Treeduck

Nearly a year ago Cisco announced (in THIS BLOG Oct 14th, 2008) a new contest where teams would develop creative, open source applications for a Cisco Integrated Services Router. With a total prize of $100,000 USD, this contest brought in a number of teams to compete. Of those teams that entered, there were eight finalists. Of those finalists I had the pleasure of interviewing three teams that have a chance to share the prize money. The questions focused on open source (of course) and just might shed some light on how projects like this can help further the cause. You can click on the link for each team to see the project they are working on.

Team Ideate (Gopinath Bailur)

1. What inspired you to create this particular project?

Gopi New platforms excite us all the time and our curiosity to do new things in every platform was the driving factor for us to create this project. Also being so long with Servion Global Solutions and handling Customer Interaction Management domain, we felt the need to address common customer issues while managing the platform. Having intelligence at the edge is something we are very cognizant about, and AXP has a good solution for that which we wanted to explore.

2. What draws you to develop open source projects?

Gopi: What interests us in particular on open source is the fact that I am working collaboratively with the best minds across the world. Also in converse, the pride that we get that somebody else is using our code drives us to work more in these projects and initiatives.

3. What are the particular problems you run into when developing open source projects?

Gopi : As always support is a big problem. It is always at “best effort” and there are no SLAs or owners we can reach out to. In hear we ensured to use the best of best open source tools available which does not hinder development.

4. What operating systems will this be available for? Or will this only require the use of Cisco hardware?

Gopi : This can work on a Linux based kernel. But we tweaked it to work for AXP as well. Though as a standalone model it does not require Cisco hardware, to get the best of both worlds, we recommend that these applications are used in tandem with Cisco gear. Our application depicts and enhances the capability of the platform and makes more sense to deploy for our customers.

5. Do you ever plan on releasing this code to the public and/or porting it to a standard Linux (or Linux variant) operating system?

Gopi: Some of the code we developed was already based on open source, so if given a chance we would evaluate releasing it to public.

6. What other open source projects are you working on?

Gopi : We have worked extensively on Asterisk and we might do the same in the future as well. We will be continuously looking for opportunities which tickle our brain and more importantly are useful to the customer.

7. What are the biggest challenges facing open source in the future?

Gopi: We believe ownership to be the biggest challenge facing open source in the future. Honestly, we believe that open source will challenge proprietary code.

8. Does this team develop with open source tools (if so, what)?

Gopi: We do work on Linux on kernels which we compile based on the requirement of our product.

9. If the team could only choose one operating system to work with, what would that be?

Gopi : Linux

10. How does the work you are doing with this Cisco project directly benefit the open source community?

Gopi : If our source code can be given back to the public, it would help a lot. Especially some of the feature set that we developed are utmost required by any customer using the Cisco platform which ensures proactive monitoring, managing the overall asset, capacity planning etc..

SNAT (Patrick McNeil)

1. What inspired you to create this particular project?

Patrick: The initial inspiration for the project came from my professional job as a computer network and security consultant. During the course of my normal work, I would do network assessments for customers which had minimal information on the devices on their network. The initial work was a series of scripts to do data collection (not integrated into a cohesive package).

At the same time, I was working on my first Master’s degree from the University of Advancing Technology (UAT - http://www.uat.edu). As part of my final applied thesis, I created the first generation of the SNAT. This project integrated a number of separate scripts into a cohesive application with a web front end and a database back end.

The inspiration to integrate the standalone SNAT project with the Cisco AXP hardware platform comes from a desire for organizations to deploy devices that can perform audit functions within the network, but without the need for separate hardware and software to manage. This integration enables the network team to deploy their auditing tools without requiring additional space or cooling in the data center.
2. What draws you to develop open source projects?

Patrick: I prefer development on the open source projects because of the freedom to modify and review source code for the applications and libraries I use. Additionally, the open source projects generally have low cost to entry (free in most cases) and are more agile and responsive to the needs of the community. From a support perspective, most large open source projects have an active community that can provide examples or troubleshooting tips for common issues during the development process.

3. What are the particular problems you run into when developing open source projects?

Patrick: Typical issues I have run into when developing in an open source environment is the lack of a unified vision or direction for related projects. Also, documentation is sometimes lagging behind the current releases (though this is not always the case). On smaller projects, there may not be a large or active community making support more difficult. However, I typically do not run into these issues very often.

4. What operating systems will this be available for? Or will this only require the use of Cisco hardware?

Patrick: The SNAT project utilizes the Cisco Hardware or nearly any operating system meeting the prerequisites (Perl, MySQL, Apache, and a number of Perl libraries). I am currently in development on a Java version of the application to get around some limitations of portability between different operating system versions.

