Best Wishes For Happy
New Year 2005
Wishing You
1 Year of Happiness
12 Months of Fun
52 Weeks of Gladness
365 Days of Success
8760 Hours of Good Health
and May You Enjoy
Every Second of it !
Sasidhar
Thursday, December 30, 2004
A NEW YEAR WISH
Best Wishes For Happy
New Year 2005
Wishing You
1 Year of Happiness
12 Months of Fun
52 Weeks of Gladness
365 Days of Success
8760 Hours of Good Health
and May You Enjoy
Every Second of it !
Sasidhar
Monday, December 27, 2004
New Year's resolution for Firefox: Grow
Forty-five days and some 13 million downloads after its official release, Mozilla's Firefox browser is showing undeniable momentum--but does it signal the beginning of the end to Microsoft's monopoly over the basic software used to access the Web?
Even as Firefox gathers steam, powerful brakes are poised to kick in that could limit its long-term growth: Interoperability has long dogged non-Microsoft browsers, which are often glitchy on some Web sites. Firefox claims some significant progress on this front, but a handful of sites, including Microsoft's Windows Update site, are still inaccessible.
In addition, Microsoft's deep hooks in corporate IT departments could make it impractical for many businesses to consider switching from Internet Explorer for the foreseeable future. Microsoft, for one, sees those hooks as a staunch bulwark against corporate defections, keeping its most profitable customers close to the fold.
"We hear from many thousands of business customers that Internet Explorer is an extensible and reliable platform upon which thousands of line-of-business applications have been built," a Microsoft representative said in a statement.
Since its launch last month, Firefox has already nudged Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser below the 90 percent mark for the first time in years, according to one survey. Now the question is whether the Web browser can surmount thorny market dynamics to become more than just another niche player among the crowd of lilliputian rivals that have long stood in IE's shadow.
After spending years on the sidelines mired in delays, Mozilla has seen its star rise suddenly with the emergence of Firefox. The group was created by Netscape Communications in 1999 to develop its browser following the open-source development model and was spun off in 2003 as a nonprofit foundation by Netscape parent Time Warner. Now, from seemingly out of nowhere, the group has set its sights on achieving 10 percent market share in the browser market by 2005.
"Our goal for the next year is to keep market share growth on pace with what's happened over 2004," said Chris Hofmann, Mozilla's director of engineering. "The Mozilla Foundation has provided the funding to help push this along."
Considering IE's current share, the realization of those ambitions would represent a breakout number, given the current dynamics of the browser market, where numerous second-tier browsers--like Apple Computer's Safari, Opera Software's browser and other Mozilla-based browsers such as Mozilla and Netscape remain squarely in the single digits.
A major problem for Mozilla in growing Firefox's market share is the lingering tendency of Web authors to code their sites to work with IE. Despite the existence of Web standards as promulgated primarily by the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org/), examples abound on the Web of sites and applications that don't work well with Firefox or other non-IE browsers.
With the successful launches of both Firefox and the Thunderbird e-mail application behind it, Mozilla is looking ahead to 2005 with both of these problems in mind.
To attack the compatibility problem, Mozilla plans to hire new staff to ferret out IE-only sites and advocate standards-based coding methods to their authors.
A similar group existed at Netscape before Mozilla's spin-off, and Mozilla has continued its work using volunteers since then. In the coming year, the full-time, paid staffers will double down on the work of convincing Web authors, one by one, to code to standards.
By targeting the Web's most trafficked Web sites, Mozilla claims to have boosted compatibility on the Web not just for its own browsers, but for other standards-compliant browsers as well.
Mozilla regularly tests the 1,700 most trafficked Web sites and performs side-by-side comparisons of how they work in IE and Firefox. The group's data shows that Firefox is 98 percent compatible with Web content on those sites. That's up from 75 percent four years ago, according to the foundation.
"We're really down to just a few problems," Hofmann said.
Those problems include Web sites' reliance on ActiveX, Microsoft's proprietary application programming interface (API) for letting Web sites take advantage of the computer's underlying functionality.
ActiveX has long been considered a security liability and was a key focus of Microsoft's recent Service Pack 2 security upgrade for IE users with Windows XP. Mozilla is part of a coalition including fellow browser makers Apple Computer and Opera Software, along with plug-in application vendors Sun Microsystems, Macromedia and Adobe Systems, to come up with a standard ActiveX equivalent.
The second most common problem for Firefox compatibility is what Hofmann termed "Microsoft's proprietary implementation of the DOM." The DOM, or Document Object Model ( http://www.w3.org/DOM/ ), is a W3C recommendation for letting scripts interact with discrete elements of a Web page.
One way Mozilla got to 98 percent compatibility from 75 percent was by convincing Web sites to code differently. Another was to emulate IE when faced with nonstandard pages.
That strategy resulted in what Mozilla calls its "quirks mode." When Firefox loads a page and its Gecko engine rendering engine detects nonstandard IE-specific behaviors, the browser switches into that mode and is able to render the page correctly--albeit at a more sluggish pace.
With the success of Firefox in winning market share, Mozilla is finding Web authors more receptive to its message about standards and compatibility. The group is now fielding between 10 and 15 calls per week from individuals and organizations asking how to make their sites work with Firefox.
Even Microsoft has become more responsive to requests that its Web pages be accessible in Firefox. Hofmann credits the software giant's sunnier attitude in part to the $12 million settlement the company paid following Opera's accusations that Microsoft was deliberately breaking its pages when viewed with the Opera browser.
Microsoft declined to comment on the matter of its Web pages' compatibility with non-IE browsers or on the issue of browser-site interoperability in general.
But the company noted another area where Mozilla will face significant challenges gaining market share: enterprise desktops.
Like post-Sept. 11 presidential candidates, both sides claim to have the best security story to tell.
"Over the last year, we have started to see interest on the part of corporate IT managers worried about security problems in IE who are starting to think about strategies for backup when serious vulnerabilities arise in IE and Microsoft doesn't have a patch," Hofmann said. "We have talked to them, listened to their concerns and are assisting them with deployment plans for rolling out Firefox."
Mozilla's pitch will likely focus on lesser-known enterprise capabilities of Firefox, such as its ability to update browser preferences from a central server.
In the coming year, Mozilla expects to continue to evangelize Firefox to corporations--something old Netscape hands at the foundation know a thing or two about.
"We see lots of interest," Hofmann said. "The companies we're talking to are across all industries. Entering the enterprise market is a long and hard route, and several of us have experience in it from our days at Netscape and know what it takes to succeed. We're in this for the long haul."
Even as Firefox gathers steam, powerful brakes are poised to kick in that could limit its long-term growth: Interoperability has long dogged non-Microsoft browsers, which are often glitchy on some Web sites. Firefox claims some significant progress on this front, but a handful of sites, including Microsoft's Windows Update site, are still inaccessible.
In addition, Microsoft's deep hooks in corporate IT departments could make it impractical for many businesses to consider switching from Internet Explorer for the foreseeable future. Microsoft, for one, sees those hooks as a staunch bulwark against corporate defections, keeping its most profitable customers close to the fold.
"We hear from many thousands of business customers that Internet Explorer is an extensible and reliable platform upon which thousands of line-of-business applications have been built," a Microsoft representative said in a statement.
