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Google makes Chrome OS open source
Google made the early code available to the open source community and claims external developers will have the same access to the code as internal Google developers.... Continued »
Category: Not Linux
October 30th, 2009
What should open source do in a car?
C|NET’s own Antuan Goodwin revealed yesterday Ford is looking to build an open source platform for its Sync services, its in-vehicle informatics interface. (Picture from C|NET.)
According to Ford’s Syncmyride.com Web site, Sync already does things like enable hands-free cell calls, voice-activated playing of your favorite MP3s, and turn-by-turn navigation. On the site Sync is co-branded with Microsoft.
The software can be updated, so when new features emerge, like the ability to create a Vehicle Health Report or call 911 automatically, all Sync users can get an update. Sync has been available since the 2008 model year on a growing number of cars, which now include mid-priced models like the Taurus and Focus as well as pricier models like the Mustang and the Explorer.
Reading between the lines of Antuan’s story, however, it seemed Ford is a little nervous about this open source idea. The near-death experience of the last few years makes the unthinkable thinkable, but maybe when it comes to open source Ford executives this morning are saying something like, “What were we thinking?”
To me, this looks like a job for the open source community. You, in other words.
What should open source be doing in a car? What would you do that Sync isn’t doing now? How should an open source community focused on automotive features be managed? And what features should be off-limits to the open source community?
Have a good weekend. Take a drive.
October 19th, 2009
Microsoft breaks Firefox
Mozilla vice president for engineering Mike Shaver is being polite about it, but basically Microsoft pushed some software into Firefox last week that left users vulnerable to attack.
(Wise guys might confuse this Three Stooges bit with a recent Microsoft security meeting.)
Windows Presentation Foundation (which those with a sense of humor now call Windows Thepresentation Foundation or WTF), along with .NET Framework 3.5 (which is now OK), were originally pushed as part of Windows in February, and their problems within Windows were fixed in May.
On Tuesday Microsoft pushed a patch to fix the problem within Internet Explorer. So if you’re patching your Microsoft browser your Firefox is safe. Let me repeat that. Microsoft insists its MS09-054 patch made even Firefox users safe.
But if you’re not following Microsoft directions then WTF you may now be vulnerable to exploit. So Mozilla told Microsoft it would “blocklist” both WTF and the .NET Framework, backing off on the latter after discussions with Microsoft.
The WTF plug-in supports an XML-based user interface called XBAP, and lets its XAML applications run. But the technology was vulnerable to a “drive-by” exploit, in which your hitting a specific Web page would download malware.
I’m reading a lot of blog posts calling this deliberate, even malicious. I don’t think it is. I suspect Microsoft is confusing its convenience with users’ security desires, rationalizing that this power lets it fix security holes automatically.
But its technology makes Microsoft the potential source of great big security holes, which can leave it with egg on its collective face. The kindest thing one can say is that this is vaudeville comedy. Others will call it burlesque or, perhaps, a horror show.
What’s your view?
July 14th, 2009
Google and open source finally kill Clippy
Microsoft’s decision to offer Office 10 free online proves that its competition with Google is as serious as a heart attack.
It is interesting that analysts just shrugged at the news. At this decade’s start Office was a bigger financial deal to Microsoft than Windows. Its long fight to make OOXML a standard was designed to reinforce a monopoly users were paying big money to stay a part of.
According to Microsoft’s Web site upgrading any Office product costs hundreds of dollars, and if you got yours cheap — if you were a student — there is no upgrade available.
Now you can go online and use the stuff inside a browser? That’s leaving serious money on the table.
Admittedly, the definition of Office has changed over the years. To Microsoft, Office is the entry point into a host of products — databases, design products, management products — which lead to five-figure server licenses for things like SharePoint, available only when bought in volume.
Why did Microsoft cut the bottom rung off this ladder? Because it had to. OpenOffice.org and online alternatives like Google Apps and Zoho have made Office unprofitable at the consumer level. Besides, as reviewers have noted, word processors and spreadsheets are mature products — what is there to upgrade to?
It’s funny that Microsoft is selling Office 2010 as an action flick whose first scene is at the graveside of Clippy, the paperclip help icon. Because the gang at Wait Wait was right. Clippy must die.
