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Amazon.com's product listing for World of Warcraft is now listing Linux support for the popular MMORPG from Blizzard...

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Brendan Eich warns of 'The Bridge of Khazad-DRM'

The co-founder and CTO of Mozilla Brendan Eich has issued a strongly worded statement decrying moves by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to allow digital rights management plugins to be included in the specifications for HTML5 and future code iterations.…

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Four new generic top-level domains - the letters that appear at the end of web addresses, such as .com - have been announced.

I was a little taken aback today by Mark’s “tea party” comment on the Trusty Tahr release announcement today. To try and put it in as much context as possible:

Mir is really important work. When lots of competitors attack a project on purely political grounds, you have to wonder what THEIR agenda is. At least we know now who belongs to the Open Source Tea Party   And to put all the hue and cry into context: Mir is relevant for approximately 1% of all developers, just those who think about shell development. Every app developer will consume Mir through their toolkit. By contrast, those same outraged individuals have NIH’d just about every important piece of the stack they can get their hands on… most notably SystemD, which is hugely invasive and hardly justified. What closely to see how competitors to Canonical torture the English language in their efforts to justify how those toolkits should support Windows but not Mir. But we’ll get it done, and it will be amazing.

I can tell you what the agenda of the Mir team is: speed, quality, reliability, efficiency. That’s it. From what I’ve seen on the smartphone, Mir is going to be a huge leap forward for gaming performance, battery life and next-generation display capabilities. So thank you for the many contributions we had to Mir, and to everyone who is testing it in more challenging environments than the smartphone. I’m enjoying it on my laptop and loving the gaming benchmarks for native Mir. So to that team, and the broader community who are helping test and refine Mir, thank you.

I was a little disappointed that this comment came out, since I really thought that the inevitable controversy that comes with any major direction-setting decision had come and gone. It was quite clear that it was aimed more broadly at Red Hat and Intel with the reference to systemd, which is unfortunate, because while there was a recent controversy surrounding Intel, I don’t think they are really the “tea party” that Mark wants to refer to.

For my non-Western or at least non-U.S based readers, the “tea party” is a far-right, decentralized and loosely associated political group that exists within the Republican party. They are (arguably) backed by some large and anonymous vested interests and have only performed the function of skewing debate about, and obstructing the implementation of some socially and economically “liberal” policies such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Their actions are largely the reason why the non-essential administrative services associated with the normal running of government went unfunded for the past two weeks and why we almost had the United States default on its foreign debt on Thursday. The “Tea Party” uses its small political power to its maximum extent in order to manufacture crisis after crisis in order to destabilize a democratically elected government and house.

It is no surprise then that calling a group of people within a community a “tea party” is a very deliberate attempt to categorize them as a group of people whose sole purpose is to destabilize, and no doubt insulting to that group of people.

There is a tea party, but just not who you expect

I think Mark did pick up on something though, which is that a tea party does exist. I’m not going to name them or imply who they are, because they are a disparate group of loosely-affiliated people, so it would be a rather pointless exercise.

One thing I think Mark got confused in his comments was the difference between those who are heavily involved in the development of open source software projects on one hand and their vocal proponents (or opponents) on the other. I tend to find that these groups are usually mutually exclusive and it is only on limited occasions that you’ll find some overlap between the two. The reality is that the vast majority of us are far too busy working on our projects, whether that be Wayland, Weston, Mutter, KWin, Mir or something else to really care all that much about coming out on top of a political crisis with words. And we know all too well that its very difficult to change taken direction with words alone.

The “tea party” does exist though. It exists in a loosely-associated group of people I like to call “armchair free software developers”. These people feel a kind of emotional closeness to the community and to particular projects but are not involved in the day to day development of those projects, either because they don’t feel that have the skills required to do so, don’t want to make the effort to do so, or simply don’t have time (because they are busy with other and probably more important things). In order to resolve this relevant inability to contribute, they create political debate and drum up support and opposition to things as an ostensible “contribution” in order to maintain their self-deception about their closeness to a community or project.

Now in jest I say – the irony in Mark’s statements is that he’s just fulfilled this exact criterion of being an “armchair free software developer”, and the irony in my statements is that I’ve also fulfilled this exact criterion of being such an armchair developer. Mark can’t be involved with the day to day running of these projects because he’s too busy trying to run a venture with a lot of external influences. I can’t be involved with the day to day running of these projects because I’m too busy with my Law degree.