Since its launch last month, Firefox has already nudged Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser below the 90 percent mark for the first time in years, according to one survey. Now the question is whether the Web browser can surmount thorny market dynamics to become more than just another niche player among the crowd of lilliputian rivals that have long stood in IE's shadow.
After spending years on the sidelines mired in delays, Mozilla has seen its star rise suddenly with the emergence of Firefox. The group was created by Netscape Communications in 1999 to develop its browser following the open-source development model and was spun off in 2003 as a nonprofit foundation by Netscape parent Time Warner. Now, from seemingly out of nowhere, the group has set its sights on achieving 10 percent market share in the browser market by 2005.
"Our goal for the next year is to keep market share growth on pace with what's happened over 2004," said Chris Hofmann, Mozilla's director of engineering. "The Mozilla Foundation has provided the funding to help push this along."
Considering IE's current share, the realization of those ambitions would represent a breakout number, given the current dynamics of the browser market, where numerous second-tier browsers--like Apple Computer's Safari, Opera Software's browser and other Mozilla-based browsers such as Mozilla and Netscape remain squarely in the single digits.
A major problem for Mozilla in growing Firefox's market share is the lingering tendency of Web authors to code their sites to work with IE. Despite the existence of Web standards as promulgated primarily by the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org/), examples abound on the Web of sites and applications that don't work well with Firefox or other non-IE browsers.
With the successful launches of both Firefox and the Thunderbird e-mail application behind it, Mozilla is looking ahead to 2005 with both of these problems in mind.
To attack the compatibility problem, Mozilla plans to hire new staff to ferret out IE-only sites and advocate standards-based coding methods to their authors.
A similar group existed at Netscape before Mozilla's spin-off, and Mozilla has continued its work using volunteers since then. In the coming year, the full-time, paid staffers will double down on the work of convincing Web authors, one by one, to code to standards.
By targeting the Web's most trafficked Web sites, Mozilla claims to have boosted compatibility on the Web not just for its own browsers, but for other standards-compliant browsers as well.
Mozilla regularly tests the 1,700 most trafficked Web sites and performs side-by-side comparisons of how they work in IE and Firefox. The group's data shows that Firefox is 98 percent compatible with Web content on those sites. That's up from 75 percent four years ago, according to the foundation.
"We're really down to just a few problems," Hofmann said.
Those problems include Web sites' reliance on ActiveX, Microsoft's proprietary application programming interface (API) for letting Web sites take advantage of the computer's underlying functionality.
ActiveX has long been considered a security liability and was a key focus of Microsoft's recent Service Pack 2 security upgrade for IE users with Windows XP. Mozilla is part of a coalition including fellow browser makers Apple Computer and Opera Software, along with plug-in application vendors Sun Microsystems, Macromedia and Adobe Systems, to come up with a standard ActiveX equivalent.
The second most common problem for Firefox compatibility is what Hofmann termed "Microsoft's proprietary implementation of the DOM." The DOM, or Document Object Model ( http://www.w3.org/DOM/ ), is a W3C recommendation for letting scripts interact with discrete elements of a Web page.
One way Mozilla got to 98 percent compatibility from 75 percent was by convincing Web sites to code differently. Another was to emulate IE when faced with nonstandard pages.
That strategy resulted in what Mozilla calls its "quirks mode." When Firefox loads a page and its Gecko engine rendering engine detects nonstandard IE-specific behaviors, the browser switches into that mode and is able to render the page correctly--albeit at a more sluggish pace.
With the success of Firefox in winning market share, Mozilla is finding Web authors more receptive to its message about standards and compatibility. The group is now fielding between 10 and 15 calls per week from individuals and organizations asking how to make their sites work with Firefox.
Even Microsoft has become more responsive to requests that its Web pages be accessible in Firefox. Hofmann credits the software giant's sunnier attitude in part to the $12 million settlement the company paid following Opera's accusations that Microsoft was deliberately breaking its pages when viewed with the Opera browser.
Microsoft declined to comment on the matter of its Web pages' compatibility with non-IE browsers or on the issue of browser-site interoperability in general.
But the company noted another area where Mozilla will face significant challenges gaining market share: enterprise desktops.
Like post-Sept. 11 presidential candidates, both sides claim to have the best security story to tell.
"Over the last year, we have started to see interest on the part of corporate IT managers worried about security problems in IE who are starting to think about strategies for backup when serious vulnerabilities arise in IE and Microsoft doesn't have a patch," Hofmann said. "We have talked to them, listened to their concerns and are assisting them with deployment plans for rolling out Firefox."
Mozilla's pitch will likely focus on lesser-known enterprise capabilities of Firefox, such as its ability to update browser preferences from a central server.
In the coming year, Mozilla expects to continue to evangelize Firefox to corporations--something old Netscape hands at the foundation know a thing or two about.
"We see lots of interest," Hofmann said. "The companies we're talking to are across all industries. Entering the enterprise market is a long and hard route, and several of us have experience in it from our days at Netscape and know what it takes to succeed. We're in this for the long haul."
Sunday, December 26, 2004
Sprucing up open source's GPL foundation
Modernization is coming to the General Public License, a legal framework that supports a large part of the free and open-source software movements and that has received sharp criticism from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
GPL ( http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html )author Richard Stallman said he's working on amendments that could deal better with software patents; clarify how GPL software may be used in some networked environments and on carefully controlled hardware; and lower some barriers that today prevent the mixing of software covered by the GPL and other licenses.
In the 13 years since the current GPL version 2 was released, the license has moved from the fringes to the center of the computing industry. GPL software is now common at Fortune 500 companies and endorsed by most large computing firms. But that prominence has made some eager for an update.
"The GPL has become the pivot point of a multibillion-dollar industry. Frankly, I don't think it was designed for that," said Mark Radcliffe, an attorney with Gray Cary who has studied the GPL and other licenses extensively.
For example, some would like to see clarifications that could help reduce the threat that using GPL software could entangle users in patent litigation. And the GPL could be better adapted to recent industry initiatives such as building sophisticated Web services on the Internet and boosting security through trusted computing methods.
Ordinarily only attorneys give much thought to the legal documents that govern how software may be used. But the GPL is different.
The license is the agreement that helped show that cooperation can work in an industry dominated by competition. And the most persuasive illustration of its power is Linux, a rising threat to computing giants such as Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.
The GPL governs the programming instructions called source code that developers write and then convert into the binary files that computers understand. At its heart, the GPL permits anyone to see, modify and redistribute that source code, as long as they make changes available publicly and license them under the GPL. That contrasts with some licenses used in open-source projects that permit source code to be made proprietary.
Another requirement is that GPL software may be tightly integrated only with other software that also is governed by the GPL. That provision helps to create a growing pool of GPL software, but it's also spurred some to label the license "viral," raising the specter that the inadvertent or surreptitious inclusion of GPL code in a proprietary product would require the release of all source code under the GPL. Gates in particular derided the license as "Pac Man-like," evoking an image of a GPL software module gobbling its way along and forcing the release of source code it touches.
Thus far, that scenario hasn't come to pass. The GPL, though, has threatened Microsoft in another way: It helped foster a vast, vibrant programming community.
Microsoft is keenly watching the arrival of the new GPL, which Stallman said likely will be labeled version 3. But the company probably won't see changes to that core provision separating GPL and proprietary code.
