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DATE 2010-12-01

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Key: Value:

MESSAGE

DATE	2010-12-22
FROM	Ruben Safir
SUBJECT	Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] 2010: The Year in Free and Open Source
Evan - I'm going to add this to the resources and articles section of the website, if it is OK with you. Reuvain On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:50:54PM -0500, einker wrote: > 2010: The Year in Free and Open Source Software > By Bruce Byfield > December 21, 2010 > http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3918011 > > To all appearances, 2010 was a year of business as usual in free and open > source software (FOSS). It was neither the long-awaited and derided Year of > the Linux Desktop, nor a year marked by any great reversals. However, some > of the trends that emerged in 2010 may become more important over the next > few years -- particularly the emerging tendency of corporations to comply > technically with FOSS licenses while ignoring their intent. > > But in the short term, 2010 was marked by such a lack of drama that deciding > whether FOSS advanced or retreated in 2010 is next to impossible. For better > or worse, here are some of the leading FOSS events and trends in 2010 for > business, technology, legal matters, and the community: > Business Moves and Directions > > For those watching FOSS business, 2010 proved a mixed year. On the one hand, > Red Hat continued to thrive, to the extent that Forbes blogger Dan Wood > predictsthat > the company will reach $1 billion in revenues next year. > > On the other hand, other companies with FOSS interests showed signs of > struggling in 2010. Smaller companies such as Xandros, which have made > headlines in previous years, were quieter in 2010, and, if they enjoyed any > successes, they were quiet ones that went mostly unnoticed. > > As for the major players, Canonical, the commercial arm of the dominant > Ubuntu distribution, continued to search for profitability in a distribution > by adding cloud and music services, and laying the groundwork for expansion > into touch-screens. However, any success in these efforts is going to take > longer than a year to emerge. > > Even worse, Novell, one of the major contributors to the Linux kernel and > other FOSS projects, was > soldto > Attachmate, with some of its patents going to a > consortiumwhose > members include Apple, EMC, Microsoft, and Oracle. Although > FOSS-related patents do not appear to have been involved, nobody knows yet > whether Novell's FOSS contributions will continue under Attachmate or not. > > Similarly, 2010 also saw the finalization of Oracle's acquisition of Sun > Microsystem, which includes major FOSS projects such as Java, MySQL, and > OpenOffice.org. > > Peter Brown, the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, > suggested to me that Oracle has still to develop a coherent free software > policy, but the decisions made by individual corporate units have caused > shockwaves throughout FOSS in the last year -- everything from a > campaignto > prevent Oracle's acquisition of MySQL by Monty Widenius to the forking > of > LibreOffice from OpenOffice.org (see below). Such reactions leave little > doubt that the community lacks confidence in Oracle as a steward for its > FOSS acquisitions. > Technology Trends > > One piece of FOSS technology -- Google's Android mobile operating system -- > thrived in 2010. Throughout the year, the sale of Android devices continued > to soar, with headlines telling us that sales were outstripping > manufacturing capability and that they were outselling the iPhone. This > success was mitigated by complaints about lack of openness in development, > and the use of Digital Rights Management technologies and proprietary Java. > All these things make Android a platform built on FOSS that has strayed > badly from its ideals. > > Another Google project, the Chrome browser, enjoyed something of the same > success in 2010, rising to an 8% market share by November, and developing a > supporting set of extensions at the same time. This growth makes Chrome the > major competitor for Mozilla's Firefox, so that it is now currently setting > the agenda for browser development. Chrome is an essential element of the > soon to be released Chrome OS, whose design choices raise > issuesof > privacy and control, but is also available separately. > > A lesser known, but equally important development in FOSS technology during > 2010 is the development of the > Linux-librekernel. > Unlike the standard Libre kernel released by the kernel project and > most distributions, the Linux-libre kernel does not include proprietary > firmware blobs for device drivers, making it the most philosophically free > version of the kernel available. The Linux-libre kernel has been adapted by > a small but growing number of > distributions, > despite being several releases behind the latest standard kernel. > > Recently, the idea of a free kernel received a major endorsement when > Debian, the largest independent community-based