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• Recommendations for distributed processing/distributed storage systems

  - by Eddie

  At my organization we have a processing and storage system spread across two dozen linux machines that handles over a petabyte of data. The system right now is very ad-hoc; processing automation and data management is handled by a collection of large perl programs on independent machines. I am looking at distributed processing and storage systems to make it easier to maintain, evenly distribute load and data with replication, and grow in disk space and compute power. The system needs to be able to handle millions of files, varying in size between 50 megabytes to 50 gigabytes. Once created, the files will not be appended to, only replaced completely if need be. The files need to be accessible via HTTP for customer download. Right now, processing is automated by perl scripts (that I have complete control over) which call a series of other programs (that I don't have control over because they are closed source) that essentially transforms one data set into another. No data mining happening here. Here is a quick list of things I am looking for: Reliability: These data must be accessible over HTTP about 99% of the time so I need something that does data replication across the cluster. Scalability: I want to be able to add more processing power and storage easily and rebalance the data on across the cluster. Distributed processing: Easy and automatic job scheduling and load balancing that fits with processing workflow I briefly described above. Data location awareness: Not strictly required but desirable. Since data and processing will be on the same set of nodes I would like the job scheduler to schedule jobs on or close to the node that the data is actually on to cut down on network traffic. Here is what I've looked at so far: Storage Management: GlusterFS: Looks really nice and easy to use but doesn't seem to have a way to figure out what node(s) a file actually resides on to supply as a hint to the job scheduler. GPFS: Seems like the gold standard of clustered filesystems. Meets most of my requirements except, like glusterfs, data location awareness. Ceph: Seems way to immature right now. Distributed processing: Sun Grid Engine: I have a lot of experience with this and it's relatively easy to use (once it is configured properly that is). But Oracle got its icy grip around it and it no longer seems very desirable. Both: Hadoop/HDFS: At first glance it looked like hadoop was perfect for my situation. Distributed storage and job scheduling and it was the only thing I found that would give me the data location awareness that I wanted. But I don't like the namename being a single point of failure. Also, I'm not really sure if the MapReduce paradigm fits the type of processing workflow that I have. It seems like you need to write all your software specifically for MapReduce instead of just using Hadoop as a generic job scheduler. OpenStack: I've done some reading on this but I'm having trouble deciding if it fits well with my problem or not. Does anyone have opinions or recommendations for technologies that would fit my problem well? Any suggestions or advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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• Getting a Database into Source Control

  - by Grant Fritchey

  For any number of reasons, from simple auditing, to change tracking, to automated deployment, to integration with application development processes, you’re going to want to place your database into source control. Using Red Gate SQL Source Control this process is extremely simple. SQL Source Control works within your SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) interface.  This means you can work with your databases in any way that you’re used to working with them. If you prefer scripts to using the GUI, not a problem. If you prefer using the GUI to having to learn T-SQL, again, that’s fine. After installing SQL Source Control, this is what you’ll see when you open SSMS:   SQL Source Control is now a direct piece of the SSMS environment. The key point initially is that I currently don’t have a database selected. You can even see that in the SQL Source Control window where it shows, in red, “No database selected – select a database in Object Explorer.” If I expand my Databases list in the Object Explorer, you’ll be able to immediately see which databases have been integrated with source control and which have not. There are visible differences between the databases as you can see here:   To add a database to source control, I first have to select it. For this example, I’m going to add the AdventureWorks2012 database to an instance of the SVN source control software (I’m using uberSVN). When I click on the AdventureWorks2012 database, the SQL Source Control screen changes:   I’m going to need to click on the “Link database to source control” text which will open up a window for connecting this database to the source control system of my choice.  You can pick from the default source control systems on the left, or define one of your own. I also have to provide the connection string for the location within the source control system where I’ll be storing my database code. I set these up in advance. You’ll need two. One for the main set of scripts and one for special scripts called Migrations that deal with different kinds of changes between versions of the code. Migrations help you solve problems like having to create or modify data in columns as part of a structural change. I’ll talk more about them another day. Finally, I have to determine if this is an isolated environment that I’m going to be the only one use, a dedicated database. Or, if I’m sharing the database in a shared environment with other developers, a shared database.  The main difference is, under a dedicated database, I will need to regularly get any changes that other developers have made from source control and integrate it into my database. While, under a shared database, all changes for all developers are made at the same time, which means you could commit other peoples work without proper testing. It all depends on the type of environment you work within. But, when it’s all set, it will look like this: SQL Source Control will compare the results between the empty folders in source control and the database, AdventureWorks2012. You’ll get a report showing exactly the list of differences and you can choose which ones will get checked into source control. Each of the database objects is scripted individually. You’ll be able to modify them later in the same way. Here’s the list of differences for my new database:   You can select/deselect all the objects or each object individually. You also get a report showing the differences between what’s in the database and what’s in source control. If there was already a database in source control, you’d only see changes to database objects rather than every single object. You can see that the database objects can be sorted by name, by type, or other choices. I’m going to add a comment such as “Initial creation of database in source control.” And then click on the Commit button which will put all the objects in my database into the source control system. That’s all it takes to get the objects into source control initially. Now is when things can get fun with breaking changes to code, automated deployments, unit testing and all the rest.

