Monday, January 26, 2004

Introduction to OpenVPN [OSNews] 3:26:37 PM

Becoming a Mac Professional? [MacSlash] 1:38:49 PM

Sun Java Desktop. Sun's Java Desktop provides an alternative to Windows that's worth exploring. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service: O'Reilly Weblogs] 12:22:30 PM

aTrack - Aspect Orientation from the ground up in a real-world enterprise application. aTrack is an open source project whose intention is to showcase AspectJ within a real world enterprise solution. The solution is that of a web based bug database, similar in functionality to Bugzilla, but designed from the ground up to take full advantage of aspect oriented concepts. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service: O'Reilly Weblogs] 12:18:42 PM

Open source lock-in. With the release of MySQL 4.0, the licensing policy of the wildly popular open source database underwent a subtle change. The code libraries that client programs use to access the native MySQL API, formerly licensed under the LGPL (Lesser General Public License), were converted to the GPL. The LGPL was designed to exempt "nonfree" programs that link against open source libraries from the GPL's strong requirement to release source code. The purpose of the LGPL, according to the Free Software Foundation, is "to encourage the widest possible use of a certain library, so that it becomes a de-facto standard." And indeed, MySQL has become the database pillar of the so-called LAMP platform, whose acronym expands to Linux, Apache, MySQL, and the trio of Perl, Python, and PHP. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] Here's an interesting bit of backstory. As originally filed, my use of the terms LGPL and GPL in the lead paragraph was backwards. Not because I don't know the difference, but because it's so darned easy to get yourself mixed up when talking about this stuff. The error got past my own proofreading, and got by several editorial checks as well, but was fortunately caught before it went to print. I'm tempted to say that the complexity of open source licensing can make your eyes bleed, and that's true, but I guess it applies to all software licensing. Oracle, for example, is apparently now offering licensing seminars where you go to learn, not how to use Oracle, but how to pay for it. ... [Jon's Radio] 9:31:52 AM

Which Python are You. Have you ever wondered which character from The Holy Grail you are? You can find out here. [justinknol.net - a stack of useful stuff] 9:29:20 AM