Tag Archives: open

OSCON 2010: Thursday Plenary Session

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This morning’s plenary session, based on the scheduled speakers, is focused on the nebulous cloud. The cloud is what everyone in technology talks about, but everyone defines differently. It’s the section of the flow chart where magic happens. Somehow, we will send our data into the cloud and all our wishes will be fulfilled.

To be fair, this vagueness and my pessimism are precisely why these speakers have been invited to the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. Tim O’Reilly has a grand vision for the cloud, for ubiquitous computing, and the use of technology to help solve the world’s problems. I commend him for that. I hope this morning’s speakers do justice to his vision and that, if there are valuable lessons to be learned, that we learn them.

Today’s LAMP Stack

David Recordon (Facebook)

Over the last decade, the LAMP stack hasn’t been fundamentally updated. A cache, such as memcached has been added. Different languages (Perl, Python, Ruby) have been used in place of the original PHP. Even different web servers have been used in place of Apache.

Facebook created HipHop for PHP, which compiles PHP into C++. Creating native executables in this way reduces CPU use by a large factor (a number I didn’t catch).

There are alternatives for the database component in the stack, too. MySQL is ubiquitous at this point. Facebook doesn’t really use the relational bits of MySQL very much. So they have been using databases from the NoSQL family—Hadoop, according to the presentation.

David made a point I think a lot of people miss. When evaluating databases, or any other software, first look at what problem needs solving, then find a product that solves it in the correct way. Too often I see people advocating their preferred solution without even looking at the problem.

Data is the lifeblood of Facebook (and we all have our own opinions about that). They are able to use a plethora of Open Source tools to store the data, scale the data, and analyze the data.

This talk wasn’t very focused on the cloud, aside from Facebook being a nebulous site where people store their data without really knowing where it goes or how it’s used. I expect this was more for public relations, given all the bad press they’ve had. Not that anyone stops using Facebook.

Open SETIQuest – It Will Be What You Make It!

Jill Tarter (SETI Institute)

Jill started her talk by explaining what SETI is and why it exists, which I won’t go into here, since it’s just a Google search away. I used to run SETI@home a bit over a decade ago when I was in college and felt like using my computer as a space heater.

Jill is here, representing SETI, because she wants to involve the world in their search. SETI has classroom materials covered, but they are lacking in the social networking world. Jill wants people to first identify themselves as Earthlings, recognizing our place in the Universe.

SETI, with the development of the setiQuest community, hopes to use the vast resources available in the Open Source world to improve the project. These include physical resources, such as cloud storage and compute cycles, to human resources, such as programmers and analysts.

Cloudant has created a SETI stack on the Amazon AWS infrastructure.

Open Cloud, Open Data

Jean Paoli (Microsoft)

I’m always a little concerned when I see a speaker from Microsoft at OSCON. While I can imagine that there are employees at the company who genuinely embrace Open Source—and, presumably from this talk, open data—I can’t lay aside my suspicion. Microsoft does not have a benevolent history with competition, so when a representative shows up to talk about an open cloud with open data, I instinctively look for the company’s angle. What is their nefarious plan?

Jean talked about open standards and open data. Data portability, standards, easy migration and deployment, and developer choice. For some reason, when he talks about the “open cloud,” I have thoughts about Microsoft’s OpenDocument move a few years ago. Sure, parts of it were open, but the format as a whole was useless for non-Microsoft tools.

He claimed that Microsoft Windows Azure is an open and interoperable platform. I have a hard time swallowing that. The #oscon IRC channel was not kind in its commentary. A selection from the channel logs:

<b3gl> "Microsoft totally agrees..." as long as you pay your Windows, Azure and MSSQL license fees

<alapapa> standards are great…as long as they're ours

<dbrewer> wow, thanks Microsoft.  You think I should be able to use any language I want, I appreciate your permissions.

<b3gl> dbrewer: Notice he didn't say "We believe if you want to use Linux ...."

Public Static Void

Rob Pike (Google, Inc.)

Programming languages used to be relatively simple, but still fairly powerful. They’ve gotten considerably more complex and confusing. The C++ language was used as an easy target during the talk. Rob went on to bash various (in most cases deservedly) programming languages as a way to lead into what he called the renaissance of language design.

Many of the emerging languages are dynamic and interpreted, and there’s a false dichotomy that they are considered good while the static and compiled languages are considered bad. Part of the problem is that the latter class of languages are old, designed in a different age of computing.

Obviously, the end goal of this talk was to talk about the Go language, which tries to bridge the gap between the dynamic interpreted languages and the static compiled languages.

