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Blog: Pete LoshinApril 18, 2008Clarifying the MySQL "Closed-Sourcing" brouhahaRemember yesterday? Well, I was reading that post again and realized that it's not entirely clear what Sun is actually doing with MySQL. Here's another article about the whole thing, MySQL Not Going Closed Source? that you can check out, but the gist of it is this: MySQL Server is still (and always was) open source. The difference is not (as I might have implied yesterday) that the Enterprise product was going to be different. What's actually happening is that if you are an Enterprise customer (meaning, you're paying the big bucks for the Enterprise license), you get some extra "add-ons". Somehow, calling them "add-ons" made a big difference (for me, anyway) in understanding what's going on: Sun is giving their customers another reason to pay extra for Enterprise MySQL. The add-on in question, this time, is online backup. If you want to do online backup with MySQL at this point, you have two options:
Sun Senior VP and former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos spelled it out, pretty much in those words. I believe in free and open software as much as the next person. I also think that companies "selling" open source software have not just the right but the obligation (to their shareholders) to find a business model that allows them to continue to publish open source software. Enterprise customers have special needs--needs that generally don't intersect with the needs of most individuals or small groups who are using the software--and that as a result, it makes sense to have enterprise customers get the extra add-ons as part of their licensing fees. Am I wrong? April 17, 2008Is Sun/MySQL selling out, or just selling?Here's some news: MySQL, Sun's still-shiny new open source database acquisition, will be adding new features to its Enterprise (that is, paid) version that won't be added to the Community (free and open) version. Here's the story at ComputerWorld: MySQL reserves features for paying customers; open-source community up in arms. Oddly enough, though, the story seems to have originated on Jeremy Cole’s blog: That tells me one of two things is happening: either Sun/MySQL is trying to pull a fast one and sneak this new development under everyone's radar, or else this is just business as usual and not anything to get upset about--or at least, not be surprised about. You can read about "user outrage" in the ComputerWorld article, as well as on Slashdot (Sun to Begin Close Sourcing MySQL). But Sun has to find a way to make that MySQL acquisition pay off, somehow. On the other hand, as Dana Blankenhorn points out here (Did Sun just make mySQL closed source?), MySQL started limited source code access to its Enterprise version last year--if you want to see the code, you've got to be a paying customer. That's fine: if you've paid for an Enterprise license, you get to see the source code (and do what you want with it). It shouldn't surprise anyone when a company that runs an open source project tries to make it pay off. The good news is that there is a huge--and strong--open source MySQL community, and that (as Mickos pointed out) anyone who likes could develop their own, free and open, version of the features that aren't going to make it into the community version. I'm sure we'll be hearing more interested news from the open source database players in days and weeks to come (including from me!). One of the exciting aspects of this development is that it illustrates and illuminates some of the most critical issues facing paying and non-paying users of open source software, as well as the vendors who are trying to build their businesses on free software. November 5, 2007Opening Up the Internet: Craigslist + Yahoo! Pipes = Better Data SearchingWe've really come a long way with the web and the Internet over the past dozen years or so. Back then, it was kind of a big deal to run screen-scraping software that could pull data off websites, or access corporate legacy mainframe systems through a webified front end. Now, we're seeing more and more of the web is instantiated in some seriously big data stores, and we're seeing more and more of the owners of those seriously big data stores making data processing tools and APIs available to anyone who wants them, so we can have some nice little mashup applications combining, for example, maps and data with geographical components. But here's something sort of new: a way to make an already popular, useful and generally great website--in this case, Craigslist--with another popular, useful and great website--Yahoo! Pipes. The result is even better than either one. Yahoo! Pipes is kind of like a web version of UNIX piping: a way to take the results of one command (output) and "pipe" it into another command as input. What you get is a very handy way to create very specific and powerful searches, and turn the results into useful information. So, here's the article that got me hooked: How to Actually Search Craigslist. As great as Craigslist is, it has some drawbacks. James