With only a couple of days to go before the international standards bodies have to declare their votes in the Ecma-376 standardisation process, the blogosphere is really hotting up with all sorts of news and scandal:

• According to this, Sweden has declared it’s vote illegal and will now abstain due to “voting irregularities”. (Yeah, right…)
• New Zealand and India have both said “NO”,
• France should be saying “non” (but it might end up abstaining) after a bit of a fracas,
• In Hungary, the Standards Institution is to reconsider its vote,
• The Brazillians have said no,
• The Swedish debarcle may impact the Danish vote too,
• Hot off the blog - Norway says NO,

It is all getting quite exciting really - better than an episode of “Heros”, but I suspect that Microsoft my well end up with enough votes to scrape through by the rather unusual changes occurring to the status of many small and normally benign countries’ standards bodies…

I’d love to know what the BSi are going to do???

More later I’m sure

Update 01/09/07 - I just found this short analysis of the OOXML v ODF debate from The Brain Wrecked Tech and thought it to be very clear, concise, lucid and worth linking too.

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In our “Case Studies” links is a solitary connection to the blog of a UK based label printing company Mercian Labels.

Since March this year (2007) their MD, Adrian Steele, has thoughtfully covered many topics including the:

• reasons,
• processes,
• selection of software & suppliers,
• general observations
• and some of the problems & difficulties,

of migrating his company from a Microsoft based IT infrastructure to a fully Open Source alternative. His most recent post is a real milestone for him and for his business - he has finally gone “Redmond Free“. Totally.

Its a great feeling to be free (in a very small individual user way) of the restrictive, slow, unreliable xp/outlook configuration I USED to use!

There are still other users to migrate and work to be done, but it is a fascinating read and many other small to medium businesses can learn a great deal from the experiences that have been so well recorded.

Why not drop by and pay their site a visit, read his blog (as with most blogs it is in chronological order so start at the bottom to read the whole story) and, if you need any labels printed, I can strongly recommend a company that relies on Open Source software to do it.

I would love to have more case studies of this kind included here. The shared learning and experiences of many is a very powerful tool for all so if there are any other businesses that are migrating to Open Source (in part or in whole) and want to share the experience in an “Open” fashion, drop me a line so I can add your company to our list.

Disclaimer: I personally have had no connection to Mercian Labels and our training and consulting business (The Open Learning Centre) has had nothing to do with their migration whatsoever. This is Open Source after all; it’s all about shared experiences, and the freedom to learn with and from others.

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I have just been catching up after a few days holiday and came across this article “OOXML is defective by design” by Stéphane Rodriguez as referenced by Rob Weir’s blog.

Astounding! It really is quite scary just how bad Ecma-376 is.

• You can’t even do simple edits to the xml without causing massive damage to the file’s readability.
• You have to understand how and why Excel rounds, or doesn’t round, particular numbers - not explained the 6000+ specification.
• Everything is stored in US English in the xml file. As a developer, you would need to deal with all locale related issues independently. Do you know the Brazilian name for every formula in Excel? Care to have to deal with translating them into any (or all) others? How about separators? (OOXML uses a period; Full Stop)
• Multiple mark-up schemes. Yes, Word, Excel and Powerpoint use different mark-up languages to format text! (And each application has multiple schemes too!)
• Document security that can be circumvented by simply removing the password hashes that are embedded in the xml file.

Take some time to read his analysis - it is quite beyond me how the standards bodies are even considering that Ecma-376 should become a standard.

Could YOU implement it?

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Microsoft continues to do its level best to drag the ISO process for the OOXML ’standard’ through the dirt. Their latest astonishing move was to drag 20 partners into the Swedish voting process at the last minute. These Microsoft partners didn’t contribute or take part in the debate about approval of the spec, they just turned up and paid to vote for Microsoft. I am amazed they found this many people who didn’t have the ethical standards to know that what they were doing was wrong.

