Planet OpenNMS

July 02, 2009

Geneva information

Es geht nicht um Technik.

Essay_digital_futureIch habe mir die Mühe gemacht und meine Gedanken zum Thema einmal aufgeschrieben.

Ich weiß nicht warum Du Dich so aufregst” – “weil diese Kluft zwischen denjenigen, die verstanden haben und den anderen eine gesellschaftliche Rolle spielen wird”, das zieht die Frage nach sich:

Warum spielt die “digitale rupture” eine gesellschaftliche Rolle?

(weil’s lang ist hier als PDF)

„Gesellschaft“ besteht aus Menschen und Organisationen. Wenn man die nach ihrem Verhältnis zum Internet in Gruppen einteilt, dann findet man:

  • Nicht-Nutzer, die keinen Zugang zum Netz haben

  • Konsumenten, die als Zuschauer im Netz unterwegs sind

  • Teilnehmer, die sich über Kommentare, eigene Webseiten, am Netz beteiligen

  • Multiplikatoren, die die Meinung und Trends im Netz mitbestimmen („Netzöffentlichkeit prägen“)

Eine weitere Unterscheidung wäre noch die Frage nach dem „wie“, „warum“ man eigentlich im Netz ist.

  • Digital Natives sind mit der Technologie aufgewachsen

  • „Affine“ haben sich die Kenntnisse und das Verständnis angeeignet

  • Oligarchen kaufen sich in das Netz ein

Ein Beispiel für Oligarchen sind die großen Telekommunikationsunternehmen oder auch Verlagshäuser, die ihr jeweiliges Geschäftsmodell mit Kapitaleinsatz in das nächste Medium getragen haben. Dabei ist „Oligarch“ nicht wertend gemeint, das englische „Incumbent“ klingt noch schlimmer ;-)

Es geht bei den Unterscheidungen auch nicht um „gut“ oder „schlecht“. Eine Gesellschaft muß in ihrer Gesamtheit funktionieren und ein System bilden. Dieses System muß alle Teilnehmer umfassen, nicht nur die coolen Digital Natives, sondern eben auch meine Großeltern, die das Internet weder brauchen noch wollen.

Eine Überlegung die ich mir in diesem Zusammenhang gestellt habe, ich greife vor, ist ob die Ursache des Problems nicht ist, daß die Gestaltungsmacht in unserer Gesellschaft in den Händen von zu alten Menschen ist. Es wäre spannend, eine Alterspyramide neben eine „Machtpyramide“ zu stellen und zu schauen, wo überhaupt schon DN’s angekommen sind. Daß sie kommen werden ist keine Frage, stellte man sie gäbe die Biologie die Antwort – zur Freude der Piraten: Der Internet-Ausdrucker ist eine aussterbende Spezies, man muß nur lange genug warten.

Aber genau das können wir nicht, denn die Gefahr daß die alten Männer mit Kugelschreibern zu viel zerstören ist zu groß.

Der technologische Fortschritt durch die Allgegenwärtigkeit des Netzes im Leben ist eine Entwicklung die mit dem Buchdruck vergleichbar ist. Der Buchdruck hat das Wissensmonopol der Kirche gebrochen und die Reformation erst möglich gemacht. Luther übersetzte auf Deutsch und ließ drucken – auf einmal konnte jeder die Bibel lesen und war nicht mehr auf die Interpretation durch die bisherige Staatskirche angewiesen. Die Sprache der Macht wechselte und sie wurde lesbar, überprüfbar, zugänglich.

Als wir in der Anfangszeit der Vernetzung die technischen Möglichkeiten des Netzes aus politischer Sicht betrachteten war für uns klar: Das Netz darf nicht den Unternehmen vorbehalten bleiben, es muß jedem zur Verfügung stehen. Unternehmen hatten die Vorteile der Vernetzung seit langem entdeckt und ihre Standorte über Wählverbindungen und Standleitungen miteinander verbunden. Wir waren der Ansicht, daß dieses Mittel der Kommunikation ihnen nicht vorbehalten sein sollte – die Idee war, das Internet „jedem“ zur Verfügung zu stellen. Angesichts der umfassenden und breitbandigen Vernetzung von heute kann man sagen: Das Ziel wurde erreicht.

Die Vorstellung, die wir von der vernetzten Gesellschaft hatten hat aber die Nebenwirkungen von heute nicht berücksichtigt – wir hätten nicht erwartet, daß das Moment so groß sein würde.

Mit Moment meine ich die Kraft, die durch die Menschen entsteht. Die Nutzer des Netzes, egal welcher Kategorie sie angehören, haben die technischen Möglichkeiten entdeckt. Sie haben ihr Leben um die Möglichkeiten ergänzt, die sich durch die Vernetzung ergeben haben. So wie das Gehirn nach Ansicht der Neurologen lernen könnte, mit drei Beinen zu laufen, wurde „das Netz“ gelernt, eingebaut und als Selbstverständlichkeit benutzt.

Aus dieser Integration der Möglichkeiten der Vernetzung in das Leben entsteht Energie – die Geschwindigkeit und der Verlust von räumlicher Distanz als Schwelle für Kommunikation wirken als Katalysatoren für menschliche Beziehungen und das Erleben.

Entgegen der oft genutzten Phrase von der „Verlagerung des Lebens ins Netz“ bin ich auch deshalb viel mehr der Ansicht, daß in Wirklichkeit das Umgekehrte geschieht: Das Netz wird ins Leben verlagert und Teil davon. Damit erklärt sich auch, warum in Frankreich die angedachte Sperrung des Internet-Zuganges als schwerwiegender Grundrechtseingriff bewertet wurde und eben nicht dem Hausverbot in dem Geschäft in dem jemand gestohlen hat gleichgestellt wurde.

Der Buchdruck wiederum wirkte ebenfalls als Katalysator: Ideen und Wissen wurden verläßlich und in großer Masse reproduzierbar, verfügbar.

Der große Unterschied zwischen dem Buchdruck und dem Internet ist die Eigendynamik der Technologie. Bücher sind statisch, einmal gedruckt werden sie nicht mehr verändert. Sie sind physisch, müssen zum Leser transportiert werden, können vernichtet werden, zusammengefaßt: Bücher kann man verbrennen, eine Datei die sich in einem peer-to-peer-Netz befindet zu löschen ist ungleich schwerer.

Regierungen versuchen heute, das Netz zu regulieren, sprich: Zu zensieren. Wer diese Versuche jetzt aber eins zu eins auf den Versuch der Bücherverbrennung überträgt macht es sich zu einfach und spielt das Problem herunter.

Zuerst muß man sich darüber klar werden, daß das Interesse einer Gesellschaft, bestimmte Informationen zu unterdrücken legitim ist. Hierüber kann man sich vortrefflich streiten, auf einer sehr abstrakten Ebene. Praktisch gab es und gibt es keine Gesellschaft, in der sämtliche Informationen unbedingt verfügbar gemacht werden dürfen. Totale Informationsfreiheit bedeutete auch, daß Beleidigungen, Lügen, Verleumdungen und Volksverhetzungen nicht zensiert werden dürften – und der gesellschaftliche Konsens in Europa nach dem Ende des zweiten Weltkrieges ist, daß es Dinge gibt, die öffentlich nicht gesagt werden dürfen. Diesen Konsens in Frage zu stellen ist gefährlich und führt vor allem dazu, das eigentliche Problem aus den Augen zu verlieren.

Damit verbunden ist das weit verbreitete Mißverständnis, daß „die Gesetze“ nicht „für das Internet“ gemacht seien. Einher geht damit die oft gehörte Formulierung daß „das Internet kein rechtsfreier Raum“ sei. Natürlich nicht, denn es ist nicht mal ein Raum – die Gesetze gelten für die Menschen in ihrem Geltungsbereich. Im Internet gibt es aber keine Menschen, sondern nur Informationen. Die wiederum werden von Menschen eingestellt.

Natürlich kann man jetzt das Beispiel des Volksverhetzers aus Kanada heranziehen, der aus der vermeintlich sicheren Entfernung seine Thesen in den deutschen Sprachraum schleuderte. Genützt hat ihm das nichts, denn irgendwann hat er sich seiner Bezugsgruppe physikalisch genähert und sich damit in den Geltungsbereich des deutschen Strafrechts begeben. Was ich damit sagen will ist, daß die Mehrheit der Rechtsverletzungen in physikalischer Nähe zu ihrer Bezugsgruppe begangen werden und daß dort, wo die physikalische Nähe nicht gegeben ist, die klassischen Mittel der Strafverfolgung und Rechtsdurchsetzung greifen können – das Internet braucht kein Lex specialis, die legi generali sind bei weitem noch nicht ausgereizt.

Die „rechtliche“ Diskussion und das Aufheben, das um die Versuche der Sperrung von Webseiten gemacht wird sind nichts anderes als Nebelkerzen oder vielleicht: Erdbeben, die durch die Verschiebung der Kontinentalplatten ausgelöst werden, Scheingefechte.

Die Vernetzung an sich ist hingegen nicht aufzuhalten. Technologie erzeugt stets einen ökonomischen Vorteil. Entweder sind Informationen schneller und in besserer Qualität verfügbar oder Aufgaben können mit weniger Aufwand an Zeit und Menschen erledigt werden. Allein das unternehmerische Handeln wird also die Vernetzung und die Durchdringung des Alltags mit Technologie stetig vorantreiben. Die ebenso stetig sinkenden Kosten für Technologien unterstützen diesen Effekt.

