Archive for July, 2008

OSCON Updates

Published by
jeremy
at July 23, 2008 in OSCON and Open Source. 0 Comments

I had planned to post regular OSCON updates, but the network has been up and down, so here are some random musings. As with some conference posts of mine, this is a bit random stream of consciousness and is not edited/proofread.

Tuesday Evening Extravaganza
* Mark put it well when he said that Open Source is really looking for a “complimentary economic model”. The web took a while to sort out that advertising was the answer, and I’m confident we’ll find the right answer (or more likely, answers) as well. This means me need economic innovation nearly as much as we need innovation in other areas. He also brought up the free software syncronicity issue again. I’ve been meaning to post on this topic and will do so soon.
* r0ml once again exceeded expectations and is one of my favorite speakers - he even juggled this time. He not only compared rhetoric methodologies to software development methodologies, he did it with panache.

Wednesday
Tim O’Reilly
* 3 biggest challenges and opportunities - Cloud Computing, open programmable web and open mobile
* It’s clear that mobile Linux is going to be a hot topic for a while. Intel will be releasing Moblin soon. Which mobile Linux offering will prevail remains to be seen.
Aker and Monty
* Monty “thank god we didn’t go public” - would very likely have led to more closed source components!
* “6 months later, Sun is still trying to figure out what they bought”
* Tim asked whether Jonathon committing to Open Source so heavily has caused internal conflicts within Sun
Brian - certainly
* Tim asked how the support within Sun was for “internal projects” such as Maria and Drizzle. Answer: surprisingly well.
* Monty: “for the last few years, MySQL has been management driven and not developer driven. Sun is allowing us to go back to our roots”
* Monty: “we had become - submit a patch and it may make it in sometime in about 3 years. That was ridiculous”
* Tim: “Adobe is one of the last great proprietary software companies”

Identi.ca
* Identi.ca is really taking off. It’s even streaming in the OSCON lobby. Had a chance to chat with Evan about it for a little bit and he’s once again doing a fantastic job. Kudos.

Changing Education… Open Content, Open Hardware, Open Curricula
* This was an extremely interesting panel and a topic that really interests me. It will be something I plan to research more in the coming months,
See: Curriki, Literacy Bridge and The Cape Town Open Education Declaration

OSSL at Microsoft
* A good look at what happens behind the scenes at the Microsoft Open Source Software Lab - surprising how many people didn’t know this existed.

Off to a break now - more updates should hopefully come soon.

–jeremy

Share This

Headed to OSCON

Published by
jeremy
at July 22, 2008 in OSCON. 0 Comments

Just about to get on a plane to Portland for OSCON. If you’ll be around and would like to connect, send me an email. I hope to be settled in with plenty of time to hit the Tuesday Evening Extravaganza. See you in Portland.

–jeremy

Share This

Judge Kimball Rules on SCO v. Novell

Published by
jeremy
at July 17, 2008 in IBM, Novell and SCO. 0 Comments

It looks like Judge Kimball has finally issued a ruling on SCO v. Novell. From the article:

OK. I’ve read it now once through, and the big picture is this: Judge Kimball did not change anything in his August 10th order, which I was afraid might happen. He could have, had he heard anything that he didn’t know when he made that order. So, SCO breached its fiduciary duty to Novell, converted funds, and so it has to pay. That is ironic, in that this case started with SCO accusing Novell of slander of title, and asking for millions in damages. Instead it has to *pay* Novell millions.

However, Judge Kimball accepted SCO’s argument that UnixWare is the latest version of UNIX and that it was the foundation of all the other agreements, even though SYSV was also involved, or so SCO thought. He accepted SCO’s argument that if SCO was wrong about owning the copyrights, and it was, then it’s too bad for the licensees — they just got less than they thought they were paying for, and that is a matter for them to work through with SCO. So if EV1, for example, wanted its money back, or part of it, it would have to sue SCO.

I think this is an appealable issue for Novell, but I don’t know if they will bother. This was all about money, this trial, and very narrowly about whether SCO owed Novell anything from the Sun and Microsoft and SCOsource licenses. The rest was decided already on August 10th. And SCO doesn’t have much money left, if any, so I would guess that if SCO appeals, Novell will raise issues it certainly can in this new order. And it’s a bit hard to fit SCOsource into the APA, since it was just a strange and vague bird. But if SCO doesn’t — and to my mind the order seems designed to discourage it, since if they do appeal, they risk being found liable for even more money than now ordered — Novell then has to figure out if it is worth it.

For its part, SCO is attempting to spin this as somewhat positive:

In an e-mailed statement today, SCO described the ruling as “an important step in (its) ability to pursue the appeals to try to get all of (its) claims heard by a jury as soon as possible. We are pleased, however, that the court agreed that Novell is not entitled to anywhere near the more than $20 million dollars it was seeking.”

“Importantly, the court ruled that Novell has no right to any royalties from UnixWare or OpenServer sales by SCO, which is where the bulk of SCO’s revenue is earned,” SCO said in the statement. “This is also an important step forward in the capitalization and reorganization plan for SCO that will allow us to emerge from Chapter 11. We continue to disagree with the premise of this trial and believe that Novell is not owed anything, but that they have interfered with SCO’s UNIX rights.”

The company is reviewing the ruling by Judge Kimball with its attorneys and will be assessing the next steps over the coming days and weeks.

Realistically, SCO is probably going to appeal and it looks like they are attempting to go for a jury case. I’m not sure how much cash they have on hand, but it looks like because they were acting as an agent for what was always Novell money, the full amount should be given to Novell before any further creditors during bankruptcy. With the IBM ruling not handled down yet, things don’t bode well for SCO. Whether someone will pick up the carcass or they will just go away remains to be seen.

–jeremy

Share This

Apple iPhone 2.0 Upgrade == FAIL

Published by
jeremy
at July 11, 2008 in Apple, Google and iPhone. 5 Comments

A note to Apple. I find it astonishing that you have created an upgrade procedure that can fail in a way that leaves the phone useless. You had 6+ months to prepare for this, so error messages like this are just inexcusable. Google, please hurry up with Android ;)

–jeremy

Share This

Random LQ Stats - Browser Update

Published by
jeremy
at July 7, 2008 in Firefox, LinuxQuestions.org and Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I like to post random LQ stats every once and a while, and with the recent release of Firefox 3, now seems like a good time for a browser update. Here are the stats for July:

Firefox 66.05%
Internet Explorer 20.86%
Mozilla 4.98%
Opera 4.28%
Safari 2.07%
Konqueror 1.59%

Now, breaking down the Firefox numbers:

3.0 56.52%
2.0.0.14 18.02%
2.0.0.15 12.66%
2.0.0.6 1.59%
1.5.0.12 1.37%
2.0.0.11 1.34%

I have to admit that I’m a bit surprised, but quite impressed with the uptake up Firefox 3. To have well over 50% of the Firefox market share that rapidly is a remarkable feat. If they’d just fix the CSS overflow bug that makes LQ code tags scroll horizontally, it’d be even better ;)

–jeremy

Share This

Close
E-mail It