Sun and Open Source

February 26, 2008 Leave a comment

Sun takes a lot of heat in the community. Some would say too much, others would say not enough. I find the situation fascinating, really… and think it’s a good look into the complex and sometimes antithetical nature of the Open Source ecosystem. I don’t think it’s disputable the Sun has done a ton for Open Source. They have deep roots in OSS and to this day contribute a ton of code and mindshare. They have strayed off the path a bit at times and I think part of the uneasiness has to do with their waffling opinion on Linux. To me, it seems like much of this is in the past, but reputations die hard. One thing that is not in the past, and is the current cause of some consternation, is that Sun likes to control projects more then some in the Open Source world are willing to tolerate. The did it with Java, OOo and now OpenSolaris. Roy Fielding recently stepped down from the OpenSolaris project due to this and I think he brings up some valid concerns. I also think much of the problem Sun has in this regard isn’t how they act, but is around their messaging. As Roy mentioned in his email, companies like MySQL were able to adopt products that are truly Open Source with a decision making structure that was mostly controlled within the company. Not many people gave MySQL heat about that, because they were quite up front and transparent about it. Sun is not always so. My next point, as you may have guessed, is that with the recent MySQL AB acquisition, Sun has the opportunely to study and learn from the culture that MySQL was able to create. While I still have some concerns, the more I think about the deal the more I think it made a ton of sense for Sun.

While on the topic of Sun and Open Source, it would be hard to not mention the dust kicked up recently by this post. I do have some commentary, but will save it for a future post. I will say now that I do have some concerns that Sun will be tempted to push MySQL on Solaris, but I don’t think Linux support of MySQL will suffer any time soon. If you’d like some background on the Linux and OpenSolaris issue, this is a great post for you.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Linux Foundation, Open Source, Sun

Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability

February 26, 2008 Leave a comment

A little late on this, but better late than never. By now, you’ve probably heard about the Microsoft press release regarding “New interoperability principles and actions”:

Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors.

Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products: (1) ensuring open connections; (2) promoting data portability; (3) enhancing support for industry standards; and (4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

“These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies,” said Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer. “For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies.”

As you may have guessed, the blogosphere was abuzz with activity shortly after the announcement. First, let’s start with the basics. The products covered in this announcement are: Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007, and future versions of all these products. The key promises are: “Ensuring open connections to Microsoft’s high-volume products”, “Documenting how Microsoft supports industry standards and extensions”, “Enhancing Office 2007 to provide greater flexibility of document formats”, “Launching the Open Source Interoperability Initiative” and “Expanding industry outreach and dialogue”. While I see the word Open Source being used quite a bit in conjunction with this release, I see very little reason why. This is about API and protocol access for the most part. This will certainly help Open Source developers, but it isn’t Microsoft actually opening any code (or even changing their stance on Open Source from what I can tell).

Let me say that this could be the beginning of a fairly major shift for Microsoft, a change that most feel is long overdue. As usual though, the devil is in the details. Is this announcement fluff or substance? The first major hole I see is that the “covenant not to sue open source developers”, along with some other pieces, only pertain to “non-commercial” distribution/implementation. This makes room for a lot of gray area on how you define commercial use. Also, from what I can tell, the patent provision terms discussed in the announcement are not compatible with most Open Source licenses. That being said, it’s also a far cry from Microsoft calling Linux a cancer, so it’s certainly a step in the right direction. The real driver here, however, is almost certainly customer demand and a landscape that is shifting underneath the feet of Microsoft. I think the 451 group puts it well:

“Nudged by the European Union’s Court of First Instance, but more likely the result of a hard look at market dynamics and the competition, Microsoft has opened up its APIs and pledged to work more openly with the rest of the industry, including the open source community, on interoperability and standards issues. It’s an acknowledgment that in today’s world, many more flowers bloom when platform companies make their APIs completely open for developers to write to, a la Google and MSFT’s recent investee, Facebook. This is yet another thing Google has taught the largest software company in the world. It appears on the face of it that Microsoft now intends to live by the merit of its products, rather than rely on lock-in.