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• Building a Redundant / Distributed Application

  - by MattW

  This is more of a "point me in the right direction" question. My team of three and I have built a hosted web app that queues and routes customer chat requests to available customer service agents (It does other things as well, but this is enough background to illustrate the issue). The basic dev architecture today is: a single page ajax web UI (ASP.NET MVC) with floating chat windows (think Gmail) a backend Windows service to queue and route the chat requests this service also logs the chats, calculates service levels, etc a Comet server product that routes data between the web frontend and the backend Windows service this also helps us detect which Agents are still connected (online) And our hardware architecture today is: 2 servers to host the web UI portion of the application a load balancer to route requests to the 2 different web app servers a third server to host the SQL Server DB and the backend Windows service responsible for queuing / delivering chats So as it stands today, one of the web app servers could go down and we would be ok. However, if something would happen to the SQL Server / Windows Service server we would be boned. My question - how can I make this backend Windows service logic be able to be spread across multiple machines (distributed)? The Windows service is written to accept requests from the Comet server, check for available Agents, and route the chat to those agents. How can I make this more distributed? How can I make it so that I can distribute the work of the backend Windows service can be spread across multiple machines for redundancy and uptime purposes? Will I need to re-write it with distributed computing in mind? I should also note that I am hosting all of this on Rackspace Cloud instances - so maybe it is something I should be less concerned about? Thanks in advance for any help!

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• Ceph: open-source petabyte scale distributed storage

  - by Gregory Burd

  You might want to read this interesting research paper titled "Object Storage on Berkeley DB". The Ceph project is a distributed network file system designed to provide excellent performance, reliability, and scalability... and it uses Oracle Berkeley DB for storage.

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• Java - System design with distributed Queues and Locks

  - by sunny

  Looking for inputs to evaluate a design for a system (java) which would have a distributed queue serving several (but not too many) nodes. These nodes would process objects present in the distributed queue and on occasion require a distributed lock across the cluster on an arbitrary (distributed) data structures. These (distributed) data structures could potentially lie in a distributed cache. Eliminating Terracotta (DSO),Hazelcast and Akka what could be alternative choices. Currently considering zookeeper as a distributed locking mechanism. Since the recommendation of a znode is not to exceed the 1M size , the understanding is that zookeeper should not be used a distributed queue. And also from Netflix curator tech note 4. So should a distributed cache, say like memcached, or redis be used to emulate a distributed queue ? i.e. The distributed queue will be stored in the caches and will be locked cluster-wide via zookeeper. Are there potential pitfalls with this high-level approach. The objects don't need to be taken off the queue. The object will pass through a lifecycle which will determine its removal from the queue. There would be about 10k+ objects in a queue at a given time changing states and any node could service one stage of the object's lifecycle. (Although not strictly necessary .. i.e. one node could serve the entire lifecycle if that is more efficient.) Any suggestions/alternatives ? sidenote: new to zookeeper ; redis etc.

