I've found a very old article, but I was going through it to see if I can extract any value out of it. I was also not sure who to ask as the comments section is closed. The article is "Eleven SSH Tricks" by Daniel R. Allen from 2003.
There is a sentence that I believe is a mistake: "You should use authentication agent forwarding only if you trust the administrators of the remote computer; you risk them using your keys as if they were you."
I thought that was the whole point of using ssh-agent, so as not to risk your administrators running away with your keys. How would they be able to use my keys if I use ssh-agent? If this is a valid concern, I would like to educate myself.
—Danie de Jager
Kyle Rankin replies: SSH agent forwards on your private keys in RAM to the target machine. That's how that remote machine is then able to use those keys to log in to another machine using those credentials. If you enable SSH agent forwarding, a malicious administrator could extract those keys from RAM while you are logged in.
After reading Doc's editorial on saving what made Linux and FOSS possible, I was so depressed. Doc's lamentations about how FOSS and Linux developers don't model the right behavior is true, but let's not get lost in a purity spiral. I share his disappointment that geeks use Linux only professionally, and that we regularly see leaders in the FOSS community giving presentations from Macs/Windows machines, but I think this is of minor concern to everybody but the Linux desktop developers. If you think about the broader picture, we're exactly where we always wanted to be, and what Doc is feeling is what we deserve for a job well done.
We all started as rule-breakers a long time ago. Linux users and FOSS advocates, myself included, relished in the fight with large companies. It was so satisfying to show people how they can run Linux servers with Apache, PHP, MySQL and Samba to avoid paying huge fees for proprietary software. Equally enjoyable was setting up Linux firewalls and configuring complicated networks for pennies when the only alternative was to buy multi-thousand-dollar hardware solutions. I spent many years enjoying the rule-breaking fun.
Then when large corporations began embracing FOSS, we suddenly found ourselves as the rule-makers, and the fun went away. The adoption of Linux and FOSS and open standards was so swift, that what we—and especially Doc—are feeling is a loss of purpose. Our purpose was to fight closed systems and to write open standards. Well, we won, and our purpose was no longer urgent or needed in many ways. I think Doc's editorial reflects the fading afterglow of victory.
To echo Doc's sentiment, what should we do now?
I think the answer is clear; we regain our purpose by breaking more rules. The world has embraced open standards, but corporations have built closed networks on top of them. We need to crack those nuts. At the end of Doc's editorial, he lists some statements from attendees at Freenode.live to inspire people with ideas and a new focus. I have a few to add myself:
Don't let Doc get you down. In many ways, the fights we're facing now are much larger and more difficult than commoditizing operating systems and client/server applications. I hope to see you all on the front lines again soon.
—Dave Huseby
Be very careful of not going down the path of "No true Scotsman" that I see lots of people doing all the time. Linux was not "founded" on those values; they just happened to be some values that some of us liked. Others could care less; they just wanted to create an operating system to solve the need they had at the time. The benefit being that our license allowed us to take those needs and pull them back in and let everyone benefit.
You can say that for "Linux", our only real unified value is "do whatever you want with it, just show us your changes".
So when someone bashes someone for not using a specific type of hardware, or specific userspace program that they somehow feel does not show the same "values" that they themselves feel, that's not acceptable in the slightest.
Who cares what hardware you use as your main operating system? We have thousands of kernel developers that do not use Linux as their primary system because they either are not allowed to do so, or can not use it for one reason or another. Am I to somehow put a litmus test on them when they send me valid changes to my project because of this? Of course not. I accept the contribution at face value, I am not one to judge.
I used Microsoft hardware for decades (they made a great trackball). So what? I used Apple's hardware for my main desktop for 5+ years, running Linux, as did Linus himself for many years. Is that a problem for some people? Sure, but does that somehow invalidate the work I did using that hardware to make an open-source project better? Of course not.
So with that, let's go down your bullet points:
"We collaborate inside proprietary environments." First off, who is "we"? Yes, Slack is a mess, and hangouts is as well, but for some projects, that's all they can afford to use (free). There are open alternatives to some of these, and they are used (hint, IRC is not dead yet), but who are you to tell someone else what tool they can and can not use to create software for others? It's a great goal to work on projects to keep collaboration working well in an open way. We have those today; work to make them better if you feel they are somehow lacking.
"Many Linux and FOSS geeks today only use Linux professionally." Um, that's always been the case, for the past 20+ years, nothing new here. Yes, there are those of us who did use it on their own, which brought Linux into those companies and professions and caused it to grow. But who am I to say that you must also use it for all of your systems, even on your home? If it is good enough, you will use it. Maybe it just is not good enough for your specific use case, so you can not use it (hint, photo-editing software, major Linux developers still use OS X because it has better solutions). Again, don't fall into the "true Scotsman" fallacy.
