[Thu Apr 28 10:30:48 CDT 2005]

It is release day for Apple, and OSNews published a review of the new MacOS X 10.4 Tiger that is overall positive. Nevertheless, the author includes a few suggestions at the end too:

What I really can't figure out is why, when Apple has been so eager to pillage the shareware world for nifty eye candy like Konfabulator/Dashboard, why are there still aspects of everyday usability that aren't build into the OS? How about a good, transparent backup utility, for example? Is that not one of the most important things that a typical computer user never ever does? How about support for more IM protocols in iChat? And why isn't there more capability to customize the look and feel of the Mac experience? I'd like to remove or move around some of the menu options, get rid of the dreaded brushed metal, and, you know, make the place my own. Right now it's half mine and half Steve's. Steve, it's time for you to move out. And will you just make an Apple-branded two button scrolling mouse, for goodness sakes! It's already fully supported int he OS! Jeez!

There is no doubt the new release of the MacOS has its issues, like any other piece of software. Still, I recently bought an used G4 from a friend, spent some time installing Panther (version 10.3 of the MacOS X, for the uninitiated), installed a few additional apps, played with it a little bit and I must say I was wowed. It definitely is user-friendly, or at least as close as one can get to that idea right now. It is smooth, nice looking, easy to use, feels natural and does not have the Windows (and Linux) feel of having been cobbled together from a thousand different pieces. Apparently, one of the main features included in this upgrade is the Dashboard, with widgets written in HTML, JavaScript and CSS. {link to this story}

[Fri Apr 22 21:08:58 CDT 2005]

Slowly but surely the GNOME desktop environment has become one of the most dynamic and innovative projects in the open source world. A week ago or so, Ryan Thiessen published an interesting article with a few suggestions for GNOME 3. They have just released GNOME 2.10, and it is perhaps about time to start considering what to do beyond the 2.x release cycle. Among other things, Ryan considers betting on Beagle instead of spending much time on a more ambitious but also riskier and more difficult idea such as GNOME Storage; allowing both Mono and Java to integrate seemlessly into the desktop instead of making a political choice of which one to continue supporting; advances some ideas about how to better switch between windows; and talks about a couple of features that may attract the advanced users. Nothing earth-shattering perhaps, but it is an interesting read. Even more interesting though are Havoc Pennington's views on the future of GNOME:

So the forces of existing userbase, the easiest-to-reach future userbase, cross-platform applications, and funded development efforts are strongly pulling GNOME 2 toward conservatism.

I think GNOME 3 should be a fork for that reason. There's another reason it should be a fork; I've been using a petrified wood analogy. The process for forming petrified wood is that an organic structure is replaced by minerals. The result is a rock, with the same shape and structure as a piece of wood.

If you think about the transition from GNOME 1 to GNOME 2, as with petrification we took the structure of GNOME 1 (session manager plus window manager plus file manager plus control center plus panel) and recoded it to be a different material, but the same shape. GNOME 2 is in an important sense "the same thing" as GNOME 1, though it's certainly much more robust and polished.

Some people seem to think of GNOME 3 as "when we get to break ABI" - I consider this a dumb goal, and I'm not sure breaking ABI even gets you anywhere. GNOME 3 may be more about creating different ABIs. My view is that GNOME 3 is interesting vs. GNOME 2 if and only if we are changing the structure, i.e. what the desktop really consists of and how it works on a macro level; GNOME 3 can't possibly be worth it if we're just substituting minerals for lignin and cellulose but getting the same structure in the end. It's worth it if we're building a different kind of tree.

Something that makes GNOME 3 harder: you can't change this macro level in interesting ways without breaking all the apps. (I state this with confidence because apps are the only interesting purpose of a desktop, ergo failing to change the apps means you've failed to change anything interesting.) Which doesn't mean you can't run the old apps, but it means that today's apps would be sort of freakishly out-of-place on a GNOME 3 desktop that had changed shape. In other words old apps would run in a "compatibility mode" and would be visibly distinct from new apps.