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• Does it matter to you that a software is "available source" but not "open source"

  - by ccpod

  You probably know the list of open source licenses officially approved by the OSI. Most notably I guess would be the GPL, MIT, [insert your favorite license here]. I recently ran into a project which although was open source (the creator made all source code available), was not officially open source under one of those official licenses. It released the source, but made no promise to release the source in the future. It allowed modification suggestions, but made no promises to accept patches and disallowed external distribution of externally-patched versions. It allowed the use of the software in commercial or paid projects, but disallowed the sale of the software itself. I suppose it could be called "available source" not open source as we like to think of it. I can see why the management team of a company wouldn't want to do business with this software. They can't fork it, they can't sell it, they can't create their own version of the software and distribute it or sell it. But would it matter to you as part of a software engineering team who's just using this software? I can still get my work done with it, I can use it in a project for which I'm paid (but I can't sell the software itself, which I'm not in the business of doing anyway), and I can make changes to the code to make it behave differently for my needs (but I can't make those modifications public), and if I do want those modifications officially made available to others, the approval is up to the project itself and they choose whether to incorporate them in an official release or not. So we know that a company that wants to base its business on this "available source" software can't do that, but as someone from the software engineering team, would those differences matter to you or do they seem less relevant? Curious what others think of this.

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• Does it matter to you that a software is "available source" but not "open source"

  - by ccpod

  You probably know the list of open source licenses officially approved by the OSI. Most notably I guess would be the GPL, MIT, [insert your favorite license here]. I recently ran into a project which although was open source (the creator made all source code available), was not officially open source under one of those official licenses. It released the source, but made no promise to release the source in the future. It allowed modification suggestions, but made no promises to accept patches and disallowed external distribution of externally-patched versions. It allowed the use of the software in commercial or paid projects, but disallowed the sale of the software itself. I suppose it could be called "available source" not open source as we like to think of it. I can see why the management team of a company wouldn't want to do business with this software. They can't fork it, they can't sell it, they can't create their own version of the software and distribute it or sell it. But would it matter to you as part of a software engineering team who's just using this software? I can still get my work done with it, I can use it in a project for which I'm paid (but I can't sell the software itself, which I'm not in the business of doing anyway), and I can make changes to the code to make it behave differently for my needs (but I can't make those modifications public), and if I do want those modifications officially made available to others, the approval is up to the project itself and they choose whether to incorporate them in an official release or not. So we know that a company that wants to base its business on this "available source" software can't do that, but as someone from the software engineering team, would those differences matter to you or do they seem less relevant? Curious what others think of this.

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• What are some examples of open source software that has turned into closed source software? [on hold]

  - by Verrier

  As the title says... can anyone think of any software that has made the transition from open source to closed source / proprietary? These could include software owned by the same company who decided to take a once open source offering and turn it into closed source... but I'm really looking for some examples of companies who developed a commercial closed source product off of an existing open source one (obviously with a permissive license).

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• Databases in Source Control

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I’ve been working as a database professional for quite a long time. But originally, I was a developer. And I loved being a developer. There was this constant feedback loop of a job well done, your code compiled and it ran. Every time this happened successfully, you’d check it into source control. These days you have to add another step; the code passed all the tests, unit, line, regression, qa, whatever, then into source control it goes. As a matter of fact, when I first made the jump from developer to DBA/database developer/database professional, source control was the one thing I couldn’t believe was missing from the DBA toolbox. Come to find out, source control was only the beginning of what was missing from your standard DBAs set of skills. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disrespecting the DBA. They’re focused where they should be, on your production data. But there has to be a method for developing applications that include databases and the database side of that development and deployment process has long been lacking. This lack of development and deployment methodologies is a part of what has given rise to some of the wackier implementations of Object Relational Mapping tools, the NoSQL movement, and some of the other foul cursing that is directed towards databases, DBAs, and database development by application developers. Some of that is well earned. A lot isn’t. But it is a fact that database professionals, in general, do not have as sophisticated a model for managing development and deployment as application developers do. We could charge out and start trying to come up with our own standards and methods. I’m sure people have done exactly that. However, I’m lazy, and not terribly bright. Rather than try to invent a whole new process, I’m going to look to my developer roots and choose instead to emulate the developers. They’re sitting over there across the hall from me working with SCRUM/Agile/Waterfall/Object Driven/Feature Driven/Test Driven development processes that they’ve been polishing for years. What if I just started working on database development the same way they work on code development? Win! Ah, but now I have to have a mechanism for treating my database like application code. First, I need a method for getting it into source control. That’s where Red Gate’s SQL Source Control comes into the picture. SQL Source Control works within SQL Server Management Studio to connect your database objects up to the source control system of your choice. Right out of the box SQL Source Control can link to TFS, SVN or Vault. With a little work you can connect it to Git or just about any other source control system. With the ability to get my database into source control, a lot of possibilities for more direct integration with the application development teams open up.

