On Software Build Systems

A Software Build System is a program that accepts a series of input files:

• Code (Java)
• External Dependencies (JAR files)
• Resources (HTML, translations, CSS, JavaScript, images, ...)

And outputs a series of files in another location (to allow building from read-only sources):

• Archives (WAR, or JAR) (compiled or minimized code and minimized HTML and CSS)
  

Apache Maven is a great build system as it can automatically upgrade and download external dependencies and uses a clear folder structure shared by most projects.

On Debian OpenSSL problem DSA-1571-1

It is sad what happened to Debian OpenSSL leaving all keys weak (DSA-1571-1 openssl -- predictable random number generator) (Slashdot | Debian Bug Leaves Private SSL/SSH Keys Guessable).

When I started using Valgrind long time ago and Valgrind warning about it, I knew something like this could happen.

To detect weak keys, all the keys to take advantage of this problem are already available: Debian OpenSSL Predictable PRNG Toys.

Open source software is getting lots of momentum and it needs software changes reviewing to prevent this kind of things happening. The Linux kernel has mostly good reviewing by having each patch needing review from at least two developers, one of the module maintainers and a core Linux developer (Introduction to Linux kernel development process).

Community owned software

The Linux kernel is community owned software because the source code is copyrighted by many individuals and companies whereas OpenOffice.org, OpenJDK or Qt is company owned software because Sun Microsystems and Trolltech have the copyright respectively. This allows them to license the software using any license, open source or privative ones. With community owned software like the Linux kernel this is really difficult because every owner should agree to any licensing changes and it can not be licensed privately because of this.

Software I use

• Operating system: Debian GNU/Linux
• Instant Messenger: Pidgin
  
• E-mail client: Mutt
• Web browser: Google Chrome (WebKit based) and Iceweasel for development
  
• Desktop environment: GNOME
• Raster graphics editor: GIMP
• Vector graphics: Inkscape
  
• Office suite: OpenOffice.org, Gnumeric and AbiWord
• Media player: MPlayer
• Multimedia framework: FFmpeg
• Download manager: Lftp (supports many protocols besides HTTP and FTP, and segmented downloading) and Wget
  
• Programming languages: C, Java, JavaScript, Python
  
• Integrated development environment: Eclipse
• Version control system: CVS, subversion, git and quilt