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November 10, 2006
Miguel de Icaza : Nov 10, 14:43 : Mono 1.2 is out
Miguel de Icaza

After two years of brewing, we finally released Mono 1.2. The release notes are here.

I would have blogged a lot more details, but it has been a couple of busy weeks: the Mono meeting burned all my spare time for two weeks, last week events and this week in Barcelona at the TechEd have not given me much time to blog about it.

Next week: Baden-baden for the Prio .NET Conference in Germany where am doing a keynote to present Mono to the .NET audience, and a tutorial session on Mono.

Some press coverage is here.
James Ogley : Nov 10, 13:47 : GNOME Blog/GNOME on Build Service
James Ogley

A morning spent wearing my openSUSE team hat. Been working on #216352. Also finally logged the gnome-blog.desktop bug (#219794).

The various GNOME projects on the Build Service are now in existence, so I'll be moving some packages to GNOME:Community real soon.

Peter Prior : Nov 10, 09:33 : More unnecessary FUD
Peter Prior

MI5 tracking '30 UK terror plots'

How is telling everyone this gaining anything? I pay my taxes so MI5 can worry about this, not me. Can you please get on with your job of dealing with genuine threats and stop the scaremongering.

Current Mood: :|

Planet SUSE News : Nov 10, 08:42 : Why Microsoft won’t assault Linux
Planet SUSE News Whenever Microsoft makes an agreement with a competitor, its actions are viewed with a fair bit of suspicion. The recent agreement between Novell and Microsoft is no exception. Plenty around the blogosphere wondered aloud where the exploding pens were hidden, and on ZDNet, David Berlind believed that the Novell agreement, coupled with previous agreements with Sun, leaves the way clear for Microsoft to make a full legal assault on both RedHat - vendor of the leading Linux distribution - and open source products in general.

Some degree of suspicion is understandable. No one would mistake Microsoft for a company that is good at losing money. Every agreement Microsoft enters into surely is done with an eye towards whether or not it will benefit Microsoft.
Nov 10, 08:39 : Novell opens legal books to GPL pundits
Novell has partnered with the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) to ensure that its partnership with Microsoft does not violate any terms of the General Public Licence.

"The SFLC has been offered cooperation by Novell sufficient to permit a confidential audit to determine whether the licence provisions of the GPL have been complied with," SFLC chairman Eben Moglen told vnunet.com.
Federico Mena-Quintero : Nov 10, 01:32 : Thu 2006/Nov/09
Federico Mena-Quintero

Bye bye, Rumsfeld.

Cartón de Rocha
*

In MS Word, the Print icon in the toolbar has a tooltip that shows you the name of the printer to which the document will be sent immediately. We need that.

November 09, 2006
Lubos Lunak : Nov 09, 23:06 : Novell, Microsoft deal and GPL
Lubos Lunak

Oh, cool. Novell's PR department needed only a week to produce FAQ that'd actually answer frequently asked questions. Press releases full of quotes, long words and other strange stuff are simple, but a plain and clear explanation of what's going on apparently takes time for some unknown reason. And, since pretty much everybody has already tried to interpret various aspects of the deal, including here on Planet KDE, why couldn't I as well? I'm no lawyer, I don't understand it that much and I don't know anything more than what's written in the FAQ and the announcements, but after all that didn't stop many others either.

Say, the part about the GPL "problem". The FAQ, among other things, says:

1. Novell still insists, and always has, that Linux does not infinge on any Microsoft's (on anybody else's) patents.
2. Novell will not include any patented code in its contributions to open source projects.
3. Novell, as one of the founding members of Open Invention Network, will continue to be prepared to defend Linux against any legal attacks against it.
4. Novell, as a part of the deal, has received from Microsoft a covenant not to sue Novell's customers, that however doesn't apply to Novell directly.

So, let's see:

1. Linux does not infringe on any patents - so there's no problem.
2. Novell does not plan to change that.
3. If Microsoft decides to sue anybody for the use of Linux, Open Invention Network will sue back with its patents portfolio (welcome to the cold war). Therefore Microsoft will probably think more than just twice about doing it.
4. Microsoft does not have to sue. Remember SCO? Just vaguely threatening to sue is often enough. It doesn't matter if Microsoft could win or even gain anything from from sueing anybody. At least here from Europe it looks like one can sue anybody for anything in the US, anyway. Small companies probably wouldn't like the idea of Microsoft sueing them, no matter how silly the allegations. They'd still have to defend and stand against Microsoft's army of lawyers. But now they can use Linux from Novell and sleep better at night.

The funny thing is that the last point doesn't seem to make sense, strictly technically speaking. There's no patent infringment and Microsoft won't most probably sue anybody anyway. So why bother? Is just the sleep of Novell's customers worth it?

