Badger Linux

Ubuntu Badger Linux

www.badgerlinux.net

http://www.vintagecomputermanuals.com
http://www.g2analyst.com/

  

So, why did the title include iPhone?  First, it's the most hyped
device in history so I have to talk about it.  Second, it's a true
touch interface and has forced the entire industry to change the
way it thinks about the mobile phone.  What this means is that even
if the iPhone isn't a runaway success, it has still succeeded in
moving the mobile industry into the next stage.  This will be the
year of TOUCH for mobile phones, mark my words.  In addition, AT&T
succeeded in putting their own servers behind the walled garden
that is the mobile operator.  Expect other companies to follow suit.

I've been debating about getting one for a long time now and have
to say that with less than 24 hours to go, I'm still debating.
At this point, though, I'm not debating about buying, but more about
allowing it to be my primary device.  Why?  Here's a quick rundown
of some negatives:

1. In order to own an iPhone you have to switch to AT&T.  

2. The subsidized price of the iPhone is $500 or $600
(4GB and 8GB versions)--that's a lot of money to spend on a phone!
Granted it does a lot more than your typical phone but still ...

3. It runs on AT&T's EDGE network.  AT&T has been making a huge claim
about having this great 3G network--which they do--but then they go
and release the iPhone on EDGE.  Why? The rumors are to conserve
battery life.  Still, that's a SLOW network.  I've been using the
T-Mobile Dash on EDGE and surfing is SLOW. Of course, you can hop
to Wi-Fi when available but 3G is already there so why go find Wi-Fi?

4. The battery can't be replaced by a user so you have to send the
iPhone in when it dies to have the battery replaced.  Basically,
you'll be without a mobile phone while you wait for a new battery.

5. No Flash support.
6. No video recording,
7. No real keyboard--it's on-screen.
8. Limited Bluetooth functionality.
9. Only Contacts and Calendar support--what about tasks??  

10. A bunch of steps to make a phone call--I can make a call with
two clicks in most cases.

I could go on but the funny thing about the list above is that I'm
still going to wait in line to get one.  Why?  Again, because it's
revolutionary in its design.  I have to have it, being a mobile geek
and all.  I won't stay overnight like others I know 

**cough** palmsolo **cough** 

but I will wait in line for at least a couple of hours.

Since I'm a mobile geek I can always use the 3G SIM, so even if I
don't switch to the iPhone being my primary mobile device, I can
still switch to AT&T without too much hassle.

If you're wondering what the other carriers are planning while Apple
and AT&T try to lock up the market, Verizon is keeping its stores
open late Friday night and showcasing all of their wares and touting
the fact that they have the best network.  While I don't necessarily
agree, my wife proved to me that coverage is better than fancy
gadgets in this little exchange:

Joel: "Do you want an iPhone?"
Donna: "Sure."
Joel: "You have to leave Verizon and switch to AT&T."
Donna: "Forget it. I don't want one."

Ubuntu Badger Linux

www.badgerlinux.net

http://www.vintagecomputermanuals.com
http://www.g2analyst.com/

Going along with the webserver update I am doing, I needed to move our company webmail from the main webserver to a different server. now this could have been our existing mail server, but I thought it would be a nice idea to take the chance and play around with Zimbra. So I’m now sitting in our datacentre reinstalling a server with Ubuntu and will then install Zimbra onto it. so far the Ubuntu install has been painless, and the Zimbra download has finished. now for the unpacking and running, after the Ubuntu system update completes.

One thing to note here. If you are using Ubuntu, make sure you use Dapper and not Feisty or Gutsy as Zimbra does not like Feisty, and probably won’t like Gutsy even more!

For specifics about other distributions, look at the Zimbra site. There are detailed docs on there as to what Distributions work. A point worth noting, they don’t support Gentoo, but there are workarounds with Gentoo, buy installing a copy of Ubuntu or Debian in a chroot.

So now I have the Ubuntu install finished and all updates done, the Zimbra install can start. This is as simple as running the install.sh, but there are a couple off things you should check and do first. First make sure your hosts file is set right.

It must contain you ip, FQDN and hostname or the install will fail. also it needs localhost set up properly (as far as they are concerned).

10.10.10.55 saturn.ctoblog.info saturn
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

you will also need to make sure you have curl, fetchmail, gmp, sudo, libidn installed. here is the apt-get line:

apt-get install fetchmail curl libidn11 libpcre3 libgmp3c2 libexpat1 libxml2 libstdc++5 openssl
(note its wrapped here, it should be all on one line)

You will also need perl and perl-modules if they are not already there.