Eines meiner Beispiele für diese Entwicklung ist die Kombination von IPV6, günstiger Funktechnik und autonomer Netze: Als Besitzer eines Strom- oder Gasnetzes muß ich das Netz regelmäßig kontrollieren – Menschen müssen sich physikalisch die Leitungen ansehen. Was, wenn ich jeden Strommast elektronisch aufrüsten würde und das Netz mir von alleine sagt, wenn es glaubt ein Problem zu haben? Was, wenn in einer Gemeinde die Laterne von alleine meldet, daß sie defekt ist? Wenn die benötigten Komponenten günstig zu haben sind, wird sich eine solche Kalkulation rechnen.

Genau wie für „das Netz“ wird es für diese technologische Entwicklung Nutzergruppen geben. Die Schnittmenge zwischen den beiden Nutzergruppen (privat/Internet, professionell/Internet-Technologie) wird sehr hoch sein.

Während also auf der einen Seite das Netz durch Menschen in ihr Leben integriert wird, werden auf der anderen Seite Unternehmen die Technologien, die das Netz ausmachen, aktiv nutzen. Das bedeutet, daß sie aus der Menge derjenigen, die sich das Netz zu eigen gemacht haben, rekrutieren werden. Es entsteht eine gesellschaftliche Entwicklung, die systembildend ist.

Um das Beispiel des Buchdruckes wieder aufzugreifen: Es wird Menschen geben, die lesen und schreiben können, es wird Unternehmen geben, die den Vorteil der Schrift für ihre Ziele erkennen und entsprechend „gelehrte“ einstellen.

Tatsächlich ist das heute schon so, nur sind die Mengen geringer. Die Anzahl derjenigen, die „Lesen und Schreiben“ können wächst aber stetig.

Im Gegensatz zum „Lesen und Schreiben“ ist aber die Bedeutung der Technologie für das Leben der „Gelehrten“ wesentlich größer, sie werden sich über kurz oder lang für eines der beiden Systeme entscheiden – bleibe ich bei den Analphabeten, gehöre ich zu den „Gelehrten“?

Schließlich kommt noch eine dritte Entwicklung ins Spiel. Der Arbeitsmarkt verändert sich. Wenn wir heute sehen, daß der Bedarf an Facharbeitern nachläßt weil produzierende Betriebe in anderen Ländern günstiger produzieren dann ist die Konsequenz, daß ein Analphabet schlechte Chancen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt hat. Es gibt Arbeit, sicher, nur nicht viel und: Sie wird schlecht bezahlt.

Diese Veränderung des Arbeitsmarktes ist gekoppelt an eine immer geringere Anzahl von Menschen, die zur Ernährung der Bevölkerung notwendig sind. Es gibt weniger Arbeit, aber es gibt genug zu essen und – wir können uns eine langfristig hohe Arbeitslosigkeit nicht nur leisten, sondern wir müssen uns darauf einstellen. Die Frage ist, wie wir damit umgehen wollen.

Diese Elemente (Arbeitsmarkt, ökonomischer Druck, Vereinnahmung des Netzes durch die Nutzer) reichen aus, um die Gesellschaft nachhaltig zu spalten.

Genau an dieser Stelle sind wir gefordert, politisch zu handeln. Und genau an dieser Stelle versagen Politiker generationenweise. Die Vernetzung gleicht dem Buchdruck, sicher, nur ist sie viel schneller, viel direkter und im Gegensatz zu Büchern kann man Daten im Netz nicht verbrennen.

Die Ultima Ratio der heute „an der Macht“ befindlichen Politiker ist jedoch genau das, Bücherverbrennung. Sie sind mit Aktenumläufen groß geworden und verstehen nicht, daß das Netz für Menschen eben mehr ist als eine Umlaufmappe, Jörg Tauss hat das in seinem Abschiedsbrief aus der SPD schön und umfassend beschrieben. Wenn wir nicht wollen, daß Bücher gelesen werden, können wir sie verbieten, vernichten, wir können den Wareneingang physikalisch kontrollieren, gar Druckmaschinen beschlagnahmen.

Das Extrem der Zensur und der mühsame Versuch, „Inhalte zu verbieten“ zeigt das auf. Wie oben ausgeführt hat eine Gesellschaft das legitime Recht, sich für oder gegen Inhalte zu entscheiden. Sie kann dieses Recht aber nur begrenzt durchsetzen. Und vor allem muß sie sich bei der Durchsetzung ihrer Rechte an die Regeln halten, die die Gesellschaft bestimmen. In Deutschland ist das das Grundgesetz. Die Art und Weise der „Zensur“, der Inhaltskontrolle, die durch das Zensurgesetz vom Juni 2009 eingeführt werden soll ist mit ihren Begleitumständen aber mit der Verfassung, mit der Gesellschaft nicht vereinbar.

Anstatt also intelligent zu handeln, werden Maßnahmen getroffen, die die Grundfesten der Gesellschaft selbst in Frage stellen – und das ist selbst dann, wenn das Ziel der Maßnahme richtig ist, nicht nur verfassungswidrig sondern: Gefährlich. Es macht eine Tendenz deutlich, die „den Zweck alle Mittel heiligen“ läßt. Wir sollten uns sehr gut fragen, ob wir in einer solchen Gesellschaft leben möchten.

Die Gesellschaft als solche wird auch reagieren, früher oder später. Anders als früher kann man die verbotenen Schriften nicht mehr an der holländischen Grenze oder beim Hauptzollamt aus dem Verkehr ziehen. Und anders als früher sind nicht mehr wenige, einzelne, betroffen, sondern viele. Und da in der.l paranoiden Post-9/11-Welt jeder verdächtig ist, ist auch jeder im Prinzip schuldig – das lehrt die kriminalistische Erfahrung. Durch die Menge der Betroffenen wird wiederum die Wahrnehmung gestärkt. Die Gesellschaft wird früher oder später den Verlust ihrer Freiheit bemerken und reagieren. Als Gegenmittel benötigen wir spektakuläre Verbrechen und diffuse Bedrohungsszenarien die in der Öffentlichkeit als hinreichender Grund für den Verlust an Freiheit und eine zunehmende Kontrolle wahrgenommen werden können – ich habe schließlich nichts zu verbergen und die, die erwischt werden werden schon irgendwas ausgefressen haben.

Anstatt also Scheingefechte um Urheberrechte und Zensur zu führen sollten wir uns lieber fragen, in welcher Art von Gesellschaft wir in zwanzig oder dreißig Jahren leben möchten. Und wir sollten uns fragen, ob der Bundestag nicht einen radikalen Generationenwechsel benötigt – mit einer neuen Generation von Politikern, die ultrakonservative Positionen vertritt. Dann nämlich, wenn es um die Grundprinzipien geht, nach denen wir über sechzig Jahre gelebt haben.

Interessanterweise hat keine der politischen Kräfte in Deutschland eine solche Vision, man lebt von der Hand in den Mund und von Wahl zu Wahl, die man gewinnen will – aber wofür eigentlich?

Die digital rupture spielt also deshalb eine Rolle, weil der Abwehrkampf der Generation 40+ das Potential hat uns in eine schöne neue Welt zu führen aus der wir uns nur schwer wieder befreien werden können.

Deshalb rege ich mich auf. Die technischen und handwerklichen Stümpereien sind nicht das größte Problem.

by af at July 02, 2009 03:48 PM

June 29, 2009

Adventures in Open Source

A Week in Silicon Valley

Sorry I’ve been so quiet lately. I spent last week in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale, to be exact) and it kept me so busy that I wasn’t able to find the time to write anything.

I’ve been to this area of California dozens of times, but I can barely suppress my delight at seeing the headquarters of all those tech companies. Just driving around for lunch is a veritable Who’s Who of the industry. Seriously, as we went to In-N-Out one day we drove past a building that had a sign out front for a company I’ve been talking to for a couple of months about using OpenNMS, but we had never met in person. I dropped them an e-mail and we went out for dinner on Thursday. Too cool.

The company I was working for was right across the street from Palm.



Speaking of Palm, I’m still trying to decide on a new phone. The Palm Pre is out to relatively positive reviews. There is always the iPhone, but until AT&T gets their femtocell solution figured out it is not an option for me. A friend of mine at Google hooked me up with a G1 Android-powered phone, but one of my requirements has to be an easy way to sync my calendar and contacts from my Mac.



From what I can tell, the only way to easily sync your contacts with a G1 is to sync them through Google. I’m enough of a privacy nut that I really don’t want to have my address book on a server I don’t control, so that option is out. For the Pre there appears to be a Missing Sync that’ll work, so that is an option. Bah, I think I just hold off for a few months and see what else comes up.

One thing I really liked about being back in California was the plethora of places to eat. My throat has been bothering me lately, so it was nice to be able to get a big hot bowl of Pho.



On the way to the restaurant I saw a very typically California sign on a post:



I hope they find it.

Tuesday night I got to meet up with a friend of mine from high school named Geoff Davis.



He’s doing some interesting things at Google, and plus we got to try this great Thai place in Mountain View.

We talked past the last shuttle back to San Francisco, so I ended up driving him back to his place in the Haight. It was nice coming over that last ridge on the 101 and seeing the city skyline. I think there will always be a special place in my heart for San Francisco.