June 19th, 2009
How much do desktops matter?
Do desktops matter?
Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation insists they don’t. (The picture is from Terry Jones’ wonderful “flying penguins” ad for the BBC.)
As he explained to me during CompuTex, people are more focused today on connectivity and applications.
Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop no longer gives it control over whether or not you run open source, and it is merely competitive on the new platforms of the Web and phones.
Thus, he would argue, when our own Adrian Kingsley-Hughes asks, “could you switch over to being 100% open source” we may be asking the wrong question.
We’re all a lot more open source than we were, in part because we’re a lot less wedded to our desks.
This desktop still runs Windows, but most of its applications are open source — The Gimp, Open Office, Thunderbird, Google Chrome. Give me the right stick and the netbook I took to China will belong to the penguin.
Meanwhile I define my life more-and-more by online resources, less and less by what’s on my desk. What is most remarkable about my netbook is how it constantly seeks open WiFi connections. The netbook computing experience is defined by being online.
Bing may be on Windows, but does that matter? I’m writing this post on WordPress, not Linux, and I’m looking up links using Google, not Linux. When you’re online no one knows if your OS is a dog.
Much of Linux’s success has been in the fact that, in an online world, it’s invisible or, to put it another way, transparent. This transparency is a key open source value. Transparency gives Zemlin hope that phones will run open source operating systems like Moblin or Android. But will those users even know they’re running Linux?
The biggest computing job today is fitting all these pieces into a coherent computing experience. Right now people remain wedded to a device. It’s a desktop in my case, but in Japan it’s often a mobile phone, and increasingly an iPhone. For some people it’s an iPod or Kindle.
It’s obvious that the only way to achieve device unity is online. One operating system is not going to bind our futures. You may choose to live in a Windows world, but each part of that world must compete with components running something else.
So where do you live your computing life?
Loading ...June 2nd, 2009
Sorry Linux but the chicken came first
In the old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, I got the answer this week, at least as it relates to computing.
The chicken came first.
I started my day on a hunt for Linux, preferably desktop Linux.
It was depressing. It’s not just Asus and MSI who have gone Windows in Taiwan, it’s everyone. The Microsoft booth dominates in a corner of the show floor. Instead of bragging on what they have done, they are pushing embedded systems for games and home servers. They are pushing outward, not defending their turf but attacking.
I visited the SUSE Linux booth, the only obvious Linux presence on the main floor. Where is my penguin, I asked. Where is the gear running Linux?
Intel has some, I was told. So I went to the Intel booth. After some shrugs and shaken heads, I was taken to a bank of three monitors showing network applications, under Linux. All were behind glass. You could look but you better not touch.
I wandered over to AMD. AMD dressed girls in high boots and short skirts. They are still showing what is known here as “fighting spirit.” Certainly they would be fighting for the penguin.
Where is Linux, I asked. I was pointed to a corner of the booth, where an AMD embedded system was shown, naked, running Ubuntu. But not for the office. This is an OEM product, I was told. Next to it stood the application. A slot machine, apparently developed for the Macau market.
June 1st, 2009
In netbook market, Wintel monopoly healthier than ever
I am filing this week from CompuTex, the Taiwan computer show. (Think Comdex, written in Chinese.)
I came here in search of successors to the Linux Laptops I wrote about here a year ago.
What I found was that the makers of those laptops, Asus and MSI, have switched entirely to Windows.
Microsoft has one of the largest exhibits at this show, as large as Asus and MSI’s own stands. The three companies seem to have embraced the fourth floor of the Nangang Convention Center, one of four halls housing the latest from Taiwan and the rest of the Far East.,
The two Taiwanese companies are taking different approaches.
- Asus is sticking with the same basic footprint as before, but offering larger keyboards on units where it has larger 10 inch screens. It is also adding more flash memory to keep prices in the $4-600 range they held last year,.
- MSI sees netbooks as the bottom of a laptop push. It’s offering very thin models (think MacBook Air), with much wider screens, along with large keyboards and space near the front to rest your wrists. Weight starts at a little over 3 pounds, rising to just 4, and these should over time become true laptop replacements.
