Tag Archives: Open Source

PortableApps Suite

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If your a fan of running an application completely on your USB drive, check out the new PortableApps Suite. It’s really great. I’ve been using PortableApps for a while, and this is a real nice suite. Now things are easier to access than ever. The next improvement I’d like to see is some Mac versions become available. The ultimate solution would be Mac/Win/Linux versions that use the same data directory. At that point it would truly be portable. It’s also cool enough to work with third party applications, so you can add other things not available through them to the suite such as everyone’s favorite Putty. Great for Firefox on the go.

The advantage of the suite is not only the easy install, but the ability to quickly open applications without navigating to them. There are other tools out there like PStart, but this is in my opinion a little more polished.

Installer Mess

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Benjamin Smedberg has an interesting post on Ubuntu and it’s effort to be a provider of not only the OS, but the software around it. I think the ‘solution’ Ubuntu choose is really a workaround for a fundamental flaw in Linux. Getting software to run quickly and easily without intimate knowledge of the OS is tough at best.

By far the best out there, though not without it’s faults is Apple. Not only are many installs just drag/drop (though that is rather cool), but ones that do require an installer typically use Apple’s installer functionality, providing a very simple interface for the user. Most importantly when Apple switched to x86, they realized users don’t know/care what’s inside their computer, or about the differences in x86 and PPC architecture. The solution they came up with was “Universal Binaries” (similar to how FAT versions of applications were used when moving from 68k to PPC). At the end of the day, the user knows nothing. The software does the work. As good as Apple’s effort is, there is a flaw, uninstalling is not always the best. In most cases it’s just drag it to the trash, but there’s no undo for installed stuff like drivers.

Ubuntu would be best off pushing for the Linux community to follow a model similar to Apple with a few changes:

  • Encourage applications to ship in the same package, and encourage distributions to use the same package installation system. Just like Apple, the user will have a familiar and obvious way of adding applications to their computer.
  • This is the tough part: 1 download for most popular Linux distributions. So it doesn’t matter what version of ____ your running, you can just install and let the installer figure it out similar to Universal Binaries.
  • One up Apple by providing a “roll back” or uninstaller that will remove and restore to what the system was before the installation was done.

Installing software on Linux stinks. Ubuntu is much better than the rest, but I don’t like how you have to rely on Ubuntu in order for that to be the case. There’s a market for someone who can solve the problem. It’s a barrier between Linux and the general user. Until someone solves it, Linux will likely remain a niche product in the desktop market.

Google Reader Updated

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I’ve been using RSS Readers for a while, but not consistently because I’m extremely picky. I insist on the following:

  • Be able to show multiple feeds merged together as 1 category.
  • Do the above, fast.
  • Handle RSS 2.0 and Atom without bugging out over all the tiny mistakes or discrepancies some generators can have
  • Either be remotely hosted, or have a client capable of having an OPML or some other API remotely, so it’s accessible on more than 1 system.
  • OPML import/export (mandatory).
  • Free, preferably open source.
  • If it’s client based, it can’t use 10,000 threads, and 100MB RAM, it needs to be somewhat small and quick.
  • Unobtrusive

So far not many have even come close to this. Bloglines is popular but royally stinks. It’s awkward (just because you use “AJAX” doesn’t mean your eloquently designed. It’s also somewhat slow, and not application-like since it’s not fully JS driven. I just can’t get comfortable to the design. Not to mention, ewww frames? Google Reader had this silly design (that scrolling concept) that was just awkward and inefficient use of screen space. That’s not good for when I want to quickly read things. Good layout is critical.

On the client side I evaluated several including Thunderbird (which I love for email), but it’s RSS support is extremely basic, which isn’t surprising considering it’s an email client. Bottom line is Feeds aren’t emails and shouldn’t be displayed as such. I also tried RSSOwl, but it’s java based and still pretty clunky as a result. I just couldn’t imagine keeping that open all day. Next up was RSSBandit. This isn’t bad (actually pretty good), but it isn’t updated often, it is very fussy in regards to feed validation issues, and is somewhat of a thread hog. Not to mention it’s not very eloquent with refreshing feeds. Rather than space them out it seems to do a large number all at once, which is somewhat of a system slow down. The whole point is to be efficient. I wasn’t to fond of using IE as the internal browser either. Adding feeds from Firefox was also painfully slow for some reason. Still it was the best so far for my needs, and was the default for a few weeks.

