2008 June archive at Jeremy’s Blog

Archive for June, 2008

Microsoft and Open Source

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at June 30, 2008 in Linux and Microsoft. 0 Comments

There’s some speculation that with Bill Gates’ departure from Microsoft will come a friendlier attitude toward Open Source. From the article:

Will Microsoft become more open to open source with the departure of Bill Gates?

It’s a tough call. Observers from both the open and closed source worlds say the exit of Microsoft’s longtime leader won’t usher in a GPL era at the company but it will likely accelerate what is already a changing attitude in Redmond.

“We already see quite a different approach to dealing with OSS and OSS companies from Sam Ramji’s group [which is] doing a great job in establishing dialog,” said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange and a former marketing exec at SUSE Linux. “With Gates’ departure, the only mammoth remaining is Ballmer. With him away in a near future, Microsoft will definitely open up. They have to.”

Gates’ exit will help acceptance of open source, another observer said.

“For much of Microsoft’s history, its primary strategic initiative has been Windows everywhere. Bill Gates was the primary architect of this and it has served the company well in reaching the $50 billion revenue mark. To get from $50 to $100 billion, however, they will clearly need to embrace the non-Windows world,” said Barry Crist, CEO, Likewise Software. “I suspect this will be easier for Microsoft to accomplish without Gates. We see substantive signs of this happening already.”

One open source backer hints that Gates’ early departure from Microsoft signals the beginning of the end for proprietary software.

“Bill Gates figured out how to harvest from software licensing early on in the game, and built the biggest software company on the planet from it. [But] selling software licenses has become a triviality,” said Juergen Geck, CTO of Openxchange, which competes against Microsoft Exchange.

Now, even with Bill still at Microsoft, the company has been slowly changing its attitude toward Open Source. It’s certainly been an internal struggle, and while some in the company are coming around some are still as averse to Open Source as ever. I maintain that the company will be unable to truly change until Ballmer steps down. The old way of thinking and acting it too ingrained into him and it permeates the decisions he makes. Even so, it’s great to hear a Microsoft rep say something like “We should have done it earlier” about Open Source.

While on the topic of billg, it’s a bit comical to see that even he had major usability problems with Windows.

–jeremy

Linux Magazine is dead, long live Linux Magazine

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jeremy

at June 30, 2008 in Linux and LinuxQuestions.org. 1 Comment

I hadn’t seen it posted anywhere, but it is now public. InfoStrada will no longer be publishing a print version of Linux Magazine. Linux Pro Magazine, which is known as Linux Magazine outside the USA, will be acquiring some of the print assets. The US-based Linux Magazine will continue operating as a web-only property at http://linux-mag.com/. I’ve been the “Tech Support” columnist for Linux Magazine since 2003 and will continue to write for the online presence. You can view the online archive of my columns at LQ.

–jeremy

Opening up Symbian – Good or Bad for Linux?

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at June 30, 2008 in Google, Linux, Nokia, Open Source, iPhone and maemo. 0 Comments

That’s the question raised by this recent Nokia press release:

Espoo, Finland – Nokia today announced it has launched a cash offer to acquire all of the shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own, at a price of EUR 3.647 per share. The net cash outlay from Nokia to purchase the approximately 52% of Symbian Limited shares it does not already own will be approximately EUR 264 million.

The acquisition is a fundamental step in the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, announced today by Nokia, together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. More information about the planned foundation can be found at www.symbianfoundation.org.

From the Symbian Foundation site:

The Symbian Foundation platform will be available to members under a royalty-free license from this non-profit foundation. The Symbian Foundation will provide, manage and unify the platform for its members. Also, it will commit to moving the platform to open source during the next two years, with the intent to use the Eclipse Public License. This will make the platform code available to all for free, bringing additional innovation to the platform and engaging even a broader community in future developments.

Keep in mind that while not a huge success in the US, Symbian does still account for about 60% of all smartphones, with the next OS a distant second at about 15%. So, what does this mean for mobile Linux? It’s still unclear to me the direction Nokia will take, so it’s hard to tell. They are all over the place at the moment. The have the GTK based maemo project, have recently acquired TrollTech for QT and now have an Open Source Symbian. Long term, they can’t possibly want to support all three of these. Looking at Symbian specifically, I’m not sure it can compete directly with the likes of the iPhone and Android. The UI looks old and clunky and it doesn’t have a lot of the functionality and polish of the newer mobile offerings. That said, developers know it, it has a huge application catalog and an entrenched base. Whether that will be enough for Symbian to make it out of the Open Source process alive remains to be seen though, and in my opinion it isn’t a certainty. What Nokia does get is 1) options and 2) the perception that they are not sitting on their hands while Android and the iPhone pass it by. Even if Symbian can’t compete feature for feature with something like Android, this announce will serve to remove one of its key advantages. That alone is likely worth the investment to Nokia.

