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Oracle takes aim at CentOS

The nature of Red Hat's business model nearly guarantees that its flagship Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution will be shadowed by clones offering the same software for no charge. It is not uncommon for people to wonder whether these RHEL clones, including CentOS, Scientific Linux, and Oracle Linux, are ultimately helpful or harmful to Red Hat. A free enterprise Linux can either serve as an entry point or an alternative for paying customers. There has been less attention paid to how the RHEL clones might affect each other; that may be about to change as a result of Oracle's new marketing initiative aimed directly at CentOS.

CentOS is the most popular of the free RHEL clones; it is widely offered to customers by hosting providers. It has become the default option for anybody wanting to run a RHEL-like system without actually paying for it. There can be no doubt that some sites would decide to pop for a real RHEL subscription if a system like CentOS were not available. At the same time, there must certainly be a steady stream of customers who started with CentOS, only to decide that Red Hat's support would be a worthwhile upgrade.

Oracle clearly has its eyes on that stream of customers. The plan seems to be to make it easy for CentOS users to switch a running system over to Oracle's distribution. And easy it is, if Oracle's instructions are to be believed; one need only download a shell script from Oracle's server and feed it, unread, to a root shell. The script will tweak some repository pointers and install a few packages, but it leaves most of the existing CentOS (or Scientific Linux) system as-is until the next update.

Why would CentOS users, who are benefiting from the efforts of a free software project, want to switch to Oracle's offering? Oracle is clearly trying to take advantage of the security update difficulties experienced by CentOS in 2011. The page reads:

Things have improved in the CentOS camp since the 2011 difficulties. The project has changed its workflow and found the sponsorship to hire a couple of developers; the recent CentOS 6.3 release surprised almost everybody with its promptness. But CentOS remains a project with limited resources and a lot of tedious work to do; it's always possible that things could fall behind again. CentOS users who were left without security updates in 2011—at least, those who are concerned about the security of their systems—cannot entirely eliminate that fear from the backs of their minds, even if things look better now.

So it is possible that Oracle is on to something here. Some CentOS users may well jump at the chance to switch to a free RHEL clone with big-company support behind it. And, when some of those users decide that paid support is worth their while, Oracle will naturally be the first provider to come to mind. This little initiative might well translate into some extra revenue for Oracle.

Of course, there could be some costs. The CentOS project is unlikely to be strengthened by having some of its users defect to Oracle. In the worst (presumably unlikely) case, CentOS could be fundamentally damaged if vast numbers of users were to vote with their feet and leave. That would leave the community with one less free enterprise distribution project. There have been a lot of complaints that CentOS is far from a truly open, community-oriented project. But anybody concerned about those issues is unlikely to find Oracle's distribution more to their liking. Oracle does make some good contributions, but community-oriented development is not, in general, among the company's greatest strengths.

Also worth keeping in mind is the fact that Oracle is making no promises that it will provide this free service for any period of time. If this effort fails to provide the desired financial results, Oracle could pull the plug on it at any time—as it did with OpenSolaris. That would leave ex-CentOS users with the choice of somehow migrating back to CentOS (assuming CentOS is still there and healthy) or becoming paid Oracle customers in a hurry. One could argue that any free (beer) distribution poses such a hazard, but a corporate-controlled distribution can only be doubly hazardous.

So this initiative by Oracle looks like it could be either a positive or a negative thing. It could increase the choices for users looking for a well-supported, highly stable, free-of-charge distribution and increase competition in the enterprise distribution space in general. Or it could just be a cynical attempt by a large corporation to profit from a free software project's success and deprive its main competitor of a potential revenue stream. Enterprise distribution users will have to make their own choice as to where their best interests lie.

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Akademy: Freedom and the internet

Mathias Klang opened this year's Akademy with a keynote look at freedom and the internet. It was something of a cautionary tale that outlined the promises that technology brings, while noting that the dangers are often being overlooked. Klang comes from an academic and legal background—he is currently a researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Göteborg in Sweden—which gives him something of a different perspective on technology issues.