Aaron, who wrote the article, is a student at San Jose State's School of Library and Information Science, and is looking for a job currently. He likes Craigslist, but, as he explains, it could be even more helpful if there were ways to search better: There is no way to truncate searches, such as "librar*" to include librarian, library, libraries, etc. There is no way to perform Boolean AND, OR, NOT searches. There is no way to remove frequently occuring irrelevant items. There is no way to search two sub-regions at once. So, unless I want to perform 20 searches a day and receive MANY completely irrelevant hits, I basically have to browse. The answer, he tells us, is Yahoo! Pipes, and he explains just how to use Pipes with Craigslist to make Craigslist that much more useful. In other words, more evidence of just how much the entire web is evolving into the world's biggest ever data store, with the most powerful ever set of tools for extracting business intelligence. How could you use this kind of capability to extract actionable knowledge from the web? April 18, 2007Open Source and Best Tech Products of All Time?When PC World reported on The 50 Best Tech Products of All Time, Slashdot counted Apple holds down seven places in the list, Microsoft two, and open source software (Red Hat Linux) one. That sounded strange to me, so I took a look at the list myself. Lots of old and new hardware, but also more open source than you'd imagine based on Slashdot's report: Number 1, Netscape Navigator, was open-sourced in 1998, (see Netscape Communicator Open Source Code White Paper), but from the start Netscape's success was based on their use of an open standard protocol for web commerce. Number 3, Tivo, is another open source success story, based on GNU/Linux. Then, there's Number 20, Microsoft Windows 95. Yes, Windows 95 incorporated a bunch of open source code from BSD in order to provide TCP/IP support. You could say that Number 30, Mac OSX, is an Apple product, but to be fair, you should at least acknowledge the debt Apple owes to open source projects including but not limited to OpenBSD and X Windows. And finally, while shareware is not the same as open source, it is certainly a related category into which Eudora (Number 32) and PC-Talk (Number 47) both fit. January 29, 2007Endlessly Free and Libre ImagesRegardless of your political leanings, you've got to love this Compendium of Public-Domain Image Links posted on Daily Kos the other day. It's always nice to find that someone else has cared enough about something to do a comprehensive job of doing the job of gathering everything you need to know or all the resources you could possibly want relating to some topic of interest. Well, someone did just that for public domain and other open-ish resources for free images. Check it out, and be sure to check the links as well, as they may have even more information and links than the original post. Meanwhile, here's some good opportunities to anyone in the business of data base management who wants to do something interesting with great big piles of images that can be used free of copyright (more or less, anyway). January 16, 2007Stop Talking to Machines!Masochists may prefer navigating the endless and aggravating automated customer support systems, but sometimes you just want, no, NEED to talk to a human. Sure, those systems save businesses lots of money, both by deterring customers from getting what they paid for as well as by forcing the burden of performing customer service onto the customer. But there are ways around most systems, and you can find the secret passphrases that get you a person at any of hundreds of businesses and government agencies, gethuman 500 database, a very nice little website that takes information collected from a variety of sources and turns it into nicely actionable knowledge that anyone with a web browser can use. Of course, this is a long-overdue shot over the bow of corporations cutting customer service corners, and you can bet your bottom dollar that corporations will use the information in this database to help them "streamline" (that is, cut out customer short-cuts) customer service. In the meantime, enjoy! December 19, 2006Linux Equivalents WebsitesI love simple ideas, and The Linux Equivalent Project is delightfully simple: a single-page website that lists Linux alternatves to Windows software, with links to each project's home page. A super resource if you're hesitant about Linux and the availability of critcal software applications. All software cited is end-user software, but I'd love to see the scope expanded to include development, back-end, server, and other kinds of enterprise software, as well as Windows equivalents to Linux programs. And the day after I discovered The Linux Equivalent Project, I ran across The table of equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software in Linux.. The link is to an Englsh translation of a Russian webpage that has been up and running since at least 2003, and that does what it says: lists software function categories from desktop apps to games to servers, developer