“As a result, developers should gain the potential to tie applications more closely into Microsoft’s Windows, SQL Server, Office and Exchange Server products with greater flexibility and innovation, perhaps through self-sustaining developer communities. SharePoint could also benefit from a platform approach, becoming a de facto central application for large segments of the market. And Microsoft is aiming to make open source applications run as well on Windows as they do on Linux, enabling it to continue competing against Linux while at the same time accepting and working to support open source projects.”

As it stands, whether this is a major announcement or a marketing fluff piece will become apparent in the coming months (and years). As real news comes forth, I’ll certainly be following it and will post updates. In the meantime, here is some additional reading:

Mary Jo Foley
Response from Red Hat
Groklaw
Bill Hilf
Andy Updegrove

One final note. I think one thing is absolutely clear. If this is to be the beginning of real change for MSFT, Ballmer has to go. I’ve said that before and I stand by it. It will not be possible for them to change with him in charge. Don’t think so? During all the talk of openness from Microsoft during this announcement, I leave you with his words from the press conference:

BRAD SMITH: With respect to other (commercial) distributors, and users, the clear message is that patent licenses will be freely available.

STEVE BALLMER: Patents will be, not freely, will be available.

BRAD SMITH: Readily available.

STEVE BALLMER: Readily available for the right fee.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Microsoft, Open Formats, Open Source, Open Standards

2007 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Award Winners

February 21, 2008 1 Comment

The polls are closed and the results are in. You can view the detailed results here, but I’ll include a list of winners at the end of this post for convenience. This was the seventh annual LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards and we’ve set a record for participation each and every year. We had some extremely close races this year (in fact just .41% separated first and second in one case). We also had a couple of multi-year winners unseated this year. The biggest surprise for me was probably how well VirtualBox did, but that may just be a result of how much marketing is behind some of the other virtualization players. Recent Sun acquisitions MySQL and VirtualBox were both winners. Congratulations to all nominees. Winners should expect an email from me over the next couple days.

Desktop Distribution of the Year Ubuntu (30.83%)
Server Distribution of the Year Debian (30.30%)
Live Distribution of the Year KNOPPIX (22.88%)
Database of the Year MySQL (54.36%)
Office Suite of the Year OpenOffice.org (89.50%)
Browser of the Year Firefox (74.03%)
Desktop Environment of the Year KDE (52.08%)
Window Manager of the Year Compiz (33.65%)
Messaging App of the Year Pidgin (53.90%)
Mail Client of the Year Thunderbird (53.72%)
Virtualization Product of the Year VirtualBox (41.58%)
Audio Media Player Application of the Year Amarok (57.37%)
Audio Authoring Application of the Year Audacity (68.24%)
Video Media Player Application of the Year mplayer (41.78%)
Video Authoring Application of the Year mencoder (24.21%)
Multimedia Utility of the Year K3b (63.34%)
Graphics Application of the Year GIMP (69.15%)
Network Security Application of the Year nmap (24.95%)
Host Security Application of the Year SELinux (30.69%)
Monitoring Application of the Year Nagios (38.58%)
Windows on Linux App of the Year Wine (84.76%)
IDE/Web Development Editor of the Year Eclipse (22.29%)
Shell of the Year bash (87.33%)
Text Editor of the Year vi/vim (36.37%)
File Manager of the Year Konqueror (38.00%)
Open Source Game of the Year Battle for Wesnoth (21.74%)
Programming Language of the Year Python (21.78%)

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, LinuxQuestions.org, Open Source

SCO Plans Rebound Thanks to $100M Lifeline

February 14, 2008 1 Comment

I have no idea how, but it looks like SCO managed to get a $100M bid that will take the company private. From the article:
Embattled Unix vendor SCO may get a new lease on life, thanks to a $100 million infusion aimed at helping it emerge from bankruptcy and pursue its controversial legal claims.