If you watch the logs of the #wayland or #ubuntu-mir IRC channels on freenode or their respective mailing lists, you’ll notice that its very rarely that anybody there makes political commentary on, or let alone even talks about, the other project. It is also very rare that they talk about Windows’ Desktop Window Manager, or OS X’ Quartz Extreme, or Android’s SurfaceFlinger, or any other “competing” project. Usually whenever that happens it is some new person trying to start an argument and they usually get ignored.

On the other hand, if you watch the Phoronix forums, Reddit or various blog posts and their comments, lots of people who have hardly anything to do with these projects seem to have a lot to say about them as well as the constant capacity to talk about them. The political commentary is typically quite shallow, makes reference to blog posts published months ago and is usually just spreading misinformation and hearsay. It does appear to make up the vast majority of the debate.

At this point, you might be asking what my credibility is on this. After all, this is just a blog post. I’ll be the first to say that I’m not involved in the day to day running of either project. After all – I have more pressing things to do with my time. I speak here as a developer who has been somewhat involved with both projects. I’ve made (very limited) contributions to both Mir and Weston, wrote the client code to support both display servers for a large media center project. I helped to write the backend for an important graphical toolkit for one of the display servers. More importantly, I speak as a person who is a personal friend of developers from both projects. Which leads me nicely on to the next section.

Why do “tea parties” and “armchair developers” matter?

One fallacy is to equate a project’s proponents and opponents with its developers. Another fallacy is to assume that because somebody does not contribute to discussion and debate, then they are not engaged or affected by its contents. There’s a really depressing feeling that comes with scrolling through comment after comment about your project, the fruit of your hard labor by the politically insatiable minds of Reddit or one of Mark’s blog posts about your “hidden agenda”.

Seeing hateful comment after hateful comment about compiz in an attempt to “contribute” to the debate by comparing it with other similar projects is what made me effectively give up on it and move on to other completely different projects in the middle of this year. In fact, I almost did so at the end of 2011 and didn’t because I was being paid to work on it. Why put all your effort into maintaining something when people constantly rag on about how its “garbage” or “tainted” or “CLA riddled” or “a corporation’s hidden agenda” or … you get the picture. The positive comments sprinkled here and there in a sea of partisan criticism manifesting itself as “contribution to the debate” only made my imposter syndrome worse. Those who manage the affairs of Intel, Red Hat and Canonical should take particular note of this. You are demotivating your employees by engaging in constant crisis and debate.

Every project that is somehow involved in all of this each has its own unique and important merits. Both Wayland and Mir have substantially innovated in the protocol space, development methodology and flexibility of display servers. They are both good things. Let their developers create and refine the fruits of their labor and don’t punish them with partisan criticism and never-ending political debate and crisis.

So far, Firefox OS has been limited to ultra-basic smartphones like the ZTE Open. LG is expanding the platform's reach today by releasing its inaugural Mozilla-powered handset, the Fireweb. The 4-inch device is still designed for newcomers between its 480 x 320 display, 1GHz Qualcomm processor and ...

Don't install Ubuntu Touch - that's my advice to anyone thinking about replacing Android on their primary device expecting a polished OS.

The post 4 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Install Ubuntu Touch on Your Nexus first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

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Dilbert readers - Please visit Dilbert.com to read this feature. Due to changes with our feeds, we are now making this RSS feed a link to Dilbert.com.

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After a long period of developer (and enthusiast) previews, Ubuntu 13.10 for smartphones, as well as desktops, is finally available as a stable release. The gesture-heavy, Linux-based mobile OS still doesn't have an official hardware home -- if you'll remember, Canoncial's Indiegogo bid for the ...

As always, you can order all System76 products with the newest Ubuntu release the day it's released. Shipments with Ubuntu 13.10 will start on Monday, after we put the final ISO through one more round of QA tomorrow.

Which brings me to an important topic: why System76 always ships the latest Ubuntu release on our laptops and desktops rather than limiting ourselves to just the LTS release.

