Software

For Open-Source Software, the Developers Are All of Us

Derek Zimmer — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 19:06:20 +0000

"We are stronger together than on our own." This is a core principle that many people adhere to in their daily lives. Whether we are overcoming adversity, fighting the powers that be, protecting our livelihoods or advancing our business strategy, this mantra propels people and ideas to success.

In the world of cybersecurity, the message of the decade is "you're not safe." Your business secrets, your personal information, your money and your livelihood are at stake. And the worst part of it is, you're on your own. Every business is beholden to hundreds of companies handling its information and security. You enter information into your Google Chrome browser, on a website running Microsoft Internet Information Server, and the website is verified through Comodo certificate verification. Your data is transmitted through Cisco firewalls and routed by Juniper routers. It passes through an Intel-branded network card on your Dell server and through a SuperMicro motherboard. Then the data is transmitted through the motherboard's serial bus to the SandForce chip that controls your Solid State Disk and is then written to Micron flash memory, in an Oracle MySQL database.

You are reliant on every single one of those steps being secure, in a world where the trillion-dollar problem is getting computers to do exactly what they are supposed to do. All of these systems have flaws. Every step has problems and challenges. And if something goes wrong, there is no liability. The lost data damages your company, your livelihood, you.

This problem goes back decades and has multiple root causes that culminate in the mess we have today. Hardware and software makers lack liability for flaws, which leads to sub-par rigor in verifying that systems are hardened against known vulnerabilities. A rise in advertising revenue from "big data" encourages firms to hoard information, looking for the right time to cash out their users' information. Privacy violations go largely unpunished in courts, and firms regularly get away with enormous data breaches without paying any real price other than pride.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Open software development has been a resounding success for businesses, in the form of Linux, BSD and the hundreds of interconnected projects for their platforms. These open platforms now account for the lion's share of the market for servers, and businesses are increasingly looking to open software for their client structure as well as for being a low-cost and high-security alternative to Windows and OS X.

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Lotfi ben Othmane, Martin Gilje Jaatun and Edgar Weippl's Empirical Research for Software Security (CRC Press)

James Gray — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 16:47:34 +0000

by James Gray

Developing truly secure software is no walk through the park. In an effort to apply the scientific method to the art of secure software development, a trio of authors—Lotfi ben Othmane, Martin Gilje Jaatun and Edgar Weippl—teamed up to write Empirical Research for Software Security: Foundations and Experience, which is published by CRC Press.

The book is a guide for using empirical research methods to study secure software challenges. Empirical methods, including data analytics, allow extraction of knowledge and insights from the data that organizations gather from their tools and processes, as well as from the opinions of the experts who practice those methods and processes. These methods can be used to perfect a secure software development lifecycle based on empirical data and published industry best practices.

The book also features examples that illustrate the application of data analytics in the context of secure software engineering.

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Heirloom Software: the Past as Adventure

Eric S. Raymond — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 12:17:29 +0000

by Eric S. Raymond

Through the years, I've spent what might seem to some people an inordinate amount of time cleaning up and preserving ancient software. My Retrocomputing Museum page archives any number of computer languages and games that might seem utterly obsolete.

I preserve this material because I think there are very good reasons to care about it. Sometimes these old designs reveal unexpected artistry, surprising approaches that can help us break free of assumptions and limits we didn't know we were carrying.

But just as important, cultures understand themselves through their history and their artifacts, and this is no less true of programming cultures than of any other kind. If you're a computer hacker, great works of heirloom software are your heritage as surely as Old Master paintings are a visual artist's; knowing about them enriches you and helps solidify your relationship to your craft.

For exactly re-creating historical computing experiences, not much can beat running the original binary executables on a software emulator for their host hardware. There are small but flourishing groups of re-creationists who do that sort of thing for dozens of different historical computers.

But that's not what I'm here to write about today, because I don't find that kind of museumization very interesting. It doesn't typically yield deep insight into the old code, nor into the thinking of its designers. For that—to have the experience parallel to appreciating an Old Master painting fully—you need not just a running program but source code you can read.

Therefore, I've always been more interested in forward-porting heirloom source code so it can be run and studied in modern environments. I don't necessarily even consider it vital to retain the original language of implementation; the important goals, in my view, are 1) to preserve the original design in a way that makes it possible to study that design as a work of craft and art, and 2) to replicate as nearly as possible the UI of the original so casual explorers not interested in dipping into source code can at least get a feel for the experiences had by its original users.