On Friday I made plans to meet up with John Mark Walker in San Mateo. Neither of us realized it at the time, but they were having a “wine walk” street faire so it took awhile to find a place to park. As I was waiting for him I wandered around a bit, and came across this Porsche 550. I’m not sure it was authentic, since they are extremely rare and worth north of US$1 million, but it was in any case a nice looking car.



We ate at this Indian place and got caught up on gossip in our little world of open source. He will be moderating a panel with me, Luke Kanies and Michael Coté at the LinuxWorld reboot called OpenSourceWorld in August.



I’m not sure what he was planning with the knife.

I made it home with little trouble on Saturday, ending my third trip out west in six weeks. In addition to the trip in August for the conference, I have only one more short trip to New York City scheduled, so perhaps I’ll get to sleep in my own bed for a change.

by tarus at June 29, 2009 07:21 PM

This Week in OpenNMS

This Week in OpenNMS: Waterfallin'

It's time for This Week in OpenNMS. This week some of the regulars were out of town, but somehow we got some code committed anyways...

Project Updates

  • Stable: Current Release is 1.6.5

    1.6.5 is the current stable release, released May 16th. It fixes a number of bugs, and adds a few features. For a full list, see the bugzilla 1.6.5 milestone. This is a non-critical but recommended upgrade for anyone on OpenNMS versions older than 1.6.5.

  • Unstable: Current Release is 1.7.4

    1.7.4 is the current unstable release, released June 8th. Since 1.7.3, more work has gone on in the Provisiond code, as well as ACLs, RANCID reports, thresholding fixes, enabling maps by default, and an entirely new way of creating the OpenNMS database under the covers. A 1.7.x overview is available in the release notes on the site.

  • Unstable: ACL UI Work

    Massimiliano Dessì has continued his work on a GUI for the ACL plumbing that has been implemented in OpenNMS.

  • Unstable: Provisiond Bugs

    The provisiond bug we were working on last week has been fixed, and imports (as well as the quick Node Add) are working again.

  • Unstable: Monitor Updates

    Jason Aras got his Bean Scripting Framework monitor working last week, and was able to create a test monitor in Groovy.

  • Unstable: Code Cleanup

    My code cleanup work in a branch was merged back into trunk alongside the provisiond fixes. We're now down to under 2000 Eclipse warnings instead of over 3000. ;) Some of those come from Castor-generated code, so it's actually looking quite a bit better, but there's still plenty to fix up.

  • Unstable: Build System Fixes

    Somewhere along the way, the java.net maven repository changed URLs, and some of the dependencies we are using in Maven were pointing to their old URL. The java.net folks put a 301 redirect from the old host to the new, but Maven doesn't actually honor it, and was writing HTML files to the .pom and .jar files in the local build directory. ;) This has been fixed now in trunk.

  • Unstable: Modularizing the Web Build

    Donald has been continuing his work on breaking up the webapp build.

TMForum Team Action Week

TMForum is the TeleManagement Forum, a consortium of telecom and other vendors who work together on standards of integration.

This week Matt and Craig went to Baltimore to meet up with the other TIP folks at Team Action Week. The goal was to try to hammer out a bit more of the specification for TIP, the TMF Interface Program. The idea is to have a standard interface for various management components like trouble-ticketing tools, fault detection systems, performance monitoring, etc. OpenNMS hopes to develop the reference implementation for these protocols, once they get finalized.

A lot of politics were involved, but we're hoping that the process will move forward enough for us to start an actual implementation. Although the process isn't great, the concepts are interesting, and should give us a good basis for modularizing OpenNMS in the future, as well as a tighter way to interact with other systems than we do even now. Keep your fingers crossed, and feel free to add toes if you think it will help.

SourceForge Community Choice Awards: OpenNMS is a Finalist - Vote Now!

I posted this last week, but it's so gosh-darn important, I thought I'd repeat. ;)

Thanks, everyone, for helping to nominate OpenNMS for the Community Choice Awards!

Now that we are a finalist in the Best Tool for the Enterprise category, it's time to vote!

As Tarus mentions in his blog, they asked us finalists to do a little extra and create a video talking about the project and why we feel we should get your vote -- I mean, besides the obvious reasons, like that our users are the best, most wonderful, handsome, beautiful, and successful people in the IT and open-source world, and obviously they deserve recognition for that...

Ahem, anyways, as I was saying, they asked us to do a video, the results are up at YouTube -- or if you just want the funny bits, we've got a short trailer.

Anyways, thanks again everyone for your nomination. All that's left is to go back and vote on the finalists. Good luck to everyone not in the Best Tool for the Enterprise category! <grin>

Vote for OpenNMS as 'Best Tool for the Enterprise'!
Vote Now!

Upcoming Events

If you have anything to add to the events list, please let me know.

Until Next Week...

As always, if there's anything you'd like me to talk about in a future TWiO, or you just have a comment, criticism, or XML configuration file obfuscator you'd like to share, don't hesitiate to say hi. Also, we've still got room for more Order of the Blue Polo members if you'd like to send your own testimonial. (Of course you would!)

June 29, 2009 06:43 PM

Geneva information

Kris hat mal wieder den längeren

..aber er ist ja auch viel älter als ich.

Meine “earliest” appearance ist Ende 1993 gewesen, laut google. Da müßte eigentlich noch was vorher sein. Nicht so weit vorher wie bei Kris, der hat nämlich Posts aus 1989 in seiner Historie. Aber auch schon “alt”, irgendwie. Kris verdanke ich übrigens auch meine erste Linux-Installation..

Abgesehen hat er einen lesenswerten Text zum Thema Generationen-Schlucht geschrieben, ich bin zu müde um das noch weiter zu kommentieren. Aber recht hat er und auch das ist nichts neues, ähnliche Worte warf ich vor etlichen Jahren mal Herrn Biedermann entgegen, der sie damals vermutlich auch nicht verstanden hat. Oder genauso ignoriert wie die Internetausdrucker sie heute ignorieren.

by af at June 29, 2009 06:38 PM

June 28, 2009

Adventures in Open Source

The Internet: Bringing People Together

I love the Internet. I just got called an asshole (well “@#*hole”) by a famous person on Twitter. Not that it is the worse thing I’ve ever been called, but I think it is delightful that someone I’ve never met is able to sum up my personality in so few characters.



The famous person is Nigel Lythgoe, once a producer of the American Idol TV show. I know him best as the producer/judge on So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD), a dance competition show that I rarely miss. As someone who knows absolutely nothing about dance, it is amazing that I like this show so much. One of the reasons is that it tends to have a nicer tone than shows like Idol, and the judges seem to realize that their final cut of contestants are all pretty damn talented, thus their criticism is constructive and every cut is a little bit painful.

Now, unless you’ve been in a cave or “hiking the Appalachian Trail”, you are aware that Michael Jackson passed away this week. At 43 I’m close enough to 50 to say that, for anyone, that is a life too short.

I was never a fan of Michael Jackson’s music, but I recognized that he was talented. A friend of mine in college who was contemporary dancer, went to see his movie Moonwalker and I was teasing her about it (where I went to college most of us were musical fascists and would deride anything that didn’t fit into our definition of “good music”). She laughed and said while that his music was definitely pop, he was an amazing dancer, and I can understand that for people in dance his passing is a great loss.

Note: for all of you geeks out there, Mr. Jackson has a patent.

Unfortunately my bullshit meter is pegged by a lot of the “tribute” stories I’m seeing on TV. Plus, I’ve been so inundated with Michael Jackson music that “Billie Jean” is currently a two-day long earworm living in my head (they even had a bluegrass version of it on Back Porch last night).

I follow Mr. Lythgoe on Twitter, and he is trying to organize a Michael Jackson tribute show for SYTYCD (and has talked about little else in the last couple of days). If anyone can do it, I expect he can, as American Idol got permission to use his music two seasons ago, and in fact they are re-running that very episode on Monday.

While I have no doubt that Mr. Lythgoe is trying to honor Mr. Jackson with the Idol repeat (the first Idol repeat in prime time, ever, I believe) and his desire to have a show dedicated to his dance styles on SYTYCD, I had the temerity to suggest on Twitter that all of this flurry of activity might look “slightly opportunistic”. It was simply my advice as an outsider that he should be aware of it. Think about it - if Mr. Jackson’s influence on dance was so important, why wait until now to have a show about it? Wouldn’t it have been at the top of the list when the producers were getting permission to use his music on Idol? I’m not saying that they shouldn’t do it, but there needs to be a certain tone around the show to prevent it from being seen as just a cheap grab at ratings.

For that I am now labeled an “@#*hole”.

Maybe I struck too close to home. Trust me, in 30 days, sad as it is, very little will be in the news about Mr. Jackson. We, as a culture, just don’t have the attention span for it. If you are in the business of news, stories about Michael Jackson are hot right now. If there will be a Michael Jackson version of SYTYCD, trust me, it’ll be as soon as it possibly can be done.

So what does this have to do with open source? Well, unpleasant as it may be, it is extremely important to listen to what your critics are saying. It is easy to dismiss them as a bunch of assholes, but you do it at your own peril. In many cases they echo the thoughts of people you need to reach, and understanding how they think is the first step.