"We're not modeling our values." That is, you are not modeling my values. You have no idea what my values are, and I have no right to enforce my values on you, so why should you enforce yours on me? Again, if you are contributing to an open project, all I can do is accept it as a contribution where we are working together on it. I don't care what editor you used to create it, and you shouldn't care what editor I used either.
"We've allowed foundational ideas to collapse." What foundational ideas? Collapse where? We "won"! Linux took over the world; open source has created more jobs and helped more people out than was ever thought possible. It has created companies that run the world (whether we like it or not, remember Apple's whole back end is Linux). Our whole "foundational idea" was "make the best operating system possible that you can use to do whatever you want with it." That's it. Yes, some of us are very liberal and love free software and buy into all of that, but not everyone, which is fine. Again, as long as you are contributing to the project, that's all I can ever ask for.
"We are also forgetting (or perhaps never learned) how a reciprocal license such as the GPL can keep a project alive and a community together." Ok, I totally buy this. But note, GPL software is a LOT bigger and represented more than anyone thinks. There is a lot of research out there about open-source projects and one paper found that:
Previous research which analysed 200 widely used OSS projects found that "licenses with strong copyleft are most widely used in the selected OSS projects and the majority of OSS projects (55%) use such licenses" (Gamalielsson and Lundell, 2017).
So people have not forgotten the fact that everyone is on a level playing ground when contributing to a project with a reciprocal license (like the GPL). It's not only fair to individuals, but very fair to any company that wants to get involved in it.
Also, SMART companies know this already. IBM learned this way before everyone else and reaped the benefits. Intel eventually learned it. Microsoft now knows it and is also reaping the benefits of it. Google always knew it.
Yes, with the "cloud", the GPL doesn't always make sense, hence AGPL, which one can argue has other issues that make it not as popular as it might have been. And for some instances, GPL makes no sense at all. Like for Zephyr (the tiny embedded operating system), which uses the Apache license because the GPL would make no sense at all in such a system.
But always remember, keeping a project alive and a community together is not the job of the license. There are thousands of abandoned GPL projects as proof of that. It takes much much more than that. Successful projects can be under any license, and again, who am I to tell you what license to create your project under :)
—Greg Kroah-Hartman
As a new subscriber, I'm impressed with the Deep Dive on the Linux kernel.
[See the May 2019 issue.]
In particular, I found it useful to follow Petros Koutoupis' excellent
guide to creating a basic kernel. It was written in an easy-to-understand
manner, with good explanations of the steps and enough information, but
not so much that it would distract from the fundamental concepts. After
correcting what seemed to be a typo in kernel.c (lsshort =>
short), I
was able to build the example kernel and boot from the .iso in a virtual
machine. I look forward to more practical "how-to" examples like this.
—David Kennedy
Petros Koutoupis replies: David, I am glad that you enjoyed the piece, and thank you for informing us about the typo. There is value in understanding the entire operating system from the application all the way down to the machine code, and it was my primary goal to reignite the conversation around that. What happens when you execute that line of code, and how is it interpreted at the kernel level? I hope to expand on this tutorial and shed more light on the inner-workings of the operating system. So, believe me when I say, you will get more of these "practical how-to examples".
I liked Shawn Powers' "Password Manager Roundup" article, but I wonder if you have heard of Enpass. It natively supports Linux, is free for desktop use, and you can store the database on Owncloud/Nextcloud. You have to pay for the mobile version. I use it on my Android phone, tablet, Windows desktop, and Mac laptop seamlessly.
If you have not heard of it, you ought to check it out.
—Mike Plemmons
I am not a regular reader of Linux Journal, but somehow your password manager article found its way into my consciousness today, and I found it to be informative and fun to read. Your writing style is so comfortable I feel like we are hanging out in a coffee shop. Keep up the good work.
—Jonathan Nystrom
Keeper has a strong Linux desktop version of our Password Manager and over 14 million users (more than the mentioned apps combined), strong ratings and the top grossing across iOS and Google Play platforms. Is there a reason you left us out of this article?
—Craig
Rummaging through my stuff last night, I found this sticker. I don't recall how i got it, but it's from days of yore when there was still a Linux Conference in San Francisco.
The "Vote" sticker above is a convenient bit of irony.
I have enjoyed Linux Journal back as far as the physical magazine days. Thank you for your work.
—Allen Randall
Regarding Dave Taylor's "Back in the Day: UNIX, Minix and Linux" Nate Falk @natefalk922:
Brings back memories...I used Tanenbaum's OS book in college in the 90s and tweaked the task scheduler in MINIX. That class led me to working at IBM on systems software for AIX and eventually Linux.
Dave Taylor replies: Ahh yes, back when we at UCSD worked late into the night on the timeshare terminals so it'd be a bit faster.
In response to "Schools in the Indian state of Kerala have chosen Linux as their OS which will save them roughly $428 million." Hardeep Asrani @HardeepAsrani:
We need to do this in all schools and colleges across, not only India, but around the world.
Photo from Hijo de Juana Chávez
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