5. Do you ever plan on releasing this code to the public and/or porting it to a standard Linux (or Linux variant) operating system?

Patrick: The current version of SNAT operates on standard Linux systems today. I am working on porting the application to Java to enable a more portable (less library dependent) installation of the application. I have been considering releasing the code into the public and creating the application as an open source project.

6. What other open source projects are you working on?

Patrick: Currently, I a not working on any other open source projects.

7. What are the biggest challenges facing open source in the future?

Patrick: I believe the biggest challenge for open source in the future is the perception that open source means free. Although most open source projects are free, that does not mean that the
developers should be working for free (or that all open source projects should be free). For example, a common method for monetizing an open source project is to offer professional
services (installation, configuration, customization, support, etc) around the open source project.

Another challenge around open source is the perception that organizations are basically on their own for support. The perception with going with commercial software is the fact that there is an organization which provides support services, upgrades, etc for the product. When compared to an open source project, there may not be an organization providing support (or even continuing the development of a project).

8. Does this team develop with open source tools (if so, what)?

Patrick: Team SNAT used the Eclipse IDE (http://www.eclipse.org/) for the development of the primary application components and source code development.

9. If the team could only choose one operating system to work with, what would that be?

From the application development perspective the Linux operating system (Ubuntu specifically) would be the primary operating system for the application hosting. The development workstations can be any operating system supporting the Eclipse IDE (in this case a combination of Windows and Ubuntu workstations were used at different points in the development process).

10. How does the work you are doing with this Cisco project directly benefit the open source community?

Patrick: The most obvious benefit is the additional exposure from a large organization such as Cisco putting support and development effort into the open source community. The open source community also benefits from more teams developing projects utilizing open source technologies. These projects expand the knowledge and breadth of applications and offerings available in the open source community.

BugsBernie (Bernie Beckmann)

1. What inspired you to create this particular project?

Bernie: Several customers’ demands

2. What draws you to develop open source projects?

Bernie: To fill some infrastructure gaps of closed software. Plus, speed & flexibility.

3. What are the particular problems you run into when developing open source projects?

Bernie: Sometimes lack of documentation, community response at very specific issues

4. What operating systems will this be available for? Or will this only require the use of Cisco hardware?

Bernie: The current release is closely linked with the Cisco H/W (AXP/CUCME), which is one of the great benefits of having such a close integration (such as high security for IOS API communication etc.).

5. Do you ever plan on releasing this code to the public and/or porting it to a standard Linux (or Linux variant) operating system?

Bernie: It actually runs on Ubuntu too, for example.

6. What other open source projects are you working on?

Bernie: Use of Ubuntu, PJSIP, Mono project, plans for Jabber/XMPP

7. What are the biggest challenges facing open source in the future?

Bernie: S/W patent issues and solid business models for developers

8. Does this team develop with open source tools (if so, what)?

Bernie: Other tools: .NET/C# (ECMA standards) on Visual Studio

9. If the team could only choose one operating system to work with, what would that be?

Bernie: Fortunately, there is a large selection of OS’s available, in the open source world as well as in the closed source world to give the developers and customers the best choice depending on demands and requirements (business workflow, embedded, real-time, …) Developers just love to have the choice. So when it comes to operating system, the Linux variants are best, but for development tools I do prefer .NET. Mono seems to unite both worlds which was part of my personal challenge of this project. And a successful proof of concept, too!

10. How does the work you are doing with this Cisco project directly benefit the open source community?

Bernie: Directly? That is hard to say. Maybe indirectly two points: 1. Reputation for the open source SIP stack connected to the Cisco Unified Manager Communications Manager Express with great stability and compatibility 2. Cross platform usage proof of concept of Mono from the Mono project, which yielded an even better performance and compatibility on the Linux platform than on its Windows counterpart!!! (such as Socket communications with Cisco IP phones)..

Ever come to work and realize you left a required file at home? Or you’re out on the road and find yourself in the same situation? Some environments and ISPs have strict firewall rules that can make life difficult. In some cases, these rules are absolutely required, in others perhaps not so much. If you are in an environment that disallows the use of SSH and forces the use of an HTTP proxy, it is possible to use that HTTP proxy as a transport for SSH.

Please note that I am not advocating breaking out of your environment’s firewall if you have a policy that expressly prevents that or outbound SSH access! Unfortunately in the real world, some draconian firewall rules are in place that cause more grief than they need to and without a real reason. In some environments, however, the explicit denial of outbound SSH is required and for that reason you should respect the policy. I am not at all advocating breaking any rules unless you have permission or an exception from the people that should provide it.

