Tuesday October 03, 2006 links for 2006-10-03
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Lots of detail in this article exploring the OpenSPARC community and ecosystem. I'd not realised that the Scirocco chip was actually shipping, very cool.
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Exhibit A in the discussion of why no government should be allowed unaccountable authority.
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As we enter deeper and deeper into the always-on era where every word and scene is recorded for future analysis, I wonder what other history future analysts will be able to rewrite.
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Presumably by the same rationale the toll on the Bay Area bridges is also a tax? Note that this is how the US treats friends...
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Very very important editorial in the New York Times that all Americans would do well to read (and us aliens probably endanger our liberty just by commenting).
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Jonathan Schwartz calls on the SEC to embrace the internet as a more egalitarian medium for informing shareholders.
Posted by webmink
( Oct 03 2006, 05:21:32 AM PDT )
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OpenSolaris on PPC
Excellent news - Sun Labs has just released into open source its Solaris PowerPC codebase. John Crowell said in an announcement on the community mailing list:
Sun Labs is pleased to announce the release to the OpenSolaris community of a long awaited update to the Solaris PowerPC code base. This release provides the community with a functional Solaris PowerPC development environment on selected target platforms. This is a modest, but important step toward reaching the goal of developing the Solaris PowerPC port project to the point where it includes the latest source tree, provides a shell or single user prompt on the target platform, and has enhanced debugging, ie: KMDB. Community members are encouraged to check out the latest information on the Solaris PowerPC port project page and/or join the discussion list.
Posted by webmink
( Oct 03 2006, 12:01:02 AM PDT )
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Monday October 02, 2006 OpenSPARC Governance
Governance is an area that I consider underappreciated within open source. Licensing gets a lot of attention in open source circles, but governance in my view is every bit as important. So the news from Sun that has my attention today is that the OpenSPARC community is getting a governing board to bootstrap its governance process. I am honoured to be one of the founding members.
The task it has will be quite different to the task we've had on the OpenSolaris interim board, where the governance proposal is now in release-candidate state. Each community needs rules so participants can know what to expect, but those rules will reflect the expectations of the stakeholders.
Already thriving after only a short time, OpenSPARC is quite different to the other open source initiatives at Sun. It's hardware, to start with (although that's something of a grey area since it's all defined by software). That means that the usual world of rapid iteration you'd expect around open source code does not apply and there's little role for a version control system to which participants contribute. Publishing changed source is likely to be more important than that.
Then the participant community is different. To create derivative works, you have to have access to some place that makes chips. Just look at the map on the web site - you'll see a heavy hit rate from China and from Austin, Texas. That should give you an idea who is interested. There's already a company making an embeddable version of the design, and they've published their sources too as required by the GPL.
More than that, the community also has stakeholders who aren't making derivative works. Using the know-how in the chip source to add support for it to the Linux kernel has been an important use that continues to be important, most recently with Gentoo adding support for the UltraSPARC T1. In addition, universities across the world are investigating how to use OpenSPARC to support their curriculum by analysing actual, live commercial designs.
All this says that the governance process for OpenSPARC is going to be an interesting challenge to create. There is a lot to do: we have to serve a very diverse set of stakeholders (which I tend to think is a great thing for the health of the project). We have to understand this community's needs, produce a model for governance that best meets them, get it ratified and then finally implemented with the OpenSPARC community. We expect the whole process to take about a year. To do the job, we have, quite appropriately, an unusually diverse board (it's an interesting mix: an analyst, a commercial company, a university, a deeply respected SPARC guy and me), One thing is for sure; this job is never dull!
Posted by webmink
( Oct 02 2006, 06:24:00 AM PDT )
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links for 2006-10-02
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Life in Tornado Alley. I heard very strong winds outside last night, perhaps it was linked to this.
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No surprise I've been getting sick travelling - it may not just be the aircraft. This problem with residual infectious agents is the reason our drop-in offices at work include antiseptic wipes and hand-cleanser.
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If this account is true then the two presenters are lowlife scumballs who's better watch their backs in the FOSS community.
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I've already taken the leap and have a Fon base-station. At this price, everyone in your street should have one - then when you visit neighbours you can take your laptop too!
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News of the new OpenSPARC governing board.
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News of the new OpenSPARC Board, plus the fact Gentoo is now available on the UltraSPARC T1.
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EETimes covers the creation of the OpenSPARC governing board.
Posted by webmink
( Oct 02 2006, 05:20:27 AM PDT )
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Bray Comments
Yep, it's finally happened. Tim Bray has turned on his hand-crafted comments system over on Ongoing, which I am sure will evolve at a steady pace (threaded comments, maybe?). Great move (I hope), Tim, congratulations.
Posted by webmink
( Oct 02 2006, 03:12:56 AM PDT )
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Sunday October 01, 2006 links for 2006-10-01
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It's a slow but constant drip, eroding the basis of liberty. I do hope you're all keeping score over there.
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Very interesting working-paper from Dennis in Sun's Corporate Standards Group. This is something the folk over at OSI need to read.
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"... in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty."
Posted by webmink
( Oct 01 2006, 05:26:07 AM PDT )
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