LWN's 2013 Predictions
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It's that time of year again: a new year has begun, so your editor must duly come up with a set of predictions that, by the end of the year, will look either embarrassing or painfully obvious — or both. It is a doomed exercise, but, then, we all need some comic relief sometimes. So, without further ado, here's a few thoughts on what can be expected this year.
In 2012, the shape of a solution for the UEFI secure boot problem came into view. In 2013, the full messiness of the secure boot situation will come to the fore. There are already reports of some secure-boot-enabled systems refusing to work right with the Linux "shim" solution; others will certainly come out. We are, after all, at the mercy of BIOS developers who only really care that Windows boots properly. We are also at the mercy of Microsoft, which could decide to take a more hostile stance at anytime; there have already been snags in getting the Linux Foundation's bootloader signed.
UEFI secure boot bears watching, and we owe thanks to the developers who have been laboring to make Linux work in that environment. But the problem of locked-down systems is much larger — and much older — than UEFI secure boot, and many of the systems in question already run Linux. Maintaining access to "our" hardware will continue to be a problem this year, just like it has been in the past. "Runs Linux" will continue to mean something different than "the owner can run their own software on it," and UEFI secure boot does not really change the situation all that much, especially for non-x86 systems.
Maintaining access to our software will also be a problem; the usual hassles with software patents will continue, as will attempts to impose draconian surveillance laws, take over the management of the Internet, and so on. Such is life in the 21st century. One could hope that the patent issue, at least, would eventually get to the point where legislators feel the need to improve the situation even slightly; recent reports that a patent troll is shaking down companies for the novel act of using a scanner might suggest that we are getting closer. But the legal system excels at tolerating (and abetting) absurdity; don't expect any significant fixes in 2013.
The 3.12 kernel release will happen on November 20, 2013, or, at worse, by the beginning of December. The kernel development process has become a well-tuned machine with a highly predictable cycle; the longest cycle in 2012 (3.3) was only twelve days longer than the shortest (3.5). In the absence of significant externally imposed stress, it is hard to see anything changing that in 2013.
On the other hand, even your editor would not dream of trying to predict which features will be added in the 3.12 development cycle.
The community will continue to become less tolerant of unpleasant behavior from even its most prominent members. The history of free software resembles that of many frontier environments; at the outset there is a small set of explorers who work mostly below the radar. As the frontier is settled — free software becoming successful and often commercially driven — the small and young community begins to lose its "wild west" feel. In our rather larger and older community, the standards for behavior are becoming more stringent. At this point, almost nobody is seen as being so indispensable that we have to put up with them regardless of their behavior.
So, in 2013, we may well see more episodes where community members call out others for what they say or do and suggest that others refuse to associate with them. To an extent, that may lead to a more friendly and inclusive community environment. But a consensus on what constitutes acceptable behavior does not always exist. So we may also see energy going into personal fights that might be better directed toward more positive activities.
In a similar vein, recent resignations of GNU maintainers have made it clear that there is some disagreement within the organization on how decisions should be made. It may be time for a change of management in the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project in 2013. Richard Stallman will certainly keep his place as the philosophical leader of both organizations, but it may become increasingly clear that his limited energies need not be absorbed by administrative matters. If these projects are to survive his eventual departure (nobody lasts forever), they would do well to better establish their processes and identities separate from their founder now.
"Vertical integration" will be heard often in 2013. There is no shortage of developers and companies asserting that the "distribution of a collection of disparate chunks of software" model is holding Linux back. Instead, they want to create a system following an overall design from top to bottom. The market performance of platforms like Android suggests that success may be found this way; now we have projects like GNOME OS, Firefox OS, and Ubuntu following similar paths. This kind of integration may well lead to a slicker result, but it also risks fragmenting the Linux world in a way that the traditional distributions did not.
This push toward vertical integration has generated a fair amount of conflict in our community; that will continue into 2013. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the strongest criticisms are reserved for those who are trying hardest to do this integration work as a community project rather than a company-controlled commercial product. As the Android developers have discovered, it can be a lot easier to just design a top-to-bottom system behind closed doors and release the result later. If we wish to minimize the fragmentation risk, we might want to engage more fully — and more constructively — with those who are doing their integration work in the open.
Some distribution will ship a release based on Wayland this year. It will be a painful experience for everybody involved. Wayland as a replacement for the venerable X Window System is certainly the future, but the future can sometimes take rather longer to arrive than one would expect.