tools and scientific apps, with lists of approximately equivalent software for Windows and Linux, as well as links to most of them. Bigger and broader coverage, yes, but also a bit messier and with more holes/bugs (and the authors actively solicit feedback to fix those). Finally, check out this Foogazi blog entry, about Alternatives to Windows Programs. It's a little chattier, but another nice little roundup. November 2, 2006The Small Print ProjectEver wonder just exactly what all that EULA legal stuff you have to click on to get at software or services is all about? Check out The Small Print Project, a new website that solicits and publishes particularly egregious EULAs with the plain language explanations of why no sane person would accept them. One of the first submissions is this Amazon.com agreement under which Amazon reserves the right to delete any and all movies it sells you. It's still early days, but already you can find some excellent insights into what you can infer just from reading the small print. For instance, here's an entry about "hair removal" scams; the scammer apparently attempts to restrict its content to prevent any official oversight. Check it out! October 19, 2006Google Gadgets Gladden Guys and GalsCall it what you will: part of the Web 2.0 explosion, or just a handy way to put new features on your website. Google Gadgets are mini-applications that grab information from Google.com or any webste and let you plaster it onto your website. Right now, there are over 1,500 Google Gadgets for websites (and growing rapidly) that you can just drop onto one of your own web pages so any browser (on any OS) capable of handling the Gadget HTML/Javascript code can access the applet. Though many bad web sites will undoubtedly get badder, savvy BI professionals will also undoubtedly view Google's new web application programming interface as an opportunity to integrate enterprise information and gather (or distribute) business intelligence. Unlike Google Gadgets for Desktops, of which there are over 100,000 examples, the Google Gadget API lets you generate content that can be interpreted by anyone, not just Windows users. October 13, 2006Google Resource for Searching Open Source CodeIt's been almost a year since I found and wrote about a cool Resource for Searching Open Source Code; it's just a week or so since Google Labs released Google Code Search. Which is more or less Google's version of the C/C++ Source Code Search Engine, except it covers all "public" source code, not just C/C++ source code. According to the Google Code Search discussion group, it's already proving popular and useful, though some have taken it as a challenge to find programming languages that are not included. September 22, 2006When Can We Open Source Voting Machines?Some more interesting news about Diebold voting hi-jinks in Rolling Stone magazine. Read all about it in Will The Next Election Be Hacked?. I won't rehash the history and controversy over electronic voting issues, I'll just point to two recent reports about just how secure Diebold's voting machines are. First, this research paper titled Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine. The bottom line: not good. And second, one of the co-authors of that paper blogged that “Hotel Minibar” Keys Open Diebold Voting Machines. The kind of key you, or anyone, can order over the Internet. Continue reading "When Can We Open Source Voting Machines?" » August 15, 2006Ready, or Really Ready?The first one, Ready.gov, "...is a national public service advertising campaign produced by The Advertising Council in partnership with Homeland Security. The Ready Campaign is designed to educate and empower Americans to prepare for and respond to emergencies, including natural disasters and potential terrorist attacks." The first cost millions and took six months, according to this blog entry by Dr. Michael Stebbins, Director of the Biology Policy for the Federation of American Scientists. The second, according to Stebbins, was developed in two months by FAS intern Emily Hesaltine. It corrects errors and omissions, and includes an "analysis" (that is, a critique) of Ready.gov. Check it out and let me know which one you think does the job better. July 17, 2006Universal Database of Software TitlesRemember way back when you first started to use a computer? Maybe you were just a kid, fooling around with a TRS-80 or Apple ][ or Commodore or whatever. Did you have a favorite program? If you've ever had a yen to show your kids what it was like back in the day, or just felt a little nostalgic about the old times, you just might be able to track it down--if you're lucky. The good news is that many of these old programs and platforms can be replicated on modern computers, so the original installation disks may still useable. Of course, you won't get any support from the publishers, but worse news is that many of these old programs are in a legal limbo: originally published under proprietary licenses by companies that have been acquired, sold, or liquidated after going bankrupt. Continue reading "Universal Database of Software