I was told by another show visitor, a Chinese-Canadian, that there was a speaker on Monday talking up the Android operating system on ARM chipsets, but the battle appears to be over on netbooks running the Intel Atom chip. Microsoft won.
Booth personnel I talked with basically confirmed what I wrote about this in May, that there is a price lower than free. Microsoft can pull demand through Best Buys and Fry’s with collateral, promotion, and other marketing aids. No Linux vendor has the money to compete with that.
As a result both Asus and MSI look as much like conventional PC vendors as HP and Dell as you can possibly look. In stores this Christmas they may be their successors, because their netbooks look really good.,
But the old Wintel monopoly, for now, is healthier than ever.
May 12th, 2009
The Obama lesson to Rupert Murdoch
The Obama Administration’s renaming of its public relations office as the “Office of Public Engagement” has deep lessons for press barons like Rupert Murdoch.
While Murdoch thinks people should be made to pay for what his people say, the Obama people understand that interaction is the future.
A liaison sits on a stage and tells you, just like a news anchor or newspaper editor. A liaison controls the horizontal, the vertical, where stories will fit on the page, what page they’re on, and whether there is time for them.
Engagement is different. It’s more than a blog. It’s not one-way traffic. It’s two-way traffic between people and government, discussions that are moderated so everyone is heard and everyone feels safe.
That’s the value of open source community. It’s not how many people contribute code. It’s interaction that creates market loyalty to code, users who feel invested in the code.
Transparent, participatory, collaborative. These are the key terms in the President’s order changing the office’s mission.
They should also be at the heart of any sucessful media effort.
Since the Web was spun many companies have sought to raise the drawbridge and charge people more for less. Even those that succeeded financially failed in other ways, as their reach declined and they were cut off from Web links. This was a common experience throughout the industry.
On my personal blog I offered another way recently, a way forward that understands your role has nothing to do with readers or advertisers, but everything to do with aggregating and enabling the creation of markets.
Depth is achieved through loyalty, through the back-and-forth of readers that adds real value to what writers provide. Publishers who fail to organize as well as advocate a place, an industry or a lifestyle deserve to fail, because they’re not even doing what made them work on paper.
The lesson has been reinforced for me here, on this blog, by you. We have a much deeper engagement here than what I enjoyed as a newspaper or magazine writer. Every one of you is my editor, every one has a role to play.
Even my critics. Especially my critics. I don’t learn anything from attaboys. I learn from criticism, from questioning, from probing my arguments, from proofs of when I am wrong. Even from trolls.
As you play those roles, here and at other ZDNet blogs, your loyalty to the site increases, your value to ZDNet increases, and thus the value of the site increases. All in proportion, as it has been since the days of Ben Franklin, when citizens stopped one another to quote Poor Richard. Only the tools have changed.
Similarly I hope the folks in the new Obama office, like Kal Penn (above), understand that this change is just the start of a journey. To truly engage even a fraction of American voters will require scaled systems, a range of tools, and an underlying structure that can take new tools on as they emerge.
And in that last sentence I just described what Murdoch needs as well.
The success of any Internet endeavor, whether it’s political or a business, does not lie in how many people read a piece of copy. It lies in the reach readers themselves give that content, through Talkbacks, through links, even through uncredited mentions on social networks.
It’s the depth of loyalty a site achieves that defines its success, not the breadth of its readership. This delivers political capital in the public sphere, and market potential in the private sphere.
At some point in the future every publisher and every politician will understand this. The playing field will level, and change will slow. Now is the time of greatest opportunity, when you either open doors or shut them.
Short News Corp.
April 24th, 2009
Microsoft stuck at top of open source incline
Longtime readers may remember my 2006 post on the “open source incline.”
I wrote there is a relationship between how open a license is and the community support a project generates.
Even while it has sprinkled itself in open source waters Microsoft has generally stayed at the top of both this and the development incline I described in 2008.
I was reminded of this reading Mary Jo Foley’s piece on Microsoft financing an open source version of NFS4 for Windows. The software will let Windows clients easily transfer data from Linux servers. It is of enormous benefit to the Windows community.
As Paula’s piece on this topic notes, Microsoft gave the University of Michigan (Go Wolverines) the money to do this development. Michigan also developed the Linux version of NFSv4, so they went to the source.