For example, my experience with open source seems to be 180 degrees in the opposite direction from Matt Asay. For better or worse, Mr. Asay is seen as a spokesperson for open source software by some, and I have to be able to respond to his ideas, which range from the bleeding obvious to the downright asinine (with a little truth thrown in to help make them seem legit). While I try not to “feed the trolls” by commenting too much, it is important to my business to understand how people like him think.

In any case I sent that tweet to Mr. Lythgoe with the best intentions and got labeled an asshole. So be it. I would rather have my actions misunderstood and get called names than to be seen trying to make a buck off a dead guy.

by tarus at June 28, 2009 06:09 PM

June 25, 2009

Sartin's Blog

Amateur Developer

I currently have very little OpenNMS time. My day job does not require a network management system, so I’ve been progressing my current OpenNMS project in fits and starts. I’ve reluctantly reached the conclusion that I’m now an amateur OpenNMS developer.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

I recall a colleague defending the ugliness of his code (and it was ugly), saying: “I was short of time, so I just pounded it out”. He was working to a tight deadline, and didn’t feel that he could spare the time to investigate the right tools for the job, so he just used what he knew and got the job done. We’ve all done it. I freely admit to being a serial offender in this respect. It’s one of the more unsatisfying aspects of a career in software engineering.

As an amateur I have a different set of time constraints. I am not “time boxed” as my old colleague was, I am (for want of a better phrase) “time sliced”. I might get a couple of hours one evening, a train journey the next day, then no time for a week. It’s definitely frustrating, but without deadlines other than those I chose to impose on myself, I gain a lot of freedom. I can reflect on my choices, abandon 90% of my work to date and start again, with no-one to question my decisions.

There are disadvantages to being an amateur though. I can’t tell you when the feature I’m working on will be complete, and you’re not about to see it appear in any road map. It may even be that somebody implements the feature before I get it finished. That’s Open Source for you.

Whatever the outcome is, I will have developed a skill or two along the way.

And If we do get a feature out of it, I hope the results won’t be too amateurish.

by jonathan at June 25, 2009 09:30 PM

Geneva information

Grease me up, Ingres

I received this mail from Ingres today. The sad thing about the story is not that Ingres tries to paint an “Open Source” Label on it’s Software. The sad part is that they might actually have a good product but that by “fauxpen”-sourcing it they draw away the focus from the product – but create a marketing promise they can not and will not stick to. The moment you try to access one of their white papers, you have to register already. And of course, if you click on “Products”, there’s an enterprise version all ready to be paid for. But there’s no source code, no community, no nothing which is ok as a business model, it’s just not what the marketing tries to sell.

But let me share the mail I received, first of all.
Want to lower your database TCO with snakeoil grease, but need business-critical capability? Read on for a white paper that can help bridge the gap.

Dear Colleague:
We wanted to give you an opportunity to read a little something new on the subject of snakeoil greased databases.

Up until now, when it comes to databases, companies have had a choice. They could pay outrageous fees to build applications using proprietary databases. Or, they could use snakeoil grease to save money, but with a final product that had less than airtight security and scalability and continous availability.

Now, in a new white paper,“Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI using Ingres Database,” discover why that choice is history. Learn:

How companies like yours are saving 20-55% over a three-year period by soaking their databases in snakeoil
How open snakeoil grease can lower your hardware costs (by running on lower-spec commodity hardware), IT expenses, and call center load—while giving you more freedom to innovate
How today’s mature snakeoil market can give you low total cost of ownership and business-critical capability
Find out why Forrester says “Every enterprise should now consider snakeoil greased databases as part of its overall DBMS strategy.” Download this game-changing white paper now.

As a truly snakeoil-greased enterprise we won’t of course share this knowledge with you for free, but all we ask is a registration to make sure that we can properly grease you up in the future as well.
 

Very truly yours,
X X
Senior Vice President, Marketing
Snakeoil Corporation

P.S. Now it really is possible to radically minimize your database TCO, without compromising security and uptime. To learn how, download your copy of this white paper now.

by af at June 25, 2009 06:34 AM

June 24, 2009

Geneva information

Camera woes

This is by the way the last picture I got out of my good old EOS 300D, called Digital Rebel as well. After almost five years of service, lots of travelling, I’m sure more than 100k pictures, the EOS300D ceased to react. I flipped the switch back and forth, but no nothing, it seems to have made it’s journey to meet it’s maker.

by af at June 24, 2009 09:10 PM

Tunnelvision

I took the train, walked through tunnels, had a terrific view and walked through tunnels and took the train. That sums up my day and I should remark that it was: Terrific. I had the opportunity to visit a (the) broadcasting station in the swiss alps. Talk about terrific technology.

Those tunnels are all located above 3333m, that’s 10.000ft for our non-metric readers.

The first one was clean cut and nice, but the second one made it’s point about being carved in stone, literally.

The fourth one hosts a cable car.

And I forgot number three! Number three was the coolest one. In all respects. It passes through a glacier..which moves, so the tunnel needs to be maintained every year.

Once we made it through all the stone, ice and again stone there was probably one of the best views the alps have.

This one’s from lower down but noteworthy as well :-)

by af at June 24, 2009 07:57 PM

June 22, 2009

This Week in OpenNMS

This Week in OpenNMS: Pants Optional

It's time for This Week in OpenNMS. This week, we've continued work on what will become OpenNMS 1.8, and gone pants-optional.

Project Updates

  • Stable: Current Release is 1.6.5

    1.6.5 is the current stable release, released May 16th. It fixes a number of bugs, and adds a few features. For a full list, see the bugzilla 1.6.5 milestone. This is a non-critical but recommended upgrade for anyone on OpenNMS versions older than 1.6.5.

  • Unstable: Current Release is 1.7.4

    1.7.4 is the current unstable release, released June 8th. Since 1.7.3, more work has gone on in the Provisiond code, as well as ACLs, RANCID reports, thresholding fixes, enabling maps by default, and an entirely new way of creating the OpenNMS database under the covers. A 1.7.x overview is available in the release notes on the site.

  • Unstable: Modularizing the Web Build

    This week Donald did more work on chopping the webapp build system into little tiny pieces. Progress has been made (in a branch) but it's not finished yet.

  • Unstable: Code Cleanup

    I've gone on a janitor kick this last week, and spent a ton of time cleaning up old warnings in the code, fixing stuff to use generics, and other tedious-but-nice-when-it's-finished work. Some of it is in trunk, but most of it has been going on in a branch. I hope to merge it sometime this week.

  • Unstable: Monitor Updates

    Jason Aras did a bit more work on his JDBC monitor, as well as a refactoring of the HTTP and HTTPs plugins and a monitor that will let you use the Bean Scripting Framework for creating custom monitors.

  • Unstable: Provisiond Bugs

    We've found some issues in the scheduling of provisiond threads. One was a Maven issue that gave us 2 different (incompatible) versions of Apache MINA in the OpenNMS library directory. With that fixed, we've seen a few other issues with the new import architecture that we're working through. Donald and Matt did some work last week on figuring it out, and I've been tinkering with it still this week.

  • Unstable: RANCID Updates

    A few more fixes have been made to the RANCID integration. We are up to release 0.96 of the full integration tarball on SourceForge.

  • Unstable: ACL UI Work

    It wouldn't be a TWiO without talking about Massimiliano Dessì's work on a GUI for the ACL plumbing that has been implemented in OpenNMS. Work is still ongoing, but he's committing at a furious pace.

  • Unstable: SMS API

    Jeff started work on a low-level SMS API which we'll use for future SMS integrations, in a branch.

SourceForge Community Choice Awards: OpenNMS is a Finalist - Vote Now!

Thanks, everyone, for helping to nominate OpenNMS for the Community Choice Awards!

Now that we are a finalist in the Best Tool for the Enterprise category, it's time to vote!

As Tarus mentions in his blog, they asked us finalists to do a little extra and create a video talking about the project and why we feel we should get your vote -- I mean, besides the obvious reasons, like that our users are the best, most wonderful, handsome, beautiful, and successful people in the IT and open-source world, and obviously they deserve recognition for that...

Ahem, anyways, as I was saying, they asked us to do a video, the results are up at YouTube -- or if you just want the funny bits, we've got a short trailer.

Anyways, thanks again everyone for your nomination. All that's left is to go back and vote on the finalists. Good luck to everyone not in the Best Tool for the Enterprise category! <grin>

Vote for OpenNMS as 'Best Tool for the Enterprise'!
Vote Now!

Upcoming Events

If you have anything to add to the events list, please let me know.

Bye for Now

As always, if there's anything you'd like me to talk about in a future TWiO, or you just have a comment, criticism, or HOWTOs on rigging SourceForge voting systems you'd like to share, don't hesitiate to say hi. Also, we've still got room for more Order of the Blue Polo members if you'd like to send your own testimonial. (Of course you would!)

June 22, 2009 08:56 PM

Adventures in Open Source

All Right Mr. De Mille, I’m Ready for My Close-Up

A couple of weeks ago we found out that OpenNMS has been nominated for a Sourceforge.net Community Choice award as “The Best Tool for the Enterprise”. Many thanks to everyone who nominated us, and I hope you’ll vote for us once more.

