Kudos to Bill Hilf

May 15, 2007 Leave a comment

As the head of Microsoft’s Linux Labs, Bill Hilf needs to have thick skin. I’ve seen Bill speak a number of times and despite his employer I was surprised to see some of his recent quotes:

“They are full-time employees, with 401K stock options. Some work for IBM or Oracle. What does that mean? It means that Linux doesn’t exist any more in 2007. There is no free software movement. If someone says Linux is about Love, Peace and Harmony, I would tell them to do their research. There is no free software movement any more. There is big commercial [firms] like IBM and there is small commercial [firms] like Ubuntu,” he said.

While it should come as no surprise that part of the issue here is overly-sensationalist journalism (a topic I have covered multiple times), it still takes a solid person to make a public correction… as Bill has:

A few folks have emailed or called me about statements I said in the Bangkok Post about the ‘end of Linux’ and ‘there is no free software movement.’ My statements were shaped in a sensationalist way, not surprisingly, this isn’t the first time the press has used shock value to get headlines. It then hit Slashdot and the blogosphere where a couple hundred people have called me every name under the sun. I have a tough skin – need to in this job. But days like this suck, to be honest.

I get asked Linux related questions from the press, most of which are probably obvious to you. One of the questions I often get asked is about the development of Linux by free software developers. I answer this by saying that most customers who use Linux, use a distribution like Red Hat or Ubuntu or SuSE and that although there are certainly a lot of developers who work for free, most of the people who do the daily work on the Linux kernel are paid to do so. Typically they are paid by IT companies who have a commercial interest in Linux. This isn’t FUD, it’s reality (Corbet from LWN did a great analysis of this here citing “at least 65% of the code which went into 2.6.20 was created by people working for companies”). And I answer this question because I get asked about it in press interviews.

But I’m rethinking that last part. Mostly because I don’t think it matters. If the software is open, it’s open, that does not change based on who developed it or why. In this article it sounds like I say ‘because they are paid, then free software is extinct!’ which, of course, is silly. I know this and I think it’s a combination of me not being clear and this particular article shaping it in a certain direction. But I’ll take the blame: I shoved my foot in my mouth and it came across as idiotic.

Thanks for the clarification, and I look forward to the promised comments on the recent Fortune story on ‘Microsoft versus the Free world’.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Microsoft, MSFT, Open Source

Microsoft takes on the free world II

May 15, 2007 Leave a comment

(a follow up to this post) As was expected, nearly everyone is commenting on the recent Fortune article about Microsoft and Patents. Even Linus has weighed in:

“It’s certainly a lot more likely that Microsoft violates patents than Linux does,” said Torvalds, holder of the Linux trademark. If the source code for Windows could be subjected to the same critical review that Linux has been, Microsoft would find itself in violation of patents held by other companies, said Torvalds.

“Basic operating system theory was pretty much done by the end of the 1960s. IBM probably owned thousands of really ‘fundamental’ patents,” Torvalds said in a response to questions submitted by InformationWeek. But he doesn’t like any form of patent saber rattling. “The fundamental stuff was done about half a century ago and has long, long since lost any patent protection,” he wrote.

“So the whole, ‘We have a list and we’re not telling you,’ itself should tell you something,” Torvalds said of Microsoft’s stance in the Fortune story. And for good measure, he added: “Don’t you think that if Microsoft actually had some really foolproof patent, they’d just tell us and go, ‘nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!'”

There’s so much good commentary on this this it’s not possible to link to everything, but I’d like to highlight a few. The OIN has posted a press release that contains some “facts to provide clarity around Linux and patents” and also points out that “In less than a year, OIN has accumulated more than 100 strategic, worldwide patents and patent applications that span Web / Internet, e-commerce, mobile and communications technologies. These patents are available to all as part of the free Linux ecosystem that OIN is creating around, and in support of Linux. We stand ready to leverage our IP portfolio to maintain the open patent environment OIN has helped create.”

Sun CEO Jonathan gives an extremely apropos summary of what Sun did when faced with adversity and pressure in its market:

So what’s my view on this interview in Fortune – in which one of Sun’s business partners claims the open source community is trampling their patent portfolio?

You would be wise to listen to the customers you’re threatening to sue – they can leave you, especially if you give them motivation. Remember, they wouldn’t be motivated unless your products were somehow missing the mark.