Klang's talk was titled "Expressions in Code and Freedom", but he came up with a different title the night before the talk: The TiVo-ization of everyday life. That title is "silly", but it does reflect some of the dangers he sees. He noted that he is not a programmer, but is surrounded by them, and they "put up with my stupidity". His background in the law means that he "likes reading licenses" and thinks everyone should. His current research is looking into social media, particularly in the area of control by the providers.

There have been multiple revolutions in communication over the years, with writing only coming about 6000 years ago or so. Punctuation did not arise until 200 BC and putting spaces between words is only 1000 years old. Gutenberg (who Klang called "The Steve Jobs of his day") revolutionized writing once again with the printing press, but the digitization of information was arguably the biggest revolution.

Once information has been digitized we can start connecting up the devices that store that data, which leads to the internet. The internet is not a bad thing, per se, but it is set up for control. The promise of the open web ("so wonderfully open, so wonderfully free") is great, but that openness invites people to come in and start closing it down in various ways.

The web started as an open platform, but that "wild web" is becoming an endangered species. For example, he said, we don't actually publish our own links anymore, instead we use various social media services to send each other links. That leaves us more and more dependent on the people who collect and store our data. It is becoming rare for people to create their own permanent web sites to store their data as it is largely being stored under the control of social media service providers.

"What would newspapers write about if we didn't have Facebook?", Klang asked. Perhaps they would write about the euro crisis instead, he joked. More seriously, social change is happening and much of it is being brought about by technology.

For example, he noted that online Scrabble games are all the rage right now. Two years ago, you wouldn't go to the pub and brag about playing Scrabble. But in Sweden (at least), people are constantly posting their high scores and such to Facebook.

Social media is set up to "create a performance lifestyle", he said. The whole idea behind it is to have an audience, but the tools used to reach that audience are controlled by the providers. Another example is Klang's Facebook post of a picture of his morning coffee as "my amazing coffee". He gets comments from people all over the world who are "lurking around my digital life". It is a bit creepy, overall. The things he routinely does online today would have been considered stalking ten years ago, but "now I'm Facebooking".

The walled gardens and information silos that typify many internet services are a threat. The service providers ensure that they "keep us entertained so we will supply them more data", he said. But, without access to the underlying code and data, we are totally at their mercy.

Klang gave more examples of how technology, social media in particular, is worming its way into everyday life. "People say that if you want to start a revolution, use Facebook", he said, and they generally point to the recent events in Egypt as an example. In Sweden, educators are asking "should we be teaching Facebook in school?" and "how do I use Facebook" as an educational tool?

Beyond that, even police departments are going online. The Swedish police now have a Facebook presence and have even had crimes reported to them via that mechanism. There was recently a "wonderful or sad" twitter message (i.e. "tweet") about a man lying unconscious in Göteborg. Klang does not think that's a good way to report such things, "but the police think it is and that's sad".

Certainly social media sites increase our ability to talk to one another, which is good. But much of that communication is being forced into these walled gardens, he said, "and that's scary".

"It's only technology" is something that is heard a lot, but that's something of a slippery slope. As an example, he pointed to tubular anti-homeless benches in Tokyo. Instead of passing a law against sleeping in parks or putting up a sign, the benches make it almost impossible to sleep on them. This is an example of TiVo-ization in real life, he said. If we create a law against sleeping on benches, there will be complaints about human rights, but creating a technological measure avoids those problems. "Design choices have consequences", Klang said.

"The more technology we embed into our lives, the less freedom we have", he said. We should all "love technology", but recognize that every piece of it has an effect on our lives. That includes all kinds of technology, not just gadgets and web sites, but things like chairs, desks, and carpets as well.

One of the problems is that the educational system teaches students how to use technology, "but we don't teach them code", Klang said. Sweden, for example, has been focusing on the use of various gadgets in schools, but you don't have to be "vaguely technical to use an iPhone or iPad". Educators are asking how to use the iPad in the classroom, rather than asking whether they should use the device.