The financing comes from Stephen Norris Capital Partners (SNCP), which will take a controlling interest in SCO as part of the deal.

“Not only will this deal position us to emerge from Chapter 11, but it also marks an exciting future for our business,” said Jeff Hunsaker, the company’s president and COO of SCO Operations, in a statement.

“This significant financial backing is positive news for SCO’s customers, partners and resellers who continue to request upgrades and rely upon SCO’s UNIX services to drive their business forward,” he said.

According to a statement from the company, SNCP already has a business plan for SCO that includes pursuing its legal claims.

Unless the Norris in SNCP is Chuck, I can’t see how this will help. SCO has a dying operating system on its hands along with two lawsuits that are going absolutely nowhere. I’ve not seen too much recently about their mobile offerings either. The previous bid of $36M by York seemed high, but $100M for SCO seem ludicrous to me. One has to wonder if McBride will remain with the company if this deal closes. There is a possible silver lining here though. If Novell does win its case against SCO, now there may actually be some assets for them to take.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, SCO

SCALE 6X Follow up

February 14, 2008 1 Comment


(photos courtesy of John Stanforth via Flickr)

I’m back from SCALE 6X and finally just about caught up. SCALE was once again an outstanding time, Ilan and the entire crew put on a great expo. The speaking lineup was interesting/informative, the networking events were good, the network was stable, the expo floor was lively and I even made it out of the hotel this year. SCALE is definitely something I plan on making a year trip. Next year I may bring a recording device that Ted introduced me to, and put the content on LQ Radio. I ended up running the Open Source Jobs BOF on Saturday and was quite surprised to see that nearly the entire room was employers looking to hire. The few people who were looking for jobs had many to choose from. While there is a job slowdown right now in many markets, it doesn’t appear that Open Source is one of them. I was also able to participate in the “Weakest Geek” competition on Saturday night, along with Jono, Ken, Ted, Anthony and Don. The really smart people were the first to go, and in the end it came down to Jono and myself ;) It was fun and hopefully the crowd enjoyed it.

Attending SCALE really makes me want to consider doing something similar here in New York, but I’m not sure that I have the time to do it right. There just aren’t enough quality shows here on the east coast. It’s an idea I’ll have to toss around a bit more.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, LinuxQuestions.org, Open Source Tagged with ,

SCALE 6X

February 9, 2008 Leave a comment

I’m in LA for SCALE 6X. If you’re in the SoCal area and able to attend, i recommend it. Last night was fairly tame by SCALE standards, but I’d expect things to kick into full gear tonight. As always the speaker line up looks interesting. I haven’t made it to the expo floor yet, but there are over 70 booths this year from what I understand. If you’re at SCALE and would like to chat, drop me a line. If you’re unable to attend but would like to know more about the event, we recently did an interview for LQ Radio.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Open Source Tagged with ,

Sun acquires MySQL

January 16, 2008 1 Comment

Sun made a huge announcement today. They are acquiring MySQL AB, for roughly $1,000,000,000. From Jonathan:

But the biggest news of the day is… we’re putting a billion dollars behind the M in LAMP. If you’re an industry insider, you’ll know what that means – we’re acquiring MySQL AB, the company behind MySQL, the world’s most popular open source database.

You’ll recall I wrote about a customer event a few weeks ago, at which some of the world’s most important web companies talked to us about their technology challenges. Simultaneously, we gathered together some of the largest IT shops and their CIO’s, and spent the same two days (in adjoining rooms) listening to their views and directions.

Both sets of customers confirmed what we’ve known for years – that MySQL is by far the most popular platform on which modern developers are creating network services. From Facebook, Google and Sina.com to banks and telecommunications companies, architects looking for performance, productivity and innovation have turned to MySQL. In high schools and college campuses, at startups, at high performance computing labs and in the Global 2000. The adoption of MySQL across the globe is nothing short of breathtaking. They are the root stock from which an enormous portion of the web economy springs.

