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Google could pick Git to manage Android code

Autor admin | 24.05.2008 | Category Open Source

Releasing 8.6 million lines of source code and expecting open-source programmers to join Google in its development is a technological challenge.

But when Google does make its Android mobile phone software an open-source project later this year, it looks likely it will take a page from the Linux playbook and use a tool called Git to manage that part of the work.

Linux leader Linus Torvalds originally developed the Git source-code management software in 2005. He didn’t like available open-source tools for the chore, but encountered resistance in using a proprietary tool, BitMover’s BitKeeper.

Torvalds liked the distributed approach enabled by BitKeeper and Git, in which individuals could maintain their own “trees,” variations of a project that branch off a main trunk. Git also can be used to track and manage software patches sent “upstream” by contributors working on code branches to the programmers responsible for maintaining various open-source projects.

Google currently uses a source-code management tool called Perforce to manage Android, but the company is moving to another code repository technology in preparation for moving Android into an open-source project, said Android leader Andy Rubin.

“We need an open-source repository. Currently we’re on Perforce. That has to be moved to Git,” and there’s an effort now to make the transition, Rubin told me in an interview about Android.

That sounded to me like Android had settled on Git, but Rubin wasn’t willing to go that far. “We have no announcements at this time,” he said.

Maybe we’ll hear more at the Google I/O conference next week for programmers interested in Google’s work. One theme of the conference is Android.

Benjamin Lynn of Google’s developer programs group offered a basic guide to Git on a Google open-source blog posting this week. And Google uses Git elsewhere, for example, to help Linux kernel programmers with support for Qualcomm mobile phone processors.

Junio C. Hamano currently maintains Git.

One choice Google won’t pick for source code management is the centralized Subversion software.

“Subversion we don’t think is enough of a repository to handle 11 million lines of code. If this is adopted, and there are 10,000 people checking out, it’ll die,” Rubin said. (Android today consists of about 8 million lines of Linux code plus 11 million lines of higher-level code; of the latter, about 8.6 million will become open-source software.)

CNET news.com

Users fight to save Windows XP

Autor admin | 14.04.2008 | Category Open Source

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp.’s operating systems run most personal computers around the globe and are a cash cow for the world’s largest software maker. But you’d never confuse a Windows user with the passionate fans of Mac OS X or even the free Linux operating system. Unless it’s someone running Windows XP, a version Microsoft wants to retire.

Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft’s latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.

No matter how hard Microsoft works to persuade people to embrace Vista, some just can’t be wowed. They complain about Vista’s hefty hardware requirements, its less-than-peppy performance, occasional incompatibility with other programs and devices and frequent, irritating security pop-up windows.

For them, the impending disappearance of XP computers from retailers, and the phased withdrawal of technical support in coming years, is causing a minor panic.

Take, for instance, Galen Gruman. A longtime technology journalist, Gruman is more accustomed to writing about trends than starting them.

But after talking to Windows users for months, he realized his distaste for Vista and strong attachment to XP were widespread.

"It sort of hit us that, wait a minute, XP will be gone as of June 30. What are we going to do?" he said. "If no one does something, it’s going to be gone."

So Gruman started a Save XP Web petition, gathering since January more than 100,000 signatures and thousands of comments, mostly from die-hard XP users who want Microsoft to keep selling it until the next version of Windows is released, currently targeted for 2010.

On the petition site’s comments section, some users proclaimed they will downgrade from Vista to XP — an option available in the past to businesses, but now open for the first time to consumers who buy Vista Ultimate or Business editions — if they need to buy a new computer after XP goes off the market.

Others used the comments section to rail against the very idea that Microsoft has the power to enforce the phase-out from a stable, decent product to one that many consider worse, while profiting from the move. Many threatened to leave Windows for Apple or Linux machines.

Microsoft already extended the XP deadline once, but it shows no signs it will do so again. The company has declined to meet with Gruman to consider the petition. Microsoft is aware of the petition, it said in a statement to The Associated Press, and "will continue to be guided by feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs."

Gruman said he’d keep pressing for a meeting.

"They really believe if they just close their eyes, people will have no choice," he said.