Apparently Novell thinks it is. There seem to be customers who are still afraid of Microsoft, despite not doing anything bad and having already all kinds of guarantees from Novell, so Novell makes a deal with Microsoft to have a guarantee from Microsoft that it will not have any silly lawsuits against Novell's customers. It's funny, it's absurd, c'est la vie.

For the other Linux users nothing changes, they also still don't do anything bad (and even their sleep doesn't change). Microsoft can still try to sue those, just like it could have done until now. In fact, Microsoft can still sue Novell. If you look at it in a way, this part of deal basically says "Listen, Microsoft, if you have a problem with Novell, sort it out with Novell, don't bother the customers". I.e. Novell redirects any possible threats from its customers to itself and Novell customers get better sleep. That's how I basically see it.

And, as for violating the GPL, I'm no lawyer, so could somebody please enlighten me: Linux does not infringe on any patents. There's no patent licensing, at least as far as GPL-ed code is concerned. There are no plans to add anything patented to GPL-ed code. Novell does not put any additional restrictions on GPL-ed code it ships that'd contradict the GPL. So how exactly is the GPL being violated? There's only a promise from Microsoft that it won't try any silly lawsuits against Novell's customers, a promise not to sue somebody who doesn't do anything bad anyway. If that's against the GPL, even against its spirit I'd say, I must have missed that part. And, while the FSF sometimes goes to quite some extremes, I hope it won't go as far as twisting GPLv3 this way (because, if nothing else, then Microsoft can simply make a public vague promise it won't sue anybody and we're all suddenly violating the GPL).

I don't feel like commenting on anything else regarding the deal or even whether I like it or not. I'm getting tired of all this anyway.

(A disclaimer is probably in order, just in case: This is just a personal opinion, more or less based on reading of the relevant announcements and FAQ, followed by resisting the urge to spread the first silly reaction that came to mind [that's a good thing to do, by the way, so this is recommended in general]. I have no idea what my employer (=Novell, just in case somebody doesn't know) will think about this (if anything at all), especially given that I may be wrong, just like everybody else. No animals were harmed during making of this blog entry and no signing of anything with one's own blood was involved either. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.)

James Ogley : Nov 09, 21:48 : openSUSE GNOME stuff
James Ogley

Well, there's been some discussion on the Build Service list about GNOME stuff and, since that's a matter of public record through the archives, I'm going to mention a few things that are happening/will happen.

Firstly, there will be two 'official' Build Service repos. These will be called GNOME:STABLE and GNOME:UNSTABLE. You can probably work out what will be contained within them. The core GNOME packages that are included in numbered distro releases go in here. STABLE contains the versions that are in the current stable GNOME release and UNSTABLE those which are in the current unstable release. We, the GNOME team, will maintain these

In addition to these there will be GNOME:Community. This will, finally, replace the old usr-local-bin repository that I run, hosted elsewhere. It will contain packages that are not, currently, part of the core distro package set. I'm guessing we're going to be open to other community packagers being added to this.

Andreas Jaeger : Nov 09, 20:06 : openSUSE and Microsoft
Andreas Jaeger Last week Novell and Microsoft announced a cooperation. I'd like to write a bit about what the announcement means especially for openSUSE.

The announcement covers three areas:

* A technical cooperation agreement were Novell and Microsoft will work together in the areas of virtualization, web services management and document format compatibility.
* A patent cooperation.
* A business cooperation between Novell and Microsoft

The business cooperation does not directly affect us at openSUSE at all.

The technical cooperation affects us in so far that the outcome of the work will end finally in the openSUSE distribution, e.g. the changes will go in the OpenOffice repository and then find its way into openSUSE. Far more important is that Microsoft and Novell do work together and will setup a research facility where experts from both companies will work together with customers and the community.

Under the technical cooperation Microsoft and Novell will work together to improve the interoperability of both Windows and Linux. Currently you can run Windows virtualized on Linux but the other way round is not working - now Microsoft and Novell will work together to support this. Additionally the virtualization support is going to be better optimized.

Most users have to exchange documents with people running Microsoft Windows. The collaboration on the filter for Office Open XML will ensure that this works smoothly for them. OpenOffice.org will continue to use Open Document Format by default and Novell will continue to invest in improving it.

I doubt that many of us will benefit from the Web services for managing physical and virtual servers. I find it interesting to see that Microsoft will develop tools to manage Linux systems.

For working together with each other and the community, there's one road block that Novell and Microsoft had to resolve - patents. The patent cooperation is controversial for many people. Note that I personally think that software patents in its current form are completely wrong and should all be invalid - but since they exist, we have to work with them somehow.

