Yet again, this is not a "Free Software" licence. This is fine, the look I had shows that there is nothing there that comes under any pre-existing copyleft, and much of it is old and poorly maintained these days. Some of them are small scripts that are often assigned as assignments for programming students (like hex). But some are useful, like MyFilm, which downloads and converts online movies, and the above ogg2mp3.

There is no problem using them in GNU/Linux as the GPL allows for this. I just cannot distribute any of the scripts as part of free software. If I develope free software around them, my software will be broken... it will only run with non-free add-ons, which defeats the point. It's kind of an incentive to write my own.

So what is this licence?

The author wants credit, dosn't want anyone to produce derived works, wants any mods you make to be sent to him. The author says he has reasons for not choosing a free licence. These reasons are set out in an old page (c. 2004) but other pages have been updated, so the reasons probably haven't changed. On the whole, it's not a nasty licence. He provides the sources (well - binary forms of scripts have yet to be invented) and invites modifications. But the reasons are worthy of consideration as they illustrate a way of thinking about software and ownership that is very common.

Ignoring the cartoon - which misunderstands the issues for the sake of laughs and is beside the authors own points - the reasons run like this:

Reason 1. Compensation
David talks at length about financial remuneration. Which is odd, as he is not actually charging for his software. The only reason for including this would be if he plans to charge in the future. This is important because he requires modifications to be sent to him... hopefully he will be true to his stated ethics and suitably remunerate all the contributors to his code. But, since he brings it up, I should deal with it.

[Contributors are not] guaranteed money - it's a gamble that requires money up front that is put at risk.

There is no guarantee under any license. Financial risk is no greater under FOSS. It's just a fact of life under any economy. But if a FOSS company goes under, their contributions remain. If Davids becomes insolvent and his software sold off, we all lose his contribution.

- it was entirely up to the company to decide the compensation the authors received. Most importantly, [companies don't] have to. And many companies have not.

Again, this is no different under a non-free license. What David has in his license is that commercial use needs to be negotiated with him. He want's a cut, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is still possible to take a cut under a free license, and FSF has suggestions on how to go about this. David knows this but he wants to be able to force companies to give him a cut.

OK. Probably the situation is more complicated - perhaps he wants the software, and to help other hackers, but he dosn't want people to start selling his software without him getting a slice. If they did, he'd feel used.

Interestingly the FSF has a good strategy for this. They find the person buying the software and point out that the same is available for free from another source.

Bottom line is that David is not asking for payment (though donations are welcome). The whole commercial argument, then, dosn't apply.

Reason 2. Fragmentation
He's worried that some of his projects will be forked. It is not clear how this has a "cost". This is by far the weakest argument, and he admits this. So I'll move on.

Reason 3. Control
Here we get into the nitty-gritty. For David it is all about control.

The problem for me with Open Source is, admittedly, one of the features that gives Open Source it's strength. Because other people can modify and redistribute your code, this means they can also screw it up. And while other people will soon learn not to trust the person that screwed up the code, the damage is already done to the original program.

This has never been a problem with any Open Source project, ever. In general, bad patches, bad code, is spotted by contributors long before it reaches release time. Anybody wants to release their own, without David, must differentiate their version to avoid confusion. So that's a non-issue. In fact, poor copies of software is a notorious problem with proprietary software, not free software.

Free licencing does not have to mean losing control - unless David thinks Linus doesn't control Linux development?

I have pretty strong beliefs about my software. That's why I wrote it in the first place. I want my software to work in what I personally consider "The Right Way." (I'm not claiming that it does yet, but it's on its way :).

Bottom line? David wants to be able to tell you how to use his software.

Reason 4. Credit

If I'm not doing this for money, and I'm not getting credit for it, then what's the point?

Let me make this clear: the programmer never gets credit - not for the big stuff. Who contributed to Windows? Can you find the programmer's names anywhere?

In fact, this has been a big issue before. The BSD license used to have a requirement to include a statement crediting contributions. Very quickly, the credit list threatened to be longer than the code. It also created problems in identifying which bits of code should be credited to whome. This was important because a programmer may have wanted to use only part of a larger project... who's attribution do they copy over?

None of this answers the question quoted: "why do it?" Most people write code to have software. They write free software so they can have software that is free... that is, they get to use the work of other people in exchange.

Finally:
There are some issues about how FOSS advocates harrass him.

My software is "free" according to definition #15 (Websters Revised Unabridged 1996,1998) and also arguably 2,5,6,7,8,9,11,13.

Websters definition #15 applies equally to "public domain" software. David's software is not public domain. In fact, the correct term to describe his software is "freeware". Though a better term would be "restrictedware".

David is working in a jargon-ridden industry. The terms "free software" and "open source" have accepted meanings in that industry and can be expected to be default meaning when talking to programmers. You can still use the common meaning, it's just that, where the default is different, you have to make it clear that this is the case. David does not always do this, though he makes it very clear on his license page. In the English language, context is everything.

why is it always the Open Source people who have to fire off an email to me scolding me for what I should or shouldn't be doing? I never get mail from other license proponents, such as proprietary companies who could mail me to tell me that I'm foolish for giving away my work without requiring compensation, it's always the Open Source folks - smells like a knee-jerk reaction to me.

