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diff --git a/free-software.txt b/free-software.txt index 75a52d4..8c11bb5 100644 --- a/free-software.txt +++ b/free-software.txt @@ -1,8 +1,8 @@ -Free and open source software enables the world as we know it. From web servers to kiosks to the big data algorithms mining your Facebook feed, nearly computer system you interact with runs, at least in part, on free software. Free software has given rise to a galaxy of startups and enabled the [largest software acquisition](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/ibm-buys-red-hat-with-eye-on-cloud-dominance/) in the history of the world. +Free and open source software enables the world as we know it. From web servers to kiosks to the big data algorithms mining your Facebook feed, nearly every computer system you interact with runs, at least in part, on free software. Free software has given rise to a galaxy of startups and enabled the [largest software acquisition](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/ibm-buys-red-hat-with-eye-on-cloud-dominance/) in the history of the world. -Free software is a gift. It's the gift that made the world as we know it possible. It's an astounding gift to give. So astounding in fact that it made businesses unaccustomed to this kind of generosity uncomfortable. They were unwilling to use free software, it was too radical and by extension, too political. It had to be renamed "open source." +Free software is a gift. It's the gift that made the world as we know it possible. It's an astounding gift to give. So astounding in fact that it made businesses unaccustomed to this kind of generosity uncomfortable. They weren't unwilling to use free software, it was too radical and by extension, too political. It had to be renamed "open source." -Once that happened though, open source software took over the world. +Once that happened open source software took over the world. Recently though there's been a disturbance in the open source force. @@ -18,19 +18,19 @@ MongoDB is not the only NoSQL database out there, but it's one of the most widel MongoDB is also leading the charge to create a new kind of open source license, which CTO Eliot Horowitz believes is necessary to protect open source software businesses as computing moves into the new world of the cloud. -The cloud, argues Horowitz and others, requires the open source community to re-think and possibly update open source licenses to "deal with new challenges in a new environment." The challenges are, essentially, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, which are all capable of taking open source software, wrapping it up as a service and reselling it. The problem with AWS or Azure wrapping up MongoDB and offering it as part a software and service (SaaS), is that it then competes with MongoDB's own cloud-based SaaS -- MongoDB Atlas. What's threatened then is not MongoDB's source code, but MongoDB's own SaaS derived from that source code, and which is the company's chief source of revenue. +The cloud, argue Horowitz and others, requires the open source community to re-think and possibly update open source licenses to "deal with new challenges in a new environment." The challenges are, essentially, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, which are all capable of taking open source software, wrapping it up as a service and reselling it. The problem with AWS or Azure wrapping up MongoDB and offering it as part of a software as a service (SaaS), is that it then competes with MongoDB's own cloud-based SaaS -- MongoDB Atlas. What's threatened then is not MongoDB's source code, but MongoDB's own SaaS derived from that source code, and which is the company's chief source of revenue. -To combat the potential threat to its bottom line, MongoDB has moved from the GPL to what it calls the Server Side Public License, or SSPL. The SSPL says, in essence, you can do anything you want with this software, except use it to build something that competes with MongoDB Atlas. +To combat the potential threat to its bottom line, MongoDB has moved from the Gnu Public License (GPL) to what it calls the Server Side Public License, or SSPL. The SSPL says, in essence, you can do anything you want with this software, except use it to build something that competes with MongoDB Atlas. -MongoDB has submitted the SSPL to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the organization that oversees and approves or disproves open source licenses, but the approval process is still in the early review stages. That said, judging by discussion on the mailing lists, and the wording of the license, the SSPL is unlikely to every be approved by the OSI, at least as it's currently written. +MongoDB has submitted the SSPL to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the organization that oversees and approves new open source licenses, but the approval process is still in the early review stages. That said, judging by discussion on the mailing lists, and the wording of the license, the SSPL is unlikely to ever be approved by the OSI, at least as it's currently written. Part of MongoDB's problem is that it's not the first open source business to run into this situation. In fact, part of this problem -- companies taking software, using it as they please and contributing nothing back -- is the reason open source software exists at all. Open source licenses vary, but the gist is generally, you can take this code and do what you want with it, but you can’t make the code proprietary, and if you use it in another project, then that project can’t be proprietary either. These licenses were written this way to prevent companies from taking open source code, using it in their own code and not sharing any of it back to the original project. -Horowitz argues that wrapping a piece of code in a SaaS offering is the modern equivalent of using it into an application. +Horowitz argues that wrapping a piece of code in a SaaS offering is the modern equivalent of using it in an application. -It's a novel argument, but it's in defense of a very old problem that goes well beyond licensing. It's a problem that goes all the back to the beginning of free software -- how do you make money off software if you give it away for free? +It is a novel argument, but it's in defense of a very old problem that goes well beyond licensing. It's a problem that goes all the back to the beginning of free software -- how do you make money off software if you give it away for free? One traditional answer has been that you sell services around your open source software. But for Horowitz that's not good enough. "Monetizing open source with support contracts has never been a great business model," he tells Ars. Red Hat would likely disagree, but Horowitz believes that more protective licenses would bring more venture capital investment and spawn more software businesses based on the open model MongoDB has used. "We're unique," he says, "I want us to be less unique." @@ -42,11 +42,11 @@ Bruce Perens, co-author of the original [open source definition](https://opensou MongoDB is not the only one complaining that the cloud is raining on its profits. -Redis Labs, another data storage company, was the first to sound the alarm about cloud providers threatening its business and Redis Labs may have the better solution. Redis Labs initially changed its license to include something called the Common Clause sub-license, which forbids anyone from selling any software it covers. Software licensed with the Common Clause is not, by anyone's definition, open source, which Redis Labs acknowledged. It has never described those portions of its software as open source. +Redis Labs, another data storage company, was the first to sound the alarm about cloud providers threatening its business and may have the better solution. Redis Labs initially changed its license to include something called the Common Clause sub-license, which forbids anyone from selling any software it covers. Software licensed with the Common Clause is not, by anyone's definition, open source, which the company Labs acknowledged. It has never described those portions of its software as open source. As this article was wrapping up Redis Labs made yet another licensing change, in essence dropping all pretense of being open source software and adopting a homegrown proprietary license for some of its modules. To be clear, most of Redis is governed by the Apache 2.0 License, but some modules are not, namely RedisJSON, RedisSearch, RedisGraph, RedisML and RedisBloom. -The license Redis Labs applies to these modules says that while users can view and modify the code, use it in their applications, it restricts which types of applications they can build. With Redis Labs' new license you are not free to build anything you want. You cannot build database products, a caching engine, a processing engine, a search engine, an indexing engine or any kinds of ML or AI derived