As part of the voting process, Ross Turk asked us why we should win this award. I can think of a number of reasons (well, beyond the fame and huge monetary prize), but the main one is that OpenNMS is an example of what can be accomplished with a small but dedicated group of people and the open source development model. OpenNMS can compete with products from companies like IBM and HP, which are orders of magnitude larger, and yet remain 100% free and open software. While there is a commercial company behind the project, it has survived on the business model of “spend less than you earn” and has not accepted outside investment. There is no need for a special, proprietary “enterprise” version of the software - the only OpenNMS version is the enterprise version. There are people out there who believe that it is not possible to create enterprise-grade software under the open source model without some sort of proprietary software “extensions”, but if you understand it and can be true to your community, open source works, which is why I’d like to see us win this award.

Another thing that Ross asked us to do was to make a video showcasing the project. We had a lot of fun with it, and it is now up on YouTube:



As much as I’d like us to win this award, I’m not optimistic. Seriously, the previous winners have included OpenOffice, Firebird and Zimbra - all of which have much more money and many more users than OpenNMS. However, it was worth going through the whole process if just to create this video. I’ve been hoping to capture what it is like to be a part of a vibrant open source community, if just to be able to explain it to others, and this is pretty close to perfection. Many thanks to Jeff and his friend Robbie for pulling an all-nighter to get this done.

At one point in time back in 2002, the “formal” OpenNMS team consisted of just me on my farm in rural North Carolina. Now we have over 20 people in the Order of the Green Polo and over 40 committers. In this video we have people of all shapes and sizes from around the United States as well as four other countries (Venezuela, France, Italy and the UK). For someone like myself with few talents outside of a big mouth, it humbles me to see so much involvement on this project, and it is a honor to be able to work on it with these people.

Check out the video, and for those of you who can’t commit to ten minutes, we’ve also made a one minute trailer, also on YouTube:



If you need a laugh to start your week, at least check that out, and remember to vote.

by tarus at June 22, 2009 08:17 PM

June 21, 2009

Geneva information

Bright light and fairy tales

The “Maison du Salève”, a site to learn about the Mountains and the people who live with them.

This is Cruseilles, though few people will actually look that way when they drive through it:

The old “Chartreuse du Pomier”(?), a place to organize meetings these days. Magnificent view on the Geneva Valley.

We had a lot of rain, the plants are at full bloom, everything is green and blue..

And in the middle of the forest, a princess has lost a glove..

by af at June 21, 2009 09:06 PM

Censorship Law in Germany

The german parliament has passed a law on friday which is “problematic”. It obliges Internet Service Providers from a certain size (10k clients) on to create an infrastructure which suppresses access to sites. The list of sites to be suppressed is maintained by the german federal police. It is not public but supposed to be reviewed regularily by a committee.

The justification of the law is the need to ban child pornography from germany.

If we put technicalities aside, for now, we have to look at whether the law complies with the constitution or not, first

A law is unconstitutional if it limits the rights given by the constitution to citizens. As however every law is limiting some right in the one or other way, there’s methodology to look into the compliance of a law.

The first thing to look at is if the law-maker is pursuing an objective given by the constitution. What is or is not given as an objective by the constitution is not extremely clear and subject to discussion and – again – court judgements. We can however safely assume that the suppression of the creation, distribution and in the end consumption of child pornography is undoubtly covered by the german constitution.

The next question is if the law is an apropriate means to accomplish the objective. Here again the law maker has a lot of freedom in chosing his ways to accomplish things, even if they are as stupid as tampering with the Domain Name System. If the law maker believes that that’s a good thing to do, well, that’s pretty much it. So while there might be better ways to accomplish the goal (eg invest in the police force to find the producers, invest into childcare to prevent abuse etc etc), blocking the content is at least an idea to tackle the problem.

The last question is if the law impacts citizens (and guests) in their constitutional rights. Well, the subject (illegal pornography) is governed by the penal laws which are in effect, which are unchallenged and hence part of the constitution. So it is indeed viable for a country to undertake measures to stop the distribution of illegal material.

For the ones reading this who do not agree with the law – read on. Right now I just checked if such a law, generally, is constitutional. And as much as the government is expect to stop the distribution of drugs like cocaine at the border, they can be expected to stop the distribution of material which is illegal in our society.

There are people who argue that Article 5 of the constitution, which grants the freedom of speech and bans censorship, would infringe with the law. This will not stand a court ruling. The distribution of illegal material is not covered by the freedom of speech, nor by the liberty of arts. While there are grey zones when it comes to “Arts” and banned material, no court will understand the material in question as “being artistic”. Even if so, it would be the creators of such material who would have to claim their liberty to produce and distribute it in front of a court of law. The probability both of such an attempt and any kind of success is low, I guess.

So still, no good arguments against banning, and indeed – I don’t think there are any.

Where the law however hits the fan is the implementation.

The fact that the list of banned sites is maintained by a police force and is not public violates basic principles of the segregation of duties in a free society. The police becomes policy maker, judge and implementing force in one person. That’s exactly where the problem is – if the law would foresee that anybody could start a legal procedure, as opposed to an administrative procedure, to ban a site and that a court of law, represented by a judge, would decide, the constitutional principle of segregating policy making, justice and execution of laws would be respected.

But it’s not, and that’s where the real problem is. In the context of german history, which can not go unnoticed in discussions about censorship, the police forces have proven to be a dutyful supporter of the dictator of choice – whether it was Hitler or Ullbricht, the police was never a stronghold of democracy and freedom.

Which is why germany has a very elaborated system of checks and balances which permits the verification of any activity of the police force in front of a court of law. Except when it comes to the new censorship list.

Making the decisions and actions of the state public is another principle of a free society. The democratic state does not need to hide behind secret services and hidden lists of unwanted things – germany has mastered a real terroristic threat in the seventies without hiding, why are we trying to search the cover of secrecy now?

There is no good reason except if you have a hidden agenda which will move the censorship regime beyond child pornography and towards whatever deems unwanted.

This censorship law comes just after a law which changed the german penal code. When it comes to terrorism, germany does not want to wait anymore until someone has manifested plans to committ a crime, they want to intercept terrorists “in preparation” already. To do this, it is now a punishable offense to take contact with a terrorist organization to prepare a crime.

Reads – if you contact Osama to interview him, fine, if you contact him to join his ranks – not fine. The line is thin, and in the end a judge has to make a statement about your state of mind when you make it in front of a court of law.

But oppression does not start with a court of law, it ends with a court of law. It starts where police forces can take measures (wire tapping, search warrants, interviews) to investigate into a crime.

What would happen now if the federal police accidently slips a “terrorist” web site on the filter list? They would have the IP-Address which originated the request. The law which is coming into effect is now prohibiting the use of these IP addresses for prosecution in it’s very context. If the website banned is however not in the context of the law, the protection will not work.

While it was indeed illegal to put the website in the filter list, there is no “fruits of the forbidden tree”-principle in the german constitution. That means that if the police encounters a “hit” on a “terrorist” website, even though the creation of the hit was illegal, they can – and have to! – take measures based on the suspicious material they collected.

That’s where I see the real problem – germany is creating a censorship machine which is neutral. The legal protection for you if you drop in the fishnet by accident is only effective if you drop in on a banned porn site. If you drop in on something else, the protection will not be in effect.

Of course it’s easy to circumvent the stupid technical implementation of the law by simply using another DNS Server. Or by tunneling your traffic out of germany.

But guess what, that again makes you a suspect. Why do you have to circumvent the censorship? Do you have anything to hide? If ever a police organisation looks for a reason to penetrate your privacy, the fact alone that you do use an alternative DNS is reason enough. Don’t believe me? Wait a few years, you will see these cases popping up and beinged approved by a judge.

They might get invalidated in the next court, but first of all you are definitely in trouble.  Read Paul Ohm’s blog entry for more information.

So you can be smart, but the problem is that the policy makers and implementors are not smart at all. In fact they just have signed off the undoubtedly most stupid law since WWII, but it’s only one piece in the puzzle. The big picture (data retention for telephony and internet, creating unclear punishable offenses) does not look bright at all. They give at least the opportunity for a regime to effectively shut up any political opposition without even breaking a law. A principle which, sorry to say that, has a tradition in germany. The number of laws changed during the Regimes in East and West was not high.

Just for the record: Banning child pornography will not save a single child from abuse. There are servers even located in germany which are not shut down. While the censorship minister, Mrs. von der Leyen, claims that there is a “huge market” out there making money out of the abuse, the governmet has no figures at all (reads: no figures at all) about that market. Not even “we arrested this guy and he had x-thousand euros out of that business”, a figure which exists even for the smallest drug dealer). The overall argumentation is a scam.

The good thing about germany is though that there are elections coming up soon. And that laws can be reverted.

by af at June 21, 2009 03:14 PM

June 20, 2009

Geneva information

Fête de la musique



Fête de la musique, originally uploaded by _af_.

Geneva, one day before Midsummer.

by af at June 20, 2009 10:06 PM

Futuristic Movie Timeline



Futuristic Movie Timeline, originally uploaded by danmeth.

That’s pretty cool. And Scary. I miss 1984, though

by af at June 20, 2009 09:46 PM

June 19, 2009

Geneva information

Jochen Borchert, Steffen Reiche, Jörg Tauss, Wolfgang Wodarg

Vielen Dank für das dagegen Stimmen. Ich vermute daß es die Tochter Katharina war, die Herrn Borchert, ehemals Landwirtschaftsminister, zu seiner klaren Aussage bewegte, hoffentlich überzeugte.