But as I pointed out, we heard some paradoxical things, too. CTO’s at startups and web companies disallow the usage of products that aren’t free and open source. They need and want access to source code to enable optimization and rapid problem resolution (although they’re happy to pay for support if they see value). Alternatively, more traditional CIO’s disallow the usage of products that aren’t backed by commercial support relationships – they’re more comfortable relying on vendors like Sun to manage global, mission critical infrastructure.

This puts products like MySQL in an interesting position. They’re a part of every web company’s infrastructure, to be sure. And though many of the more traditional companies use MySQL (from auto companies to financial institutions to banks and retailers), many have been waiting for a Fortune 500 vendor willing to step up, to provide mission critical global support.

In addition to the current MySQL offerings, Sun is unveiling new global support offerings. This has huge implications, not only for Sun and MySQL… but for Open Source in general. MySQL AB was one of the hottest commercial Open Source companies. Almost everyone thought they were headed for a 2008 IPO. Sun was already one of the largest contributors of Open Source in the world, but this puts them at the epicenter of the LAMP stack. How this will impact their on again off again relationship with Linux remains to be seen, but I’m already seeing promises that this acquisition will not impact MySQL support on non-Solaris platforms.

As you can imagine, the blogosphere is buzzing due to this announcement. I’m still digesting the news and doing as much research as I can, but the real implications of this will not be fully known for some time. I’d like to congratulation the entire MySQL AB team. Monty and David have built not only a wonderful product but a fantastic company. This is well deserved. Marten has been an exemplary Open Source CEO. Congratulations should also go to Sun. They continue to prove their dedication and understanding of Open Source. This is a fantastic pickup for them and I think it could be a great fit.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this once I have a chance to do more research and think about it further, but in the meantime here is some additional reading:

Zack Urlocker
Q&A from kaj
Press release
Tim O’Reilly

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Open Source, Sun

Is Apple Killing Linux on the Desktop?

January 11, 2008 1 Comment

It looks like some think that OS X may be “killing” Linux on the desktop. I’m not sure that’s the case, but it’s an interesting point to explore. It’s true that Apple has a much higher percentage of desktop users than Linux does. Even if Linux grew at a faster rate in the time period given, it was off a much smaller base (and is still under 1-3% by most accounts). In most cases though, I don’t think you can definitively say that if a user didn’t go with OS X that they would have gone with Linux. Apple does a lot of things really good. Marketing is certainly one of them, but they do create slick machines that are very appealing. The fact that most traditional UNIX tools work with OS X is huge. I do think the “they just work” part is a bit overblown, but it’s certainly a better out of the box experience than Linux. That being said, many of the things that make that out of the box experience possible are the reasons some people switch to Linux. You want OS X, you have to purchase an Apple. The lock in involved with the Apple experience is actually worse than with Microsoft. So if it’s a UNIX-like OS with a shiny GUI that you’re looking for, OS X may indeed be what you want. If freedom is what you’re looking for, Apple is probably not for you.

Don’t take this to mean that I don’t like Apple. I think they are doing some really cool things. They are at times Open Source friendly and are creating real choice in the mass OS market. I think people are getting increasingly frustrated with Apple policies and practices though. The evidence isn’t too difficult to find. Apple really has little incentive to have pro-customer policies. If you want an iPod, an iPhone or OS X you don’t have any choice. If you want Linux, you can get hardware from any vendor you’d like. In the end, however, I’d still contend that more OS X sales are good for Linux… not bad. It gets people used to not using Windows. It introduces them to a UNIX-based OS. It opens doors that would be hard for Linux to open. Once the Windows monopoly is broken, it will be easy for all other operating systems to get a fair look. I welcome that day.

–jeremy

Filed under Apple, Linux

Open Source Code Contains Security Holes

January 10, 2008 4 Comments

That’s the title of a recent InformationWeek article. I hope this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. All code contains bugs, and some of those bugs may turn into security issues.

Open source code, much like its commercial counterpart, tends to contain one security exposure for every 1,000 lines of code, according to a program launched by the Department of Homeland Security to review and tighten up open source code’s security.