Titles" » June 13, 2006Hypo-Allergenic Cats, Adding Value, and Proprietary TechnologyOne hypo-allergenic kitten: US$3,950 Processing and delivery (by private jet): US$995 Premium Placement fee (to reduce waiting time from two years or more to a few months): US$1,950 A business model that guarantees total monopoly over product distribution: Priceless. Continue reading "Hypo-Allergenic Cats, Adding Value, and Proprietary Technology" » February 7, 2006What Would YOU Pay to Link to a News Story?Last week I commented on how Microsoft wasn't planning to publish a patch for the Kama Sutra/Blackworm/MyWife worm until next week; it turned out not to be that big a deal. But imagine my surprise when I noticed that the news source for the original article was playing some games: they'll email the article to all your friends for you, in the process collecting all of your email addresses. Or, they'll sell you a "license" to email the URL for as little as $5.00. If you prefer, you can pay a measly $2.50 to "license" the link on your own website--a better deal because if you wanted to email the URL to 200 people you'd have to pay $50.00). The costs go up even faster if you want to license an article, or even just excerpt an article, to be used in a book or newsletter; the whole thing is done through a third-party clearance company and presumably the publisher and the clearance company split the proceeds and leave the original author out in the cold. Rather than increasing profits, this whole thing tends to reduce the likelihood that anyone would want to link to this publisher's articles, or that other authors would cite their articles. Why bother with the cost and nuisance of this "license", or even worse, worry about legal action resulting from what would normally be considered "fair use"? January 26, 2006Money Games, Ad Hoc Databasing, and Serious ScienceLook in your pocket. No, the other one, where you stash your cash. That's right. Now, pull out your currency and go check out Where's George?, a website that's a front end for entering US bills into a database and figuring out where they came from, where they are, and where they are going. Every note has a serial number, a denomination, a series (year) and a few other bits of information that remain static; the only thing that changes is the location. So, you enter the information, along with your zip code. Then, you go on with your life. Chances are good that you'll get the most bang for your bucks by spreading them around, maybe down at the corner deli or maybe buying a paper at the airport across the country. Eventually, someone else will check out Where's George, too, and enter a new location for what once was your currency. The whole idea is kind of interesting, in a kind of geeky, weird way. I'm not sure I'd bother looking up or registering my cash, unless I had a lot of time on my hands. It all started out in 1998 as a sort of fun thing to do, for no other good reason (though maybe as part of the dot-com boom, when anything that could generate traffic was thought to be a potential money-maker). Oddly enough, though, all that data turned out to be useful after all. Scientists are now reporting that tracking currency is a valuable tool for modeling the spread of infectious diseases. What a cool example of how a game, really, based on openly-available information, when looked at as a database can actually return a worthwhile result. January 21, 2006Putting a Pricetag on Computer CrimeAccording to the FBI, and as reported on C|Net, "Dealing with viruses, spyware, PC theft and other computer-related crimes costs U.S. businesses a staggering $67.2 billion a year". Wow. Here's what I found staggering, as I read the article:
Given all that money the FBI says is being spent on this kind of criminal activity, I wonder when we'll start to see software companies that sell insecure products be held accountable. January 16, 2006Get Ready for GPL, Version 3You may not have realized it, but the current version of the GNU General Public License (GPL) is version 2; even if you realized it, you may not have been aware that the Free Software Foundation is hard at work on Version 3. It's a first draft, and with millions of programmers and others in the open source "community", expect to hear plenty of commentary on what's right and what's wrong with it. Not having yet had the opportunity to study it (and not being a lawyer in any case), I can't really comment on the ramifications: but the ever-expanding GPL may soon address issues such as Digital Rights Management (DRM), patents, and maybe more. Stay tuned! January 9, 2006ODF Still a Go for MassachusettsMore news about Open Data Format (ODF) and Massachusetts in the wake of Peter Quinn's resignation. Andy Updegrove reports: New Acting MA CIO Appointed, and Full Speed Ahead with ODF. January 4, 2006Data Mining for the MassesIf you read any of the same blogs I do, you're likely to see a link to this article by Tom Owad on Applefritter.com Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists. There's nothing particularly revolutionary about the actual technologies