But they went there with cash, even though Michigan itself would gain benefits from having this kind of software available. As would any university running a mixed-source computer network, which is to say all of them.
When you have to pay people to do your open source development, even development that is in their interest to have done, you are naturally going to take a proprietary attitude toward what results. You may indeed wonder what the excitement of open source is all about — is it just taking your work for nothing?
It’s not, but Microsoft has never gone far enough down the open source incline to know any different and I wonder if it ever will.
February 12th, 2009
How Mozilla can save Windows Mobile
A small team at the Mozilla Foundation is working on a new version of the Firefox browser, code-named Fennec, and a pre-alpha version is now online for trial. All this was announced on Mozilla’s development blog.
The new version, 3.1, is aimed at Windows Mobile phones, earlier versions having been developed for the Nokia Internet Tablet. The new version was developed in parallel with the other. (The natural habitat for real Fennecs, like this fellow, is Egypt.)
But how can this help Microsoft, given that Mozilla is committed to developing versions for a wide variety of mobiles, including the Google Android and Symbian?
The answer is extensibility.
Because Fennec is designed to support multiple extensions, there is an incentive for Windows Mobile designers to produce high-capacity phones. Usually phones are designed to handle only those applications pre-loaded onto them, since they can be tossed after a year or so.
Extensibility can lead to durability, and once you’re making a durable phone you’re really making a mobile Internet client, not a phone. Your design requirements change and you really are competing with the iPhone.
Another important point is that the business model has to adjust. When you’re building something durable you’re building something that lives beyond the typical phone contract.
Breaking the SIM card monopoly inside all phones becomes an important design consideration. Now you are freed from carrier control.
By embracing extensibility, durability, and freedom from carrier control, Microsoft can buld an ecosystem around the Fennec browser that will make it truly competitive again, and a business with which it will be far more familiar than it is with today’s mobile phone business.
This assumes, of course, that Microsoft embraces the design attributes of Fennec and designs for users, rather than carriers.
But wouldn’t it be ironic if an open source projects saves Windows its blushes?
January 9th, 2009
Is Palm webOS too little and too late?
One thing I’ve learned covering open source for four years here is that it is often the business model of last resort.
“We’re going open source” can be the same thing as a publication saying “we’re going to the Web.” It’s something to say instead of “we’re shutting the doors,” often a prelude to it.
Too often open source is to business what patriotism is to a politician, the last refuge of a scoundrel. In both cases the innocent concept is harmed by those hiding behind it.
It’s with this in mind that I approach the story of the open source Palm webOS. Great, in theory. The device is attractive, it has a good set of applications, and it could be a bridge between the lap and the coat pocket, one we have long needed.
If this had happened last year, or the year before, or the year before that, I might be quite happy, even ecstatic.
But Palm has missed so many technology trains since the heyday of the palmtop that I have despaired. I don’t think the issue of old PalmOS applications is that important.
What’s important to me is the timing. And the timing here is late. Very late. Too late.
Fact is the world has moved on. After years of waiting on Palm to create a true laptop-pocket bridge, we have moved on to the joy of Internet clients that fit in your hand. That’s the future.
Palm remains locked in the past, and its coming failure should not be laid at the door of open source. Palm lost the plot years ago, and a Clue that comes after the game is over is not worth very much.
Although I would love to be proven wrong. Am I?
Loading ...December 24th, 2008
Dumping on Microsoft, good times
As I noted earlier in this review of 2008 one of the best ways to get traffic and talkbacks among open source readers is to say the magic word. Microsoft.
But as our 11th and 12th most popular posts of the year demonstrate the real key to success lies in casting Microsoft as the villain.
It’s also best if you’re specific, and on top of the news.
Take this May post on Microsoft patent claims, which drew 205 talkbacks. I illustrated it with a still from a musical troupe in Allentown, Penn. performing The Emperor’s New Clothes, and the point was that bowing before a mere claim is silly.
Claims, not just of patents but of how they are germane to a competitor’s offerings, must be proven in court. Which takes time and money. Microsoft has both, which is why competitors steer clear, giving even false claims power.
