Microsoft offers much-needed fix for Windows OSS development

Although Microsoft is beginning to acknowledge that the rich ecosystem of open source software can bring a lot of value to Windows users, the most popular open source software projects are largely developed on other platforms, which means that they aren't always easy to deploy on Windows. A relatively complex open source server stack can be rolled out on Linux with a few clicks, but it might take hours to get the same software installed and properly configured on Windows.

Microsoft developer Garrett Serack has identified a compelling solution to this problem. He is launching a new project to build a package management system for Windows with the aim of radically simplifying installation of popular open source software on Microsoft's platform. He calls it the Common Open Source Application Publishing Platform (CoApp).

Much like the package management systems that are a standard part of popular Linux distributions, the CoApp project will provide a delivery platform for packaged open source software libraries and applications, with support for dependency resolution and automatic updates. It could be a powerful tool for system administrators who want a WAMP stack or developers who want to port Linux applications to Windows.

Serack wants to use Microsoft's MSI format for the packages and intends to take advantage of WinSxS in order to deliver parallel binaries so that users will have access to multiple builds of the same library generated by different compilers. The project will also seek to establish some basic standards for filesystem layout so that files are put in consistent places.

He is coordinating the project with Microsoft's blessing, but the actual development effort will be community-driven—an approach that will hopefully enable CoApp to evolve in a way that best serves its users rather than being directed by Microsoft.

"The folks here at Microsoft have recognized the value in this project—and have kindly offered to let me work on it full-time. I'm running the project; Microsoft is supporting my efforts in this 100%," he wrote in a blog entry about the project on Wednesday. "The design is entirely the work of myself and the CoApp community, I don't have to vet it with anyone inside the company."

Making open source development on Windows suck less

Having ported several of my own Linux applications to Windows, I know from personal experience how insanely difficult it can be to set up a proper environment for developing open source software on Microsoft's operating system. For the last Qt application that I ported, the process of getting all of the dependencies installed took hours. I had to install CMake, find just the right version of Automoc, and compile OpenSSL from source.

My current Windows VM has a half a dozen different build systems and three separate sets of version control tools, all of which had to be installed individually. I also have two completely separate installations of MinGW and a rather heavy Cygwin setup. I need all of this crap in order to port my software to Windows, but it's a nightmare to maintain. I have to meticulously document every step of the setup process if I ever want to be able to do it again on a different Windows installation.

These headaches are enough to deter many open source software developers who would otherwise be releasing Windows versions of their applications. Spending a few hours developing on Windows often serves as a painful reminder of how much I depend on my distro's super cow powers. That is why I'm convinced that CoApp is a very good idea.

Cygwin arguably constitutes a package management system by itself, but it tends to be somewhat insular and isn't very native. Serack believes that CoApp offers an opportunity to do it the right way and close the gaps that isolate ported open source software components from the rest of the Windows ecosystem. If it's done properly, that could be very significant.

Although Linux enthusiasts tend to disdain Windows, porting Linux applications to Microsoft's operating system can open up a lot of opportunities. A Windows port can expose your application to a whole new audience, making it possible to attract new contributors. We have seen a number of prominent open source software projects benefit in that manner from Windows compatibility in the past.

A positive side effect of that phenomenon is that it introduces Windows application developers to open source frameworks and technologies. Broader adoption of cross-platform Linux-friendly software and toolkits on Windows would obviously help boost the availability of software for Linux.

Although I'm really impressed with Serack's vision, I'm a bit skeptical that a task of such magnitude and complexity can be fulfilled to an extent that would truly deliver on its potential. Such an undertaking will require considerable manpower. Ars readers who want to participate in the project or learn more can check out the CoApp page on Launchpad.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Solaris 10 no longer free as in beer, now a 90-day trial

Solaris 10, the official stable version of Sun's UNIX operating system, is no longer available to users at no cost. Oracle has adjusted the terms of the license, which now requires users to purchase a service contract in order to use the software.

Sun's policy was that anyone could use Solaris 10 for free without official support. Users could get a license entitling them to perpetual commercial use by filling out a simple survey and giving their e-mail address to Sun. Oracle is discontinuing this practice, and is repositioning the free version as a limited-duration trial.

"Your right to use Solaris acquired as a download is limited to a trial of 90 days, unless you acquire a service contract for the downloaded Software," the new license says.

It's important to understand that this change will not affect OpenSolaris, which is still freely available under the terms of Sun's open source Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). Users who don't want to pay for service contracts will be able to use OpenSolaris instead. That might not be particularly comforting to some users, however, because there are is some uncertainty about the future of OpenSolaris.

Although Oracle has committed to continuing OpenSolaris development, the company says that OpenSolaris might not get all of the new features that are being developed for the Solaris platform. Oracle says that it is reevaluating some aspects of the development process and isn't entirely sure how it will proceed.

