that’s whacked

rtorrent (& libtorrent (& libsigc++)) packages for Solaris

Monday, Aug 27. 2007  –  Category: OpenSolaris

with many thanks to Thomas B for pointing me at the patch I needed, I was able to fix my rtorrent packages. You can grab the package here which contains the SFWrtorrent, SFWsigc++, and SFWtorrent packages.

clarification: the above .pkg contains ALL 3 packages (for rtorrent, libsigc++ and libtorrent), so it should be all you need. it’s an x86 package only.

updated: 2008 may 8th: I’ve built new packages… you should go grab the new ones instead

ctorrent Solaris package

Sunday, Aug 26. 2007  –  Category: OpenSolaris

i built a basic ctorrent package (following the CCD build system, it places it in /opt/sfw). if you’re interested you can grab it here

i built rtorrent/libtorrent/libsigc++ packages too but had issues with rtorrent not quite working nicely with ncurses, so i’ll post those whenever i figure that issue out.

links for 2007-08-25

Saturday, Aug 25. 2007  –  Category: Linkage

• really nice free to use icon sets
  (tags: graphics icons)

links for 2007-08-23

Thursday, Aug 23. 2007  –  Category: Linkage

• Image Browser Controls
  (tags: html css)

link: dealing with upstream

Monday, Aug 20. 2007  –  Category: OpenSource

great article on arstechnica about how to deal with upstream dependencies. specifically they talk about KDE4.0, but the lessons seem useful and applicable to the generic case.

gplv2/cddl dual-licensing

Saturday, Aug 18. 2007  –  Category: OpenSolaris, OpenSource

This should be implied as usual, but I’ll explicitly state it here: this is my personal opinion only, and isn’t reflective of any opinion of the OGB (OpenSolaris Governing Board) nor of Sun.

Looks like the Netbeans project is thinking of going the dual license route, and licensing under both CDDL and GPLv2. Doing a Google search for ‘netbeans cddl gplv2′ pulls up quite a few blogs and responses from people who generally view it as favourable – but it’s not clear to me why.

A few posts cite that it will make Netbeans more “Linux-friendly”. I’m not sure how or why this perception is there. Are people looking to integrate Netbeans into the Linux kernel? Into Emacs? (Wouldn’t be surprised really..) There is nothing in the CDDL that prevents Netbeans from being distributed in Linux distributions, and as near as I can tell there is nothing in the GPLv2 that would prohibit distributions from bundling Netbeans. So is it really just people’s false perception that “anything not GPLv2 is bad”?

My (and many other people’s) worry with projects going down the dual licensing path is the danger of creating a fork…. how will patches and fixes be ported in the source base? What if someone forks a GPLv2 only Netbeans from which fixes can be sent back upstream into the CDDL Netbeans?

Do people (Sun?) think that more people will contribute to Netbeans now that it’s GPLv2? I would argue the contributor agreement requirement is more of a stumbling block than the license. If people are willing and sane enough to sign the SCA, then I would think they would be intelligent enough to understand the licenses under which their code would be distributed.

It just seems to me that people push Sun to hop on the dual-licensing with GPLv2/v3 wagon merely for the sake of publicity. I’ve yet to see compelling reasons to dual-license. Now switching entirely to a GPLv2/GPLv3 license is more compelling to me since it reduces the fork-dangers of having a dual licensed source base. If there is compelling code out there (Eclipse? I’m not sure how the mingling of GPL & EPL (Eclipse Public License, not the English Premier League) goes..) that is GPLv2 and Netbeans wanted to go the GPLv2 route to promote co-mingling and cross-pollination of code – then that’s one thing. That is a compelling technical reason for a license switch in my mind. (Likewise for OpenSolaris if it were to pursue the GPLv3 route).

open sourcey goodness

Thursday, Aug 16. 2007  –  Category: OpenSolaris, OpenSource

check out sherry’s post on opensolaris-code earlier.

it’s nice to see the Sun/Intel collaboration thing paying off. corporations partner up all the time – but it’s never clear what the exact dividend of said partnership is. sometimes it’s obvious (Partner A bundles Partner B’s software, or Partner A uses Partner B’s hardware), but sometimes it isn’t, e.g. did Google & Sun’s agreement from almost 2 years ago have anything to do with last week’s announce that Google Pack was going to bundle StarOffice?

anyway, the putbacks Sherry mentions are pretty good indicators that the Sun/Intel partnership is paying off dividends already. my only regret is that we don’t have onnv-gate moved outside yet, and that OpenRTI[1] (to steal Rich’s name for it) doesn’t exist (yet).

[1] that would be the ‘open’ replacement for WebRTI (Sun’s Request-To-Integrate) tool, not the Australian Defence Force’s OpenRTI

char-siu is a huntin’

Thursday, Aug 16. 2007  –  Category: Pets

for the past 25 minutes or so, char-siu has been stalking a fly in the living room. it’s hilarious – i’ve never seen him this focused on something for this long. he’s seriously gone into hunting mode. ears cocked, tail straight, the works..

the funny thing is he’s caught it 3 times already. each time he tries to chew it, and it falls out of his mouth and ends up on the floor covered in dog drool. it kind of splats about for a few minutes or so while char-siu stares at it curiously, and then once it dries off enough it starts flying again – and the cycle repeats.

the fly will buzz by over him, char-siu jumps/bounces up and catches him, lather, rinse, repeat.

best 25 minutes of entertainment i’ve had all day.

blog theme change…

Wednesday, Aug 15. 2007  –  Category: Photos

it’s about that time again…

i decided to change my theme. no good reason. i just got bored of my old one.

i took the “sweet blossoms” theme, and did some graphics/colour/theme work to it to get it just right. added a tag cloud, my photo roll, and that’s about it. i like the clean geometric look.

(the photo is here, and is a photo i took while waiting at Hong Kong airport)

shaking it up in the east bay

Wednesday, Aug 15. 2007  –  Category: Musings

hrm. it’s been a shaky past month in the east bay with the various earthquakes we’ve had.

last night we had a 3.2 whose epicenter was 1.7 miles from our house

on Sunday we had a 2.7 whose epicenter was 12.8 miles from our house

and about a month ago we had a 4.2 whose epicenter was a mere 1.5 miles from our house.

i’m starting to wonder if we’re going to have a big one soon.