Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 00:26:05 +0100
From: Alain Williams <addw@phcomp.co.uk>
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: Netproject Linux conference


Here is the report that I have just submitted to UKUUG (UK Unix User
Group), it will appear on their web pages (http://www.linux.ukuug.org/)
when the paper copy of the next newsletter has been sent out.

Cheers

**************** cut
Editor's note: The character £ is a UK pound symbol.
In a few places I put *stars* around a word to indicate emphasis (italics
would be nice).

**************** cut

Report on the NetProject Linux conference in London, England on 11th May 1999.

Written by Alain Williams <addw@phcomp.co.uk>

Contact NetProject on http://www.netproject.com.


This was the second NetProject Linux conference, like the one in January it
was held at the Commonwealth Institute in London. That was a good start,
only three stops on the tube from Paddington.

I looked at the programme, what to go to ?
The conference was dual tracked: with management and technical streams.
Evelyn then explained that the reason my name badge had so many pretty ribbons
on it was because I was chairing the first technical session - decision made.

First thing: upstairs for coffee. Meet plenty of the old friends that I had
first met at the Unix/UKUUG conferences almost two decades ago. One of the
things that I like about Linux is that it has brought back the social
spirit that existed in those days: technical ideas, problems and solutions
were discussed and swapped; we were all in it together and keen to help
each other. Later the marketing men took over and competitive walls were
raised, hopefully Open Source will prevent that happening this time.

The first speaker was Ian Batten of Fujitsu Europe.  He was talking about
the problems of integrating Linux into a predominantly MicroSoft world.  The
main problems were that of file formats: there are several products that
will make a reasonable job of reading and writing MicroSoft Word and Excel
files, but none of them does a perfect job.  Running the MicroSoft
applications under something like WINE or WABI was an idea, but these
didn't always work properly. The best solutions seemed to be Windows
Terminal Server (which could be expensive) and the new VNC, these allow
someone to work in their preferred environment and hop into Windows for the
occasional application.

Many users don't care or want to know about such problems, they just want
to get on with their job.  The main issues are the applications, the
operating system is a secondary consideration most most users.  This is
what lets MicroSoft get away with it's ``extend and embrace'' -- take
existing protocols and warp them so that non MicroSoft applications have
difficulties.

Often these ``enhancements'' don't really help with the job in hand,
after all ``Charles Dickens wrote all of his books in one font, are they
bad because of that ?''.

One thought that he left us with was: ``Remember the problems last time
MicroSoft updated Word. What are you going to read those .DOC files with in
twenty years time''. [I don't care, I still use troff].


Mike Banahan (GBdirect) talked about how his company had moved entirely to
Linux 18 months ago.  He talked about how they built a web based training
directory (http://www.trainingpages.co.uk) on top of Linux with Open Source
tools: Apache, GNU C++, Perl, mySQL.  They used C++ as they knew it well,
thought that it would be faster and more scalable, that was a mistake and
Perl throughout would have been better.  mySQL has worked well and is fast.

The hardware costs were minimal, no software costs. They have never had a
crash. Mike spent some time explaining how it worked and what they had
learned: ``Javascript is a nightmare'', ``Java doesn't always work'',
``weblint is a good idea''.


Time for a fix of coffee and a tour of the exhibitors (why does O'Reilly
have to turn up, I spent £65, and so was grateful of the 25% discount that
UKUUG membership gets me). Informix turned up to rival Oracle, there was a
software publisher, a couple of consultancies & systems vendors (good to
see the small guys doing well in the Linux business). I was tempted by the
flat screen that Dell were showing Gnome off on -- until I learned what it
cost, next year, maybe.


Both streams joined together for the star of the event: Miguel de Icaza,
the man behind the Gnome project. Someone had compared him to the portrayal
of Wolfgang Mozart in the film Amadeus ``off the wall''. He is a bright,
open person who knows how to speak well. I can see why he is doing well at
leading the Gnome project: not only does he understand the computing but he
has a good personality that lets him lead well and keep people wanting to
work with him, he held audience well.

He explained why he started Gnome: Linux is mainly found working as a
server, but servers only account for a small percentage of computers in
use. There is plenty of ``free'' software for servers, not enough for the
desktop. (Quick diversion to explain that ``free'' means liberty, not zero
cost). To get good a desktop a consistent user interface is needed, and
a means to to integrate tools into the system.

Where possible they have reused existing standards (they don't have the
effort available to do lots of research).  CORBA is used, this is an
InterProcess Communication (IPC) mechanism that enables much code reuse --
like pipes but better.  This allows applications to be written quickly and
easily.  Applications are small, they reuse other applications to do things
that they can't themselves do, they can be reused by other applications.
Drag and drop is all over the place.

He talked about the Bonobo document model (named after a species of highly
sexed monkeys). In many ways this is rather like a filing system within a
file and allows things like a document to contain a spreadsheet that
contains pictures. It is based on MicroSoft's OLE2/ActiveX design (he made
several compliments about the good design).