Several new Linux-based platforms will ship on hardware in the coming year. We should see devices based on Firefox OS in some parts of the world. The Mer-based "Sailfish OS" may well be available in 2013. Samsung will likely ship Tizen-based handsets, the KDE-based "Vivaldi" tablet (or something descended from it) may actually ship, Ubuntu may show up on some mobile devices, and something totally unpredictable will probably materialize as well. There will be a wealth of interesting Linux-based choices, though they cannot all be expected to do well in the market.
Finally, LWN will celebrate its 15th anniversary on
January 22. As we were thinking about what LWN might be in 1997, we
could never have imagined that we would still be at it all these years
later. Some people never learn, evidently. But, having come this far, we
certainly don't plan to stop now. So, as we wish all of you a great 2013,
we would also like to thank you for fifteen years of support, and all the
years yet to come. We could not possibly ask for a better audience.
(Log in to post comments)
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 3:11 UTC (Fri) by pjones (subscriber, #31722) [Link]
what hardware is being referred to here? are greetings filed, so we can investigate exactly what the issues are?
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 4:30 UTC (Fri) by pjones (subscriber, #31722) [Link]
According to the holiday season
Posted Jan 4, 2013 15:49 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]
Have you filed a greeting about it?
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 16:04 UTC (Fri) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 18:30 UTC (Fri) by pjones (subscriber, #31722) [Link]
That said, I'm still unaware of any x86_64 PC implementing Secure Boot in a way that doesn't work with our implementation, so I'd still like some citations on that.
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 6, 2013 9:56 UTC (Sun) by yaap (subscriber, #71398) [Link]
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 6, 2013 16:39 UTC (Sun) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 7, 2013 13:52 UTC (Mon) by pjones (subscriber, #31722) [Link]
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 4:33 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
I've heard nothing, and you'd think someone would have mentioned it to me.
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 14, 2013 17:27 UTC (Mon) by meuh (guest, #22042) [Link]
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 14, 2013 22:22 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 15, 2013 10:15 UTC (Tue) by meuh (guest, #22042) [Link]
https://github.com/mjg59/shim
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/19448.html
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 9:27 UTC (Fri) by etienne (guest, #25256) [Link]
It seems that for some BIOS/hardware developers, making a PC incompatible with Linux is a value-added thing: it is easier to sell because the crapware added has more value, people paying for such crapware and reducing the street price of such PC will get a better return on their investment.
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 5, 2013 15:30 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]
The crapware comes preinstalled. When system is sold all the income from crapware is already accounted for. And most crapware creators don't really obsessed enough to give higher price to manufacturers who cripple Linux.
This means that for manufacturer Linux-incompatible device is bad. It may not be "bad enough" to warrant full Q&A cycle but you may be sure that nobody intentionally cripples Linux: all the cases I've seen so far are easily explained by sloppiness, not malice.
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 10:03 UTC (Fri) by ctg (guest, #3459) [Link]
Thanks for 15 Years!
Posted Jan 4, 2013 10:50 UTC (Fri) by kay (subscriber, #1362) [Link]
I couldn't ask for a better source of Linux News.
Thank's for 15 years of good and cool stuff!
Kay
Thanks for 15 Years!
Posted Jan 4, 2013 11:51 UTC (Fri) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link]
I can't believe it's been 15 years now. Congratulations, everybody!
Thanks for 15 Years!
Posted Jan 4, 2013 22:48 UTC (Fri) by a9db0 (subscriber, #2181) [Link]
>> Some people never learn, evidently.
Neither do we, your readers, evidently.
Thanks again for everything.
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 15:46 UTC (Fri) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
This kind of [vertical] integration may well lead to a slicker result, but it also risks fragmenting the Linux world in a way that the traditional distributions did not.
really?
because we all know that writing and deploying a Linux application today is easy, and you don't have multiple distributions, multiple environments, multiple packaging systems, multiple interpretations and deviations of various specifications, and multiple versions of the dependencies to care about at all.
of all the things, vertical integration will at least reduce the insanity that is the Linux ecosystem, given that it will consolidate around a bunch of environments, with strictly defined dependencies and entry points. plus, those environments are also striving to define standards for sandboxed environments and application deployments, instead of the current free for all.
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 21:23 UTC (Fri) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]
On Windows, on the other hand... There's the endless plethora of varieties of Windows, xp, vista, 7, 8 -- with the various service packs, but even with the various sets of patches: on some versions of Windows 7 with some set of security patches, installing an application while Windows checks for updates will make sure the install half-fails: the app will refuse to start, until Windows is booted for the first time, _or_ unless the user manually chooses "repair the install". And this is with Microsoft's own msi installer system, mind.
Linux makes life easy for the application developer. Real easy. Most of us app developers don't realize how easy we have it until we try to port to Windows (or OSX).