With that disclaimer out of the away, go to the Corkscrew homepage and download the source for Corkscrew. Corkscrew is an HTTP-tunneling programming that does not require server-side modifications to work. It is also cross-platform and will work on most client systems.

To build Corkscrew, simply unpack the tarball and run:

./configure
make
Then copy the resulting corkscrew application to somewhere in your PATH or in ~/bin/. Next, edit your SSH configuration file, ~/.ssh/config, and add:

Host somehost
Hostname somehost.example.com
ProxyCommand /home/user/bin/corkscrew proxy.example.com 8080 %h %p
Replace the hostname with the host you are attempting to SSH into, and replace “proxy.example.com” with the actual HTTP proxy. You may also need to replace the port (8080) if the proxy listens on an alternate port (i.e., port 3128 in the case of Squid). OpenSSH transparently converts the %h to the hostname to connect to (somehost.example.com) and the port to connect to (22, by default).

The ProxyCommand line here is telling OpenSSH to start the Corkscrew program to make the actual connection to the end SSH server. You can create multiple entries for all of the hosts you may need to connect to, or use a simple regular expression or the global asterisk (*) in the Host line (* will tell OpenSSH to use this Host stanza for all connections).

When this is done, you should be able to run ssh somehost and have the connection be established, just as if you were connecting directly. Keep in mind this may not work with all proxies, so it may be a little hit-and-miss, but it should work with Squid and Apache’s mod_proxy module as well as a few other popular implementations.