Steffen Reiche’s Beweggründe kenne ich nicht, Jörg Tauss hat seine öffentlich gemacht und ein bißchen Stolz bin ich auf Wolfgang Wodarg, den ich bei seiner ersten Bewerbung um die Kandidatur in den Bundestag unterstützte – zusammen mit vielen anderen :)

by af at June 19, 2009 01:32 PM

18 Jahre später.

Im Dezember 1990 trat ich in die SPD ein, 1991 war ich Kreisvorsitzender der Jusos und 1993 im Landesausschuß. Ich kandidierte für Kreistagswahlen, organisierte Jugendpolitik, arbeitete in meiner Gemeinde mit.

Der Grund dafür war das Godesberger Programm, die große Tradition, die großartigen Menschen die ich – teils persönlich – kennenlernen durfte.

Aber je weiter sich die SPD vom Godesberger Programm verabschiedete, je mehr sie im Bundestag ihre Abgeordneten zum “Abstimmer” degenerierte, desto weiter entfernten wir uns voneinander.

Und heute ist dann Schluß, es reicht. Zensur geht nicht, das sollte eine SPD aus ihrer Geschichte gelernt haben. Hätte man die “Sperrung” in Hand der Justiz gegeben, vielleicht wäre es noch gegangen, nur brauchte man dazu kein Gesetz. Aber es macht auch keinen Sinn, zu diskutieren. Wenn mehr als 130.000 Menschen im Internet laut Nein sagen und “die Politik” das sanft ignoriert, dann braucht man nach der digitalen Kluft nicht lange zu suchen.

Achtzehn Jahre später kann ich sagen – wir teilen nicht mehr dieselben Ideale, ich bin wohl in einer anderen Zeit stehengeblieben und verstehe nicht, warum man bürgerliche Rechte einem Phantom opfern soll, warum eine nicht bewiesene kommerzielle kriminelle Handlung, ebenso ein Phantom, die unkontrollierbare Zensur erlauben soll.

by af at June 19, 2009 10:28 AM

June 18, 2009

Adventures in Open Source

CitiBank Redux

Last September I wrote about my Citibank business credit card being cancelled due to the number being reported as compromised. Well, it’s happened again. Yesterday both Jeff and I were informed that our card numbers were possibly stolen and that Citi would have to issue new ones. No word yet on my personal card.

While this is slightly inconvenient, what really pisses me off is that Citibank will not reveal the name of the merchant who allowed the security breach. I believe I have a right to know and to possibly avoid using that merchant in the future, but no matter how hard I pressed, the agent I talked to either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell.

It’s almost enough to make me change banks, and I thought it funny that when the agent signed off with “Thanks for using Citi” it came across as “$hitty”.

I do like the fact that Citi was proactive in contacting me and closing the account, but the fact that they are willing to hide the identity of the real culprit bothers me. The merchant should be held accountable. At OpenNMS, when we take credit cards we use a system that does not store the number or any detailed information once the payment is processed. I can honestly tell our customers that their payment information is not stored by us.

So, did anyone else get “the call” and have to replace their credit cards? Is there some information that I’m missing (as a Google search doesn’t turn up anything recent)?

(sigh)

by tarus at June 18, 2009 04:36 PM

June 16, 2009

Geneva information

Bei uns doch nicht.

Vor ein paar Monaten hatte ich beruflich mit den Zensurwünschen des türkischen Regulators (für Telekommunikation) zu tun. Eine etwas bizarre Erfahrung und ich war so blauäugig zu denken: Man gut daß wir davon weit entfernt sind.

Aber jetzt sind wir sogar viel weiter.

Mehr gibt’s zu diesem Unfug nicht zu sagen. Vielleicht “Deutschland erwache”, aber das ist wirklich abgeschmackt und braun belegt. Schön wär’s trotzdem. Nüchtern betrachtet  etabliert sich gerade ein neues Wertesystem – und das ist dem des “ultimativen Bösen” doch recht nah, näher jedenfalls als einer liberalen Tradition.

by af at June 16, 2009 09:45 PM

June 15, 2009

This Week in OpenNMS

This Week in OpenNMS: Inching Ever Closer

It's time for This Week in OpenNMS. This week, we've continued work on what will become OpenNMS 1.8.

Project Updates

  • Stable: Current Release is 1.6.5

    1.6.5 is the current stable release, released May 16th. It fixes a number of bugs, and adds a few features. For a full list, see the bugzilla 1.6.5 milestone. This is a non-critical but recommended upgrade for anyone on OpenNMS versions older than 1.6.5.

  • Unstable: Current Release is 1.7.4

    1.7.4 is the current unstable release, released June 8th. Since 1.7.3, more work has gone on in the Provisiond code, as well as ACLs, RANCID reports, thresholding fixes, enabling maps by default, and an entirely new way of creating the OpenNMS database under the covers. A 1.7.x overview is available in the release notes on the site.

  • Unstable: ACL UI Work

    Massimiliano Dessì has continued working on the ACL/Custom View UI webapp. Hopefully this will be finished up before 1.8 goes final, but if not, it will probably be included in a later 1.8.x release.

  • Unstable: Bug Fixes

    I spent most of the week going through the backlog of bugs for 1.6 and fixing what I can. I ended up fixing some bugs opened as far back as 3 years ago. ;) So please! Open bugs, even if they're low priority. They will get looked at eventually. ;)

  • Unstable: JICMP Port to JNA

    We have an upcoming project involving native support for interacting with serial devices, and we're planning on using RXTX to do it. One problem with RXTX is that it has a native component, and is a bit of a trick to distribute as-is. Matt has been experimenting with porting JICMP to use JNA, as a test for implementing it in RXTX for the future to ease platform support.

  • Unstable: Web Application Build System Cleanups

    One of the banes of doing OpenNMS development is how long a full build takes. Some of that comes from our build system having been slowly converted from a huge monolithic ant-based codebase into smaller modules, built using maven. Since the dashboard is made with GWT, it has to do some code generation, and right now it is run as part of the monolithic "opennms-webapp" module, even though the dashboard code changes rarely.

    Donald has been working in a branch to chop up the webapp module into smaller, more manageable pieces, which will facilitate turning less-often-changed parts of the build off for common usage.

  • Unstable: JDBC Monitor

    Jason Aras made more progress this week on his JDBC monitor, which will let you evaluate full SQL queries for monitoring and data collection.

Upcoming Events

If you have anything to add to the events list, please let me know.

Bye for Now

As always, if there's anything you'd like me to talk about in a future TWiO, or you just have a comment, criticism, or SNMP haikus you'd like to share, don't hesitiate to say hi. Also, we've still got room for more Order of the Blue Polo members if you'd like to send your own testimonial. (Of course you would!)

June 15, 2009 06:48 PM

June 14, 2009

Geneva information

Besides Crêpes

The Medieval Festival had of course more than the crêpes we sold, but I was – first – busy with doing that and – second – the batteries of the camera where empty.

If anybody wants to get rid of a 5D Mark II, throw it my way, just so that I have said it – I need to plan for a replacement of the Digital Rebel (300D) this year.

So the batteries were good for exactly two good pictures.

by af at June 14, 2009 08:18 PM

Adventures in Open Source

Wikipedia for Hire

One thing I hate about the general perception of open source software is that it is somehow amateurish. Sure, there are a lot of projects that are less than professional out there, but that’s just because there are so many projects. A large portion of them can compete with the best software, period, closed or open.

At OpenNMS we take our development process seriously. For example, we have a ton of junit tests. It’s the only way we can insure robust code while committing a large number of changes from different people. I was talking with a commercial Java company awhile back, and when I brought up junit tests the CEO said, “oh, we tried that and found it was just too hard.”

Chalk one up for open source.

So it kind of bothered me that Slashdot ran a story tonight that Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame is against anyone hiring out their services as a Wikipedia editor. I can’t understand why.

Does he not think that almost every commercial entity out there with an entry has someone in their marketing department tweak if not outright write their article? I quote Wikipedia constantly on this blog and I must say that I assume most entries are written by someone with some form of self interest. Heck, I take everything I see on the Internet with a grain of salt and Wikipedia is no different.

While I can see blocking people who constantly violate the guidelines of Wikipedia by posting marketing material, how-tos or other content that goes against the “form” of an encyclopedia entry, I can’t see why people talented at writing such copy should be prevented from charging to do so. Heck, I wish the OpenNMS entry was better written (and I wish that my own entry wasn’t there at all - it’s a little embarrassing to me to have one). I would gladly pay someone a reasonable amount of money to put in more information on the OpenNMS entry yet not slop over into marketing or promotional-speak.

Think about it. Suppose you were the AKC and you wanted to have detailed entries for all of your registered dog breeds. If Wikipedia is to become the main source for such information on the web, wouldn’t it be prudent to higher someone to write them? Sure, there could be a single line stating that “the Standard Poodle is an AKC registered breed” and I couldn’t see anything wrong with that. Users get great information on dogs they are interested in and the AKC gets a tiny amount of promotion in exchange for paying for that information to be created.

If Mr. Wales wants Wikipedia to be taking seriously and not just another amateur endeavor, there has to be room for professionals.

by tarus at June 14, 2009 04:33 AM

June 13, 2009

Geneva information

Finally moved

Right now the RSS Feed should be up again as well, that was the last thing to do.