I sometimes think of Microsoft as the Richard Nixon of open source. It has no evil intent, but the hatred of its enemies can cause it to lash out.
Thus I found a picture of Hillary Clinton, whom I’ve compared elsewhere to Nixon, on my March post examining Microsoft-hatred. It drew 149 talkbacks, and 39 of you voted on it, most negatively.
My criticism here was of Microsoft’s attempts to have it both ways, to attack yet be seen as the victim, which I found Clintonesque, even Nixonesque.
I’m not sure what to make of the negative reaction. Did y’all just disagree with the comparison, were you saying Microsoft should not be a target of abuse, or was it the Hillary picture?
Either way, if you really want to get a conversation going here, Obama is not “the one” as Oprah so famously called him.
Nixon’s the one. And Microsoft is open source’s Nixon.
Oh, one more fun fact to know and tell. Bill Gates is still younger than Nixon was when he was elected President. But not for much longer.
December 11th, 2008
Open source in a closed market
In a truly open market the battle to set new mobile standards would be fairly clear.
It’s not, because this is not an open market.
In an open market we could await the Microsoft Zune phone, a host of Android kit, whatever LiMo and Symbian decide to come up with, along with RIM and Blackberry devices running on the networks of our choice.
In an open market this would sort itself out in Internet time. Equipment makers might mix-and-match features among the various open source offerings.
I personally don’t think closed source would stand much of a chance in the long run, although I would enjoy being proven wrong
But the mobile market is a cartel, a very small one.
The U.S. has only two real national competitors — AT&T and Verizon. Sprint and T-Mobile are so far back their market shares can barely be seen.
AT&T says it’s cutting the number of products it lets on its network. Verizon isn’t saying that only because the AT&T-iPhone deal is exclusive.
If Verizon had a clear competitor to the iPhone it would likely close up like AT&T. Before the iPhone it bragged about how it controlled every bit of software on its wireless network and got a cut on every bit it passed.
Google’s efforts to create a competing network through Clearwire are moving slowly. Analysts remain highly skeptical.
Wireless is truly a “pay to play” market. The bribes were made in the open, through spectrum auctions. Your spectrum goes to the highest bidder, your government pockets the cash, and your market is thus controlled by a chosen few.
It may not be fashionable to say this, especially from one often accused of being a liberal, but competition is the solution to many of our economic problems.
Including this one.
December 3rd, 2008
Should Apple worry about Songbird 1.0
Songbird, an open source iTunes replacement (or music browser) has hit its 1.0 release, and now everyone will start asking whether Apple should be worried.
It has some nifty features, like integration with the Last.fm recommendation engine and mashTape, which links Web content to what you’re listening to. It’s dubbed a browser because it is based on the Mozilla eingine.
But it lacks key features, like the ability to copy files from a CD or sync to the iPhone. (Both are on the development roadmap.) It’s also clear that Apple will be ruthless in trying to kill it and maintain the closed nature of its iUniverse.
Which leads me to ask this question. If Microsoft controlled key Internet formats and were ruthless in protecting them, could Mozilla itself have gotten off the ground?
That’s the situation facing Songbird. It claims support for Apple’s formats, on the PC as well as the Macintosh. Will it be allowed to maintain compatibility? Forget syncing an iPhone to it, will you be able to sync an iPod after its next software update?
If you can, then there is hope for Songbird in that, because it’s open, you can customize it. New iTunes features are either proprietary or subject to intense corporate negotiation and strategizing. New Songbird apps can merely be written.
It’s really the open source development framework that makes Songbird different. Note that Mozilla, despite its success, still has just 20% of that market. Can Songbird get half that? If it can its developers really will be Pioneers of the Inevitable.
October 30th, 2008
Has Chrome fixed its Adobe problem?
I noticed that Google recently pushed out a new version of its Chrome browser, version 0.3.
I had stopped using Chrome due to a big problem with Adobe Shockwave and Flash files, which are becoming crucial on many Web pages, both for displaying video content and ads.
Simply put the browser was crashing. It would sit unmoving for a time, then finally say a named plug-in question had crashed. When I agreed the plug-in had to die it was killed in all tabs.
