IPocracy

Red Hat Claims AMQP

Written: 1238075190|%e %B %Y, %H:%M (amqp lecture patent)

Brian Che is Product Manager at Red Hat for their MRG messaging product, which includes an AMQP server.

Brian welcomed Microsoft to the AMQP working group:

Just as Red Hat has been adding native AMQP support into the Linux platform and ecosystem at Fedora and through Red Hat Enterprise MRG, Microsoft is bringing AMQP support to Windows and its ecosystem. Between Linux and Windows, AMQP will become a standard messaging facility on the vast majority of operating systems and server platforms.

And he listed the Working group members, omitting the other implementers (Rabbit Technologies and iMatix):

The AMQP working group already has a well-esteemed set of members, ranging from software vendors like Red Hat to hardware vendors like Cisco to end-users like JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Börse (see the full list of participants at http://amqp.org).

Ironically, given the later exposure of a stealth patent very close to AMQP by Red Hat, he wrote:

So, there is no threat of Microsoft holding the AMQP standard hostage via patent threats.

So much for Red Hat's public statements. But what do they say behind doors, to their clients, to journalists, and to partners? Well, Brian has been helpful in pointing us to a position paper he wrote for an Indiana University workshop on Cyberinfrastructure Software Sustainability on March 26 & 27th 2009.

In that paper, which I've copied here in case it disappears from that site, Brian explains Red Hat's true position:

Red Hat teamed up with one of its customers, JP Morgan Chase (JPMC), to create an open protocol standard around messaging, AMQP.

This is strange news. iMatix was working closely with JPMC in 2004-6 when we (iMatix and JPMC) designed AMQP, and we never saw anyone from Red Hat until they reviewed the specifications and helped create the AMQP workgroup. And to the best of my knowledge JPMC was not a Red Hat customer except for Linux licenses.

Maybe Brian just meant to type "iMatix" and wrote "Red Hat" out of habit instead. This happens. I do it all the time. But sadly there is more…

JPMC, like many other banks, had developed its own messaging software to meet its high-end messaging requirements. However, JPMC had also written down the specification of its work, and this proved to be a good starting point for creating an open messaging protocol standard. Red Hat and JPMC created a legal contract to form the AMQP working group, which would develop this new standard as AMQP in an open and IP-unencumbered manner. Then, they started bringing in many additional companies to collaborate in this working group.

I will now state this for the record. iMatix was hired by JPMC in 2004 specifically to (a) develop AMQP, (b) develop an open source implementation, and (c) migrate JPMC's largest investment bank application onto this new stack. It was a tough triple project done on brutal deadlines with a deep emotional cost. To demonstrate how much iMatix invested in this project: my wife was pregnant with our second baby, which died in utero at eight months¹. While she was in hospital in Brussels, I was at JPMC in London with my team, where we had spent most of the previous months, making things work.

We took this work utterly seriously and in 2006, we were ready with a very solid specification that is essentially unchanged - many fixes, and unused parts removed - from the AMQP/0.9.1 specification that is used by most AMQP users today. Red Hat received this specification and their major contribution to it, infamous as an example of incompetent protocol 'design' pushed through by bluster and force, was the AMQP/0.9-work-in-progress specification. Read it, and weep, if you have the courage.

It is quite trivial to check that iMatix registered the AMQP IANA port (5672), and the amqp.org, amqp.com, and amqp.net domain names.

Brian's text continues to celebrate the "Linux to Windows interoperability" that seems to echo through Red Hat's approach to software patents over the years.

But back to Red Hat's mythical invention of AMQP. Maybe Brian Che is just ignorant. Let's roll with that for a second. All this specification and accuracy stuff is complex, after all. But in 2007 - yes, eighteen months ago - I pointed the AMQP work group to a Red Hat news article which said,

Indeed, Red Hat's APQM[sic] began its life as proprietary messaging software at financial services giant JP Morgan Chase, said Red Hat Chief Technology Officer Brian Stevens in an interview here during Oracle OpenWorld.

Different Brian, same set of lies. The AMQP work group asked Red Hat for an explanation for this article. "The journalist got it wrong", we were told. We were invited to speak to a Red Hat VP if we wanted clarification.

But I think Brian Che has given us all the clarification we need.

Comments: 9, Rating: 1

Two Day Computing

Written: 1236944031|%e %B %Y, %H:%M (eee gadgets linux)

It's taken a long time to arrive but finally, here is a full-featured portable computer that runs for two full days on a single battery charge and costs about $475. A hands-on report…

The computer is an Asus Eee 1000 portable, with an extended battery. The software is Linux, wrapped up as Eeebuntu. Here is a screenshot showing the power consumption at 6.4W, and battery life of 13 hours.