Further Reading:
Linux Foundation
Red Monk
SAI

–jeremy

LinuxQuestions.org Turns 8

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at June 25, 2008 in LinuxQuestions.org. 0 Comments

It was on June 25, 2000 that I made the very first post at LQ, introducing it to the world. Fast forward eight years and we have almost 3,200,000 posts and over 350,000 registered members. I don’t think the raw numbers tell the real story though. It continues to amaze me just how far the site has come. Despite our constantly growing size we remain one of the friendlier community sites on the web and much of the original feel and spirit of the site remain. That being said, there is always room for improvement. We’re going to refocus and redouble our efforts. Our commitment to our members remains as strong as ever. We’re currently looking for feedback on what we’re doing well and how we can improve. No one knows the site better than you, and we want to know what you think. I have to admit I feel a bit rejuvenated and am really looking forward to see how we can improve the site. I’d like to take this time to thank each and every LQ member. Without you, we’d be nothing. A special thanks goes out to the mod team, who’s dedication has allowed us to not only grow, but flourish…for eight years and counting.

–jeremy

ISO puts standard for Microsoft’s OOXML document formats on hold

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at June 13, 2008 in Microsoft, Open Formats and Open Standards. 0 Comments

From Heise:

After member states filed four complaints against the standardisation of Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) document format, the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in Geneva have responded by postponing publication of the revised specification. As the ISO announced, the planned ISO/IEC DIS 29500 cannot be published until these complaints have been heard. Procedure requires that they be dealt with by the end of June, when the ISO and IEC have to hand over their comments on the complaints to two management committees for a final decision.

Brazil, India, South Africa, and Venezuela have officially filed complaints against the controversial certification of OOXML in expedited proceedings in Geneva. These emerging nations are concerned that no consensus was reached about which changes need to be made to the specification, which is more than 6000 pages long, during consultation on the numerous comments submitted at the end of February, after the first attempt to adopt OOXML as a standard failed in 2007. Specifically, they complained that concrete technical objections were not individually discussed .

The official press release:

Four national standards body members of ISO and IEC – Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela – have submitted appeals against the recent approval of ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML formats, as an ISO/IEC International Standard.

In accordance with the ISO/IEC rules governing the work of their joint technical committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, the appeals are currently being considered by the ISO Secretary-General and the IEC General Secretary who, within a period of 30 days (to the end of June), and following whatever consultations they judge appropriate, are required to submit the appeals, with their comments, to the ISO Technical Management Board and the IEC Standardization Management Board.

The two management boards will then decide whether the appeals should be further processed or not. If they decide in favour of proceeding, the chairmen of the two boards are required to establish a conciliation panel which will attempt to resolve the appeals. The process could take several months.

According to the ISO/IEC rules, a document which is the subject of an appeal cannot be published as an ISO/IEC International Standard while the appeal is going on. Therefore, the decision to publish or not ISO/IEC DIS 29500 as an ISO/IEC International Standard cannot be taken until the outcome of the appeals is known.

It should be noted that this is not a directional change for the ISO. Their rules dictate that they have to postpone publishing the standard if any official appeals are made. Considering many of the countries originally filed comments that weren’t addressed, it’s very possible the ISO will decide not to process the appeals.

–jeremy

As the ODF-OOXML world turns

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at June 2, 2008 in Microsoft, ODF, Open Formats, Open Source and Open Standards. 1 Comment

I’m a bit behind on this, but it’s a topic I’ve been covering for a while now so I wanted to follow up. First, from the the 451 group:

Oh the drama. Most of us knew ISO approval of Microsoft’s OOXML format was not the end, but more of a beginning in the ongoing fight for the future’s file format. Any doubts of that were put to rest this week with a flurry of activity around OOXML’s approval, ODF adoption, Microsoft’s support and the stance of U.S. states and other governments.

Much of it started with Microsoft’s announcement that it would expand its Office 2007 format support, including ODF. The move, which means Office 2007 users will be able to set ODF as their default file format, is further evidence of changes at Microsoft and the need to support multiple formats and interoperability. However, it still drew criticism from a number of ODF proponents/OOXML opponents, whose concerns include the typical Microsoft skepticism, but also center on the software giant’s OOXML approval campaign and previous statements downplaying the market for ODF.

We also saw further objection to ISO’s OOXML approval, primarily an appeal from South Africa. As format expert and saga watcher Andy Updegrove points out here, the appeal centers on the approval process and also on the ‘business basis’ for OOXML’s fast-track approval. Despite that relatively rapid approval, Updegrove points out that, ironically, Microsoft Office users will not have the opportunity to use the file format until Microsoft’s coming Office 14, expected in 2010 at the earliest.