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• MUD source code

  - by Tchalvak

  I haven't been able to find a lot of the old, open source mud source codes. I find the way they did things very applicable to text-based/browser based games, and I'd love to be able to skim through parts of 'em for inspiration. For instance, we have this huge list of muds and the relationships between them, but little by way of access to source code. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD_trees Often (I'm looking at you, dikumud, http://www.dikumud.com/links.aspx ) the sites of the mud itself doesn't even have a working link to the source. https://github.com/alexmchale/merc-mud has a copy of merc that I found, which certainly contains other works within it's history, but the pickings seems sparse. Does anyone have better resources for gaining access to MUD source code than these?

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• What are some ramifications of open source software turning into closed source software? [on hold]

  - by Verrier

  If a company takes a permissively licensed open source application and then develops a closed source application from that by reworking extensive parts of the application, adding new features and applying bug fixes... Ignoring any license requirements... How does the transition happen and what can be done to prevent it beyond choosing a difference license? What are the (ethical or social) responsibilities for the company? (For example: Giving back to the open source project would be the ethical thing to do) If the open source version and closed source version are both available, how does the competition affect either product? Are there any examples of companies or products that have done this (either successfully or unsuccessfully) in the past? What was the community attitude toward those projects?

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• Choice of open source license for some components, closed source for others

  - by Peter Serwylo

  G'day, I am working on a set of multiplayer games, where different games play against each other (e.g. you play a Tetris clone, I play an Asteroids clone, but we are both competing against each other). All the games would be based on the same underlying framework written specifically for this project. I am struggling to comprehend how I would license this so that: The underlying framework is open source, so other people can create new games based on it. Some games built on the framework are open source Other games are closed source The goal is to have two bundles on something like the Android market: One free and open source package which has a collection of games Another "premium" (although I dislike that word) paid package which has a different collection of games. Usually I am fond of permissive licenses such as MIT/BSD, however I would prefer something more in the vein of the GPL for this. This is because for software such as the snes-9x SNES emulator, which is a great piece of software, there is a ton of poor quality versions being sold, whereas it would be preferable if there was just one authoritative version which was always kept up to date, and distributed for free. If the underlying framework was GPL'd, would I be able to build closed source games on top of it? Thanks for your input.

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• Open Source Survey: Oracle Products on Top

  - by trond-arne.undheim

  Oracle continues to work with the open source community to bring the most innovative and productive software to market (more). Oracle products received the most votes in several key categories of the 2010 Linux Journal Reader's Choice Awards. With over 12,000 technologists reporting, these product earned top spots: Best Office Suite: OpenOffice.org Best Single Office Program: OpenOffice.org Writer Best Database: MySQL Best Virtualization Solution: VirtualBox "As the leading open source technology and service provider, Oracle continues to work with the community stakeholders to rapidly innovate many open source products for use in fully tested production environments," says Edward Screven, Oracle's chief corporate architect. "Supporting open source is important to Oracle and our customers, and we continue to invest in it." According to a recent report by the Linux Foundation, Oracle is one of the top ten contributors to the Linux Kernel. Oracle also contributes millions of lines of code to these important projects: OpenJDK: 7,002,579 Eclipse: 1,800,000 (#3 in active committers) MySQL: 5,073,113 NetBeans: 7,870,446 JSF: 701,980 Apache MyFaces Trinidad: 1,316,840 Hudson: 1,209,779 OpenOffice.org: 7,500,000