I bought the Eee 1000 at J&R's in New York this month, list price $375 plus sales tax. The machine is a top-of-the-line Eee model, with all the features that are sometimes dropped off cheaper Eee's like the 1000HD. The main reason I bought this machine was that it did not have Windows, and came with a 40GB SSD instead of a cheaper, more fragile moving hard drive. At this price, the SSD is a must-have for a portable computer: 25% of portable computers die because they are dropped.

The battery is a "13000mAh" thing off Ebay, posted from Hong Kong and costing $75. In fact it only holds about 10500mAh. They offered to replace it, but 10500mAh is still fine. It's a large "hammer-head" battery but it fits the Eee 1000 neatly and acts as a prop. Check Ebay to see what these batteries look like and cost.

Xandros… ah, Xandros. I used to use this when I first switched to Linux for my desktops, mainly because Xandros used to be Corel Linux and they were one of the first firms to really invest in Linux in the late 1990's, so they kind of earned a soft spot in my heart. Xandros also has a file manager that worked really well, especially with Windows file shares. Today, Gnome and KDE have caught up.

On the Eee 1000, Xandros does two things very well. It boots and suspends/restores incredibly quickly. Boot time is about 15 seconds. Second, it does something magic with the network card, picking up dozens of networks where other Linuxes pick up a handful.

But for a serious user, Xandros sucks. Their repositories are old, and since the main reason for using Linux is the vast amount of great free software, this is really a pain. Xandros works for my five-year old daughter. It does not work for me.

So I tried a variety of EEE-friendly Linux distros. It's easy: download an ISO and use unetbootin to burn to a 2GB USB stick, then reboot and press Esc to get the choice of booting from the USB stick. I tried several distros, with unhappy results. [www.mandriva.coom Mandriva] (supposed to work well with the wifi) did not boot properly. Easy-Peasy, which used to be called Ubuntu-eee and which I've used before, installed fine but just acted weird (like running the installer each time it booted), and showing a horrid green pixelated "Easy Peasy" logo on the desktop. Besides, the name really does not work for me. Then I tried Eeebuntu and this is what I'm now using.

There is a bunch of stuff I had to do before the system was what I'd consider properly set-up. None of these are vital but they all make it better:

• use manual disk partitioning so the system goes on the 8GB SSD and /home goes on the 32GB SSD (the 1000 in fact has two solid-state disks).
• tweak the file systems to reduce SSD write accesses as explained in this blog posting by Ter.
• fix the "software sources" to include the normal Ubunbtu repositories
• install Kate (better than Gedit), Gimp, and a bunch of other good tools
• install powertop
• go into gconf-editor and fix the top panel to auto-hide to 0 pixels, with no animation, and with shorter (200msec) delays to appear and hide.
• remove the bottom panel

Now, the Linux works both as a netbook remix, with the easy access desktop, and a proper full Ubuntu, with the panel menu.

Eeebunbtu uses the array.org kernels and has a decent driver for the RaLink 0781 wifi card. Now, here is where I start to dislike Xandros. They have closed drivers for the RaLink card that use undocumented features. Presumably money changed hands. All very well, but when Xandros get 99% of their software for free, it is unethical to try to get a competitive advantage by exploiting secret knowledge. RaLink do provide open source drivers but they are buggy and imperfect. In the end, this is bad for Asus: users have a choice between three imperfect worlds: Windows XP with its viruses and malwares, Xandros, with its childish limitations, and Linux with its weak wifi drivers.

Asus: please use only hardware that is fully documented and fully supported in Linux.

However, the wifi works acceptably and better than some other portables. Now, to get that 13 hours of battery, I switch off the wifi, dim the screen, and exit Firefox. When I'm on the road, I'm mostly writing, so I need my text editor (Kate).

Unbelievably, the 1000 draws only 6.4 Watts in this state. For comparison, my Thinkpad X60 draws 9.8W (and gets 7 hours from its battery) and the Eee 1000HD draws 11.5W (and gets around 6 hours from the hammerhead battery).

Highly recommended.

Comments: 0, Rating: 0

Obama and the End of Politics

Written: 1232820658|%e %B %Y, %H:%M (internet politics)

Watching Obama's inaguration, the whole world surely is aware that this is a historic event. But quite why is difficult to understand. It can't simply be the end of Bush, nor the election of a non-white to the most important job in the world. In this article I'll explain what I think is really happening, and what it means for our modern world. We have witnessed a revolution, but one that is far from over.

