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Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Mon 26 Apr 2004

Postfix Enabler 1.1 Beta

Category : Technology/PFE1.1Beta.txt

I've got a version of Postfix Enabler (1.1) that I can release for beta testing. In addition to a new field that will make it more convenient for a user to enter RBL (Real-Time Black Lists) sites that the mail server will check against, the real value that this new version brings is that it will install all the stuff needed to use a basic SpamAssassin configuration, as well as the ability to generate detailed mail statistics, with just a couple of clicks.

I'm tending towards the decision to GPL Postfix Enabler, too. I feel it's a waste of time to do a pflogsumm replacement, when it's already doing a good enough job.

And, at this point, I'm using the SpamAssassin/Anomy combination, where Anomy does the anti-virus filtering, and the latter is also GPL.

I'm using this exercise to try and understand the intellectual property issues better. So if I want to be precise, I think the key issue lies with the use of pflogsumm rather than with Anomy.

With Anomy (and SpamAssassin), Postfix Enabler acts like an installer application. Its job is only to bundle and install all the stuff needed by a non-technical user to make use of these two pieces of software with their mail server quickly. That's the value contributed by Postfix Enabler and I think everybody will agree that it's a good thing. But Postfix Enabler itself doesn't use Anomy or SpamAssassin as a library. So it can be argued that Postfix Enabler, then, doesn't need to be infected by the viral nature of the GPL.

But, in the case of pflogsumm, Postfix Enabler does use it like a library - to generate the mail traffic statistics and then show its results in a Postfix Enabler window. So that aspect of its use could constitute a requirement for Postfix Enabler to be released as GPL'ed software, too. So you can see the viral mechanism of the GPL at work.

In the main, the decision to treat this as a non-issue (i.e., make the Postfix Enabler source code available for download) is because it's already quite easy to see what Postfix Enabler does by going to the Finder, looking for the application, and do a "Show Package Contents". You will see all the scripts (both AppleScript scripts and Unix shell scripts), plus all the Unix binaries installed by Postfix Enabler. At various stages during the year, I've put up the link to the source code, only to bring it down, when I got tired of having to give support for that, too.

But, now, I may have to put that back. Postfix Enabler loads stuff into people's systems. It may be better to make the process transparent, to test the validity of Eric Raymond's argument (actually attributed to Linus Torvalds) for Open Source - "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". (Actually, I don't necessarily agree with that, at least not totally, and here's a guy who thinks along the same line.)

But Postfix Enabler is a vehicle to learn about a lot more things than turning on a mail server. I only wish I don't have to do, or turn away, so much tech support. The real issue with the GPL is that, in its zeal to make source code free, it undercuts the rights of the author to control how the software is distributed. For example, theoretically, it is permissible then to make very minor changes to the source, including re-directing the PayPal link, and then re-distribute the modified version from another server, so long as the person making the changes makes available the source, too. With GPL, you've given away the rights to be the only one who can distribute the software. If it does turn out to be true that I've made a big mistake, I think the way to recover is to rewrite the whole thing in another language, learn from what went wrong, add a lot more features, and release it under another name and licensing mechanism.

My wife reads these pages and thinks that I can't quite decide between being cynical or idealistic. That's probably understating it.

Posted at 5:17AM UTC | permalink

Panther Server

Category : Technology/pantherserverreviewAFP548.txt

I was about to think that there's no point looking at the Panther (OS X 10.3) Server when even something that is so simple to do on a normal OS X machine, like sharing an Internet connection, seems so much harder to get right on a Panther Server machine.

But I found this article by Joel Rennich at afp548.com and it's a very good review of the Panther Server. It's easy to miss a lot of the good stuff Apple had built into the Server version of OS X. There are a lot of things I didn't know OS Server could do, including the ability to extend the administrative capabilties of the system by writing plug-ins, if I hadn't read the article. So I'm making a link to it, in case I forget where to find it later.

Posted at 1:56AM UTC | permalink

Sat 24 Apr 2004

Roadstead Domain Down

Category : Commentary/roadstead.txt

Sorry for the loss of service, if you're trying to get here via the roadstead.com domain name. The cutedgesystems.com domain name is still active, fortunately.

The problem was that I forgot to update the billing/admin contact information, etc, for roadstead.com, so I didn't get the renewal warning (I'm sure they would have sent that out). And I didn't set it to auto-renew.

But that's been fixed and it'll probably get cleared in the next few hours as it propagates through the domain name system.

I didn't set the domain to auto-renew because I thought of dropping the roadstead.com domain and concentrate everything on cutedgesystems.com. Roadstead.com was just a fun thing I did with the Mac-related stuff that I put up. I wouldn't have known, a year ago, that it would get to this state where it would be noticed if it were to be brought down. Maybe I need to re-think that.

