2004.08_Projects-Free Software and Its Makers.pdf

COMMUNITY

Free Software Projects

Projects on the Move

This month is again jam packed

for WLAN cards based on the Prism

chipset is a lot more stable, and the

driver can now hide the SSID in

HostAP mode. This provides useful

protection against wardrivers. Also,

there have been some enhance-

ments to Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit

Ethernet card support, SCSI drivers,

ATA/SATA, and APM-based power

management.

End users will also notice a few

improvements. The developers have

replaced some programs gleaned

from the GNU project with BSD

licensed equivalents. OpenBSD now

generates PTY devices (pseudo-ter-

minal interfaces) dynamically and

uses a new interface called /dev/ptm .

Root privileges are no longer required to

open a PTY. The new programs in ver-

sion 3.5 include the BGP 4 daemon,

bgpd, sensorsd (for parsing hardware

information) and PXEBoot (for booting

off a network).

OpenBSD 3.5 includes all kinds of

security fixes, and a current version of

OpenSSH. The application software is

state of the art: XFree86 4.4 (in a modi-

fied version due to the recent license

modifications [3]), Perl 5.8.2, GCC

2.95.3, and 3.3.2, Apache 1.3.29.

OpenBSD 3.5 does not have any truly

innovative new features, but

there are a few goodies that

make the change worthwhile.

Users wanting to install the

new release should check out

the FTP archive at [4]. The

Upgrade Mini FAQ [5] pro-

vides tips for users wanting to

update their installation.

with news from the world of free

software. We picked the best of the

bunch for you: OpenBSD 3.5, a GUI-

based front-end for Subversion,

and more trouble at Debian.

BY MARTIN LOSCHWITZ

turned 40 in May. Although there

is no direct connection between

BASIC and Linux, BASIC is a good exam-

ple of a software product that can look

back on amazing success stories, despite

its lack of popularity in the early days.

Most people thought of BASIC as

restricted in every sense of the word. The

language soon became well-known, and

it formed the language basis on which a

certain William Henry Gates founded his

new company, Microsoft. You are proba-

bly familiar with the rest of the story.

it does not make much sense to run

OpenBSD on these systems – OpenBSD

does not support SMP. This said, the

developers have been working on an

SMP implementation for quite a while.

The new OpenBSD 3.5 version also

supports the Cats architecture. The port

to ARM-based chips forms the basis for

future ARM CPU support. The port code

originates from NetBSD. This should

make it possible to use OpenBSD on

PDAs in future – following in the foot-

steps of Linux on the HP iPAQ.

The developers have also been busy

producing device drivers. The Wi driver

OpenBSD 3.5

A new version of the hard-

ened OpenBSD [1] operating

system was released recently.

In contrast to the previous

version, OpenBSD 3.5 does

not have much in the line of

spectacular changes; at least

for users with i386 architec-

ture. The previous version

caused quite a stir by intro-

ducing W^X buffer overflow

protection (see [2]). What is

really interesting about the

new OpenBSD 3.5 version is

the existence of an AMD 64

port.

As Opteron processors run

in multiprocessor mode only,

Figure 1: The BASIC programing language is extremely widespread, and this

is reflected by the scope of the Wikipedia entry on BASIC.

RapidSVN

Free software is typically a

combined effort by a group of

programmers. Most projects

use version control systems

such as CVS [6], or the more

modern Subversion [7] to

coordinate and manage this

effort centrally. These sys-

August 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

An up-to-date overview of free software and its makers

T he BASIC programing language

Free Software Projects

COMMUNITY

tems can do more than just

manage source code. In fact,

they can handle all kinds of

files. For example, you could

use a version control system

to release company docu-

ments to the complete

workforce (or a selected

group of staff).

This is fine for the geeks,

but less experienced col-

leagues will need a user

friendly GUI. In most cases,

developers embrace this kind

of system, as they have some

experience of command-line

tools. RapidSVN [8] may pro-

vide the solution you need.

RapidSVN is an extension

of the Subversion file management sys-

tem with a GUI-based front-end.

RapidSVN is based on wxWindows, and

runs on a variety of platforms.

The tool closely resembles the Win-

dows Explorer. Its most important

features are directly accessible via icons

from within the program interface. This

allows inexperienced users to quickly

adapt to RapidSVN. More experienced

users will appreciate the interface’s more

advanced features.