From the Devil's Wiki:

US "democracy" is not an intellectual exercise. Each team attempts to get the highest score, the winner gets control over the world's most powerful army and secret services for four years, and the right to steal as many dollars as they can transfer to off-shore bank accounts through fraudulent contracts with their friends' companies.

Let's start with the how. How on earth did someone with a clear and major handicap win the top job? Forget Obama's obvious assets, let's ask how a "black" man won. I'm putting that in quotes because like my kids, half European and half African, Obama is no more "black" than he is "white". As if humans were not all mongrels.

But I remember many American friends telling me that no matter how good a candidate Obama was, he could not beat the deep racial barriers that divide their country. "In Ohio, sixty percent of voters say they'll vote Democrat", one of my friends told me in August, "but only forty percent would vote for Obama."

For me, the key sign that Obama was going to win was his fund raising. Raising money needs a machine. This is the machine that propels - or mostly, fails to - individuals into high office, and keeps them there, protecting them from endless attack like an immune system.

Obama clearly stood out of the other Democrat candidates with a machine that was orders of magnitude more powerful. More powerful than the Clintons, who's machine is sixteen years' mature. Unusual and, I believe, significant.

As we saw, Obama's machine then made silly putty of the Republicans' monster, a machine that has had eight years and untold billions to grow into every branch of government: the courts, the intelligence services, the military, every single federal agency down to local school boards was (and still is) part of the Republican party machine. And Obama beat this machine like the Karate Kid carefully putting down a bully.

Charisma? McCain and Palin? A great slogan? Yes, and no. These were all part of the result but not really the point. There's a reason why there was not widespread vote fraud in 2008. Every time there was a "glitch", lawyers paid by the Democrats descended and began to take notes. Compare this to 2000 and 2004, when painfully obvious frauds stole the White House.

Not just a pretty face, Obama represents the most powerful political machine we've ever seen, any place, any time. The Democratic party puts to shame the old Russian and Chinese Communist parties, the European and Japanese fascists, and every ideology ever invented by a tinpot dictator desperate to hold onto power at any cost.

And yet I don't see the Democrats going on genocidal wars, nor in fact doing anything particularly stupid except perhaps arguing a lot over petty details, while agreeing on and executing the fundamentals with unparalleled speed, accuracy, and efficiency.

It is, in my view, the End of Politics.

In fact, Obama was not elected by the traditional Democratic party. That party wanted a Clinton, Obama was elected by the young Democrats, who represent the majority of educated Internet users with any interest in politics. And who were angry with Bush the first time, angry with him the second time, furious when Bush sided with every business and lobbyist who hates the Internet, from the old entertainment industries, old telecoms, to old software.

Note that I don't say "majority of educated US Internet users". Obama has 4M supporters on Facebook. I bet 50% of them are not Americans.

I repeat, it's the End of Politics.

In the Economics of Evil I explained how online communities use a Bad Guy to grow and prosper. Why Wikipedia exists because of, not despite, the trolls and vandals. Thus the machine that selected and then elected Obama exists thanks to eight years of Republican misrule and abuse of power that felt, and perhaps was, a small step away from a slide towards totalitarianism.

I think that Bush actually hastened the End of Politics by ten years. I've been studying the growing political power of the Internet society for some years but I had not expect to see it crystallize so soon. That eight years of anger and frustration turned into something powerful, determined, and well organized, as online communities tend to be.

Now, how does this translate into the End of Politics, and what does this imply?

The Republicans, by being extreme in their hostility to science, truth, and society, promoted the growth of the machine that would crush them. But the Republican machine is not yet dead. It has roots in local and regional politics across America, it has lots of money - stolen from the public purse through endless insider contracts - and it has time. The game is now Obama's to lose.

So Obama needs his machine and he needs to feed it, invest in it, and protect it from attack. It's not enough to give executive orders when at every level, people can subvert, sabotage, and strangle the progress he wants to make. Obama needs what he had in the elections: an army of volunteers who jump onto every problem and "solve it", as the Internet tends to solve problems like Scientology and regressive copyright.

There is, most definitely, a large and powerful section of US society that hates what Obama represents, and is determined to fight it. If it cannot fight from the top, it will fight from the bottom and sides. An insurgency, perhaps, though with different kinds of bombs. We are going to see eight years more of conflict, and this fight will be definitive. We are, I think, fighting for our very soul as a global society. On the one hand, we have the Bush doctrine of "Power exists to bully those I consider my enemies". On the other hand, we have the Obama doctrine of "We". The contrast could not be greater.

