Open Source: Architecture or Goodwill?

August 10, 2006 Leave a comment

Sparked by a debate between Jeremy Zawodny and Matt Asay about whether companies like Yahoo! and Google are good Open Source citizens, Tim O'Reilly has posted an interesting Radar piece about the future of Open Source in a world that is increasingly web-based. From the post by Tim:
There are a lot of reasons why people make their code open source. I believe that one of the strongest original motivations has often been overlooked. Our hagiography tells the tale of how it all started with the quest for software freedom. But contemporaneous with Richard Stallman's story, other people were taking the same path (releasing source code) for a very different reason: the architecture of Unix.
The Software as a Service movement certainly has the potential to shake up what Open Source means to software. Tim makes some insightful points.
But in the world of Web 2.0, applications never need to be distributed. They are simply performed on the internet's global stage. What's more, they are global in scope, often running on hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands of servers. They have vast databases, and complex business processes required to keep those databases up to date.
As a result, one of the motivations to share — the necessity of giving a copy of the source in order to let someone run your program — is truly gone. Not only is it no longer required, in the case of the largest applications, it's no longer possible.
That's why companies are having to think about new ways to “open source” their product. In the O'Reilly Radar Executive Briefing at OSCON, we looked at three of those ways:
The GPLv3 does make an attempt to address some of this issue, but the software world is rapidly changing and we could very well be at an inflection point. Open Source may very well have to go through an evolution to keep pace. Here's hoping our leaders and visionaries are listening. Indeed, as Tim says, the story has not been written.
–jeremy
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Filed under Google, Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Jono is the new Ubuntu Community Manager

August 10, 2006 Leave a comment

A quick congratulations to Jono, who will be the new Ubuntu Community Manager. I had a good number of beers with Jono at the last SCALE and he's a good guy who's well deserving of the position. He should have his work cut out for him trying to toe the line between Debian, Ubuntu and Canonical. Good luck Jono.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Andrew Morton Moves To Google

August 9, 2006 Leave a comment

In a move I somehow missed a couple days ago, Andrew Morton is now employed by Google, where he'll continue to maintain the 2.6 Linux kernel. From the article:
The reason for this odd statement is explained by who was funding Morton's employment to begin with. Morton was named a full-time Open Source Development Labs Fellow in July 2003, and it is a common misperception that he was directly employed the OSDL. In actuality, Morton was employed by Palo Alto-based Digeo Interactive.
“My position there was funded by OSDL so that I could work on the kernel full-time,” Morton said in an interview with Linux Today.
Until recently, the arrangement worked very well for the developer, who is oft-times referred to as Linus Torvalds' right-hand man. But recently, changes began to take place.
“There were reorganizations at Digeo which would have changed my work situation in ways which were not attractive, and it was time to move on,” Morton explained.
The OSDL offered to directly employ Morton while he worked from home, but Morton indicated that he preferred to work in an office with other engineers. Thus a search for a new home was underway.
He also added his desire to work for a company that did not have a vested commercial interest in the kernel.org kernel. On the heels of the Google Code Project Hosting announcement, Google is clearly stepping up its Open Source support.
–jeremy
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Filed under Google, Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Niall Kennedy is Leaving Microsoft

