the indian wind along the telegraph lines

The days of asking people to dial a phone number by associating letters in your nifty, branded phone number (I’m looking at you, Key Bank and Compass Bank) to digits on my telephone keypad are over. Why? I have a Blackberry Curve. Here’s my keypad:

My wife has the Blackberry Pearl. Here’s her keyboard:

Uhhhhhh ….

Asking me to dial 1-800-KEY2YOU or 1-800-COMPASS without giving me the actual digits basically shows your entire marketing team thinks this is the 1950s, and all telephone handsets look and behave exactly alike.

In our home, we only have cell phones. The only POTS phones we own are packed in a box in the garage. I could look up an old-fashioned telephone keypad with a Google image search, but … seriously? And what if I’m in my car? Pull over and find a pay telephone so that I can figure out what number to dial? Ridiculous.

Wake up, suits!

Seen the movie? Very funny fiction about the Vermont State Police.

So a week or so ago I was pulled over on I-89 in northern Vermont for speeding. The officer exhibited behavior and judgment so poor and so unprofessional I will not sully the reputation of his peers by discussing it here. I have raised my concerns with his supervisor.

However, that does not negate the fact I was, indeed, traveling at a rate of speed higher than the posted speed limit. So I’ll pay the ticket. And when I went to do so, I noticed that “You can now pay your tickets online at the VT Judiciary Branch website.” Click the URL for some head-scratchin’ fun!

I’m aghast. WTF are they smoking in Vermont?

Big events today, and the MySQL User Conference is all abuzz with news, speculation, and even some concern. Oracle has acquired Sun, which again brings the light of Apollo to Mount Parnassus. 🙂

Of course, this raises all kinds of questions about the whys and hows. I’m happy to publicly speculate, as I am not in an insider’s position with either Sun or Oracle. Of course, I do work for Monty Program Ab, which makes me somewhat less than a wholly dispassionate bystander. And please, before you read my humble musings on the subject, please read my boss’ thoughts.

Without further ado, here some possible reasons I can see for this move by Oracle:

– Oracle now has a hardware business, something I think they have craved for a very long time.

– Oracle now has their very own trusted server operating system. Not to disparage what must have been some very hard work, but Oracle’s Linux platform has been and will be an also-ran. I predict that Solaris as a commercial product will soon disappear, and that Oracle will concentrate their efforts on OpenSolaris. I think Oracle wants an operating system, but I (perhaps naively) believe they see the folly in closed, commercial OSes in 2009.

– And of course, MySQL. I think it almost certain that we will begin to see MySQL used as a sort of “gateway drug” to Oracle’s flagship DB products.

Of course, this begs the question “Why would Oracle continue to pay attention to and improve a product that is solely used as a carrot to their flagship product?”

I’m not quite sure I know the answer to this. However, I do know that it is nigh impossible to “own” a Free or open source project in the same sense that Oracle “owns” their database. Patrick Galbraith spoke to this point quite eloquently in a recent blog post. I think Monty paraphrased it perfectly when he said “that ‘ownership’ of Free and open source projects has more to do with who provides the best stewardship of the code, rather than who owns a trademark.” Amen, brother.

That having been said, I hope Oracle realizes that they have taken their first big step into the Free and open source software world with their acquisition of Sun. Their track record in this field is non-existent, as they have traditionally been quite opposed to the ideals and values that make Free and open source software viable. They now stand at a crossroads. They can continue to play the closed, proprietary, commercial game they have been playing (quite successfully, mind you) for many years. However, if they do this, they almost guarantee the success of competitors (including Monty Program Ab). I cannot say I’m opposed to this, but it decreases users’ choice, and this is never good.

Alternatively, Oracle could choose to engage and interact with the open source community in ways that Sun never did (e.g. viewing each developer with meaningful patches as a full partner in their success). Should they choose this route, I have every confidence that they will succeed where Sun did not.

When Sun was the principle owner of MySQL, Monty liked to think of Monty Program and the Maria Project as the MySQL Fedora to Sun’s RHEL. Now that Oracle is in charge, I see three possibilities:

1). The Maria Project continues to be the MySQL Fedora to Oracle’s RHEL.

2). Oracle completely fails to understand the open model and Maria becomes the Linux to Oracle’s Windows.

3). Oracle really and truly understands the landscape in which they now live, and the Maria Project becomes the Ubuntu to Oracle’s Debian.