We have an internal intellectual property review process at openSUSE for quite some time already that checks all packages, this covers both contributions by internal and external developers. Due to this announcement, we will not change that process in any way at all. If our reviewers find packages that would infringe a patent they will take the necessary actions independent of who owns the patent. The normal way to handle a patent infringement is to find prior technology to invalidate the patents, rework the code to design around the infringement, or as last resort remove the functionality.

There's one exception where we do ship code that potentially infringes patents - and Red Hat seems to do the same thing in this example: If the patent is declared by a party to be completely open for any open
source software, like IBM gave a royalty free license for GPL software with some patents regarding register allocation in GCC and RCU in the Linux kernel, then we would consider allowing the code to go in.

We're also shipping code that we have contracted like the proprietary - closed source - RealPlayer where our contract with Real allows the distribution and RealPlayer contains as far as I'm aware licensed code.

We have basically two different groups that the patent cooperation addresses, customers and developers, so let's look separately at them:

A number of our potential customers had serious concerns that especially Microsoft would sue them if they use Linux code and Microsoft would claim patents are infringed by Linux code - as SCO sued Autozone and DaimlerChrysler as Linux users (not for patents but I think this is something that gave a bad example). With the new agreement, they can be sure that Microsoft will not sue them, even if Novell had shipped this code with their Linux distribution before.

Open source developers write code - and nobody can ever check all the patents that are out there. If they wrote code that infringed Microsoft's patents, then Microsoft could sue them, but due to the Novell/Microsoft agreement they are protected now. I still expect that the developers - once becoming aware of an infringement - change the code so that it can be freely distributed e.g. under the GPL.

The statement here is two-fold: Microsoft will not sue individuals - the patent pledge does not cover companies - that are either a) non-commercial developers, e.g. work in their spare time and not for
money or b) write code that ends in our SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution (this covers also individuals receiving money for their open source work). In the first case (non-commercial developer) this patent pledge is not revocable by Microsoft - unless the developer chooses to pursuse patent ligitation against Microsoft. This is a standard clause that can be found also in many open source licenses, one example is the "Open Software License".

Let me state clearly: We do not think that Novell's Linux distributions violate valid patents - but if they do, we do change the code to avoid or work around the patent. Meanwhile we have some means in place to protect customers and developers better. So, it's some kind of important insurance.

We did not expect that Microsoft would sue individuals. But who would have known a couple of years ago that the record industry is going after individuals downloading or copying music and driving them in __ruptcy. Therefore the agreements consider a promise not to sue.

Novell is a founding member of the Open Invention Network (OIN) which was formed to protect many commonly distributed open source and free software packages, including Linux, from legal attacks, no matter where an attack comes from. OIN provides coverage to the entire Linux industry by providing a form of retaliatory protection for Linux customers, developers and companies that might be targeted in patent litigation.

Novell is strongly committed to OIN and will continue in its support, we are one of the members that brought in a significant patent pool to protect Linux. The Novell/Microsoft agreement strengthens the protection of our customers.

I think that with this agreements between Novell and Microsoft the intellectual property situation is not worse than before - for some users and developers the status quo has not changed and for others it is improved.

Microsoft is historically the arch-enemy of Linux. So, is this "sleeping with the enemy", "Novell selling out" - or a 180 degree turn of Microsoft? I think all of us fear Microsoft and therefore are very cautious about every step they do. I'm interested whether this is a first step in a new direction and others will follow - or just a trap? Microsoft is still competition and both Novell and Microsoft state this. But they want to make Linux and Windows work together seamlessly so that the customer is not the looser in this competition (see the technical cooperation). Microsoft is facing for some time an image problem, investigation from the EU lawyers about monopolistic behaviour and faces competition from Oracle and Google - one can only guess what has brought this change in direction by Microsoft.

So, let us continue to work as before and build the finest distribution - and beat Microsoft Windows ;-)
Jakub Steiner : Nov 09, 16:52
Jakub Steiner

Not everyone knows that F-Spot has a very neat viewer mode. By default F-Spot manages a photo library, but if you invoke it with `f-spot --view $file-or-folder` it will work on the provided pictures.

EOG in Gnome is a very decent viewer, but F-Spot has a nice RAW file support for very quick previews. Another great advantage of f-spot-viewer is the posibility to export to Flickr and other supported photo-sharing and publication systems thanks to a recent patch by Thomas Van Machelen.*

There are pictures I certainly don't want in my photo library, but are easily previewable and uploadable.

* Update - corrected the original patch author.

Scott Morris : Nov 09, 15:54 : Linux is incredible
Scott Morris

School….. *BAH*!

If you work full time, are married, and have a child, never take 16 credit hours of school in a semester. It will beat you senseless.

Many apologies for the infrequent posts. I’ve received several inquiries as to what I opine about recent events. I’m putting a piece together, but I fear I’ve missed the window of opportunity. Whatever, I’ll still post it at some point.