I would have to agree on these comments. I do like GNOME and, as I said, it has become one of the most dynamic and innovative open source projects out there perhaps mainly due to the guys who worked for the old Ximian. Sorry, but in my view there is no comparison whatsover between this and KDE. Sure, both projects are sort of Windows-look-alikes but at least GNOME does not appear to be obsessed with just copying whatever Windows does (yeah, the official way to put it is that "we are trying to reproduce a positive user experience that will help our customer base feel comfortable with our product" or some other similar managerialesse but it means what it means: we are copying Windows). GNOME 1 was definitely doing no more than that. Then came GNOME 2, which started showing certain good ideas and how to implement them. Now, with GNOME 3, it is time to break free from the old Windows paradigm. Come on, guys! Apple has demonstrated very clearly how it is perfectly possible to build an user-friendly desktop that goes beyond the old and tired Windows model. Why should we be less than them? I am telling you, if there is something that excites me about Enlightenment is that at least they are not so afraid of breaking free from the old mold. It is time for the open source community to prove that it can not only compete with Microsoft and other biggies on equal terms but that it can also innovate and lead. {link to this story}

[Wed Apr 13 16:27:38 CDT 2005]

Some time ago, a guy by the name of Matthew Thomas wrote a great story titled My first 48 hours enduring Mac OS X with plenty of suggestions about things that should be changed and improved in Apple's MacOS X GUI interface. Well, now his employer (i.e. Ubuntu) asked him to do the same with their latest release, Hoary Hedgehog. Once more, the result is an excellent article titled My first 48 hours enduring Ubuntu 5.04 where Matthew does not doubt in criticizing all of Ubuntu's shortcomings (actually, most of them are not even limited to Ubuntu at all but are rather problems with the GNOME interface). Among a long list of intereszting points that he makes, we find:

The mouse pointer does not hide itself when it is stationary and I start using the keyboard. As a result, it frequently gets in the way of what I am typing or reading.

(...)

When a program needs administrator privileges to work properly, Ubuntu presents an alert asking for my administrator password. The title of this alert is "Changing user...", which is incorrectly capitalized and incorrectly punctuated, but most of all, incorrectly worded. I'm not "changing" a "user", I'm just altering some settings or running a program.

(...)

The dialog for choosing a session similarly includes "Last" without telling me which that was, and "Default System Session" without telling me which that is. It also offers "GNOME" and "Failsafe Gnome"; failsafe behavior, apparently, is achieved partly by not SHOUTING.

(...)

When returning after locking the screen, the interface for logging in again is completely different from that for logging in normally, for no apparent reason.

In this different interface the "Password:" field is editable, while the "User:" field is not. This would be fine, except that the two fields look identical.

(...)

The tasks of copying music from a CD in uncompressed format, copying music from a CD in compressed format, playing music on a CD, and playing music on a hard disk are performed with —I am not making this up— four separate programs with four different interfaces: Nautilus, Sound Juicer, CD Player, and Music Player.

They all sound quite legitimate issues to me. In conclusion, a very productive article that GNOME and Ubuntu developers should be able to learn from. {link to this story}

[Mon Apr 11 15:34:04 CDT 2005]

More on the BitKeeper soap opera I wrote about in my previous post: the Subversion developers published an open letter to the open source community asking everyone to "stop bugging Linus Torvalds about Subversion". As they explain:

Subversion was primarily designed as a replacement for CVS. It is a centralized version control system. It does not support distributed repositories, nor foreign branching, nor tracking of dependencies between changesets. Given the way Linus and the kernel team work, using patch swapping and decentralized development, Subversion would simply not be much help. While Subversion has been well-received by many open source projects, that doesn't mean it's right for every project.

The letter was necessary after so many people had been bothering Linus and other kernel developers trying to convince them to use Subversion as a replacement for BitKeeper. The open source community is quite prone to these outbursts of advocacy that remind one of good old evangelizations more than technical discussions. Oh, well, I suppose everything must have its downside. {link to this story}

[Wed Apr 6 14:38:43 CDT 2005]