I was going to write a post this morning slamming this bug when I decided to check the “about” tag, from which Chrome informs you of updates and loads them in the background. Sure enough, a new version was available. I didn’t even have to reboot the machine.
I then went into a heavy editing session, pulling up literally dozens of separate tabs to produce this, a review of local politics as seen on various blogs. Each link you find here was a separate tab instance in Chrome, and there were a few more I left out.
I just counted 37 links in this piece, so I probably had 40 tabs open at one point. Many had video, since many political blogs like to embed the latest ads.
There was no crash. There were no problems. Everything ran clean.
So, has Google solved the problems that Chrome had running Adobe software? What does your computer say?
October 14th, 2008
What OpenOffice site crash means
As Paula wrote yesterday Open Office 3.0 was released yesterday.
The launch was so successful the site partly crashed. All visitors can see right now is a text-based link to mirrors where the software is available, under 7 different configurations and in 14 different languages (including Kurdish).
This is good news and bad news.
The good news is we have more proof of the popularity of Open Office, which continues to seize market share from Microsoft Office and reduce the monopoly rents that company earns.
The bad news is it will take some time, and some money, for the open source group to scale-up.
I know they can speak for themselves, but it’s time that companies which benefit from OpenOffice step up to the plate.
If you’re an enterprise standardizing on OpenOffice, or a company that competes fiercely with Microsoft, you have a stake in this.
It’s time for you to step up and support OpenOffice. Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of the software.
October 7th, 2008
Open source and Steve Jobs is fine
They really had us going there for a while on Friday.
Next time have Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin and Michael Dell shoot a picture of themselves walking through a crosswalk, only Jobs isn’t wearing shoes. (Can an iPod be made to run backward?)
My guess is that a rogue stock trader used CNN’s iReport to spread a Jobs health rumor because regulators look at stock bulletin boards for signs of fraud.
The phony report of a Jobs heart attack (quickly taken down) sent Apple shares down $7 per share in six hours.
Investigators might be wise to check Europe or the Emirates as a source. The false story went out near midnight on the East Coast, there was enormous trading volume from 4-8 AM (10 AM to 2 PM in Europe), and then things calmed down.
Ironically traders got the same kind of movement the next two trading days, based on economic fundamentals, and you could have gotten Apple shares mid-day Monday for under $90. (The bottom of the spike on the rumor was $97.45.)
So what happened? The same thing that happened to Usenet, and e-mail, and all those stock boards happened. An anonymous, credible medium is easy for spammers and scammers to wreck.
Unless, of course, you have registration up-front, trace the source of posts, and hold those who run scams responsible for their crimes.
There are bigger financial stories to cover, I know, but I do expect whoever did this will be caught.
On the Internet no one knows you’re a dog, until they traceroute the leash to your collar.
October 5th, 2008
Microsoft bad cop is up against the wall
Microsoft is back to its “bad cop” routine again.
(This League of Cliche Evil Super-Villains appeared at Geekologie in January. Also available as a t-shirt. By Joshua Kemble.)
This time they are offering Windows-only code on their “open source” CodePlex site. It’s not that this is technically impossible. It’s just prohibited by license.
What is at issue here is the so-called Microsoft Limited Permission License, a non-OSI approved license once thought replaced.
While most observers are busy dumping on Microsoft for violating open source principles, I prefer to point out where the bad cop is now as opposed to where it was a while ago.
Microsoft today is in retreat against open source. Think of them as a football team that keeps starting drives deeper in their own end, or an army conducting harrying raids to cover its loss of territory.
Ot think of them as a politician holding rallies in ballrooms rather than stadiums, a singer trying to fill theaters where they once packed hockey arenas.
However you play the analogy, the fact is that each time Microsoft goes back-and-forth like this, it does so from a weaker position.
Last time they played this game they were pushing OOXML as an ISO standard. Before that they were promising to bury open source in patent suits.
Now they’re trying to sneak semi-proprietary code on their own site.
It’s like a crime boss getting arrested for pickpocketing. Lex Luthor gets a parking ticket, and pays it. Godzilla has become Reptar.
So instead of taking deep umbrage, I’m just sad. You want a super villain to be, well, super. Not silly.
September 25th, 2008
Is Chrome a security risk?