Imad Sousou is the director of Intel's Open Source Technology Center, which is behind the Moblin project--aimed at providing optimized Linux technology for Netbooks and mobile Internet devices.
On Wednesday, ZDNet UK caught up with Sousou at the Open Source In Mobile 09 event in Amsterdam, to discuss the nature of Moblin and the hardware on which it will run.
Q: There seems to be some confusion over what Moblin entails--it appears to be a full Linux distribution, but we have seen Suse and Linpus flavors, and Canonical are about to release an Ubuntu flavor. What is Moblin?
Sousou: What Moblin really is, in technical terms, is a community distribution, much like Fedora or Debian, that people tend to use in different ways.
There are certain operating-system vendors who take Moblin completely as is and use it, and add customization and provide support, and there are those who take various technologies from Moblin and incorporate them into their own operating systems--although, when people do that, they tend to focus on the user experience.
When you hear, for example, Novell is taking Moblin or Ubuntu is doing Ubuntu Moblin, they are using the operating-system infrastructure and taking the Moblin user experience, which is a set of applications--the 3D infrastructure and a set of libraries, infrastructure components like the social networking, media management, and so on.
Essentially, from a technical standpoint, you end up with the same thing, but for the OS vendors it is sometimes easier to use a distribution system that they already use. We made it easy for them to use that.
I don't think there is a lot of confusion anymore, at least not with the people who use Moblin. It is a full OS but you don't have to use the full OS.
You're about to release Moblin v2.0. Can you tell us more about that?
Sousou: (As a) release from an open-source perspective, it's a milestone more than it is a product release--product releases come from OS vendors and OEMs (manufacturers). Soon you will start to see OEMs shipping Netbooks with Moblin. You will see an announcement over the next week or two.
It's still in beta--right now we're in the very final phase. Very minor but critical bug fixes are being done based on input from OEMs and OS vendors. We don't want to call it a release until someone actually ships a product with it.
"This is a bit of self-criticism of what we've done in Linux over the past years--we in Linux have got to stop writing clones of the OSs from 15 years ago."
The final version will be available for download over the next couple of weeks. Once that happens, we will go on a regular cadence of a release every six months...to make it easy for people to be able to have predictability in terms of time schedules.
Will we see Moblin devices in the UK market soon?
Sousou: With Moblin v2.0, there haven't been any devices released yet, and this is what we will start seeing over the next couple of weeks with Netbooks and early next year with Moorestown-based MIDs (mobile Internet devices). You will see that everywhere in the world.
What changes have been made since the first version?
Sousou: Version one of Moblin was more of an enabling project. It's basically just a set of technologies that Linux distributors and people who use Linux can use for the optimization aspect on our (Intel) platform. Moblin v2.0 is when we started really doing an integrated OS with its own reference user experience that OEMs and vendors can take and customize.
What would a manufacturer or user gain from using Moblin on a Netbook, as opposed to using a more standard Linux distribution?
Sousou: There are a lot of things that we've done with Moblin that are fairly cutting-edge, such as social-networking integration. We created the infrastructure that lets you very easily integrate streams from all the social networks with simple (application programming interfaces) and then be able to allow the user, in an integrated way, to update their status and so on. Moblin also boots in five seconds.
It's things like this--we look at things from a user experience perspective, then we build all the plumbing, such as the kernel and adding libraries and 3D infrastructure.
This is a bit of self-criticism of what we've done in Linux over the past years--we in Linux have got to stop writing clones of the OSs from 15 years ago. People want to use these devices as an Internet-media, social-networking consumption device, and this is what we've focused a great deal on, to provide those capabilities in an easy way to use while at the same time maintaining the traditional PC compatibility and consistency.
Earlier in the conference, Vodafone's David Pollington said users were confusing the intended functionality of Netbooks with that of more high-powered laptops, leading them to find Linux unsatisfactory on such devices. Do you agree that a Netbook is not simply a small PC?
Sousou: It's different from a PC in one key aspect at least: a Netbook is primarily a consumption device. It's great for browsing, playing your media, viewing documents and so on. People tend not to use a Netbook to create content.
Is it possible to change consumer attitudes to Netbooks, to convince them not to expect a PC-like experience?
Sousou: I don't think it's up to us to change how (customers view Netbooks). In a lot of ways it's the other way around. We will support and do what our customers and end users want to do rather than trying to force some usage model on the end users. We won't advocate you should use this versus that.
How does Moblin stack up against Windows 7 on Netbooks?
Sousou: Windows 7 is a great platform for Netbooks and we worked very closely with Microsoft on optimizing the Windows 7 OS to our platforms. It depends on what the usage model is--if somebody wants a PC, they should use Windows. We follow our end users and our customers, and if someone wants Windows, that's great. If (they want) Linux, that's great.
"A Netbook is primarily a consumption device. It's great for browsing, playing your media, viewing documents and so on. People tend not to use a Netbook to create content."
Moblin is also tailored for MIDs, which is a segment that hasn't taken off yet. Will MIDs become more popular?
The Nokia N900 is fundamentally an MID--a device that can do PC functionality and that includes a phone. End users want devices that can bring a full Internet experience, viewing the Web in a real way with Flash completely running, with all the normal plug-ins and content you would normally see. By definition, that's fundamentally what a MID is.
In my opinion, I don't see the MID as a new category. It's more an evolution of smartphones. There is some confusion (surrounding) the name. It's good to have terminology for something like an MID--it distinguishes it in what you are really getting. With the term "Netbooks," people said it was just a small notebook, and we said fine, it's just a small notebook, so let's call it something that means that.
Intel suddenly has a lot of competitors in the Netbook and MID markets, with ARM architecture being used by companies like Qualcomm and Nvidia. How do you view these new rivals?
Sousou: It's very hard to comment, because I haven't seen any of (the resulting devices). For the past year and a half, I've been hearing about the ARM Netbook or smartbook, but I haven't seen anything to see if it works.
From my personal experience, over the past several years I have been seeing people trying to put a PC OS on ARM, but you simply don't get the experience. It's the phone-browsing experience on a larger screen.
Unless the ARM ecosystem is able to fix the software problem of being able to provide a real Internet experience, real compatibility and those things, it will be difficult because the Internet is designed fundamentally for the PC.
Our long experience has shown that the Internet changes things and it's not the other way around. Trying to do it the other way, in terms of the Internet adapting to a different class of devices...it is hard to understand how that will happen.
What do you mean? Are you saying that Web is designed for the x86 platform?
Sousou: Fundamentally, that's true. It's designed for the PC in general and, unless your platform is designed to be PC-compatible, you will always--if you are able to show 90 percent of the Internet but you cannot show ESPN and MTV and whatever your top 10 Web sites are, which are generally media-rich, that's what people use those devices for. These are connected devices for Internet--the point of being connected is to use the Internet.
What about Google's entry into the Linux OS market with Chrome? Do you have any view on that?
Sousou: We will have to wait and see. Google does great things. From an Intel perspective, we don't view this as a competitor--we work with Google and everyone. We don't view Moblin as a competing OS to other Linux distributions; we work with them. With any Linux-based OS, we will provide them with whatever help they need.
Will Intel work with Google on the development of the Chrome OS?
Sousou: Yes.
Has this collaboration started yet?
Sousou: We work with Google in the upstreams: in the kernel, graphics subsystem, plotter and all these great upstream Linux products. This is what happens in the open-source community.
If you look at our work in Bluetooth, the maintenance of Bluetooth and what happens in the Linux Bluetooth stuff is done by Intel. That's used in Android, in the (Nokia) N900, in Moblin--we developed most of that in Moblin, but it gets used everywhere.
A lot of the technologies we use that we developed in Moblin, you will see everywhere. This is how open-source works.
David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from Amsterdam.

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