(That would be me in the green)

Looking around, I only found windows-only C# examples that used dnsapi, so I wrote a quick wrapper around glibc’s libresolv library.

http://gist.github.com/27591

$ gmcs -out:srv.exe -unsafe srv.cs
$ ./srv.exe _xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com
20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com
20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com
20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com
5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com
20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com

The code could be easily modified to support other DNS record types too. I think this would make a good addition to the Mono namespace somewhere.

The res_query() function is extremely annoying to use, and the documentation is almost non-existent. If there is a more modern API that I should be using instead, please let me know.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/firerabbit/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/firerabbit/ubuntu intrepid main

Please let me know if you find them useful!

Note that these packages are unofficial, if you have any problems, please let me know directly. Do not file an ubunu bug.

Also, here’s the diff against the pkg-mono repository which is currently at v1.9.1.

Licensing issues have always surrounded Qt. The GNOME project was started partially because at the time, Qt was closed-source and there was a need for a free software desktop. Today, Qt is dual-licensed: GPL and commercial, so KDE is certainly a free software desktop just as GNOME.

However, the GTK/GNOME library stack has one major difference: it is LGPL. Why does this matter?

Commercial development. Now, please don’t get me wrong - I’m a huge fan of free software and the GPL, but there are certain situations where GPL is not an option. A example is an ISV with a flagship free, open source product who wants to sell customizations to businesses. These customizations would likely contain code to access proprietary internal systems, and are just not something this ISV would be able to release to the wider world.

Nokia, Trollltech, and mobile development

After hearing about Nokia’s acquisition of Trolltech, I started thinking about why they bought them, and what their plans are.

My initial thought was (written from Nokia’s point of view):

Wow, the iPhone is a very nice phone - and a very nice software platform, people love writing iPhone applications. Right now, most of our phones are based on Java Mobile or Symbian, which nobody really enjoys. We could try to write our own new platform, but that would take a lot of time… and hey! There’s this thing called Qt which is arguably just as good as Cocoa, and already has a lot of developer support. Let’s buy them and adopt it as our future phone platform, and build a great community of both open source and commercial developers.

Then I realized there’s a serious flaw with this theory: Nokia has maintained Qt’s dual-licensing model as-is.

Qt is now the only mobile phone platform that costs money to develop with.

Sure, Apple and other companies charge a per-release fee to digitally sign your application, make it available for download, etc… but Qt is different. Qt licenses are sold on a per-developer basis. But that’s not the worst part:

You must purchase a Qt Commercial License from Qt Software or from one of its authorized resellers before you start developing commercial software. The Commercial license does not allow the incorporation of code developed with the Open Source Edition of Qt into a commercial product.

Qt is the ONLY framework I can find that forces you to shell out before you have a single line of code written. This completely prevents developers from experimenting, and makes the platform unreachable to individuals and startups. You’re either all in or all out - there’s no middle ground.

Let’s compare that to other mobile platforms:

Note I’m only comparing platforms that anyone to publish software. BREW doesn’t count because you have to form a business deal with the carrier to make apps available (Verizon “Get it now”, etc.). Also please let me know if you have any additional information to add to this table - companies seem to go out of their way to make this information extremely hard to find.

Qt is unique - no other platform works this way. With this sort of pricing structure, Nokia Qt phones will never see the type of developer interest that we’re seeing with the iPhone and Android.

But Nokia certainly knows this, so why not change things? It’s hard to say - maybe they aren’t excited about the cell phone industry becoming more open, maybe they think they can make more money off of a small number of Qt licenses than thousands of developers under the iphone model. And how does Maemo fit into all this?

Qt is a really great toolkit - it’s a real shame to see its potential squandered.

You may have noticed that almost everything here applies beyond the mobile realm too. KDE is the only modern desktop platform out there without a free commercial SDK. I suppose it really is the true free software desktop.

It managed to line up the two shoes and box you see here trapping itself, then went around in circles until it’s battery died.

Sadly, this Roomba has hated life from the very beginning. The day after I got it, it forced it’s way under my couch scratching it’s self up and eventually getting stuck.