Now I'll get specific and talk about Colossal Cave Adventure.

This game, still known as ADVENT to many of its fans because it was written on an operating system that supported only monocase filenames at most six characters long, is one of the great early classics of software. Written in 1976–77, it was the very first text adventure game. It's also the direct ancestor of every rogue-like dungeon simulation, and through those the indirect ancestor of a pretty large percentage of the games being written even today.

If you're of a certain age, the following opening sequence will bring back some fond memories:

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SoftMaker FreeOffice

James Gray — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 15:20:20 +0000

by James Gray

The bottom line on SoftMaker FreeOffice 2016—the updated, free, full-featured Office alternative to the expensive Microsoft Office suite—is this: no other free office suite offers as high a level of file compatibility with Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This maxim applies to both Windows and Linux operating systems, says the suite's maker, SoftMaker Software GmbH. SoftMaker asserts that the myriad competing free alternatives often harbor problems opening the Excel, Word and PowerPoint file formats loss-free. Sometimes the layout and formatting get lost, and on other occasions, files cannot even be opened. SoftMaker sees itself as the positive exception to this rule, especially with the newly overhauled FreeOffice 2016. Benefiting greatly from SoftMaker's commercial offering, SoftMaker Office 2016, FreeOffice 2016 adds features such as improved graphics rendering, compatibility with all current Linux distributions and Windows flavors (XP to Windows 10), new EPUB export and improved PDF export and many other MS-Office interoperability enhancements.

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The Usability of GNOME

Jim Hall — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 20:49:20 +0000

by Jim Hall

I work at a university, and one of our faculty members often repeats to me, "Software needs to be like a rock; it needs to be that easy to use." And, she's right. Because if software is too hard to use, no one will want to use it.

I recently spoke at GUADEC, the GNOME Users And Developers European Conference, and I opened my presentation with a reminder that GNOME is competing for mind share with other systems that are fairly easy for most people to use: Mac, iPad, Windows and Chromebook. So for GNOME to continue to be successful, it needs to be easy for everyone to use—experts and newcomers alike. And, that's where usability comes in.

So, what is usability? Usability is about the users. Users often are busy people who are trying to get things done. They use programs to be productive, so the users decide when a program is easy to use. Generally, a program has good usability if it is easy for new users to learn, easy for them to use, and easy for them to remember when they use the program again.

In a more practical view, average users with typical knowledge should be able to use the software to perform real tasks. The purpose of usability testing, therefore, is to uncover issues that prevent general users from employing the software successfully. As such, usability testing differs from quality assurance testing or unit testing, the purpose of which is to uncover errors in the program. Usability testing is not a functional evaluation of the program's features, but rather a practical determination of the program's operability.

Usability testing does not rely on a single method. There are multiple approaches to implement usability practices, from interviews and focus groups to formal usability testing. Whatever method you use, the value of usability testing lies in performing the evaluation during development, not after the program enters functional testing when user interface changes become more difficult to implement. In open-source software development, the community of developers must apply usability testing iteratively throughout development. Developers do not require extensive usability experience to apply these usability practices in open-source software.

I prefer the formal usability test, and it's not hard. You can gain significant insight just by gathering a few testers and watching them use the software. With each iteration, usability testing identifies a number of issues to resolve and uncovers additional issues that, when addressed, will further improve the program's ease of use. Usability cannot be addressed only at the end of a software development lifecycle. If you wait until the end, it is usually too late to make changes.

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Designing Electronics with Linux

Joey Bernard — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:28:41 +0000

by Joey Bernard

In many scientific disciplines, the research you may be doing is completely new. It may be so new that there isn't even any instrumentation available to make your experimental measurements. In those cases, you have no choice but to design and build your own measuring devices. Although you could build them using trial and error, having a way to model them first to see how they will behave is a much better choice—in steps oregano. With oregano, you can design your circuitry ahead of time and run simulations on it to iron out any problems you may encounter.