Popular open source projects, such as Samba, the PHP, Perl, and Tcl dynamic languages used to bind together elements of Web sites, and Amanda, the popular open source backup and recovery software running on half a million servers, were all found to have dozens or hundreds of security exposures and quality defects.

A total of 7,826 open source project defects have been fixed through the Homeland Security review, or one every two hours since it was launched in 2006, according to David Maxwell, open source strategist for Coverity, maker of the source code checking system, the Prevent Software Quality System, that’s being used in the review.

A couple comments. Looking at the defect rate for some popular Open Source projects, they are consistently way below the average:

* Samba was found to have a total of 236 defects, a far lower rate than average for 450,000 lines of code. Of the 236 defects, 228 have been corrected, said Maxwell in an interview.
* Linux came in with far fewer defects than average as did a number of other open source projects. The version 2.6 of the Linux kernel had a security bug rate of .127 per thousand lines of code.
* The Apache Web server includes 135,916 lines of code, which yielded a security defect rate of .14 bugs per thousand lines of code.
* The PostgreSQL database system contains 909,148 lines of code, with a .041 defect rate.

I think those numbers speak volumes about the Open Source methodology. Beyond that though, is the fact that a study like this can be done in the first place. That’s the real power of Open Source. Security defects aren’t hidden and denied. They are out in the open and actively being fixed. Security by obscurity is a myth.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Open Source

On the record with Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat's new CEO

January 4, 2008 Leave a comment

When Red Hat announced that Jim Whitehurst, the COO of Delta, would be taking over for Matthew Szulik there were quite a few skeptics. As I noted, going outside the tech industry for a CEO has had both its ups and downs. After reading this interview of Jim Whitehurst by Matt Asay, I have to admit that I am more optimistic than I was before. A couple snippets:

Tell me a little bit about yourself. What are the last three bands you listened to on your iPod?

I don’t have an iPod (or a Zune). It won’t play Ogg Vorbis files.

…

When the airline industry appeared to be falling apart, Delta’s CEO asked me to be COO. I had been serving as the treasurer of the company (while still at BCG). I became the finance/strategy guy for a few years and ran Delta for the past two years with the company, except for Finance, reporting to me. I left Delta on good terms.

I looked at doing further corporate turnaround work. But I’ve found that I have to have a mission to fuel my work. I can’t just work for a paycheck. Just turning around a random company had no interest for me.

Red Hat appealed to me. Red Hat is different. By doing well as a company at Red Hat we are doing good. Open source is a way to focus on the customer, letting us grow, succeed, and change the technology landscape…all while doing something that is fundamentally good. Fighting for open standards and open formats. These things will change society. I’m thrilled to be here.

…

When I look at the quality of our existing technology, and the incredible brand that we have and the markets we play in, we should be a $5 billion company or more. If you just look at operating systems and middleware – that’s nearly a $100 billion business. We’re a $500 million business. We have barely scratched the surface.

We need to figure out what our “fair share” of each market should be and aggressively go after it. We need to make sure we nail the markets we’re already in. I’m not saying we won’t go broader, but we really need to ensure we’re building our presence in our core markets and technologies. Perhaps we need to set our ambitions a bit higher.

…

You just became leader of the “free world.” You also must appease Wall Street, which cares less about freedom of code and more about certainty of profits. How do you balance the two? Developers and investors?

I actually don’t think it’s a hard line to walk at all. If you fundamentally believe, which I do, that open source is a superior way to develop software, then that is our mission and that is what we’re going to do.

There will always be distractions: suggestions that we should make a product proprietary, the idea that we can get to revenue faster by adding proprietary this or that. But we fundamentally believe this is a better way to build a software business. The two groups are appeased together.

It’s all about serving your core constituency – the customer.

I suggest you read the entire interview, but I really like what he’s saying from both a technical and business perspective. I’d say that under Jim there is a very good chance we’ll see Red Hat become the first pure play $1 Billion Open Source company. From there, the sky is the limit.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Open Source, Red Hat

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