New Friends from Linux World Brazil - Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft

New Friends from Linux World Brazil by admin on June 06, 2006 05:49PM

New friends from Linux World Brazil

I’m recently returning from Linux World Brazil where I presented on ‘OSS and Microsoft.’ One night in Sao Paulo I had the opportunity to chat with two of the leading OSS technologists in Brazil – Cesar Brod and Helio Chessini de Castro. Cesar has an interesting background, working at Tandem from 1992-1998 and at various companies throughout Brazil, including his own consulting company. Cesar is involved with Linux International and was also one of three finalists for the Free Software Community Award in 2004. Helio is well known in Brazil as one of the key developers of Conectiva and a prolific KDE and Linux developer and instructor. He currently works for Mandriva (who acquired Conectiva to form the Mandrake+Conectiva distribution). If you’ve spent time in the Conectiva or KDE developer world, you certainly have heard of Helio.

We had a great conversation about the Linux/OSS environment in Brazil, particularly the history of this community. Cesar echoed a statement I’ve heard from quite a few other OSS developers about those who ‘do’ actual technical work in the OSS community and those who ‘talk’ about it. His point was that there has always been a developer community in Brazil – before OSS hit the scene – and Cesar has tried to keep this community focused on the real work, not simply the rhetoric and politics. Cesar is a well regarded OSS participant and has some great stories about his early days at Tandem, how he discovered Linux (an alternative from flying back and forth from city to city to use a Unix machine) and how the OSS community has evolved. Both Cesar’s and Helio’s pragmatism, honesty, and open mindedness show their experience and wisdom – I hope to continue our discussions in the future.

Cesar was also kind enough to introduce me to his friend John “Maddog” Hall. Maddog is well known in OSS circles and although we’ve heard about each other, this was the first time we had the opportunity to meet face to face.

(From left: Maddog, Me)

Maddog’s keynote was right before mine, so I had the chance to see him present on ‘Total Value’ of software. It was interesting, and although I disagreed with some of his points (and the ‘blue screen of death’ jabs – come on, used any Microsoft software since 2003?), Maddog is a good presenter and hit some important points about standards, competition and choice that I agree strongly with. Shortly after our presentations I had the chance to talk with Maddog. We had a good conversation about change at large corporations (Maddog is a former Digital guy), and software trends. Despite the name, Maddog is a balanced industry veteran who I could talk to easily for hours, his perspectives and insight are valuable and although I think we may disagree on some points, there are many others where we find harmony.

I have visited Brazil many times, and I was honored to speak at Linux World Brazil, but this may be one of the most useful of my trips as I was able to meet customers, partners, Microsoft teams, government officials and developers and thinkers in the OSS world. New friendships are always important to me, but it’s the cascade of new thoughts from all of these various discussions that keeps me awake on my flight back to Seattle.

-Bill

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cronos said:

"His point was that there has always been a developer community in Brazil – before OSS hit the scene – and Cesar has tried to keep this community focused on the real work, not simply the rhetoric and politics."

Every time I read this kind of statements, think that people has no memory at all. As long as I understand, the software itself is not a goal, is only a medium to reach some goals.

In my case, I don't use GNU software because is "cool", or because everyone uses it; even nor because it's gratis. I use GNU software because it resolves real problems for me, like having my own portal in my home, or not having to worry about servers going broken misteriously at midnight. And very important: the Free Software respects my freedom. I don't like software companies that don't respect my privacy and freedom, even if their software would be amazing and gratis:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060607/ap_on_hi_te/microsoft_monitoring_piracy;_ylt=AujEpciXDaznfIp7roidcYMjtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTA0cDJlYmhvBHNlYwM-

I can see clearly that the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation works to preserve the freedom throught software development. Why Microsoft develops software? I'm sure not for my freedom and liberty.

Earning money is a legitimate goal, but not at any cost.

posted at 06:18PM 06/08/2006
rjdohnert said:

Actually, I havent seen a Blue Screen of Death since the early days of Win2k and that was because my RAM was failing. I havent seen it in Windows Server 2003, Windows XP or the betas of Windows Vista. I too have seen Maddog's public talks. I found it to be informative yet I disagreed with some of his points as well. Are we going to see your Linuxworld keynote webcast or anything like that?

posted at 05:55 06/09/2006
eocasio said:

<< and the ‘blue screen of death’ jabs – come on, used any Microsoft software since 2003? >>

Granted, no BSODs but lots of spyware and lots and lots of the "install, restart, good luck if it loads" mantra. You cannot deny that. Although I still do not believe in this Microsoft PR project, I still visit for the interoperability information. I do not use Windows anymore, but I have to deal with it at campus.

posted at 03:35PM 06/15/2006
fluke said:

I do not think the BSOD comment really is an unfair jab. If I run "crashme" to run random code as ELF binaries under an unpriviledged user and generate a recreatable kernel oops then the Linux developers do take it seriously. When running the some sort of thing on a fully patched XP SP2, the Microsoft attitude seems to be that since the bug "normally" should not come up that it is not worth fixing. In one circle of developers, the triaging is based on having a solid stable kernel regardless of who reports the problem. The other does triaging on if it was a corprate account or an individual that reported the problem and if a "work-around" can be suggested.

The NT kernel developers continue to miss basic concepts from *nix while the PR side of MS continue to push having a better solution than *nix. I think the most damning issue that continues to this day is the file locking of files in use. *nix allows for the generation of "unnamed files" where a file in use can loose it's name as part of "deletion." Once the file is no longer in use, the allocations on the file system are freed as well. But in the mean time, no other applications can open file since it can no longer be referenced. So, to answer your question of if something beyond 2003 has been used, the answer is yes. I have tried Vista Beta 2 and found that Windows is still "protective" of keeping it's malware and not allowing even administrative processes from performing deletions that would work on the majority of *nix kernels.

A comment on BSODs in this day and age is not ment to be literally but rather is an universally recognized symbol of the results provided under a corporate method of software development. If you want technically correct modern examples, I can provide two lists on how Vista beta falls short of expectations. The first list is basic concepts that *nix has provided for over a decade that Vista still does not provide. The second list is concepts described over a decade ago as part of the road to "Cairo" for a modern operating system that Vista still does not provide. Which measure stick do you want to be compared with?

Regardless, both measure sticks remain highly technical ones and do not exist in the popular press. Refering to a BSOD is one way of pointing out that since the release of Chicago, we still have not made it to Cairo and are still getting products that dump us in the Atlantic ocean. It would be possible to create a talk where your the target audience that explains exactly how modern day offerings are continuing to dump us in the Atlantic ocean and then we are charge for additional products to save us from drowning but still do not get us to Cairo either. However, such references would miss the target audience that he was giving the talk too.

posted at 03:28PM 06/20/2006