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Reuven Lerner
May-2008

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Speed Up Your Site With Memcached

What happens when your database is the bottleneck for your Web application?ﾠ You could create a database cluster, or even add new hardware.ﾠ But an open-source library called memcached offers another solution, putting frequently needed data in a server-accessible memory cache, whose values can be retrieved quickly and easily from almost every library.ﾠ Memcached is in use on many popular sites, including Facebook and LiveJournal, and you might find that it provides just the solution you need to make your site act faster.


Google Now Hosts Open Source Libraries

Are you using Ajax in your web application? If so, then you're probably using an open source JavaScript library, as well. Google announced earlier today that several popular JavaScript libraries, including Prototype and Dojo, will be freely available for web applications to incorporate in their HTML pages. By using Google's Ajax API, applications will be able to benefit from Google's fast content delivery network, as well as from the fact that browsers cache JavaScript files. So if any other application uses Google's copy of Prototype, your application will be able to used the cached version, saving time and bandwidth.


Open Source Quality Is Good, Getting Better

Coverity recently used its code analysis tools on more than 250 open source projects, in order to assess the general code quality of the software applications. The tests indicated that open source software is already of high quality -- but more interestingly, it found that the code had improved over time, with fewer defects detected this time than previously. What does it mean to find that open source software is continually improving?


Unbound: More Thoughts on a New DNS Server

A new player has entered the arena: Unbound is an open-source DNS server written, maintained, and distributed by a consortium of Internet companies that specialize in domain-name sales and management (NLnet Labs, Verisign, Nominet, and Kirei), and released under the BSD license. As Mike noted, Unbound has the potential to challenge the DNS monoculture.



Autoconf: The Unsung Hero of Source Code Compatibility

Have you ever wondered how the same program can work across so many different flavors of Unix?ﾠ One of the behind-the-scenes systems that makes this happen is GNU Autoconf, a program that makes it possible to write source code in a way that will work on many different computers.ﾠ Unix systems are largely, but not completely, source-code compatible, and Autoconf makes it possible for a programmer to identify these differences when the program is compiled, papering over them in the source code itself.ﾠ


Worry About Integration, Not Installation

Thinking about using open-source software in your business? That's a great idea, and might well save you money. But don't assume that the only cost will be installing and configuring the program. No, the biggest cost will be integrating your new program into your organization. The integration may well require a consultant, or an in-house expert in these matters. But even so, using open-source software almost guarantees that the integration will be easier and cheaper than would be the case with proprietary software.


Fink Puts Open Source Packages on OS X

If you have switched to the Mac because of its Unix underpinnings and elegant GUI, then you aren't alone. If you want to install open source packages on your Mac, then you have at least two good options -- MacPorts and Fink. Installing Fink not only gives you access to a large number of open source programs, but lets you track which programs are installed on your computer, handles dependencies, and helps you to upgrade with a minimum of fuss.


PHP 6.0: More to Love, Less to Hate

PHP 6.0 is on its way, and it looks like this release will finally remove some of the features that caused many people to turn their noses up at PHP, such as register globals and magic quotes. At the same time, the new version will include built-in support for a number of new features, most notably Unicode, which will make it possible to create completely internationalized Web applications. PHP 6.0 might not stop people from hating the languge, but the improvements that we're seeing in the current developer snapshot point to a language that is maturing with time.


Two Options for Emacs Users on Mac OS X

Emacs is one of the oldest and best-known text editors, beloved by programmers not only for its amazing functionality, but also for the fact that it can be customized and extended in almost every way. Emacs might seem like a dinosaur, and there are many people who have abandoned it in favor of IDEs such as Eclipse. However, Emacs continues to undergo development, and there are two excellent implementations for OS X. If you are a Macintosh user, and have thought about trying Emacs at some time, read on: You'll not only learn something about Emacs history, but also about the two GUI versions that are available (free of charge, of course) for the Mac.


Read the Fine Print on "Open Source" Software

The term open source was supposed to remove confusion, and was deliberately chosen to emphasize what the software is, rather than what it isn't. The good news is that when the term open source was coined, just 10 years ago, the world was ready to listen, and incorporated this term into its vocabulary. The bad news is that the open source world is now so diverse, with so many licenses and commercial interests involved, that it is often hard to know whether a program is truly available on an open source basis without reading the fine print.



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