serving engine. You cannot in other words use Redis Labs' code to compete with Redis Labs. This violates one of the core tenants of open source licensing -- that there be no restrictions on derivative software. +The license that applies to these modules says that while users can view and modify the code, use it in their applications, it restricts which types of applications they can build. With this new license you are not free to build anything you want. You cannot build database products, a caching engine, a processing engine, a search engine, an indexing engine or any kinds of ML or AI derived serving engine. You cannot in other words use Redis Labs' code to compete with Redis Labs. This violates one of the core tenants of open source licensing -- that there be no restrictions on derivative software. This is the same sort of protection MongoDB also wants, but MongoDB wants to retain the open source label. @@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ Perens tells Ars that this was one of the key motivations behind the intimal ope Redis Labs' new license puts companies in the position of needing a lawyer, and GoodFORM becomes the more logical choice. This also may hint at why MongoDB wants to remain open source. -Other open source projects which have changed to closed source licenses have not faired well. The Xfree86 project was the defacto standard for running X Windows for most of the 1990s, up through the early 2000s. In 2004 Xfree86 began shipping code that the Free Software Foundation felt was counter to the GPL. The downstream operating systems using Xfree86 decided that was unacceptable and a fork, X.org, was born. Today X.org occupies the place Xfree86 once did and Xfree86 is abandoned. +Other open source projects which have changed to closed source licenses have not fared well. The Xfree86 project was the defacto standard for running X Windows for most of the 1990s, up through the early 2000s. In 2004 Xfree86 began shipping code that the Free Software Foundation felt was counter to the GPL. The downstream operating systems using Xfree86 decided that was unacceptable and a fork, X.org, was born. Today X.org occupies the place Xfree86 once did and Xfree86 is abandoned. Other examples are easy to find, LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice, MariaDB came out of license changes in MySQL, Wireshark came out of Ethereal, the list goes on, but the key thing to note is not just that the forks happened, but that they took with them the developers, the community, the momentum that sustains open source software over the long haul. Lose the goodwill of the open source community and it can be vicious in exacting its revenge. It's also efficient in doing so, Xfree86 was effectively dead six months after X.org began, OpenOffice disappeared into irrelevancy similarly quickly. @@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ If open source history teaches that there is no going back, it's worth consideri After years of using Quickbooks to appease accountants, I got fed up with it. I looked around for some open source accounting software and stumbled across something that fit my needs, [Beanbooks](https://beansbooks.com/opencode), a little project spun out of Linux computer manufacturer System76. -System76's Beanbooks is a perfect example of what Peren's sees as an ideal open source software scenario. In <cite>The emerging economic paradigm of Open Source</cite> Perens argues that a company's non-differentiating software is its best scenario for open source software. That is, open source the infrastructure of the business, not the core. +System76's Beanbooks is a perfect example of what Perens sees as an ideal open source software scenario. In <cite>The emerging economic paradigm of Open Source</cite> Perens argues that a company's non-differentiating software is its best scenario for open source software. That is, open source the infrastructure of the business, not the core. To put it another way, Beanbooks was not System76's profit center, but it is an enabling technology for System76's profit center -- building Linux-based computers. @@ -114,7 +114,7 @@ Everyone loves an underdog, and Redis Labs and MongoDB want to portray themselve Redis Labs and MongoDB both look like very healthy companies. Redis Labs just raised $60 million dollars in funding and, based on the companies doing the funding, looks poised for a successful IPO. MongoDB's IPO last year was, by all accounts, a huge success. It's stock IPOed at $24 and has steadily climbed ever since then. Today it trades at at around $100 a share. Just before this article went to press one of MongoDB's biggest users, Lyft, did defect to Amazon, but after a slight stock drop, MongoDB's stock was right back up where it was before Lyft defected. -Neither company seems to be hurting in anyway. Yet. The fallout from their license changes remains to be seen. It could be that they end going the way of Xfree86 and OpenOffice. It could be that they are able to survive as proprietary software companies. The fate of either is unimportant to the fate of the larger open source paradigm. +Neither company is hurting. At least not yet. The fallout from their license changes remains to be seen, but given that much of the development of MongoDB comes from employees, it will likely be fine regardless of whether it's open source or not. The fate of either is unimportant to the fate of the larger open source paradigm. The open source paradigm doesn't work for everyone. As Perens put it in a conversation we had as I was wrapping this up, "you can use any license you want as long as you don't call it open source, that's your freedom. But we have certain rights that come with open source it doesn't make sense to give these up to protect a business model." diff --git a/open-source-article.html b/open-source-article.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fb26216 --- /dev/null +++ b/open-source-article.html @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +<p>Free and open source software enables the world as we know it. From web servers to kiosks to the big data algorithms mining your Facebook feed, nearly every computer system you interact with runs, at least in part, on free software. Free software has given rise to a galaxy of startups and enabled the <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/ibm-buys-red-hat-with-eye-on-cloud-dominance/">largest software acquisition</a> in the history of the world.</p> +<p>Free software is a gift. It’s the gift that made the world as we know it possible. It’s an astounding gift to give. So astounding in fact that it made businesses unaccustomed to this kind of generosity uncomfortable. They weren’t unwilling to use free software, it was too radical and by extension, too political. It had to be renamed “open source.”</p> +<p>Once that happened open source software took over the world.</p> +<p>Recently though there’s been a disturbance in the open source force.</p> +<p>Redis Labs, MongoDB, and Confluent all changed their software licenses in recent months, moving away from open source licenses to more restrictive terms that limit what can be done with the software, making it no longer open source software.</p> +<p>The problem, argue Redis Labs, MongoDB and others, is hosted software services. Also known as, “the cloud.” Also known as Amazon AWS.</p> +<p>Amazon, for it’s part, recently came out swinging, releasing its own version of the code behind Elastic Search in response to licensing changes at Elastic. Interestingly, Elastic, the company behind Elastic Search, has a very different response from that of MongoDB and Redis – it hasn’t said a word in protest.</p> +<h2 id="cloud-burst">Cloud Burst</h2> +<p>MongoDB the company is built around the open source “NoSQL” database of the same name. MongoDB’s database is useful for storing unstructured data, for example images, which it can handle just as well as it handles more traditional data types. Data is stored in JSON-like documents rather than the columns and rows of a relational database. Since there’s no structured tables there’s no “structured query language” for working with the data, hence the term “NoSQL.”</p> +<p>MongoDB is not the only NoSQL database out there, but it’s one of the most widely used. According to industry aggregator, DB Engines, MongoDB is the <a href="https://db-engines.com/en/ranking">fifth most popular database</a>, with everyone from Google to Code Academy to Foursquare using MongoDB.</p> +<p>MongoDB is also leading the charge to create a new kind of open source license, which CTO Eliot Horowitz believes is necessary to protect open source software businesses as computing moves into the new world of the cloud.