"Overall it's going to be the same," the globe-trotting Stallman said in a telephone interview from Morocco. "I don't expect anyone releasing software under the GPL to be unhappy with the changes."
Changes aren't going to happen anytime soon, though. "We're nowhere near ready to have anything to show people anything yet. We know what we'd like to do, but how to do it is not clear," Stallman said. Only when he's good and ready will he begin seeking comments on a draft.
Stallman wrote the GPL in the 1980s as part of his Gnu's Not Unix, or GNU ( http://www.gnu.org/ ), project to create a clone of the operating system unfettered by Unix's proprietary constraints--thus the term "free software" and the Free Software Foundation that Stallman established to promote it.
According to Freshmeat ( http://freshmeat.net/browse/15/ ), which calls itself "the Web's largest index of Unix and cross-platform software," there are more than 19,000 GPL-covered software projects, and the GPL governs 68 percent of projects in the Freshmeat index.
The most prominent GPL project is Linux, the kernel of an operating system that will underlie a $35.7 billion business in 2008, according to a forecast by market researcher IDC. Among others: the MySQL database, the netfilter/iptables protective firewall and the Samba file-sharing software.
But programmers have other choices if they're not happy with the GPL. Other licenses cover the Mozilla project, which helped launch the open-source movement in 1998, and the widely used Apache server software. And Sun Microsystems is testing its Community Development and Distribution License, which likely will be used to govern its Solaris version of Unix.
The patent problem :-
Patents are one reason Sun chose the license it did. How the GPL deals with that thorny legal area is the issue more than a dozen experts raised most often in discussions for this story.
The patent problems boil down to two issues. First, should the license explicitly require those who distribute GPL software to grant others unhindered use of whatever patented technology is involved in that software? And second, should there be some form of punishment for those who file lawsuits alleging that GPL software infringes their patents?
These issues are under discussion for the next version of the GPL. "It may possibly help protect our community from pirates armed with patents," said Stallman, an outspoken critic of the overall idea of software patents.
One interpretation of the current GPL is that patent holders who distribute GPL software "are in effect granting an implied license" to those patents, said Mark Webbink, the lead intellectual-property attorney for Linux seller Red Hat and a person who first saw revised GPL drafts in 2000. But it might be useful to have an explicitly expressed patent agreement, he said. "A distributor may not want to leave that ambiguous as to what rights they are giving."
Frank Bernstein, an attorney with Sughrue Mion, suggests Stallman look for inspiration to Apple Computer's Apple Public Source Licence ( http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/2.0.txt ) and the Common Public Licence ( http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/CPLv1.0.htm ) IBM often uses. Both grant a license to use patents covering the software, and when it comes to organizations that sue for patent infringement, both licenses terminate their rights to use and distribute the software.
Bernstein said addressing patents could make the GPL more palatable among corporations--users that have become major contributors to, and customers of, open-source software.
But some would like to see the GPL be more of a political tool to overturn the idea of software patents. "We need to find some way to monkey-wrench the awful, broken software-patent oligopoly before it does more serious damage," said Eric Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative ( http://www.opensource.org/ ). "If GPL (version) 3 can help do that, it would be extremely valuable."
And Bruce Perens, an open-source advocate, would like to see damages for a patent-infringement suit extended to prohibit use not just of the software in question but of all programs classified as free software. "I would like to see the next issue of the GPL include a mutual-defense clause regarding patents, such that if you enforce a patent against any free software, your rights to use free software terminate," Perens said.
A middle ground is possible, Linux seller Novell said in a statement. "Intellectual-property protection and open source can work hand in hand and are not mutually inconsistent," the company said.
Other changes:-
Stallman listed several other areas where modifications are under way:
The GPL will become more compatible with some other free software licenses that have minor conditions that currently prohibit programmers from intermingling the GPL and non-GPL code. None of those other licenses are very widely used, however, he said.
An area of investigation is getting GPL software to run on devices such as TiVo's digital video recorders, which use a specific version of Linux but won't run modified versions. But prohibitions on modifications violates the spirit of the GPL. "This is not what free software is supposed to be," Stallman said.
The next version likely will have a mechanism for dealing with GPL software that has been modified and that runs on publicly accessible computers. Today, a programmer who wanted his or her GPL software to run in this public fashion could insert a programming command that would let the public download a version of the software if it's been modified. However, with the current GPL, the organization running the software could simply remove that section of the code. Stallman is considering a provision that would prohibit its removal. "If the program has such a command already, and you modify the program, you must keep that working," he said.
Stallman isn't the only one looking for improvements.
Martin Fink, vice president of Linux at Hewlett-Packard, has been grappling with some thorny GPL issues. One problem he foresees--related to the TiVo issue Stallman raises--is integration with the "trusted computing" technology under development.
Trusted computing :-
Among other things, trusted computing is designed to permit execution only of software that has been cryptographically signed--but that signature process could be at odds with the goals of sharing and modification at the heart of the GPL, Fink said.
Another specific hitch is that the GPL isn't clear about what exactly "distribution" means, Fink said. How should GPL software be treated that's distributed from a corporation to a subsidiary? Or from one machine to another as the program executes? "We're dealing in a world where a program entity is not confined to a machine. You can have bits and parts of a program that are highly distributed," Fink said, as in the widely embraced Web services concept.
Attorney John Ferrell of Carr & Ferrell would like to see a better indication of the use of derivative works--software based on the original GPL product. Is it a derivative work to include a GPL component unmodified as part of a larger software suite?
Derivative works, copyrights and other concepts are central to the GPL but those concepts vary by country and state. Radcliffe of Gray Cary would prefer precise definitions that are more absolute.
GPL improvements are crucial to the open-source software realm, Fink said. Improvements could help the license become more popular and better understood, which in turn would mean a larger body of GPL software that could be shared among projects.
"I'm trying to stop people from creating new licenses," Fink said. "To the extent we can create a license that has a broader buy-in, that stops proliferation of more licenses, that to me is goodness."
GPL ( http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html )author Richard Stallman said he's working on amendments that could deal better with software patents; clarify how GPL software may be used in some networked environments and on carefully controlled hardware; and lower some barriers that today prevent the mixing of software covered by the GPL and other licenses.
In the 13 years since the current GPL version 2 was released, the license has moved from the fringes to the center of the computing industry. GPL software is now common at Fortune 500 companies and endorsed by most large computing firms. But that prominence has made some eager for an update.
"The GPL has become the pivot point of a multibillion-dollar industry. Frankly, I don't think it was designed for that," said Mark Radcliffe, an attorney with Gray Cary who has studied the GPL and other licenses extensively.
For example, some would like to see clarifications that could help reduce the threat that using GPL software could entangle users in patent litigation. And the GPL could be better adapted to recent industry initiatives such as building sophisticated Web services on the Internet and boosting security through trusted computing methods.
Ordinarily only attorneys give much thought to the legal documents that govern how software may be used. But the GPL is different.
The license is the agreement that helped show that cooperation can work in an industry dominated by competition. And the most persuasive illustration of its power is Linux, a rising threat to computing giants such as Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.
The GPL governs the programming instructions called source code that developers write and then convert into the binary files that computers understand. At its heart, the GPL permits anyone to see, modify and redistribute that source code, as long as they make changes available publicly and license them under the GPL. That contrasts with some licenses used in open-source projects that permit source code to be made proprietary.