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• Dilemma for growing a project: Open source volunteer developers VS closed source paid / revshare developers? [closed]

  - by giorgio79

  I am trying to grow my project, and I am vaccillating between some examples. Some options seem to be: 1. open sourcing the project to draw volunteer developers. Pros This would mean anyone can try and make some money off the code that would motivate them to contribute back and grow the project. Cons Existing bigger could easily copy and paste my work so far. They can also replicate without having access to the code, but that would take more time. I also thought of using AGPL license, but again, code can still be copied without redistribution. After all, enforcing a license costs a lot of money, and I cannot just say to a possible copycat that it seems you copied my code, show me what you got. 2. Keep the project closed source, but create some kind of a developer program where they get revshare Pros I keep the main rights for the project, but still generate interest by creating a developer program. Noone can copy code easily, just with some considerable effort, but make contributions easy as a breeze. I am also seeing many companies just open source a part of their projects, like Acquia does not open source its multisite setup, or github does not open source some of its core business. Cons Less attention from open source committed devs. Conclusion So option 2 seems the most secure, but would love some feedback.

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• going from closed-source to open-source [closed]

  - by mspoerr

  I am thinking of releasing the source code of my application (Freeware at the moment). It is written in C++ with VisualStudio 2008 and all used 3rd-party libs are free or open-source and platform independent. The idea to release the source-code is very old, but till now I did not want to show the code because I am not sure if it is nice/well designed (I am not a professional developer), but the application is growing and help would be very welcome, but I want to keep control... What do I need to consider? Is there any best practice for this scenario? The code itself is one thing, but there is much more like license, documentation, project settings, 3rd party libs, platform (Sourceforge, other?)

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• Open Source vs. Closed Source? Which one to choose? [closed]

  - by Rafal Chmiel

  So far, I was always creating open-source applications (or didn't publish them at all) because it was free for me to create a new CodePlex project, and upload everything. Couple of days ago I started wandering what kind of apps should I make, closed or open source. I can see "cons" and "pros" in both such as the ones below: Open Source: Pro, free project hosting (CodePlex is excellent for .NET app updates. ClickOnce etc) Pro, free help such as developers and designers Con, people can get your source code and (sometimes) use some of your code in their apps and make money Con, companies such as Microsoft, Twitter or Tumblr won't be looking forward in buying your project (like for example Twitter bought TweetDeck - TweetDeck being a closed source AIR application, of course) Closed Source: Pro, it's harder for people to copy your idea without the source code Pro, you're more likely to get acquired/bought by companies Con, no free hosting - you have to have a website to do so (not good for updates) Con, no free help What do you think? What do you think I should choose?

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• Distributed storage and computing

  - by Tim van Elteren

  Dear Serverfault community, After researching a number of distributed file systems for deployment in a production environment with the main purpose of performing both batch and real-time distributed computing I've identified the following list as potential candidates, mainly on maturity, license and support: Ceph Lustre GlusterFS HDFS FhGFS MooseFS XtreemFS The key properties that our system should exhibit: an open source, liberally licensed, yet production ready, e.g. a mature, reliable, community and commercially supported solution; ability to run on commodity hardware, preferably be designed for it; provide high availability of the data with the most focus on reads; high scalability, so operation over multiple data centres, possibly on a global scale; removal of single points of failure with the use of replication and distribution of (meta-)data, e.g. provide fault-tolerance. The sensitivity points that were identified, and resulted in the following questions, are: transparency to the processing layer / application with respect to data locality, e.g. know where data is physically located on a server level, mainly for resource allocation and fast processing, high performance, how can this be accomplished? Do you from experience know what solutions provide this transparency and to what extent? posix compliance, or conformance, is mentioned on the wiki pages of most of the above listed solutions. The question here mainly is, how relevant is support for the posix standard? Hadoop for example isn't posix compliant by design, what are the pro's and con's? what about the difference between synchronous and asynchronous opeartion of a distributed file system. Though a synchronous distributed file system has the preference because of reliability it also imposes certain limitations with respect to scalability. What would be, from your expertise, the way to go on this? I'm looking forward to your replies. Thanks in advance! :) With kind regards, Tim van Elteren

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• open source gossip-based membership protocol?