As I said, there is palpable concern amongst the conference attendees. I think there are some easy tasks Oracle could undertake to alleviate these concerns to some degree. I’ll post my ideas in the next few days, once I’ve a a bit more time to process today’s events.

Fasten your seatbelts and return your tray table and seat back to their upright and locked positions.

HMS (His Mark Shuttleworth’s-ness) Ubuntu

Ship’s Log: February 2009

At six bells on the evening on February 6, HMS Ubuntu encountered the Monty, a vessel of Finnish registry transporting forked code to Open Source markets.

Per standing orders of Admiral Shuttleworth, the craft was hailed to determine her intentions. Monty‘s captain, an affable Finn named Widenius, satisfied the deck watch through semaphore that she was a craft in the Free Software armada, and was brought alongside.

Captain Widenius expressed interest in Ubuntu’s detachment of Marines, as their performance in both the user and paid support customer theaters is well known; having served with distinction through the recent Dell Campaigns. Widenius asked that Lieutenant von Finck be released from service aboard the Ubuntu to provide ground command services to the Monty, its crew of developers, and its users in port.

Admiral Shuttleworth having been consulted, the Lieutenant was re-assigned, and will begin organizing campaigns once the Monty and her code reaches safe harbor.

Lieutenant von Finck is hereby released from active duty aboard HMS Ubuntu and commended by his superiors to the service of the Monty.

Admiral Shuttleworth has expressed interest in completing the crew exchange expeditiously, as he plans to continue the hunt for the white whale.

—–

🙂

So … yeah. I’m leaving Canonical and joining my friend Monty organizing the developer and user communities around the new Maria storage engine. My last day will be February 27.

I’m still in Free Software. I still use Ubuntu. I’m still an Ubuntu member, and plan to keep doing what small part I can to help. I’m not really going too far. Sorry ’bout that. 😉

Excuse the long title, but I want to make sure search engines get this one.

So, you bought a swell new Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu, ran through the first-boot account configurator, and promptly forgot your password? You’re not alone. Resetting it is done the standard way from a recovery mode kernel boot, albeit with a quirk. Here are the steps.

1). You’ll need your username. If you have auto-login enabled, open a Terminal (Applications > Accessories) and type whoami and that’s your username.

2). Reboot. When the Dell logo appears, begin tapping [Esc]. Continue tapping until the boot process stops, displaying a MBR 2FA: prompt.

3). The boot process is now halted. The GRUB bootloader has a 0-second timeout before booting, so sit quietly, prepare yourself, and reach out with your feelings and dominant Jedi hand and …

4). Press [Enter] and then [Esc] as quickly as possible. Note the “and then.” You must press one, then the other, not both at the same time. And you must be fast.

5). If successful, padawan, you will have a GRUB boot menu. Using the arrow keys, choose recovery mode. Press [Enter] to boot.

6). At the resulting prompt, type passwd $USERNAME (replace $USERNAME with your actual username). You’ll be asked to type a new password twice, and nothing will be displayed on-screen as you do.

7)). Type reboot and press [Enter]. The job is done.

No one endorses this procedure as actual Jedi training, and machines used for such may lose [Esc] and [Enter] key functionality as a result. Please only use this mind/hand exercise to reset your password.

This is the subject of a session I’m conducting as part of Ubuntu Open Week. Many thanks to Jono, Jorge, and the Ubuntu community of developers and users for making this happen, and allowing me to be a part of it.

I plan to discuss how to make smart buying decisions as a user of Free Software, and Ubuntu in particular. I’ll cover hardware, software, support, services, etc etc.

So, do you plan to attend? If so, are there subjects you’d like to see covered, or specific questions you want answered? Please let me know via comments and I’ll do my best to work such issues and questions into my session notes.

Of course, you’re always welcome to ask questions during the session. However, you may get a more researched and thoughtful (and therefore cogent) response if you give me a little time to prepare. So, have at the comments and let me know what questions you might have.

See you all at 2200UTC on Thursday!

Full disclosure: I am a Canonical employee and a GNOME Foundation member.

Caveat: The opinions expressed in this post are solely my own, and should not be construed as representative of Canonical’s corporate policy or ethos, nor as representative of the Ubuntu or Kubuntu projects’ ideals or policies.

