Linux Foundation Weblogs

Angela Brown: Plumbers Conference Speaker Proposal Deadline Extended Until 7/31

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:22:28 +0000

Linux Plumbers Conference
17-19 September 2008
Portland, Oregon USA
http://linuxplumbersconf.org/

The deadline for Linux Plumbers Conference speaker proposals has been extended to July 31st. We are looking for proposals from knowledgeable speakers on timely technical topics related to core Linux software - kernel, utilities, graphics, libraries, etc. The ideal proposal will address a specific technical problem or opportunity and suggest solutions.

Proposals targeting issues which cross sub-system boundaries - such as power management and suspend/resume - are especially encouraged. Talks will be 25 minutes or less and serve as a starting point for round-table discussion.

LPC is an opportunity to work on technical problems face-to-face with other developers, especially between developers who seldom attend the same conference or summit. The conference is organized into small working groups - microconferences - focusing on specific topics, such
as storage, power management, and graphics. One conference track is reserved for talks not part of microconferences and new microconferences, created as needed by popular demand.

Submissions are encouraged for all Linux "plumbing" related topics, not just the topics of the microconferences. Example topics:

* Networking architecture
* Wireless utilities and infrastructure
* Tools for optimizing embedded Linux applications
* Integration of system libraries, window managers, and the kernel
* Network file systems and utilities
* Support for upcoming hardware features
* Real-time/low latency

Current microconference topics include:

* The future of Linux storage
* Video input infrastructure and V4L2
* Power management and tools for efficient resource usage
* Future displays and input devices
* Dbus for desktop integration
* Linux server management
* XCB and graphics
* Audio
* Kernel/userspace interfaces
* Debugging, tuning, tracing, and profiling

If in doubt about the appropriateness of your topic for LPC, please submit anyway.

Speakers will receive free registration to the conference, which includes access to all technical sessions, the joint Kernel Summit and LPC party on Tuesday night, and an evening reception sponsored by Intel.

For details on submission format, see our call for speakers:
http://linuxplumbersconf.org/cfp/

Andy Updegrove: Don’t Forget UOF: Here Comes EIOffice 2009

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:17:05 +0000

Long time followers of the ODF-OOXML story will recall that there is a third editable, XML-based document format in the race to create the documentary record of history. That contender is called UOF - for Uniform Office Format, and it has been under development in China since 2002. Last summer, UOF was adopted as a Chinese National Standard, and on Friday the first complete office suite based upon UOF was released. It’s called Evermore Integrated Office 2009 (EIOffice 2009 for short).

How successful could this new entrant be in China? For starters, Evermore Software Co. Ltd., its developer, is reportedly the largest software vendor to the Chinese government. And then there’s price: Evermore’s professional edition is less than a quarter of the price of the comparable version of Office 2007. And finally, it’s clearly no coincidence that on July 11, Evermore Vice President Cao Shen called for Microsoft to be the first target for the China’s new anti-monopoly law, which will take effect in just ten days’ time. Whether Shen is speaking to, or for, the government remains to be seen.

Read the whole story

Andy Updegrove: Welcoming Brian Proffitt (and looking forward to the LDN)

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:40:56 +0000

Although I’m a little late doing so, I’d like to add my voice to Amanda McPherson’s in welcoming Brian Proffitt to the Linux Foundation. Amanda is the Linux Foundation’s Vice President, Marketing and Developer Programs, and posted the official welcome on Thursday at the Linux Foundation Web site here.

As I expect just about every reader of this blog knows, Brian has been the Managing Editor of LinuxToday for quite a few years (as well as Managing Editor of various other Jupiter Media properties: LinuxPlanet, Enterprise Linux Today, AllLinuxDevices, LinuxPR, and JustLinux). If you missed it, you can find Brian’s farewell column at LinuxToday here. As he disclosed there, his new role will be to help launch the Linux Foundation’s new Linux Developer Network site and project, which Amanda has been already been working on for some time. When it launches, Brian will be its Community Manager and Editor.

I’m particularly happy that I’ll be able to continue to work with Brian, as he has been a great friend to me here, linking to hundreds of my blog entries over the last several years. It’s fair to say that many of you would never have learned of this blog but for Brian’s deciding that what I was writing here might be of interest to the Linux community. I am quite appropriately grateful for his willingness to pull what I had to say out of the fire hose of information that he had to deal with on a daily basis.

Read the rest here

Amanda McPherson: Welcome Brian Proffitt to the Linux Foundation

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:54:46 +0000

I’m very pleased to welcome Brian Proffitt to the Linux Foundation. Brian will be serving as the community manager and editor for the Linux Developer Network. We’re extremely lucky to lure Brian away from Jupiter Media, where he built a thriving community and reported on Linux for such publications as Linux Today and Linux Planet.

Adding a community manager for the Linux Developer Network is an important move for us. The LDN, while not launched yet, we hope will become a central place for the community to collaborate. As Brian mentions in this excellent article in OSstatic, the LDN will be the public-facing manifestation of all things LSB, meaning it will assist developers in writing portable applications for Linux.

