Evans Data Corporation (EDC) just released the results of their yearly survey of software developers. The results are astounding:

The market research firm said that about 65 percent of developers targeted Windows client operating systems in 2006, down from 74 percent the year before, and likely to fall another couple of points this year.

…but it gets better:

“Some of Windows’s marketshare loss appears to be Linux’s gain. Client-side versions of the open source OS were targeted by 11.8 percent of developers in 2006, up from 3.3 percent the year before, the report suggests.”

3.3% to 11.8% in a single year?!? My goodness! If the developers surveyed represent the market accurately (+/- who knows what) then that is about 1.1 million developers jumping on the Linux bandwagon (assuming the current estimate of worldwide developers is correct).

Looks like now is a great time to be an open source geek =)

Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Last night, the Internet community proved once again that Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the worst idea in technology since the glow-in-the-dark combat uniform. Before I rundown what happened, here’s a brief glossary to get you up to speed:

• DRM: It stands for “Digital Rights Management” and it is what prevents you from doing what you damned well please with digital content (movies, music, etc) that you bought and paid for. Its sole purpose is to prevent consumers (note: not pirates) from copying things. Sounds fine in theory except for the fact that it also prevents you from doing perfectly legal and reasonable things with your own stuff. Examples: 1) Moving your legally-purchased music from one computer to another. 2) Changing the format of a movie so it will play on a portable device. 3) Playing a DVD on an unsupported platform (say, Linux).
• DMCA: It stands for the, “Digital Millennium Copyright Act”. This U.S. law makes it illegal to make, distribute, or even tell someone how to make, a device or tool that can circumvent “copy protection mechanisms” (i.e. DRM). So if you were to say, publish a program such as DeCSS (or even link to where you can download it) you are in violation of the law.
• DVD-CSS: The DVD Content Scrambling Standard. It is the encryption mechanism that is used on all DVDs. It is a form of DRM.
• DVD-CCA: The DVD Copy Control Association. It is a group made up of the various big movie studios and DVD-technology companies that invented/controls/licenses the DVD-CSS.
• AACS: Advanced Access Content System, another kind of DRM. It is the new and improved replacement for the DVD-CSS that was invented, at an enormous expense (hundreds of millions of dollars?), for the new Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movie discs. It was cracked a few months ago, mere days after its debut.

  So here’s what happened: Someone cracked AACS a few months ago and just recently people began posting (one of?) the keys necessary to circumvent it on various websites. Presumably, if you have the key in question (09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0) you can use it to break the DRM on HD-DVDs and, say, play them in Linux (or upload them to the Internet).

  A few days ago a popular blogger posted that number to one of his websites which prompted the AACS group to send him a DMCA cease-and-desist takedown notice instructing him to remove the number. So he responded by letting everyone know what had happened and the community responded by discretely posting that number all over the Internet. Not a big deal, really. Wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

  Then the AACS group did the most mind-numbingly-stupid thing you could possibly do in such a situation: They sent more letters. Not hundreds, not thousands, but quite possibly hundreds of thousands of “censor this or else” letters to various blogs, websites, and even search engines all over the Internet. Every time they sent a new letter, the number would pop up in more and more places. Were they really expecting the global Internet to bow down before a draconian U.S. law? An Internet that was designed by researchers (at the request of the U.S. military) to “find damage and route around it”?

  So not only did the movie studios not learn from their mistakes with DRM in the past (that it can never work, that it isn’t good for them or consumers, and everyone hates it), they also didn’t learn from their mistakes with censorship. If you know a movie studio executive you might want to pass the following message along, “The Internet treats censorship like damage.”

  Oh, and by the way: This whole post is illegal according to the DMCA. Apparently freedom of speech doesn’t apply if you cut into the profits of organizations with enormous lobbying power.

  Update: Two days ago if you did a google search for the hex key in question you would see that google indexed about 10,000 pages that contained the number. I just did that search today and was delighted to find that it is up to “557,000 English pages”.

I’m stunned, to say the least. I just read an article over at DesktopLinux.com that describes one of Michael Dell’s (as in, Dell Computer’s CEO and founder) personal workstations. It is a Dell Precicion M90 running Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (apparently he’s been keeping up with the betas).

To be precise, Mr. Dell, in addition to running the latest version of Ubuntu, which is still scheduled for final release on April 19, is also running the VMware Workstation 6 Beta, OpenOffice.org 2.2, Automatix2, Firefox 2.0.0.3, and Evolution Groupware 2.10.

He also has four other high-powered systems at home running Windows but the fact that he’s using Automatix2 along with the pre-release version of Feisty (which is due out today) leads me to believe that he’s spent a considerable time using it. Why? Two reasons:

1) Automatix2 doesn’t come with Feisty. He would have had to do some fooling around on the web to find and install it (even if it was only a cursory trip to the Ubuntu forums or the Ubuntu Guide).
2) Feisty hasn’t been “officially” released yet. You’d have to have a real interest and be “into” Ubuntu to even know about Feisty before today (I’m sure the major computer news outlets will be blasting it).

This is very good news indeed. Dell has promised to ship consumer laptops and workstations running Linux some day “soon”. When that happens I’ll definitely start recommending Dell to my friends and coworkers. I’m dying to see how pre-loaded Linux systems from such a big vendor will have on the market (and Microsofties). It will certainly make it harder for people to say, “Linux isn’t ready for the desktop”.

I saw this while walking to work this morning.

I just read this article that was linked from digg. Think IE sucks? So does Microsoft! Check out this quote:

There is a 0 day exploit of another Microsoft file format that makes your Windows XP system wide-open for hackers if you made some bad decisions. On top of those is still using Microsoft Internet Explorer to surf the Internet – what in the world are you thinking? How many times do you have to stab yourself to bleed to death? If you know the answer to that please download Firefox today and say goodbye to IE-borne online threats.

I wish I could get that same message through to so many people I know who insist on using IE. Here’s some quotes I’ve heard: “I don’t see what is so special about tabs.” “I tried Firefox once. It was more trouble than it was worth.” “Firefox doesn’t work with (random website). When they (the Firefox team) fix that I’ll switch.”

The level of ignorance is amazing. It is no wonder Linux adoption is taking so long.