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Future of Hobbit

list Axel Beckert
Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:09:27 +0100
Message-Id: <user-b90e18ea84fd@xymon.invalid>

Hi,

On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 11:06:50PM +0100, Henrik Stoerner wrote:
What about Windows? As far as I heard, the only current Windows client
for hobbit is BBWin.
Correct. I've been contacted by a fellow who was interesting in doing a
Windows port of the Hobbit server. I've encouraged him to look into it,
but also made it clear that I cannot help with Windows programming.
Ok. For us, a working Windows XP and Vista client is important, but
there seem to be a few around.
coworkers also managed to install the Debian packages also run on
Ubuntu, so I would expect that the Debian packages will find there way
into Ubuntu and derivatives.
I believe the Ubuntu folks have picked up the Debian package for
inclusion into the next release, "Hardy" 2008.04.
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/+source/hobbit
Yeah, the package version number looks a lot like the original Debian
package. Cool!
Ack, but be warned that (at least AFAIK) if you want to link GNU GPL
licensed software with OpenSSL, you do need the explicit allowance of
the OpenSSL authors. 
Actually, it's the other way around. If you look at the Hobbit README,
it says this:

      Hobbit is Open Source software, made available under the
      GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2, with the explicit
      exemption that linking with the OpenSSL libraries is permitted.
Ok, forgot, that you already use OpenSSL for the HTTPS and other
SSL-using tests. :-)
That last sentence is copied almost verbatim from the OpenSSL FAQ
http://www.openssl.org/support/faq.html#LEGAL2:

      2. Can I use OpenSSL with GPL software ?

      If you develop open source software that uses OpenSSL, you may 
      find it useful to choose an other license than the GPL, or state 
      explicitly that "This program is released under the GPL with the 
      additional exemption that compiling, linking, and/or using 
      OpenSSL is allowed."
Ok, I really remembered it the other way 'round. Thanks for
clarification! :-)

[Statistics]
So Nagios is still ahead of Hobbit, but I am actually quite pleased that
Hobbit has a 5% market share :-)
Ack!

For Debian and Ubuntu, there are the popcon (popularity contest) statistics:

http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=hobbit
http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=hobbit-client
http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=hobbit-plugins

I haven't found any per-package statistics page for Ubuntu, but you
can easily extract the relevant data from what is offered on the
website:

GET http://popcon.ubuntu.com/by_inst.gz | zcat | egrep '^#rank|hobbit'
#rank name                            inst  vote   old recent no-files (maintainer)
34301 hobbit                             8     4     4     0     0 (Unknown)
35099 hobbit-client                      7     3     4     0     0 (Unknown)
53687 hobbit-plugins                     1     0     0     0     1 (Unknown)

GET http://popcon.debian.org/by_inst.gz | zcat | egrep '^#rank|hobbit'
#rank name                            inst  vote   old recent no-files (maintainer)
16769 hobbit-client                     70    62     3     5     0 (Christoph Berg)
21642 hobbit                            33    31     1     0     1 (Christoph Berg)
23141 hobbit-plugins                    26     1     0     0    25 (Christoph Berg)
83984 wmaker-hobbit-.-theme              1     0     0     0     1 (Not in sid)

So you have about 70 client and 33 server installations on Debian (of
which probably 4 servers and about 20 clients and plugin packages and
are ours :-) and 7 in Ubuntu.

Interestingly there are more Ubuntu hobbit servers than clients
although at least in Debian the hobbit server depends on the hobbit
client and can be installed without. Strange. Maybe some not official
packages.

Well, I guess the Debian hobbit-client statistics will shoot up when
we start deploying the hobbit client to our about 170 Debian
workstations and a bunch of servers. :-) Currently one of my coworkers
is preparing the new hobbit server...
A STARTTLS command as with many other protocols would be cool, so no
new port would be needed. (OTOH, it makes debugging less easier...)
No, STARTTLS is the "right" way of doing it, and the one I have been
looking at.
Perfect! :-)

		Kind regards, Axel Beckert
-- 
Axel Beckert <user-96d9963fe797@xymon.invalid>       support: +41 44 633 2668
IT Support Group, HPR E 86.1              voice:   +41 44 633 4189
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