Open Season for Open Source

Nokia has acquired Trolltech. This hot on the heals of Sun's acquisition of MySQL. It truly is an exciting time and really gratifying for those of us that have been saying for years that Open Source Software is viable and that it makes sense to businesses.

I've always had a soft spot for KDE and Trolltech and it really seems like a great opportunity for them to truly become serious players. Webkit has already demonstrated over and over that KDE is build on top of solid technology. An interesting intersection of KDE -> Trolltech -> Nokia and Apple...

Mac OSS roundup

Thanks for KMF for some of these.

Looking for OSS software for Mac OS X?

Here is a list of very useful Open Source Software/Free Software directories for the Mac. I have used a couple of these with great success. There inevitably is some duplication, so be warned.
Here they are:

• Open Source Mac (http://www.opensourcemac.org/)
• FreeSMUG (http://www.freesmug.org/)
• iUseThis (http://osx.iusethis.com/search?q=open+source)
  
• CocoaDev (http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?CocoaOpen)
• AjaxFlakes Top 100 Best (http://www.ajaxflakes.com/open-source/top-100-best-open-source-mac-software)
  

The if you are looking for non-mac-specific OSS that will run on OS X there is:

• The mother ship (http://www.apple.com/opensource/)
• MacPorts (http://www.macports.org/)
• Fink (http://www.finkproject.org/)

Expect to need some Unix and X11 know-how to use the software provided through the last three links.

Mac OS X Open Source and Security

Previously I blogged about my regularly used Open Source applications on the Mac. Today I am dealing with some applications that deal with security on the Mac. In my career I wear two hats, one of Open Source advocate/developer/consultant and then also a security consultant hat.
I also have a keen interest in keeping my Mac secure when using it from day to day - thus the tools I am about to discuss deal with "personal" security (local firewall for example) as well as "network" security.

Lets get started.

1. MacGPG (http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/)
• The Free Software implementation of PGP. I specifically use the GPGMail plug-in for Apple Mail.app to allow me to send and receive encrypted email as well as sign emails and verify email signatures.
  
2. sshfs (http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/)
• A FUSE pluggable filesystem for the Mac that allows it to mount drives on other Unix or Linux hosts using ssh. This might not be a specific security related app but it does allow for extra security when sharing across a network - the links are encrypted and safe from snooping.
  
3. Waterroof (http://www.hanynet.com/waterroof/)
• A personal firewall manager that exposes the underlying, powerful, ipfw firewall of Mac OS X. There were a couple of scares with the Leopard firewall's default behavior when it first ship and it led me to look for more information on the topic. Waterroof allows a user to truly fine-tune the firewall. A handy wizard also allows novice users to set up a very secure default policy.
  
4. MacPorts Apps (http://www.macports.org/)
• Some applications are best served using macports. To install the following app download and install macports and then issue: "sudo port install appname"
  
1. nmap (http://insecure.org/nmap/)
• nmap is the de-facto standard when it comes to port scanning. You can use nmap to learn a lot about hosts, networks and services.
  
2. wireshark (http://www.wireshark.org/)
• wireshark is a packet sniffer with a lot of advanced capabilities. Packet captures can be analyzed to a great level of detail. It also produces traffic flow and usage reports on the traffic that it captures. If you need find out what is going on on your network you need Wireshark.
  

Thats it for this installment. There are many more apps within MacPorts that I'm not covering here, as well as some legendary apps like KisMac. I will try to blog again soon about some more Mac OS X Open Source goodness. As always comments are welcome and if you know of any other great OSS security analysis tools on the Mac please let me know.

Mac OS X Open Source Roundup

As we approach the end of the year, here is a list of really usefull Open Source utilities and applications that I use regularly on my Mac.
I run Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), but most of the applications should work on Tiger (10.4) as well.

1. Freemind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/)
• Indispensable mind-mapping application written in Java. I have been using Freemind for years on Linux, Windows and of course now on the Mac as well. Truly useful with some real advanced functions and scripting capabilities.
  
2. Vienna (http://www.opencommunity.co.uk/vienna2.php)
• An Open Source RSS feed reader. Vienna is a part of my daily routine in which I track a couple of hundred feeds. Once you get to know it you will love it even more - some clever keyboard shortcuts really create a lot of efficiency.
  
3. Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/)
• Firefox is the standard web browser for millions of Windows, Linux and Mac users out there. I prefer Firefox as opposed to Camino on the Mac as I really depend on some plug-ins for my daily security and privacy needs (I'll blog more about this again soon).
  