Microsoft credited customer and government demand for its new found ODF love, but we also saw indications it may also involve difficulties in backward compatibility with OOXML. As ZDNet’s Tom Espiner points out, ‘The company now says OOXML support would require substantially more work.’ This comes as no surprise to many open source software users who have come to the same conclusion over the years. In fact, the inability of Microsoft to support different versions of its own Office and format software has fueled many OpenOffice.org downloads over the last few years, including my own.

Still, customer demand as the reasoning behind Microsoft’s ODF support was reinforced by yet another development in the ongoing format saga: findings from the State of New York. While the state’s officials indicated it would be a mistake to name ODF or OOXML as the standard of choice, New York’s format wonks did indicate that openness is the path to the future. That does not necessarily mean ODF, but it certainly makes it more likely given the controversy, uncertainty and drama still surrounding OOXML.

Since that post, Brazil and India have also decided to appeal. The deadline to appeal has now passed. The India post by Andy contains some good “what comes next” information for those that are interested. The appeals all have some items in common, but each also has points made only by that country. It’s clear that Microsoft did some very shady things during this process. It’s a sad indication that the company is still not willing to compete on the merits of its products on the one hand. On the other hand, they recently announced that Office 2007 would support ODF but not OOXML:

Microsoft today announced that it would update Office 2007 to natively support ODF 1.1, but not to implement its own OOXML format. Moreover, it would also join both the OASIS working group as well as the ISO/IEC JTC1 working group that has control of the ISO/IEC version of ODF. Implementation of DIS 29500, the ISO/IEC JTC 1 version of OOXML that has still not been publicly released will await the release of Office 14, the ship date of which remains unannounced.

So they fast track an office format while a competing one already exists, push it through the approval process using tactics that are questionable at best and then decide to only implement the competing standard in the current shipping product. You couldn’t make this stuff up. It’s clear that the internal battle within Microsoft is still raging. Part of the company really want to change, but part of it really doesn’t. It remains to be seen which side will prevail, but it’s not difficult to see why many in the Open Source community remain wary.

–jeremy

Ozzie: Open Source a more disruptive competitor than Google

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at June 2, 2008 in Microsoft and Open Source. 0 Comments

I’ve often said that for Microsoft to truly change, Ballmer will have to go. On the other hand, Microsoft should be clinging to some other top level execs with a kung fu grip. Ray Ozzie is one of those execs. The vision and leadership he’s shown over his career is exceptional. He gets it. With that in mind it wasn’t a real surprise to hear him say this:

Google has nothing on open source when it comes to potential competitive threats to Microsoft, according to Redmond’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie.

Ozzie fielded a number of questions on his role at Microsoft and the company’s evolving technology strategies during an appearance at the Sanford Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference on May 28. (I listened to his session via the Webcast.)

Ozzie reiterated that it often takes a strong competitor to truly galvanize Microsoft.

“Microsoft has built up a culture of crisis,” Ozzie told conference attendees.

Competitors like his former employer, Lotus, and now, Google, have spurred the company to make changes to its business to stay ahead, Ozzie said. But while Google is a “tremendously strong competitor,” Ozzie acknowledged, “open source was much more potentially disruptive” to Microsoft’s business. (He noted that, unlike Google, many open-source programmers aren’t beholden to shareholders.)

Ozzie said that competing with open source “made Microsoft a much stronger company.” He cited changes Microsoft has made to its business model — such as focusing on making its closed-source software interoperable with open-source products — as directly attributable to that competition.

You see, Google is a company… and Microsoft knows how to compete with companies (although they are proving completely unable to compete on the web, despite both huge efforts and large amounts of cash). Open Source is a movement, and that concept is proving troublesome for many at Redmond. Keep in mind that in my opinion Google would never have been possible without Open Source. Open Source enables companies like Google to exist, and that’s really powerful. It’s literally changing the rules of the game.

So why is Ballmer still in charge? I’m not sure. I thought the failed Yahoo! blunder may be enough to do him in, but it looks like that isn’t going to be the case. In a way, I guess many of us in the OSS world should be happy. The longer he’s around the more time we have to mature and hone our products and skills. It’s hard for a behemoth like MSFT to turn around, but once they do – look out.

–jeremy

Jeremy’s Blog

Archive for June, 2008

Microsoft and Open Source

Linux Magazine is dead, long live Linux Magazine

Opening up Symbian – Good or Bad for Linux?

LinuxQuestions.org Turns 8

ISO puts standard for Microsoft’s OOXML document formats on hold

As the ODF-OOXML world turns

Ozzie: Open Source a more disruptive competitor than Google

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