Now its a simple case of unpacking the tar file you downloaded from Zimbra and then running the install script.

tar xvzf zcs-NETWORK-4.5.5_GA_838.UBUNTU6.tgz

This will create a directory zcs. So change into that directory then, as root run the install script.

cd zcs
sudo ./install.sh

You are now presented with the license for Zimbra, please look through it and make sure you are comfortable with it. Having accepted the license you now need to accept to install each portion of Zimbra and then say Y to continue when asked “The system will be modified. Continue?”

If for any reason the install fails, like if you don’t have the correct perl modules installed then make sure you uninstall by using ./install.sh -u then rm -rf /opt/zimbra to clean up properly. once you have cleaned up you can try the install again.

During the install Zimbra will try to verify the hostname can be found via DNS. If you are putting this into production, you must make sure that the hostname you have used can be found via DNS. If you are just testing then it should be fine.

If Zimbra cannot find the hostname it will prompt you to change it. If you want to change it say yes here.

Similarly, Zimbra will check the MX record for the host configured. Here you should really set it to the public domain name for your company. Or the internal testing domain. Something you can send emails via.

Once installed you will be asked to set a few parameters. The ones you must remember to do are the admin password and the license.

For the admin password press 6, followed by 4. Then enter your password. Caution, it will be echoed onto the screen

Ubuntu Badger Linux

www.badgerlinux.net

http://www.vintagecomputermanuals.com

http://www.g2analyst.com/

 http://www.sellyourmanitobacottage.com

http://www.fishlakemanitobanarrows.com 

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Ubuntu Badger Linux

www.badgerlinux.net

http://www.vintagecomputermanuals.com

http://www.g2analyst.com/

Haiku has come a long way in the last six years. The aim for the 1.0 release is full source and binary compatibility with BeOS Release 5 (the last public release). A lot of applications run already, and the team has implemented my favorite feature from BeOS: the BFS. There are only two filesystems I consider to have a truly elegant design—BFS and ZFS. While BFS lacks a few features you would expect from a new design, such as snapshots, it is still a very good choice for a desktop.

The basic design of BFS is close to UFS, with the addition of journalling and the use of B+ trees to store directory contents. BFS inodes were at least one disk block, because this is the smallest amount you can efficiently read from a disk. This left about 200 bytes free per inode. Rather than waste this space, BFS used this for “small data,” or typed key-value pairs containing arbitrary information.

While storing arbitrary metadata was nice, as was the fact that you could get at it all just by reading the inode (making folder listings with metadata very fast), BFS had one extra trick. It was possible to create folders containing indexes of metadata, which would be automatically updated.

One of the ways in which BeOS gained some speed was to put the file icon into the metadata. This meant that a single disk read would get all of the information required to display a file in the Tracker (the BeOS file manager). Haiku does this, too, but uses a highly compressed vector graphics format, giving a much higher visual quality.

Haiku is more or less ready for their 1.0 release in terms of features, although not in terms of bugs (a lot still remain). Hopefully this will improve in the next few months, making Haiku a potentially interesting operating system for future desktops.

Ubuntu Badger Linux

www.badgerlinux.net

http://www.vintagecomputermanuals.com
http://www.g2analyst.com/

the Vista to Ubuntu switch is complete and I have had some time to use Ubuntu in a productive environment… I can say that I love Ubunutu (I have had experience with Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, QNX and Debian in the past)! Even running Windows XP under VMware is great. I was doing some Photoshop editing under VMware on some large files and it seemed faster than when I was running Photoshop natively on Vista.

Everything was not all smooth sailing, especially when it came to setting up my two monitors, both on Ubuntu and on VMware. But after setting that up, everything else was easy. I would definitely recommend installing Ubuntu on family computers, especially since my ordeal this past weekend with a family members Windows XP machine that was so infected I just wanted to throw it out the Window…

For convenience the entire series is posted below. I will continue to add blog posts to the Ubuntu category as a continue to use Ubuntu in the day to day. There will also be a series shortly where I ditch Vista on my laptop for Ubuntu. Enjoy.