In fact, most people who get a new computer will end up with Vista. In 2008, 94 percent of new Windows machines for consumers worldwide will run Vista, forecasts industry research group IDC. For businesses, about 75 percent of new PCs will have Vista. (That figure takes into account companies that choose to downgrade to XP.)

Although Microsoft may not budge on selling new copies of XP, it may have to extend support for it.

Al Gillen, an IDC analyst, estimated that at the end of 2008 nearly 60 percent of consumer PCs and almost 70 percent of business PCs worldwide will still run XP. Microsoft plans to end full support — including warranty claims and free help with problems — in April 2009. The company will continue providing a more limited level of service until April 2014.

Gillen said efforts like Gruman’s grass-roots petition may not influence the software maker, but business customers’ demands should carry more clout.

"You really can’t make 69 percent of your installed base unhappy with you," he said.

Some companies — such as Wells Manufacturing Co. in Woodstock, Ill. — are crossing their fingers that he’s right. The company, which melts scrap steel and casts iron bars, has 200 PCs that run Windows 2000 or XP. (Windows 2000 is no longer sold on PCs. Mainstream support has ended, but limited support is available through the middle of 2010.)

Wells usually replaces 50 of its PCs every 18 months. In the most recent round of purchases, Chief Information Officer Lou Peterhans said, the company stuck with XP because several of its applications don’t run well on Vista.

"There is no strong reason to go to Vista, other than eventually losing support for XP," he said. Peterhans added that the company isn’t planning to bring in Vista computers for 18 months to two years. If Microsoft keeps to its current timetable, its next operating system, code-named Windows 7, will be on the market by then.

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On the Net:

Save XP Petition: http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/

Microsoft’s Windows support timeline: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy

With Firefox 3, Microsoft has reason to worry

Autor admin | 27.03.2008 | Category Open Source, Software

In the chronology of Internet browsers, Netscape came out earlier, but Microsoft figured out a way to do most of the same things at least as well, if not better. It didn’t hurt that the company violated the law as it mobilized to crush a nascent challenge to its desktop monopoly.

Still, it’s an incorrect rewrite of history to explain the triumph of Internet Explorer solely in terms of antitrust violations. Fact is that by the time Microsoft got around to the third incarnation of its Web browser, IE was arguably as good–if not better–than Netscape. We all know how that story finished up.

Nowadays, most PC users are on IE because, well, it’s the path of least resistance. But I’ve long been a big fan of Firefox and so have some 160 million people who now use the product. That’s a big enough number to get onto Microsoft’s radar. The funny thing is that this relatively small organization of some 150 people puts out a more elegant Web browser than Microsoft with its legion of developers. (For instance, there’s still no IE support of next-generation Java script.)

Coincidentally, next week marks 10 years since the release of the source code for Mozilla. Earlier Wednesday, I had an opportunity to hear more about what Mozilla’s up to. CEO John Lilly invited a group of bloggers to the company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters to talk tech. (Rafe Needleman from Webware has kept up a live blog of the product rollout. Check it out.)

I’d love to hear you chime in on this topic, but my biggest bugaboo about Web surfing remains security–and that’s where these folks are doing very interesting work. Among other items, pay attention to the following bullet points:

•  In FireFox 2, they shipped the product’s first anti-phishing features. Now Mozilla plans to include an anti-malware feature in the upcoming version of the browser.

•  With a click, you can get active information from a company’s SSL certificate in the URL to get information about the site to determine whether it’s kosher.

Mozilla also is tweaking the overall performance of the platform to extract better memory usage. The organization takes about a year between releases (though this newest version has taken a bit longer). Still, that’s an eternity faster than the MO over at Microsoft.

Chalk that up to bureaucracy as well as poor decision making. In particular, Microsoft’s 2001 decision to take its foot off the pedal after version 6.0 was a mistake I’m sure management wishes it could take back. Since then, the Web has gotten scarier and cooler, and Redmond has until recently been sitting on its laurels. That’s why Firefox has come out of nowhere to take anywhere between 17 percent and 28 percent of the market, depending on which research organization you trust.

At this rate, Mozilla’s got a great chance to add to those numbers. Until–if ever–Microsoft gets off its duff and comes up with better technology.

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