</p> +<p>The cloud, argue Horowitz and others, requires the open source community to re-think and possibly update open source licenses to “deal with new challenges in a new environment.” The challenges are, essentially, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, which are all capable of taking open source software, wrapping it up as a service and reselling it. The problem with AWS or Azure wrapping up MongoDB and offering it as part of a software as a service (SaaS), is that it then competes with MongoDB’s own cloud-based SaaS – MongoDB Atlas. What’s threatened then is not MongoDB’s source code, but MongoDB’s own SaaS derived from that source code, and which is the company’s chief source of revenue.</p> +<p>To combat the potential threat to its bottom line, MongoDB has moved from the Gnu Public License (GPL) to what it calls the Server Side Public License, or SSPL. The SSPL says, in essence, you can do anything you want with this software, except use it to build something that competes with MongoDB Atlas.</p> +<p>Originally MongoDB submitted the SSPL to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the organization that oversees and approves new open source licenses, but after seeing the writing on the wall – discussion on the OSI mailing lists, combined with the wording of the license made it unlikely the SSPL would ever be approved by the OSI – MongoDB has withdrawn the SSPL from consideration.</p> +<p>The SSPL is not an open source license and it never will be.</p> +<p>To understand why it helps to realize that MongoDB is not the first open source business to run into this situation. In fact, part of this problem – companies taking software, using it as they please and contributing nothing back – is the reason open source software exists at all.</p> +<p>Open source licenses vary, but the gist is generally, you can take this code and do what you want with it, but you can’t make the code proprietary, and if you use it in another project, then that project can’t be proprietary either. These licenses were written this way to prevent companies from taking open source code, using it in their own code and not sharing any of it back to the original project.</p> +<p>Horowitz argues that wrapping a piece of code in a SaaS offering is the modern equivalent of using it in an application.</p> +<p>It is a novel argument, but it’s in defense of a very old problem that goes well beyond licensing. It’s a problem that goes all the back to the beginning of free software – how do you make money off software if you give it away for free?</p> +<p>One traditional answer has been that you sell services around your open source software. But for Horowitz that’s not good enough. “Monetizing open source with support contracts has never been a great business model,” he tells Ars. Red Hat would likely disagree, but Horowitz believes that more protective licenses would bring more venture capital investment and spawn more software businesses based on the open model MongoDB has used. “We’re unique,” he says, “I want us to be less unique.”</p> +<p>He may be correct. A more protective license could induce more venture capital investment because there’s (arguably) a greater likelihood of return on their investment. But if that capital did come, it wouldn’t be investing in open source because that kind of restriction on the software means it no longer fits the definition of open source.</p> +<p>Quite a few open source advocates have already made the counter argument that the current set of licenses are fine, it’s the business models that need work.</p> +<p>Bruce Perens, co-author of the original <a href="https://opensource.org/docs/osd">open source definition</a>, says the SSPL is incompatible with the OSI’s open source definition number nine, which says that the “license must not restrict other software.” Since the SSPL forces any SaaS software that is aggregated with the covered software, but not a derivative of it, to nevertheless be open source, it fails this test. “I wrote number nine into the OSD to prohibit exactly this sort of conduct,” says Perens, “the text is really clear.”</p> +<p>But MongoDB is not the only one complaining that the cloud is raining on its profits.</p> +<p>Redis Labs, another data storage company, was the first to sound the alarm about cloud providers threatening its business and Redis Labs may have the better solution. Redis Labs initially changed its license to include something called the Common Clause sub-license, which forbids anyone from selling any software it covers. Software licensed with the Common Clause is not, by anyone’s definition, open source, which Redis Labs acknowledged. It has never described those portions of its software as open source.</p> +<p>As this article was wrapping up Redis Labs made yet another licensing change, in essence dropping all pretense of being open source software and adopting a homegrown proprietary license for some of its modules. To be clear, most of Redis is governed by the Apache 2.0 License, but some modules are not, namely RedisJSON, RedisSearch, RedisGraph, RedisML and RedisBloom.</p> +<p>The license Redis Labs applies to these modules says that while users can view and modify the code, use it in their applications, it restricts which types of applications they can build. With Redis Labs’ new license you are not free to build anything you want. You cannot build database products, a caching engine, a processing engine, a search engine, an indexing engine or any kinds of ML or AI derived serving engine. You cannot in other words use Redis Labs’ code to compete with Redis Labs. This violates one of the core tenants of open source licensing – that there be no restrictions on derivative software.</p> +<p>Unfortunately for both companies it doesn’t make sense to simultaneously say that you are open source, and that only you should profit from your open source software. There <em>is</em> a business model where than does make sense: proprietary software.</p> +<p>That’s a path that Elastic.co has hewed for some time. While part of the problem here is that there is no playbook set in stone yet, some companies has managed to prosper with both open source and proprietary code. Elastic, makers of Elasticsearch and other open source tools, has faced the exact competition from AWS and soldiered on.</p> +<p>Not only has Amazon for years offered Elasticsearch on AWS (ostensibly competing with Elastic’s own offerings), Amazon recently packaged up its own version of the Elasticsearch codebase, extending it to offer for free several of the services Elastic hasn’t released as open source. Elastic’s response has been little more than the corporate equivalent of a shrug.</p> +<h2 id="lessons-from-history">Lessons from history</h2> +<p>Why does MongoDB want to be open source at all? After all there is no shortage of very successful proprietary software, so why not embrace that path and move on?</p> +<p>Horowitz tells me he believes “that open source results in better systems software, especially databases,” going on to cite security and community as advantages of remaining open source. He’s right about both of those things, those are often cited as reasons to use open source software – more eyes on the software means fewer bugs, better security.</p> +<p>But looking at the open source definition, it’s clear that Horowitz is missing one key component that’s built into to every open source license – generosity.</p> +<p>Open source does not limit what you can do with the software, ever. Full stop. This may well be the chief reason for its success, it’s certainly what made it palpable to large businesses in the first place.</p> +<p>Generosity of this kind is how you get community, the cornerstone on which any successful open source project is built. By allowing the widest possible range of users to use your software you get the biggest possible community. More eyes on bugs, more people fixing them. That community is what turns into momentum. That momentum becomes market share. Sometimes market share becomes profit, but that’s not a promise of open source.</p> +<p>As Bruce Perens puts it, “we have to draw a line between open source… and the right to make money with open source. The open source definition allows, but does not support, your right to make money. We’re not going to change the rules because you can make money better that way.”</p> +<p>To its credit, Horowitz and MongoDB seem to have come around to this point for view, or at least accepted the inevitability of it when they withdrew the SSPL from consideration as an OSI-approved license.</p> +<p>Just because you build it and they come, does not mean massive profit.</p> +<p>In fact, if you build it and they come and then you take it away, it might be worse than if you’d never built it.</p> +<p>Redis Labs’ move away from open source comes after it reaped all the benefits of open source – community support, wide adoption and code contributions from a widespread sources. To put it bluntly, Redis Labs angered the community.</p> +<p>When free software developers get mad, they get forking, and there is indeed a fork of Redis, <a href="https://goodformcode.com/">GoodFORM</a>. GoodFORM takes the re-licensed Redis modules as they were prior to the license change, and will maintain them for Debian, Fedora and other Linux distros that cannot ship proprietary software.