I had a great time at SCALE, here’s a wrap-up of some of the things that went on:

• The first day had two tracks all about open source in healthcare. Speakers included Scott Shreeve (co-founder of Medsphere, and founder of Crossover Health) who gave a very motivating talk about the importance of transparency in healthcare, and how open technology can revolutionize the U.S. system (or current lack there of). A marketing executive from Medsphere spoke about the company in general. Christian and Fred Trotter didn’t go easy on him, asking many direct questions about Medsphere’s past attacks on the open-source community and the lawsuit against the founders and unknown members of the community who downloaded the then-release source code. The guy basically knew nothing, I hope Fred will post more information on GPL Medicine or his blog in the coming days.
• Due to a miscommunication, the GNOME event supplies box didn’t make it out. We made a late night run to Kinkos and printed a huge banner, posters, and fliers. Thanks to Rosanna Yuen for her help on IRC figuring out what was going on (sorry for coming off as a stalker!), and to everyone who worked on the GNOME Marketing Materials. The “Happy People” poster was a big hit.
• A group of developers and community members from Foresight Linux were at the booth next to us, it was great to meet and talk to them. Conary is a very interesting package management system, and I certainly plan to learn more about it.
• Since we didn’t have the computer from the event box, Christian brought in his dual display quad-core desktop. He has both of his monitors rotated 90°, and we’re fairly sure that more people came by to talk about that than GNOME. By the end of the conference, the Gentoo folks across from us had done the same with their case-modded strangely mouse-less computer.
• On the second day of the expo, Jeff Schroeder (another fellow GNOME volunteer) and the Foresight folks got there before us, and didn’t have the computer’s password. They asked the Gentoo guys for a Live CD so they could reset it. They asked what operating system the computer was running, and after hearing “Ubuntu”, their response was “FAIL SAUCE”. Of course, their Live CD completely failed to boot so Jeff got a Live CD from the Ubuntu booth which worked perfectly. He returned the Gentoo CD. Ehm, what was that phrase? Ah yes…FAIL SAUCE.
• While standing at the booth, I got a random message on AIM. Since there was nobody coming up to the booth to talk to me at the time, I thought I’d try to engage this person in Linux conversation, which sadly fell on deaf ears. Here’s the log, what do you think? Pedophile trying to cover his ass, intoxicated cop, Chris Hansen, or really a clueless highschool student?
• Christopher Blizzard from Mozilla as well as a few other people expressed interest in my D-Bus Javascript bindings, so I’m going to try to find time soon to answer everyone’s email on the dev-platforms-linux mailing list, and get an initial release out there. If anyone is interested in helping out, please let me know. The bindings make it possible for XUL application and extension developers to interact with D-Bus services, allowing for deeper integration into the Linux desktop.
• It was incredible how many companies in the expo hall were there promoting closed-source proprietary software. I was especially irritated with the folks from Promise, who didn’t even understand why someone might possibly want an open/free API for querying health information of their RAID hardware. Ironically, their booth was next to OpenBSD and across from the Free Software Foundation.
• There was someone from HP trying to raise awareness about their commitment to linux/opensource. I’ve been very impressed with their open-source printing/scanning software (scanning over the network using XSane works!), so I was happy to see them support SCALE. However, the web interface on the neat little linux-powered NAS device he had on display is not open source, I hope this changes in the near future. Also, although I wasn’t told anything specific, I’ll be watching the news for an announcement about HP laptops preloaded with Linux later this year.
• I had a good chat with one of the Inkscape developers. One of my questions was if there were plans to use a docking library instead of having so many floating windows, and was very surprised/impressed when he showed me that it had already been implemented, and is coming in the next release! Although I’m not an artist myself, it is exciting to see free graphics software continue to improve, the next release will be a big step. Now if only GIMP would hurry up and follow suit…
• The booth to our right was run by a family business called RANDR that develops and maintains open-source business software. Very cool to see what they’ve been able to accomplish, check them out!
• Thanks again to one of the guys running the PostgreSQL booth for letting me borrow his laptop power cable!
• A single person recognized the Toorcon t-shirt I was wearing on the second day of the expo.
• Lastly, I direct your attention to this photograph which perhaps depicts Sun’s true commitment to Linux.

While I absolutely had a great time, I found that very few people hadn’t heard of GNOME, and there wasn’t all that much to say to most people about it. Common questions were people wondering what’s coming in the next release, how to properly pronounce “GNOME”, and of course, why choose GNOME over KDE.