used, other than the fact that they are all easily and cheaply (or freely) accessible to just about anyone with the time and interest in seeking them out. In a nutshell, Tom rights about how he went about mining Amazon.com's wishlists to find anyone who might be interested in the kinds of things that subversives might be interested in. And then he shows how to extract locations and map them. All in all, a tidy demonstration of just how much too much information some people are more than willing to put out there. A fascinating read for the details as well as this comment: "It used to be you had to get a warrant to monitor a person or a group of people. Today, it is increasingly easy to monitor ideas. And then track them back to people." January 2, 2006Peter Quinn ResignsSadly, the man who was going to be bringing the Open Document Format (ODF) to Massachusetts, Peter Quinn, is resigning. Andy Updegrove reported last week that Quinn would be stepping down effective 1/9/06. This story bothers me for a couple of reasons, not least is that it is due in large part to "reporting" by the Boston Globe. Having just got back into my office after a vacation, I don't have all the details on this story yet, but you can get more from Andy Updegrove's standards blog. December 18, 2005Wikipedia vs EncyclopediaJust because you pay for it doesn't mean you're getting your money's worth, as a report, Internet encyclopaedias go head to head from Nature.com demonstrates. Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. If you read an article in there and find an error, you can fix it. You can also do mischief, but Nature reporter Jim Giles reports that at least as far as science goes, Encyclopedia Brittanica Online, averaging about 3 errors per article, is only marginally better than Wikipedia, averaging roughly 4 errors per article. Wikipedia is even easier to use, since you don't have to log in. December 6, 2005Resource for Searching Open Source CodeThe C/C++ Source Code Search Engine (csourcesearch.net) is quite something: some guy (I think) who goes by the nom de code "Sembiance" decided it would be a good idea to build a searchable database of open C/C++ source code. So he did it. It's an interesting open source story for a lot of reasons:
Of course, you can't build a huge searchable code base just from the raw source code; you've got to have the right tools to do all the formatting and data basing and indexing and so on. What might have been a multi-year, multi-million dollar project if done from scratch apparently turned out to be a hobby for Sembiance, using open source tools. The ones cited on csourcesearch.net include:
You can browse and search by what kind of license is used, by individual packages, and by software categories. All in all, csourcesearch.net provides an intriguing tool for exploring the world of open source C/C++ software for anyone interested in knowing more, whether you're looking to do due diligence on your own code base or just interested in learning more about how to build your own applications. November 30, 2005The Never-Ending Sony StoryI've already blogged about Sony's DRM woes (What Hath Sony Wrought?), but it just never ends. They're being sued in Texas, maybe in New York and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is bringing a class action suit against them. Then there's this report from Business Week Online that Sony was warned about the danger of their rootkit to their customers almost a full month before the news hit. Stay tuned, it's only going to get more interesting. November 21, 2005True Crime and Open Source Mapping SolutionsDid you see Shawn's blog entry ("Criminal Predictions")?. It reminded me of ChicagoCrime.org. Using Google Maps for the maps, and a feed of crime data from the Chicago PD's publicly available database of reported crime at the Citizen ICAM site, ChicagoCrime.org lets you browse Chicago to see where, and what, crimes have been reported over the past 90 days. The brainchild of up-and-coming web journalist/technologist Adrian Holovaty, ChicagoCrime.org was a spare-time project that's garnered a lot of attention (read Holovaty's interview in newspaper industry newspaper Editor and Publisher). I wonder how much of the functionality of the SPSS/Information Builders could be encompassed in this type of application built on a shoestring and powered by another of Holovaty's projects, the Django web framework. An important part of Django is the ability to define data models entirely with the Python programming/scripting language. Django offers a dynamic database-access API, as well as the ability to write portions of the application in SQL, if needed. Web-application hybrids ("mashups") combine two or more, usually unrelated, web services to create new and unique applications. Some of the most interesting are Google Map mashups marrying powerful mapping with geographical data from wherever you can find it. Most are partly or entirely driven by free and open source software. Check out the Google Maps Mania blog for the latest Google mapping news. |
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