But that’s certainly not all it will be. We want to make it easier for application developers to target Linux in general. We have designed the LDN to hopefully provide a central place for collaboration and problem solving across the application development community. We also hope that other Linux loving folks may join the conversation on the site. This could evolve to include driver development, embedded, mobile, Cloud computing, general Linux documentation and so on. It’s a community site, and just like Linux, its direction will be set by those who use and participate in it.

As you can see from Brian’s response on OSstatic he holds a passion and vision for LDN:

How many thousands of developers work with free and open source software? And how much excellent documentation is out there now? I look at the efforts of the volunteers on JustLinux, or Jeremy Garcia and his team on LinuxQuestions, and I think just the answers they provide end-users are great. Now imagine the same energy from volunteers for developer-oriented content, all channeling their efforts into a centralized LDN site.

Watch this space for the launch of the LDN in the coming months. We expect great things from Brian in his new role.

Amanda McPherson: Linux is Big in Japan — Our Symposium

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:17:57 +0000

The 8th Linux Foundation Japan Symposium took place last week in Tokyo. The goal of these symposiums is to bring leading Linux luminaries to present and interact with local senior software developers, with the goal of increasing open source participation by talented Japanese developers and also fostering Linux usage in the Japanese IT industry.

Andrew Morton was on hand to speak about the status and direction of kernel development, covering kernel process material and specifically highlighting areas that need to be worked on including solid state disks and the linux-next tree.

James Morris presented on the SE Linux project, Thomas Gleixner spoke about the advantages of the Completely Fair Scheduler and Paul Moore talked about labeled networking. Toshiharu Harada,project manager of TOMOYO Linux, was able to explain to the developers in attendance about how to participate in Linux development and provided words of encouragement to other young developers like himself.

While the majority of the audience came from Japan, attendees came from throughout Asia. The audience consisted almost completely of developers attending from such companies as NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, NTT, Sony, Toshiba, Canon and Red Hat and from universities including Tokyo University and Waseda University. An audience survey revealed that the areas of most interest to the attendees included server, desktop and embedded with the largest technical interests focused on virtualization, process scheduler and file systems, in that order.

Andrew Morton informed the audience that about 15% of current kernel contributions are now coming from Japan - something we hope the Japan Symposiums have contributed to.

For more information on the 8th Linux Foundation Japan Symposium, please visit the following:

All speaker slides posted on LF Japan’s website: http://www.linux-foundation.jp/modules/eguide/event.php?eid=10

James Morris’ notes, photos and slides: http://james-morris.livejournal.com/31240.html

Linux Weather Forecast: 2.6.26 at last

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:27:38 +0000

Linus Torvalds released the 2.6.26 kernel on July 13 - somewhat later than most people had expected. At a full three months, this development cycle took longer than some others; that is especially surprising given that the number of patches merged and new features added is somewhat less than we have seen in recent development cycles. Still, at over 10,000 changesets, this is not a small release.

As always, I recommend that people wanting to know all about what’s in this release head on over to the KernelNewbies 2.6.26 page.

The new feature list for this kernel is huge. But there is a lot of good stuff there. One of my favorites is the incorporation of the kgdb debugger for the x86 architecture. Linus has been resisting the addition of an interactive debugger almost since the very beginning; he believes that such tools lead developers to focus on symptoms rather than understanding the underlying problem. But one of the things that makes Linus who he is is that he can, with effort, be convinced to change his mind. And so the developers who have long patched in kgdb from outside have finally gotten their point across: development tools help to make a better tool. Don’t expect Linus to use kgdb anytime soon, but he has at least let it into his kernel.

Now attention turns to the 2.6.27 development cycle; Linus has already started merging patches for this release. One of the more interesting things to watch will be whether the merge window process goes more smoothly this time around. 2.6.27 will be the first kernel cycle for which the linux-next tree was in full operation, so, in theory, much of the integration work has already been done. If linux-next has done its job, this merge window should come together with relatively little pain. See this article and this one for more information on the evolving role of linux-next.

And stay tuned: I’ll be back in about two weeks with a summary of what will be in the 2.6.27 kernel.

Jim Zemlin: Meet the People Who Have Trillions Riding on Linux this Fall

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:06:26 +0000

If you work around Linux regularly, in some ways the latest amazing news is… not that amazing. The New York Stock Exchange, where the world’s largest public companies trade their stocks, is now running on Linux. (Microsoft is not listed on the NYSE; they trade on the NASDAQ. Now *that* would have been a fun headline…) In addition the Chicago Mercantile Exchange also runs on Linux. While perhaps not as famous as the NYSE, the CME is one of the largest exchanges in the world. Even the Tokyo Stock Exchange is running on Linux.

Why is this? Linux’s stability and flexibility make it an obvious choice for stock exchanges that mix in a wide range of server and real-time application technologies connected by global networks with extremely high security needs. People who work around Linux have always thought Linux really shines in these kinds of computing environments.