Another requirement is that GPL software may be tightly integrated only with other software that also is governed by the GPL. That provision helps to create a growing pool of GPL software, but it's also spurred some to label the license "viral," raising the specter that the inadvertent or surreptitious inclusion of GPL code in a proprietary product would require the release of all source code under the GPL. Gates in particular derided the license as "Pac Man-like," evoking an image of a GPL software module gobbling its way along and forcing the release of source code it touches.
Thus far, that scenario hasn't come to pass. The GPL, though, has threatened Microsoft in another way: It helped foster a vast, vibrant programming community.
Microsoft is keenly watching the arrival of the new GPL, which Stallman said likely will be labeled version 3. But the company probably won't see changes to that core provision separating GPL and proprietary code.
"Overall it's going to be the same," the globe-trotting Stallman said in a telephone interview from Morocco. "I don't expect anyone releasing software under the GPL to be unhappy with the changes."
Changes aren't going to happen anytime soon, though. "We're nowhere near ready to have anything to show people anything yet. We know what we'd like to do, but how to do it is not clear," Stallman said. Only when he's good and ready will he begin seeking comments on a draft.
Stallman wrote the GPL in the 1980s as part of his Gnu's Not Unix, or GNU ( http://www.gnu.org/ ), project to create a clone of the operating system unfettered by Unix's proprietary constraints--thus the term "free software" and the Free Software Foundation that Stallman established to promote it.
According to Freshmeat ( http://freshmeat.net/browse/15/ ), which calls itself "the Web's largest index of Unix and cross-platform software," there are more than 19,000 GPL-covered software projects, and the GPL governs 68 percent of projects in the Freshmeat index.
The most prominent GPL project is Linux, the kernel of an operating system that will underlie a $35.7 billion business in 2008, according to a forecast by market researcher IDC. Among others: the MySQL database, the netfilter/iptables protective firewall and the Samba file-sharing software.
But programmers have other choices if they're not happy with the GPL. Other licenses cover the Mozilla project, which helped launch the open-source movement in 1998, and the widely used Apache server software. And Sun Microsystems is testing its Community Development and Distribution License, which likely will be used to govern its Solaris version of Unix.
The patent problem :-
Patents are one reason Sun chose the license it did. How the GPL deals with that thorny legal area is the issue more than a dozen experts raised most often in discussions for this story.
The patent problems boil down to two issues. First, should the license explicitly require those who distribute GPL software to grant others unhindered use of whatever patented technology is involved in that software? And second, should there be some form of punishment for those who file lawsuits alleging that GPL software infringes their patents?
These issues are under discussion for the next version of the GPL. "It may possibly help protect our community from pirates armed with patents," said Stallman, an outspoken critic of the overall idea of software patents.
One interpretation of the current GPL is that patent holders who distribute GPL software "are in effect granting an implied license" to those patents, said Mark Webbink, the lead intellectual-property attorney for Linux seller Red Hat and a person who first saw revised GPL drafts in 2000. But it might be useful to have an explicitly expressed patent agreement, he said. "A distributor may not want to leave that ambiguous as to what rights they are giving."
Frank Bernstein, an attorney with Sughrue Mion, suggests Stallman look for inspiration to Apple Computer's Apple Public Source Licence ( http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/2.0.txt ) and the Common Public Licence ( http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/CPLv1.0.htm ) IBM often uses. Both grant a license to use patents covering the software, and when it comes to organizations that sue for patent infringement, both licenses terminate their rights to use and distribute the software.
Bernstein said addressing patents could make the GPL more palatable among corporations--users that have become major contributors to, and customers of, open-source software.
But some would like to see the GPL be more of a political tool to overturn the idea of software patents. "We need to find some way to monkey-wrench the awful, broken software-patent oligopoly before it does more serious damage," said Eric Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative ( http://www.opensource.org/ ). "If GPL (version) 3 can help do that, it would be extremely valuable."
And Bruce Perens, an open-source advocate, would like to see damages for a patent-infringement suit extended to prohibit use not just of the software in question but of all programs classified as free software. "I would like to see the next issue of the GPL include a mutual-defense clause regarding patents, such that if you enforce a patent against any free software, your rights to use free software terminate," Perens said.
A middle ground is possible, Linux seller Novell said in a statement. "Intellectual-property protection and open source can work hand in hand and are not mutually inconsistent," the company said.
Other changes:-
Stallman listed several other areas where modifications are under way:
The GPL will become more compatible with some other free software licenses that have minor conditions that currently prohibit programmers from intermingling the GPL and non-GPL code. None of those other licenses are very widely used, however, he said.
An area of investigation is getting GPL software to run on devices such as TiVo's digital video recorders, which use a specific version of Linux but won't run modified versions. But prohibitions on modifications violates the spirit of the GPL. "This is not what free software is supposed to be," Stallman said.
The next version likely will have a mechanism for dealing with GPL software that has been modified and that runs on publicly accessible computers. Today, a programmer who wanted his or her GPL software to run in this public fashion could insert a programming command that would let the public download a version of the software if it's been modified. However, with the current GPL, the organization running the software could simply remove that section of the code. Stallman is considering a provision that would prohibit its removal. "If the program has such a command already, and you modify the program, you must keep that working," he said.
Stallman isn't the only one looking for improvements.
Martin Fink, vice president of Linux at Hewlett-Packard, has been grappling with some thorny GPL issues. One problem he foresees--related to the TiVo issue Stallman raises--is integration with the "trusted computing" technology under development.
Trusted computing :-
Among other things, trusted computing is designed to permit execution only of software that has been cryptographically signed--but that signature process could be at odds with the goals of sharing and modification at the heart of the GPL, Fink said.
Another specific hitch is that the GPL isn't clear about what exactly "distribution" means, Fink said. How should GPL software be treated that's distributed from a corporation to a subsidiary? Or from one machine to another as the program executes? "We're dealing in a world where a program entity is not confined to a machine. You can have bits and parts of a program that are highly distributed," Fink said, as in the widely embraced Web services concept.
Attorney John Ferrell of Carr & Ferrell would like to see a better indication of the use of derivative works--software based on the original GPL product. Is it a derivative work to include a GPL component unmodified as part of a larger software suite?
Derivative works, copyrights and other concepts are central to the GPL but those concepts vary by country and state. Radcliffe of Gray Cary would prefer precise definitions that are more absolute.
GPL improvements are crucial to the open-source software realm, Fink said. Improvements could help the license become more popular and better understood, which in turn would mean a larger body of GPL software that could be shared among projects.
"I'm trying to stop people from creating new licenses," Fink said. "To the extent we can create a license that has a broader buy-in, that stops proliferation of more licenses, that to me is goodness."
Opera releases talking Web browser
Opera Software released a test version of a major update to its Web browser software Thursday, intensifying its efforts, along with open-source rival Firefox, to cut into Microsoft's market share.
The new, as-yet-unnamed software adds stronger support for RSS (Really Simple Syndication)--a technology widely used for automatic access to blogs and other material--and technology that allows users to navigate through voice commands and have Web pages read to them.
The company said it has made enough improvements to turn the final version of this beta download into a major new release, instead of an ordinary incremental upgrade.