All of which is to say – no amount of fear can stop the rise of free media, or free software (they are the same, after all). The community is vastly more innovative and powerful than a single company. And you will never turn back the clock on elementary school students and developing economies and aid agencies and fledgling universities – or the Fortune 500 – that have found value in the wisdom of the open source community. Open standards and open source software are literally changing the face of the planet – creating opportunity wherever the network can reach.

That’s not a genie any litigator I know can put back in a bottle.

There’s one recurring theme that you’ll see in most of the commentary. This action is fairly definitive proof that Microsoft sees clear and imminent danger. They, for the first time in a long time, see something they can’t kill. It’s starting to show that they don’t know exactly what to do next. Stephe, a former Microsoftie, has the following advice:

Microsoft needs to get back in the business of building exceptional solutions to customer problems, instead of chasing a 1990s dream of IBM’s secondary revenues from hardware patent licensing, or worse yet threatening those same customers.

[Disclaimer: Microsoft is a client. But I swear I’m reconsidering that decision. It’s unclear to me that the mortgage payment is worth this much aggravation.]

What Microsoft will do remains to be seen. It seems the current near-universal consensus is that they won’t sue anyone, but will continue to try to squeeze money out of those willing to pay or partner, while figuring out the next strategic move. That may have an unintended consequence though. I’ve heard Don Marti say many times that much of the software industry is really a recruiting contest. You need look no further than Google for proof of this. The really smart engineers though, like to build cool software… not win by (or even have to deal with) litigation. Now sure, Microsoft has a lot of money to throw at the problem, but with a fairly stagnant stock price and plenty of companies doing really interesting things, money is no longer going to be enough to keep the very best. The long term implications of that should not be underestimated. Neither should the disruptive force of Open Source. Will either lesson be learned?

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Microsoft, MSFT, Open Source, Sun

Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit

May 14, 2007 Leave a comment

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be attending the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit at Google’s Mountain View Campus. It looks to be a great event to discuss the future direction of Linux and Open Source. If you’ll be attending, I’ll see you there. Trying to work out a decent flight schedule now, but it looks like it’ll be challenging. BTW, I’ll also be in the Bay Area next week for OSBC. If you’ll be attending (or in the area) and would like to connect, drop me a line.

–jeremy

Filed under Google, Linux, LinuxQuestions.org, Open Source, OSBC

Microsoft takes on the free world

May 14, 2007 2 Comments

Some thought it was inevitable, while other thought it would never happen. From a recent Fortune article:

Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It’s often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It’s versatile – it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task – and it’s blessedly crash-resistant.

A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers.

But now there’s a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it’s being cast by Microsoft. The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft’s patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google, Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won’t be free anymore.

The conflict pits Microsoft and its dogged CEO, Steve Ballmer, against the “free world” – people who believe software is pure knowledge. The leader of that faction is Richard Matthew Stallman, a computer visionary with the look and the intransigence of an Old Testament prophet.

Then come the details:

Microsoft counters that it is a matter of principle. “We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property,” says Ballmer in an interview. FOSS patrons are going to have to “play by the same rules as the rest of the business,” he insists. “What’s fair is fair.”

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.

The 235 number is fairly close to the previously given (and disputed) 228. While the lengthy article does get some minor details wrong, it’s a good way to get up to date on the situation if it’s not one you’ve been following. On to why Microsoft choose to do this now. It could be that they think the GPLv3 has teeth and are trying to get out ahead of its release. It could be that they’ve not been as effective as they thought they’d be at battling Open Source and Linux more directly. Regardless of the reason, I agree with Larry:

If Microsoft believes that Free and Open Source Software violates any of their patents, let them put those patents forward now, in the light of day, where we can all evaluate them on their merits. If not, then stop trying to bully customers into paying royalties to use Open Source. It’s time for Microsoft to put up or shut up.

(Tim put it nice and succinctly: Four Words for Microsoft: Litigate or shut up

It appears that the battle lines are being drawn and the cold war of software patent world may be coming to an end. The players involved here are huge and the amount of money astronomical. Who has the most to lose? I’d say Microsoft. How will this play out? We’ll all be watching closely, that’s for sure. One has to wonder how Novell feels about their recent deal right about now.