Still, the sheer amounts of money that are now traded on top of Linux are staggering. NYSE Euronext and its family of exchanges which include the NYSE, Euronext, Liffe, Alternext and NYSE Arca Options, operating in the US and Europe, now run on Red Hat Linux and look to Red Hat for support and services. Put it another way, over 4000 public companies and over $141 billion in daily stock transactions depend on Linux. The Chicago Mercantile exchange at last count traded 1.403 Billion contracts valued at $827 trillion annually. The Tokyo Stock Exchange has 2,413 listed companies have a total market capitalization of nearly 678 trillion yen.

Wow.

Interested in hearing more from the kinds of developers and vendors that work on large, high-performance installations? The Linux Foundation is hosting our End User Collaboration Summit this fall in New York City, Oct 13-14. The leaders of the development and vendor communities will be interacting directly with CIOs and senior IT people to discuss in detail how to accelerate problem solving and advance the Linux platform. The author of Wikinomics will be there with his observations on collaborative development and I suspect to learn a little from the folks working on Linux. All verticals are welcome, including Online Services, Financial Services, Healthcare, and HPC.

It’s an invitation-only event, limited to 150 participants, so if you’re interested in attending, please don’t wait to get in touch. http://www.linux-foundation.org/events/enduser . If you have questions or need further information, please email us at events@linux-foundation.org .

Andy Updegrove: ISO TMB Recommends Rejection of OOXML Appeals

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:22:23 +0000

Last night someone sent me a copy of a document delivered by the CEOs of ISO and IEC earlier that day to the ISO Technical Management Board (TMB). That documents summarizes the four appeals filed in relation to the adoption of DIS 29500 (OOXML), and provides a response to each claimed basis for appeal. Those appeals, you will recall, were registered by the National Bodies of South Africa, India, Venezuela and Brazil, not all of which have became publicly available. Under the Directives, the next step in the Appeals process is for the TMB to vote on each appeal, with each member being entitled to vote yes, no or abstain on one or the other of the following resolutions, in each case as to each appeal separately:

a) Not to process the appeal further

b) To process one or more of the appeals, which would require setting up of a conciliation panel

If more than one appeal is approved for further consideration, the CEOs recommend that a single panel be formed to address them (I’ve previously described the ongoing process in greater detail here). The TMB’s are asked to vote by August 4.

The recommendation of the CEOs is as follows:

The processing of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 project has been conducted in conformity with the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, with decisions determined by the votes expressed by the relevant ISO and IEC national bodies under their own responsibility, and consequently, for the reasons mentioned above, the appeals should not be process further.

Those who have been disappointed by how the Fast Track process was conducted will also be disappointed by the reasoning they will find in the document, which can be effectively be summarized as follows:

Read the Rest

Andy Updegrove: Post-Gates: Microsoft, Competition and the Semantic Web

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:32:50 +0000

Microsoft has made many acquisitions for many reasons over its history - 122 to date, according to the list maintained at the Wikipedia. Almost 100 of these have been consummated in the last decade, as the company that triumphed in operating system and office productivity software has sought (often unsuccessfully) to achieve similar success in other domains. Other purchases have demonstrated pragmatic “build versus buy” decisions, serving to add functionalities to products that needed them more quickly and efficiently than in house efforts could achieve.

In its earlier days, Microsoft was much more likely to mimic the products of other companies rather than buy them, in part reflecting its engineering-driven culture, and in part its hardball approach to competition. When it did add features this way, it invariably added them for free into its existing products to make them more desirable. The result was often to drive the originators of those features out of the marketplace, since who would buy what they could get for free? Sometimes, the motivation was more desperate, as with the crash development, and bundling, of Internet Explorer in Window, when Netscape threatened to open a critical breach in Microsoft’s control personal computing.

If that sounds vaguely familiar, it should, since Google is following the same course, albeit in a kinder, gentler way, as it adds service upon service, all for free, and all in the service of racking up more and more ad revenues. That’s disturbing, because when your goal is ad revenues and not great technology, you may not necessarily produce great technology. But as Google’s dominance continues to grow, who will be able to credibly compete against it in those technologies, to ensure that innovation continues?

Read more here

Angela Brown: Author of Wikinomics to Keynote at End User Summit

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:32:46 +0000

Anthony Williams, the co-author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything will be the opening keynote on October 13th at the Linux Foundation End User Summit in New York City.

Anthony is Vice President and Executive Editor at New Paradigm. An avid researcher and writer, Anthony has pursued his interests in the wide-ranging impacts of new technologies on social and economic life for over a decade. His work has been featured in publications such as Business 2.0 and Optimize Magazine, and has been widely circulated in proprietary syndicated research programs. Anthony was previously Research Director with Digital 4Sight and has consulted to Fortune 500 firms and international institutions, including the World Bank. He holds a Masters in Research from the London School of Economics and is a Ph.D. candidate there in the Department of Government.

The Linux Foundation End User Collaboration Summit gathers the leaders of the Linux development and vendor communities to collaborate with CTOs, architects and senior IT representatives from the largest and most dynamic end users in the world to accelerate problem solving and advance the Linux platform.

More Information on the End User Summit