I did read something that made me absolutely smile, though. It’s an article called, “Linux man gets his Windows money back.” Finally, someone has figured out how to return the blasted OS and get their money back after buying a computer that comes prepackaged with it. Pass this information on to people. They could save themselves a decent amount of money should they follow suit.

Anyway, I have to run, I am still a week behind in homework, and have mounting fires to put out at work. I’ll post something about the M$/Novell thing here, at some point.

Pascal Bleser : Nov 09, 11:58 : A call to dump SUSE Linux ? wtf
Pascal Bleser

My reply to yet another piece of clueless FUD, this time calling for a boycott of SUSE Linux - just in case they don't post it.

Amazing how many "open source voices" and tech writers know nothing about IT business.

The author forgot one reason for Novell to do the patent non-aggression pact with MS, and believe it or not, it's the right one.
As you're most probably not working in an IT business of a non-negligible size nor have IT customers of that size, you don't understand how customers (well, their decision makers) think.
There is most probably no case for patent infringement in Linux distributions, be it SUSE Linux, Debian, Fedora, whatever. That is still Novell's opinion and position (as stated in the FAQ).

The point is that it is not sufficient to the large number of MS shops that have been considering using Linux since some time but are afraid of potential patent litigation claims, because of all the FUD MS and SCO have been spreading.
That's why Novell made that part of the deal with MS. Novell's position is: there is currently no part of the SUSE Linux (or SLES or SLED) distribution that infringes patents, but if there is, at some point, then MS (yes, MS, not Novell, read the announcement again, as well as the FAQ) is giving you a guarantee, as a SLES/SLED customer, that they will not sue *you*. They may still sue Novell, and Novell may still sue MS for patent infringements.

Now, you're calling for a boycott of a Linux distribution that is a combined effort of Novell employees and community members. Those community members have no less merit than the folks contributing to Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, whatever. This is a childish call for a distro war because you happen to like Debian and not SUSE Linux.
That's fine, Debian is a great distribution, and use whatever you like, but bashing the work of people who believe in FOSS and contribute their free time on it is distasteful.
Also, it's "interesting" to see how so many people like to reduce Novell to this one agreement with MS (that is actually an agreement between MS and SLED/SLES customers) and fail to see how Novell contributes to a large number of FOSS projects (Linux kernel, OpenOffice.org, Samba, KDE, GNOME, ... ...).

"This is not religious fanaticism" - this *is* religious fanaticism because all those FUD spreaders fail to read the announcement and Novell's FAQ about it. Instead, they are drawing hypothetical scenarios out of their mind and bully against a FOSS community and a business that is a major contributor to many FOSS projects.
And the point about Novell violating the GPL is just totally wrong. The GPL states that you *may not* publish source code that is known to infringe patents under the GPL unless the right to use those patents is granted to everyone who uses that source code: "Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all." (GPL v2, Preamble)

So, *if* a FOSS project contains source code that is proven to infringe a (valid) patent, the project itself violates the GPL.
If the patent holder is MS, they may still sue the authors for patent infringement.

If that project is included on SUSE Linux/SLED/SLES, MS may still sue Novell for patent infringement.
The deal Novell has made with MS just means that if you are using SLED or SLES, MS will not sue *you* as a customer.

Duncan Mac-Vicar : Nov 09, 11:34 : Dependencies. Lasagna raviolis and spaghettis
Duncan Mac-Vicar

Yesterday, while providing some info for bug #216495, at some point we had to realize if it was a HAL bug, a NetworkManager bug, or a bug in the KDE or Gnome specific applets. So had to install the Gnome one, so if the bug was there too, then both applets were innocent.

So, I went to YaST and selected NetworkManager-gnome, and I fell from my chair, when I saw the packages that were going to be pulled from dependencies. Poor laptop!. Does a Gnome user needs to suffer the same if he wants to run the KDE applet?

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

So, I pressed cancel. Using my zypp-debug tool, I checked the list of packages NetworkManager-kde, and NetworkManager-gnome pulled. The number is 124 for the KDE applet, and 190 for the gnome applet. This number says nothing, as there is no 1:1 equivalence in KDE and Gnome packages, so lets analyze the package lists and see how related are those packages so they end depending on them.

The first two suspicious packages in the KDE applet, are OpenEXR (because I had no idea what was it), and gnome-filesystem. But then if you go down, you will find packages that make sense, all core packages, plus kdelibs and Qt dependencies. Still looks like the applet depends on a “framework”, not on applications. At the end you see X.org, and that is. The dependencies form a perfect lasagne, with the exception of gnome-filesystem, which I don’t know why is there.