By shipping Ubuntu 13.10 now, our customers get:

1. Over twice the Haswell GPU performance
2. Longer battery life (eg, Galago gets around an hour more)
3. 802.11ac WiFi via the new Intel 7260 card
4. Better Haswell CPU performance via GCC 4.8

If we stuck with the LTS, we wouldn't be able to offer our customers the first three improvements till 12.04.4 is released in 3 months from now, and GCC 4.8 wouldn't be available till 14.04 LTS is released in six months, not to mention all the other software that has improved in the past 18 months. What do you think represents Ubuntu, and System76 hardware, best? Do we want to lead, or to follow?

Some people will say the LTS is more stable. And to that I say: no it isn't, it's just supported longer. And the LTS is especially not more stable when running on the latest hardware.

Carl Richell has been running System76 for a long time, almost as long as Ubuntu has been around, and System76 has a very meaningful way of evaluating "stability": incurred support costs.

Like every other fall Ubuntu release, there will be an immediate reduction in per unit support cost, because the fall Ubuntu release will work much better on the new Intel hardware (which was released during the summer). Carl tells me that this has been true every time, regardless whether the spring Ubuntu release was an LTS. Remember, from an OEM perspective, stability on your exact hardware is what matters, and the hardware you're selling will almost always be the newest available.

Personally I'm skeptical as to the claim that other OEMs are insisting on only using the LTS. I think they probably don't know better either way, and are just being told by Canonical that the LTS is what they should use. But even if this is true, I will point out the glaring difference between these other OEMs and System76: for these other OEMs, Ubuntu ships on a rather small percentage of their units, and by the time one of their products first ships with Ubuntu, it's usually well into its life as a Windows product already.

Whereas System76 only ships Ubuntu. It's not just that we prefer to ship the latest Ubuntu release (which we do, because the entire stack moves forward and improves). System76 really must ship the latest Ubuntu release, otherwise we just couldn't be competitive. To understand why, you need some insight into how the hardware world works.

System76 started shipping Haswell products in June. If we stuck with the LTS, we wouldn't be able to start offering Haswell till late August when 12.04.3 was released. Now you might say, hey, just be patient, you don't need to always be offering the newest, shiniest thing. And to that I'd say: yes we absolutely do. If there's one thing that markets aren't, it's patient.

At the wholesale level, old Ivy Bridge processors still cost just as much as their new Haswell equivalents. Intel does this deliberately because they want to push OEMs to the new processors as quickly as possible (always put your best foot forward). Yet there was immediate downward price pressure on Ivy Bridge products when Haswell was released. For example, I noticed at Costco that all the Ivy Bridge laptops were suddenly "on sale". To be clear, this sale was not due to any lower costs for the OEM, it was due to the OEM (and probably the retailer) being forced to lower their margins. And unless you're Apple, an OEM's margins are scary low even on the best day.

So if System76 waited till 12.04.3 to offer Haswell, that would be two full months with lower margins and a lower unit volume (as demand for Ivy Bridge immediately started to decline). Plus that's assuming we could still get Ivy Bridge processors in the first place. The entire System76 supply chain works with almost zero inventory (a huge competitive advantage), and availability of the previous generation processors dries up far more quickly than you might expect.

Places like Newegg will have Ivy Bridge processors around for a while, but that's because a place like Newegg carries more inventory, plus no one is really buying Ivy Bridge processors at this point... so of course they linger around. Seemingly good availability at the retail level does not mean there is the supply stability that an OEM needs to offer a product.

None of this is a problem for the big OEMs because they wont wait to offer Haswell, they'll just wait to offer Ubuntu (on Haswell products). In contrast, as Carl has got this stuff down pat, System76 was proudly shipping Haswell products before almost everyone, regardless of operating system. We had several Haswell products before Apple had even one, and we're only slightly behind Apple in offering 802.11ac. That sounds a lot more exciting than Ubuntu being months behind everyone.

One last point. You might think, bah, System76 just sells to geeky Linux enthusiasts, so of course Linux enthusiasts always want the latest Ubuntu release! To which I'd say: you'd be surprised just how wrong you are about that.

Sure, Linux enthusiasts certainly represent part of our customer base, and we value and care for them just as much as any of our other customers. Plus Linux enthusiasts very often deserve credit for leading organizations to Ubuntu and to System76 in the first place... so, thank you!

But System76 also sells to enterprise customers, to people doing high-end scientific computing, to the VFX industry, to biotech, to car companies, to startups equipping entire teams of developers... the list goes on and on.