Without a single trace of doubt the big news in Linuxland today is the announcement that BitKeeper will be free no more, which has prompted a message from Linus Torvalds with some thoughts on what may happen now. As usual, the KernelTrap folks offer a great summary of the debate. It all boils down to this: for whatever reason (allegedly the attempts of some people in the open source community to replicate their features) BitMover has decided to rescind the clause of BitKeeper's license that allow open source developers to run their application for free with some restrictions, therefore pulling the rug under the feet of the whole Linux kernel project. Now, this may sound petty but I cannot avoid bringing up here the innumerable amount of times that different people sent emails to the Linux kernel list warning that something like this could happen. Mind you, I understand quite a few critics of the decision to go with BitKeeper were just taking a jerk's approach while preaching the wonders of the free software gospel, managing to get on people's nerves along the way. Still, that does not change the fact that they were indeed right. Linus made a practical decision based on practical reasons, and that is fine and dandy. However, it was patently obvious since the very beginning that Larry McVoy and the BitMover folks could simply rescind the license at any given time. Sure, one can trust this or that other guy, but the fact is the fact, and there is always the chance that somebody else will step in, purchase the company and make the decision. To some extent, this reminds me of the Red Hat controversy when they decided to stop developing their highly successful low-end Linux distribution. Sorry, but that is the name of the game. These people are in the business of making money, and not in the business of helping the Linux kernel developers (or anybody else for that matter) to release their own products. After all these years, it still amazes me how so many people can believe the corporate rhetoric of "working for the customers" and "always thinking in your best interest". As I explained above, I am not saying I agreed with the rabid dogmatism of the free software zealots who started countless flame wars in the Linux kernel list, but underneath all their fundamentalism there was an argument that made sense and that so many people simply chose to disregard because it came dressed in apocalyptical form: using proprietary software is just fine, and there is nothing immoral about it, but do not (ever!) believe that the software vendor truly has you in mind when making a decision about the future of a product. That is just not the case, unless you represent a significant source of revenue, that is. It is time to wake up. {link to this story}

[Wed Apr 6 14:30:15 CDT 2005]

NewsForge publishes an article about Enlightenment DR17, which has been in development forever. I know many people (probably most people) still have this idea that Enlightenment is a memory hog but the reality is that compared to GNOME and KDE, the Enlightenment window manager is actually quite lightweight these days. As a matter of fact, I have been using it on my older PCs at home and it works just fine, feeling way more responsive than either of the two better known desktop environments. In any case, what I like the most about Enlightenment is that its developers truly appear to be entering uncharted territory and (oh, my God!) innovating. Check out Rasterman's personal web space for a few screenshots and files. {link to this story}

[Tue Apr 5 15:41:27 CDT 2005]

A couple of weeks back, Allen Holub wrote a column titled Is Software Engineering An Oxymoron? for SD Times, and judging by the reaction to it, it definitely touched a nerve. Let us see what Holub's arguments are then.

Computer science started out as a kind of mathematics. Computers were little more than glorified adding machines intended to ease the drudge work associated with solving some classes of mathematical problems. The task of programming a computer was little more than presenting an algorithm to the machine so that it could crunch numbers.

Granted the description is quite simplistic but nevertheless accurate overall. However, Holub quickly launches his main and controversial theory:

In fact, computer science is neither a science nor an engineering discipline. Science concerns itself with the formulation and proof of hypothesis. Programmers just don't do that. Similarly, all engineering disciplines except software engineering concern themselves primarily with the mathematical analysis of structures, be they physical structures or electronic circuits. Programmers don't do that, either.

Indeed, "software engineering" books don't talk about engineering at all, at least not in the way that mechanical or electrical engineering books cover their subjects. Software engineering is about process, not structural analysis. The closes thing that software engineering has to real engineering is the study of design patterns, but even these are nebulous. There is no single "correct" structure for the realization of a design pattern. Even calling the creation of software "engineering" is a misnomer in my mind.

(...)

So if programming isn't science or engineering, what is it? It's a liberal art. Modern programming bears more similarity to creative writing thant engineering or physics. The design process that you go through (or at least should go through) to create a program is almost identical to the process that you use to write a book: research, formulating a thesis (or problem definition), an orderly exposition of the tehsis. These steps are central to both expository writing and object-oriented analysis and design.

(...)

We should really give up on the notion of math being the foundation of computer science, drop hard-core mathematics from the curriculum, and replace it with English composition (which teaches you how to write large, complex, documents like computer programs) and Latin (which teaches you how to analyze complex linguistic systems).