Now, looking at the dependencies pulled by the Gnome applet. The first dependencies are a couple of gnome libraries, fine. Then, gnome2-user-docs, ups. Why?. Then, gnome-menus, mmm, the applet depends on gnome-libs, but why the libraries know that menus exists in a upper layer. Then comes evolution-data-server, ok I accept this one, as it could be named gnome-libs-pim-storage as well, so part of the framework. The mess starts here. Next package is gnome-desktop. So the applet depends on the framework, and the framework depends on the desktop built over the framework (loop). It is followed for some lib* packages, which again makes sense. Then comes gnome-main-menu. Uhm. Why gnome-libs would ever know somebody did a menu using the libs?. Then gnome-system-monitor, another application. Ups! gnome-panel there too.

Then I found dbus-1-mono and I raised an eyebrow. I thought “Mono is coming too.”. Not big deal, only that not only mono-core was there but mono-data and mono-web. Why a framework would depend in mono-web?. I am completely sure an IDE would depend on it, but a network applet?. Then comes… metacity!. So the framework depends also on a specific window manager. And after finding nautilus I realized it depends on a file manager. And also on the software updater applet.

I hear often “I won’t install k3b in my gnome desktop because that means pulling all the KDE crap and bloat”. Yes, the bloat is Qt, kdelibs and some dependencies. Not a window manager, not a SDK+runtime, not Konqueror, not the documentation of the desktop, not the panel.

Our goal is to build a common Linux desktop strategy, moving pieces to the common grounds of the lasagne and share them. This is already happening thanks to some freedesktop technologies like dbus, NetworkManager and Qt4 and its glib event loop integration plus Gnome look and feel. But can you mix lasagne with spaghettis?.

I wanted to provide the whole dependency graph, so this can be improved. Perhaps there is only one guilty package pulling stuff it don’t really needs, perhaps it is not a limitation of the platform design but a bug in some spec file. The tool in zypp/repotools is not working fine at the moment. I provide the package list on request, and I will try to post the graph soon.

Planet SUSE News : Nov 09, 08:50 : Novell and Microsoft: The Vista Impact
Planet SUSE News There is nothing more indicative of change than the recently announced partnership between Novell and Microsoft.

Unlike the Sun partnership, which seemed to be more about Sun getting money from Microsoft than anything truly material, this one has teeth and addresses the critical needs of both companies and the customers who use their products. It easily makes SuSe Linux the favored product and creates the strongest argument yet that the Microsoft of today isn’t the Microsoft of a few years ago.
Nov 09, 08:49 : Novell: We Surrender
Three years ago this week, ailing software maker Novell paid $210 million to acquire Suse, a German version of the free operating system called Linux. Novell hoped that by embracing Linux, an alternative to the decidedly unfree Windows operating system from Microsoft, it could revive its dying software business.

On Thursday, Novell effectively conceded that this effort has failed. On stage with Microsoft in San Francisco, Novell announced that the two companies would cooperate to make the Windows operating system and Linux work well together. More significantly, Microsoft will resell Novell's version of Linux, and Novell will start paying royalties to Microsoft in exchange for Microsoft's pledge not to enforce patent claims against Novell and its customers.
Nov 09, 08:48 : Is Microsoft Going to Start a Linux War?
In a surprise announcement, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer seems to be doing a deal with Novell and the SUSE Linux folks. Apparently, the goal is to make Linux interoperable with Windows and perhaps move some apps onto the Linux platform. What could be brewing? Does it make any sense that Microsoft is going to embrace Linux in a big way? After all, Ballmer used to demean it.

I think something is up, and it was probably triggered by Larry Ellison's announcement at the recent Oracle OpenWorld event that his company would sell support services for Red Hat Linux. I suspect that the big enterprise players are each going to jump on one of the various Linux boats and start a software war.
November 08, 2006
Daniel Gollub : Nov 08, 23:48 : OpenSync 0.20 and libsyncml 0.4.2 are ready!
Daniel Gollub

Yesterday, i announced OpenSync 0.20:
[…]
I’m happy to announce the general availability of OpenSync 0.20, after “only”
5 weeks of development.

These are the highlights of this release:

* Multisync (GUI) for OpenSync got rewritten by Daniel Friedrich
* Kitchensync supports disabling of object types (not released - KDE SVN only)
* Time API is thread safe
* Time API handle xml-event Timezone Information
* Added new object type “memo” for plain/text notes
* Avoid slow-syncs when connection failed
* msynctool is now more verbose and shows the plugin name
* SyncML Plugin:

* Avoid crash of OBEX stack of mobile phone on transport errors and send OBEX Disconnect signal. This happens often on mobile phones which can’t handle a synchronisation while another application is running on the mobile phone (Calendar, Addressbook, …)

* Avoid crash when recieving deleted items without a contenttype

* Hint: If you have a Sony Erricson and have trouble to sync events, try as calendar_db “agenda”. Some SE may have 4th SyncML database for todos, which is not yet supported by the syncml-plugin.

