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FOSS Force

2014’s Five Biggest Stories Affecting FOSS

Another year has come and gone, and as you might have guessed, 2014 still wasn’t the year of the Linux desktop.

Covering FOSS and Linux isn’t nearly as exciting as it was a decade or so ago — but that’s a good thing. Back then, we were at war with nearly every proprietary software vendor on the planet and faced threats from all directions, including up and down. To be sure, we didn’t start the wars we were fighting, as PROFAL (the People’s Republic of FOSS and Linux) only wished for peaceful coexistence.

The dust settled long ago and it appears as if we won most of these wars we didn’t start. Even our old arch enemy Microsoft is now waving the flag of peace and is seeking to normalize relations with us. And our old arch-arch enemy, SCO, doesn’t even exist any more — at least not in any form that we would recognize as the SCO of old. May Caldera rest in peace.

That doesn’t mean there’s not still news to be covered in the FOSS world. There is — and plenty of it. But these days, it’s mostly about advancements in technology, new start-ups and new alliances. We still face threats, to be sure, from crackers, spooks, politicians, the RIAA and the MPAA, but these forces threaten all of computerdom, not just FOSS, so we’ve been able to nurture some new strange bedfellows to join us in our struggles.

As years go, 2014 wasn’t the most boring year in the history of the free software movement, but it also wasn’t overly exciting. Again, that’s a good thing as it means there was no battening down the hatches and stuff. Still, there were many trends in the news this year which directly affect the purveyors and users of FOSS.

Here’s my top five list:

Whether Online or Off: Be Nice to Each Other

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
–Mark Twain

We’ve talked about this before.

A while back I was an observer during an extremely short span of time. An instant when a choice was going to be made and that decision was going to be life-changing. I want to share that specific moment with you, as well as how that one short space in time changed one person’s life forever.

Getting along onlineWe learned a social rule early on in school. Those of us who were part of a Kindergarten curriculum were taught it when we were what…five or six years old?

“Be nice to each other.”

It’s a simple thing really. Not as much of a rule as it is a tool for successful social interaction. Being a jerk or an aggressive asshat is only effective in the short-term. Continuous expression of said asshattery will eventually brand you as outside of the herd…the social herd as it were.

You can see it daily if you look for it. The jerk who isn’t invited for drinks and fun after work. The mouthy bully who ends up being the last one to go home because no one wants to help him finish up. I’ve also seen it in horrible circumstances. Nightmare circumstances where castigation from the group can be hot-metal-projectiles-ripping-into-your-body-and-rending-you-assunder deadly. I don’t want to specifically talk about it. Just look up the term “military frag” and you’ll understand.

Punching Out the Week on Boxing Day

FOSS Week in Review

So much joy abounds on Christmas morning, unless of course you’re trying to set up your new XBox or your new PlayStation (See? You should have waited for the Steam box…). But you can’t blame the North Koreans for that — blame is being heaped upon your friends at the Lizard Squad which, according to an article in USA Today (Tomorrow, the World!), is taking credit for the takedown (not their first try at this — they have previously claimed credit for attacks earlier this year on the PlayStation Network, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends).

So the gaming may have to wait.

But now that it’s Boxing Day, let’s punch out the week with a couple of tidbits from the week that was, as 2014 is winding down and 2015 is in our sights.

Marriott Boycott? Manic geek Jim Lynch — his self-description, not mine — opines on his blog post on Christmas Day that we should maybe not stay at hotels like Marriott or others that attempt to force guests to pay for wireless connectivity by blocking networks other than that provided by the hotel. But wait, there’s more: Marriott is asking the Federal Communications Commission for the government’s blessing to do this.

Old FOSS Friend & Foe Represents Sony in Hack

Folks who follow news about FOSS, OSS and Linux who also watch the “talking heads” shows the TV networks serve up on Sunday mornings might be excused for not noting that David Boies, the lawyer speaking for Sony on this week’s “Meet the Press,” has on several occasions been involved in news stories affecting Linux. Over the years, he’s played the role of both friend and foe, but it’s been a while since his and the FOSS world’s paths have crossed.

David Boies
David Boies speaking at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
Photograph by Doc Searls
Back in the days of the Clinton Administration, Boies became something of a hero to FOSS and Linux supporters when he represented the Justice Department in “United States vs. Microsoft,” which went to trial in May of 1998. This antitrust suit by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Attorneys General of twenty U.S. states, found Microsoft being accused of illegal and unfair competition. In October of the same year, the U.S. Department of Justice also sued Microsoft additionally for violating a 1994 consent decree by including Internet Explorer as part of Windows.

Welcome to the Pre-Post-PC Era

And the hits just keep on coming…

Today’s float on the parade of the PC-is-dead prognostications comes from The Register, which says, “At the very moment that Linux desktops seem to be reaching new levels of sophistication, polish and ‘just works’ ease-of-use, the entire future of the desktop computer (by which I also mean laptop) feels in doubt.”

The only thing that’s in doubt is whether that sentence is anywhere near remotely accurate. But let’s put that aside for a moment and assume we can see the future of how we deal with our digital lives.

Sure, you can see a Post-PC future from here all right. Of course, you’re going to need the Hubble to do so.

Naturally, there are things that you can do with your Post-PC apparatus, like surf the web, watch videos and all those important digital activities. But bear in mind that you’re not going to be using Blender on your smartphone.