This fight is absolutely necessary, and it is obvious that the Democrats will triumph and Obama will serve his eight years in extraordinary style and accomplishing extraordinary things. If the dreaded disaster happens, and an extremist - a true terrorist, then - murders him, another person will take his place and do much the same. Because, as I explained, this is not about one man but about a massive popular movement. A movement that coordinates through the web, brings together the best, brightest, most optimistic of our society, and which has global roots.

Obama is not the first black US president. He is, however, the first Internet president, and in order to survive the next eight years he must convert every political instrument in the US, and then beyond, to a form compatible with the Internet. This means transparent, online, participatory, and honest.

The Internet knows no politics except as a response to external threats. There are no Internet political parties, no Blues and Greens. The most extreme we get is Digg vs. Fark, KDE vs. Gnome, and that ends with everyone stealing everyone else's ideas and competing like mad until it all looks fantastic, and all looks the same. On the Internet, your worst competitor is in fact your best friend.

So let's work through this again:

• Obama has an ambitious program to reform the errors of his predecessors.
• He will face subtle but massive resistance at all levels of government.
• To win over this, he must bring all levels of federal government into his machine.
• This means, bringing them online.
• At that point, the politics will be replaced by simple work.

In fact traditional politics works by arbitraging power, like traditional banks work by arbitraging money. Both systems have been rendered obsolete by ever-cheaper information technology. The banks did not go to high-risk leveraged instruments because they were stupid. They did that because they had no choice: every traditional way of making 5% profits (above inflation) has been ground away until they cannot make more than 1%. At this point, a commercial bank has no reason to exist.

(Banks will, I suggest, become fully nationalized arms of the state, providing an essential service but without profit. This process has already started.)

As Obama begins the conversion of the old, closed, systems of political arbitrage, he will have to liberate the Internet from anything that restricts it, anything that presents a threat to it, anything that stops it growing. Because if he does not address threats to the Internet, his enemies will use them to attack his power base.

What are the threats to the Internet? We know them, of course. They are:

• The telecoms cartels, which are strangling wireless communications.
• The music and movie lobbyists, which are pushing for filtering and Internet policing.
• Many governments, especially in the UK, who still see their own citizens as fundamentally dangerous.
• The patent system, which holds weapons of mass destruction against any knowledge economy.
• Certain failing software businesses, which were granted immunity from competition law under Bush.

And so, my predictions are fairly easy. Obama will do the right thing, because he has no choice:

• He will end the War on Terror and turn US foreign policy to peacekeeping, not war making.
• He will prosecute many in the old Bush regime but not Dubya, who has done a deal with the new chief.
• He will take America to join the International Criminal Court.
• He will rapidly get the Federal Trade Commission to re-open dusty dossiers on abuse of monopoly by Microsoft, Big Pharma, and telecoms companies.
• He will address copyright and propose a reform, which will be adopted. Specifically, he will be outspoken on the obligation of businesses to license their work under "socially acceptable" licenses.
• He will address the patent system, and propose a reform, which will be adopted. Specifically, he will be outspoken on the issue of software patents and the high cost of drugs.
• He will explicitly promote the use of, development of, and investment in, free and open source software by the Federal government.
• He will end the War on Drugs and stop federal prosecution of marijuana use, which many states now tolerate.
• He will push the deployment of wired and wireless Internet to every home, with subsidies and competition.
• He will push for reforms in education that give students more freedom through online studying.
• He will push for a fundamental reform of the United Nations and he will invest in that, and he will turn it into something never seen before.
• He will encourage, bribe, and force, other governments to adopt similar policies.

Some of these will happen rapidly, some slowly, some only later. Much of it will be obscured by the coming traumas - unemployment, depression, deflation - so will only be visible after the fact. The impact of these reforms is impossible to overstate but when the global middle classes are finally liberated, and given full voice, the world will, I think, become a place fit for my children to grow up in.

At the end of the day, we will tip into something the opposite of the world as imagined by those who ran it for the last eight years. Their vision was of a world of monsters and Gods, of brutality and darkness, of blood and treasure for those strong enough to seize it. Obama's vision is that of every Internet community: life is scientific, truths are real, idiots are for making fun of, and good Internet connections, everywhere one is, is more important than a large car.

Comments: 4, Rating: 2