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 21:46 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Making all applications GPL'ed to get distributions to redistribute them just isn't going to fly. Lots and lots of apps that users want are never going to GPL'ed and it is not like distributions can package all GPL'ed apps either. The most commonly used ones? sure but there are hundreds of stuff that aren't in the distro repos and probably never will.
If you are already part of the core ecosystem of free software apps, the centralized repo model works for you. If you are a independent software developer, Linux model is very problematic and people who are doing it are sometimes targeting just one distro (commercial ISV market - RHEL, Steam like folks - Ubuntu) and excluding everyone else.
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 22:29 UTC (Fri) by mezcalero (subscriber, #45103) [Link]
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 4, 2013 22:44 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
(Worse yet, sometimes the bug was never present in a release version at all, but the distro vendor picked up a prerelease! Sometimes you're lucky and they picked up the subsequent bugfix in an erratum, but even then there are some users who are too conservative to ever apply any bugfixes to their production systems at all because they might disrupt something, but who think that it makes sense to report the resulting long-fixed bugs to the upstream with great indignation, or rather to the first name that pops up in Google when they search for the name of the software...)
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 5, 2013 9:24 UTC (Sat) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]
I know it's attractive to see problems everywhere and argue that the status quo is broken and needs to be replaced, but for me as an application developer the current model really works a lot better for me than what I have to do on Windows. Especially if you try to push your application through one of the app stores on Windows.
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 8, 2013 13:21 UTC (Tue) by jpnp (guest, #63341) [Link]
...for some reason pretty much only with Ubuntu users in my experience. Maybe because they are in a huge majority.Or because Canonical provide updates for Ubuntu for a longer period, certainly compared to Fedora which has a userbase who must be much more up-to-date to receive security patches.
LWN's 2013 Predictions
Posted Jan 8, 2013 13:50 UTC (Tue) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]
One more prediction
Posted Jan 4, 2013 17:05 UTC (Fri) by utoddl (guest, #1232) [Link]
I'll stick my neck out here and predict that Jon once again will not release the source code behind the LWN web site this year. I only mention it because several of us have been gently egging him on about this for about a decade, and I wanted to get this year's egging out of the way.Here's hoping LWN's 2013 is its best year yet.
One more prediction
Posted Jan 4, 2013 17:27 UTC (Fri) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
One more prediction
Posted Jan 4, 2013 22:46 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
(I have never run this software because the mere idea of it is too terrifying to contemplate for long.)
One more prediction
Posted Jan 5, 2013 21:12 UTC (Sat) by lacos (guest, #70616) [Link]
I'll stick my neck out here and predict that Jon once again will not release the source code behind the LWN web site this year
Why do you think he should? I think it's both ethical and reasonable from him not to release the source.
One more prediction
Posted Jan 5, 2013 22:22 UTC (Sat) by utoddl (guest, #1232) [Link]
I agree with you 100%. "Should" is a bit strong, but the reason I still think he might is because he has indicated that he would like to for a decade. Several of us have gently encouraged him to pursue that course for two primary reasons. First, we actually wanted to help ensure LWN would stay around. The more site development/maintenance work we could take off Jon, the more he could focus on finding/creating content and generally staying afloat. Second, remember, 10 years ago, there weren't quite so many capable free off-the-shelf site management systems around, so having access to the LWN code base would have been valuable to the community. These days most of the problems with the code base have been worked out, and the community has plenty of other CMS options. Yet to some extent, both of those original motivations still hold true.Preparing a mature code base for public release is no small amount of work. Managing the resultant stream of patches (which may never materialize) is yet more work. It's doubtful the payback for Jon at this point would be worth it, and frankly if the choice for Jon's legacy is between the content he has provided over the years vs. the source code to the means he created to provide it, in hind sight I'd take the former. But if a tarball were to show up someday along with a wishlist of things Jon wanted added, I'm sure some of us would at least take a look and see what we could do to help.
In any case, I wish the LWN staff a happy and successful 2013.
One more prediction
Posted Jan 5, 2013 22:29 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
One more prediction
Posted Jan 13, 2013 14:19 UTC (Sun) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link]
Jon could just dump what they have currently and add as wish list item "cleaning & generalizing the code base to the standards of a good public release".
Only things that would really need to be cleaned before publishing are things like:
* internal passwords, key files and mail addresses
* proprietary code not owned by LWN
Volunteer subscribers could clean & generalize rest.
LWN source
Posted Jan 15, 2013 7:06 UTC (Tue) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]
Because that has been the promise for at least the decade or so I've been reading it, now. See the FAQ, which has said very close to the same thing since I first looked, way back then.