August 9, 2006 Leave a comment

That didn't take long. Niall Kennedy, who was seen as an ad hoc blogger evangelist replacement for Scoble at Microsoft, is already leaving. From his post:
The stock plummeted on the announcement Microsoft did not have its costs under control. Microsoft's market cap lost close to $59 billion in the six weeks after I joined and second quarter financials were released, more than the GDP of Ecuador and over half the market cap of Google. What do you do when the market responds to your 6 month-old online services strategy by reducing your valuation by 1.5 Yahoos? Windows Live is under some heavy change, reorganization, pullback, and general paralysis and unfortunately my ability to perform, hire, and execute was completely frozen as well.
Looks like Microsoft may be taking the short sighted approached and be letting the Street dictate a bit too much. Microsoft, in a bit of irony if you ask me, is in the middle of what Clayton Christensen calls the Innovator's Dilemma. A disruptive technology is upon us, but the sustaining technology for Microsoft (in the form of Windows and Office) is just too much of a cash cow. They can't move away too fast, lest they loss too much of their incoming cash, but at the same time they face a very real possibility of being left behind. Add to that attempting to placate Wall Street and you have one snarky situation on your hands. Now, Microsoft has a ton of cash to help them in this, but at the rate they are going to have to spend, that cash could go away faster than one might think. Now, I'm not one of those Open Source fanatics that will claim Microsoft will be irrelevant this time next year. They'll be relevant for a long time to come. But there is a strong possibility that a major snafu now will mark the beginning of the end. Keep in mind though, the “end” won't be a company that goes out of business, but one that looks like the railroads or Xerox does today. I continue to wonder how history will look back on Ballmer.
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Apple Opens Up: Kernel, Mac OS Forge, iCal Server, Bonjour, Launchd

August 9, 2006 Leave a comment

After taking a bit of heat for appearing to have closed the XNU source, Apple just announce that XNU and more are being released as Open Source. The projects will be hosted at Mac OS Forge, which will be replacing the OpenDarwin servers and may serve as a home for external (non-Apple) Open Source projects in the future. The one thing I found a bit odd while the previous story was making its rounds was how much heat Apple was taking. They aren't an Open Source company, and the don't really claim to be. They do, however, support Open Source where they feel it's advantageous or beneficial. That's more than can be said for most proprietary software companies. My guess is that the delay was a result of them not wanting the PPC->Intel news to leak too early, or simply that they didn't have sufficient time to cleanup the code for release. It could be something more nefarious though (such as them intending to really close that source and just now changing their mind). The former seems much more likely, but in the end we'll almost certainly never know.
The current list of what Apple is releasing is quite impressive from the brief look I gave it. Especially compelling is the Darwin Calendar Server (also known as iCal Server). This may have the best potential to serve as an Exchange replacement as anything I've seen to date (although it should be noted that Zimbra makes a really good product). Also interesting was the mention of “Apple Teams” on the list of supported clients, which also includes Mozilla Thunderbird. It looks like a wiki-based client that will support team collaboration and shared calendaring. On the topic of licensing, most releases are being done under the Apache license, and in fact some apps that were previous released under the Apple Public Source License have been converted. It's good to see Apple doing their part in cutting down on license proliferation.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Jeremy Zawodny and Ubuntu Linux on his Thinkpad T43p

August 8, 2006 1 Comment

Jeremy Zawodny just tried Ubuntu 6.06 on a recently purchased Thinkpad T43p. His thoughts? WOW! A quote:
Given all that, I'm shocked and amazed. It works. It just works.
I think this is a very good sign that desktop Linux is well on its way. It's not there yet, but we've crossed an important barrier. I see Jeremy and users like him as the next wave of Linux adopters. They're technically savvy and have tried Linux before, only to give up for various reasons. For the most part, those “various reasons” are almost completely a thing of the past. That's significant. I've heard good things about SLED (Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop) as well. One of these days I'll have to try Ubuntu and SLED to see what I'm missing out on. In the meantime, it's encouraging to see users like Jeremy coming back to Linux and liking it.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Couple Quick Followups

August 6, 2006 Leave a comment

I had a could quick followups to previous stories, so I'll lump them together in this post.
– On the topic of Ubuntu still being a fairly new offering in the server market, it looks like they now have a Ubuntu Billboard up in California. It's right near the exit for the Oracle offices, which has at least one Oracle employee wondering what Canonical is up to.
– Newsforge has posted Torvalds' comments on GPLv3 committees refuted which is a response to the piece I posted about here. The GPLv3 issue looks like one that is going to get really heated, which isn't going to be good for anyone (at least not anyone in the F/OSS world).
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Lenovo to Load Linux on ThinkPad Laptop