</p> +<p>The unintended consequence of Redis Labs’ new license is that anyone wanting to use a full and open source version of Redis will have to use GoodFORM, not Redis.</p> +<p>Individual developers might not much care, but large companies looking to use open source software aren’t so cavalier. For them it usually comes down to a choice, either use clearly open source software with an OSI approved license, or call the lawyers. And no one ever wants to call the lawyers just to install a piece of software.</p> +<p>Perens tells Ars that this was one of the key motivations behind the intimal open source definition (originally written for the Debian project). “The open source definition means that you shouldn’t need a lawyer just to be a user,” says Perns. “And one of the ways we do that is minimizing the legal load.”</p> +<p>Redis Labs’ new license puts companies in the position of needing a lawyer, and GoodFORM becomes the more logical choice. This also may hint at why MongoDB wanted to remain open source.</p> +<p>Other open source projects which have changed to closed source licenses have not fared well. The Xfree86 project was the defacto standard for running X Windows for most of the 1990s, up through the early 2000s. In 2004 Xfree86 began shipping code that the Free Software Foundation felt was counter to the GPL. The downstream operating systems using Xfree86 decided that was unacceptable and a fork, X.org, was born. Today X.org occupies the place Xfree86 once did and Xfree86 is abandoned.</p> +<p>Other examples are easy to find, LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice, MariaDB came out of license changes in MySQL, Wireshark came out of Ethereal, the list goes on, but the key thing to note is not just that the forks happened, but that they took with them the developers, the community, the momentum that sustains open source software over the long haul. Lose the goodwill of the open source community and it can be vicious in exacting its revenge. It’s also efficient in doing so, Xfree86 was effectively dead six months after X.org began, OpenOffice disappeared into irrelevancy similarly quickly.</p> +<p>The overwhelming lesson of open source history is that once you are open source, it’s very unlikely you will change that and survive.</p> +<h2 id="what-makes-open-source-work-generosity">What makes open source work: generosity</h2> +<p>If open source history teaches that there is no going back, it’s worth considering why.</p> +<p><a href="https://beansbooks.com/opencode">Beanbooks</a>, a little project spun out of Linux computer manufacturer System76 is a perfect example of what Perens sees as an ideal open source software scenario. In <cite><a href="https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1470/1385">The emerging economic paradigm of Open Source</a></cite> Perens argues that a company’s non-differentiating software is its best scenario for open source software. That is, open source the infrastructure of the business, not the core.</p> +<p>To put it another way, Beanbooks was not System76’s profit center, but it is an enabling technology for System76’s profit center – building Linux-based computers.</p> +<p>However, despite being a perfect candidate for an open source license, Beanbooks is not open source. Why?</p> +<p>System76 sells a hosted version of Beanbooks, a SaaS, and at the time the company was worried that a larger company would come along, take the GPL code, essentially clone Beanbooks and get all the profit from System76’s investment.</p> +<p>System76 founder Carl Richell says he can empathize with MongoDB and Redis Labs, but he has already been down the worry-about-someone-stealing-your-code-for-competing-SaaS road and regrets it. “Our concern was that someone would wrap up the software and we would lose all our investment.” He says System76 wanted something like patent protection for a few years, but that “ended up hurting us, hurting the platform, and we shouldn’t have had those concerns.”</p> +<p>While the SaaS version of Beanbooks looks to be fine, the available code does not get updates and is, from a free software perspective, fairly useless. The Github page is a ghost town. There’s no development, no community.</p> +<p>Beanbooks the service carries on, but it does so without a community contributing ideas, code and everything else vibrant open source projects have. Richell thinks Beanbooks might have avoided its fate if it had a GPL or similar license from the beginning.</p> +<p>“If it was good enough that someone wanted it that’s great,” says Richell. The key to success for Ritchell isn’t the open source software, it’s the innovation. “Differentiation is not what you’ve done today, but how rapidly you can advance,” he says. As the software developer you have a head start, and, hopefully, a vision of where you are going, those are your differentiators, to use Perens’ terms.</p> +<p>“The only way to be successful is to stay ahead,” says Richell, “I don’t think the license has anything to do with it.”</p> +<p>The Chef project, makers of various software automation and deployment tools, seems to agree and offers an alternative course to that of MongoDB and Redis. Chef recently announced it would change its license to be completely open source (under the Apache 2.0 license). “We welcome anyone to use and extend our software for any purpose in alignment with the four essential freedoms of Free Software,” writes Chef CEO Barry Crist. While Crist doesn’t mention any other companies, it’s hard to see the specific language of “the four essential freedoms” as anything but a response to Redis and MongoDB.</p> +<h2 id="what-the-future-looks-like">What the future looks like</h2> +<p>Everyone loves an underdog, and Redis Labs and MongoDB want to portray themselves as the open source underdogs waging a heroic battle against the forces of evil in the form of AWS. But are they?</p> +<p>Redis Labs and MongoDB both look like very healthy companies. Redis Labs recently raised $60 million dollars in funding and, based on the companies doing the funding, looks poised for a successful IPO. MongoDB’s IPO last year was, by all accounts, a huge success. It’s stock IPOed at $24 and has steadily climbed ever since then. Today it trades at at around $100 a share. Just before this article went to press one of MongoDB’s biggest users, Lyft, did defect to Amazon, but after a slight stock drop, MongoDB’s stock was right back up where it was before Lyft defected.</p> +<p>Neither company is hurting. At least not yet. The fallout from their license changes remains to be seen, but given that much of the development of MongoDB comes from employees, it will likely be fine regardless of whether it’s open source or not. The fate of either is unimportant to the fate of the larger open source paradigm.</p> +<p>The open source paradigm doesn’t work for everyone. As Perens put it in a conversation we had as I was wrapping this up, “you can use any license you want as long as you don’t call it open source, that’s your freedom. But we have certain rights that come with open source it doesn’t make sense to give these up to protect a business model.”</p> +<p>Through all the conversations I had with developers and founders, one line kept coming back to me. System76 founder Carl Richell told me: “if generosity isn’t built into open source, it isn’t going to work.”</p> +<p>Generosity in this case is the right to use the software for any purpose.</p> +<p>This has always been the basic litmus test for new open licenses – is the license limiting the generosity of the software? What got open source where it is today is that it could be used anywhere, with anything. Need to combine open source and proprietary software? No problem. Need to re-write that open source library so it can interface with your proprietary code? No problem. Want to take that open source library, wrap it up as a service and sell it? No problem. Because in the end, that’s what open source is: freedom through generosity. And as Perens points out, that’s what it is even when that model doesn’t work for a particular business.</p> diff --git a/open-source-article.txt b/open-source-article.