Thanks to all the testers and developers of OpenSync!

Many thanks to Christopher Stender, who was the driving force for the 0.20
release. Matthias Jahn for preparing packages of nearly every SVN revision
and fixing problems of every kind. Daniel Friedrich for his work on
the “Quick and Dirty” branch of multisync. Tobias König und Cornelius
Schumacher for their work on Kitchensync, especially for the lightning
integration of filtering object types! And of course to Armin Bauer, who
spend a whole weekend on hacking libsyncml and OpenSync to improve the
support of the Nokia 6230(i) series and other mobile phones.
[…]

… and libsyncml 0.4.2 …

[…] libsyncml 0.4.2 is ready. The new release includes serveral bugfixes for the
SyncML and OBEX implementation:

* Fixed handling of MaxMsgSize in different fragments
* Avoid crash of OBEX stack in mobile phones when transport error
is recieved and libsyncml forgot to send OBEX Disconnect signal
* Fixed serveral bugs in the XML paraser
* Added noStringTable option for syncml-http-server
* Manpages for syncml-http-server and syncml-obex-client

This changes should also bring the Nokia 6230* series to sync. The Nokia 6230*
series (and other mobile phones) requires to close every open menu or
application while synchronisation. Otherwise you will recieve on connection:
“Request not successful: 67″

Christopher Stender discovered that the calendar database on some Sony
Erricson mobile phone is “agenda”. If you got problems with syncing events,
try “AGENDA”. Some Sony Erricson also seems to have a fourth database for
todos called “TASKS”. (This is not yet implemented in the syncml-plugin of
OpenSync)

libsyncml 0.4.2 source:
http://libsyncml.opensync.org/wiki/download

Thanks to everyone who helped on testing and developing libsyncml.
[…]OpenSync 0.20 live!

(kitchensync and multisync0.91.0)

Pavel Machek : Nov 08, 21:24 : OpenMoko linux phone
Pavel Machek...looks nice. Actually, it looks very nice; motorola had chance to do something like this with their a780 line, but they failed :-(. Being open really matters here.

Still, it is touchscreen phone => not the beast you can control in a bus on a rough road, not a beast you can use while walking (needs both hands), and not a beast you'd like to use while riding a horse. I've actually used nokia 6230 for navigation (compass, maps) and sms communication while riding arabian mare, and going pretty fast... attempt to do that with touchscreen phone would certainly result in me sitting on the ground, and mare moving away at 40kph. Plus, there's no word on phone's weight.

Details here. Ouch, it looks like it has _no_ keyboard at all. I guess that's going to suck for single-hand control... it does not seem to have bluetooth (bad!) and no word about UMTS (but I assume the answer is "no").

So... they picked the easy target -- touchscreen phone is relatively simple to do, because all the openembedded.org infrastructure can be used. Still, bringing it to market is probably not the easy task, so thank you, FIC. (Now... anyone wants to send me one of those to play with? Is it likely it will be possible to buy one in Czech republic/europe?)
Stephan Binner : Nov 08, 21:09 : KDE:KDE4 Build Service Project Complete
Stephan Binner

During the last days I updated the existing packages, added the until now missing KDE modules to the KDE:KDE4 project of the openSUSE build service and fiddled a bit until all packages built successfully for SUSE Linux 10.0, SUSE Linux 10.1 and Factory. I will make no promises if they work Smiling - they are just snapshots of last Sunday's SVN. I think we will update regularly to newer SVN versions to ease development/porting work or just for the curious who are eager to try if they can see progress on the way to KDE 4.

Ted Haeger : Nov 08, 19:12 : Hovsepian Interview Now Online
Ted Haeger

Hovsepian interview now online.

More later.

SuSE Linux Cool Solutions : Nov 08, 18:52 : Novell & Microsoft: What Do You Think?
SuSE Linux Cool Solutions Learn more about the landmark announcement from Novell and Microsoft.
Antje Faber : Nov 08, 16:16 : Mouse is back
Antje Faber
Went to this Irish pub on Halloween. Irish live music. Reminded me of Doolin. Really enjoyed it. Immediately booked my next flight to Dublin. Hope for good weather. Want to play pitch and putt. Mouse can join me. He should be back by then. Can use him as replacement ball.

He's back. He smuggled himself through the passport control. Heard that he fought wild animals. Will get some news tomorrow when he'll be handed over to me again.

This morning I was walking with a fresh cup of coffee through the underground. Without a lid! Good that Pat wasn't near.

Today I'll meet mouse in the famous pizza place. Christina: Will upload loads of pictures of evidence soon.