Ubuntu: The Switch

This series of blog entries will document the process of a ThemBid.com developers journey from the vast barren lands of Windows Vista to the green pastures of Ubuntu.
Motivations

All throughout my University life and education, Linux was my home. I was raised on Red Hat, Mandriva and Gentoo (my favorite). It is time to return home.
For my Life 2.0 project, I require a low cost point of entry and I have decided to use Ubuntu as the OS. Although the system will be OS independent, I want to make sure that those withe most restrictive of budgets can be equally as productive as their Windows brethren.
I have a long term vision of creating a Small/Micro Business distrubution of Linux, and this is the very first baby step.
I have been running Ubuntu in a VMware instance within Windows; however, I have not been happy with the performance that Vista gives me (random crashes and slow responsiveness), even after performing some optimizations and with upgraded hardware.
I have two other machines that are running Windows Vista, so I will be able to transfer, compare and fall back as needed.
It will be fun.
Current Hardware Setup

OS: Windows Vista Ultimate
MODEL: Dell Precision Workstation 690
CPU: DualCore Intel Xeon 5050, 3000MHz
RAM: 2048 MB DDR-677 Fully Buffered ECC DDR2 SDRAM
MONITORS: 2 DELL 19″ LCD’s
VIDEO CARD: Radeon X700 Pro 256MB
AUDIO: SigmaTel STAC9200
HD: 232GB SCSI Internal Drive, 298 GB External USB Drive, 74GB External USB Drive
OPTICAL: CDRW / DVD
PRINTER/SCANNER: HP Officejet 5600 (printer, fax, scanner), Samsung ML-1740
WEBCAM: Creative WebCam NX Pro
MIC/HEADPHONES/SPEAKER: Logitech USB Headset/Mic, Logitech Computer Speakers
Frequently Used Software

Firefox 2, IE 7, IE 6
PHP Eclipse
Skype
MS Outlook
MS Office
QuickBooks Premier 2007
Adobe Photoshop CS2
Notepad++
RoboForm / RoboForm Portable / Goodsync
Adobe Acrobat / Distiller
WS FTP
WinSCP3
UltraMon
GoToMeeting
FreeMind
Audacity
Camtasia Studio 4
XAMPP
ActiveSync
Google Desktop
Tortoise SVN
Macromedia Flash
iTunes
Windows Media Player
Goals

Ultimately I would like to have a Windows Vista, OS X and Ubuntu setup, with each optimized for productivity. I will document the OS X experience as well.
First Steps

Back up all data and settings
Find the Linux equivalents of my frequently used software.
For those that can not be replaced, I will use Wine, Crossover Office and VMware in that order. Or I may just run those applications on a separate Windows machine.
Install a fresh copy of Ubuntu and begin the fun.
Back Up all Data and Settings

I will be formatting the hard drive so I will need to make sure that all the data I have on the machine is safely backed up. Fortunately about six months ago I started the practice of storing no files on a local computer. Everything is stored either on the web, on servers or external hard drives. I just needed to make sure there were no changes in my local SVN folder that needed to be committed and I synchronized my RoboForm data.

Replacement Software

Firefox 2, IE 7, IE 6
Firefox 2, IE6&7 emulated
PHP Eclipse
Linux Version
Skype
Linux Version
MS Outlook
Emulate
MS Office
Open Office
QuickBooks Premier 2007
Emulate
Adobe Photoshop CS2
GimpShop
Notepad++
VI
RoboForm / RoboForm Portable / Goodsync
Not sure yet
Adobe Acrobat / Distiller
Linux version of the reader
PDF Creator and Ghostscript
WS FTP
Filezilla
WinSCP3
Not sure
UltraMon
I will see how my two monitor setup works natively in Linux
GoToMeeting
Emulator
FreeMind
Linux Version
Audacity
Linux Version
Camtasia Studio 4
Xvidcap and Camstudio
XAMPP
Linux Version
ActiveSync
Not sure
Google Desktop
Not sure
Tortoise SVN
Not sure
Macromedia Flash
Linux version
Emulator
iTunes
Amarok and Banshee
Windows Media Player
VLC Player
Remote Desktop
Timer
The Installation

I start at 5:48pm (and 7 seconds)