As I said, the article has generated some controversy. Among others, Jack Ganssle replied with an article in EETimes where he admitted that perhaps software programming does not have much to do with science but is related to engineering, since it involves using technology to solve a problem and it also requires analytical skills. Needless to say, the engineering disciplines are not the only ones that require this, although perhaps Ganssle does not know that. Of course writing a book (heck, even writing a short story or an opinion article, or even painting!) does require a well thought out design in spite of all the efforts we made throughout the centuries to romanticize the activity and make it sound as if some muse lands on one's shoulder and gently whispers to the ear what to do. The reality is not like that at all. For the most part, the so called liberal arts require a significant amount of thought, preparation and design (now, the fact that contemporary art has become a huge wasteland for the most part is a completely different issue). I firmly believe that we have a lot to learn in this respect from Paul Graham's approach in Hackers & Painters. The feeling I get when I have to start a new project is exactly the same I have when I have to sit in front of the screen to start a new article, short story, novel or essay. It is the famous writer's block or fear of the blank paper folio, and the great feeling of sel-fulfillment that I get when I am done with a script or piece of software is also the same. For the most part, software programming is an art. There is little doubt in my mind.

Incidentally, this whole dispute sort of reminds me of how much we used to joke in college about the first introductory class for any discipline and how the professor would invariably start by defining his discipline as a "science" and tracing its roots back to Aristotle. Well, as far as I can see, the very same joke can be told about the Computer Science. Yes, I fully understand how this is to a great extent a defense mechanism to emphasize that these are serious disciplines and not something someone just invented to make a quick buck. Still, I don't see why one cannot simply acknowledge the seriousness of a given pursuit without at the same time attempting to invest it in the semi-sacred clothes of science and engineering. In the end, it all may boil down to the fact that other fields of human endeavor simply do not have the same "prestige" associated to their names, but then that is a very poor argument to say that a given discipline is indeed engineering, isn't it? {link to this story}

[Fri Apr 1 11:05:55 CST 2005]

There are still people out there who believe that many techies criticize Microsoft out of habit. To be honest, there may be something of that but even if we tried to be 100% neutral and fair they just manage to screw things up for themselves all the time. Today I read in Developer Pipeline that MSIE was unsafe 98% of the time in the year 2004. Some achievement, if you ask me. {link to this story}

[Fri Apr 1 10:57:56 CST 2005]

If, like me, you ever had to write a shell script that contained some sensitive information such as passwords you know how bad it feels. Yet, it is just plain necessary sometimes no matter how much one tries to find a possible workaround. Well, I just came across little but interesting tool, shc, that allows you to encrypt a shell script by simply building a binary after translating your script to C. I wonder though how safe the final C code might be, and whether or not it could leave my code open to buffer overflow exploits, for instance. Still, the idea is quite appealing. {link to this story}

[Fri Apr 1 10:19:04 CST 2005]

I read in NewsForge that SSC, the publisher of Linux Journal, just launched a new magazine aimed at new Linux users titled TUX. The peculiarity about TUX is that it is an online magazine 100% (i.e., it is not printed). You can simply point your browser to their webiste, register to obtain a free account and download it in PDF format. Say what you may, but it definitely is an interesting new model for this type of technical magazine. One has to concede that much to the SSC folks. So, what is the magazine about? According to the editorial from Phil Hughes in this first issue:

If we compare Linux to a car, many more people drive cars than build them or even repair them. Linus is the same. Linux Journal is for the people who build and repair. TUX is for the drivers. That is, if you simply want to drive Linux and not have to lift the hood, TUX is for you.

From this first issue, it becomes clear that its target audience is indeed those people who are more interested in doing thins than in how or why they work the way they do: using KAudioCreator to rip audio files, amaroK to play music, digiKam, syncing a Palm to KOrganizer using KPilot... Incidentally, the magazine seems too KDE-centric for my own taste (it even includes an article on how to customize the KDE desktop), which is something I do not fully understand for the days when this was the only real user-friendly desktop are long gone. Since they released GNOME 2.0, their desktop environment is as useable if not more than KDE. In any case, the birth of a new Linux magazine is something to celebrate, especially if it is a free (as in beer) one. {link to this story}