This recent post is not the first time that the Ubuntu project and its sponsor, my employer, have been accused of neglecting Kubuntu. And it may not be the last. But please allow me to make some points.

First, Ubuntu is a project. If Ubuntu “ignores” Kubuntu, the reason is simple. They are different projects. I’ll be attending the GNOME Boston Summit 2008 this weekend. If I don’t find a lot of KDE developers there, can I then posit that KDE “ignores major trends and issues related to the free Unix desktop?” Clearly not. And I wouldn’t expect to find large numbers of GNOME developers at Akademy. Although GNOME and KDE have similar aims, there is no reason to expect the two projects to mutually support each other in absolutely everything they do. When such mutual support happens, it’s very, very nice. I value my friendships with many people in the KDE community, but I wouldn’t seek out a KDE developer when I have issues with GNOME. By extension, I wouldn’t blame Ubuntu developers and packagers when things break in Kubuntu. If Kubuntu is broken, then Kubuntu developers, MOTUs, bug triagers, and all Kubuntu community members are responsible for fixing it.

Second, looking at the issue of Konqueror and the Ubuntu wiki, I am unable to find Jonathan Thomas’ reports, suggestions, or potential fixes. In fact, I can’t even see that he’s subscribed to the bug. It’s one thing to complain about an issue not being addressed. It’s quite another to complain about an issue you yourself have not taken the time to address. If the issue is that important to you, get involved. Not to belabor the “separate projects” point, but it’s not the responsibility of GNOME developers to make sure their stuff works in KDE (and vice versa). Thus, at the desktop/UI level, it’s not the responsibility of Ubuntu developers to ensure their stuff works in Kubuntu. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fantastic when this happens, and we should always strive to allow this kind of cooperation. But demanding that one project alter its needs and the needs of its users based on the requirements of a different project does a disservice to both projects involved, never mind the users that depend upon them. Now, be aware, if the Linux kernel deployed in Ubuntu breaks KDE functionality for Kubuntu, that’s the responsibility of the kernel team. But if GNOME features do not translate well to another desktop environment, that’s not necessarily GNOME’s, and by extension the distros that use GNOME, problem.

Finally, I don’t see any suggestions from Jonathan as to how things might be improved in the future. Criticism is always difficult to hear, but when such criticism is in no way constructive, it’s difficult to find a reason to listen at all. Not to mention that unconstructive criticism probably violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Ubuntu Code Of Conduct. Simply put, “lead, follow, or get out of the way.” It’s also especially interesting that two-thirds of the issues Jonathan cites (Konqueror vs. Moin, KNetworkManager vs. NetworkManager) are actually already fixed, and were prior to his post.

I apologize if this post comes off as somewhat harsh, it is not my intention to be so. But clearly it is not the responsibility of the Camry assembly plant to ensure the Prius meets delivery requirements, despite both being owned by Toyota. In the case of Ubuntu and Kubuntu, this distinction is even more clear, as no single company “owns” either. Kubuntu belongs to you, the Kubuntu community of users and developers. If something is missing, broken, or needs polish in Kubuntu, it is the responsibility of the Kubuntu community to address these issues. While it’s always desirable for the different desktop environment projects to work together, this obviously cannot happen all of the time. And GNOME is not going to ask “How does this affect KDE?” every time a feature is added to GNOME. Conversely, I wouldn’t expect KDE developers to worry much about GNOME’s needs.

Jonathan, I understand your frustration. But be aware, Kubuntu is not a product as much as it is a project. You’re able, at any time, to get involved and make the changes you deem necessary. If you don’t, it’s a bit unfair to ask other people to address your specific needs and issues without your involvement. I’m aware of this because I often have to censor myself when I encounter a piece of missing or broken functionality. For instance, the UPnP browser plugin in Rhythmbox simply does not work with MediaTomb UPnP shares. It really annoys me, as I have to run both MediaTomb and Firefly/mt-daapd on my media server. But I don’t have the time or skills necessary to address this issue myself, so I find myself having to squelch my dissatisfaction to some degree. I’d love to file bug reports, participate in triaging of these bugs, and test potential fixes. But my work and personal commitments have thus far prevented me from doing so. Thus, since I’m not part of any potential solution, complaining about this broken functionality simply would make me part of the problem.

Personally, I don’t think that’s helpful or constructive. Flame on.