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..07e3d83 --- /dev/null +++ b/open-source-article.txt @@ -0,0 +1,139 @@ +Free and open source software enables the world as we know it. From web servers to kiosks to the big data algorithms mining your Facebook feed, nearly every computer system you interact with runs, at least in part, on free software. Free software has given rise to a galaxy of startups and enabled the [largest software acquisition](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/ibm-buys-red-hat-with-eye-on-cloud-dominance/) in the history of the world. + +Free software is a gift. It's the gift that made the world as we know it possible. It's an astounding gift to give. So astounding in fact that it made businesses unaccustomed to this kind of generosity uncomfortable. They weren't unwilling to use free software, it was too radical and by extension, too political. It had to be renamed "open source." + +Once that happened open source software took over the world. + +Recently though there's been a disturbance in the open source force. + +Redis Labs, MongoDB, and Confluent all changed their software licenses in recent months, moving away from open source licenses to more restrictive terms that limit what can be done with the software, making it no longer open source software. + +The problem, argue Redis Labs, MongoDB and others, is hosted software services. Also known as, "the cloud." Also known as Amazon AWS. + +Amazon, for it's part, recently came out swinging, releasing its own version of the code behind Elastic Search in response to licensing changes at Elastic. Interestingly, Elastic, the company behind Elastic Search, has a very different response from that of MongoDB and Redis -- it hasn't said a word in protest. + +## Cloud Burst + +MongoDB the company is built around the open source "NoSQL" database of the same name. MongoDB's database is useful for storing unstructured data, for example images, which it can handle just as well as it handles more traditional data types. Data is stored in JSON-like documents rather than the columns and rows of a relational database. Since there's no structured tables there's no "structured query language" for working with the data, hence the term "NoSQL." + +MongoDB is not the only NoSQL database out there, but it's one of the most widely used. According to industry aggregator, DB Engines, MongoDB is the [fifth most popular database](https://db-engines.com/en/ranking), with everyone from Google to Code Academy to Foursquare using MongoDB. + +MongoDB is also leading the charge to create a new kind of open source license, which CTO Eliot Horowitz believes is necessary to protect open source software businesses as computing moves into the new world of the cloud. + +The cloud, argue Horowitz and others, requires the open source community to re-think and possibly update open source licenses to "deal with new challenges in a new environment." The challenges are, essentially, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, which are all capable of taking open source software, wrapping it up as a service and reselling it. The problem with AWS or Azure wrapping up MongoDB and offering it as part of a software as a service (SaaS), is that it then competes with MongoDB's own cloud-based SaaS -- MongoDB Atlas. What's threatened then is not MongoDB's source code, but MongoDB's own SaaS derived from that source code, and which is the company's chief source of revenue. + +To combat the potential threat to its bottom line, MongoDB has moved from the Gnu Public License (GPL) to what it calls the Server Side Public License, or SSPL. The SSPL says, in essence, you can do anything you want with this software, except use it to build something that competes with MongoDB Atlas. + +Originally MongoDB submitted the SSPL to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the organization that oversees and approves new open source licenses, but after seeing the writing on the wall -- discussion on the OSI mailing lists, combined with the wording of the license made it unlikely the SSPL would ever be approved by the OSI -- MongoDB has withdrawn the SSPL from consideration. + +The SSPL is not an open source license and it never will be. + +To understand why it helps to realize that MongoDB is not the first open source business to run into this situation. In fact, part of this problem -- companies taking software, using it as they please and contributing nothing back -- is the reason open source software exists at all. + +Open source licenses vary, but the gist is generally, you can take this code and do what you want with it, but you can't make the code proprietary, and if you use it in another project, then that project can't be proprietary either. These licenses were written this way to prevent companies from taking open source code, using it in their own code and not sharing any of it back to the original project. + +Horowitz argues that wrapping a piece of code in a SaaS offering is the modern equivalent of using it in an application. + +It is a novel argument, but it's in defense of a very old problem that goes well beyond licensing. It's a problem that goes all the back to the beginning of free software -- how do you make money off software if you give it away for free? + +One traditional answer has been that you sell services around your open source software. But for Horowitz that's not good enough. "Monetizing open source with support contracts has never been a great business model," he tells Ars. Red Hat would likely disagree, but Horowitz believes that more protective licenses would bring more venture capital investment and spawn more software businesses based on the open model MongoDB has used. "We're unique," he says, "I want us to be less unique." + +He may be correct. A more protective license could induce more venture capital investment because there's (arguably) a greater likelihood of return on their investment. But if that capital did come, it wouldn't be investing in open source because that kind of restriction on the software means it no longer fits the definition of open source. + +Quite a few open source advocates have already made the counter argument that the current set of licenses are fine, it's the business models that need work. + +Bruce Perens, co-author of the original [open source definition](https://opensource.org/docs/osd), says the SSPL is incompatible with the OSI's open source definition number nine, which says that the "license must not restrict other software." Since the SSPL forces any SaaS software that is aggregated with the covered software, but not a derivative of it, to nevertheless be open source, it fails this test. "I wrote number nine into the OSD to prohibit exactly this sort of conduct," says Perens, "the text is really clear." + +But MongoDB is not the only one complaining that the cloud is raining on its profits. + +Redis Labs, another data storage company, was the first to sound the alarm about cloud providers threatening its business and Redis Labs may have the better solution. Redis Labs initially changed its license to include something called the Common Clause sub-license, which forbids anyone from selling any software it covers. Software licensed with the Common Clause is not, by anyone's definition, open source, which Redis Labs acknowledged. It has never described those portions of its software as open source. + +As this article was wrapping up Redis Labs made yet another licensing change, in essence dropping all pretense of being open source software and adopting a homegrown proprietary license for some of its modules. To be clear, most of Redis is governed by the Apache 2.0 License, but some modules are not, namely RedisJSON, RedisSearch, RedisGraph, RedisML and RedisBloom. + +The license Redis Labs applies to these modules says that while users can view and modify the code, use it in their applications, it restricts which types of applications they can build. With Redis Labs' new license you are not free to build anything you want. You cannot build database products, a caching engine, a processing engine, a search engine, an indexing engine or any kinds of ML or AI derived serving engine. You cannot in other words use Redis Labs' code to compete with Redis Labs. This violates one of the core tenants of open source licensing -- that there be no restrictions on derivative software. + +Unfortunately for both companies it doesn't make sense to simultaneously say that you are open source, and that only you should profit from your open source software. There *is* a business model where than does make sense: proprietary software. + +That's a path that Elastic.co has hewed for some time. While part of the problem here is that there is no playbook set in stone yet, some companies has managed to prosper with both open source and proprietary code. Elastic, makers of Elasticsearch and other open source tools, has faced the exact competition from AWS and soldiered on. + +Not only has Amazon for years offered Elasticsearch on AWS (ostensibly competing with Elastic's own offerings), Amazon recently packaged up its own version of the Elasticsearch codebase, extending it to offer for free several of the services Elastic hasn't released as open source. Elastic's response has been little more than the corporate equivalent of a shrug. + +## Lessons from history + +Why does MongoDB want to be open source at all? After all there is no shortage of very successful proprietary software, so why not embrace that path and move on? + +Horowitz tells me he believes "that open source results in better systems