–jeremy

Filed under GPLv3, Linux, Microsoft, MSFT, Novell, Open Source

Sun hopes for Linux-like Solaris

May 11, 2007 Leave a comment

Looks like Ian is already making a difference at Sun. From the article:

In an effort to spur adoption of Solaris, Sun Microsystems has begun a project code-named Indiana to try to give its operating system some of the trappings of Linux.

The project is one of the items on the to-do list of Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian version of Linux and, as of March, Sun’s chief operating systems officer. Though he wouldn’t confirm the name of the project, Murdock — who’s from Indiana — discussed the project’s essence at the JavaOne conference in the US this week, and Sun spokesman Russ Castronovo confirmed the name.

Sun has been trying for years to restore the luster of Solaris, a version of Unix that peaked in popularity in the late 1990s, but that since has faced a strong challenge chiefly from Linux. Sun has worked to reinvigorate Solaris by boosting its performance, offering it as a free download, making it an open-source project called OpenSolaris, and pushing a version that runs on servers using Intel’s and AMD’s mainstream x86 processors.

Linux and Solaris are cousins that stem from the same Unix heritage, if not from the same source code. But Linux fans simply have a hard time trying Solaris, Murdock said on Tuesday.

“It’s too unfamiliar. There’s a gulf,” Murdock said in an interview. “We need to make it familiar to people who know Linux inside and out.”

The Solaris userland has historically been quite painful for the average Linux user. It’s easy to take the niceties of the GNU tools for granted, until you have to live without them. Solaris 10 has changed some of this, but most of it involves either installing additional packages or messing with your PATH. There are some really compelling things about Solaris 10 (ZFS, Dtrace and zones to name a few). Getting the userland issues sorted would be a big win for Sun. Whether they will be able to do it while still keeping the backwards compatibility that Solaris is known for remains to be seen. Will Solaris turn into an ABI-stable version of Linux? Time will tell.

–jeremy

Disclosure: During a recent market dip I decided it was worth while to take a small position in SUNW. It certainly won’t change my opinion or how I blog though.

Filed under Linux, Sun

Red Hat to build 'Global Desktop'

May 10, 2007 1 Comment

Quite a bit of news coming out of the Red Hat Summit. I really would have liked to attend this, but somehow the date slipped by me. Hopefully next year. One of the major announcements made was ‘Global Desktop’. From the article:

Red Hat is preparing to release a new ‘Global Desktop’ that over time will grow into an online desktop which integrates online services into a client desktop platform.

The platform will allow users to access online and local data in a unified way.

Red Hat has teamed up with Intel for the platform. Local PC manufacturers will build the actual systems.

The software borrows from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, with about 95 per cent of the code overlapping.

The OLPC uses an adapted version of Red Hat’s Fedora Linux. The Global Desktop won’t share the OLPC’s ‘Sugar’ user interface, but will come bundled with applications such as Firefox and OpenOffice.

The first version of the software is due out in June and will use a traditional user interface.

Subsequent updates will move to a model where traditional applications are integrated with online services, said Red Hat chief technology officer Brian Stevens.

“It will take online services and integrate them richly into a client desktop, and make them first class citizens with the traditional applications,” Stevens said in a keynote at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego.

Integrating online services with local data is required for the next-generation desktop, he argued. Data will be pulled onto the client using service oriented architectures (SOAs).

Note that this has two very specific target markets: Emerging Markets and Enterprise. This doesn’t seem like something meant to be used for mass consumer adoption. At least not yet. While the merging of online and offline seem inevitable long term, the details to getting that system to work for the average person just isn’t quite here. There are just too many times I’m in an airplane or the tube or for this to work today. However, once apps like Firefox can seamlessly give me access to apps while I’m offline and then sync when access is available, this will trickle into the mainstream quickly. By targeting markets for which this technology is good enough now, Red Hat is positioning themselves to pounce when the opportunity is right. It seems to me that a perfect partner here would be Google, but I’ve not seen any official word on that front. The official press release is available here.

–jeremy

Filed under Google, Linux, Open Source, Red Hat

Novell confirms that patent deal gave it access to Microsoft IP

May 10, 2007 1 Comment

Matthew Aslett has some more information from Novell on the patent agreement with Microsoft. From the article:

Last week I noted that a new explanation had emerged as to why Novell entered into its patent agreement with Microsoft: because Novell engineers “required sanctioned access to Microsoft’s code in order to develop open source interoperability without violating MSFT’s IP.”