Running a booth and being involved in projects is absolutely the best way to get the most out of conferences, and I look forward to having a project of my own to show off at future expos. We were also tossing around the idea of having a hacker booth with bean bags chairs, music, and soft lighting, etc. where people can work on stuff and learn about open source software development.

Photos from Jordan and Kevin.

I’m heading down to LA tonight for SCALE, the Southern California Linux Expo. I’ll be volunteering at the GNOME booth in the Exhibition Hall, so if you’re in the area, stop by and say hi!

Yesterday was opening day for the new South Lake Union Streetcar line in Seattle, WA. This is not to be confused with the first stretch of light rail, scheduled to arrive late 2009.

I met a group of friends downtown at the Westlake station to join in on the festivities. After collecting a bags worth of streetcar swag, we piled into the inaugural run of the purple train along with probably 200 other people. It was crowded. Sadly amidst all the chaos, only one out of the five people in our group got a golden ticket.

I think I see the back corner of my head somewhere in this picture.

For some reason - probably to be absolutely sure that there would be no accidents on the first day - they were running the streetcars at a maximum of 12mph (they are governed for 30mph, but will unlikely be run over 25mpg according to a City representative). Because of this, it was a slow ride, and left many people unimpressed. The city probably should have told everyone about the speed cap in advance.

One of the things that was being handed out was a “passport” containing a list of retailers, restaurants, and other businesses along the streetcar line. These participating businesses would stamp their name in your passport if you stopped by, and if you got 10 stamps, you could drop the passport off to enter into a drawing for prizes. Many businesses were also giving discounts to streetcar riders.

We got off the streetcar the North end of the line, popped open our passports, and found a nearby participating restaurant for lunch. Afterwards we set off, by train and foot, to explore. The passport served as a guide - getting enough stamps to enter the contest was really just a secondary goal. We all had a great time walking and riding around a neighborhood that none of us have spent much time in, and discovered new coffee shops, parks, expensive-yet-amazing condos, and a very cheap and tasty happy hour menu. The city did a great job with this program.

Throughout our travels, we bumped into a reporter for the Seattle PI. Both Andrew and Jessika were quoted in an article about the streetcar.

Three blocks from the streetcar line, near Fairview Avenue North, the streetcar’s debut brought busy sales of the SLUT T-shirts at the Kapow Coffee shop, where entrepreneur Jeremiah St. Georges has been selling them.

Outside the shop, Andrew Filer called the line a “small start” toward developing density that will support it — “a good idea in the long run. I like it.”

But Jesika McEvoy, sporting one of St. Georges’ T-shirts, was unconvinced. “Why spend a lot of money on something that doesn’t go very fast and stops at every stoplight? It seems like Paul Allen should have funded this exclusively … the only ones benefiting are him and a couple of retailers.”

The day ended with 11 stamps, a streetcar ride back downtown, and a bus ride home.

May ‘07: Toorcon Seattle (BETA)

I wrote a separate post about this, see here.

July ‘07: Ubuntu Live

I took the train down to Portland with Andy, which is so much more enjoyable than flying, I don’t even know where start. Unfortunately, Amtrak’s trains on the west cost are quite slow, and at least between Seattle and Portland, don’t have priority on the track. The trip home was delayed over two hours because the freight company was using the tracks, so we were stuck in the middle of nowhere for a while.

My happiness with mass transit continued after getting off the train, when I walked a few blocks from the Amtrak station and hopped on Portland’s light rail, which is absolutely wonderful. It dropped me off right in front of my hotel, across the street from the convention center where the conference took place. And best of all, this was all within the free ride zone. Chris and Steve arrived from California by air and also were impressed with the continence of the rail system, which took them from the airport right to the hotel, for under $3.

Fortunately, the first leg of light rail starts operating here in Seattle in 2009, and will eventually stop a block and a half from my apartment. More information on that here.

Onto the conference itself, there were some excellent keynotes, including Mark Shuttleworth (founder of Canonical/Ubuntu) and Eben Moglen (from the SFLC). Eben Moglen’s talked about GPLv3, and also encouraged everyone to shift their thinking from “open source” to “free software”. He had a very positive response from the crowd, which I think is great news.