software, especially databases," going on to cite security and community as advantages of remaining open source. He's right about both of those things, those are often cited as reasons to use open source software -- more eyes on the software means fewer bugs, better security. + +But looking at the open source definition, it's clear that Horowitz is missing one key component that's built into to every open source license -- generosity. + +Open source does not limit what you can do with the software, ever. Full stop. This may well be the chief reason for its success, it's certainly what made it palpable to large businesses in the first place. + +Generosity of this kind is how you get community, the cornerstone on which any successful open source project is built. By allowing the widest possible range of users to use your software you get the biggest possible community. More eyes on bugs, more people fixing them. That community is what turns into momentum. That momentum becomes market share. Sometimes market share becomes profit, but that's not a promise of open source. + +As Bruce Perens puts it, "we have to draw a line between open source... and the right to make money with open source. The open source definition allows, but does not support, your right to make money. We're not going to change the rules because you can make money better that way." + +To its credit, Horowitz and MongoDB seem to have come around to this point for view, or at least accepted the inevitability of it when they withdrew the SSPL from consideration as an OSI-approved license. + +Just because you build it and they come, does not mean massive profit. + +In fact, if you build it and they come and then you take it away, it might be worse than if you'd never built it. + +Redis Labs' move away from open source comes after it reaped all the benefits of open source -- community support, wide adoption and code contributions from a widespread sources. To put it bluntly, Redis Labs angered the community. + +When free software developers get mad, they get forking, and there is indeed a fork of Redis, [GoodFORM](https://goodformcode.com/). GoodFORM takes the re-licensed Redis modules as they were prior to the license change, and will maintain them for Debian, Fedora and other Linux distros that cannot ship proprietary software. + +The unintended consequence of Redis Labs' new license is that anyone wanting to use a full and open source version of Redis will have to use GoodFORM, not Redis. + +Individual developers might not much care, but large companies looking to use open source software aren't so cavalier. For them it usually comes down to a choice, either use clearly open source software with an OSI approved license, or call the lawyers. And no one ever wants to call the lawyers just to install a piece of software. + +Perens tells Ars that this was one of the key motivations behind the intimal open source definition (originally written for the Debian project). "The open source definition means that you shouldn't need a lawyer just to be a user," says Perns. "And one of the ways we do that is minimizing the legal load." + +Redis Labs' new license puts companies in the position of needing a lawyer, and GoodFORM becomes the more logical choice. This also may hint at why MongoDB wanted to remain open source. + +Other open source projects which have changed to closed source licenses have not fared well. The Xfree86 project was the defacto standard for running X Windows for most of the 1990s, up through the early 2000s. In 2004 Xfree86 began shipping code that the Free Software Foundation felt was counter to the GPL. The downstream operating systems using Xfree86 decided that was unacceptable and a fork, X.org, was born. Today X.org occupies the place Xfree86 once did and Xfree86 is abandoned. + +Other examples are easy to find, LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice, MariaDB came out of license changes in MySQL, Wireshark came out of Ethereal, the list goes on, but the key thing to note is not just that the forks happened, but that they took with them the developers, the community, the momentum that sustains open source software over the long haul. Lose the goodwill of the open source community and it can be vicious in exacting its revenge. It's also efficient in doing so, Xfree86 was effectively dead six months after X.org began, OpenOffice disappeared into irrelevancy similarly quickly. + +The overwhelming lesson of open source history is that once you are open source, it's very unlikely you will change that and survive. + +## What makes open source work: generosity + +If open source history teaches that there is no going back, it's worth considering why. + +[Beanbooks](https://beansbooks.com/opencode), a little project spun out of Linux computer manufacturer System76 is a perfect example of what Perens sees as an ideal open source software scenario. In <cite>[The emerging economic paradigm of Open Source](https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1470/1385)</cite> Perens argues that a company's non-differentiating software is its best scenario for open source software. That is, open source the infrastructure of the business, not the core. + +To put it another way, Beanbooks was not System76's profit center, but it is an enabling technology for System76's profit center -- building Linux-based computers. + +However, despite being a perfect candidate for an open source license, Beanbooks is not open source. Why? + +System76 sells a hosted version of Beanbooks, a SaaS, and at the time the company was worried that a larger company would come along, take the GPL code, essentially clone Beanbooks and get all the profit from System76's investment. + +System76 founder Carl Richell says he can empathize with MongoDB and Redis Labs, but he has already been down the worry-about-someone-stealing-your-code-for-competing-SaaS road and regrets it. "Our concern was that someone would wrap up the software and we would lose all our investment." He says System76 wanted something like patent protection for a few years, but that "ended up hurting us, hurting the platform, and we shouldn't have had those concerns." + +While the SaaS version of Beanbooks looks to be fine, the available code does not get updates and is, from a free software perspective, fairly useless. The Github page is a ghost town. There's no development, no community. + +Beanbooks the service carries on, but it does so without a community contributing ideas, code and everything else vibrant open source projects have. Richell thinks Beanbooks might have avoided its fate if it had a GPL or similar license from the beginning. + +"If it was good enough that someone wanted it that's great," says Richell. The key to success for Ritchell isn't the open source software, it's the innovation. "Differentiation is not what you've done today, but how rapidly you can advance," he says. As the software developer you have a head start, and, hopefully, a vision of where you are going, those are your differentiators, to use Perens' terms. + +"The only way to be successful is to stay ahead," says Richell, "I don't think the license has anything to do with it." + +The Chef project, makers of various software automation and deployment tools, seems to agree and offers an alternative course to that of MongoDB and Redis. Chef recently announced it would change its license to be completely open source (under the Apache 2.0 license). "We welcome anyone to use and extend our software for any purpose in alignment with the four essential freedoms of Free Software," writes Chef CEO Barry Crist. While Crist doesn't mention any other companies, it's hard to see the specific language of "the four essential freedoms" as anything but a response to Redis and MongoDB. + +## What the future looks like + +Everyone loves an underdog, and Redis Labs and MongoDB want to portray themselves as the open source underdogs waging a heroic battle against the forces of evil in the form of AWS. But are they? + +Redis Labs and MongoDB both look like very healthy companies. Redis Labs recently raised $60 million dollars in funding and, based on the companies doing the funding, looks poised for a successful IPO. MongoDB's IPO last year was, by all accounts, a huge success. It's stock IPOed at $24 and has steadily climbed ever since then. Today it trades at at around $100 a share. Just before this article went to press one of MongoDB's biggest users, Lyft, did defect to Amazon, but after a slight stock drop, MongoDB's stock was right back up where it was before Lyft defected. + +Neither company is hurting. At least not yet. The fallout from their license changes remains to be seen, but given that much of the development of MongoDB comes from employees, it will likely be fine regardless of whether it's open source or not. The fate of either is unimportant to the fate of the larger open source paradigm. + +The open source paradigm doesn't work for everyone. As Perens put it in a conversation we had as I was wrapping this up, "you can use any license you want as long as you don't call it open source, that's your freedom. But we have certain rights that come with open source it doesn't make sense to give these up to protect a business model." + + +Through all the conversations I had with developers and founders, one line kept coming back to me. System76 founder Carl Richell told me: "if generosity isn't built into open source, it isn't going to work." + +Generosity in this case is the right to use the software for any purpose. + +This has always been the basic litmus test for new open licenses -- is the license limiting the generosity of the software? What got open source where it is today is that it could be used anywhere, with anything. Need to combine open source and proprietary software? No problem. Need to re-write that open source library so it can interface with your proprietary code? No problem. Want to take that open source library, wrap it up as a service and sell it? No problem. Because in the end, that's what open source is: freedom through generosity. And as Perens points out, that's what it is even when that model doesn't work for a particular business. + diff --git a/ubuntu-1904review.txt b/ubuntu-1904review.