Teaching Linux in the Dark

I like living here. “Here” is a low-cost, no maintenance condo-type neighborhood for us folks who are 55 or older or have a disability. A good friend of mine, a bit older than me, told me that since I live here now, I need to start acting my age.

Well pass the Ensure and bingo cards Gladys …I’ll get right on that.

The same good friend also described me once as the oldest juvenile delinquent he has ever met.

Linux gremlins be goneBut there’s really no getting away from the fact that I’ve reached the stage of life when grandchildren are finally accepted and I no longer wince when one of my grand babies address me as “grandpa.” Yeah, it took me almost a decade to be comfortable with the fact that I am indeed a grandpa.

A medley of aches, pains and cramps often remind me that I can’t do stuff as fast and for as long as I used to. These days, my life consists of blazing my way through my work day then hobbling to my comfy sofa, moaning my regret for all that day’s blazing.

This is a nice place to which to come home. One of the great things about living here is how close the residents are…and not in just proximity. We lived in a fairly nice home prior to moving here and in the three years we stayed there I couldn’t tell you the last names of the people living next door or across the street from us. In less than a week here, almost every neighbor had stopped by to say “hi” or to bring various house warming baked goods.

This past Thanksgiving, Diane and I went to the pot luck community gathering at the community center. To be honest, I really didn’t want to go. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I had promised a computer to the kids of a single mom, but while installing it, gremlins found their way into the machine. The computer that worked perfectly on the workbench suddenly decided that a kernel panic was in order. I needed Thanksgiving evening to myself so I could get another system ready, but a long, chilly look from Diane was enough to forestall that mission…for a couple of hours anyway.

Sony & North Korea: Dumb & Dumber

Hacking, hacking, everywhere hacking. And not the good kind either. We’re talking cracking hacking.

Take the Sony hack for instance. Bunches of movies set for Christmas release are now available online for free, for those willing to break the law and invoke the displeasure of the MPAA while firing up the ol’ BitTorrent. Worse than that: even more bunches of Sony employees have had their financial lives turned upside down, with all of their personal information leaked. Not so bad, however, is the news that “The Interview” won’t be making an appearance on a screen near you anytime soon.

Oddly, it’s that last tidbit that’s been getting the most press. That, and the ongoing argument on who’s to blame for the Sony crack hack.

At first, U.S. authorities said that the North Koreans didn’t do it. Then they said they did. The North Koreans countered with a “no-way-Jose” and offered to help in the hunt to find the real culprit, which elicited an adamant “no-way-back-atcha” from the U.S.

Linux & FOSS Predictions for 2015

You can tell it’s the holiday season — a lot of people are focusing more on the guy with the red suit who looks quite a bit like Jon ‘maddog’ Hall than they are on digital matters. This also is the time of year, naturally, where pundits make their predictions for the following year.

However, I should admit something here. Truth in advertising: I don’t have a good record in predicting the future. I have a hard enough time predicting what to wear the following day — oh, right: clothes. But Linux and FOSS being, well, Linux and FOSS, these projections are as good as any prediction now being foisted on the FOSS public by the army of digital pundits out there.

So what’s going to happen in 2015?

A lot. Like…

MPAA Wants to Use DMCA to Effectively Bring Back SOPA

In “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” Winston Smith’s job was to rewrite the past for the Inner Party. Mainly, he made people vanish from the pages of history. Anyone who came under the party’s bad graces suddenly disappeared from all media; from all newspaper articles, books, television archives and any other mentions. In Orwell’s world, anyone declared a nonperson was completely erased. S/he never existed.

According to memos leaked from the recent hack on Sony, the big studios would like to employ a Winston Smith to remove domain name listings from ISPs DNS directories, effectively removing entire websites from the Internet for most users, as if they never existed.

MPAA logo
MPAA Logo
The movie moguls want to do this in the name of fighting their old monster-under-the-bed, content piracy. Not surprisingly, they plan on evoking an old enemy of a free and open Internet in the process, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), while attempting to revive at least a part of the ghost of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was killed back in 2011.

Get Out the Vote for LinuxQuestions.org

Ken Starks — I love him like a brother, but I hate following him every Wednesday here at FOSS Force after his Tuesday column runs, because every time — week in and week out — his column is always a good one.

He knows what I’m talking about, too, because he got to experience the same kind of thing at Ohio Linux Fest when his keynote came after Jon ‘maddog’ Hall. While I wouldn’t characterize Ken’s situation there the same way he did in his keynote — like Tiny Tim following Aerosmith — I certainly can relate. If you haven’t given his latest post a read, go ahead, I’ll wait.

Be that as it may, it’s time to vote. Every year around this time, LinuxQuestions.org trots out its annual LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards. The 2014 version, which ends in February, certainly does not disappoint.

One great thing about this poll — probably the best thing about this poll — is that each of the categories has an extremely wide range of candidates, and there are programs in many of the categories that I’ve never heard of. Hearing about them for the first time, I get to try them out. So not only is it fun — yeah, I think voting is fun (so shoot me) — it’s also educational.

Here’s how we’ll do this: I’m not going to post every category, but I’ll post some of them and tell you my choice — vote with me or not, it’s entirely up to you — and then I’ll mention some of the programs new to me that I plan to try out. Conversely, you can post your own choices in the comments below.