Posted at 5:03AM UTC | permalink

Wed 21 Apr 2004

The Ultimate Toolbox for Business

Category : Commentary/SunTechDay2.txt

I'm sitting in front of Leon Chen's custom-made "Ultimate Toolbox for Developers" poster stand at Sun Tech Day. We (i.e., my friend Hai Hwee and me) had been asked to help set up the Xserve at the booth to show the widest variety of applications - e.g., a J2EE insurance application we've been porting over to run on the Tomcat server, and a series of demos we've done to show Java on OS X, from the command line to Cocoa to web-based applications - that will, in fact, do justice to that claim. I hope we did manage to achieve that.

Mostly I hear the same thing - "I never thought the Mac could do that". For example, the Oracle guys, below, came over to watch trailers on the QuickTime site but ended up amazed when they found Oracle running on the Xserve. And on my iBook. They quickly got round a few more of their friends to see something they never thought they would see - Oracle actually running on a Mac. (And they showed us where to find a newer 10g release).

I've never had much affinity for Apple's sales and marketing people. I ended up over the last two days with even more antipathy. Not that I had expected much. But I can't help feeling, from contrasting the focus and determination to add value that Sun brought to Singapore (over their last ten years of working with the government, ministries, and major corporations) that all these technologies that Apple's own developers had wrought was like so much casting pearls to the swine, as far as the Apple sales people were concerned. Sun, I'm sure, would have done so much more - if their people had all these richness, instead. If only we could merge Apple and Sun. But, then, the world ain't big enough for both Steve Jobs and Scott McNeally together, I should imagine.

If Apple could get their sales people's noses away from concerns about shop fronts, and all the frills, signifying nothing, and thinking about how cool everybody think they are ... if they could just do that, the Mac would have been a contender. Now, if only I didn't like the Mac quite so much...

[But I'm in good company; it is easy enough for all the Java guys to see that James Gosling likes his PowerBook a lot. Where their hero goes...]

Posted at 4:20PM UTC | permalink

Tue 20 Apr 2004

An Industry Icon

Category : Commentary/industryicon.txt

"It's not everyday that you get to meet an industry icon," says the Sun guy on the stage. So we welcome James Gosling to Singapore for Sun Tech Day.

Note that PowerBook, below. It has done more than anything Apple could do to make using a Mac cool among the Java crowd, judging by the interest shown by the visitors to the Apple booth.

Posted at 8:14AM UTC | permalink

Wed 14 Apr 2004

Speaking of James Gosling

Category : Commentary/suntechdayUpdate.txt

I understand that James Gosling will be the keynote speaker at next week's Sun Tech Day in Singapore at The Stamford, 20th and 21st of April.

James Gosling - Java creator and, need I remind you, Mac user.

Posted at 11:16AM UTC | permalink

James Gosling on the Java Road

Category : Commentary/ontheJavaRoad.txt

My cousin, Edwin, who works for Sun, writes me this note, "Sun is a great company. Not many company (Apple excluded) shares this kind of belief and passion. Sometimes, many comments by people are unreasonable. On one hand, they say the company is doomed because it seems to not follow mainstream, next it wants to see more profitability, next the same criticise that we are a separatists because we don't do MS, next we should opensource our IP in Java, finally being the largest open source contributor after UCBerkeley, yet accused of being proprietary."

He sent me this : James Gosling : On the Java Road.

I like this paragraph in the James Gosling (creator of Java) article :

"As for Richard Stallman's Free but shackled: The Java trap , it's hard to know where to begin. He has his own rather peculiar definition of "Free" that I think violates the First Law of Thermodynamics (energy is conserved): developers put a huge amount of energy into creating software and if they can't get that energy back in a way that balances, then the system falls apart. I've been in this discussion countless times and I'd like to avoid landing there again. GPL software is not "free": it comes with a license that has a strong political agenda. Like GPL software, the Java platform is "free" in many senses: you don't have to pay anything for the runtime or developers kit and you can get the sources for everything. Unlike GPLd software, the Java sources don't come with a viral infection clause that requires you to apply the GPL to your own code. But the sources for the JDK do come with a license that has a different catch: redistribution requires compatibility testing."

-- "He (Richard Stallman) has his own rather peculiar definition of "Free" that I think violates the First Law of Thermodynamics (energy is conserved) ... GPL software is not "free": it comes with a license that has a strong political agenda."

-- "Developers put a huge amount of energy into creating software and if they can't get that energy back in a way that balances, then the system falls apart."

As they used to say in Marvin Gaye's time, right on...

