Persönliches dies-und-das
Qt and CDDL, follow-up
I finally got a response to my inquiry about the Qt licensing exceptions for opensource licenses. I doesn’t look confidential, so here it is:
We will try to add the CDDL, but it may need to wait for a later release. The next package is already going through testing, so I think it may be too late to add it, but we will try.
I’m not sure how adding a license affects testing a release, but that’s their business. It still sounds great! Thank you, all the people at Trolltech for a wonderful c++ development library and supportive licensing behaviour!
…Windows Annoyance, Pt. 2
I encountered some problems reading one audio CD into a flac file (I like to keep them in a one-file-per-cd format, with integrated cuesheet, etc) - not even good old trusty cdrdao on win32 managed to read it (but did just fine on DragonFly).
Searching a bit, I found that the ASPI driver (which provides the interface to lowlevel SCSI-and-similar devices for userspace applications) requires some flags in the registry. cdrdao even has the necessary changes in its cvs repository. Just apply, reboot (took me a while to remember that) and it works (for me).
…Windows Annoyance, Pt. 1
After 8 Years of UNIX desktop (where not much changed - sure, glitzy-shiny features in the dozen, but still lacking in the usability and integration department), I bought a Windows license.
No Operating System without some weird corners, so I think I’ll collect such issues here (while looking for solutions). Sooo…
Episode 1: Try to delete a movie in a folder you just opened a few seconds ago. “This file is in use”.. That thumbnailer/metadata extractor stuff again, with no obvious way to get rid of it (or to teach it how to read that file in a non-blocking way)
…binary blobs, gnu, fsf and s-boxes
Yay for GNU Freedom. Recently I ran over a discussion where there were some concerns about the viability of using “binary blobs” in an implementation of the AES algorithm.
Sure, there’s a table in it, 256 elements wide, with some weird numbers in it. What is that table? It’s an S-Box, one of the central pieces of every algorithm that’s based on the Feistel cipher. AES is such an algorithm.
When looking in the the spec (FIPS-197), you can see (on page 16) that they’re defined just like that: a table of values to use. Where do this numbers come from? Probably some NSA office, where some mad scientist (just like you’d image, probably) took the hints from page 26 of the proposal (or not) and shuffled a box with 256 numbers, and carefully placed them in a 16x16 square (think of lottery)…
…progress on hg2mtn
I continued work on hg2mtn (which managed to import the whole onnv-gate repository just fine, stats will come later), and except for one issue, I’m feature complete: while I track renames now, I have to synthesize directory renames. This will work by looking for each rename if the source directory is getting removed and the target directory newly created. If so, assume that a rename from source dir to target dir takes place.
…first release of hg2mtn
Today I worked a lot on hg2mtn, a tool to import hg (mercurial) repositories into monotone.
The result of it is a first release that’s barely useful, but contains all the logic necessary to do it - what’s missing is userinterface, stability and general niceness.
…Grub2 on LinuxBIOSv3 got access to IDE disks
As part of this year’s Google Summer of Code I’m working for the LinuxBIOS project. My assignment is to make GRUB2 work as payload for LinuxBIOSv3 (the most recent version of LinuxBIOS). This means, that GRUB2 ends up in the flash ROM and gets loaded by LinuxBIOSv3 (which sets up the memory controller and things like that), so that GRUB2 can continue the boot process (provide a menu, load the system, etc)
…Qt’s license got some exceptions
Trolltech decided to give more Open Source projects the possibility to use their fine Qt library - Unfortunately they seem to have forgotten about the CDDL (but the MPL is in there).
I asked them for their reasons, probably they just didn’t realize that the CDDL would be a fine addition. Let’s see when/if they answer…
…Taufe
Heute war meine Taufe.
9:15
los gehts zur Gemeinde
9:45
Treffen der Täuflinge (Christoph hat mich das letzte Stück mitgenommen), inkl. Kleidungsbeschaffung (die meisten Hosen waren einige Nummern zu gross)
10:15
Treffen von allen zur Vorbesprechung und Gebet - Nervosität steigt
10:30
Beginn des Gottesdienstes. Jonas und Geschwister, meine Mutter + Udo, Henrike, Wilhelm, Hr. u. Fr. Frenzen, Caro waren da - hat mich echt gefreut!
Erst einige Ansagen, Predigt, dann Zeugnisse - lief besser als erwartet, vor der gesamten Mannschaft zu erzählen (danke Claudi nochmal, für die Ermutigung gestern)
…