Now Google Reader has been redesigned, and it’s finally good enough for real use. It’s new design is vastly superior to the last generation, though still has a few odd quirks. It really needs to take a tip from Bloglines in regards to organizing/manging feeds, so that it’s not as much effort (go into prefs, in the subscriptions tab, scroll down to the feed you want, tag it). The one thing Bloglines had right, Google Reader doesn’t have. It also doesn’t send the right MimeType when exporting OPML, but I suspect that will be fixed shortly. It also requires this interstitial page before adding a feed (to select where to add it to), but doesn’t give you the option to select what tags to give it. That’s pointless. Other than that, it’s solid. It’s now my default. I’ll be using Firefox to preview feeds, and add them to Google Reader. I can keep it open in 1 Firefox tab and monitor it just by the page title.

On a side note, how many years will it take before FedEx, UPS, DHL and USPS finally offer tracking via feed? I know there are services for it, but they break when one of them updates, and I really don’t feel like giving another site my tracking number.

Filtering out the Channel Noise

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Ben wrote a must read post about public discussion that I think any Open Source developer needs to read. If you’re a Mozilla contributor, read it extra close. It really makes only 1 point (make more discussion open). But it doesn’t really address all the problems that prevent that goal from becoming a reality. I mentioned it briefly in a comment, but thought I’d make a post on the topic of channel noise.

Continue reading →

DHS helping to secure open-source software

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CNet News is reporting that Homeland Security is sponsoring an effort to secure open source software. According to the article:

In the effort, which the government agency calls the “Vulnerability Discovery and Remediation, Open Source Hardening Project,” Stanford and Coverity will build and maintain a system that does daily scans of code contributed to popular open-source projects. The automated system should be running by March, and the resulting database of bugs will be accessible to developers, they said.

And yes Firefox is listed as one of the projects to be scanned. Thunderbird unfortunately isn’t listed, which personally I think would be a good candidate for this project considering mail clients have been used quite a bit as a point of entry. Since it shares common code with Firefox it still gets some benefit. It says the “resulting database” will be accessible, but I don’t know if that means they will file in bugzilla, or host their own database which developers need to visit and harvest from.

Personally I think this is great. Getting open source projects an audit like this will enhance security online, so end users will benefit. Hopefully things work out well, and they expand to cover more projects over time.

A criticism of the project is that this only funds finding bugs, rather than fixing them. This isn’t likely to be as large of a problem for Firefox as there are paid staff working on the project. Perhaps bounties will be put out by third parties? Who knows. Hopefully in the end, these products become better.

Word Press 1.5 A first look

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I decided I needed some geeky play time this evening, so I downloaded the latest cvs build of WordPress (yes they skipped numbers) and ran it in a dev environment, just for me to look, poke, and play. I’m floored. A rundown of what I see/like:

  • Themes – Makes sense, needed to happen. I love this feature a lot already, and I don’t actually have it yet, as the production blog is in 1.2.
  • Static Posting – This is another thing I’m digging. I need this as well.
  • Much Better UI – The User interface is so much better in WP 1.5 it’s amazing. Small changes but they make the app feel much more complete.

There’s no indication of a target release date. I’m hoping it’s sooner than later. Projects go on forever. Eventually one has to stop collecting new features and decide to start fixing bugs and getting things release worthy. Hopefully it will be out soon.

I’d like to use it a bit more professionally for more than just blogging, but I need things to be stable and release worthy. These are big features I could use.

Firefox Killing Open Source?

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Via Slashdot (as usual) I ran across this blog post. Of particular interest was this:

FireFox: Enabling Windows Users .. To Use Windows

I think we can all agree that FireFox gives Windows users a way out from the security nightmare and feature desert that is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. At least, Internet Explorer as it appears in 2004. FireFox does this while allowing users to stay on the Windows platform. Meanwhile, Microsoft is not porting any applications to Linux/BSD, nor will they start to do so anytime soon. And so the application imbalance begins…

Survey people using FireFox on Windows. How many of them are saying, “I’m so impressed I’m going to switch to a Free Software desktop.” Virtually zero. Too many of us in the Open Source community naively expect people to draw conclusions that today’s technology consumers are not motivated, let alone empowered, to make.