My lovely bride of 30 years worked from home yesterday, hoping to save our city some gas.
An e-mail came in from her administrator around mid-day which she decided to share with me.
It told all users to shut down Chrome.
The e-mail called Chrome a security risk. It told all users within the company to use Firefox or Internet Explorer, to shut Chrome down.
I don’t know how serious those concerns are. Without identifying my wife’s employer I will say it’s a conservative company, very security conscious, and often proactive.
But this is a good time to ask how well Chrome is doing. Google Analytics says 1 in 40 visits to ZDNet Open Source are now done with Chrome. It’s currently on build 2200, Version 0.2.149.30. (Click the wrench, then the About tab.)
Personally I have noticed that Chrome often crashes Shockwave and Flash pages. Thanks to its redundant tab-based design, whole browser sessions don’t die, but these plug-in crashes are more common than with Firefox.
I have also found that, despite its promise, it pays to shut Chrome down every once in a while and re-start it. The lack of add-ons can be annoying, as when I’m asked for personal information or want to search a page for a word or phrase.
Other reviewers have not been so kind. Some bloggers are already calling it a failure, and the criticism is global in scope.
On the other hand, this open source browser is already being forked, as with a German version dubbed Iron.
This, to me, is good news. It may be the most important news.
It is wrong to evaluate Chrome as you would a new TV show. It is wrong to consider it solely in terms of Google because, like Firefox, this is an open source product subject to the open source process.
But what I think or what any other reporter thinks really does not matter. What do you think? Are you using Google Chrome now? Do you plan to? When? And if not, why not?
September 16th, 2008
Untangle changes the security game with open source
Untangle today announced Re-Router, a free open source download that lets any Windows desktop become a security gateway.
The program can handle policies on viruses, spam, spyware, and censorship, said CTO Dirk Morris.
“What it does behind the machine is run Untangle on a virtual machine, and using a re-routing protocol, to run traffic through it. You get all the benefits of Untangle but you don’t need dedicated hardware, or the need to reconfigure the network.”
Morris expects the biggest impact to lie in helping small businesses prevent use of IM, peer-to-peer, and improper Web pages. Anyone can become China, and for free.
There are sound and honest reasons for you to do this, Morris said.
“The Web is overtaking e-mail as the chief vector for malware. You can stop people from going to sites that have malware. You need to block phishing and malware sites even if you’re not blocking other things.”
Untangle is not yet in discussions with router companies, but I suggested adding value through this software might be one way companies like Netgear can maintain their retail prices and margins.
September 8th, 2008
Can Google Chrome build an ecosystem?
Google Chrome has already jumped some tough hurdles.
It faced its first security alerts, two bugs which taught users what the wrench in the corner of the screen is for. (It gets you updates.)
It has faced the first blush of backlash, with snarky charges of its being over-hyped, the expected stories of a threat to privacy, and a threat by Microsoft to put the anti-trust shoe on the other foot.
What it has yet to do is build an ecosystem.
One of the great strengths of Firefox is its ecosystem of add-ons. I miss my tool bars (especially the Google one) when using Chrome.
An ecosystem offers many advantages. But it also has disadvantages. Add-ons written by others can slow down your product, introduce security risks, and make you responsible for things you did not do.
I use Firefox for commerce because I keep my passwords in an add-on. I use Explorer to write posts here because Chrome does not yet support the Wordpress visual editor.
There are indications that Google “gets it.”
Google has extended its deal with Mozilla, so rumors of its death (or that of its ecosystem) are greatly exaggerated.
It’s also possible Google may go another route in building an ecosystem. SaaS vendors which create Web applications are thrilled with Chrome, and since many have working business models they might help Google build profits into Chrome fast.
The problem is that an ecosystem requires a vendor to scale-up in areas where Google has long been reluctant to scale-up.
Google’s real secret sauce is that it scales technology, not people. This is a variant on the old soccer saying that the ball is the fastest thing on the field. The computer is the ball.
But to build an ecosystem you need people who will meet with other people. Lots of people. People who need people and are, in many ways, the luckiest people in the world.
Mozilla has such people. Microsoft has such people. Does Google have enough of them, or a willingness to bring them in and respect them, as it respects technologists?
Stay tuned.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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