Archive for November, 2007

Torvalds on where Linux is headed in 2008

Published by
jeremy
at November 29, 2007 in Linux, Microsoft and Open Source. 1 Comment

A key benefit of Linux, and Open Source in general, is flexibility. Linus underscores this in a recent interview:

In your opinion, where does Linux shine versus Windows? Reliability? Virtualisation?

I think the real strength of Linux is not in any particular area, but in the flexibility. For example, you mention virtualisation, and in some ways that’s a really excellent example, because it’s not only an example of something where Linux is a fairly strong player, but more tellingly, it’s an example where there are actually many different approaches, and there is no one-size-fits-all “One True Virtualisation” model.

There are many different levels of virtualisation, and many different trade-offs in efficiency, management, separation, running legacy applications and system software, etc. And different people simply care about different parts of it, which is why the buzz-word “virtualisation” shows up in so many places.

And not only do we tend to support many different models of virtualisation, but one telling detail may be that I am personally so totally uninterested in it, that I am really happy that I have almost nothing to do with any of them.

And I mention that as a strong point of open source! Why? Because it actually is a great example of what open source results in: one person’s (or company’s) particular interests don’t end up being dominant. The fact that I personally think that virtualisation isn’t all that exciting means next to nothing.

This is actually the biggest strength of Linux. When you buy an OS from Microsoft, not only you can’t fix it, but it has had years of being skewed by one single entity’s sense of the market. It doesn’t matter how competent Microsoft — or any individual company — is, it’s going to reflect that fact. In contrast, look at where Linux is used. Everything from cellphones and other small embedded computers that people wouldn’t even think of as computers, to the bulk of the biggest machines on the supercomputer Top-500 list. That is flexibility. And it stems directly from the fact that anybody who is interested can participate in the development, and no single entity ends up being in control of where it all goes.

And what does that then lead to? Linux ends up being very good at a lot of different things, and rather well-rounded in general. It’s also very adept at taking up any new niche, because regardless of where you want to put it, not only has somebody else probably looked at something related before but you don’t have to go through license hassles to get permission to do a pilot project.

You’ll see Linux in more places than almost any other OS. Open Source is the reason for this. As Linus mentions, anyone can jump in and makes Linux do whatever it is they need to do. From a DVR to a watch to a storage deice to a super computer - Linux is not only there, it’s doing well. I’ve also always liked how Linus frames Microsoft:

I simply don’t use Microsoft products, not because I hate them, but because they aren’t interesting to me.

He doesn’t bash and doesn’t instigate - a bit refreshing really.

–jeremy

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Top ten terrible tech products - Vista makes the list

Published by
jeremy
at November 26, 2007 in Microsoft. 0 Comments

By most accounts, Vista has not been the success Microsoft was looking for. While I’ve never used it myself, I was surprised to see it make a “Top ten terrible tech products” list on cnet:

Windows Vista
Any operating system that provokes a campaign for its predecessor’s reintroduction deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that quietly has a downgrade-to- previous-edition option introduced for PC makers deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that takes six years of development but is instantly hated by hordes of PC professionals and enthusiasts deserves to be classed as terrible technology.

Windows Vista conforms to all of the above. Its incompatibility with hardware, its obsessive requirement of human interaction to clear security dialogue box warnings and its abusive use of hated DRM, not to mention its general pointlessness as an upgrade, are just some examples of why this expensive operating system earns the final place in our terrible tech list.

For its part, Apple is pouncing on this in their most recent commercial. With early reports that Vista SP1 isn’t the solution people were looking for, it will be interesting to see where Microsoft goes from here. Seems like a great opportunity for someone to grab market share, but I don’t think that someone is going to be Linux quite yet (although the eeePC and the $200 Walmart PC could be beginning to change that).

–jeremy

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Patent Firm Acacia Loses Case Against Microsoft; More To Come?

