The AFULTab project was mentioned earlier [1]: six months for groups of developers to choose a tablet-based hardware platform of their choice, and get a full Open Source system running with a decent user experience. While awaiting the results of this contest, you are welcome to have a look at the submission for DeforaOS [2], as sponsored by DUEKIN Consulting [3].

As mentioned in the submission, the progress for this project was tracked here as well, as a wiki page [4].

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/news/3610/DeforaOS-selected-for-the-AFULTab-contest
[2] http://www.duekin.com/downloads/papers/WeTab%20Freedom%20Report.pdf
[3] http://www.duekin.com/
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3622/AFULTab-contest

Actually, the whole infrastructure behind the project was migrated to a newer, more powerful and comfortable server earlier last week. This was a good occasion to modify a few parameters for consistency, and the most obvious consequence is a modification of the address for the public, anonymous CVS repository:

:pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.defora.org:/home/cvs co DeforaOS


This is as documented in the homepage for the project as a whole [1]. As another positive side-effect, source code analysis by the Ohloh project is functional again [2], apparently due to performance issues on the previous server.

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/project/download/11/DeforaOS
[2] http://www.ohloh.net/projects/DeforaOS

BreakFast [1] last Friday was very productive, and saw eight projects released and packaged for the NetBSD-based tablet in development [2]:

• libDesktop-0.0.6.tar.gz
• Browser-0.4.4.tar.gz
• Locker-0.1.2.tar.gz
• Mailer-0.1.4.tar.gz
• Mixer-0.0.4.tar.gz
• Panel-0.2.12.tar.gz
• PDFViewer-0.0.0.tar.gz
• Phone-0.3.9.tar.gz

This event was a hackathon taking place the whole night at c-base [3] in Berlin (Germany, Earth). Each of these versions is packaged in pkgsrc-wip [4] already.

[1] http://pastebin.com/d9uCHjB2
[2] http://www.defora.org/os/news/3610/DeforaOS-selected-for-the-AFULTab-contest
[3] http://www.c-base.org/
[4] http://pkgsrc-wip.sf.net/

First, I wish you all a great year 2012! I will hopefully manage to write a more detailed overview of the progress made with the DeforaOS project in 2011 soon; but first, I would like to announce the following.

In November last year, AFUL [1], a French FOSS user group, launched the AFULTab contest [2]. A group of associations, companies and private individuals are sponsoring and awarding a competition, aiming at the development of an Open Source tablet system.

I am glad to announce that DeforaOS was selected and will be entering this competition, which will take place until May 1st 2012. During these four months, the development will therefore focus on the user experience of the DeforaOS desktop environment [3] on tablet hardware, while trying to integrate the distributed environment [4] and VFS project in particular [5].

This effort will be performed on top of a NetBSD base system [6] with packages from the pkgsrc [7] and pkgsrc-wip [8] projects, where parts of the DeforaOS software stack is already available. This would also be a great opportunity to leverage, extend and push the wstablet driver [9] into NetBSD.

Last but not least, this effort is also part of the Research & Development program of DUEKIN Consulting [10].

[1] http://www.aful.org/
[2] http://aful.org/metamorphose/the-afultab-contest
[3] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3426/Graphical-environment
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3427/Distributed-environment
[5] http://www.defora.org/os/project/3304/VFS
[6] http://www.netbsd.org/
[7] http://www.pkgsrc.org/
[8] http://pkgsrc-wip.sf.net/
[9] http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/wscons/
[10] http://www.duekin.com/

On October 6th 2011, the defora.org domain celebrated its tenth anniversary [1]. It is certainly a good opportunity to gather a few facts around the project, which has not always been about creating a completely new Operating System.