The project was released under the

Apache Software License rather than the

GPL. The developers refer to possible

hitches in the readme file [9], including

some issues under Linux. Although

RapidSVN compiles okay, users may

need to resort to a few workarounds at

runtime. There is also a note to the effect

that RapidSVN should work fine with

other Unix derivatives such as MacOS.

The only problem with RapidSVN is

the lack of a binary distribution with a

matching installer. Compiling the source

code on Windows, also requires the MS

Platform SDK which weighs in at a hefty

400MBytes – not everyone’s idea of a fun

download. If you want to try out

RapidSVN, you will need to download

the sources from a SVN repository.

mailing list. There are clearly

two lobbies, one of which

agrees with Herbert Xu that

proprietary firmware is irrec-

oncilable with the Debian

Free Software Guidelines [10].

Thus, integrating this kind of

software in the main Debian

tree contravenes the Social

Contract.

The other camp, quote

user-friendliness as their

main argument. Users need-

ing drivers of this kind would

have a lot of work to do, to

procure the drivers indepen-

dently of Debian. These users

could not be expected to

download updates across a

network, as the network card would not

work without the TG3 driver. Interest-

ingly, they also cited the Social Contract.

Paragraph 1 of the Contract states that

Debian GNU/Linux should comprise free

only software; but paragraph four attests

to Debian’s user orientation.

Debian developer, Erich Schubert

added a new aspect to the discussion. He

stated that in his opinion, firmware files

contain only data, just like any other

software. He demanded a fundamental

decision on the issue of how to deal with

any kind of data in the context of free

software. In Erich’s opinion, any distinc-

tion between different data types could

cause a number of issues

turers often hire developers to write a

free driver, but at the same time make

the driver dependent on binary-only

modules. These drivers may be “free”

but in a very limited sense of the word.

A discussion within the Debian project

illustrates the issue. It is quite easy to

identify drivers or programs such as the

nVidia modules, as nVidia does not sup-

ply a single line of source code. Things

start to get complicated when there is a

mixture of source and binary files, as is

the case for some drivers for so-called

Winmodems.

It may have been easy enough to iden-

tify free and non-free so far, but things

are starting to become more compli-

cated. Some drivers are free, but depend

on proprietary firmware files or drivers

where the binary firmware is hard coded

in the sources. The Prism54 driver is just

one example. What Herbert Xu, the

Debian maintainer for most of the kernel

packages, did just recently caused quite

a stir. Herbert simply removed all the

kernel modules that used binary

firmware from the Debian packages.

Solutions

In the meantime, Herbert Xu is happily

going about removing more drivers from

the kernel packages. The maintainers of

other packages, such as XFree86, have

also started to remove some parts of

their source code from the Debian ver-

sion. The effect on XFree86 has been

minimal. The old firmware files are not

required by any recent graphics adapters.

There does not seem to be an immedi-

ate solution. Some developers suggested

using the current kernel’s hotplug archi-

tecture to plug-in non-free binary files if

required. Many drivers only need

firmware blobs in the source code on

rare occasions and for arcane hardware.

It would be quite simple to separate

firmware and drivers. The firmware com-

ponent could then reside in Debian

non-free .

Less Drivers under Debian

Users are now missing modules like the

TG3 driver for Broadcom Gigabit NICs,

or the Qla2xxx driver for QLogic SCSI

adapters. The DRM driver for R128 and

Radeon chipsets is also missing from the

new kernel packages. Users with these

graphics adapters will have to do with-

out X11 hardware acceleration facilities.

Herbert’s approach provoked tumul-

tuous reactions in the debian-devel

Free or Non-Free, Part I

In last month’s Projects on the Move, we

noted a trend toward more Linux sup-

port among hardware manufacturers.

This may sound like a good thing, but

closer inspection often reveals a lame

duck. In many cases, hardware manufac-

www.linux-magazine.com

August 2004

Figure 2: The RapidSVN program provides a GUI-based front-end for the Sub-

version file management system. RapidSVN is based on wxWindows and

runs on a variety of platforms.

COMMUNITY

Free Software Projects

This suggestion seems to be

making waves. A patch that

separates the TG3 driver from

the firmware has already been

released on the Linux-Kernel

mailing list. Some users have

tested the patch and report

that the TG3 chipset on their

motherboards continued to

work without any hitches. Jeff

Garzik, who is responsible for

this driver, refused the patch,

however, preferring to imple-

ment a similar mechanism

using the hotplug system in

the near future.