In goes the fresh new Ubuntu CD (I am inside Vista at this point). I am using version 7.4 Desktop Edition.
I write down the current IP adress I have assigned to this machine before rebooting (almost forgot about that).
I note the peripherals that I have currently attached via USB (I forgot to do this last time)
Two External Drives
Pocket PC (will remove for now)
Webcam (will remove for now)
iPod (will remove for now)
HP OfficeJet (will remove for now)
So I now only have the one external drive connected.
I hit F12 to go into the boot menu.
I choose Start or Install Ubuntu.
The orange bar going back and forth reminds me of Kit.
And then there is some Zen like sound….
The desktop has now loaded and I go ahead and click on the Install icon.
I choose my time zone, keyboard layout.
At the “Prepare disk space” section I choose “Guided – use entire disk”.
At the “Migrate Documents and Settings” screen it does not find any users or operating systems suitable for importing form. I find this odd, maybe Vista is not supported yet.
Ubuntu asks “Who are you?”. I reply that it is none of their business.
I am notified that Ubuntu is “Ready to install” (thanks to justnik, lol). I note there is an Advanced button and since I consider myself Advanced I click it. Then I click OK and smile.
I click Install and watch in wonder as Ubuntu does its install magic.
I click Restart Now and remove the CD.
I watch in awe as as my computer loads up Ubuntu…
I log in! More Zen like music…
I see a notification that informs me that software updates are available. There are 60 total! I go ahead and install them.
After successful update I am asked to do a system restart.
I do the berries and cream dance… (replace Starburst with Ubuntu)
The whole process took 1 hour 8 minutes and 14 seconds.

Monitor

I have a two monitor setup with a Radeon X700 Pro 256MB. Out of the box my monitors are simply duplicating each other and the resolution will not go over 1024×768 and the optimum resolution for the monitors is 1280 x 1024. I found the tutorial I needed here, but then I tried this:

System->Administration->Restricted Drivers Manager
I went through the simple wizard and did a computer restart
After rebooting I opened up the terminal and typed “sudo aticonfig –desktop-setup=horizontal” to make the screen spread across two monitors.
Then I rebooted again.
Joy! I now have the second monitor extending the first.
Now I tried enabling video accelleration with “sudo aticonfig –overlay-type=Xv” typed into the terminal, and then rebooted.
To fix the resolution:
sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
under the SubSection “Display” where the depth is 24 I added a mode “1280×1024″
My second monitor was fuzzy, but a hardware auto-adjust fixed it right up.
Applications

Next stop the applications tab. Let’s see what I should remove…. I select show “Installed Applications” and I ended up removing nothing Seems like a nice bare bones install.

Places

Ubuntu found my external drives nicely and when I browsed the network I saw the shared drive from the HP. When I right clicked and selected “Make Link” I received an error “Unsupported operation” (I think this is because I am not logged in as root). So I right clicked the desktop and chose “Create Launcher”, for type I chose file then for location I typed smb://[name of HP computer]/[name of shared folder].

System Preferences

I tweak the following:

About Me
I add in details that are not secret. I’m assuming this data may be used to help automate filling other stuff out later..
Sessions
I removed the Evolution alarm manager, since I use Gmail for my email.
Screensaver
Just had to enable the Matrix screensaver.
There are so many cool ones, I would like to use a random option.
Theme
Switched to the “Glossy” theme.
Desktop Background
I installed my favorite desktop wallpaper.
System Administration

Printing
Used the wizard to connect to a printer connected to my other computer. The wizard made it trivial.
Services Settings
Disabled the Bluetooth device management since this computer has not Bluetooth devices.
Shared Folders
I am informed that sharing services are not installed, but a friendly wizard appears to make that process easy.
I change my domain/workgroup to match the one I had setup in Windows.
I share the two external drives and test that I can access from my other Windows computer (no luck).
I restart the Ubuntu machine and all is well.
I set up a the samba user by doing the following:
sudo smbpasswd -a [username]
Application Migration

Now that Ubuntu is up and running and configured the way I like, its time to get the applications installed. Following is a list of all the applications that I replaced from my Windows environment with notes on how to get them installed and configured properly. I have put command line commands into quotes.