distribution, > announcedthat > its upcoming release would ship with a default free kernel. This > decision increases the likelihood of other major distributions providing a > free kernel as an option. > > 2010 also marked the start of a possible move away from Flash as the main > video format on the web. Although free Flash alternatives such as Gnash have > been in development for several years, they are still not ready for the > ordinary user's desktop, and Flash itself remains a non-free format. > > However, now, the development of WebM > and HTML > 5's video element mean that free > alternatives to Flash may soon become widespread. This possibility gained > momentum in 2010, although some browsers and applications do not yet support > the new alternatives. > Legal Landmarks and Licensing > > Arguments in the SCO legal cases continue to wind through the American > courts, and some details still need to be worked out. However, for most > observers, the beginning of the end came on March 30, 2010, when the United > States Supreme Court handed down the ruling that Novell, not SCO, was the > owner of the contested UNIX and UnixWare copyrights. > > The awarding of > coststo > Novell on December 10 provides further indications that the saga that > has > fascinated the community for so long might actually have an ending some day. > > > Another court case watched by FOSS advocates that concluded in 2010 was Re: > Bilski , which was ruled upon on > June 28. FOSS advocates had hoped to use the case as a means of eliminating > software patents altogether, viewing them as stiflers of innovation and a > method for attacking free software. The decision stopped short of > eliminating software patents altogether in the United States, but placed > some restrictions on them that could make them saner in the future. > > While these cases were winding down, the seeds of future concerns were also > sown. In 2010, the Free Software Foundation, which has long opposed Digital > Rights Management through its Defective By > DesignCampaign, turned its > attention to Apple's > iPhoneand > App > Store , and Amazon's Android App > Store. > > > Besides the issues themselves, these issues make 2010 the year in which > Microsoft lost its position as the major opponent of software freedom to > other companies. However, since Microsoft has recently entered the mobile > device market, this is most likely only a temporary change. > Community Concerns > > By far the most widely discussed community story in 2010 was the forking of > LibreOffice from OpenOffice.org. The fork has been waiting to happen for a > long time, due to widespread disillusion with Sun Microsystem's centralized > control of OpenOffice.org. However, the timing of the fork makes it a vote > of no confidence in Oracle's ability to run the project for the benefit of > the community. In place of Oracle, LibreOffice has created The Document > Foundation . > > Since the fork is only a few months old, its effect is still unknown. So > far, LibreOffice's mailing lists and code contributions seem far more active > than OpenOffice.org's have been for several years. Nearly everything is > being re-thought, down to the names of the applications in the office suite. > > > However, whether The Document Foundation has the resources to implement all > these changes has yet to be tested. Working against it is the fact that > OpenOffice.org has considerable recognition value. To what extent > OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice will borrow code from each other is also > uncertain. Possibly, the two code bases will diverge rapidly -- which would > be wasteful, although possibly unavoidable. > > Less publicized, but potentially as far-reaching in its consequences is the > project begun in 2010 to draft an anti-harassment > policysuitable > for technology conferences. Such policies have already been > adopted by > a number of FOSS conferences, including LibrePlanet, Linux.conf.au and all > of Linux Foundation???s events. Given the ongoing concerns about > sexismin > FOSS, this development could help to mitigate at least some of the > symptoms of this often unacknowledged problem. > When the Letter Replaces the Spirit > > However, for me, the biggest story in 2010 is one that has gone largely > unrecognized: The increasing number of ways that companies have found to > keep to the letter of FOSS licensing while ignoring the spirit. > > Nothing is new, of course, in companies exploiting FOSS for their own > benefit. In the past, however, most companies, however, have eventually > realized that at least limited cooperation with a community that includes > their rivals can benefit them. What is different now is the number of ways > in which companies are technically conforming to the requirements of FOSS > while finding ways to continue business as usual. > > This trend takes numerous forms. At Oracle, it takes the form of maintaining > projects, but limiting releases and development, and of bringing a > claimof > infringement on Java patents against Google. > > > -- > Regards, > > Evan M. Inker > > > > -- > Regards, > > Evan M. Inker