The first step, as always, is installing the software. Most distributions should have a package for oregano available. If you want to follow the source version, it is available at GitHub. Oregano also needs another software package to handle the actual simulation. The two packages it currently can work with are Gnucap and ngspice. Either of these two packages needs to be installed in order to do the calculations for the simulation. While this is handled automagically by your distribution's package manager, you will need to install this dependency yourself if you are building from source.

Once it's installed, you will get a blank new project when you first start up oregano (Figure 1). On the right-hand side, you should see a list of elements you can use to build your circuits. It starts up with the default library selected. This library provides all the standard electronic components you likely will want to use. But, this isn't the only library included. You can select from other libraries, such as TTL, Linear, CPU or Power Devices, among others.

Figure 1. On startup, you get a blank canvas and a parts list.

Each of these libraries contains a list of associated elements you can use in your circuits. Selecting one of the elements shows a preview of the schematic drawing of that element in the bottom window. You then can drag and drop the element onto your canvas and start building your circuit. Once you have an element on the canvas, you can double-click the element to edit its properties (Figure 2). You need to click on the "Draw wires" icon at the top of the window in order to connect the elements together into a proper circuit.

Figure 2. The property window depends on which properties are available for that element.

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Trying to Tame the Tablet

Shawn Powers — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:50:57 +0000

by Shawn Powers

Like many folks, I received a shiny new Nexus 7 tablet for Christmas. This brought me great joy and excitement as I began to plot my future paperless life. For most of the evening and an hour or so the next day, I was sure the new Android tablet would change my life forever. Sadly, it wasn't that easy. This month, I want to dive head first into the tablet lifestyle, but I'm not sure if it's really the lifestyle for me. I'll try to keep everyone posted during the next few months (most likely in the Upfront section of LJ). And please, please don't hesitate to send me messages about the ways you find your Android tablet useful at work/home/play.

At Work

The main reason I decided on the Nexus 7 was because with the leather case I bought for it (Figure 1), it was small enough to carry to meetings easily, yet big enough to view full-size documents. I figured with a tablet computer, I might be able to do away with most of the paper in my life. I have cabinets full of filed papers that I never use. I do, however, search my e-mail on a regular basis for communications sent or received years ago. I want that same accessibility for items that exist only in paper form now.

Figure 1. My case doubles as a stand.

Paperless: Evernote or Dropbox

I've been trying to go paperless since long before I got a tablet computer. There seems to be two schools of thought in the paperless department. There are the Evernote people, and there are the "every-other-kind" of people. I have Evernote on every electronic device I own (which is a significant number), and I have to admit, for raw information, Evernote is amazing. The problem comes with documents. Granted, documents can be added to an Evernote note, but they are like e-mail attachments, and they can't be modified once attached. This means, at least for me, that the only documents I ever attach are "complete" documents that are printed as PDF files.

I don't have a good solution for how to handle Word/LibreOffice documents in Evernote. So, that means I have an inconvenient combination of Evernote for unformatted information and Dropbox for documents. Thankfully, both applications run very well on Android, so although I don't have a central repository for all my information, at least I can access all the information from my tablet.

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Interfacing Disparate Systems

James Litton — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:37:40 +0000

by James Litton

When hearing the word interface, most people probably think of a Graphical User Interface or a physical hardware interface (serial, USB). If you dabble in scripting or are a serious developer, you, no doubt, are familiar with the concept of software interfaces as well. Occasionally, the need arises to integrate disparate systems where an interface doesn't already exist, but with a little ingenuity, an interface can be created to bridge the disparity and help you meet your specific needs.

I have an extensive home automation implementation I developed over the years. As I knocked out the "easy" integrations, I eventually came to a point of wanting to integrate systems that are not home automation-friendly. An example of this is my alarm system. Excellent alarm panels exist on the market that make integration a cinch, but I already had a fully functional alarm system and was determined to integrate it into my home automation setup rather than replace it.

My first inclination was to hack a keypad or build my own hardware interface that would allow me to capture status information. Both of those approaches are viable, but as I thought about other options, I realized I could integrate my proprietary alarm system into my home automation system without even cracking open the alarm panel.