Separating the kernel from

firmware has some advan-

tages, but it would mean linking non-free

components into the new installation

system, the Debian Installer. At present,

simply removing drivers from the kernel

does not seem to be a solution, as it

would confront users with unsolvable

problems. Incidentally, Herbert Xu does

not seem to be entirely consistent. After

removing the DRM driver for cards with

R128 and Radeon chipsets, the number

of bug reports increased so dramatically

that Herbert was forced to reinstate the

driver.

Figure 3: Excerpt from the TG3 kernel driver. It contains proprietary firmware

and will not be included in the Debian distribution in future.

Steve Langasek suggested

postponing the amendment

to the Social Contract, and

reinstating it as of 01.09.2004.

Duncan Findlay’s proposal is

similar but avoids setting a

strict deadline. Colin Watson

proposed an addition to the

Social Contract that clearly

states that Debian GNU/

Linux 3.1 will not uphold the

guidelines of the Social Con-

tract and promising to resolve

the issues in the next version.

The fourth proposal, by Craig

Sanders, is quite simple and

would remove any changes

made by the last General Res-

olution. Check out [13] for the results of

the vote as of May 31.

of the word. Because the GFDL contains

a contestable paragraph, the Debian

developers decided that it did not com-

ply with some of the conditions laid

down in the Debian Free Software Guide-

lines. Thus, GFDL licensed software is

non-free from Debian’s point of view.

Much of the documentation that

accompanies the official GNU packages

is GFDL licensed. Removing the docu-

mentation would mean leave the main

Debian tree without any documentation

for major libraries such as glibc or GCC.

To postpone this issue until after Sarge

had been released, Anthony Towns

recently used a trick. As the Social Con-

tract only refers to software, he stated

that documents, and thus the firmware

in the main part of the distribution, are

not software. The files would continue to

be non-free, the problem, and an answer

to it, could be ignored until after the

Sarge release.

As the Social Contract now refers to

works, Anthony recently mailed the

developers [12] to state that his

workaround would not work. The term

“works” covers both documentation and

firmware.

Anthony Towns is pessimistic about

the planned Sarge release, stating that it

may be impossible to release Sarge this

year, due to the new Social Contract. One

change would be the requirement to

modify the new Debian Installer to sup-

port non-free .

Just a few hours after Anthony’s mes-

sage became public, a number of new

proposals for a General Resolution

removing the changes appeared.

That’s all folks…

… for this month at least. Why not mail

me with your suggestion for a program

to be featured [14]? I look forward to

your comments!

■

INFO

[1] Martin Loschwitz,“Projects on the Move”:

Linux Magazine, Issue 39, February 2004

p86

[2] OpenBSD: http://www.openbsd.org/

[3] Martin Loschwitz,“Projects on the Move”:

Linux Magazine, Issue 43, June 2004 p88

[4] OpenBSD FTP Archive:

ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/

[5] OpenBSD Upgrade Mini FAQ: http://

openbsd.org/faq/upgrade-minifaq.html

[6] CVS: http://www.cvshome.org

[7] Subversion: http://subversion.tigris.org/

[8] RapidSVN:

http://rapidsvn.sourceforge.net/

[9] RapidSVN Readme: http://rapidsvn.

sourceforge.net/README.txt

[10] Social Contract and DFSG: http://www.

debian.org/social_contract

[11] Andrew Suffield’s proposal: http://www.

debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003

[12] Anthony Town’s email message: http://

lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/

debian-devel-200404/msg06588.html

[13] Voting page for Social Contract vote:

http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/

vote_004

[14] Tips and suggestions:

projects@linux-magazine.com

Free or Non-Free, Part II

Debian developers are currently ponder-

ing another drastic change. In this case,

a change to the Social Contract, first

drawn up by Bruce Perens in 1997. Some

developers regard the phrasing of the

Contract as faulty. One of them is

Andrew Suffield, who put forward a

modification of the Social Contract in the

form of a so-called General Resolution.

The “editorial amendments” [11] were

put forward to the developers for discus-

sion and voting. It was not until the

Contract had been modified that Release

Manager Anthony Towns saw just how

far-reaching they were.

This replaced “software” with

“works”, thus making it possible to

apply the terms of the contract to other

areas of the Debian project.

The GNU FDL

The GNU Free Documentation License,

(GFDL), was designed as a license for

texts and other documents that could not

be regarded as software in a strict sense

August 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

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