Posted at 11:06AM UTC | permalink

Tue 13 Apr 2004

The Mac is so good

Category : Commentary/theMacIsSoGood.txt

It's evening and energy levels are getting low. I've just finished the spam filters and mail stats installer for the Xserve, building on the Postfix Enabler framework. Finished testing on the TiBook. Time to move it to the Xserve. It's the moment of truth. Will it work?

But before that, maybe it's time for some iTunes. And my life flashes past. I've got all of my CDs on iTunes - every song I've ever loved. From Sandy Lam to Van Morrison to Jackson Brown. It feels so good. Even over the noise from the Xserve.

But did the code work? Yes. The Xserve is so fast, the installer loaded the spam filters and everything needed to generate the mail stats in under thirty seconds. Try doing this manually, even if you're a Linux expert.

The Mac is so good. No fiddling with Sound Blaster Cards. From Unix to Gloria Estefan to James Taylor ("I don't want to be lonely tonight"). It's never let me down in twenty years as a Mac user. Why do the IT guys hate it so much? I don't care. It's Rod Steward, Tonight's the Night, and I'm going home.

Posted at 12:41PM UTC | permalink

Mon 12 Apr 2004

Sell Your Air

Category : Technology/linspot.txt

Take a look at LinSpot. It has a very interesting business model.

"LinSpot is free and easy software to sell your Wireless Internet Access. LinSpot uses an innovative combination of different technologies to turn your Wireless Internet into a paid-for Internet Access Point and let YOU benefit from it!"

You, as well as LinSpot because they take 15% of the cut. But the LinSpot software is free and they only get paid if you get paid (payments are via PayPal), so you've got nothing to lose. Wonderful.

Now, why didn't I think of that? But then you need the technical skills to make this work, so they probably deserve to succeed with the idea.

But LinSpot uses a bunch of Open Source applications. Is its source code available? And how does it handle the respective licensing requirements of Apache, the ISC DHCP server, the ISC BIND Nameserver, the SQUID Web Proxy Cache, etc, among the things that are packaged into the LinSpot application? This will make an interesting case study.

Posted at 9:49AM UTC | permalink

Sun 11 Apr 2004

Poetic Licenses

Category : Commentary/gnu.txt

I'm reading the Free Software Foundation's definition of the GNU General Public License (GPL), as well as some very interesting pages, like this on selling free software.

Let's say, I'm now able to add a new panel (say, for Spam Control) to Postfix Enabler and, among the new features, is an ability to generate very detailed mail statistics. Let's say, also, I'm thinking of using pflogsumm, a Perl script written by Jim Seymour and distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL, to save time writing a log analysis tool of my own.

Now, if I were to download, install and use pflogsumm for my own use, in my own projects, I can use it freely, both in the "free beer" and "free speech" sense - i.e., I don't have to pay to use it and I can make any modification to the source code as I need.

But, if I want to embed its use within a larger piece of software that I wrote myself, and distribute the whole as a package, what happens?

I think the relevant rule is found in the following paragraph in the GPL :

"These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."

- the key sentences being, "...this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License" - (italics added).

Therefore, if we build and sell an accounting system that interfaces with MySQL, an Open Source database system that is also released under the terms of the GNU GPL, then I think it's safe to say that the accounting system can be released as a proprietary product because the two are clearly separate products.

However, I think but I'm not sure, if I build something like this (below), then Postfix Enabler has to be released also under the terms of the GNU GPL :

It's interesting to work through the implications. For example, let's take ourselves through these scenarios :

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?

"Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)"

Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site?

"Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide "equivalent access" to download the source--therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary."

Does the GPL allow me to require that anyone who receives the software must pay me a fee and/or notify me?

"No. In fact, a requirement like that would make the program non-free. If people have to pay when they get a copy of a program, or if they have to notify anyone in particular, then the program is not free. See the definition of free software.

"The GPL is a free software license, and therefore it permits people to use and even redistribute the software without being required to pay anyone a fee for doing so."

If I distribute GPL'd software for a fee, am I required to also make it available to the public without a charge?

"No. However, if someone pays your fee and gets a copy, the GPL gives them the freedom to release it to the public, with or without a fee. For example, someone could pay your fee, and then put her copy on a web site for the general public."

---

So "free speech" would, probably, lead eventually to "free beer". It's hard to sell a product for a fee if somewhere else it can be downloaded, legally, for free. I believe people would only do it if the add-ons it brings - like consultancy and training projects - are worth more to the company than any revenue lost from releasing the product for free.

And so, if I'm unsure whether to release Postfix Enabler under the GPL, then using pflogsumm now is out of the question because :

If a library is released under the GPL (not the LGPL), does that mean that any program which uses it has to be under the GPL?

"Yes, because the program as it is actually run includes the library."

At this point, I think the issues have become clear.