First, as of today, this is not even the case yet:

• the lowest-level code is a standard libc [2], requiring an existing kernel to interface with (eg Linux, *BSD...)
• DeforaOS' own low-level library [3] still requires a libc to be available (it can be the one provided by DeforaOS though)
• the distributed computing environment [4] is functional but not ready for industrial use,
• the graphical environment [5] relies on Gtk+ (not supported by DeforaOS' base libraries)

It actually started as a custom Debian distribution [6]. The first significant material was released in November 2001, and consisted in a bootable ISO image to help installing a Debian system:

• 100% graphical operation (splashscreen on a VESA framebuffer, X running on that same framebuffer)
• automatic detection of the CD-ROM drive [7]
• complete rewrite of fdisk for Gtk+;
• extraction of a pre-installed tarball on the first partition of the first hard disk drive (this was hard-coded)

This CD-ROM image can still be downloaded here [8]. The website was based on PHP-Nuke [9] at the time, and interestingly was quite popular by then. The logo contest for the splashscreen was subject to a lot of interesting submissions.

However, considering the huge (and rarely rewarding) effort required to keep up with the development of Debian's upstream, the project changed orientation in the end of 2002 and became a complete Linux distribution [10]. Two different versions were released, with some components remaining here [11].

The website was completely changed as well, and based on static content for a while. I believed good parts of it were generated automatically, although of little interest. The first lines of code for DaPortal [12] were written around this time though.

But again, the orientation taken proved to be a huge and annoying task, mainly because of the bugs and inconsistencies found in the build systems of most Open Source projects. Even proper use of GNU autotools [13] was rare, creating more trouble than anything else in the context of packaging and handling of configuration files.

As a consequence, the idea of the project as it is today surfaced around 2004. This is when a port of Minix 2 to GCC was started [14], with the code still found in the CVS repository. Significant development on DeforaOS as an Operating System really began in 2005, like with the libSystem-based Probe [15] and the libc of course. It was painfully realized that starting from the kernel was too complex, so most of the focus was kept on userland applications and portability. This included a beginning of a graphical environment, based on Gtk+ after a first attempt with a toolkit native to DeforaOS [16].

So indeed, the true, original meaning of "Defora" was nothing else than "DEbian FOR All". It was possible to obtain it by issuing a TXT request on the "defora.org" domain. Unfortunately, a popular Linux distribution [17] has chosen a very similar name back in 2003 (but therefore after the creation of DeforaOS).

Still, DeforaOS is now a fairly complete system, with its three major parts hopefully converging sooner than later, and eventually providing a complete, modern (and Open Source) alternative to the popular Operating Systems today, such as Linux (GNU), *BSD (including MacOS X), Windows, Solaris...

A few figures before concluding:

• no (or way too few) documentation
• one main developer
• two main languages used (C and PHP)
• three orientations in parallel for development
• four additional contributors (one active)
• five kernels supported by the libc
• seven distributed interfaces defined
• eight major sub-divisions in the code
• ten years of involvement
• fourteen combinations of kernel and architectures supported by the libc
• 21 menu entries in the desktop environment
• 40 bugs reported
• 44 sub-projects registered today
• 83 users currently registered on the website (including spammers)
• 142 news items published
• 350 folders in the latest source archive
• over 500 users estimated for the most popular sub-project, makepasswd (or earlier gputty)
• 2299 files in the latest source archive
• about 9400 commits
• more than 200,000 lines, of which 150,000 of code and 75% written in C
• 1,956,003 bytes in the latest source archive
• FWIW, estimated worth over $2,000,000 according to Ohloh [18]

I have every intention to let these figures grow, with the first one in particular of course. Feedback is appreciated, help is welcome, and I am of course very thankful for all of the support the project has already received.

On for another ten years!

[1] http://who.is/whois/defora.org/
[2] http://www.defora.org/os/project/14/libc
[3] http://www.defora.org/os/project/27/libSystem
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3427/Distributed-environment
[5] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3426/Graphical-environment
[6] http://www.debian.org/
[7] http://www.defora.org/os/project/browse/53?file=/tools/linuxrc.c,v
[8] ftp://ftp.defora.org/pub/defora/beta/defora_200111.iso
[9] http://phpnuke.org/
[10] http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
[11] ftp://ftp.defora.org/pub/defora/
[12] http://www.defora.org/os/project/12/DaPortal
[13] http://www.gnu.org/s/hello/manual/automake/Autotools-Introduction.html
[14] http://www.minix.org/
[15] http://www.defora.org/os/project/44/Probe
[16] http://www.defora.org/os/project/3398/GToolkit
[17] http://www.fedoraproject.org/
[18] http://www.ohloh.net/projects/DeforaOS

About two weeks ago, a new tool was added to the configure project [1]: pkg-config [2], a re-implementation of the popular program of the same name [3]. A number of political reasons have motivated this decision, like the current circular dependency of pkg-config on glib [4].