With a variety of votes from the national bodies it seems there will be no consensus so the next step is a Ballot Resolution Meeting. This will happen in Geneva and will be chaired by Alex Brown of the UK, who happens to have a blog. He is on the blogroll now, and I predict we will be hearing a lot more about him and from him in the next few months. So far he seems to dislike the NoOOXML campaigning but I think he would also dislike the way Microsoft are gaming the system. The process is important and I am sure he will see it is followed in spirit and letter, his writing is balanced and neutral (so I don’t like everything) and I think he will do a great job for ISO in this important role.

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I noted last week that Projity - the SaaS Project Management supplier - have released an Open Source desktop version of their product called OpenProj.

There are few Open Source applications in this space that have any serious user-base and the de facto standard to compare with is Microsoft’s Project application.

As I know next to nothing about project management software I asked a good friend of mine (David Catchpole) who does PM stuff for a living to take a look. I sent him a link to their download page and asked him if he’d try it out and give me some words. Here they are:

OpenProj from Projity

Before we start lets make it clear that OpenProj is a cracking piece of software given that it is free and Open Source. OpenProj doesn’t even bother to try and hide its inspiration and is such a close replica of Microsoft Project that it’s going to take you more than a few minutes to notice the differences. To cut a, possibly, very long review short, if you haven’t used MS Project or other scheduling package before and fancy having a shot at some basic project planning then download this and go for it. If you have used MS Project before here is a, not exhaustive, list of some of the more advanced stuff that you might miss:

• Printing control
• Formatting - of pretty much anything, text, timescale, Gantt, gridlines… (think default MS Project)
• File security
• Resource levelling
• Resource sharing
• Multiple projects (as we know them)
• Custom field names
• Formulas & automation
• Graphical indicators
• Custom tables
• Custom views
• Forms
• Custom default settings & behaviours
• Automatic outline level view
• Recurring tasks
• Custom Sorts, Filters & Grouping
• Collaboration
• Custom toolbars
• Spell checker
• Hyperlinks
• Inserted objects
• Integration & add-ons

Now that may sound like quite a long list but given the complexity (much of it hidden) of both MS Project and OpenProj it is quite some feat that the list is so short. Most professional planners would not be able to live with many of the omissions but for the more casual user it ticks most boxes. My feeling is that this is very much a first stab and we will see OpenProj picking up on some of the above gaps before long - printing possibly being its biggest weakness. There are also some minor user interface inconsistencies and quirks that reduce the feeling of quality but are not serious. Taking on MS Project in such an overt, and possibly lawyer friendly way, may be a little foolhardy but at least we now have an open alternative to a very pricey MS product.

Ironically one thing OpenProj does give us is a free MS Project viewer, something we previously had to pay for, as it happily opens .mpp files.

Keep a very close eye on OpenProj - to achieve what it has is staggering and with a bit of TLC it may yet take over the world…

Contributor: D.J.Catchpole BSc, MBCS, CITP, CEng - Director, NETquest Ltd and user of MS Project since 1990.

There is one other thing to mention that is certainly important for many. As OpenProj is written in Java, it will run on any mainstream operating system: Linux, Windows, Apple Macs, and probably anything else that you can get a fairly recent JRE installed on. MS Project I assume is Windows only.

I just checked on Sourceforge - since it became available for download (just 14 days ago) it has been downloaded approximately 30,000 times and is currently ranked #6 out of ~160,000 project for daily activity!

Thanks Dave, in the world of Open Source, an individuals’ comments, ideas and opinions can really make a difference. If you feel inclined to, why not jump on their mailing lists and help them to improve it. I’m sure your contribution(s) would be warmly received…

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I don’t. Very often…

Sometimes there is an ad that attracts my attention for all the right reasons: It’s relevant, interesting, humorous, potentially lucrative etc etc.

But there is one set of on-line adverts I find increasingly compelling and that’s those I come across by Microsoft. You know, when you are reading a piece about Linux or some Open Source news article, there are always Microsoft ads nearby that claim to show me how their stuff is better, faster, more secure or reliable.