"The new Opera version has dramatic improvements under the hood, in addition to some very helpful new features to welcome more and more users to take advantage of browsing the Internet in a fast, safe and customizable way," Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner said in a statement.
Opera has benefited over the last year from a growing dissatisfaction online with Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer Web browser, driven by repeated security concerns and the passage of years between IE updates.
However, the lion's share of the public's experimentation with alternative browsers has gone to the open-source Firefox browser, which has been downloaded more than 12 million times since being released in final form in early November.
According to Net metrics firm WebSideStory, Internet Explorer's Share ( http://www.websidestory.com/pressroom/pressreleases.html?id=238 )of the U.S. market fell from 93.2 percent to 91.8 percent between early October and early December. Firefox grew from 2.7 percent to 4 percent, while "others"--largely Opera and the Apple Safari browser--grew from 1 to 1.25 percent.
The new Opera beta version also includes user interface improvements such as more browsing space, cleaner menus and better printing support, the company says. The browser also now works with Google's Gmail, correcting a problem that had led some Opera users to switch to Firefox.
The voice support is powered by IBM's Embedded ViaVoice technology, which Opera licensed early in the year.
Like other releases, the new beta is available as an ad-supported free download from the company's Web site(http://www.opera.com/ ). Final versions of Opera browsers are also offered in ad-free editions with the same functionality for $39.
The new, as-yet-unnamed software adds stronger support for RSS (Really Simple Syndication)--a technology widely used for automatic access to blogs and other material--and technology that allows users to navigate through voice commands and have Web pages read to them.
The company said it has made enough improvements to turn the final version of this beta download into a major new release, instead of an ordinary incremental upgrade.
"The new Opera version has dramatic improvements under the hood, in addition to some very helpful new features to welcome more and more users to take advantage of browsing the Internet in a fast, safe and customizable way," Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner said in a statement.
Opera has benefited over the last year from a growing dissatisfaction online with Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer Web browser, driven by repeated security concerns and the passage of years between IE updates.
However, the lion's share of the public's experimentation with alternative browsers has gone to the open-source Firefox browser, which has been downloaded more than 12 million times since being released in final form in early November.
According to Net metrics firm WebSideStory, Internet Explorer's Share ( http://www.websidestory.com/pressroom/pressreleases.html?id=238 )of the U.S. market fell from 93.2 percent to 91.8 percent between early October and early December. Firefox grew from 2.7 percent to 4 percent, while "others"--largely Opera and the Apple Safari browser--grew from 1 to 1.25 percent.
The new Opera beta version also includes user interface improvements such as more browsing space, cleaner menus and better printing support, the company says. The browser also now works with Google's Gmail, correcting a problem that had led some Opera users to switch to Firefox.
The voice support is powered by IBM's Embedded ViaVoice technology, which Opera licensed early in the year.
Like other releases, the new beta is available as an ad-supported free download from the company's Web site(http://www.opera.com/ ). Final versions of Opera browsers are also offered in ad-free editions with the same functionality for $39.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 release candidate
The Mozilla Firefox browser has already won the hearts and mice of millions of disgruntled Internet Explorer users. Now, the Mozilla Foundation aims to do it again with its open-source e-mail program, Thunderbird. The newly minted 1.0 release candidate isn't entirely free of flaws, but it runs rings around the more well-established mail clients. It's as easy to use as Outlook Express but far more powerful, and it's superior to the idiosyncratic Eudora 6.0 or the ponderous Outlook 2003. This release candidate (for testing purposes, available in somewhat cryptic form at the THUNDERBIRDS BUILDS FORUM ( http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=5695 ) ) is nearly complete, but as with all beta software, we suggest you wait and install the final version on your primary PC.
Upside: Well designed, easy to use, free for the download (with no ads in sight)--what more could you want from an e-mail client? Well, how about a built-in junk-mail filter and an RSS reader? Or smart search tools that let you save the results in a folder and run the search again at a later date? Or the ability to color-code messages for easier sorting? Did we mention that it works across the Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris platforms?
But most compellingly, Thunderbird provides big gains with almost no pain. At install, it automatically imports account settings and addresses from Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Eudora, or Netscape Mail; the 1.0 candidate also transports unopened mail from your old in-box. The interface looks like a hybrid between the Firefox browser and Outlook Express, making it extremely intuitive. And though it doesn't have the contact management and scheduling muscle of a program such as Outlook, it's a lot sleeker and swifter--more sports car than SUV.
Downside: There are a few small annoyances. For example, Thunderbird doesn't display the date on messages less than one day old, though you can change this by manually editing a user preferences file. In our limited tests, T-bird trapped almost all of our junk mail but also a large number of legit messages. You'll have to train the spam filter to make it fully effective, and when you mark a message by clicking Not Junk, you have to manually move it to your in-box. The new RSS reader was hard to find and somewhat spartan; newbies may find themselves at a loss. And if you run into snags, you must rely on FAQs, user forums, and the community of Mozillans for assistance.
Outlook: It's hard to find a free e-mail client that can go toe to toe with Thunderbird. Microsoft's continued support for future versions of Outlook Express is questionable, which makes the open-source Mozilla software even more attractive. When the final code appears--sometime in early December, say Mozilla Foundation folks--Thunderbird will undoubtedly win many converts
Upside: Well designed, easy to use, free for the download (with no ads in sight)--what more could you want from an e-mail client? Well, how about a built-in junk-mail filter and an RSS reader? Or smart search tools that let you save the results in a folder and run the search again at a later date? Or the ability to color-code messages for easier sorting? Did we mention that it works across the Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris platforms?
But most compellingly, Thunderbird provides big gains with almost no pain. At install, it automatically imports account settings and addresses from Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Eudora, or Netscape Mail; the 1.0 candidate also transports unopened mail from your old in-box. The interface looks like a hybrid between the Firefox browser and Outlook Express, making it extremely intuitive. And though it doesn't have the contact management and scheduling muscle of a program such as Outlook, it's a lot sleeker and swifter--more sports car than SUV.
Downside: There are a few small annoyances. For example, Thunderbird doesn't display the date on messages less than one day old, though you can change this by manually editing a user preferences file. In our limited tests, T-bird trapped almost all of our junk mail but also a large number of legit messages. You'll have to train the spam filter to make it fully effective, and when you mark a message by clicking Not Junk, you have to manually move it to your in-box. The new RSS reader was hard to find and somewhat spartan; newbies may find themselves at a loss. And if you run into snags, you must rely on FAQs, user forums, and the community of Mozillans for assistance.
Outlook: It's hard to find a free e-mail client that can go toe to toe with Thunderbird. Microsoft's continued support for future versions of Outlook Express is questionable, which makes the open-source Mozilla software even more attractive. When the final code appears--sometime in early December, say Mozilla Foundation folks--Thunderbird will undoubtedly win many converts
Linux lasting longer against Net attacks
Unpatched Linux systems are surviving longer on the Internet before being compromised, according to a report from the Honeynet Project released this week.
The data, from a dozen networks, showed that the average Linux system lasts three months before being compromised, a significant increase from the 72 hours life span of a Linux system in 2001. Unpatched Windows systems continue to be compromised more quickly, sometimes within minutes, the Honeynet Project report stated ( http://www.honeynet.org/papers/index.html ).