There was also talk about the effect “web 2.0″ has on software freedom, specifically about how we’ve been moving from proprietary software on the desktop to proprietary software on the web. This time however, we loose control of who controls and has access to our data, not only the file format it’s stored in.

Chris and I are both irritated by all the attention web applications have been getting recently. We both hope developers will start writing great free desktop software again some day soon. The linux desktop should be innovative, NOT just the best shell to the web.

The sessions weren’t as technical as we had hoped, but we all certainly learned something new. Sadly, the BoF I arranged was a non-event, and I was completely blown off by everyone from Canonical.

Someone from OpenMoko had a booth at the vendor area showing off the Neo1978, and I have to say, I don’t like it. It’s rather big and bulky, but more importantly, the screen is inset from the case, which I find to be very unappealing. The lack of EDGE or WiFi is also a big deal breaker, and software is very unintuitive and clunky, but I see there’s good progress being made there.

July ‘07: OSCON

I didn’t pay for any sessions at OSCON, but the exhibition hall was HUGE, and I spent almost half the day there. Intel dominated the floor with people demoing their new Thread Building Blocks framework (which looks very cool), as well as their new Moblin hardware platform (which doesn’t interest me at all).

Mozilla also had a solid presence there. Chris and I had a good chat with someone about XUL, which I still need to follow up on.

Sun was there, but I hope nobody else tried to use any of the computers they had on display, some very pissed off looking woman yelled at me and scared me off. Fortunately, I did manage to get some OpenSolaris DVDs before running away. I need to find time to install Nexenta and see what all the ZFS fuss is about.

July ‘07: Facebook Developer Garage

At work, we developed a Facebook application, so I figured I’d show up and represent.

There were three people from Facebook who talked a bit about the platform and took questions/feedback from the crowd, but were all very careful not to talk about future plans.

The Facebook Platform is interesting to startups because it provides instant access to a huge user base, and has already proven to be a successful way to bootstrap a product.

Overall, most people were extremely excited about the platform, but at the same time, had complaints about functionality and features. The representatives from Facebook acknowledged everything that was brought up, but because of their policy to not speculate on the future, they made no commitments, and I don’t think anyone left feeling confident that specific things would change. I suspect a Windows developer would feel the same way having run into problems or limitations with their proprietary platform.

Although they claim otherwise, Facebook is a closed, proprietary platform, much like Windows or OS X. As a developer for this platform, you’re limited to a small set of functionality that could change underneath you any day, and may not work as documented.

Facebook is about more than social networking, they are creating a new type of operating system, much like Google has been doing with their online web-based applications.

Personally, I’m not ready to loose the freedom to tinker with applications that I use, or have my data stored online (and possibly owned) by a third party. If this is the case, I’ve lost my freedom, and might as well go back to using Windows.

August ‘07: DEFCON

I’ve been saying I’d go to DEFCON for a few years, and this time I actually made it! Just about everyone I know was there, so it would have been a very boring weekend in Seattle had I not. Generally I enjoy the social aspect of conferences more than the talks themselves, and DEFCON offers plenty of other things to do besides attending talks all day. Some friends got second place in the aCTF contest, next year I look forward to being more active in both that and the badge hacking competition.

The next meeting is this Saturday (September 1st, 2007) at 12:00pm, here’s the announcement that Ian sent out on the list:

  The September 2007, inaugural meeting of the Greater Seattle
  Linux Users Group (GSLUG) will be held on Saturday, September 1st,
  starting promptly at 12:00 PM on the North Seattle Community College
  campus.

  We are confirmed to use room IB 3319. (Yes, the same room we've
  had in the past)

  Parking is free on weekends.

  For directions and complete details, please visit the meeting's Wiki
  entry:

      http://wiki.gslug.org/index.php/Meeting_2007-09-01
      (Links to: http://www.northseattle.edu/maps/ for directions)

  Please feel free to forward this announcement as appropriate.

  This will be the first meeting GSLUG has had in quite a while, and
  things have changed. The presentation format will be that of Lightning
  talks (Several talks from 5-10 minutes in length, with open Q&A
  afterwards) instead of the traditional hour or so long presentations.

Microsoft might be right on the other side of the water, but Linux and Free Software is alive in Seattle! If you’re reading this and in the Seattle area, I hope to see you there! (Also, I’m giving a talk!)