August 5, 2006 Leave a comment

In a topic that I've covered quite a bit over the years, Lenovo will be announcing a ThinkPad with Linux preloaded at the upcoming LinuxWorld. As I've mentioned many times, OEM support on a large scale is critical to those who'd like to see mainstream Linux adoption. This is the first time in a while that a major OEM has announced something related to Linux preloads. Remember that Dell and others will load Linux as a special order for large clients. Not a lot of details on this deal yet, but I still don't see it as that break through deal. It's specific to a single model and I'd guess that the Microsoft Windows XP Professional [standard] [Lenovo recommended] line on the order page won't be going away. In the end, the deal that we need (and the one that will signal mainstream adoption to me) is one where Linux is an available option across a manufacturers product line. No specific models, no special order – simply a regular option. Unfortunately, we're almost certainly a ways off on this. How long? That remains to be seen.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Why Red Hat will go bust because of Ubuntu

August 4, 2006 1 Comment

In this Free Software Magazine article, Tony Mobily gives the reasons why he thinks Red Hat will go under. The main reasons he gives are their departure from the desktop market and Ubuntu. While I also wasn't a fan of the way Red Hat did what they did, i think it's a bit myopic to be calling for their demise. The year of “Linux on the Desktop” has been declared so many times that it's now an industry joke. While it's absolutely true that Microsoft gained much of their dominance by attacking the desktop first, that was a different era that played by different rules. Linux on the desktop is at a very tenuous point right now. From a stability standpoint it is so much better than Windows that it's not even a contest. Same goes for security. But, from a usability and application standpoint it's still not that close. No amount of wishing will make it so. We still don't have out of the box mp3 support. No current Flash and no Photoshop at all. Many things are still a manual configure. What does that mean? The Linux desktop is the desktop of choice for many of us. In reality though, we've not even caught up to the Mac yet, so why some people seem to think it will overtake Windows in a year is beyond me. Red Hat could not attain any semblance of desktop penetration, so they bailed. I think they could have made some different moves, but of course hindsight is 20/20. I think their server offering is of a high enough quality and is entrenched enough that many people will stick with it, at least for the mid term (and by mid term I am talking many many years here). Don't forget, to many enterprises Red Hat is Linux on multiple levels. On to Ubuntu. I have to admit, I really like what they are doing. To be fair though they have very little track record and have not proven what they'll be able to do once the money Mark so graciously donated is gone. They have to build a viable business before that money is gone, or else they're in big trouble. Even if they do build a viable business, I'd be more worried if I was Novell than if I was Red Hat. I have no doubts that the enterprise distro market will heat up, but Ubuntu is still a very new offering. Desktop success doesn't translate directly into server success with Linux. You want Oracle support for Ubuntu? Nope. Well, surely an Open Source company like Zimbra will mention Ubuntu on their downloads page. Also a no (although they do have beta Debian support). Same goes for EMC, Veritas, and most other enterprise products. In the end, I think it's a bit too early in the game to see who will be the eventual dominant player (or more likely, players). It could be Red Hat, Novell and Ubuntu – but realistically it could be something else. Remember though, people no longer want one single dominant player (and for good reason). If I had to guess I'd say all major distributions will be in the picture for the foreseeable future.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

The LQ Bookmarks site is moving

August 3, 2006 Leave a comment

About a year ago, we released LQ Bookmarks, a site for Social Bookmarking, tagging and annotating all things Linux and Open Source. The site has seen decent adoption, but not to the level I'd have liked. I think one thing holding the site back was the lack of integrated logins. We're closing in on 300,000 registered LQ members and we were not taking advantage of that. Also, the site was very functional, but a bit plain even by LQ standards (where functionality trumps design every time). I am happy to announce that we just relaunched the site at http://www.linuxquestions.org/bookmarks/. The new site has an updated look, a unified LQ login, supports the del.icio.us API, has a nice tag cloud and more. If you used the old site you can import your bookmarks to the new site with a single click. The site should be considered BETA, but seems fairly stable at the moment. As always your feedback is welcome. We'll start redirecting tags from the old site to the new in a few weeks.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

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