Toward an Open Cloud

Lew Moorman (Rackspace.com)

Lew’s talk was to introduce OpenStack. Rackspace took the internal software that powers their cloud and donated it to OpenStack. I wonder if this is something we can use at my day job to build an internal cloud. The stack is licensed under the Apache 2 license and they don’t use a dual licensing model, which sounds nice.

I was wrong, the talks weren’t really about demonstrating the wonder of ubiquitous computing and how we can move in that direction so much as a showcase of organizations in the cloud or using the cloud. It was really just one long commercial.

OSCON 2010: Wednesday Morning Keynotes

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I haven’t had a chance to compose my Tuesday blog posts.  Hopefully, I’ll find time throughout the day to work on them.  All that really means is that my posts will be chronologically out of order.

It’s Wednesday morning at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, which means it’s time for the introductory keynotes. The first thing I’ve noticed this morning is how crowded it is. Certainly more so than when I was last here in 2008. I don’t know if that’s just because we aren’t being given breakfast in the expo hall this year, so everyone is crowded into the area outside the ballroom. Another thing I’ve noticed is the gender makeup of the attendees. While still overwhelmingly male, I have noticed more women in attendance this year. Diversity is good.

Without any further ado, we’re getting started.

Welcome

Allison Randal, Edd Dumbill (O’Reilly Media Inc.)

This year’s co-chairs welcomed us and talked a bit about OSCON this year. Obviously, there wasn’t a lot of content, but they did mention the Android Hands-on event being sponsored by Google tonight. I did register for that, since it sounds like it will be fun.

Keynote

Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media Inc.)

First up is the namesake of the convention. Every year he presents his vision, not just for the conference, but for the future he wants to see. He has been steering his company away from being just a book publisher or a content producer, but a company trying to make the world a better place. He urges the Open Source community to think about the cloud. Don’t just think about Linux, or whatever project, but about the bigger picture and where we’re going as a society.

He is fascinated by the ability of technology to reinvent government, a concept he’s dubbed “Gov 2.0.” We fall into the cycle of thinking of government as a vending machine, something we simply get things out of, and get frustrated when we don’t. Over the last few years, he has been talking about government as a platform.

We shouldn’t think just about selling to the enterprise, but about building a better world. We all benefit when that happens.

Coding the Next Generation of American History

Jennifer Pahlka (Code for America)

The government doesn’t have to be this obscure, opaque thing we get stuff from. It can be a platform for us to work together. Currently, the majority of the municipal workforce is over 40, and a significant percentage will retire soon. This creates a huge age gap, which leads to a technology gap.

In Oakland, California, the city workers can’t search city council meeting notes online. The method of entering the data in the computer is to scan the written notes, which are impossible for them to index.

Code for America was created to encourage younger, technologically-savvy individuals to apply their talents to government. It’s designed to create technology to open up government, to make it more accessible to the citizens. It’s a little like the iPhone or Android ecosystems. Government provides the platform, essentially the data. We, the citizens, build the apps.

Keynote

Bryan Sivak (Government of the District of Columbia

Those in the government of DC are big fans of Open Source, running Linux among other projects. They’ve long talked about being committed to Open Source, partly to save the taxpayers’ money. Unfortunately, much of this commitment is all talk.

For any project used in DC, forms are required to be filled out, justifying the choice and the expense. On this form is the question, “What Open Source projects were considered?” This is often left blank and still slips through without comment.

Proprietary solutions tend to come with copious documentation and an implementation plan. Open Source projects are more open-ended, which requires people within the government to have that vision and that creativity. This goes back to the age and technology gaps mentioned previously.

It’s good that these challenges have been identified and are being addressed.

Got MeeGo?

Dirk Hohndel (Intel Corporation)

MeeGo is the result of the unification of Moblin and Maemo. It targets netbooks, handset, tablets, and just about anything designed to be more mobile than a traditional notebook. It offers a full client Linux Open Source stack, from the kernel all the way up to the user interface, including the flexibility to support proprietary devices.

Dirk went over the primary goals and philosophy of the project (to be completely open), then went on to describe the organization of MeeGo at a high level. This included both the technical building blocks and the relationship with upstream projects.

Is Your Data Free?

Stormy Peters (GNOME Foundation)

Many of us use completely Free software on our computers, some even insist on it. However, when it comes to online services, we’ve gotten lazy.