First I setup a root password by using “sudo passwd”
VMware
There are some applications that just wont run in Ubuntu and I do not want to mess around with Wine at this point. Eventually I would like to get to a stage where all my needs can be served by Ubuntu + Wine, but for now I will use the free VMware virtual machine to emulate Windows XP.
I used this tutorial to get it working.
I gave it 80GB of hard drive space and 1024MB of RAM and installed Windows XP Professional (Vista is still experimental with VMware and XP can do all I that need Windows to do for me).
One thing I have not figured out yet is how to get full screen working with two monitors. Currently when I do this the monitor is only cloned.
IE6
I tried to first install Muliple IE in my virtualized Windows machine, but IE6 kept crashing.
I then decided to install IE6 in Ubuntu using this tutorial. That did not work correctly either; some of the images would not show up.
So then I created another partition in VMware that will be strictly used for IE6 testing. I gave it 8GB with 256 RAM with 1 processor.
NTFS
I found out that I could not write to my external drives because they were ntfs file systems. I used this thread to get started.
So then I “sudo apt-get install ntfs-config”
“ntfs-config”
I checked Enable write support for external device
PHP Eclipse
I used the tutorial here.
Skype
I installed the Linux version from the website with the Debain 7.04 download package installer.
Outlook 2003
For now I installed Outlook 2003 on my VM (the one with 80GB). I use this to synchronize with my 1and1.com exchange account which I use mainly because of the great synchronization with my Pocket PC.
I have Evolution already installed by Ubuntu which I will attempt to get it to work with Exchange and my Pocket PC at a later date.
MS Office
I will be using Open Office which is already included in the Ubuntu installation. I do have Office 2003 installed on VMware as well.
QuickBooks Premier 2007
I will install this in the VM.
Adobe Photoshop CS2
I will install this in the VM.
I also have the Gimp bundled with Ubuntu, but I think for a time I will still use Photoshop since I am experienced and skilled with it.
Notepad
I will be using the awesome VI!
RoboForm / RoboForm Portable / Goodsync (To syncronize the desktop version of roboform with my thumb drive)
I’m not sure how to replace this yet. For now I’m using Firefox’s built in password manager. Has anyone found a Linux equivalent solution?
Adobe Acrobat / Distiller
The document viewer that comes with Ubuntu seems to work just fine for viewing PDF’s and it loads very fast.
For printing PDF’s, I used the tutorial here. PDF printing is already supported in Open Office.
WS FTP
“sudo apt-get install gftp”
UltraMon
See the post on Unbuntu configuration on how I was able to get my two monitor setup to work. The new version of Ubuntu will have a better GUI support for dual monitor configuration.
GoToMeeting
I will play with webhuddle and see if it will be a suitable replacement. If it works well, I’ll just need to find another conference calling solution.
I’ll have to run GoToMeeting in VMware for now.
FreeMind
I will stick to using MindMeister.com as it is working very well for me.
Audacity
“sudo apt-get install audacity”
Camtasia Studio 4
There is a good tutorial here.
I installed xvidcap by downloading the .deb package from sourceforge and using the package installer.
XAMPP
I will use XAMPP to maintain consistency with my Windows development environment.
I downloaded and followed the instructions on the XAMPP website. Make sure to use sudo.
I also ran “sudo /opt/lampp/lampp security” to add better security.
ActiveSync
I found what I needed here. Luckily my xv6700 device is supported. I’ll play around with this more when I start migrating from Outlook to Evolution.
Google Desktop
grep and find!
sed and awk!
Tortoise SVN
“sudo apt-get install subversion”
I will just use the command line version and I will look into integrating svn with eclipse.
Macromedia Flash
I downloaded the player from Adobe’s website.
I installed Macromedia Flash in VMware.
iTunes
I installed Amarok, but I will using my iPod with the HP media center because of the awesome sounds…
“sudo apt-get install amarok”
Windows Media Player
I installed VLC Player with these instructions.
Remote Desktop
I installed a ssh server instead using this guide.
I already have a dynamic IP account. I just need to forward port 22 to the Ubuntu machine on my router settings.
Timer / Alarm
I think I will use Evolution for the alarms. Does anyone have a suggest for an alarm clock that allows for multiple alarms and multiple timers?

Generally Linux will run on any computer with an Intel or AMD CPU processor that is even 386 vintage or newer as well as various Digital , Alpha , Sun , Sparc , Motorola Mips. It must be remembered that the Linux computer operating system is descended from Unix. One of the hallmarks of the UNIX operating system was the various portability of its nature- that it could be “ported” to almost any computer system.

Since Intel / AMD pcs represent the bulk of the readily available computer market the have become the base of Linux use and installations.

Linux supports symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) which means that you can have more than one CPU (central processing unit) per computer. In fact Linux supports several processors per computer box.

Indeed the Linux operating system can utlilize these cpus either by speeding up a specific program written to take advantage of these multiple computer cpus or to run more than one program at a time.