Duncan Mac-Vicar : Nov 08, 15:56 : gspcav1 in build servce
Duncan Mac-Vicar

You may know that in the drivers:webcam project of the openSUSE build service you find a repository with the spca5xx package, which includes drivers for lot of webcams.

Since kernel 2.6.11 is out, this driver set was renamed to gspcav1 ( Generic Softwares Package for Camera Adaptator ). I planned since some weeks to package it, but never pop out of my TODO. Even if I needed to, because spca5xx never worked with my camera after a kernel upgrade.

That is the cool thing about the build service. If someone else does it, it can be put in the same automated place and share maintenance with more people. Martin came to my office and told me that he had a package for gspcav1. woooho. cool. So now it is in the same repository among the old spca5xx (for use with kernels below 2.6.11). Enjoy it.

Danny Kukawka : Nov 08, 15:54 : HAL patch collection (2)
Danny Kukawka
Today again some new patches I send to the HAL mailing list which aren't included in the git repository because they are not approved so far :

* fix detection of wireless network capability for devices which use drivers with dscape stack as e.g. rt2500pci: here
* fix to add hardware specific/dependent sound devices to HAL (as e.g. /dev/snd/hwC0D0): here
* fix of libhal related to changed behavior of dbus_error_is_set(error) if error == NULL in the new D-Bus. Now the check would crash the realated application which use libhal. Download: here

These patches are against current HAL git. As always: you can find all my current HAL patches here .
Tags: HAL Patches

James Ogley : Nov 08, 13:09 : Holiday write-up
James Ogley

Since I keep getting hassled to produce my holiday write up, here it is at last:

We went to Italy.

It was good.

I liked it.

Michael Meeks : Nov 08, 12:34 : 2006-11-08: Wednesday
Michael Meeks

* Up early, a new set of helpful FAQs on the MS/Novell deal as it relates to open-source arrived: good. Also a more official looking Novell statement on our OpenDocument involvement arrived.
* Poked at another proposed e-d-s change, of course all changes to remove (unused) API are good, as long as the major .so version isn't changed - breaking the OO.o integration. Massaged bugs, call with Kai. Really it seems software engineering is by far the easiest piece of the job; fixing or working around organizational dysfunction is by far the more difficult & (perhaps) interesting piece.

Peter Prior : Nov 08, 11:32 : US midterm elections
Peter Prior

"The Democrats win the US House of Representatives in mid-term elections.."

Thank fuck for that. Best news all day.

I'm pleased to hear they've elected a muslim member of congress in one state too, though I think it's too much to hope the democrats will win control of the senate as well.

Current Mood: :)

Duncan Mac-Vicar : Nov 08, 11:29 : Sun Set To Move On GPL License For Open-Source Java
Duncan Mac-Vicar

Sun Microsystems has talked a lot about putting Java into an open-source license. Now it’s ready to move.

The company is very close to announcing that it will put the mobile (ME) and standard (SE) editions of the Java platform into the GNU General Public License (GPL), with the Java Enterprise Edition and GlassFish reference implementation (currently open-sourced under Sun’s Common Development and Distribution License, or CDDL) to follow, several industry sources said.

( from CRN )

If this happens, just remember Trolltech announced Qt Jambi back in July. So another cool free stack to develop on.

Peter Prior : Nov 08, 10:51 : Misconceptions of value
Peter Prior

It's comforting to know that when you seem to be slipping behind people you know in terms of housing, salary, and staying behind in things like looks and confidence, you still possess more of a couple of things than they will ever have.

Current Mood: :|

Danny Kukawka : Nov 08, 09:58 : Novell bring some light in the dark ...
Danny Kukawka
It was about time. So many questions from the community about the Novell/Microsoft deal and the details. All this (justified) spec and rumours about Novell violoate the GPL section 7 with this arrangement and the other issues like Novell and the Open Invention Network (OIN) or Mono. Now we have some answers to the questions. Take a look at: Novell Answers Questions from the Community.

Here some parts (for more read the FAQ):

How is this agreement compatible with Novell's obligations under Section 7 of the GPL?

Our agreement with Microsoft is focused on our customers, and does not include a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft to Novell (or, for that matter, from Novell to Microsoft). Novell's customers receive a covenant not to sue directly from Microsoft. We have not agreed with Microsoft to any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL and we are in full compliance.

Novell's end user customers receive a covenant not to sue directly from Microsoft for their use of Novell products and services, but these activities are outside the scope of the GPL.

Will Novell's involvement with the Open Invention Network (OIN) change due to this agreement with Microsoft?