Well, being an OSS advocate I find their claims quite hard to believe, so I ALWAYS click on them - just to make sure I am not missing out on something important. I haven’t found anything yet, but I guess if we all try we might find it

I wonder how much their click-through rates are?

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You will be familiar by now about the ongoing saga of Ecma-376. No? Read some of my earlier posts and google for blogs about OOXML or Ecma-376 or ODF and such like.

Ecma-376 is a legitimised published specification of Microsoft’s OOXML (Office Open XML) document format that was introduced with their Office 2007 application suite. They have requested (paid?) Ecma to represent the specification through the national and international standards’ bodies for fast track approval, despite it being over 6000 pages in length!) as an International Standard.

There have been many hundreds of technical criticisms made, and flaws with the specification identified that make it hard to see how it could ever become such a standard. In mine and others’ blogging about this, there have been many questions raised about the way in which national standards bodies are being “manouvered” into voting in a positive, or just benign, manner when the technical issues raised would have usually caused the vote to be a resounding no.

Tonight I found this excellent summary of the rather suspicious and unusual voting patterns that have taken place and been recorded so far. It really stinks…..

The other place of regularly updated record on this subject is at noooxml.org.

As I have said before, please don’t buy any more M$ products. Don’t even pirate their stuff. You will lose control of YOUR data, unless you sign an irrevocable, never-ending exclusive license - a bit like doing a deal with the devil…. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

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O.K. Last night I followed this very well refined Howto on the Compiz Fusion forums. It works like a charm… In fact there isn’t really much to add, but I’ll explain a few steps along the way. And make a few comments where something might be interesting.

The finished CF works really well on my PC (An AMD 3200+ with a rather old and shabby Nvidia 6200 card). Some of the new effects are very cool (your windows can fold up like a paper aeroplane and the Shift Switcher is pretty neat) and the whole thing feels very smooth - especially the cube rotation and expo.

Here we go then.

Firstly, this build is for a normal Ubuntu Feisty setup. That means we are talking Gnome (not KDE or XFCE). Also, as I only have a Nvidia graphics card, that’s what you get here. The HowTo does explain what to do if you have ATI or Intel cards, but I can’t comment.

As a safeguard I strongly recommend you first remove any existing compiz, beryl, compiz fusion stuff you have previously installed. Search through synaptic and uninstall everything that’s relevant.

All building, downloads etc I did in a single directory under my home_dir (~). I called it “compiz”.

This build is from source code and so won’t be recorded in the package manager. Therefore, you will probably want to keep this directory tree around so, you can - in the future - use make uninstall to remove this software; for example when the Ubuntu repo gets updated to include the latest and greatest.

Having just said that - I have read reports that local compilation provides better performance than a “one-size-fits-all” build that you get from a deb repository. I don’t have the time or inclination to test this theory but I am a big fan of building things from source. I do believe you get a better system and much less baggage too. You also grok (really understand) your system much better.

For those who are interested in learning more - I REALLY REALLY recommend you take a look at Linux From Scratch. You will learn more than you ever thought possible, and it will help you in trouble shooting your own systems (whatever they are) when you come back to whatever distro is your preference.

Finally - I also found a script yesterday, that purports to do what you see below automatically. I downloaded it and tried it but it is wanting in a number ways. It failed for me, it made too many assumptions about my system and tried to install stuff that I neither wanted or needed. In short you lost control… It isn’t hard to find it on-line but I don’t recommend it. The whole process below only took me about an hour. Took me much longer to write up though

Following the Howto, first of all get all the tools needed to build from source:
sudo apt-get install git-core automake build-essential intltool libtool python-pyrex python2.5-dev
sudo apt-get build-dep compiz

Git is interesting. It is a version control system similar in some respects to SVN (Subversion) and CVS (Concurrent Versioning System). It is used by some pretty big software projects including the Linux Kernel.