The really important take-away is that this latter group of customers buys System76 products just as frequently when we ship a non-LTS Ubuntu release as when we ship an LTS release, and there's zero evidence that these customers are any less happy with the product or with Ubuntu when it's a non-LTS release. This isn't a matter of vague opinion, this is based on hard sales figures, return rates, and support costs.

Canonical should take note that the way System76 is doing things is what it looks like for Ubuntu to be winning in the OEM space. Dunno about you folks, but personally I think winning is really fun =D

Ubuntu 13.10 is a fantastic release! Deepest thanks to the many people whose countless hours of hard work made it happen!

And hey... how about that Ubuntu Touch 1.0!

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E-mail provider Lavabit shut down in August due to government pressure in the wake the Edward Snowden leaks, but it is apparently re-opening -- for a little while. A press release issued by Lavabit indicates that there's a two-step process, with step one giving users a chance to change their ...

Retailer Argos launches an own-brand budget tablet aimed at the "tweenie" market, kicking off the Christmas tablet wars.

Alex Paxton was fined when he stopped beyond an advanced stop line. He is challenging the fixed penalty notice in a case that could have important implications for UK cyclists

When Alex Paxton was cycling down the road, he came to an advanced stop line (ASL). Even if the words don't ring a bell, you'll know an ASL, or cycle box, when you see it: typically an area marked by green tarmac and white lines, set aside to allow cyclists to safely position themselves at the front of a queue at traffic lights.

Paxton claims that because the ASL was already occupied by a car which had stopped illegally inside the area, he was unable to stop within it. As he was on a three-lane road and didn't want to have to cross several lanes of moving traffic in order to turn right when the light changed to green, he positioned himself ahead of the car and in front of the ASL.

A police officer who noticed what had happened radioed ahead to a colleague further along the road in Fulham, London, who issued Paxton with a fixed penalty notice (FPN). Although Paxton argued at the time that the car that blocked the ASL meant he wouldn't have been able to obey the law without putting himself in danger, he received an FPN regardless. Paxton claims that because the second police officer didn't actually see what happened, he was unable to assess the greater risk that Paxton would have faced had he remained behind the ASL.

After receiving advice from the Cyclists' Defence Fund (CDF), set up by the national cycling charity, CTC, to fight legal cases involving cycling, Paxton decided to contest the fine in court. The CDF hopes the case will set a precedent around the enforcement of ASLs. The CDF set up a fundraising page to assist him with his legal costs, which quickly exceeded its target of £2,000. The case is due to be heard at Lavender Hill magistrates court on Wednesday 16 October.

According to CDF's Rhia Weston:

"When the first FPNs for cyclists (targeting those who cycled on footways) were first introduced, the CTC sought assurance that fines would only be given out when a cyclist's actions were reckless and would endanger pedestrians – not, for example, when a cyclist uses an empty pavement to avoid a dangerous section of road. It's important that the same sensible enforcement is applied to cyclists who don't use ASLs when it's unsafe to do so, especially given how frequently ASLs are blocked by illegally positioned vehicles."

Transport for London (TfL) pledged to enforce rules that prohibit drivers from stopping in ASLs more strictly in April 2013, after Andrew Gilligan, London's cycling commissioner, announced plans to use CCTV cameras to catch wayward motorists.

Weston continued:

"ASLs are there for a good reason: around 70% of cyclists' collisions occur at or near junctions. They're by no means perfect, but when used properly, we do believe that they have the potential to save lives. We understand that the Department for Transport is planning to update regulation around ASLs to overcome the considerable problems with their access, which does give us some hope for the future."

If successful, the case could have important implications for UK cyclists: it would compel police officers to use their discretion when issuing FPNs to cyclists who, in order to stay safe, must occasionally act contrary to the law, and press the DfT to clarify the law governing what cyclists should do if an ASL is illegally occupied by a vehicle.

Contrary to the belief of some, ASLs are provided for cycles only, and motorcyclists are specifically prohibited from using them (Highway Code rule 178).

It's worth noting, though, that there is some leeway for drivers: if the light turns red as the driver's vehicle is already within the ASL, the driver must wait within the ASL until the light turns green.

Happy Bartolomé Day.

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The BBC will launch an initiative in 2015 to get coding more widespread in schools and homes.