[...] Novell is a founding member of the OIN and remains strongly committed to its mission. We have contributed valuable resources to OIN and will continue to participate in OIN in the future. Novell remains firmly in support of the goal of creating an environment of open innovation in the Linux world, without worry about the threat of patent lawsuits.

The value of OIN's patents as a deterrent remains critical to the entire Linux industry, including Novell, and is not affected by our agreement with Microsoft.

There is now also an new Novell announcement with more details of the deal. This also include a statement about GPL Section 7 and (very interesting) about the financial parts:

As part of the business cooperation agreement, Microsoft will make an upfront payment to Novell of $240 million for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscription certificates. [...] Microsoft will dedicate $60 million total over the five year period for marketing Linux and Windows virtualized scenarios and will also spend $34 million over the five year term of the agreement for a Microsoft sales force devoted primarily to marketing the combined offering.

[...] Under the patent cooperation agreement, Microsoft will make an up-front net payment to Novell of $108 million, and Novell will make ongoing payments of at least $40 million over five years to Microsoft, based on percentages of Novell's Open Platform Solutions and Open Enterprise Server revenues.

I think this should bring finally some light in the dark ...
Tags: Novell Microsoft GPL

Pascal Bleser : Nov 08, 08:07 : smart-beta 0.50rc1
Pascal Bleser
Gustavo Niemeyer has just released smart 0.50rc1 with a few interesting enhancements.

If you feel brave (well, not that brave, no issues to expect), please give my smart-beta packages a run and report any issues with it either to the list, or directly to me.

The procedure for upgrading to smart-beta is as follows:

smart update guru
smart install smart-beta

That line should normally deinstall smart, smart-gui, smart-ksmarttray and smart-addons (if you had any of these installed), and install smart-beta-0.50rc1 instead.

If you want to use the GUI, etc..., then also perform the next command:

smart update guru smart
smart install smart-beta-{gui,ksmarttray,addons}

If you don't want to add/enable my repository in order to use smart, there is also a standalone repository that only contains my smart and smart-beta packages:
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/smart/repo/SUSEVERSION
where SUSEVERSION has to be replaced by 10.1, 10.0 or 9.3 (it's an rpm-md repository)
Or use the mirror: http://ftp.skynet.be/pub/suser-guru/smart/repo/SUSEVERSION

Nov 08, 07:38 : MPlayer 1.0rc1 on Packman
Refresh your sources, upgrade MPlayer ;)

It took a while because MPlayer-1.0rc1 requires a newer x264 version, and the latter is required by a lot of other packages.
Unfortunately the ABI and API of x264 is still a moving target, being incompatible with pretty much each new release, and thus all the other RPMs that use it (fun stuff like vlc) had to be patched and rebuilt, which is a tedious task to say the least.

A big thanks to Detlef who has rebuilt pretty much everything all alone, uploading over a Gigabyte of RPMs to Packman in a single day !

Ted Haeger : Nov 08, 05:03 : Questions with Ron Hovsepian
Ted Haeger

My apologies to our listeners for the delay in posting any interviews about the Novell-Microsoft agreement. I know that there are a lot of questions and I have seen plenty of concern and speculation among the community at large. (There is an annual sales kickoff event that has everyone at Novell tied up. That’s not an excuse, it’s just the terrain I have to navigate to get information.)

The outcry from the free software community about the Novell-Microsoft agreement has been substantial, and a lot of people have been turning to me and asking for answers. I hear you, and I am at last starting to assmble some material.

I finally secured an interview with Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian and Novell General Counsel Joe LaSala this afternoon. Having received many questions from the community, I chose two major items to take up with Ron: Why deal with Microsoft, and, Is Novell abiding by the GPL? More specifically, the questions are essentially these:

1. Few companies have ever lived to tell about their partnership with Microsoft. Why should Novell be any different?
2. Is Novell paying Microsoft royalties for software patents? And, if so, is Novell possibly violating section 7 of the GNU General Public License?
3. By collaborating with Microsoft on Windows-Linux interoperability while operating under a patent agreement, will Novell possibly contaminate open source projects with Microsoft intellectual property?
4. Why has there been such a delay on getting out more information?

I know that there is a lot more ground that needs to be covered than these four questions, but because they will get into technical detail, I will commit to going deeper and further into the matter with people who are involved in the technical aspects.

I’m staying up late tonight to review the audio, and I’ll be mastering this edition myself. As soon as I get it done, I have to put it through approvals (which happens when questions involve legal matters). I hope to have it online by mid-day Thursday (MST), depending on how quickly some of the stakeholders can get back to me. Thanks for bearing with me on this.

Nov 08, 00:08 : Novell Answers Questions

Novell has posted a new FAQ for the free software community. (I provided some help on identifying questions and drafting answers on this.)

There is also an accompanying press announcement: Novell Outlines Details of Agreement with Microsoft.

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