Because LWN is a flagship FLOSS community publication, and as such, it should walk its own talk. Many of the projects and hardware manufacturer's drivers that LWN was covering a decade ago as closed source have come around and are either directly open source now, or they're cooperating with the community and open source alternatives are now available, yet LWN, one of the FLOSS community would-be flagships, is still stuck with the same now rather hollow reading promise it had way back then.
It wouldn't be so bad if LWN weren't the in the highly visible FLOSS community flagship publication position it's in. Honestly, as someone else mentioned the time has passed when the LWN code would be the valuable contribution it once could have been. But by now, LWN is badly undercutting its own FLOSS message and the efforts of many others in the community as well, exactly BECAUSE it's in the highly visible flagship position it occupies, yet the code remains closed despite a decade (or more) of promising to open it.
What has the community done with others who have promised that they'd open their code for a decade, yet it remains closed? What sort of community credibility do they have? Would the community have tolerated a hardware manufacturer promising sources for the kernel and GPL software they ship, and not delivering for over a decade, or would they have been on the receiving end of a law suit well before that, with LWN's blessing as it covered the news? Of course LWN doesn't have the legal obligation, but having made the promise and as the community spokes-site they are, they certainly have the moral obligation. Why does LWN continue to get away with it?
More selfishly, not that a few subscriptions make that much difference to LWN, but while I was a subscriber for awhile and at least initially I felt good about it even when I didn't have time to read LWN because it was a way I could contribute to furthering the community, eventually I got uncomfortable enough about the discord between the message LWN promoted and its actions, that I found I could no longer in good conscience subscribe. But I'm selfish and not being a subscriber is inconvenient. I'd love to be able to read LWN's feature articles as they're published, and I miss the reply notification feature even more, but were I to subscribe just for the convenience while LWN remains closed source, it'd setup a personal moral discordance that I'm not willing to live with, so I just live with the inconvenience. If LWN would just open up its code as it has promised, it would thus eliminate a big personal inconvenience, as I'd then be able to subscribe in good conscience again, and thus have access once again to these valuable LWN subscriber features that I sure miss!
But for now, I've resigned myself to not getting reply notifications, or being able to read feature articles before they're old news. And... I guess I can still hope that in Jon's final instructions (which hopefully won't be read for decades yet, but it happens to us all!) there's provision for finally opening the code, because at this point, I've about lost hope of that promise ever being fulfilled otherwise. Not because he doesn't want to, but simply because "in real life (tm)" if something's not made a priority, as this evidently hasn't been despite the promise, there's generally always something else more important to do first...
Maybe this'll be the year that all changes. =:^)
Duncan
LWN source
Posted Jan 15, 2013 8:37 UTC (Tue) by cladisch (✭ supporter ✭, #50193) [Link]
Because, apparently, users pay for the articles, not for the CMS source code.
LWN source
Posted Jan 15, 2013 9:35 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
Because most LWN readers apparently believe that the people who write code (including the people who pay others to write code), have the right to decide what do do with the code.
The fact that many people are willing to release the code under copyleft licenses is something that we appreciate, but we don't believe that anyone should be forced to release code (unless it's a derivative work of code where the license requires release)
This is one of the places where Free Software and Open Source Software differ.
Free Software believes that writing non-Free software is unethical.
Open Source Software believes that releasing the code is a choice, and frequently a very good choice the from purely pragmatic viewpoint.
In the case of the LWN codebase, I would rather have more articles and no code release rather than having them concentrate on the code audit and release and go under because they aren't producing articles.
LWN source
Posted Jan 15, 2013 10:39 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
In the case of the LWN codebase, I would rather have more articles and no code release rather than having them concentrate on the code audit and release and go under because they aren't producing articles.
The LWN.net site code was presumably written in response to the specific requirements of LWN.net and much of it is probably not directly useful unless you are, in fact, LWN.net.
Personally I, too, would much rather see Jon and his team concentrate on content, which they demonstrably do better than just about anybody else, than get sidetracked by having to sanitise the LWN site code for release and running a community development project (because naturally the people clamouring for a LWN.net code release don't want them to just throw the code over the wall, Android-style, no, they want them to accept bug reports and patches, do new releases, etc. etc. on an ongoing basis). Especially since, these days, ready-made free content management systems with support and a community are a dime a dozen.
LWN source
Posted Jan 15, 2013 14:46 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]
Why does LWN continue to get away with it?Com on. LWN.net doesn't ever distribute its source code; it is an internal product, so even under the GPL they might get away with it.
As to the promise, it may have made sense some years ago, but today our beloved editors might retract their promise and very few people would feel the loss, as stated above.
I am sure even Stallman keeps a closet full of code uglier than a troll's foot that he uses internally and would never release.