With the new year right around the corner, voting for the 2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards is now open. There are 21 categories this year. Based on feedback we dropped a couple polls that had either consistently low turnout or landslide (90%+) victories and also added a couple new polls. We have set a record for number of votes each and every year we've done this, and I expect the same this year. I think we improve the process every year, but it's not too late to suggest improvements for this years poll (and even if the suggestion doesn't get implemented this year, it may impact how we set things up in the future). This is your chance to have your opinion heard. Vote now!
–jeremy
Archive for December, 2006
Sparked by a post by Blake Ross, many are starting to question Google. The “tips” issue seems to be the tipping point for many. To be honest, that issue doesn't bother me much. For me, it came when they deprecated the SOAP API. In my mind, that marked the first time Google made a decision based on something besides technical merit. If they had dropped the SOAP API for something like a REST API, I'd have thought much differently about the situation. The replacement, however, was the AJAX Search API which is in no way comparable. The SOAP API allowed you to do whatever you needed to do with the data. The AJAX Search API doesn't allow you to do anything with the data except show it verbatim, and it has ads. The deprecation was especially poignant for LQ, since we used it as an alternative search method to supplement our normal search functionality (which uses FULLTEXT). We'll either need to drop the alternative search, or move it to something like the Yahoo! REST API. 2007 may prove to be an interesting year for Google. They remain technically superior, but they may find they're not able to do some of the things they do (giving no idea of what the revenue share on AdSense is comes to mind, but so do other things) once they are no longer the darling. Being able to ignore the Street and move in whatever direction they wanted has been a core strength of Google in my mind. That ability may be coming to an end though. Kudos to Matt Cutts (a Google employee) for speaking on the issue openly and transparently. That's what's needed right now. Goggle has been very good at responding to criticism in the past. Hopefully that trend will continue.
–jeremy
Google, GOOG
Just in time for the new year, I'm proud to announce that we have added a new section to LQ. LQ Screenshots offers a visual overview for a large number of Linux distributions. This allows you to get a basic feel for a distro before trying it out. The site is fully functional, but the look does need to be updated to bring it in line with the rest of the LQ network. We do have some additional functionality in mind, and one of the first moves will be some integration with LQ ISO. As always, we're looking for your feedback. I'd like to thank Chris for not only working with me to get this on LQ, but for building a great service.
–jeremy
I'm going to quickly cover this Microsoft-related story, but for a reason different than most times I cover Microsoft (which is because it's Linux-related). Basically, Microsoft sent a bunch of Ferrari laptops with Windows Vista installed to some bloggers they felt were influential. Let me begin by saying I don't think they did anything wrong. Let me also say, I'm not surprised I didn't get one 
Here's a snippet to show the intent:
This would be a review machine, so I’d love to hear your opinion on the machine and OS. Full disclosure, while I hope you will blog about your experience with the pc, you don’t have to. Also, you are welcome to send the machine back to us after you are done playing with it, or you can give it away to your community, or you can hold onto it for as long as you’d like. Just let me know what you plan to do with it when the time comes. And if you run into any problems let me know. A few of the drivers aren't quite final, but are very close.
I'd have preferred that if it was blogged about that disclosure was mandatory, but the option to return, keep or give away the laptop with no obligation to blog about it makes the marketing program seem 100% acceptable and legitimate to me. So why the outcry? I don't think it would have been as bad for any company except Microsoft. They have burned through so much community good will and fostered so much resentment that even when they do a good thing, it comes back to bite them. This should be a wake up call for some and a good indicator as to how far in Karma debit Microsoft really is. To be sure, it's not a lost cause…but they have a lot of making up to do. This should be a lesson to other companies, though. Be mindful of how you act, it does make a difference.
–jeremy
Edit (12.28 3:52): Some very interesting conversation going on about this in the Blogosphere. Joel is insightful as ever and is making me rethink my original position. Some linkage: Bribing Bloggers, I think the Microsoft Vista giveaway is an awesome idea, Dave Winer
Microsoft, MSFT, Ferrari
I usually keep this blog to Linux and Open Source related topics. While somewhat related to that meme, this is also a personal announcement. As many of you know, in addition to LQ and Open Source evangelism, I have a full time job. In a move that has been a while in the making, I recently gave my notice. A big step to be sure, but one I'm really excited about. I love a challenge, and think we have a real chance to change the world with this community. That's something worth giving your all for. So, what will I be doing? No, it's not LQ full time. Not exactly. I don't want LQ to become a job. It's a passion and I like it that way. Borrowing from the words of Doc Searls, I'll be making money because of LQ, not with LQ. What does that mean? First, I'll be doing more speaking, writing, etc. I get gigs like that in no small part due to LQ. Secondly, I've started an Open Source Consulting company. I've learned a ton working with LinuxQuestions.org, Linux and Open Source for the last ten or so years – now your company can directly benefit from that. I'll even be working on an hourly bases for my previous employer. In short, you shouldn't expect LQ to become more commercialized in any way. You should expect an increase in features and improvements though, as I'll have more time to dedicate to it. I don't know where the rabbit hole ends, but I do plan on enjoying the journey. Enjoy your new year. For me, it'll be a bit of a new beginning. If you have a similar chance, I'd encourage you to seize that opportunity.
