Overview

   

Introduction to standards in general Technology Standards, Open Standards The good, the bad, and the ugly Open Source Software

Standards in Real Life Nuts and Bolts



Generally speaking, nuts and bolts come in standard sizes. If you loose a nut, you can run to the hardware store and buy another one of the same size.

Standards in Real Life Pipes and Fittings



Plumbing pipe comes in standard sizes and fittings You can choose your plumber based on quality of service, not on the brand of pipe you have.

Standards in Real Life Electrical Plugs (and voltage!)



Think about how many electronic devices exist today in your home. This would not be possible without standardization of electrical power delivery.

Standards in Real Life Connections



Almost all external computing devices are now USB Eliminates questions such as do you need a serial or PS/2 mouse?

Standards in Real Life More plugs

 

Audio Video

Standards in Real Life How Web Sites Work

GET /index.html HTTP/1.1 Host:www.example.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 22:38:34 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) Last-Modified: Wed, 08 Jan 2003 23:11:55 GMT Etag: "3f80f-1b6-3e1cb03b" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 438 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

What is a Standard?
A set of criteria (some of which may be mandatory), voluntary guidelines, and best practices.

Who Creates Standards?



Strictly speaking, an official standard is only produced by an officially recognized standards organization, such as ISO, ANSI, NEMA, NIST, IASB, ITU, ... IETF, IEEE, W3C, OASIS, Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) etc. are industry consortia, where groups of companies and individuals get together to produce an industry standard. Industry consortia may produce either open or closed standards. Entities (people, companies, or software projects) may publish a specification that is open and free to use. This is called an open standard. Companies may license a specification and charge royalties for its use. This is called a closed standard.

What makes a standard Open?

 

Available Anyone is allowed to read and implement the standard. No Royalties Free to implement without paying hefty licensing fees or
royalties. Maximizes end-user choice and makes the market more competitive with no lock-in to a single vendor's implementation.

Not controlled by a single vendor -

The Internet Runs on Standard Protocols

Something called TCP/IP came along and became the standard network protocol. Why? Because it was completely free and open for anyone to implement.

Technology Standards that work SMTP (email)

 

Completely open protocol Allows you to communicate with someone else on the Internet just by knowing their email address.

Where are the Standards? Web Browser Wars



W3C an organization that defines web standards, the authority on what constitutes valid HTML. Major Web Browsers during the late 1990's: - Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) - Netscape Navigator

Open Document Format (ODF)

Completely open standard, anyone can read the specifications and use this format. Accepted as an ISO standard.

Defining Terms
 

Proprietary Software Open Source Software

Proprietary Software


  

Source code availability  Source code not provided  Source code provided - may or may not include permission to create modifications and enhancements Restrictions on dissemination Warranties provided Maintenance and support terms included

Open Source Software



 

Open Source software generally is distributed under a license that guarantees the right to read, modify, redistribute and use the software freely. No indemnification; No maintenance or support.

Open Source Software Mozilla Firefox web browser

 

http://www.mozilla.com Browser is safer than Internet Explorer Reduce chances of getting badware on your computer Adheres to web standards (HTML, CSS) This is the recommended web browser at FLMNH.

Open Source Software OpenOffice Productivity Suite

 

 

http://www.openoffice.org Supports Open Document Format (ODF). Output to PDF. Completely Free!

Freeware
Freeware is free software, software that the licensee can use without paying a license fee.  Free software may be proprietary software for which source code is not provided (Adobe Acrobat) or open source software (Linux). Note: Not all open source software is free; not all proprietary software is licensed for a fee.

Open Source Software License - Licensees

Original software owner or developer chooses to limit the rights that he asserts over licensees Licensees, subject to license terms, can:  make and distribute copies of software;  build upon software to create modifications or other works.