  - by Aaron

  I am looking for a library which I can plug into a distributed application which implements any gossip-based membership protocol. Such a library would allow me to send/receive membership lists, merge received membership lists, etc... Even better would be if the library implemented a protocol with performance O(logn) performance guarantees. Does anyone know of any open source library like this? It doesn't need to meet all of the aforementioned requirements; even something partially implemented would be helpful.

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• Is there a distributed project management software like Redmine?

  - by Tobias Kienzler

  I am quite familiar with and love using git, among other reasons due to its distributed nature. Now I'd like to set up some similarly distributed (FOSS) Project Management software with features similar to what Redmine offers, such as Issue & time tracking, milestones Gantt charts, calendar git integration, maybe some automatic linking of commits and issues Wiki (preferably with Mathjax support) Forum, news, notifications Multiple Projects However, I am looking for a solution that does not require a permanently accesible server, i.e. like in git, each user should have their own copy which can be easily synchronized with others. However it should be possible to not have a copy of every Project on every machine. Since trac uses multiple instances for multiple projects anyway, I was considering using that, but I neither know how well it adapts to simply giting the database itself (which would be be easiest way to handle the distribution due to git being used anyway), nor does it include all of Redmine's feature. So, can you recommend me a distributed project management software? If your suggestion is a software that usually runs on a server please include a description of the distribution method (e.g. whether simply putting the data in a git repository would do the trick), and if it's e.g. trac, please mention plugins required to include the features mentioned.

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• Can Foswiki be used as a distributed Redmine replacement? [closed]

  - by Tobias Kienzler

  I am quite familiar with and love using git, among other reasons due to its distributed nature. Now I'd like to set up some similarly distributed (FOSS) Project Management software with features similar to what Redmine offers, such as Issue & time tracking, milestones Gantt charts, calendar git integration, maybe some automatic linking of commits and issues Wiki (preferably with Mathjax support) Forum, news, notifications Multiple Projects However, I am looking for a solution that does not require a permanently accesible server, i.e. like in git, each user should have their own copy which can be easily synchronized with others. However it should be possible to not have a copy of every Project on every machine. Since trac uses multiple instances for multiple projects anyway, I was considering using that, but I neither know how well it adapts to simply giting the database itself (which would be be easiest way to handle the distribution due to git being used anyway), nor does it include all of Redmine's feature. After checking http://www.wikimatrix.org for Wikis with integrated tracking system and RCS support, and filtering out seemingly stale project, the choices basically boil down to Foswiki, TWiki and Ikiwiki. The latter doesn't seem to offer as many usability features, and in the TWiki vs Foswiki issue I tend to the latter. Finally, there is Fossil, which starts from the other end by attempting to replace git entirely and tracking itself. I am however not too comfortable with the thought of replacing git, and Fossil's non-SCM features don't seem to be as developed. Now before I invest too much time when someone else might already have tried this, I basically have two questions: Are there crucial features of Project Management software like Redmine that Foswiki does not provide even with all the extensions available? How to set Foswiki up to use git instead of the perl RcsLite?

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• Source-to-source compiler framework wanted

  - by cheungcc_2000

  Dear all, I used to use OpenC++ (http://opencxx.sourceforge.net/opencxx/html/overview.html) to perform code generation like: Source: class MyKeyword A { public: void myMethod(inarg double x, inarg const std::vector<int>& y, outarg double& z); }; Generated: class A { public: void myMethod(const string& x, double& y); // generated method below: void _myMehtod(const string& serializedInput, string& serializedOutput) { double x; std::vector<int> y; // deserialized x and y from serializedInput double z; myMethod(x, y, z); } }; This kind of code generation directly matches the use case in the tutorial of OpenC++ (http://www.csg.is.titech.ac.jp/~chiba/opencxx/tutorial.pdf) by writing a meta-level program for handling "MyKeyword", "inarg" and "outarg" and performing the code generation. However, OpenC++ is sort of out-of-date and inactive now, and my code generator can only work on g++ 3.2 and it triggers error on parsing header files of g++ of higher version. I have looked at VivaCore, but it does not provide the infra-structure for compiling meta-level program. I'm also looking at LLVM, but I cannot find documentation that tutor me on working out my source-to-source compilation usage. I'm also aware of the ROSE compiler framework, but I'm not sure whether it suits my usage, and whether its proprietary C++ front-end binary can be used in a commercial product, and whether a Windows version is available. Any comments and pointers to specific tutorial/paper/documentation are much appreciated.