Published by
jeremy
at November 23, 2007 in MSFT, Microsoft, Novell and Red Hat. 0 Comments

It looks like Acacia, who recent filed a suit against Red Hat and Novell, just lost its first court battle. From a paidContent article:

The notorious patent holding company Acacia Research, which first came to light in the digital media industry for claiming broad patents in the streaming media field, has lost first of its many lawsuits to reach as far as a jury trial. In a federal court in Lufkin, Texas, the jury found that Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) did not infringe on an Acacia patent related to technology used to quickly power up computer, reports Marketwatch. Filed in 2006, the lawsuit sought as much as $900 million in damages from Microsoft, based on sales of its Windows XP OS. The news sent Acacia’s shares down nearly 35 percent in late Nasdaq trading.

As the story says, Acacia has distinguished itself as a particularly aggressive patent holding company, and has embraced the public spotlight that comes alongside suing high-profile companies. Earlier in the week, it announced a patent settlement with AT&T.

Let’s hope this is the first of the many cases they are trolling that end up with a loss. With the stock already plunging 35% on this one loss, a couple losses strung in a row could put significant pressure on the company to get a new revenue model. If patent trolls didn’t make money there would be significantly fewer of them.

–jeremy

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HP CEO: Vista Never Had Its Moment in 2007

Published by
jeremy
at November 20, 2007 in Linux, MSFT and Microsoft. 0 Comments

It’s clear that OEMs just don’t fear Microsoft like they used to. From a recent CIO article:

Wondering what’s happened to momentum for Microsoft’s Vista operating system in corporate America? Fact is, enterprise IT has continued to decline the Vista plate like it’s an undercooked holiday casserole. Listen to what Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd said yesterday: HP never saw a “Vista moment at any time over the past year,” he told reporters on a conference call to discuss HP’s fourth-quarter earnings.

HP was happily announcing that revenue for its personal systems group has spiked to $10.1 billion; that’s up 30 percent compared to fourth quarter a year ago. But that success sure isn’t because businesses planned a Vista upgrade and refreshed systems at the same time.

On the contrary, Vista did not play into HP’s sales uptick, Hurd declared. That uptick is all about sales in emerging markets including China, he says. In fact, HP says that revenue from Brazil, Russia, India and China increased 37 percent; it’s now nearing 10 percent of HP’s $104.3 billion in sales.

I can practically see the steam coming out of Steve Ballmer’s ears when he hears Hurd say this out loud. This isn’t the way Vista was supposed to play.

Just a few short years ago you would not have had the CEO of a company like HP admitting something like this, even if it were true. With growth coming from emerging markets such as BRIC and viable alternatives becoming available, the stranglehold Microsoft had on most OEMs is fading fast. That’s good for the OEMs and good for the consumers. It’s good for just about everyone but Microsoft, really. Real competition looks like it may come sooner than many would have thought.

–jeremy

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Lessons from Google and Red Hat for Facebook and Open Source

Published by
jeremy
at November 19, 2007 in Google, Open Source and Red Hat. 0 Comments

Matt has articulated something I’ve tried to explain to people many times. From his post:

Twentieth century software business models focus on scarcity because they’re founded upon 20th century conceptions of property (actually, their origin is a few centuries’ older than that, but never mind).

Scarcity is the absolute wrong way to build a software business in the 21st century, with the rise of digitization. It is pointless and fruitless to insist that the digital world act like the physical or analog world, and build business models that conform to this false view. To thrive in the new software world, we need to embrace its changes rather than fight them.

The old model was to assume that the value was in the software itself and to therefore lock it up. It turns out, however, as Tim O’Reilly notes, that data is the real value, not bits and bytes. You don’t discover or, rather, uncover, that value until you have abundance.

There will be a few companies that continue to effectively monetize the old world. Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, and SAP, to name the four primary ones. But these outdated models will eventually fall against the rising tide of abundance-based business models, because the new models recognize that digital bits really do want to be free, and that all attempts to artificially lock them are doomed to fail.

It fascinates me how many companies still operate under the guise of artificial scarcity. The landscape is rapidly changing and the shift is so large and fundamental that it seems some are completely missing it. That’s not all that surprising in the end, but as with most industry paradigm shifts, at least one seemingly invincible player will almost invariably not survive.