Ubuntu Badger Linux

www.badgerlinux.net

http://www.vintagecomputermanuals.com

http://www.g2analyst.com/

Red Hat Linux has received a new level of security certification that should make the software more appealing to some government agencies.

Last week IBM Corp. was able to achieve EAL4 Augmented with ALC_FLR.3 certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, putting it on a par with Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Trusted Solaris operating system, said Dan Frye, vice president of open systems with IBM.

“This is the highest level of security function that anybody has,” Frye said. “We have delivered LSPP functionality in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and we have certified that at the EAL4 level of assurance.”

This rating is awarded by the government-funded National Information Assurance Partnership’s (NIAP) Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme for IT Security program, which evaluates the security of commercial technology products.

Red Hat Linux has been certified EAL4 Augmented with ALC_FLR.3 on IBM’s mainframe, System x, System p5 and eServer systems.

This level of security certification is not usually required for enterprise contracts, but it is mandatory for some programs within government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. National Security Agency, Frye said.

Linux had already been certified at the EAL4 level, but this is the first time that the operating system has received the Labeled Security Protection Profile (LSPP) certification, which relates to its access-control features.

Linux developers have been working to add these “SE Linux” access control features into the operating system for several years now. SE Linux shipped as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and now it has been certified for government use, Frye said. “You now have a level of fine-grained control for everybody,” he added. “You can set security based on groups or based on individuals.”

In addition to LSPP Red Hat Linux has also been certified with Role Based Access Control Protection (RBAC), and that too is noteworthy, said Red Hat Inc.

“Historically, OS vendors have required you buy a separate branched OS to get something that is LSPP and RBAC certified,” the company said in a statement. “This is something completely unique for commercial operating systems because the support for multilevel security is native to the OS.”

According to Frye, the certification is “big news for the Linux industry” because it shows that open-source software can be used for sensitive computing tasks. “If anyone had any doubts that you could do this with an open-source operating system, we’ve proved them wrong.”

agreement with Microsoft under the threat of unspecified patent infringements.

Allegations of “infringement of unspecified patents” carry no weight whatsoever. We don’t think they have any legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any of the wonderful things we could do together. A promise by Microsoft not to sue for infringement of unspecified patents has no value at all and is not worth paying for. It does not protect users from the real risk of a patent suit from a pure-IP-holder (Microsoft itself is regularly found to violate such patents and regularly settles such suits). People who pay protection money for that promise are likely living in a false sense of security.

I welcome Microsoft’s stated commitment to interoperability between Linux and the Windows world – and believe Ubuntu will benefit fully from any investment made in that regard by Microsoft and its new partners, as that code will no doubt be free software and will no doubt be included in Ubuntu.

With regard to open standards on document formats, I have no confidence in Microsoft’s OpenXML specification to deliver a vibrant, competitive and healthy market of multiple implementations. I don’t believe that the specifications are good enough, nor that Microsoft will hold itself to the specification when it does not suit the company to do so. There is currently one implementation of the specification, and as far as I’m aware, Microsoft hasn’t even certified that their own Office12 completely implements OpenXML, or that OpenXML completely defines Office12’s behavior. The Open Document Format (ODF) specification is a much better, much cleaner and widely implemented specification that is already a global standard. I would invite Microsoft to participate in the OASIS Open Document Format working group, and to ensure that the existing import and export filters for Office12 to Open Document Format are improved and available as a standard option. Microsoft is already, I think, a member of OASIS. This would be a far more constructive open standard approach than OpenXML, which is merely a vague codification of current practice by one vendor.

In the past, we have surprised people with announcements of collaboration with companies like Sun, that have at one time or another been hostile to free software. I do believe that companies change their position, as they get new leadership and new management. And we should engage with companies that are committed to the values we hold dear, and disengage if they change their position again. While Sun has yet to fully deliver on its commitments to free software licensing for Java, I believe that commitment is still in place at the top.

I have no objections to working with Microsoft in ways that further the cause of free software, and I don’t rule out any collaboration with them, in the event that they adopt a position of constructive engagement with the free software community. It’s not useful to characterize any company as “intrinsically evil for all time”. But I don’t believe that the intent of the current round of agreements is supportive of free software, and in fact I don’t think it’s particularly in Microsoft’s interests to pursue this agenda either. In time, perhaps, they will come to see things that way too.