Make and then move into our directory:
mkdir ~/compiz
cd ~/compiz

Get the compiz core 0.5.2 tarball and extract it:
wget http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/individual/app/compiz-0.5.2.tar.gz
tar xf compiz-0.5.2.tar.gz

Now get all the packages (in source code form) from their git repository:
git clone git://anongit.compiz-fusion.org/fusion/libraries/bcop
git clone git://anongit.compiz-fusion.org/fusion/compizconfig/ccsm
git clone git://anongit.compiz-fusion.org/fusion/compizconfig/libcompizconfig
git clone git://anongit.compiz-fusion.org/fusion/compizconfig/compizconfig-python
git clone git://anongit.compiz-fusion.org/fusion/plugins-main
git clone git://anongit.compiz-fusion.org/fusion/decorators/emerald
git clone git://anongit.compiz-fusion.org/fusion/decorators/emerald-themes
git clone git://anongit.compiz-fusion.org/users/crdlb/fusion-icon

Also retrieve two optional packages that are well worth having:
git clone git://anongit.opencompositing.org/fusion/plugins-extra
git clone git://anongit.opencompositing.org/fusion/plugins-unsupported

We are now ready to build. Move into the directory we made when we extracted the compiz tarball earlier and run the standard CMMI command (C=Configure, M=Make, MI=Make Install):
cd ~/compiz/compiz-0.5.2
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --disable-kde && make && sudo make install &&
cd -
The double ampersands are a useful thing - they check for successful completion of the previous command before proceeding to the next. You will be prompted for your password before the make install command is run as you require root privileges to write to the /usr hierarchy. The cd - command takes you back to your previous directory.

Let the system know where to find the configuration information.
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig

Now we build the packages we downloaded earlier by moving into the relevant directories and running the commands as shown and in this order:
cd ~/compiz/bcop
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local --disable-kde && make && sudo make install &&
cd -

cd ~/compiz/libcompizconfig
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local --disable-kde && make && sudo make install &&
cd -

cd ~/compiz/compizconfig-python
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local --disable-kde && make && sudo make install &&
cd -

cd ~/compiz/plugins-main
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local --disable-kde && make && sudo make install &&
cd -

This is the configuration manager which is a Python application and so has a different build and install command sequence:
cd ~/compiz/ccsm
sudo python setup.py install &&
cd -

cd ~/compiz/emerald
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local --disable-kde && make && sudo make install &&
cd -

cd ~/compiz/emerald-themes
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local --disable-kde && make && sudo make install &&
cd -

cd ~/compiz/plugins-extra
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local --disable-kde && make && sudo make install &&
cd -
I had a problem with building this package. It failed to compile looking for a header called text.h. A bit of googling showed me this is installed by the plugins-main package so I went back and rebuilt the plugins-main package, made sure it installed properly then came back to here. Second time around it built fine.

cd ~/compiz/plugins-unsupported
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local --disable-kde && make && sudo make install &&
cd -

This makes sure that your Xorg configuration is correctly setup to work with the Nvidia binary driver. If you are using ATI or Intel graphics chipsets, please see the HowTo for what to do with them.
sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals -d 24

This is the new startup package that starts CF itself and provides a small icon on your toolbar (top right by default) that gives you access to the various configuration applications and options:
cd ~/compiz/fusion-icon
make &&
sudo make install &&
cd -

That’s it. Compiz Fusion is now built and installed. To run it from your terminal type fusion-icon &. To have it start automatically, add the command fusion-icon to your System>Preferences>Sessions utility and give it a meaningful name.

If you find a package fails to compile, as I had above, try getting the very latest code by pulling the source back from the git repository. Enter the relevant directory for each package and simply type git-pull. This will check for any file changes and upload only those that have changed. Then use the CMMI command above to rebuild and install as before.