My legacy internet world looks now like this:

http://syd.de -> forwards to https://www.genevainformation.ch/wordpress

http://www.genevainformation.ch -> forwards to https://www.genevainformation.ch/wordpress

http://www.genevainformation.ch/feeds -> gives the feeds out

The wordpress installation is under https://www.genevainformation.ch/wordpress

You an reach it under http://www.genevainformation.ch/wordpress but the base url is set to https.

Then for my Project work:

http://opennms.eisago.eu -> forwards to https://w.genevainformation.ch/Starting_easy_with_OpenNMS.html

RT is under https://www.genevainformation.ch/rt/ and OpenNMS is under https://www.genevainformation.ch/opennms/

Which boils down to two things:

If you want to read the blog, type http://syd.de .

If you want to access my OpenNMS or RT, type http://opennms.eisago.eu

The certificate I use is from Cacert, hence your Browser will moan and mutter until you install the Cacert root certificate (see http://opennms.eisago.eu/ and there the links section).

I have btw upgraded OpenNMS to 1.7.4 and had to manually wipe out some orphan notifications from the DB but besides that 1.7.4 looks great.

by af at June 13, 2009 08:53 PM

Adventures in Open Source

Idaho - the 45th State

(Other titles I thought about for this post included “Post Falls from the Edge”, “My Own Private Idaho” and the ever popular “I da ho”)

I am writing this from a hotel near the Spokane, Washington, airport where I am awaiting my usual club sandwich and trying to catch up on e-mail and such.

I spent this week in the middle of Washington state with a client. It was quite a departure from my normal trips which usually involve big cities, but I enjoyed it since I live in a small town and it made me feel more at home. Small town, desert Washington is much different from rainy, west coast Washington.

Even though I live in a small town, I still have some biases. When I was contacted by the client for some training and consulting services, I was curious what a small rural community would need with OpenNMS. I asked them how many devices they needed to monitor, expecting a couple of hundred, and was surprised when the answer came back 6800. We were replacing an OpenView install (as well as Netcool, but while they bought it they were never able to get it into production so “replace” is too strong a word).

Turns out there is a lot of fiber in that sagebrush, so not only do they have a lot of devices, their network is fast. The motel I was staying in had screaming bandwidth. I decided to try it out by running, uh, a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used to distribute large files, and found I was able to download a 1.5GB file in about 10 minutes (peaking at 2 megabytes per second).

Most awesome.

Speaking of awesome, I drove through a thunderstorm on the way back to Spokane. Storms on the prairie are something to behold. I’m driving along in bright sunshine, with the car’s outside thermometer reading 89F, and up ahead I spy a massive, solid-looking black wall streaked with bolts of lightening. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally reached it. The world went dark and raindrops the size of golf balls pelted the car.

Then the situation reversed itself. Off in the distance I could see it was lighter, and before I knew it I was back in the sun and the road was starting to dry. The temperature was 70F.

The rest of the trip was uneventful.

Oh, back to Idaho.

I have never been to Idaho, and since I had pre-paid for a tank of gas I decided to head over to Post Falls.



I was going to eat there but I realized I wasn’t hungry, so I stretched my legs, hopped back in the car, and headed to the airport.

So now I can say I’ve been in 45 of the 50 United States. Many of those have been to work on OpenNMS, including Iowa, Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont and New Hampshire. I’m still missing Rhode Island, Maine, Nebraska and the Dakotas, so if any of my three readers lives in those states, I hope to get to visit you soon.

by tarus at June 13, 2009 03:32 AM

June 12, 2009

Adventures in Open Source

Monday June 15th is Ride to Work Day

Just a reminder to all of my motorcycle friends that Monday is Ride to Work day.



I hope to see everyone on their bikes, and remember to keep the shiny side up.

by tarus at June 12, 2009 05:29 PM

OpenSourceWorld Now Free

If you are a “qualified” IT professional you can register for free to attend the OpenSourceWorld conference in San Francisco, California, 11-13 August.

I’ll be there on a panel with Luke Kanies and Michael Coté, so since it is now free come check it out.

by tarus at June 12, 2009 02:12 PM

Kevin Bacon. Mood: Silly

I read in Entertainment Weekly that Kevin Bacon checks a Google News Search on his name.

While this blog doesn’t show up on Google News, it does show up on the Google Blog Search, so I thought I’d post and see if he sees it. It would be cool to be one degree away from Kevin Bacon.

Kevin Bacon Kevin Bacon Kevin Bacon.

by tarus at June 12, 2009 01:15 AM

June 11, 2009

Geneva information

Marguerite – others take nice pictures, too



Marguerite, originally uploaded by Brulama.

This one is from Brulama. If you dive into his photo stream on flickr you’ll find some amazing pictures as well as a reportage on his work as a paramed.

by af at June 11, 2009 05:03 PM

Welcome!

So if you made it here, you followed the links, redirections and accepted the certificate.

Welcome back!

by af at June 11, 2009 03:58 PM

Ausgesperrt: Internet-Sperren in Frankreich

Es wurde viel über die Entscheidung des französischen Parlamentes geschrieben und diskutiert: Das “Loi HADOPI” sollte es einer Behörde ermöglichen, den Internetzugang eines Benutzers zu sperren wenn ihm vorgeworfen wird, das Urheberrecht verletzt zu haben.

Der Conseil Constitutionnel (hier auf Deutsch erklärt) hat auf Antrag von mehr als 60 Abgeordneten das Gesetz einer abstrakten Normenkontrolle unterzogen (hat überprüft ob das Gesetz und die Verfassung zusammenpassen).

Dabei ist er zu dem Schluß gekommen, daß die Sperre eines Internet-Anschlusses nur durch einen Richter erfolgen kann: Hier der Artikel in der Liberation, hier die Pressemitteilung zur Entscheidung des Verfassungsrates (auf Französisch).

Der Grundrechtseingriff in das Recht auf Kommunikation(!) sei so schwerwiegend, daß er nicht einer Behörde übertragen werden könne. Zudem sei die Unschuldsvermutung außer Kraft gesetzt, denn es würde der Zugang gesperrt ohne daß sicher sei, daß der Inhaber tatsächlich der schuldige sei, so der Verfassungsrat.

Sehr schön. Jetzt brauchen wir noch einen Verfassungsrat in Deutschland :-)

(buah, ich hab’s in der Zeitung gelesen, Heise war natürlich schneller :))

by af at June 11, 2009 07:23 AM

June 09, 2009

Adventures in Open Source

OpenNMS 1.7.4 Released

Just a quick note that OpenNMS version 1.7.4 has been released. This is the next developer/unstable version that will eventually become OpenNMS 1.8.

This is mainly a bug fix release (as 1.7 is getting close to being a release candidate for the next stable). Maps are now mature enough that they are enabled by default. Also, the installer has moved to using LiquiBase to handle database upgrades. While this will make it more robust, be extra careful when upgrading for the first time, and as always backup your DB before starting.

We hope you find it useful, and if so please tell us about it.

by tarus at June 09, 2009 02:26 PM

June 08, 2009

This Week in OpenNMS

This Week in OpenNMS: Indeterminate Schematic Determinism

It's time for This Week in OpenNMS. This week, we've continued work on what will become OpenNMS 1.8.

Project Updates

  • Stable: Current Release is 1.6.5

    1.6.5 is the current stable release, released May 16th. It fixes a number of bugs, and adds a few features. For a full list, see the bugzilla 1.6.5 milestone. This is a non-critical but recommended upgrade for anyone on OpenNMS versions older than 1.6.5.

  • Unstable: Current Release is 1.7.4

    1.7.4 is the current unstable release, released June 8th. Since 1.7.3, more work has gone on in the Provisiond code, as well as ACLs, RANCID reports, thresholding fixes, enabling maps by default, and an entirely new way of creating the OpenNMS database under the covers. A 1.7.x overview is available in the release notes on the site.

  • Unstable: ACL UI Work

    Massimiliano Dessì has continued working on the ACL/Custom View UI webapp. Hopefully this will be finished up before 1.8 goes final, but if not, it will probably be included in a later 1.8.x release.

  • Unstable: Unified Groups

    Daniele Piras has been working (in a branch) on some code to unify the way we handle grouping of resources in OpenNMS, in an attempt to resolve the schizophrenic way we deal with surveillance categories, groups, and other stuff.

  • Unstable: RANCID Updates

    Rocco committed some more changes to the RANCID integration, and shortly afterwards I released the 0.94 version of the RANCID pack on SourceForge.

  • Unstable: Database Schema Management

    Thanks to some great feedback from a few users on the LiquiBase transition, I made a few bugfixes, which made it into the 1.7.4 release.

  • Unstable: Thresholding Fixes

    Alejandro did more work on fixing up thresholding. A few more bugs were fixed and his work is in the 1.7.4 release.

  • Unstable: Map Updates

    Antonio did a few updates to the maps, and also as of 1.7.4, they are enabled by default! Yay!

  • Unstable: Memcached Monitor

    I added a MemcachedMonitor which will check if it is able to run the "stats" command, and store some of the numeric results in RRDs for thresholding and so on. (See $OPENNMS_HOME/etc/examples/ for samples on how to configure it.)

OpenNMS 1.7.4 Released

OpenNMS 1.7.4 is out as of today (June 8th). It includes a number of bugfixes, and a few updates and new features, most notably maps are now enabled by default in the UI.