The results are probably due to two trends, said Lance Spitzner, president of Honeynet, which develops software for deploying computer systems as bait for online attackers. The default installations of new Linux systems are much more secure than previous versions of the open-source operating system, he said. Secondly, attackers seem to be much more concentrated on Windows systems than on Linux systems, and on attempting to fool desktop users, of which the vast majority use Windows.
"Everybody is focused on Windows," Spitzner said. "There is more money (for an attacker) to be made on the Windows systems."
The study is the latest data on the relative security of Linux systems versus Microsoft Windows. Last week, students found dozens of flaws in software that runs on Linux systems, and a research report stated that a thorough analysis of the Linux kernel turned up hundreds of flaws. However, in relative terms, those numbers are low compared to commercial applications.
Honeynets, a term coined by the project, are networks of computers that are placed on the Internet with the expectation that they will be compromised by attackers. The networks are heavily monitored, and the data is used to research the latest tactics of online miscreants.
While some of the Windows XP systems on the honeynets used for the latest study were compromised within minutes of being placed on the Internet, newer versions of the Linux operating system from Red Hat failed to be compromised by random attacks for more than two months.
Debbie Fry Wilson, director of product management for the security response center at Microsoft, told CNET News.com that the company's latest operating system is more secure than the report suggests.
"While it is not clear which version of Windows was used during the study, we feel that a Windows XP SP2 configuration with the Windows firewall enabled is the most resilient client operating system available in the market and can withstand attack much longer," Wilson said. "We are pleased that the report indicates that two Windows-based honeynets in Brazil withstood attack for several months. However, we are not certain that the report provides conclusive data based on a controlled and scientific study comparing the two operating systems."
Every Windows system compromised during the study had its security breached by a worm.
However, Spitzner stressed that the Honeynet Project does not have enough Windows systems deployed to offer meaningful data on that operating system's security. Moreover, the report does not specify what version of Windows XP had been running on the systems that had been compromised and whether any Service Pack upgrades had been installed.
The study did find that more recent versions of the Linux operating system lasted longer on the Internet without patching.
The data, from a dozen networks, showed that the average Linux system lasts three months before being compromised, a significant increase from the 72 hours life span of a Linux system in 2001. Unpatched Windows systems continue to be compromised more quickly, sometimes within minutes, the Honeynet Project report stated ( http://www.honeynet.org/papers/index.html ).
The results are probably due to two trends, said Lance Spitzner, president of Honeynet, which develops software for deploying computer systems as bait for online attackers. The default installations of new Linux systems are much more secure than previous versions of the open-source operating system, he said. Secondly, attackers seem to be much more concentrated on Windows systems than on Linux systems, and on attempting to fool desktop users, of which the vast majority use Windows.
"Everybody is focused on Windows," Spitzner said. "There is more money (for an attacker) to be made on the Windows systems."
The study is the latest data on the relative security of Linux systems versus Microsoft Windows. Last week, students found dozens of flaws in software that runs on Linux systems, and a research report stated that a thorough analysis of the Linux kernel turned up hundreds of flaws. However, in relative terms, those numbers are low compared to commercial applications.
Honeynets, a term coined by the project, are networks of computers that are placed on the Internet with the expectation that they will be compromised by attackers. The networks are heavily monitored, and the data is used to research the latest tactics of online miscreants.
While some of the Windows XP systems on the honeynets used for the latest study were compromised within minutes of being placed on the Internet, newer versions of the Linux operating system from Red Hat failed to be compromised by random attacks for more than two months.
Debbie Fry Wilson, director of product management for the security response center at Microsoft, told CNET News.com that the company's latest operating system is more secure than the report suggests.
"While it is not clear which version of Windows was used during the study, we feel that a Windows XP SP2 configuration with the Windows firewall enabled is the most resilient client operating system available in the market and can withstand attack much longer," Wilson said. "We are pleased that the report indicates that two Windows-based honeynets in Brazil withstood attack for several months. However, we are not certain that the report provides conclusive data based on a controlled and scientific study comparing the two operating systems."
Every Windows system compromised during the study had its security breached by a worm.
However, Spitzner stressed that the Honeynet Project does not have enough Windows systems deployed to offer meaningful data on that operating system's security. Moreover, the report does not specify what version of Windows XP had been running on the systems that had been compromised and whether any Service Pack upgrades had been installed.
The study did find that more recent versions of the Linux operating system lasted longer on the Internet without patching.
ComScore: Spyware or 'researchware'?
A battle has broken out over the proper definition of "spyware," pitting a Net research provider against critics who see little difference between its software and illicit programs that record personal data without consent.
ComScore Networks' Marketscore application is installed on more than 1 million PCs in the United States, forming the backbone of a well-regarded research service used by Fortune 500 companies, universities and media outlets, including CNET News.com. Now the software is in the privacy spotlight, tied to warnings from some universities and computer security experts about secretive and invasive software, sometimes known as adware or spyware, that can take over a PC with little or no warning.
COMSCORE ( http://www.comscore.com/ ) denies the charges and is preparing to go on the offensive with a lobby campaign aimed at legitimizing data collection products such as Marketscore. A ComScore proposal currently being shopped to security firms and Internet service providers would create a new "researchware" label for its software in order to explicitly distinguish it from badly behaved spyware products.
"There's a small group of people in universities who've taken it upon themselves to take an issue with our software," said Dan Hess, senior vice president of industry analysis at ComScore. "We're trying to make them fully aware of the nature of our (products and services). It's a completely voluntary program."
What's in a name? Quite a bit, it turns out, if you happen to make your living tracking the private lives of millions of consumers over the Web.
Labels such as spyware and adware cut a wide swath, with many gray areas that can spark disagreements among software makers, consumers and security experts over legitimate and illegitimate practices. Now these basic categories are poised for an overhaul, as federal spyware legislation moves forward and companies like ComScore push for finer definitions from the security companies that are largely responsible for classifying specific products one way or the other.
Depending on how these changes are handled, consumers could face an even more bewildering labyrinth of warnings and terminology over little-understood products such as Marketscore and dozens of other products up for grabs on the Web.
WEB ROOT SOFTWARE, ( http://www.webroot.com/ ) an Internet security company that counts Microsoft and EarthLink among its customers, said it plans to unveil a new category of potential threats in the next version of its security software, due out in the next few months.
"We're going to have an 'other' category, where we'll be able to identify things like Marketscore, describe what it does, and give users an option to remove it," said Richard Stiennon, vice president of threat research at Webroot. "It's ironic. When we do focus groups with consumers, they say they have too much information. So they're not going to be happy, but we're going to do it."
Webroot currently identifies Marketscore as a subcategory of spyware, known as a "system monitor," that tracks user behavior for marketing purposes.
Other software programs that are designed to detect and remove spyware and adware applications have warned users off Marketscore, too. Spybot Search and Destroy, for example, labels it spyware, and Ad-Aware dubs it a "data miner" for removal.
In fact, many in the Internet industry want better classifications for spyware and other tracking software because, too often, everything gets lumped together. For example, earlier this year, Webroot and EarthLink estimated that the majority of people have spyware on their computers. But the companies' classification of spyware included "cookies" that can be useful for people's PCs to recall passwords. Even sites like entertainment provider iFilm, which distributes an application for watching movie trailers, has been labeled ( http://www.ifilm.com/ii_install ) as spyware.