A new developer is helping in this task: bapt [5], who is already a FreeBSD developer [6] and of pkgng fame [7]. This also prompted the decision to publish pkg-config under a simplified BSD license, unlike most of the DeforaOS project at the moment.

More information about the people involved in DeforaOS is found here [8].

Many thanks to bapt for his contributions!

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/project/16/configure
[2] http://www.defora.org/os/project/browse/16?file=/tools/pkg-config.c,v
[3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config
[4] http://developer.gnome.org/glib/
[5] http://people.freebsd.org/~bapt/
[6] http://www.freebsd.org/
[7] http://wiki.freebsd.org/pkgng
[8] http://people.defora.org/

Just like reported on freshmeat [1] and Twitter [2] already, Mailer 0.1.0 was released moments ago [3] with a significant addition: SSL support when connecting to IMAP4 and POP3 servers. Writing messages is also more convenient, thanks to additional improvements to the user interface. Source code, bug reports and screenshots are still found on the project's own page [4].

[1] http://freshmeat.net/projects/deforaos-mailer
[2] http://twitter.com/#!/DeforaOS/status/119223406116876288
[3] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3575/Mailer-0.1.0.tar.gz
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/project/268/Mailer

The source archive for asm 0.2.1 was uploaded moments ago [1], with the following changes:

• the maximum number of operands per instruction was raised to five (and is easier to tweak)
• architecture plug-ins can now be (de)initialized
• deassembly can now apply to the whole file, or code parts only
• fixes for the deassembly of strings on the command-line
• more accurate deassembly of the x86, amd64, sparc and sparc64 architectures, as well as ELF and PE file formats
• otherwise nicer output (address size...)

Of course more information can also be found in the project's homepage [2].

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3573/asm-0.2.1.tar.gz
[2] http://www.defora.org/os/project/15/asm

The Open World Forum [1] is a yearly conference about Open Source, of which the fourth edition took place last week in Paris, France. A programming contest was organized during the first two days [2], for which a source code sample could be uploaded to win a few prizes (and exposure).

This was a great occasion to finally write a graphical user interface for the deassembly framework [3], using the library from the asm project. It was called "gdeasm" and pushed into the GEDI project, even though it is not mature yet [4]. Of course, it also allowed for a few bugfixes and improvements to the library.

The actual submission for the contest can be found here [5]. After winning the vote tally, it was awarded the second place of the contest by the jury. Besides an awesome prize from HP (a brand new laptop), I could speak about the project for a few minutes on stage, which is probably the first time this happened while being recorded.

I would therefore like to thank the organizers and sponsors of this event (Microsoft, HP, af83) and for a great conference. Looking forward to the next edition!

[1] http://www.openworldforum.org/
[2] http://www.openworldforum.org/Univers/Code/Awards
[3] http://www.defora.org/os/project/15/asm
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/project/browse/11?file=/Apps/Devel/src/GEDI/tools/gdeasm.c,v
[5] http://openworldforum.cloudapp.net/projects/graphical-cross-architecture-deassembler

A third release of the mail client [2] is now available, still logically labeled as version 0.0.3 [2]. Support for the IMAP4 protocol is slowly getting good enough for daily use, with some more bugs eliminated.

Additionally, software packages for NetBSD [3], Debian/hackable:1 [4] and Maemo [5] are available already, as referenced below.

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/project/268/Mailer
[2] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3548/Mailer-0.0.3.tar.gz
[3] http://cvsweb.netbsd.se/cgi-bin/bsdweb.cgi/wip/deforaos-mailer/
[4] http://build.hackable1.org/
[5] http://people.defora.org/~khorben/place/blog/123/hackable-1-builds-and-provides-a-package-repository-for-Maemo