SpamAssassin and all the Perl modules it uses are released under the Perl Artistic License (though Spamassassin from 3.0 on will be released under the Apache Software License, according the Spamassasin site), which doesn't appear to have the copyleft restriction. The Free Software Foundation site has a very interesting page comparing the features of each of the known licenses against the GPL.

So, if you're looking to hire an Intellectual Property lawyer (lots of people getting into this field), quiz him all the nuances of all these licenses and watch to see if he starts to drown.

Posted at 8:23AM UTC | permalink

Wed 07 Apr 2004

Time Compression

Category : Technology/timecompression.txt

Success with spamassassin, too. So it is possible to install spamassassin on one Mac, get logGen to determine precisely which files came in with the installation, copy over just these files to the right places in another Mac, and get that other Mac to run spamassassin, too. The difference being that, for that other Mac, you don't have to go through the download-build-and-install cycle again. And you don't need it to have the Developer Tools installed, so it can be any standard Mac.

Time saved? A typical download-build-install cycle can take about two hours. I made a mistake today and ended up using close to four hours debugging it - you can never get all the steps right because we're only human.

And, if you don't know how to do it, and need to figure all these out from scratch, it can take almost forever.

So we've come from forever, to four hours, to two hours, to half an hour - i.e., if I'm just manually copying the required files to the right locations (which I've packed and marked as to where they should go). Now, if I put all these into a script, it can be done in seconds. From days to seconds.

This was how the first version of Sendmail Enabler got done - I was fed up with always forgetting a step here or a step there whenever I have a to set up a mail server but I don't set up mail servers often enough to want to stick this in my head. Plus they're all so boring.

I'm reading "Education for a Bright Future - The Goals of the Kumon Method of Education" by Hiroshi Kumon, the son of the founder of Kumon. And I was thinking about how this could be what his father meant by arithmetic training being the foundation of all other skills. I'm wondering if the idea for doing what I've just done didn't come from the ability to see AB + AC + AD = A(B + C + D). Like A being the copying process and B+C+D being the sum of all the installations and we can just take the final state and use it in all our subsequent transformations.

Posted at 10:53AM UTC | permalink

Tue 06 Apr 2004

Mail Stats

Category : Technology/MailStats.txt

Success. I'm now able to make the Xserve produce mail statistics like this :

Postfix log summaries for Apr 6

Grand Totals
------------
messages

5 received
5 delivered
0 forwarded
0 deferred
2 bounced
0 rejected (0%)
0 reject warnings
0 held
0 discarded (0%)

14483 bytes received
17981 bytes delivered
1 senders
1 sending hosts/domains
4 recipients
4 recipient hosts/domains

... and lots more, including Per-Hour Traffic Summary, Host/Domain Summary: Message Delivery (top 150), Host/Domain Summary: Messages Received (top 150), top 100 Senders by message count, top 100 Recipients by message count, top 100 Senders by message size, top 100 Recipients by message size, message deferral detail, message bounce detail (by relay), message reject detail, message reject warning detail, message hold detail, message discard detail, smtp delivery failures, Warnings, Fatal Errors, Panics, and Master daemon messages.

They're everything a mail administrator would need. All these are generated by a piece of software called pflogsumm.pl by James S. Seymour. It is distributed under under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.

I'm starting my exploration of Perl modules with pflogsumm because it's small, yet it does something very useful, and it's dependent on a Perl library called Date::Calc which, in turn, is dependent on a few other Perl modules.

The first question I was trying to solve is : how do we figure out precisely what Perl modules are needed? Until I discovered logGen, I didn't have a reliable way of knowing this. The second question is : now that I know which ones are needed, and where they need to be stored, can I simply copy them over to another machine, and have them work, even if I had not loaded the Developer Tools on this other fresh machine.? I've just proven that they will work. Which means that it is possible to build an installer that will automate all these activities. So, instead of taking about twenty minutes to do it manually, it will only take a few seconds to get this set up on any standard machine.

Which brings me to the next question. Let's say, I'm now able to conceive of a version of Postfix Enabler that will install all the things that are needed to run pflogsumm, and then provide the user with an interface that will generate mail statistics in all the variations that are built into pflogsumm, am I allowed to do that?

This is the next part of the learning process. We've got to check the license agreements for pflogsumm, as well as Date::Calc, and all its dependent modules. Plus trying to understand the implications of the GNU GPL and the concept of "copyleft". Does using pflogsumm mean that Postfix Enabler has to be released under the GPL, too? It's not something that I would mind and I had always thought that that was the consequence of the viral nature of the GPL. But I've just re-read the GPL and realised it's not necessarily so. So I'll learn something from this.

I remember the old Reebok tag-line, "Life is not a spectator sport". You learn deeper and faster when you throw yourself into the tackle.

Posted at 5:19AM UTC | permalink