–jeremy

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Apple Support

Published by
jeremy
at November 15, 2007 in Apple, OpenMoko and iPhone. 5 Comments

Did you know that if you walk into an Apple store with a broken iPhone, in this case a roughly one inch horizontal band on the touch screen that doesn’t register anything, they actually tell you to make an appointment and come back another time? I don’t mean walk around the mall and grab something to eat another time, I mean a different day. When I asked the rep if he thought this was good customer service, he just shrugged and said that’s the way it is. As regular readers know, I already wasn’t that happy of an iPhone owner. This just puts me over the top. I’m now counting the days until I can order the OpenMoko Neo1973 GTA02. I was seriously considering getting a new MacBook Pro over the next couple weeks. No way that will happen now. Are my expectations too high?

–jeremy

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Solaris and Dell

Published by
jeremy
at November 15, 2007 in Dell, Linux and Sun. 0 Comments

Jonathan recently announced a partnership with Dell on his blog.

First, we announced a key relationship with Dell, through which they’ll be OEM’ing Solaris, and directly supporting customers running Solaris on Dell systems. Second, we announced our free/open source virtualization roadmap, starting with xVM and xVM OpsCenter, our hypervisor and management product set.

Truth be told, the relationship with Dell has been in the making for a while - I flew down to Texas last year to have dinner at his house (with a fortuitous 180 knot tail wind - sadly, I had return the same night with a 180 knot headwind). If you’re thinking, “hm, didn’t Sun’s relationship with Intel start with dinner, too?” you’re picking up on a theme - great partnerships start with a meal, in my book. At that dinner, we began discussing ways we could work together. Since then, we’ve both heard from a ton of customers that they’re running Solaris (and Sun Software, broadly) on Dell systems - and they’d like us to work together to make the experience a seamless one. It’s important to note, of the Solaris instances distributed into the world, roughly a third run on Dell - that’s certainly motiviation for us both to work together.

I was quite surprised to read that 1 out of 3 Solaris instances run on a Dell machine. Maybe that’s why Joyent just signed the deal that they did. On the surface, though, this seems like a somewhat odd partnership. While Sun may be trying to pickup some software services revenue, they are still a hardware company. It seems that Forbes picked up on this:

Nevertheless, the deal is a turnabout for the two companies. Sun and Dell have been clawing at each other for more than a decade. Last year, Sun grabbed back the No. 3 spot in the server market from Dell.

Yet the two companies still do less business, put together, than HP alone. In the second quarter of this year, IBM sold $4.1 billion worth of servers, while HP sold $3.7 billion, Sun sold $1.76 billion and Dell $1.5 billion.

Now, by buddying up, Dell and Sun are trying to wring sales out of customers who are going in different directions. If you’re putting Solaris on Dell machines, you’re either already a Sun customer–and you’re tiptoeing away from the Santa Clara, Calif.-based software and server vendor–or you’re a Dell customer fooling around with heavy-duty Unix, and chances are you’re looking to trade up to bigger servers than Dell now sells.

If you look at things on a longer timeline it makes a bit more sense. Sun is trying to move down into smaller markets and Dell is trying to move up into bigger ones. They are both fighting competitors that are significantly bigger. Whether the strategy works remains to be seen. I’m still not sure that the Sun corporate culture will allow them to play well in the commodity sandbox. They are used to be innovative and interesting. High volume low margin products that compete on price just doesn’t seem their style. One thing is clear, however. Sun is doing everything in their power to turn Solaris into a true competitor to Linux. That should be good for everyone.

–jeremy

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OLPC Give One Get One program is now live

Published by
jeremy
at November 12, 2007 in Linux and Open Source. 0 Comments

The OLPC Give One Get One program is now officially open.

One learning child. One connected child. One laptop at a time.

The mission of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege. Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During this time, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution.