Proprietary companies don't care, you are playing in their ballpark. The FOSS advocates care that they cannot contribute to your projects without losing their work. They are attempting to negotiate a better license, which is what the proprietary companies would do if they wanted to use your software. Fact that you have not received any attempts means that they don't want to use it or they are using it and just not telling you.

In fact, open source and free software projects do recieve such emails - asking for different, usually restrictive, license terms. Your's are just not useful, or clever, enough to be worth proprietary attention. There are non-free alternatives to them all, and under more proprietary-freindly licenses too.

Possibly FOSS advocates would get further by offering you money?

The license chosen is at odds with the stated reason for it, vis:

Why:
I've made this software freely available for the following reasons:

• I like to think that I write useful software, so I want other people to use it.
• I felt like helping out a bit. This is not a common thing for me, so enjoy it.
• I use free software , and wanted to give something back.

The first two are fine. Not charging makes wider adoption easier, and maintaining restrictive copyright makes sure he is helping out only "a bit". However, the accepted way to "give something back" to the free software movement is to write free software. He has not done this. Instead he is encouraging the use of non-free software, his, which is exactly the opposite of what free software is all about.

Notice the link? That's in the actual page. David is directing us to a ZDNet article written by Rick Lehrbaum in November 2000. In this article, go see, Rick spells out what it means to give back. David's software does none of these things.

On the whole, I would like to see David revise these pages. He needs more cogent arguments or, at least, a re-phrasing, before FOSS advocates will let him be.

January 26, 2008
A Patent Troll is a company whose sole business is licensing patents. The idea is that they buy up IP, then gouge manufacturers and users with royalty hikes. Patent trolls are a kind of parasite, they don't actually produce anything themselves, but feed off a marketplace locked-in to specific products - usually hardware.

They are parasites that seem completely happy to kill the host: royalty hikes result in standards being poorly adopted as future manufacturers move from the suddenly-expensive solutions. There are plenty of exploitable patents left, after all.

But surely if a patent is so valuable, the original owner won't part with it? Would they? Well... if a company participates in drafting or setting an international standard, then it may be required to agree to set low fees for the use of patents which would otherwise stifle the standard. But, if the patent is onsold, the new company may not be bound by that agreement.

Or so thought N-Data, one such troll in the US.

Only yesturday, N-Data was soundly and publically larted for this by the (US) Federal Trade Commission. They had attempted to exploit patents involving Fast Ethernet (particlarly the way it negotiates a connection with other kinds of ethernet). This would have limited the use of fast-ethernet cards in future computers and render implimenting the standard problematical.

This also highlights the problems associated with patenting ideas. Had the IP been released under GPL (for eg.) it would have been impossible for any campany to hold the industry to ransom like this. Profits from the IP would have been smaller - but they were artificially limited anyway.

It would be interesting to see how a similar case would stack up in NZ.

January 25, 2008
FYI: The font used in the title-graphic on this page is called Atlas of the Magi, I have also set it to the first option in several other places (like the drop caps and subtitles). However, you are probably not seeing it.

Free Software users will probably see a typewriter font instead' called "Free Mono", a free handwriting font, or the browser default.

Microsoft XP Users, and anyone with the "MS Core TTF Fonts" package installed will see a handwriting font called "Viner Hand ITC" as a close alternative (papyrus is closer, but it's too big). Vista may not come with this font, and some versions of XP too... depending on MS Licensing at the time. Next preference is "Courier New", a typewriter font... other wise you too are stuck with the browser defaults.

So... you may enjoy the special font. Here it is: Atlas of the Magi.
This font is freeware for personal, non-commercial, use: copyright S.John Ross. Redistribution is permitted as long as you redistribute the entire zipfile.

January 24, 2008
I'm famous! Out of curiosity I googled myself and found this blog in the number 9 slot (after "Simon and Garfunkle, Bridge over Troubled Water"). The hit is actually for a page in another site (linuxquestions.org) that links to mine, so lots of people must be following that link.

Don't worry, fame won't change me: I'll still write the same old rubbish I always do. B'sides, the hit counter is only recording a bit over a thousand a week.

The Site is now 100% XHTML'd ... you'll see that I have added dynamic menu buttons (look, no javascript), but things are definately stabilizing now. I like this look - I'll keep it. People with high-res monitors will find it suddenly looks a bit pokey - that's because I have to change pixel measurements into millimeters. Then it should look good on every monitor and most browsers.

The Orewa ACE course is staill stalled: the advertising has the wrong hours and the wrond days and nobody has got back to me on this. I hope they do soon, I don't want to be advertising the wrong days. Probably I'll end up advertising it anyway, and have a contingency plan in place for confusion. We'll see.

Richard Stallman in still on track for a visit in August. It is slow going right now, but inching along. The idea is to set a date and secure funding by the end of February. Stay tuned. People who want to help, just use the contact link.

January 22, 2008
That should be just about it as far as Website stuff goes... what do you think? Still to test it out in Internet Explorer, but all the non-archived pages now use xhtml and css sheets. This means I can change the whole feel of the place by editing only one file.

The hbclinux.net.nz websites still use transparent png files, so they will get ugly white borders in some IE installations. Otherwise, they should look like this one. Here, I got rid of the alpha channels, bet it means that each time I change the background, I have to change all the icons and titles as well.

Unless there are major problems though, I'll stick with this look. Next project: a feedback form :) and more semantic web tags.

The weather has been insufferably muggy, especially for coding. Thank goodness for the swimming pool.