open source

I thought I would share a trick that has eased my cross-platform and cross-network password management tasks.

I run a LAN subversion server, which keeps track of the revisions of my password vault. For storing, organizing and encrypting passwords, I use Password Gorilla which is a great cross-platform (linux, windows, mac) application using twofish encryption to secure everything. One master password unlocks all the rest. The password generator included in PG is great, and allows for customizations like not using similar digits (O and 0), as well as desired password length, etc. You can also override password defaults on a case-by-case basis.

The glue that ties this all together and makes it a networked application is a bash script on linux (I have not bothered to automate this on other platforms since I am in linux 98% of the time). For this to work, I have set up ssh keys (not necessary, but a pain to type a password each time), gentoo's cool keychain program, and ssh-askpass-fulscreen (is called different things on different distros ie: ssh-askpass-gtk on gentoo i believe).

Linux, the free operating system, has gone from an intriguing experiment to a mainstream technology in corporate data centers, helped by the backing of major technology companies like I.B.M., Intel and Hewlett-Packard, which sponsored industry consortiums to promote its adoption.

Almost unbelievable, but Sun has open-sourced JAVA!

Go see for yourself, hear Stallman say "Sun has now contributed the most to free software of anyone out there".

This is amazing news!

The annual Semaine québécoise de l'informatique libre (SQIL) is upon us, running from November 11th until the 19th. Let's get out there and spread the word of free software!