It's not clear exactly how this will play out, but it seems that Oracle might choose not to open the source code of certain improvements in order to differentiate its commercial Solaris offerings. If Oracle decides to move in that direction, then OpenSolaris will no longer be able to serve as a drop-in free replacement for the latest commercial version of the operating system.

OpenSolaris contributor Ben Rockwood, a Sun Community Champion, discussed the licensing change in a recent blog entry. The licensing changes will be detrimental to smaller Solaris users, he says. He also expresses some concerns about the future of OpenSolaris due to the lack of communication from Oracle about the current status of the overdue OpenSolaris 2010.03 release.

"There may be attractive offerings for new customers in the high-end enterprise space, but long time supporters in smaller shops are going to get royally screwed," he wrote. "This might be a good time to catch up on non-Sun/Oracle distros such as Nexenta, Schillix, and Belenix."

Sun started giving away Solaris for free so that it could retain mindshare for the platform as Linux gained a broader presence. Oracle doesn't really need to do that because it has robust commercial offerings for both Linux and Solaris. Oracle can afford for Solaris to become the niche premium offering while Linux dominates most of the rest of the market. If dropping the free version gets some existing users to start paying for service contracts, than it's a win for Oracle. The downside is that the changes in licensing will exacerbate the growing rift between Oracle and the existing community of OpenSolaris enthusiasts.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Multicore requires OS rewrites? Well, maybe

A Microsoft kernel engineer, Dave Probert, gave a presentation last week outlining his thoughts on how the Windows kernel should evolve to meet the needs of the multicore future ahead of us. Probert complained that current operating systems fail to capitalize on the capabilities of multicore processors and leave users waiting. "Why should you ever, with all this parallel hardware, ever be waiting for your computer?" he asked.

Probert said that a future OS should not look like Windows or Linux currently do. In particular, he targeted the way current OSes share processor cores between multiple applications. He suggested that in multicore OSes, cores would instead be dedicated to particular processes, with the OS acting more as a hypervisor; assigning processes to cores, but then leaving them alone to do their thing. It might then be possible to abandon current abstractions like protected memory—abstractions that are necessary in large part due to the sharing of processor resources between multiple programs and the operating system itself.

The reason for this major change is, apparently, that it will improve the responsiveness of the system. Current OSes don't know which task is the most important, and though there are priority levels within the OS, these are generally imprecise, and they depend on programs setting priorities correctly in the first place. The new approach would purportedly improve responsiveness and provide greater flexibility, and would allow CPUs to "become CPUs again."

Probert is an engineer for Microsoft, working on future generations of the Windows kernel. He acknowledged that other engineers at Microsoft did not necessarily agree with his views.

At least, this is what has been claimed; the're one original report from IDG, and that's about the extent of it. The presentation was made at the Microsoft and Intel-sponsored Universal Parallel Computing Research Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the slides unfortunately appear to be available only to university attendees and sponsors. Either the report is missing some key point from the presentation that explains the ideas, or it's just not that surprising that Probert's Microsoft colleagues don't agree with him since, well, the suggestion just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

The big reason that you might have to "wait for your computer" is because your computer hasn't done what you've asked it for. It's still loading a document, or rendering a Web page, or computing your spreadsheet, or something else. Dedicating cores to specific processes isn't going to change that—the problem is not task-switching overhead (which is negligible, and far, far quicker than human reactions can detect) or the overhead of protected memory. The problem is much simpler: programs are slow to react because the tasks they're doing take a finite amount of time, and if sufficient time has not elapsed the task will not be complete!

It's true that some programs do bad things like failing to respond to user input while they're performing lengthy processing, but that's bad coding, and dedicating cores to processes isn't going to do a thing to prevent it. That problem needs to be fixed by developers themselves. The broader problem—splitting up those tasks so that they can be computed on multiple processors simultaneously, and hence get faster and faster as more cores are available—remains a tough nut to crack, and indeed is one of the problems that the Parallel Computing Research Center is working on.

Most peculiar is the alleged claim that this model has "more flexibility" than current models. Current systems can already dedicate processor cores to a task, by having the OS assign a task to the core and then letting it run uninterrupted. But they can also multiplex multiple processes onto a single core to enable running more processes than one has cores (we call this "multitasking").

This isn't to say that operating systems won't undergo changes as more cores become more common. Windows 7, for example, included a raft of changes to improve the scaling of certain system components when used on large multi-core systems. But none of these changes required throwing out everything we have now.

It's not possible that we might yet have to do just that in order to get useful scaling if and when CPUs routinely ship with dozens or hundreds of cores. But unless something's missing from the explanation, it's hard to see just how a massive single-tasking system is the solution to any of our problems.