For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving). For all U.S. donors who participate in the Give One Get One program, T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary HotSpot access. If you purchase one now, you should have it for the holidays. This is a great way to get a child you know a fantastic gift while also helping someone less fortunate than yourself. The XO is a Linux based laptop. I’m proud to say that LQ has purchased one:

Confirmation

Thank you for participating in Give One Get One. Your donation will bring education and enlightenment to children of the developing world, and, in recognition of your gift, you will be receiving an XO laptop for the child in your life as well. If you have any questions or problems, please contact One Laptop Per Child at service@laptopgiving.org. Should your employer wish to match your donation, we are a 501(c)(3) organization and our EIN# is 20-5471780. Thanks again, and welcome to the One Laptop Per Child community!

–jeremy

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Oracle mulls vote on open source at upcoming shareholders meeting II

Published by
jeremy
at November 10, 2007 in Open Source and Oracle. 0 Comments

As a follow up to this post, Jonas just informed me that 127,717,018 shares voted in favor of the proposal. From his email:

In the end, we received the support of 127,717,018 shares. That is 3.58% of the vote and approximately $2.8 billion in assets. As I’ve mentioned before, taking into account Larry Ellison’s ownership that percentage can be viewed a bit differently. That number goes up to 4.99% if you remove his approximately 1 billion shares from the calculation.

While 3.58% may not seem like a significant number, it is a very respectable vote for a first year issue that nobody ever heard of and with no advocacy budget. These are the kinds of votes climate change proposals received years ago and now they pull in up to 30%. That is not to say that FLOSS is the same kind of issue as global warming, but it gives you an idea of how support often starts off in the single digits. It is also significant that we broke the 3% threshold, because under SEC rules we are now entitled to bring the proposal forward to the 2008 AGM if we wish.

3.58% may not sound like a big number, but as Jonas points out, since Ellison and institutional investors voted against the proposal it is a significant number. One hundred million votes is more than I’d have anticipated (although being new to this kind of thing my expectations don’t mean much), but it’s great to see the issue getting this kind of support right out of the gate.

Matt is also blogging about this here.

–jeremy

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Linux wins Nigerian school desktops back from Microsoft

Published by
jeremy
at November 9, 2007 in Linux, MSFT, Mandriva, Microsoft and Open Source. 0 Comments

It looks like the open letter to Steve Ballmer from Mandriva may have had an impact. From the article:

Mandriva had closed a deal in mid-August to provide a customised Linux operating system and support for 17,000 Intel Classmate PCs intended for Nigerian schools, but found out last week that the company deploying the computers for the government, Technology Support Center (TSC), planned to wipe the computers’ disks and install Windows XP instead.

Now, however, a government agency funding 11,000 of the PCs has overruled the supplier. Nigeria’s Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) wants to keep Mandriva Linux on the Classmate PCs, said an official who identified himself as the programme manager for USPF’s Classmate PCs project.

“We are sticking with that platform,” said the official, who would not give his name.

Mba-Uzoukwu wrote that Microsoft is still negotiating an agreement that would give TSC US$400,000 (£190,323) for marketing activities around the Classmate PCs when those computers are converted to Windows.

“Microsoft is able to offer a comprehensive education solution - including software, training and support - on the 17,000 Classmate PCs for 200 schools across Nigeria,” the statement said.

After public statements from Mandriva officials implied the marketing deal is legally questionable, Microsoft said last week that it complies with international law and the law of the countries in which it operates.

It’s not clear how much TSC would pay for each Windows XP licence. Efforts to reach senior managers at TSC, which is a subsidiary of Alteq.ict, an IT consulting business in Nigeria, were unsuccessful.

However, details on Mandriva’s deal with TSC have emerged. Mandriva is providing a customised OS for Nigeria for under $10 (£4.7) per licence, including support, according to its local partner.

It’s clear that Microsoft is willing to go to pretty great lengths to ensure that it’s able to put some stakes down in the growing third world economies. I’m not a lawyer, so don’t have any insight into the legality of this $400,000 “marketing” deal, but it seems that for now the machines are going to be delivered with Mandriva and stay with Mandriva. I have a feeling we haven’t heard the end of this story though.

–jeremy

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