Open Sauce Software

Linux blogs elsewhere have uncovered a very nice little bedtime story, contained in the readme file for Gnome's printer manager.

"Once upon a time there was a printer who lived in the woods. He was a lonely printer, because nobody knew how to configure him. He hoped and hoped for someone to play with," begins the story, contained in the gnome-cups-manager , and reported by fsckin w/ linux.

The poor little printer remains unhappy, "jamming paper (for that is what little printers do when they are confused)", until a girl - called gnome-cups-manager - comes to play with him, after which the happy little printer can print to its heart's content.

If I'd known README files were this good, I'd have read more of them.

Along with its surprise funding of Apache, Microsoft has updated some aspects of its "Open Specification Promise" and - surprise - people are positive about it.

Microsoft is sponsoring the Apache Foundation which makes the leading web server. Sources elsewhere on the web report the sponsorship at $100,000, and explain that this gives Microsoft no direct influence over the open source project.

This is positive, and if you want a perspective on how big a turnaround it is, here's Bruce Perens reminding us that in 2002, Microsoft was all set to sue Apache and other open source projects for patent infringement.

But the big news is an update to Microsoft's Open Specification Promise, a scheme under which it promised, in February, to allow non-commercial implementations of its protocols and formats.

The OSP was criticised for barring commercial applications, and not allowing GPL licences. Now both are in, according to a report on Groklaw.

"We have established a clarification to the OSP that guarantees developer rights to build software of any kind and for any purpose using these specifications, including commercial use", says Sam Ramji. Microsoft's senior director of platform strategy.

Groklaw has the text from Microsoft's OSP FAQ that clarifies the GPL is covered.

As if all that wasn't enough, where did Ramji make the announcement? At the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCon) where he is a keynote speaker.

Times really are changing, I think.

It looks like the long-running SCO-Novell trial is over, and justice is served. But could this lead to trouble for Sun?

It's nicely explained by Pamela Jones at Groklaw as usual. Judge Kimball has upheld his original decision from last year, that Novell, not SCO, owns Unix. So SCO's original assertion that Linux infringed its rights falls to the ground. And it's been ordered to pay a surprisingly slight $2.5 million to Novell.

Of course, this being SCO, it's not really all over. "I think they have to appeal, frankly, if they can find a way," says Jones.. "Otherwise, SCO will sell the litigation rights to whoever was really behind this, or a surrogate, and off we go again. But it's their decision. SCO will try to be bad no matter what anyone does."

And then there's Sun. Sun bought rights from SCO, to allow it to build OpenSolaris and open-source it. SCO didn't own Unix, Novell did. So, it's been suggested that Novell could take action over OpenSolaris.

Alternatively, as Novell and Sun both actually like open source software, they could team up and promote OpenSolaris, according to one poster at Groklaw.

As yet, there's no comment on what Novell plans to do.

The best clerihew celebrates, not Bill Gates, but a paragon whose contribution to IT has empowered all of us to create great and worthwhile things.

Over at Miss Conduct, the winner is announced:

Tim Berners-Lee
Invented HTTP
Thus the World Wide Web was born
For Nigerian Diplomats and porn.

I'm impressed by the way IT dominated an open clerihew contest. Obviously, I was too slack to produce any entries of my own, but here are one or two more suggestions for IT-related clerihews....

Linus Torvalds
Doesn't suffer from colds
I guess that comes from calling
Your child after Linus Pauling

Steve Jobs
Inspires hysterical mobs
They shout "Can I swap my phone
For an iPhone?"

I think Richard Stallman
Is not a small man
He writes code for free
And once sent an email to me

Alan Turing
Broke codes during
World War II
And never played the kazoo

I know you can do better...

Technologists figure prominently as the subjects of amusing poems, in a competition to celebrate Clerihew Day, july 10.

Miss Conduct is running a Clerihew competition , and the five finalists include both Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee.

Here's the Gates one

Bill Gates
Has left the giant software company everyone hates.
"Hey, Mistah?
Are *you* gonna use Vista?"

Voting ends today, the birthday of Edmund Clerihew Bentley, the inventor of the form (well explained on Wikipedia, of course).

I've voted for Bill, even though his clerihew is close to breaking one rule reported in Wikipedia: "Clerihews are not satirical or abusive, but they target famous individuals and reposition them in an absurd or commonplace setting."

I should point out that, despite the headline of this post, I'm not advocating any form of ballot rigging, of course.

And if anyone else has IT-related clerihews, let's hear them. Even if you miss the delivery date of 10 July!