That's why security software makers like Symantec plan to improve information they have on the threat level of software circulating the Internet. "Rather than new categories, we're focusing on new classifications for understanding risk, to help people make decisions about what it is they want to block and what it is they are OK with," said Vincent Weafer, director of security software for Symantec.
For ComScore, the data it compiles is used to create reports tracking e-commerce sales trends, Web site traffic and online advertising campaigns, to name a few. In a few years, it has risen from obscurity to challenge larger rivals such as Nielsen/NetRatings.
ComScore freely admits that it tracks the activities of its customers, also called "panelists." But it insists that it fully discloses its practices and protects the privacy of its customers by providing only aggregate data for its reports. It also promises to strip out and discard any information that could connect data back to a particular individual.
"We do capture information, including data that occurs in secure sessions, to get information like what a person buys," said Chris Lin, ComScore's chief privacy officer. "We do that with full disclosure, and we scrub the personally identifiable information."
The company also has had its privacy policy, practices and data security audited by independent accounting firm Ernst & Young.
Despite ComScore's claims that it provides clear disclosure and consent, some privacy experts said controversy over its software highlights gray zones for data collection companies. For example, even companies that fully disclose software behavior may nevertheless undermine public perceptions of notice and consent if their disclosure documentation is overly dense or poorly worded.
ComScore Networks' Marketscore application is installed on more than 1 million PCs in the United States, forming the backbone of a well-regarded research service used by Fortune 500 companies, universities and media outlets, including CNET News.com. Now the software is in the privacy spotlight, tied to warnings from some universities and computer security experts about secretive and invasive software, sometimes known as adware or spyware, that can take over a PC with little or no warning.
COMSCORE ( http://www.comscore.com/ ) denies the charges and is preparing to go on the offensive with a lobby campaign aimed at legitimizing data collection products such as Marketscore. A ComScore proposal currently being shopped to security firms and Internet service providers would create a new "researchware" label for its software in order to explicitly distinguish it from badly behaved spyware products.
"There's a small group of people in universities who've taken it upon themselves to take an issue with our software," said Dan Hess, senior vice president of industry analysis at ComScore. "We're trying to make them fully aware of the nature of our (products and services). It's a completely voluntary program."
What's in a name? Quite a bit, it turns out, if you happen to make your living tracking the private lives of millions of consumers over the Web.
Labels such as spyware and adware cut a wide swath, with many gray areas that can spark disagreements among software makers, consumers and security experts over legitimate and illegitimate practices. Now these basic categories are poised for an overhaul, as federal spyware legislation moves forward and companies like ComScore push for finer definitions from the security companies that are largely responsible for classifying specific products one way or the other.
Depending on how these changes are handled, consumers could face an even more bewildering labyrinth of warnings and terminology over little-understood products such as Marketscore and dozens of other products up for grabs on the Web.
WEB ROOT SOFTWARE, ( http://www.webroot.com/ ) an Internet security company that counts Microsoft and EarthLink among its customers, said it plans to unveil a new category of potential threats in the next version of its security software, due out in the next few months.
"We're going to have an 'other' category, where we'll be able to identify things like Marketscore, describe what it does, and give users an option to remove it," said Richard Stiennon, vice president of threat research at Webroot. "It's ironic. When we do focus groups with consumers, they say they have too much information. So they're not going to be happy, but we're going to do it."
Webroot currently identifies Marketscore as a subcategory of spyware, known as a "system monitor," that tracks user behavior for marketing purposes.
Other software programs that are designed to detect and remove spyware and adware applications have warned users off Marketscore, too. Spybot Search and Destroy, for example, labels it spyware, and Ad-Aware dubs it a "data miner" for removal.
In fact, many in the Internet industry want better classifications for spyware and other tracking software because, too often, everything gets lumped together. For example, earlier this year, Webroot and EarthLink estimated that the majority of people have spyware on their computers. But the companies' classification of spyware included "cookies" that can be useful for people's PCs to recall passwords. Even sites like entertainment provider iFilm, which distributes an application for watching movie trailers, has been labeled ( http://www.ifilm.com/ii_install ) as spyware.
That's why security software makers like Symantec plan to improve information they have on the threat level of software circulating the Internet. "Rather than new categories, we're focusing on new classifications for understanding risk, to help people make decisions about what it is they want to block and what it is they are OK with," said Vincent Weafer, director of security software for Symantec.
For ComScore, the data it compiles is used to create reports tracking e-commerce sales trends, Web site traffic and online advertising campaigns, to name a few. In a few years, it has risen from obscurity to challenge larger rivals such as Nielsen/NetRatings.
ComScore freely admits that it tracks the activities of its customers, also called "panelists." But it insists that it fully discloses its practices and protects the privacy of its customers by providing only aggregate data for its reports. It also promises to strip out and discard any information that could connect data back to a particular individual.
"We do capture information, including data that occurs in secure sessions, to get information like what a person buys," said Chris Lin, ComScore's chief privacy officer. "We do that with full disclosure, and we scrub the personally identifiable information."
The company also has had its privacy policy, practices and data security audited by independent accounting firm Ernst & Young.
Despite ComScore's claims that it provides clear disclosure and consent, some privacy experts said controversy over its software highlights gray zones for data collection companies. For example, even companies that fully disclose software behavior may nevertheless undermine public perceptions of notice and consent if their disclosure documentation is overly dense or poorly worded.
OpenOffice 2.0 focuses on interoperability
The preview release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 includes a number of fixes designed to improve interoperability with Microsoft Office.
The preview release, which is meant for testing only, was made available for download at the end of last week. The final version of 2.0 will not be completed until April or May 2005, according to Michael Meeks, an OpenOffice.org developer.
There are various features in OpenOffice.org 2.0 that should help retain the formatting of MS Office files when loaded or saved in OpenOffice.org. "Interoperability should be substantially better in 2.0 -- there are lots of bug fixes," said Meeks.
One important interoperability issue that is difficult to resolve is converting proprietary MS Office fonts into a similar font in OpenOffice.org, said Meeks. This an issue for those who use OpenOffice.org on Linux, as only Windows users have access to the same font pool as is used by MS Office.
The copyright for many of the fonts used in MS Office are owned either by Microsoft or by the AGFA Monotype foundry, which means that open source developers cannot use the same font, and must create a similar one that is metrically compatible.
Interoperability with MS Office will continue to be a focus in future releases of OpenOffice.org. A group of developers are currently working on macro interoperability, so that individuals can port macros from Microsoft's Word or Excel to OpenOffice.org's Writer or Calc respectively. Macro compatibility is important for businesses, which often have specially formatted spreadsheets for business functions such as annual leave or expenses.
OpenOffice.org 2.0 also contains various changes to Impress, the presentation application, and Base, the database app, which both now have improved usability.
"The presentation application was previously very clunky to use," said Meeks. "Substantial work has gone into reworking it, for example, on the left-hand side there is now a list of slides that you can flick through very quickly."
Base also has a new application layer that Meeks claims is similar to the MS Access shell. The application layer allows users to create forms, reports, queries, tables and views.