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5107ddb --- /dev/null +++ b/ubuntu-1904review.txt @@ -0,0 +1,89 @@ +Canonical recently released Ubuntu 19.04, the latest version of its flagship GNOME-based Linux desktop. + +The latest version of the venerable Ubuntu desktop packs quite a few tempting reasons to upgrade, especially for Linux gamers. Ubuntu 19.04 makes the leap to the Linux kernel 5.x series, which offers much improved graphics support. + +Still, while there are some nice updates to the desktop, the emphasis in this release is on Ubuntu as a tool for infrastructure development, server deployment and the good old Internet of Things. The server version of Ubuntu ships with all the latest cloud computing tools and is already available in optimized builds on the major cloud services. + +If you're a desktop user you might feel a little left out, but despite all the talk of developer tools and enterprise deployment stacks -- Canonical has taken to calling Ubuntu the "leading OS for cloud operations" -- Ubuntu 19.04 is still a worthwhile upgrade that will leave you with a faster, more polished desktop than its predecessors offered. + +## GNOME + +The default desktop for 19.04 looks, aside from the new wallpaper, more or less like previous releases. There are no major changes to be seen, but there are plenty to be felt. + +Thanks to work both in the upstream GNOME project, along with some contributions from downstream, Ubuntu 19.04 is the snappiest version of GNOME I've ever used. In fact, Ubuntu's GNOME desktop finally feels like it's about on par with the old Unity, at least in terms of speed and responsiveness. + +Much of the credit here goes to the GNOME project, which has been hard a work speeding things up and to be completely fair to GNOME, they've actually made even more speed improvements that didn't make it into Ubuntu 19.04. Ubuntu is looking to incorporate some more of those improvements down the road. It's also worth noting that nearly all the improvements to GNOME in 19.04 have been [patched into 18.10](https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/gnome-3-32-performance-ubuntu-19-04/10208) and will eventually make it to the 18.04 LTS release as well. + +Suffice to say that, if you're a GNOME user, the huge, very noticeable speed boost in Ubuntu 19.04 will make you very happy. + +Another trickle down win from the upstream speed improvements is the inclusion of GNOME's indexing tool, Tracker, which is installed by default in Ubuntu 19.04. Previously Tracker was considered too slow to ship with Ubuntu. You've probably never heard of Tracker, it runs behind the scenes and indexes and stores metadata for use in searches throughout GNOME, but adding tracker enables some new features for 19.04. Tracker means you can use the batch rename tool with metadata tags and that searching in the Files app is now full-text. + +While Ubuntu 19.04 doesn't make any radical changes to the basic GNOME user experience, there are a couple of visual improvements worth noting. The new default theme for Ubuntu (known as Yaru) has been further refined and includes a new icon theme that looks more unified -- nearly everything gets a rounded square icon now (except of course for any applications you install that aren't part of the icon set). + +Another immediately noticeable change to the user experience is that alt-tab now switches windows by default. You can cycle through your applications with super-tab. Naturally you can change this using the settings app. + +I should also note that, as with all things GNOME, the many steps forward come with a backward step as well -- you can no longer put icons on the desktop in GNOME 3.32. Ubuntu has worked around this change by including a new GNOME Shell extension aptly named "Desktop Icons". So far so good, but there's a catch: the extension doesn't allow you to drag and drop files or apps onto the Desktop. Instead you'll have to do that using the Nautilus file manager. Drag and drop your file into the desktop folder and you'll see it show up on the desktop. It's a small annoyance easily worked around, but an annoyance nonetheless. + +One much-requested new feature in GNOME 3.32 is support for fractional UI scaling, that is the ability to set the interface to something other than 100 percent (1080p and smaller screens) or 200 percent (for HiDPI screens). With GNOME 3.32 you can scale in 25 percent increments -- not arbitrary, but certainly better than previous releases. The catch is that it really only works (in my testing) running under Wayland. + +There is some experimental support for Xorg sessions, but you'll need to enable it yourself. Instructions can be found on the [Ubuntu Community site](https://community.ubuntu.com/t/x11-hidpi-scaling-available-for-testing-on-disco/10293), but in my testing it was pretty buggy, especially with GIMP. My suggestion would be to use Wayland, after all, if your hardware includes a HiDPI screen, it's probably perfectly capable of running Wayland. + +Several releases ago, Canonical began collecting metrics from willing users (it still does, you can opt out after installation), and one of the bits of data the company mentioned it has learned from that collected data is how often Ubuntu is installed as a virtual machine. Lo and behold, Ubuntu 19.04 will now automatically install the open-vm-tools package (to improve VM integration) when it sees its being installed virtually. It's a small thing, but one that really helps if you spin up a lot of VMs since saves you the hassle of adding those tools by hand after the fact. With Ubuntu 19.04 you can just start up a virtual machine and when its done installing your clipboard will work inside the guest, you can easily share folders, and you'll get a much improved graphics experience, all without doing anything extra. + +## Flavors + +When I said earlier that Ubuntu 19.04 is the snappiest version of GNOME I've ever used, the emphasis there is on GNOME. In the broader scheme of Ubuntu desktops there's really nothing particularly snappy about GNOME. In fact, in my experience it's the slowest of the bunch. Fortunately, if you're looking for a faster desktop that uses less system resources, and offers a more "traditional" experience, Ubuntu's various flavors have you covered. + +All of the under the hood improvements, which I'll get into below, apply to the flavors as well as the main release, so when I say very little has changed, I mean very little in that flavor's desktop. And the truth is, very little has changed for most desktops with this release. There's plenty of improvements in the Ubuntu base packages that all these flavors are built upon, but the user experience in most cases remains largely unchanged. + +After the GNOME-based version, the biggest changes to an Ubuntu flavor come in Ubuntu Budgie. Budgie 19.04 is notable for replacing the Nautilus file manager with Nemo, the file manager found in Linux Mint. This change is Budgie's way of dealing with the inability to show icons on the desktop in GNOME 3.32. Having tested both Ubuntu and Ubuntu Budgie's methods of fixing this feature removal, I'd have to give the edge to Budgie. + +Nemo is simply a better file manager. Not only do you get desktop icons, but you also get some useful features GNOME long ago ripped out like a split screen view and tree-view. + +Ubuntu MATE 19.04, which would be one of my top picks in the Ubuntu flavors world, looks to be a relatively minor update with some bug fixes and a couple new features, but it's probably most notable for what's not included -- the latest version of MATE. + +Ubuntu MATE 19.04 ships with MATE Desktop 1.20 rather than the recently released 1.22. The MATE blog [notes](https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/ubuntu-mate-disco-final-release/) that this is for stability reasons. MATE 1.22 introduces some API changes that some third party applications have not yet incorporated, making them unstable. Look for MATE Desktop 1.22 to land in 19.10 later this year. + +As you would expect from and Xfce-based flavor, Xubuntu is more or less the same as the previous release. Indeed the lack of change is one of the best reasons to use Xfce. That said there are some changes in this release that should welcome news to Xfce-users' ears: more GTK 3 apps. Xubuntu 19.04 ships with GTK 3 versions of the Xfce file manager and app finder. Xubuntu's transition to GTK 3 continues to progress and may even be finished by next year's Xubuntu 20.04 LTS. + +Other Ubuntu flavors like Lubuntu (LXDE-based), Kubuntu (KDE-based) and the oft-overlooked Ubuntu Studio have updates for 19.04. The latter deserves special mention for 19.04 since it's now possible to install Ubuntu Studio's configuration and metapackages on top of an existing Ubuntu installation. That means you can have your stock Ubuntu (or other flavor) desktop and get all the Studio goodness as well. If you've ever wanted a complete audio/video Linux workstation, without the pain of configuring low level audio and video setting, Ubuntu Studio is the way to go. + +## Under the hood + +While Ubuntu's various desktop options all get a little love in this release, most of what's new and improved in Ubuntu 19.04 lies further beneath the surface, especially all the way down in the kernel, which is now at 5.0. + +There's a good bit of new stuff in the Linux 5.x line, but the notable new features include support for AMD FreeSync (great news for anyone with a compatible monitor, you shouldn't see an tearing or latency in video and games), NVIDIA Xavier display support, support for swap files on Btrfs, and support for the Raspberry Pi Touchscreen. There's also a new 16x32 sized Terminus console font in there as well, which, while not super useful for Ubuntu, might come in handy next time you install Arch on a HiDPI screen. + +Ubuntu 19.04 also includes Mesa 19.0, the latest development release of the open-source graphics driver. There's quite a few performance improvements in 19.0, including everything you need to get the kernel-supported FreeSync working. Ubuntu's attention to graphics in this release doesn't stop there, in 19.04 you can go ahead and install proprietary NVIDIA drivers for your NVIDIA graphics card. Just be sure to check the option during installation to "Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media" (note to Canonical, might be time to split that into multiple options). + +The NVIDIA support It's not earth-shattering, but it's one less thing to do after Ubuntu is installed and it goes a long way to making the overall experience even more hassle free for new users. And anyone who tells you the open source Nouveau drivers are good enough has obviously never used it for gaming. + +There's a little tease in this release as well, if you open up the Software and Updates app you'll see a new tab label Livepatch, which does... nothing -- it's just there so it can be backported to 18.04. Canonical's Livepatch feature, which applies security updates that don't require a system restart, only supports long term releases. Previously it was only available in Ubuntu server and required configuration through the command line. Now it will be available to Desktop users with a handy GUI -- just not 19.04 users. If you stick with 18.04 LTS, look for this feature to arrive soon. + +Ubuntu is also shipping with an impressively up-to-date set of developer tools in this release. Python is at 3.7.3, golang 1.10.4, rustc 1.32.0, and GCC 8.3, with the option to go ahead and use GCC 9. Normally this warrants a sentence and that's about it, but I think 19.04 shows something of a shift for Ubuntu, which previously was more conservative about updating programming languages. I think this change is indicative of a change in direction for Ubuntu -- it's becoming a more developer-focused distro. + +Another example of this focus on developers can be seen in Snaps, Ubuntu's containerized app distribution system. In this release you can now install multiple instances of a snap. This means developers can install production alongside development versions of their app (it also paves the way for users to be able to install more bleeding edge versions of apps if they like). That's a huge win if you're building out a continuous integration environment + +There's also a noteworthy new Snap app available that will make some developers happy -- Microsoft's Visual Studio Code. Yes, in 19.04, with a single click you can install an open source Microsoft app on your Linux box. I'll be honest, that's not a sentence I ever expected to write. + +But one of the reasons Ubuntu is the closest thing Linux has to a household name is because it focused on making Linux newcomer-friendly and easy to use. Now it seems to be bring that experience to bear on a subset of the Linux user market -- developers. + +To some extent Ubuntu was and often still is the first place people, including developers, experience desktop Linux. That's a huge part of how Ubuntu became a household name. Since people were comfortable with it on the desktop, they turned to it on the server as well, which is a big part of Ubuntu's growth in server space over the past decade. + +Now I think that's coming back around -- a new generation of developers who are familiar with Ubuntu on the server are turning to it on the desktop as well. But to capture that developer mind share Ubuntu needs to make the developer experience as smooth as it has made the desktop experience for everyone else. I believe that's why this release is so focused on developer tools and updated version of programming languages, and yes, even Microsoft apps. + +## Server and IoT + +Another, more prosaic, reason Ubuntu is popular in the server world is that it provides optimized builds for all the major cloud platforms. This release is no different, optimized Ubuntu Server 19.04 and Minimal Ubuntu 19.04 images are already available on your favorite cloud hosting service. + +That's not unusual for an Ubuntu release, but more telling is Ubuntu's [press release](https://blog.ubuntu.com/2019/04/18/open-infrastructure-developer-desktop-and-iot-are-the-focus-for-ubuntu-19-04) for 19.04 which is entitled "open infrastructure, developer desktop and IoT are the focus for Ubuntu 19.04." + +Despite being a press release, it's worth considering that headline for a minute. Ever since Canonical turned its back on "convergence" and laid off the majority of the developers working on the Ubuntu desktop, these three things -- infrastructure, developer tools and the Internet of Things -- have been the core focus of its resources. + +It's also worth noting that this is a trinity of goals that have long served the Fedora project well, producing a quality no-frills desktop loaded with developer tools, a set of server management tools and Fedora's various cloud-based tools. They also trickle down to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which in turns is a big part of IBM's acquisition, which is to say that Canonical is following in some very well established footprints here and the release of 19.04 shows its paying off. + +Not only is this a solid desktop release for developers (as well as everyone else), it shows the considerable progress Canonical has made in providing an entire tool chain for it's customers. From the bare metal server management system MaaS, to Juju, to LXC/LXD, to Ubuntu Server, to it's integrated OpenStack and Kubernetes tools, Ubuntu has something for every part of the enterprise stack. + +That makes Ubuntu a compelling alternative to public clouds, as well as an integral part of those clouds. Seemingly no matter what enterprise opts for Canonical wins. This trickles down as well since Canonical's continued investment in the desktop we users enjoy is made possible, at least in part, by its success elsewhere. And with 19.04 Ubuntu looks to be in a good position to continue growing in both use and mind share. + +Ubuntu 19.04 is not a Long Term Support release and will only be supported for nine months. For the average user that's not a huge deal, though the question of should you upgrade is complicated by the fact that most of the improvements to the desktop will eventually make their way to the most recent LTS release (last year's 18.04). My suggestion would be for LTS users to stick with 18.04. If you already upgraded to 18.10, you'll definitely want to make the jump to 19.04. If you'd like to do so now you can follow [Canonical's instructions](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DiscoDingo/ReleaseNotes#Upgrading_from_Ubuntu_18.10), or just wait a few weeks for the first bug fix release, after which Ubuntu should prompt you to upgrade. |