–jeremy
A quick (belated) follow up to a story I previously covered. Sun has now officially released part of Java under the GPL. phoneME, which has previously been called J2ME, is now available for download with a GPLv2 license. The supported platforms are Linux/ARM, Linux/x86 and Windows/i386. Many seemed to guess that J2SE would be released first, but I'm sure that's coming soon. Once again kudos to Sun for making the decision they did.
–jeremy
Java, Sun, Open Source, GPL, Linux
The Red Hat stock continues to increase (RHT up almost 30% on the month), mostly as a result of beating Wall Street expectations last week. During the earnings call with analysts, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik was asked about Microsoft's announcement of three joint customers with Novell this week. His response:
“Those were existing accounts and there is at least one of them that I can speak definitely that is also a Red Hat account,” Szulik said. “So those were older engagements and we were not involved in competitive situations with those two or three years ago when they became Novell accounts.”
The existing Red Hat account would presumably be Credit Suisse. And one of the existing Novell customers is Deutsche Bank, whose chief technology officer, Clemens Jochum, said in the joint news release that the Microsoft-Novell deal “gives us the benefit of choice of platforms and tremendous flexibility that will help make our company more competitive and efficient.”
On that subject, the VAR Guy blog pointed out this week (see Dec. 20 post) that Deutsche Bank, “was an early investor in SuSE Linux, so it's hardly surprising that the firm's IT team now praises the Novell-Microsoft deal.”
An interesting perspective on the announcement, which I covered here. It should also be noted that Deutsche Bank was also subpoenaed by IBM in the SCO case. Google for more details, but while not directly related to this, it could give you some insight into their general mindset. I'm a bit intrigued into how 2007 will treat both NOVL and RHT.
–jeremy
Red Hat, RHT, Novell, NOVL, Linux, Open Source
One of the parts of the Novell/Microsoft deal that hasn't been getting much press is the 70,000 SLES certificates that Microsoft purchased for distribution. I was a bit surprised to see that 16,000 of them have already been doled out. Three major companies have even gone on the record about their involvement: AIG, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank. From the article:
Two banks and an insurance company have accepted Microsoft's offer of technical support for Novell Inc.'s Suse Enterprise Linux.
One of the three, Credit Suisse Group, does not yet use Suse Linux, spokeswomen for the two software vendors said.
As part of its marketing support for Suse Linux, Microsoft agreed to distribute “subscription certificates,” each one entitling customers to technical support from Novell for a server running Suse Enterprise Linux. Microsoft intends to distribute around 70,000 of the certificates a year for the next five years. Customers have already activated 16,000 of the certificates in the seven weeks they have been offered, Microsoft said.
The companies declined to put a price on the certificates, but Microsoft's general manager for customer advocacy and licensing, Susan Hauser, warned: “Don't assume that we're giving them away.”
It still strikes me as odd to have your main competitor sell your product, especially when that competitor is Microsoft. There's some interesting discussion about this going on at Matt Asay's blog. A snippet:
Again, one problem I have with this announcement is that each of these companies was already using both company's products prior to this announcement and the pact. They're not net new customers of either Microsoft or Novell, making the announcement as such somewhat deceptive. Fine. It's marketing.
But it also overlooks the fact that some – perhaps all? – of these companies are also heavy Red Hat users. Hence, the real question whether this early adopter program with Novell/Microsoft will actually pull them away from Red Hat. Early signs are a clear “No,” even despite the dramatically lower prices Novell is offering for its pilot program. It's tough to beat free.
All that said, I still think it's good that customers are buying into the interoperability story. This part of the Microsoft/Novell deal is useful and important. I buy it.
It's unclear in the announcement whether the patent bit of the agreement had anything to do with any of the companies decisions. That would be an interesting question to get the answer to, although I'm not going to hold my breath. This story continues to get more interesting from my perspective. And I said I wouldn't blog about it any more
–jeremy
Novell, SLES, Linux, Open Source, Microsoft, Suse
Quite a bit going on at Novell over the last couple days. We have Hubert Mantel returning and Jeremy Allison resigning. For those that don't remember, Hubert is one of the Suse founders and had resigned from Novell a little over a year ago, saying: “”Too late for me. I just decided to leave Suse/Novell, this is no longer the company I founded 13 years ago.” Jeremy, who is a core Samba guy, joined Novell a bit over a year ago and resigned over the recent Microsoft Patent agreement, saying:
I know you don't want to hear this, I know *nobody* wants to hear this but I'll not be able to live with this if I don't say it publicly at least once.