Free software was driven by two types of people. There were those who advocated that all software should be Free, that it should be available to all people, regardless of their means. There were others who used and advocated Free software because they wanted something that didn’t crash. It’s this latter It Just Works motivation that Stormy believes has caused us to get lazy about demanding Freedom from our Web services.

She asks how many of us control our own email or have alternative ways to access it if something should happen to the primary service. What if Twitter or Facebook decides to delete your account? What happens to your data? She then went through a few examples of alternative services that have open data policies, such as Identica and Tomboy Online (it’s funny, I don’t use Tomboy because I won’t use Mono).

How many of us have read the agreements when signing up for Web services? Do we know who owns our data? Can we back it up ourselves? Who owns it, both while we’re using the service and if or when we decide to delete our data?

Keynote

Marten Mickos (Eucalyptus Systems)

The shift to the cloud is causing computing to scale, both up and out, far faster and far larger than any of the previous trends (mainframes, minicomputers, or client/server).

Many of the Open Source licenses were designed in an environment where everyone runs software on their own computers, software that requires distribution to be useful. Today we’re seeing more services being offered by companies running software within their own grids. Users never run the software themselves but rather send data in and get data out.

Eucalyptus is designed to be a highly scalable platform for on-premise use. As someone who supports many thousands of hosts in many data centers, this product has intrigued me for a while. Unfortunately, I’ve never taken the time to investigate it. It’s nice to see that those behind the company are committed to Open Source, using the split model. Users are free to download and use the software, while the company sells a supported version to enterprise.

The keynote sessions at OSCON tend to drag on for a while, making it difficult to pay attention the whole time. But they are finally over for now. We have a break before the first session of the day. I’m going to try to get some work done on yesterday’s posts before starting on my long day of Perl sessions.

I’m really impressed with the wireless network today. It had its problems during the tutorials on Monday and Tuesday. Traditionally, the network becomes almost unusable on Wednesday morning. This year, however, I have been able to connect to the Internet and write this blog post without any frustration.

OSCON 2010: Get Started with the Arduino

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Arduino and BreadboardThe second tutorial I attended at OSCON on Monday was one I had regrettably skipped when I was last here in 2008: Get Started with the Arduino.  After purchasing my Getting Started with Arduino Kit for $69.95, I tore it open like a kid in a toy store.  Inside the kit were the Arduino board itself, some jumper wires, a handful of components, including LED bulbs and resistors, and a USB cable to allow for programming the notebook computers everyone in attendance brought with them.

In the beginning, I was shamed.  While I tried and failed to follow the Linux installation instructions, my coworker, Debbie, was able to plug my Arduino board into her Microsoft Windows notebook and get the first example running.  When the udev tip didn’t work, things were looking bleak for my attempt to control open hardware with an open operating system.  Finally, a trip to Google landed me right back on the Arduno wiki at the installation instructions for Fedora.  Finally, I could upload code to my Arduino board.  After getting the initial example to work, I modified it to change the pattern of the blinking on-board LED bulb:

int ledPin = 13;

void setup() {
    pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
    digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); delay(300);
    digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);  delay(300);
    digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); delay(300);
    digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);  delay(300);
    digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); delay(1000);
    digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);  delay(1000);
}

While we were playing with our new toys, we were treated to the history of the Arduino project, some other open hardware projects, and some of the things people have done with them.  Unfortunately, I was too busy playing with my new toy to take notes on these things, so the history lesson, by way of Wikipedia, is left as an exercise for the reader.

The editor embedded in the Arduino IDE leaves a lot to be desired.  It’s like Microsoft Notepad with syntax coloring.  My coworker found a setting that forces the IDE to use an external editor.  Basically, all it does is to make the editing window read-only.  Files edited outside of the IDE are re-read when the code is compiled.  In short order, I was able to find a Vim syntax file for Arduino code files.

After the break, we were introduced to using the Arduino board in combination with a breadboard, which allows for the creation of more complex circuits.  I’m excited, because I still have the breadboard, components, and multi-meter I bought in college for a computer engineering class.  I’ve been waiting all these years to finally have an excuse to dig them out of the closet and put them to use.  The Arduino will be a fun learning tool when my daughter is older, too.

To commence our unstructured time, which would last until the end of the tutorial (and the day), we were shown a simple circuit to wire up between the Arduino board and the breadboard.  Using a copy of the first blinking code, we could acheive the same effect of blinking the external LED simply by modifying which pin was referenced.  I took this a step further and made my LED bulb pulse like the light on a suspended MacBook.

I’m glad I decided to attend the Arduino tutorial this year. I’ve just picked up yet another hobby I don’t have time for.