Source: Arstechnica.com

The Body of a Tank, the Brain of an Android

We've come across plenty of robots that were controlled by phones before, but usually those phones were being controlled by human hands. Some California hackers, however, are building bots that harness Android for their robo-brainpower.

Their first creation, the TruckBot, uses a HTC G1 as a brain and has a chassis that they made for $30 in parts. It's not too advanced yet—it can use the phone's compass to head in a particular direction—but they're working on incorporating the bot more fully with the phone and the Android software. Some ideas they're kicking around that wouldn't be possible with a dinky Arduino brain: face and voice recognition and location awareness.


If you're interested in putting together a Cellbot of your own—can you even conceive of a cooler dock for your Android phone? Or a better use for your G1?—the team's development blog has some more information. The possibilities here are manifold; mad scientists, feel free to share your Android-bot schemes in the comments. [Wired]

Image credit Miran Pavic / Wired.com

Source: Gizmodo.com

OS Software Revenue Up 35%

U.S. retail operating systems boxed software revenue increased 35 percent in 2009, but it was not enough to lift non-games software into positive territory, according to new research from The NPD Group.

Total retail non-games software revenue fell 7 percent in 2009 to $2.4 billion. That is an improvement over the 10 percent decrease in 2008. Unit volume for 2009 dropped 6 percent and average selling price dipped 2 percent.

Operating systems was the only category to post both a revenue and unit increase over 2008. With new operating system releases from both Microsoft and Apple in the back half of the year sales traffic, volume, and interest in boxed software were at very high levels. Both OS releases posted record sales and growth figures for their initial launch periods and continued to perform strongly even after their initial entry into the market.

"2009 was a mixed bag for the packaged consumer software market," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. "There is always a burst of interest when new versions of operating system are released.

"But weak results in the more stable sales categories, like tax and system utilities, drove overall revenue down. Shifting channel activities and a move to more online purchasing took a bite out of both of those segments in 2009. The outlook for 2010 is for similar sales results as the lack of any OS launches will likely be offset by the release of Office 2010."

Business software was the only other category, besides operating systems, to post a unit gain. The category grew 6 percent, due in part to ASPs dropping 15 percent. MS Office Home and Student delivered strong sales volumes during both the back-to-school and holiday periods as a result of aggressive price promotion.

The average selling price fell from $118 in the prior year to $106 in 2009. Apple's iWork 2009 also saw strong unit volume growth as average prices declined more than 15 percent on the single-user version. With these falling prices, however, category revenue took a hit posting a 10 percent decline.

Source: Webpronews.com

Week in tech: Chrome OS, HTML5, China, Ubuntu 10.04a, and Firefox 3.6

It was a busy week as controversy continued to rage over the Google-China dust-up and Mozilla released a solid new version of Firefox. But first, Google.

Ars sat down with the engineering director of Google's Chrome OS project to talk about the past, present, and future of the project. There's a lot of good detail about the relationship between Chrome and Android, the genesis of Chrome OS, and much more.
The Google/China story has enough legs to qualify as a "centipede" at this point. After saying that it would no longer censor Chinese search results and that it was ready to pull out of China, Google also admitted to being the victim of a sophisticated cyberattack that went after more than 30 companies. The Chinese government responded harshly.

The Ubuntu development community pushed out the second alpha version of Ubuntu 10.04. It offers a few new apps and drops HAL in favor of DeviceKit. Check out our hands-on for the scoop on 10.04.

Firefox 3.6 was released this past week. We tested it extensively and found that its incremental improvements combined with a lot of developer-friendly features to make for an extremely solid release.

Ever wanted to know more about quantum computing but were afraid to ask? Check out our definitive guide to quantum computing. It covers the basics of qubits, two-qubit systems, and a primer on quantum physics 101 so you can wrap your brain around the topic.

As the e-book reader wars heat up and we await the unveiling of the Apple tablet, Amazon tried grabbing a bit of the spotlight by announcing a new royalty program for the Kindle. Authors can now earn up to 70 percent from each e-book sold, with a couple of catches.

Looking to make a love connection online? Data from popular dating site OKCupid reveals what kind of photos draw the most attention, and the results may surprise you.

The FTC recently filed a complaint against Intel over its business practices in the CPU market. Intel finally got around to posting its response this past week, and it's a doozy. Highlights include some damning comments from AMD execs made during the middle of the past decade.

Carbon sequestration has been touted as a way to deal with the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Researchers have developed a copper complex that is capable of reacting with carbon dioxide at a slightly elevated electric potential. The process turns the carbon dioxide into a usable byproduct which can be recycled and reused for this purpose multiple times.

Akamai's State of the Internet report reinforces the United States' reputation as a broadband sluggard. The average broadband speed in the US is 3.9Mbps, placing the country in 18th place. Topping the list? South Korea, with an average speed of 14.6Mbps.

Source: Arstechnica.com