I asked Novell to confirm whether this was correct and received an interesting response from Justin Steinman, director of marketing for Linux and open platforms at Novell, in which he confirmed the explanation and stated that it was not new, but had been overlooked the press and community.

The statement from Steinman was as follows:

“Since we announced the Novell-Microsoft agreement in November, we’ve always said that the intellectual property agreement provided a foundation for the interoperability between Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise. This foundation falls into two primary categories: 1) the “covenant not to sue,” which provides customers with peace of mind when they deploy SUSE Linux Enterprise; and 2) the IP access necessary for the technical collaboration to deliver interoperability between Windows and Linux. For better or worse, the community and press at-large have focused on #1, although Novell has talked about both categories since we signed the agreement.

“As you know, engineers at Novell and Microsoft are hard at work on our technical collaboration, and we demonstrated the first results at BrainShare in March. But in order to deliver the interoperability between Novell eDirectory and Microsoft Active Directory, as well as the bidirectional virtualization between Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise, Novell required sanctioned access to Microsoft’s code in order to develop open source interoperability without violating Microsoft’s intellectual property.

OK, that sounds a little more reasonable than some of the previously given explanations. The perplexing part here is why this is all slowly coming out in bits. Given the initial community reaction, you’d think Novell would have been crystal clear of the reasons and benefits from day one. Their actions caused people (for the most part reasonably in my opinion, given the circumstances) to assume the worst. At this point a huge amount of damage has been done to Novell, not only from an image/trust point of view but also from a staffing/recruiting point of view. Both of these are absolutely critical in the commercial Open Source world. It will be interesting to see how they attempt to recover moving forward.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Open Source

2 LQ Updates: Save 20% on CrossOver Office, Take the LQ survey

May 4, 2007 Leave a comment

2 quick (unrelated) LQ updates:

For a short time (end of May) you can save a full 20% on both CrossOver Linux Standard and CrossOver Linux Professional, while helping LQ in the process. Use the code LQCO20 when placing your CrossOver Office order and the discount will be automatically applied.

There is a survey currently running at LQ. Filling out the survey is quick/easy and the resulting information will help us better serve you.

Thanks!

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, LinuxQuestions.org, Open Source

Forrester: Open Source is everywhere, and increasingly used for mission-critical applications

May 3, 2007 Leave a comment

(via Matt). Forrester has released a report on the increasing adoption of Open Source in the enterprise. While this will likely not come as a surprise to many of you reading this blog, the PDF does contain some interesting and worthwhile information. It’s not only that adoption is increasing, but that “Mission Critical” adoption is rapidly increasing. More and more companies are trusting Open Source for bits that are critical to the companies survival. That’s hard to ignore. From the article:

Forrester has observed a pattern: Once companies start using open source software, usage expands from simple applications (e.g., file and print serving and email) to mission-critical application areas including customer-facing applications. Data from the survey on which this report is based indicates that a large majority of companies that considered open source ended up adopting it, and more than half have adopted it for mission-critical applications. Each industry has its own definition of mission-critical, of course, but the key point is that enterprises feel confident enough in the quality and security of the technology to use open source in areas that affect revenue and customers.

The report also covers why enterprises are buying into Open Source, that they don’t really want to collaborate with the Open Source communities in general (another blog post in itself), some of the perceived inhibitors to enterprise adoption and more. Worth a read if enterprise Open Source is something you’re interested in.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Open Source

Dell to Offer Ubuntu 7.04

May 1, 2007 Leave a comment

It’s Official. In response to the Idea Storm feedback, Dell will be offering desktop Linux. There are not a lot of details available yet, but this isn’t the “Linux on any model” option we’re looking for yet. It may be a good first step though. Dell, however, has had some Linux-related false starts in the past. From the article:

In February when Dell launched IdeaStorm as forum for customers to contribute ideas for product offerings, we received overwhelming feedback that customers wanted Linux on desktops and notebooks.

As part of an overall effort to update our Linux program, today we are announcing a partnership with Canonical to offer Ubuntu on select consumer desktop and notebook products.

Kudos to Ubuntu and Canonical for working this out. The official Ubuntu release is available here.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Open Source, Ubuntu

← Older posts

Newer posts →