Whilst the Microsoft patent agreement is in place there is *nothing* we can do to fix community relations. And I really mean nothing.
We can pledge patents all we wish, we can talk to the press and “community leaders”, we can do all the right things w.r.t. all our other interactions, but we will still be known as GPL violators and that's the end of it.
For people who will point out to me we don't “technically” violate the GPLv2 here's an argument I recently made on the mailing lists.
“Do you think that if we'd have found what we legally considered a clever way around the Microsoft EULA so we didn't have to pay for Microsoft licenses and had decided to ship, oh let's say, “Exchange Server” under this “legal hack” that Microsoft would be silent about it – or we should act aggr[i]eved when they change the EULA to stop us doing this?”
The Microsoft patent agreement has put us outside the community, and there is no positive aspect to that fact, and no way to make it so. Until the patent provision is revoked, we are pariahs.
When asked about that deal, Mantel said:
6. What do you think about the Microsoft/Novell deal?
I think it is a good thing especially for the users. If you think some years back, Linux was not taken seriously. Now even Microsoft acknowledges that it exists and will not go away. I understand that many people don't like it as Novell is collaborating with the “evil empire”. But I don't like this way of thinking; we are not working against somebody, but we are working FOR Linux. Fundamentalism always leads to pain. What's important is that Linux is free and will remain to be free. The source code is open to everybody, this is what counts for me. Some people seem to be torn in an interesting way: On one hand they want “world domination”, at the same time they don't like the feeling that Linux has grown up and needs to deal with the real business world out there. We have a saying here in Germany that goes along the lines of “wash me, but do not make me wet”. If you want Linux to succeed, you cannot live in your own separate universe.
One thing is clear, a rift is definitely forming on this issue. Was that one of the goals of the agreement from the Microsoft side? Some are speculating that, but I'm still unsure what the motives were. It took Jeremy about 30 seconds to find a job as he seems to have landed at Google. Regardless of what you think of the patent agreement, you have to applaud Jeremy for sticking up for what he believes in. He put his money where his mouth is and gave up a job he clearly enjoyed because of it. You have to respect that kind of conviction. It will be interesting to see what direction Novell heads in over the next 6 months or so. Meanwhile RHT seems completely unaffected by this or the recent Oracle news. Today they beat analysts expectations handily and the stock jumped over 25%.
–jeremy
Novell, Samba, Linux, Open Source, Red Hat, RHT
That's the question posed by this article. To be honest, I don't think there ever was a “Desktop Linux Bubble” to burst. The Linux “Desktop” continues to be an interesting thing to me. What I mean by that is, there's a dichotomy that I don't think is going away soon. On the one hand, I find the Linux desktop much easier to use and more stable than any version of Windows I have ever used. Even in XP you have to reboot to install something like a scanner (I'd not have believed that, except I just walked someone through it). While some people seem to maintain that the way things are done is XP is easier, I think they are confusing ease with familiarity. Things in Linux are typically much more logical (or maybe they just make more sense to me). On the other hand, the Linux desktop has a huge number of deficiencies. The lack of audio and video support out of the box (and as I have said before, if your answer is that all these items are in some off-shore repo, please put your hand down). There's also a general lack of what I'll call integration. Because we have such a large variety of frameworks and apps, too often they just don't work well together. This is something Apple does extremely well. This is also something the Portland Project is attempting to address, but realistically how long do you think it well be before real strides are made? Probably 2008-2009. That doesn't mean we're not making progress though. Not too long ago audio was a complicated mess in Linux. You had ESD, arts, jackd, ALSA, OSS-emulation – it was a nightmare. With the addition of the dmix plugin most of that complexity is now hidden. I haven't had an audio issue that I can think of in a while. That's real and demonstrable progress.
Now, some people seem to think the answer is for Gnome and KDE to join forces or merge. I'm not heavily into either community, but that seems really unlikely. They have fundamentally different visions and are built using completely different toolsets. A merge would basically mean throwing away everything and starting 100% from scratch. Something like Portland that allows any number of Desktop Environments to conform to a known API seems much more likely to succeed (and more more in the spirit of Linux in general). In the end, I guess I still don't understand why Linux on the Desktop is such a debated topic. Linux is an absolutely remarkable Operating System. Even more, it's an amazing testament to what can be accomplished. It's not all things to all people, and it never will be. The desktop may be a ways off realistically, but sometimes you just have to sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. We have an OS here that scales from mobile phones to mainframes. We have an OS that despite its success still has a community that continues to make decisions based on technical merit and not marketing. That means the sky quite literally is the limit. We'll get there – be patient.
–jeremy
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