There are 288 developers in 21 countries that have write rights to the 500Mb
of code in the CVS system, many others talk to these 288.  Red Hat Advanced
Development Labs have done good integration work and provide some 7 full
time programmers.  You can buy Gnome support at http://www.gnome-support.com.

There are many desktop and group ware tools in development: spreadsheet,
mail calendar, address book integration, gui developer, music, presentation.
There is no word processor, use AbiSource.  Multibyte character support has
recently been added.  The recent 1.0 release was of about 20% of the
available code -- what was ready.

See also http://www.gnome.org, and http://bugs.gnome.org.

He also mentioned a bit about the use of Linux in Mexico's schools. My
notes say 1,000,000, but if that was 6 to 15 year olds or computers I can't
remember. But at $100 per MicroSoft license it is a large amount of money
saved. The schools are using Gnome/Linux.


I like buffet lunches, it means that you can wander round and get to speak
to interesting people. I met someone who I think will help in my pet aim of
trying to get Linux widely adopted in UK schools. I don't want to replace
the existing MicroSoft (and few Macs), but to have Linux work along side. I
believe that children will greatly benefit from the use of different
systems, it means that they will need to have to understand and think (ie
work out what they are doing rather than working by rote); this is quite
apart from the huge cost savings.


After lunch Andrew Findlay (Brunel University) talked about one of the
current NetProject efforts: working towards a Secure Single Sign On.
The idea is to have one username and password/token for all services (or
per role). The trouble with networked computer systems is that they all
want passwords, you have to keep on quoting them and remembering the
different ones for different uses -- then some time expire.

There is an important distinction between Authentication (you are who you
claim to be) and Authorisation (you are allowed to do X with service Y).

Some strategies were looked at and compared. The difficulties are as much
political as technical -- why should *you* be allowed to control part of the
authentication on *my* machine, you are in a different company or (even
worse) a different department in the same company.

The building blocks are Public Key Infrastructure (certificates,
directories, agent/security libraries), and hooks into existing systems
(Unix PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) and NT GINA (replaceable
authentication library)).  NetProject is producing an Open Source
demonstrator of these ideas.


John Logsden (Quantex Research) and John Brazier (Brazier consultants)
talked about the recently released VMware product. This allows you to run
Windows (98 or NT) on top of Linux, and soon Linux on top of Windows NT.
They had a few problems with the first release, but basically the product
works well.

This means that you can get the best of both worlds.  Many of us took that
to mean running MS Word on Linux, but they think that this will cause
MicroSoft a lot of grief as it will provide a way in for dedicated
MicroSoft shops to get to use a few Linux apps, and then once they get to
know them to gradually use more. This will break the MS strangle hold on the
desktop, people will genuinely be able to choose the best tools for the
job.

There was some description of the virtual machine that was created. There
seems to only be a small performance hit, but (unless you want it to
thrash) you need lots of memory.

Up for some more coffee where someone came up with a brilliant use for
this. You want to do network testing: configuration or secure IP
tunneling or something. Under Linux run up several guest Linux systems and
set up a private network on which you can do what you want -- without
sending a byte out of you Ethernet card. That is what *I* call smart.


Miguel then treated us to a bit more of a technical view of Gnome.  I must
admit that I was impressed by the great emphasis on correctness, and a
drive to reduce bugs.  There is a great use of run time consistency checks
and asserts, every function checks it's arguments before using them.  The
coding style has got to be consistent, code is rewritten if it isn't quite
right.  There is a focus on security: it is more important to be secure
than simple.  Stick to C, it is less complex than C++, avoid threads.  This
is a refreshing change from much of the commercial code that I meet: ``if
it passes a few quick tests: ship it''.

They use lots of libraries rather than one big one as it is easier to
maintain that way. Don't forget that the Gnome developers don't work on it
full time and so it has to be understandable by such a community, small
components help in this. Some of these libraries were looked at.

Miguel told us how to pronounce his name (we Brits all got it wrong), and
had many strong opinions: ``TCL is a mistake which shouldn't have
happened'' [sorry Linday]. He also showed us a Gnome that Alan Cox had
given him -- will this be the start of a major new market in Mexico for the
UK garden Gnome industry ?


Alan Cox then talked about some work he had done a CymruNet in Wales a few
years ago. They introduced cheaply E-commerce to small businesses, how could
they get credit card authorisation done over the net. Orders were to be
made over the net and passed on to CymruNet customers.

The first problem was to find a bank that understood what they were trying
to do (in 1996), security (40 bit Secure Socket Layer). What server: NT vs
Linux or BSD (I won't bore you with the reasons why NT was discarded)
Apache is the web server and a public domain shopping site system that Alan
found in the Far East.
The end result was very successful.


All the speakers then joined for a panel session: Gnome and VMware were the
hot topics.


Then upstairs for a beer and to listen to the excellent jazz band.


I spent all of my time in the technical sessions but would have liked to
spend some time in the management stream.  I spend some time explaining to
people that you should use the best tools for the job, I like to see what
other people have done so that I can quote them as examples.


All in all an excellent day. Well done Eddie.
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-- 
Alain Williams