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• Open Source but not Free Software (or vice versa)

  - by TRiG

  The definition of "Free Software" from the Free Software Foundation: “Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission to do so. The definition of "Open Source Software" from the Open Source Initiative: Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Integrity of The Author's Source Code The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. Distribution of License The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution. License Must Not Restrict Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software. License Must Be Technology-Neutral No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface. These definitions, although they derive from very different ideologies, are broadly compatible, and most Free Software is also Open Source Software and vice versa. I believe, however, that it is possible for this not to be the case: It is possible for software to be Open Source without being Free, or to be Free without being Open Source. Questions Is my belief correct? Is it possible for software to fall into one camp and not the other? Does any such software actually exist? Please give examples. Clarification I've already accepted an answer now, but I seem to have confused a lot of people, so perhaps a clarification is in order. I was not asking about the difference between copyleft (or "viral", though I don't like that term) and non-copyleft ("permissive") licenses. Nor was I asking about your personal idiosyncratic definitions of "Free" and "Open". I was asking about "Free Software as defined by the FSF" and "Open Source Software as defined by the OSI". Are the two always the same? Is it possible to be one without being the other? And the answer, it seems, is that it's impossible to be Free without being Open, but possible to be Open without being Free. Thank you everyone who actually answered the question.

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• Elastic versus Distributed in caching.

  - by Mike Reys

  Until now, I hadn't heard about Elastic Caching yet. Today I read Mike Gualtieri's Blog entry. I immediately thought about Oracle Coherence and got a little scare throughout the reading. Elastic Caching is the next step after Distributed Caching. As we've always positioned Coherence as a Distributed Cache, I thought for a brief instance that Oracle had missed a new trend/technology. But then I started reading the characteristics of an Elastic Cache. Forrester definition: Software infrastructure that provides application developers with data caching services that are distributed across two or more server nodes that consistently perform as volumes grow can be scaled without downtime provide a range of fault-tolerance levels Hey wait a minute, doesn't Coherence fullfill all these requirements? Oh yes, I think it does! The next defintion in the article is about Elastic Application Platforms. This is mainly more of the same with the addition of code execution. Now there is analytics functionality in Oracle Coherence. The analytics capability provides data-centric functions like distributed aggregation, searching and sorting. Coherence also provides continuous querying and event-handling. I think that when it comes to providing an Elastic Application Platform (as in the Forrester definition), Oracle is close, nearly there. And what's more, as Elastic Platform is the next big thing towards the big C word, Oracle Coherence makes you cloud-ready ;-) There you go! Find more info on Oracle Coherence here.

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• Building a distributed system on Amazon Web Services

  - by Songo

  Would simply using AWS to build an application make this application a distributed system? For example if someone uses RDS for the database server, EC2 for the application itself and S3 for hosting user uploaded media, does that make it a distributed system? If not, then what should it be called and what is this application lacking for it to be distributed? Update Here is my take on the application to clarify my approach to building the system: The application I'm building is a social game for Facebook. I developed the application locally on a LAMP stack using Symfony2. For production I used an a single EC2 Micro instance for hosting the app itself, RDS for hosting my database, S3 for the user uploaded files and CloudFront for hosting static content. I know this may sound like a naive approach, so don't be shy to express your ideas.

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• Design a Distributed System

  - by Bonton255

  I am preparing for an interview on Distributed Systems. I have gone through a lot of text and understand the basics of the area. However, I need some examples of discussions on designing a distributed system given a scenario. For example, if I were to design a distributed system to calculate if a number N is primary or not, what will the be design of the system, what will be the impact of network latency, CPU performance, node failure, addition of nodes, time synchronization etc. If you guys could present your in-depth thoughts on this example, or point me to some similar discussion, that would be really helpful.

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