The biggest change under the covers is the switch to using LiquiBase for managing our database schema. Previously we'd been using some very crazy cobbled-together code which compares raw SQL to the current runtime schema, and transitions the data accordingly. This was occasionally error-prone (especially in large databases, where we could run out of memory creating temporary tables) and definitely not as, let's say, deterministic as it should have been. ;)

HOWEVER, if you are upgrading from an existing OpenNMS release, you are encouraged even more than you usually are to back up your database before upgrading to 1.7.4. I've tested plenty of combinations of source schemas, but this is still very new and not all possible upgrade paths have been tested.

Also, on the first upgrade to a LiquiBase-controlled schema, the OpenNMS `install` command will take longer than usual, and spit out some errors that may look a little strange, like so:

Jun 8, 2009 11:55:32 AM liquibase.database.template.JdbcTemplate comment
INFO: Changeset 1.6.0/tables/service.xml::1.6.0-service::rangerrick::(MD5Sum: e2513f723746da99580f1dc60ee8559)
Jun 8, 2009 11:55:34 AM liquibase.ChangeSet execute
INFO: Marking ChangeSet: 1.6.0/tables/service.xml::1.6.0-service::rangerrick::(MD5Sum: e2513f723746da99580f1dc60ee8559) ran due to precondition failure:
          Not precondition failed

These are NORMAL and part of the upgrade process. LiquiBase expects your schema to have been created by LiquiBase. For upgrade purposes, I created a LiquiBase change set that basically works like this:

  1. I want to create the table "events"
  2. As a precondition, before creating the table, make sure the table does not exist
  3. If the precondition fails ("Not precondition failed" -- ie, the table does exist), then pretend the change set has already been run by LiquiBase
  4. If the precondition passes (the table does not exist), then run the change set, which creates the table

As long as `install` does not kick you out, you are fine. :)

Once this has been done, and LiquiBase "owns" the schema, future upgrades will go much faster, and only do new changes.

Upcoming Events

If you have anything to add to the events list, please let me know.

Until Next Week

As always, if there's anything you'd like me to talk about in a future TWiO, or you just have a comment, criticism, or pirated RRD files you'd like to share, don't hesitiate to say hi. Also, we've still got room for more Order of the Blue Polo members if you'd like to send your own testimonial. (Of course you would!)

June 08, 2009 09:31 PM

Geneva information

Crêpes

It was the second weekend of the middle age festival in Andilly (www.andillyloisisrs.fr) this week and my sports club sold pancakes.

We had an awful lot of rain, unfortunately, business did not go as we wanted – but! we had fun and the guys (and girls) with the beer shared the building with us :)

by af at June 08, 2009 09:03 AM

June 06, 2009

Tales of the Racoon Fink

The Open Source Philosophy

There has been a lot of discussion recently on the Open Source Definition, and the use (and abuse) of the term "Open Source." One of the things that has been missing from this discussion is a higher-level overview of where the friction between "open source" and so-called "fauxpen source" comes from: intent.

The Open Source Definition arose out of the ambiguity of the word "free" in "Free Software," as defined by the Free Software Foundation." In the English language, "free" is a loaded term that has two meanings: "freedom", and "costing nothing." It was created to get rid of some of the emotional baggage that came with the intense philosophical point of view of the FSF, but just because the OSD is more "business-friendly" does not mean that it doesn't have the philosophy and intent of openness behind it.

This friction comes from two very different approaches to open source that I think have been missing from a lot of the discussion regarding how open source applies to business models. I'm going to call these "community value" and "monetary value."

In some ways, this dichotomy reminds me of the GPL (GNU Public License) versus the LGPL (Lesser GNU Public License). The GPL is a pure open-source license, which guarantees the user's freedom by making it so that no software that uses GPL software can hide or restrict that use in a derivative work. The LGPL, on the other hand, was a compromise, a pragmatic license which allows one to create free software, but it does not require free distribution of things that link to that software. The LGPL has always clearly been discouraged by the FSF precisely because it compromises the freedoms guaranteed by the GPL.

Open Core: Nurturing Monetary Value ("Lesser" Open Source)

Advocates of using the term "open source" to apply to open-core and similar business models approach open source from a monetary value point of view. It is an approach of pragmatism: you create a business plan, get venture capital to get going, and sell software licenses to (hopefully) eventually pay back the VC firms and continue to grow. In many ways, an open-core business is exactly the same as any other startup. Open Source is not a fundamental philosophical part of the business, it is instead used to cut costs, and to help grow "buzz" about what your company is doing, and perhaps even get some free QA, bug reports, etc. The focus is not on creating a community to draw customers indirectly by improving the product, but to draw customers directly by creating awareness. To meet the demands of the venture capital, it requires a fast-growth, high-yield business model, and the community model doesn't grow that fast.

In the end, how much work you do nurturing a community is directly a matter of how many you can convert to paying year-over-year for software licenses, or whatever other artificial scarcity you create. Once customers have decided they want the features only available in the up-sell ("enterprise") version of your software, they have more resistance to changing to another product.

This is growing monetary value. The open-source community in a "monetary value" business is a side-effect of a marketing push to draw licensed customers. If the community goes away, you still have an essentially standalone commercial business that can continue just as if the community never existed. This is not to say the community doesn't provide value, nor that it doesn't derive value from the open source portion of their software, only that the business plan itself doesn't hinge on the openness of the software.

Open Source: Nurturing Community Value ("Pure" Open Source)

On the other hand, "pure" open source business models (services & support, like my employer) approach business from a community value point of view. This is not to say that pure open source companies don't want to make money -- only that to be successful, we compete with much bigger companies by multiplying our value with that of the community. To be able to be competitive with companies with huge amounts of seed money, we can't afford to treat our community just as a resource to be mined; our community is what makes it possible to support a large user-base with a small number of employees. Our community are like-minded individuals, working on this project with us together.

Since we are not beholden to venture capital, we don't have to get quick returns to maximize stockholder returns. Instead what we need is to work with the community to make great software, and to continue to challenge ourselves to extend and expand our knowledge of that software, so we are able to provide our expert opinions as a service worth paying for. As long as we can pay the bills, give ourselves a comfortable salary, keep customers and the user-base happy, and grow the business, we consider ourselves successful. Our goal is to become the de facto network management platform, and we can do that better by not being in debt to venture firms for years.

On the surface, the value we and our community get from each other may not look that different from that of an open-core company, but looking deeper, there are a number of advantages to the "slow and steady wins the race" methodology we use:

Everyone Gets the "Enterprise" Version

You are not held ransom for features that are only in the for-pay version. You can evaluate the product as it truly is, without time-limited evaluation licenses, crippleware with features missing, or annoying shareware reminders.

No Software Licenses

The software isn't artificially limited, it is capable of whatever your hardware is capable of without an arbitrary restriction because the sales VP decided that's where to draw the line. Note that it's easy to think that Red Hat is a counter-example, since they charge licenses for installed hosts, but from a freedom perspective, you can install the code on as many hosts as you like (ie, CentOS) without restriction, the restriction is only on "official" support.

Everyone Benefits from Community Involvement

When the community adds value, everyone benefits. Users help each other with issues, provide patches, documentation, and so on. The community contribution to OpenNMS has been huge -- not only major features, but default configuration for large amounts of network gear, which OpenNMS now supports out of the box on every new install.

Everyone Benefits from Commercial Involvement

Since the code is 100% open-source, customers who pay for custom development not only get their own value from the transaction, but the software goes back into the mainline, and benefits everyone.

An anecdote: We had a support customer who paid for some custom development for a somewhat esoteric feature. It was originally done in a branch of OpenNMS something like 5 or 6 years ago. The OpenNMS code base has gone through huge upheavals, refactorings, and architectural changes since that feature was created, but since it was released back into the OpenNMS mainline, when they finally upgraded their production system to an up-to-date OpenNMS release, the feature continued to work. If a consulting company did that same custom work as an HP OpenView plugin, they would have to port/implement it all over again after 3 major version revisions of the upstream software.

100% Forkable

While we make a living supporting OpenNMS, we do not "own" the project. (Although, we do own the OpenNMS trademark -- the realities of business in the US require it if we want to be able to protect the name of the project.)

At best we are stewards, but the list of OpenNMS employees is a fraction of the number of "core" contributors, and the core contributors are a fraction of the number of users who have added value to OpenNMS over the years.

We run and guide the project, but only because the community trusts us to do so. Our job is to earn that trust, by upholding the principles I've outlined above. When we do so, everyone gets value from OpenNMS. If we fail to do so, the OGP will "vote us off the island," and if it becomes bad enough, the source is fully available so it can be forked to something the community approves of.

Either Approach is "Better," but Only One is Truly Open

In the end, it's like the difference between a stable community bank who personally knows every person it gives a loan to, and an investment bank bringing in money fast with high-risk derivatives; they are focused on providing value to two entirely different sets of people. Either approach is better depending on your point of view -- they each have their advantages. However, in the end, I believe it is disingenuous to claim that open-core and similar business models have as much right to the phrase "open source" as pure open source businesses.

by Benjamin Reed at June 06, 2009 04:56 PM

June 05, 2009

Geneva information

Re, the pyramind

I read myself through Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle book in the last weeks. The german translation is btw considerably cheaper than the english version you can find at Amazon.

It’s a “re”, a comeback for me. Years ago I had a presentation training with a retired manager from AT Kearney which I think went already into that direction. Then last year another round, more focus