He referenced Douglas Adams's notion of "digital natives", that those under a certain age (15, say) natively understand technology changes while those over a certain age (e.g. 35) will always be immigrants and lack that understanding. Klang would like to see everyone become a digital native so that the understanding of technology and the consequences of technological change become widespread.

He had several suggestions toward that goal. To begin with, we should all try to "hack society for openness". Our infrastructure remains open, so far, but much of what runs atop it isn't. Richard Stallman, was "not being friendly" when he started the free software movement; "he was being right", Klang said.

"Be that guy", he suggested, and tell people what their information habits are doing to their (and other people's) lives. He likened it to getting a PhD, where you do research that "you and four other people in the world care about", but when people ask, you explain what it is and why it's important. In this case, it is necessary to make people aware of the problems that arise when "going from an information deficit to an information circus", which is what we have seen over the last decade or more. He also said that we should read all of the end-user license agreements (EULAs) and terms of service that are presented to us, but "I know you won't".

He closed with the idea that developers should at least think about what their code does, and "how you are affecting other people". All of the different gadgets out there "manipulate lives", but who decides how they do that, he asked. Everything we do with technology has effects on others, so he encouraged developers to think about those effects. He was clear that he wasn't advocating not building new devices and technologies, only asking that developers think about how those technologies might be used—or abused.

[ The author would like to thank KDE e.V. for travel assistance to Tallinn for Akademy. ]

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Akademy: Contour and Plasma Active

Contour was a project to create a mobile, touch-friendly user experience atop Qt and KDE that started in 2010. It eventually became part of the KDE's Plasma Active effort so Eva Brucherseifer came to Akademy to recount how and why that came about. She also discussed how the Contour design process worked, along with the process of integrating Plasma Active with various device platforms.

Brucherseifer is a longtime KDE community member, going back to the 1990s. She was elected to the KDE e.V. board in 2002 and served as its president for three years, which is what happens "if you talk too much about what should be done". She started the embedded services company basysKom in 2003 and serves as its managing director.

Contour's history and goals

In the (northern hemisphere) summer of 2010, there were lots of ideas floating around that factored into the ideas behind Contour, she said. Using context and semantic data to provide recommendations for users was one idea. There was also a lot of talk about the mobile space, and back then people were anticipating numerous Linux devices to ship with Qt because of MeeGo. The idea of "daily use" devices and the need for an improved user interface to support that use case was another consideration.

People at basysKom were thinking about these ideas, which led to Contour. Later in 2010 the project was formed based on Qt and KDE. Contour project members wrote a proposal and the project was granted funding by the German Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie (Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology). So, basysKom and the German government each funded half of the project.

The core idea behind Contour is to be "information-centric" rather than "app-centric" as the iPhone is. The goal was to create a new user paradigm where context and usage information are used to adapt the device's behavior to the user and their needs. A "learning system" would be used to try to derive patterns of use so that the device could anticipate and facilitate the user's task. There were ideas on how to do that, she said, but it was unclear if they would work.

For Contour, using KDE's "activities" made sense as a way to group the information around specific tasks that users do. By using contexts, such as what time of day it is and whether the user is at home or work, the interface can have an idea of the "things you do at those times". Deriving the usage patterns will help make it easier for the user, she said.

Contour is a user experience (UX) layer on top of the Plasma shell. Other UXes are possible, including ones targeted at set-top boxes or automobiles.

Designing the interface

The Contour interface evolved as the project tried out various ideas. Brucherseifer put up images of different parts of the interface (e.g. activity switcher, activity screen) as they changed from the initial prototype to the final design (which can be seen in her slides [PDF]). The activity switcher started out as a stacked set of activities, with a slider to activate the switch. That moved through a rotating "wheel" of activities that kept the slider to the final version which kept the wheel idea, but made the activity thumbnails completely visible and eliminated the slider. The three versions from her slides are shown at right.