Open Source Software Licenses - Source Code

  

Source code to original product always provided; Licensee can modify or enhance source code Licensee may be prohibited from charging royalties

Open Source Software License Warranties and Support



Generally, software provided AS-IS with no warranties, warranties excluded; No indemnification; No maintenance or support.

Popular Free software licenses

     

GNU General Public License GNU Lesser General Public License BSD License Mozilla Public License MIT License Apache License

The GNU General Public License (GPL)

No standard open source license, but GPL most widely used (roughly 85% of open source software); Terms include:
    

User freedom to distribute and/or modify; Requirement that original and modified source code be always made available to the world under the terms of the original license; Must retain copyright notices and warranty disclaimers; Does not include grant of patent licenses; Extremely viral license.

Advantages: Proprietary Software



Indemnification;

Maintenance and support;

Disadvantages: Proprietary Software

COST!  License fee  Product bundlingexample: Microsoft office. Licensee cannot modify or enhance the code; Often not built to open standards, leading to interoperability problems; Shut off from continuing development and information sharing in open source community; Some proprietary code is not as good as its open source counterparts.

 

Advantages: Open Source License

 

PRICE: Generally no or low license fees; Availability of source code coupled with permission to make modifications; Access open source development community, which may be very active with respect to code used. Continuing improvement; outstanding development; More likely to be built to open standards, so interoperable with other open standards systems.

Disadvantages: Open Source Licensing



 

No indemnification; if a third party claims that licensee is using code that the third party developed, the licensee has no one to pay his legal fees and damage award (SCO v. IBM); No maintenance and support (unless purchased separately); No warranties regarding media, viruses, and performance; Staff must be open source savvy; License terms are NOT standard: thus important to pay close attention to terms.

Open Standards and International Cooperation

Open standards are essential for us to develop our own standards and applications. Proprietary products force us into long-term contracts and provide no flexibility for us to develop according to our needs.

ADVANTAGES OF FREE SOFTWARE

   

freedom to run the program for any purpose. freedom to study and modify the program. freedom to copy the program so you can help your neighbor. freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits

Why Use Shells?

Well, most likely because the are a simple way to string together a bunch of UNIX commands for execution at any time without the need for prior compilation. Also because its generally fast to get a script going.

Shell History
The basic shells come in three main language forms. These are (in order of creation) sh, csh and ksh

The shell
The shell acts as an interface between the user and the kernel. When a user logs in, the login program checks the username and password, and then starts another program called the shell. The shell is a command line interpreter (CLI). It interprets the commands the user types in and arranges for them to be carried out. The commands are themselves programs: when they terminate, the shell gives the user another prompt (% on our systems).

Bourne Shell


Historically the sh language was the first to be created and goes under the name of The Bourne Shell. It has a very compact syntax which makes it obtuse for novice users but very efficient when used by experts. It also contains some powerful constructs built in.

C Shell
Next up was The C Shell (csh), so called because of the similar syntactical structures to the C language. The UNIX man pages contain almost twice as much information for the C Shell as the pages for the Bourne shell, leading most users to believe that it is twice as good.

Korne Shell


The Korne shell can be thought of as a superset of the Bourne shell as it contains the whole of the Bourne shell world within its own syntax rules. The extensions over and above the Bourne shell exceed even the level of functionality available within the C Shell (but without any of the compromises!), making it the obvious language of choice for real scripters.

The kernel


The kernel of UNIX is the hub of the operating system: it allocates time and memory to programs and handles the file store and communications in response to system calls. As an illustration of the way that the shell and the kernel work together, suppose a user types rm myfile (which has the effect of removing the file myfile). The shell searches the file store for the file containing the program rm, and then requests the kernel, through system calls, to execute the program rm on myfile. When the process rm myfile has finished running, the shell then returns the UNIX prompt % to the user, indicating that it is waiting for further commands.

The Directory Structure

All the files are grouped together in the directory structure. The filesystem is arranged in a hierarchical structure, like an inverted tree. The top of the hierarchy is traditionally called root (written as a slash / )