4. Adium (http://www.adiumx.com/)
• Due to its massive multi-protocol nature (supports over 10 different IM providers) Adium was a no-brainer when it came to Instant Messaging on the Mac. I have never tried iChat or any alternatives mostly as Adium did such a stellar job out of the box. Growl integration makes it even more powerful - I like the ability to do specific actions when certain contacts come online. It also offers the ability to "bundle" accounts from multiple networks into one account for those contact who like myself are on various networks.
  
5. Colloquy (http://colloquy.info/)
• The gents behind Adium also recommend Colloquy for IRC (internet relay chat). My usage of IRC varies depending on project and job focus but I have started to learn the nuances of the program and have grown to love it. I'm not crazy about its default behavior but after a little bit of tweaking it really turned out to be a powerful tool.
  
6. Quicksilver (http://www.blacktree.com/projects/quicksilver.html)
• What can one say about Quicksilver? It has changed the way I interact with my computer and probably would be one of the functions I cant live without. The ability to "act without doing" as the developers call it creates the most amazing productivity gains. I am not a Quicksilver ninja yet but the limited ways that I use it in has made life so much easier... Thinking of an app? Three keystrokes and you're there.
  

There's still a plethora of other applications that I use on a less regular basis. I will blog about Open Source security software for the Mac in the next installment.

How to FLOSS

In my never ending quest to discover good up-to-date resources about Open Source Software I stumbled across the following.

"This guide (developed in the context of the FLOSSMETRICS and OpenTTT projects) present a set of guidelines and suggestions for the adoption of open source software within SMEs, using a ladder model that will guide companies from the initial selection and adoption of FLOSS within the IT infrastructure up to the creation of suitable business models based on open source software."

The guide seems to be pretty comprehensive and could serve as a valuable resource for persons wanting to familiarise themselves with FLOSS.

The guide can be found at http://guide.conecta.it/.

Spot on

Matt Assay quoting Michael Tiemann on Microsoft and the OSI.
Going Open Source is the _best_ thing Microsoft could do.

...

The Semantic Desktop

Oh wow...

Watch out, here comes KDE4!
http://nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main1/Participants

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3688606

This is quite frankly mind-boggling, amazing, exciting stuff :-)
I love it when a good plan comes together!

First step towards the Semantic Web

It seems that the ideas reflected by Havoc Pennington and other GNOME developers in the GNOME Online Desktop echo some of the concepts put forward by Sir Tim Berners-Lee with his Semantic Web.

Very interesting...

I also have the desire, more and more everyday, that my data should integrate. I'm tired of synchronization issues, multiple calendars and task lists. The fact that items "dont match up". Standardization is definitely driving the ability to have a Semantic Web forward...

The challenge that we will then face is security and privacy. I for one would not want my personal calendar and tasks to be seen by everyone or synchronized with software or hardware that I do not fully control or own. Even though I would find it incredibly useful to see my work calendar on my personal phone (for planning purposes) that should not imply entitlement by my employer to have access to the rest of my data.

Did Enterprise Linux slow Linux adoption?

I have been fondly thinking of the "good old days" of Red Hat 9 recently. It seemed so clear back in the day that if you wanted to run any kind of server (or proprietary server software) that you could just run it on Red Hat 9. Everyone seemed to be using Red Hat. Debian was extremely popular, but if you just wanted to get going and run something Red Hat 9 seemed to be the obvious choice.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Suse Linux Enterprise just never could obtain the same kind of ubiquitous/de facto status as those early distributions had. All of a sudden sysadmins had to scramble to find new solutions or pay up. A lot of uncertainty ensued for vendors and for customers. The reasoning behind the change was sound but it left a big gap, which Debian and more so Ubuntu gladly filled. I know that Fedora and more recently OpenSUSE are strong, robust alternatives, but it just doesn't fit the bill as old Red Hat 9 did.

Could it be that had Red Hat just opened their development process to leverage the community more (the Ubuntu model) the world would've been a different place? I think now that things are really starting to take off the opportunity for revenue through services and support is really taking off for Ubuntu (and Canonical for that matter).

It is hard to tell how things would've been different, but I cannot seem to shake the feeling that if the latest server offering from Red Hat was still as free and ubiquitous as good old Red Hat 9 the world would've been a very different place by now.