Similarly, the activity screen that shows the files, applications, and other information associated with an activity went through a number of iterations. It moved from a tree-like structure to something more like a standard desktop. When she shows the interface to customers as an example of what can be done with Qt and QML, "they love it".

There are still more things to do, including an application launcher and a task switcher. WebKit integration is still lacking, but is needed because HTML 5 will be important, she said. Private, password-protected activities are another feature that will be added. Some of these features will be needed for a real product, but the project couldn't get to all of them.

In addition to a tablet UX, basysKom created an in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) UX as an internal project. It took two person-months to implement, she said, and it still needs some polish. It was done as an experiment to see how long it would take.

Designing the UXes went through several phases. It started with sketches, which were then turned into wireframes using Photoshop. Promising versions were then implemented using QML. Multiple iterations back and forth between those steps were required, she said.

Getting the code onto devices was challenging. The project started basing itself on top of MeeGo, because it believed that the two big companies behind the distribution would make for a stable platform. That didn't work out, of course, so a switch to Mer was eventually made.

The project "learned a lot" in getting its code running on two different devices: the WeTab/ExoPC and the Archos G9. There was a need to create binary RPMs for all of the packages as well as a single binary image that could be installed onto the devices. Some of those things are not necessarily easy to accomplish using volunteers in an open community.

Plasma Active

In March 2011, Plasma Active was announced. A workshop was held in Darmstadt, Germany where basysKom joined forces with Sebastian Kügler of open-slx and Aaron Seigo of Coherent Theory to create Plasma Active. Contour was adopted as the "activities and recommendations" piece of Plasma Active. Several coding sprints were held and two releases of Plasma Active have been made so far.

There were multiple reasons behind basysKom's decision to contribute Contour to KDE. The company could have held on to Contour and sold it to customers, but if it wanted to develop the technology upstream the code needed to be free. Trying to set up a "joint process" between the community and companies was another consideration. Plasma Active is a chance for KDE to succeed in the mobile space, which also factored into the decision. She (and, by extension, basysKom) cares about KDE, so it made sense to contribute Contour to the effort.

There were a few challenges that Plasma Active has faced over the last year or so. The cooperation between the community and companies can be hard at times. Volunteers often work all day then work on Plasma Active at night, which can make it hard to hit deadlines. The embedded development process is "not there yet", she said, and encouraged anyone interested to help out with that. In addition, desktop technologies are "too large and slow" for embedded devices; Plasma Active is still too large for many devices.

On the other hand, a lot of things have gone well. There were lots of KDE frameworks that could be reused, which made it relatively easy and quick to get something working. It surprised her how quickly things could come together. The project also produced highly motivated people; there were basysKom employees who wanted to continue working on Plasma Active even after the company needed to scale back its commitment, for example.

Plasma Active is not done yet; what has been produced so far is a "starting point", Brucherseifer said. There is currently no way to manage multiple open applications, for example, which is "probably very solvable", but needs to be done. More automation is needed in creating images for devices and there is a need for release management and QA as well. Those who are interested should get an Archos G9 and an image from basysKom to get started. Support for the WeTab/ExoPC is still available, but those devices are no longer on the market, so the project is focused on the G9 for now.

An audience member asked about how to get the design process used by Contour and Plasma Active into KDE. Brucherseifer said that the most important part is that developers need to be open to suggestions. basysKom hired two UX people to work on the project, but they "didn't really enjoy it". The developers had very different opinions from the designers, which made things difficult at times. There is a need for a different culture between developers and designers, "if both could give a little bit, it would be helpful", she said.

At the end of the talk, Brucherseifer demonstrated the interface, including showing how the recommendation system worked. The UX looks quite usable at this point, though there are still things to do as she noted. It will be interesting to see real devices shipped with Plasma Active (such as the Vivaldi tablet) down the road.

[ The author would like to thank KDE e.V. for travel assistance to Tallinn for Akademy. ]

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