OpenOffice.org is an important application for businesses that are considering a move to open source on the desktop. The City of Munich, which plans to migrate 14,000 desktops to open source software, is due to start migrating to OpenOffice.org in the first half of next year and will later shift from Windows NT 4.0 to Linux. The Ministry of Defence in Singapore has already installed OpenOffice.org on 5,000 PCs, and may switch from Windows XP to Linux in the future.
The preview release, which is meant for testing only, was made available for download at the end of last week. The final version of 2.0 will not be completed until April or May 2005, according to Michael Meeks, an OpenOffice.org developer.
There are various features in OpenOffice.org 2.0 that should help retain the formatting of MS Office files when loaded or saved in OpenOffice.org. "Interoperability should be substantially better in 2.0 -- there are lots of bug fixes," said Meeks.
One important interoperability issue that is difficult to resolve is converting proprietary MS Office fonts into a similar font in OpenOffice.org, said Meeks. This an issue for those who use OpenOffice.org on Linux, as only Windows users have access to the same font pool as is used by MS Office.
The copyright for many of the fonts used in MS Office are owned either by Microsoft or by the AGFA Monotype foundry, which means that open source developers cannot use the same font, and must create a similar one that is metrically compatible.
Interoperability with MS Office will continue to be a focus in future releases of OpenOffice.org. A group of developers are currently working on macro interoperability, so that individuals can port macros from Microsoft's Word or Excel to OpenOffice.org's Writer or Calc respectively. Macro compatibility is important for businesses, which often have specially formatted spreadsheets for business functions such as annual leave or expenses.
OpenOffice.org 2.0 also contains various changes to Impress, the presentation application, and Base, the database app, which both now have improved usability.
"The presentation application was previously very clunky to use," said Meeks. "Substantial work has gone into reworking it, for example, on the left-hand side there is now a list of slides that you can flick through very quickly."
Base also has a new application layer that Meeks claims is similar to the MS Access shell. The application layer allows users to create forms, reports, queries, tables and views.
OpenOffice.org is an important application for businesses that are considering a move to open source on the desktop. The City of Munich, which plans to migrate 14,000 desktops to open source software, is due to start migrating to OpenOffice.org in the first half of next year and will later shift from Windows NT 4.0 to Linux. The Ministry of Defence in Singapore has already installed OpenOffice.org on 5,000 PCs, and may switch from Windows XP to Linux in the future.
Mozilla's Lightning to strike Outlook?
The Mozilla Foundation is hatching yet another software project to challenge a key Microsoft title.
The new project, code-named Lightning, aims to integrate Mozilla's calendar application, SUNBIRD, with its recently released Thunderbird e-mail application. That integration is aimed right at the heart of Microsoft's widely used Outlook software.
"I think Outlook leaves a lot of room for a fast competitor," said a Mozilla volunteer involved in the project, who asked not to be named. "There's a lot of user dissatisfaction out there, and it will be interesting to see what the market looks like once there's a strong open-source alternative."
After years of delays and miscues, Mozilla has made some market inroads this year with its Firefox Web browser. Web surfers have downloaded more than 12 million copies of the software since its version 1.0 launch last month, nudging Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer browser below the 90 percent market share mark for the first time in years, according to one survey.
Whether Thunderbird, released this month, can have a similar impact on the Outlook juggernaut depends in large part on how quickly Mozilla can match some of the calendar features Outlook ties into the e-mail application.
Mozilla today released the first Sunbird 0.2 release candidate for Windows, Linux and the Macintosh.
Sunbird was donated to Mozilla by corporate volunteer OEone, now called AXCENTRA. The calendar has seen development in fits and starts, with more attention focused on it, now that both Firefox and Thunderbird 1.0 are out the door.
The mandate of Lightning, headed by longtime Mozilla volunteer and current Oracle technical staffer Mike Shaver, will be to integrate Sunbird features into Thunderbird so that users can do things like search across e-mail documents and calendar entries, and click a button to turn an e-mail message into a calendar task or reminder.
Mozilla isn't the only open-source group cooking up a potential Outlook competitor. The Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) is concentrating on an application called Chandler that is also focused on tightly integrated calendar and e-mail functions. Lotus Development founder Mitch Kapor is president of both Mozilla and OSAF.
Microsoft dismissed Mozilla's pretensions to its Outlook throne, noting that the vast majority of enterprise Outlook users rely on Outlook's integration with Microsoft's Exchange e-mail server.
"Thunderbird does not offer an equivalent comparison to Microsoft Office Outlook," Microsoft said in a statement. "Customers expect much more than simple calendaring and the ability to send and receive e-mails. The integration of Exchange and Outlook far outweighs any feature that Thunderbird may deliver, and we don't see it as being applicable for serious business use."
Mozilla engineering director Chris Hofmann said enterprise demand for Thunderbird was off to a good start and that an unidentified company recently installed Thunderbird on 44,000 desktops.
Mozilla, which posted information to its web page about lightning, plans a general release of some version of the software by the middle of the new year.
The new project, code-named Lightning, aims to integrate Mozilla's calendar application, SUNBIRD, with its recently released Thunderbird e-mail application. That integration is aimed right at the heart of Microsoft's widely used Outlook software.
"I think Outlook leaves a lot of room for a fast competitor," said a Mozilla volunteer involved in the project, who asked not to be named. "There's a lot of user dissatisfaction out there, and it will be interesting to see what the market looks like once there's a strong open-source alternative."
After years of delays and miscues, Mozilla has made some market inroads this year with its Firefox Web browser. Web surfers have downloaded more than 12 million copies of the software since its version 1.0 launch last month, nudging Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer browser below the 90 percent market share mark for the first time in years, according to one survey.
Whether Thunderbird, released this month, can have a similar impact on the Outlook juggernaut depends in large part on how quickly Mozilla can match some of the calendar features Outlook ties into the e-mail application.
Mozilla today released the first Sunbird 0.2 release candidate for Windows, Linux and the Macintosh.
Sunbird was donated to Mozilla by corporate volunteer OEone, now called AXCENTRA. The calendar has seen development in fits and starts, with more attention focused on it, now that both Firefox and Thunderbird 1.0 are out the door.
The mandate of Lightning, headed by longtime Mozilla volunteer and current Oracle technical staffer Mike Shaver, will be to integrate Sunbird features into Thunderbird so that users can do things like search across e-mail documents and calendar entries, and click a button to turn an e-mail message into a calendar task or reminder.
Mozilla isn't the only open-source group cooking up a potential Outlook competitor. The Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) is concentrating on an application called Chandler that is also focused on tightly integrated calendar and e-mail functions. Lotus Development founder Mitch Kapor is president of both Mozilla and OSAF.
Microsoft dismissed Mozilla's pretensions to its Outlook throne, noting that the vast majority of enterprise Outlook users rely on Outlook's integration with Microsoft's Exchange e-mail server.
"Thunderbird does not offer an equivalent comparison to Microsoft Office Outlook," Microsoft said in a statement. "Customers expect much more than simple calendaring and the ability to send and receive e-mails. The integration of Exchange and Outlook far outweighs any feature that Thunderbird may deliver, and we don't see it as being applicable for serious business use."
Mozilla engineering director Chris Hofmann said enterprise demand for Thunderbird was off to a good start and that an unidentified company recently installed Thunderbird on 44,000 desktops.
Mozilla, which posted information to its web page about lightning, plans a general release of some version of the software by the middle of the new year.
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