I hope this is useful and have a lot of fun…

Update 01/09/07. Diego asked me to post my xorg.conf. Here it is:

=======Begin xorg.conf=======

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder3) Thu Nov 9 17:55:20 PST 2006

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf(5) manual page.
# (Type “man xorg.conf” at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Default Layout”
Screen “Default Screen” 0 0
InputDevice “Generic Keyboard”
InputDevice “Logitech MX1000″ “CorePointer”
EndSection

Section “Files”

# path to defoma fonts
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1″
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi”
FontPath “/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType”
EndSection

Section “Module”
Load “i2c”
Load “bitmap”
Load “ddc”
Load “extmod”
Load “freetype”
Load “glx”
Load “int10″
Load “vbe”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Generic Keyboard”
Driver “kbd”
Option “CoreKeyboard”
Option “XkbRules” “xorg”
Option “XkbModel” “pc105″
Option “XkbLayout” “gb”
Option “XkbOptions” “lv3:ralt_switch”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Logitech MX1000″
Driver “evdev”
Option “Name” “PS2++ Logitech MX Mouse”
Option “HWHEELRelativeAxisButtons” “7 6″
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Generic Monitor”
HorizSync 28.0 - 64.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 60.0
Option “DPMS”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “nVidia Corporation NV37GL [Quadro FX 330/GeForce PCX 5300]”
Driver “nvidia”
EndSection

Section “Screen”

#Option “AllowGLXWithComposite” “True”
#Option “RenderAccel” “True”
Identifier “Default Screen”
Device “nVidia Corporation NV37GL [Quadro FX 330/GeForce PCX 5300]”
Monitor “Generic Monitor”
DefaultDepth 24
Option “NvAGP” “0″
Option “DamageEvents” “True”
Option “UseEvents” “True”
Option “TripleBuffer” “True”
Option “NoLogo” “True”
Option “AddARGBGLXVisuals” “True”
SubSection “Display”
Depth 1
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1152×768″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 4
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1152×768″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 8
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1152×768″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 15
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1152×768″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 16
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1152×768″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1152×768″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “Enable”
Option “DAMAGE” “Enable”
Option “RENDER” “Enable”
EndSection

======= End xorg.conf =======

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Yesterday the team announced the release of the first development release of Compiz Fusion. This means it is still “unstable” but almost certainly more stable than the temporary Ubuntu repo we have been using which builds “deb” packages automatically from their git repository on an almost daily basis.

Here’s a nice video showing off the latest eye candy you could be getting on your desktop

According to their release notice, the odd release numbers are for unstable and the even numbers for stable code. So the first stable release will be 0.6 but may actually have less features than the 0.5 release if particular code is still deemed to be unstable… (Hope that makes sense?)

Anyway - this thread discusses how to build 0.5.2 from source on Ubuntu if you want it now. Or alternatively I guess, just wait for the very kind host of the unofficial Ubuntu repos to come back off holiday

If I get chance to I’ll probably build it tonight and document the process here once I am happy it works.

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Novell start to discuss the implications of the legal victory they achieved against SCO on the 10th August.

In a decent summing up of opinion on infoworld by Elizabeth Montalbano, we get:

“We’re not interested in suing people over Unix,” Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry said. “We’re not even in the Unix business any more.”

And Novell’s own CMO John Dragoon gives a neat and concise diary of events that led to Friday’s momentous decision:

“This is a great outcome for Linux and the open source community. A big cloud has been lifted. Customers and developers can deploy and develop on Linux with increased confidence that SCO’s copyright allegations around Linux will be put to rest. “

Checking SCO’s stock quote tells us what the market really thinks: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=scox. Down to just 37c when I looked. That’s a fall of over 75% since market close on Friday and a market capitalisation of about $8m (or approx. £4m in Sterling).

I can’t see how SCO can remain a viable business for much longer. As an anonymous commentator wrote on a mailing list - Novell could buy them with spare change and that would be the end of that. Although it’s a bit of a waste of $8m I guess. There are plenty of other companies out there with that sort of cash to burn…

• Microsoft Corporation: $268.14B
• International Business Machines Corp. : $151.90B
• Hewlett-Packard Company: $122.69B
• Red Hat, Inc. : $4.12B
• Novell, Inc. : $2.26B
• Sun Microsystems, Inc.: $16.74B
• Oracle Corporation : $99.96B

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