The more software we port to Windows the more we reinforce this application availability imbalance and strengthen the user’s inertia to stay on Windows. If users had to make a choice between Windows or Linux (or BSD) when it came to getting access to better applications they would find they had a motivation to switch. And switch they would.

Now I really have to question this idea. Is open source having a place on proprietary desktops such as Windows going to kill Open Source on the desktop? I’d suggest a clear no.

Here’s my reasoning:

Those who have an incentive to move to an open source desktop, for reasons such as lower cost, security, flexibility, better performance on older hardware, etc. are going to use open source anyway. So there is clearly no impact on this audience. They are sold. The availability of software on Windows isn’t changing the fact that it’s windows. People who want the advantages of an Open Source desktop still want the Open Source Desktop.

Where there is demand, there will be those wanting to supply

Nobody would switch operating systems because of a browser like Firefox. I’m sorry, but that’s a rediculus argument. Nor will they for pretty much any particular application. If the demand for such a product were high enough to spark such a choice, there would be someone to meet those needs. For example there are several IE based products to add tabs to Internet Explorer. Windows people got sick of popups that Mozilla users were blocking, so a billion and 1 popup blockers came of age.

“Incentive” should be the buzzword in open source

Open Source has spent to much time working on geeky things. Average Joe doesn’t care about 90% of what open source spends it’s time on. He just wants to check his email, visit a few websites, fire up a spreadsheet and do his work, perhaps listen to some music, and sign off. That is it.

Open Source really needs to evaluate what Mozilla did with Firefox. They stopped with the geek talk/features and worked towards pleasing the masses. THAT is what won users. They didn’t rely on the Internet catering to them, they didn’t rely on anyone but the product itself. The product stands alone. Firefox isn’t great because of [insert product here]. It’s a great product. It would be just as good if Windows never existed. It would be just as good if OpenOffice was never created. It would be just as good if… the list goes on. It stands alone.

Why go with a Open Source Desktop?

Well there are a ton of reasons, but each person has their own. Personally I do at some times (I’m not a full time Linux user) simply to play. There is nothing there that’s truly revolutionary (other than security and stability). But that alone isn’t a “feature” to me. The Open Source Desktop has not come of age. I’m sorry to say. Lets look at the offerings:

Windows
Severe market penetration
Most applications available
Mac OS X
Niche market, but still signifigant
Most popular applications available.
Beautiful easy to use UI. Exceeds any offering to date
Open Source Desktops (lumped together)
Free
Lots of free software
Security, Stability

That’s really about it. Notice that 2 out of the 3 advantages for Open Source desktops include the word “free”. I can really lump that into 1 advantage, but then I’d only have 2.

Conclusion

If OpenSource wants to penetrate the desktop, it needs to do so on it’s own two legs. The “we suck less than Microsoft” argument is old, and irrelevant. It needs to stop. The “free” is a buzzword. As economists say “there’s no such thing as free lunch”. Everything has a price. In this case, most common support (commercial products have better support than open source, simply because there is a phone number with someone trained at the other end). That’s expensive to a company deploying. It’s a deterrent to a home user.

Until open source refines itself to target an audience like Apple did. And brings itself to a whole new level, it will not progress. If open source wants the desktop market, it needs to go for it. Not sit around and cry about applications working in Windows. There’s no clear reason for the average computer user to switch to Linux. Anyone who wants to make that argument first needs to make the reason, then argue it.

Blaming others doesn’t fix your own shortcomings. It’s time for Open Source desktops to sit down and think, perhaps even conduct some surveys. “What does my audience want/need/dream of?” Then say “How can I deliver it?” Once that is done… deliver.

Without Spyware there’s no such thing as free software

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But some users of iMesh didn’t seem to be troubled by the actions of Marketscore. Users at iMesh forums chided those who complained, posting messages stating that “without spyware there’s no such thing as free software.”

[Source: Wired.com @ 12/6/2004 9:55 AM EST]

SpreadFirefox anyone? This is a common mindset among average internet users. Something that needs to be debunked.

Challenge

Formulate a campaign that SpreadFirefox can use, which would also raise awareness to the fact that Spyware is not required to make software free. Make users realize they don’t have to jeopardize their privacy to get something free. Make them realize privacy is important. And of course, Spread Firefox. Perhaps if someone comes up with a good one it can be the next campaign.