Before I reveal the details of how I achieved the outcome I wanted, let me first lay out my integration goals. Although it would be nice to capture sensor data from the alarm system, in my case, it was totally unnecessary as the only data that might be helpful was motion sensor data or specific zone faults. Because I already have numerous motion sensors installed that are native to my home automation build, and because fault data wasn't a factor in my immediate integration requirements, I concluded that I needed to know only if my alarm was "armed" or "unarmed". Knowing the state of the alarm system helps me make my home automation system smarter. An example of this added intelligence might be to change the thermostat setting and turn off all lights if the alarm state changes to armed. Another example might be to turn on all of the lights in the house when the garage door opens after dark and the alarm is armed.

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Fade In Pro

Charles Olsen — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:27:25 +0000

by Charles Olsen

When I switched from Windows to Linux, I found software to replace almost everything I had been doing in Windows. Most of the software I needed was in the repos, although I did pay for a couple commercial programs.

The most difficult program to replace was Final Draft, a commercial program for writing screenplays. Final Draft is available for Windows and Macs, but not for Linux. It also does not run in Wine or CrossOver Office.

I understand that software for writing screenplays is a small niche, but it's not limited only to writers in Hollywood. Any company that prepares videos for training or other purposes would benefit from a program that helps write scripts.

You can write scripts with a word processor, of course. But, the formatting is tricky and goes beyond what you can accomplish just by using styles. A dedicated script-writing tool ensures that all your formatting is correct, and it also can help in other ways.

At first, I was able to get by with Celtx, a free screenplay program that is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. But a nasty bug crept into the Linux version, making it painful to enter character names for dialogue. Although the developer acknowledged the issue two years ago, and several new versions have been released since then, the bug is still there.

A new solution now is available. Fade In Professional Screenwriting Software is a powerful application for writing screenplays, and it includes tools for organizing and navigating the script, as well as tools for managing revisions and rewrites.

Fade In intelligently handles the various formatting elements of a screenplay. You can format the elements manually using key combinations or menus, or you can format everything just by using the Enter and Tab keys. Type a Scene Heading and press Enter, and the next element automatically is formatted as Action. Press Tab to change the formatting to Character, which automatically is followed by Dialogue. Press Tab to change from Dialogue to Parenthetical, which formats properly and inserts the parentheses.

Fade In builds autocomplete lists of your characters and locations. Once you've written a character or location, you can re-enter it with a couple keystrokes.

When it's time to produce a screenplay, Fade In can help by generating standard production reports including scenes, cast, locations and so on. You then can print these reports or save them to HTML or CSV.

Fade In can import and export files in these formats: Final Draft, Formatted Text, Screenplay Markdown, Unformatted Text and XML. It also can import files in Celtx or Rich Text Format and export to PDF and HTML. The Final Draft format is particularly important if you want to sell your script or submit it to certain screenplay-writing contests.

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Astronomy on the Desktop

Joey Bernard — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:53:29 +0000

by Joey Bernard

Many people's initial exposure to science is through astronomy, and they are inspired by that first look through a telescope or their first glimpse of a Hubble image. Several software packages are available for the Linux desktop that allow users to enjoy their love of the stars. I look at several packages in this article that should be available for most distributions.

The first is Stellarium, my personal favorite for day-to-day stargazing. When you install it, you get a thorough star catalog. By default, Stellarium starts up in full-screen mode. The layout makes for a very attractive display of the sky above you, and almost all the details of the display are customizable.

Figure 1. Opening Stellarium gives you a look at the local sky.

If you hover your mouse pointer over either the bottom-left border or the lower-left-side border, one of two configuration panels appears. From here, you can set visual items, such as constellation outlines, constellation names, whether galaxies and nebulae are visible, as well as a coordinate grid. You also can set location and time values. This means you not only can see what the sky looked like in the past or what it will look like in the future, but you also can see what it looks like on the other side of the planet. Additionally, you can add even more stars to the catalog that Stellarium uses.

Figure 2. You can set the time so it's later, letting you check out what you might want to look for that evening.

Figure 3. The configuration window lets you download even more star catalogs.

Stellarium includes a script capability. With it, you can script views of starfields and share them with others. When you install Stellarium, you get several demo scripts to use as examples. As of version 0.10.1, there is a new scripting engine based on the Qt scripting engine. A full API is available, allowing you to interact with all of the functions that Stellarium provides. It is a full scripting language called ECMAscript. You may know it better as JavaScript. You can define your own functions, encapsulating larger chunks of work. There is a for statement, providing a loop structure that will look familiar to C and Java programmers.

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