Ellison Talks Up Red Hat Linux

August 2, 2006 Leave a comment

It seems the rumors that Oracle may offer Red Hat support are intensifying. One thing that seems to be slightly misunderstood by the MSM is that Oracle can't simply redistribute RHEL. What they could do is offer a RHEL-compatible version of Linux, as CentOS does, that is completely devoid of the Red Hat name and any associated logos. This would be a fairly inexpensive thing to do for Oracle, and to be honest it doesn't have a lot of down side to it. Ellison would get the entire stack that he seems to desperately want and customers would get a single neck to choke, which they love. As I mentioned in my previous post on this topic though, I don't necessarily think this would be a bad thing for Red Hat. It would serve to further solidify Linux as the platform of choice for Oracle and really serve to further validate Linux as a server in general (not that it's even needed any more at this point). While RHAT may lose some support contracts to ORCL in the short run, the mind share that Linux would gain would almost certainly benefit Red Hat in the mid and long term. Now, if I were Microsoft and Sun, this would worry me much more. They have the most to lose.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Ballmer Analyzes Microsoft's 'One Big' Vista Mistake

August 2, 2006 Leave a comment

This <a href="http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarchives.jhtml;jsessionid=ZEQ0I0LMYJC1MQSNDLPCKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleId=191600739"CRN article covers a recent meeting Steve Ballmer had with industry financial analysts. From the article we get such Ballmer quotes as:

We made an upfront decision that was, I'll say, incredibly strategic and brilliant and wise — and was not implementable,” Ballmer said.
We've been fortunate. There is nothing that we have undertaken — with a couple of exceptions like Microsoft Bob that I'll cop to in advance — where we have decided that we have not succeeded and let's stop,” Ballmer said. “We've either succeeded, or we're still telling you we're going to succeed.”
I don't understand either quote either. I'd not call any decision that is “not implementable” by admission of the company CEO as strategic, brilliant or wise. If I were a Microsoft employee, I'd be a little worried by that comment. In the end, it seems they may have finally learned a lesson that Joel posted about way back in 2000. It's easy to say hindsight is 20/20, but I guess sometimes foresight can be also. The second quote is equally as odd. Multiple things Microsoft has tried have failed miserably, and in fact he points out one of the most egregious examples himself..in the middle of saying nothing hasn't succeeded. I guess one shouldn't be surprised that Microsoft's stock has stagnated during much of Ballmer's tenure. Still no news on whether he'll follow Bill and step down.
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Second Discussion Draft of GPLv3 Released

July 30, 2006 1 Comment

The second discussion draft of the GNU General Public License version 3 was released on 2006 July 27, along with the first discussion draft of the GNU Lesser General Public License. While the DRM clause has been updated and clarified, Linus still doesn't likeit. From the CNET article:
“Say I'm a hardware manufacturer. I decide I love some particular piece of open-source software, but when I sell my hardware, I want to make sure it runs only one particular version of that software, because that's what I've validated. So I make my hardware check the cryptographic signature of the binary before I run it,” Torvalds said. “The GPLv3 doesn't seem to allow that, and in fact, most of the GPLv3 changes seem to be explicitly designed exactly to not allow the above kind of use, which I don't think it has any business doing.”
The DRM debate here is getting quite heated. Out of my disdain for DRM, I initially disagreed with Linus. As I think about it more though, I am starting to agree with him. Let me explain why. His contention (or at least my interpretation of it) is not that DRM is good, it's that it's not within the rights of a software license to put restrictions on a hardware device. I think that's true and the clause is also a statement that markets don't work. If some hardware vendors out there wants to make a device that only runs software version foo, I can't see a problem with that (as long as the hardware manufacturer is explicit in this requirement). You still have full access to the code and are free to run it elsewhere. You're freedom is not limited and you'd have bought the device knowing full well what the restrictions are. You are free not to purchase such a device and if a sufficient number of people do not, the company will go out of business – ie. the market made the decision. Now, let me go from hypothetical to a situation where I think this would actually be useful. I'd like to see all voting software Open Sourced. The nature of voting in democratic counties is such that we should have full access to the code that decides our leaders. A single bug could be absolutely detrimental and have astounding implications (Bush for a third term anyone?). The more eyes on that code the better. BUT, the voting machines themselves should certainly only run the exact version of the code that has been certified for obvious reasons. The GPLv3 seems to preclude that possibility. DRM aside, it seems like many other large companies, such as HP, have problems with other clauses. All in all, it seems like v3 of the GPL is going to have a very rough time gaining adoption and may serve to further polarize the Open Source licensing landscape, where concerns over proliferation already abound.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Google announces hosting for open source projects

July 29, 2006 Leave a comment

The Google service I mentioned previously has been officially announced. Google Code Project Hosting is a place for Open Source project that fall under an approved license to host their code. While it shares some features with SourceForge, it's a much more minimalist approach (although they do add that it's not yet feature complete). They do specifically state that they do not intend to compete directly with SF:
Stein says, “We really like SourceForge, and we don't want to hurt SourceForge” or take away projects. Instead, Stein says that the goal is to see what Google can do with the Google infrastructure, to provide an alternative for open source projects.
DiBona says that it's a “direct result of Greg concentrating on what open source projects need. Most bugtrackers are informed by what corporations” and large projects need, whereas Google's offering is just about what open source developers need.
While Google does not offer project web site hosting (Google pages isn't integrated, but is an alternative), forums, etc. – many SF projects don't seem to use them anyway. What Google is offering seems to directly target the places where you hear the most complaints about SF, and that's: reliability, search and version control. You have to assume it will be reliable as it's Google. The same goes for the quality of the search (although to be fair the SF search has improved somewhat recently). The CVS support at SF was horrific and they still seem to be ironing out the kinks in their SVN support. Google is offering SVN with their custom Big Table backend, so it should be extremely scalable. The issue tracker the site uses is one developed by Google. I'd guess the long term impact of this on SF won't be clear until we see what the Google offering looks like feature complete. For now, both sides seem to be looking forward to a peaceful almost symbiotic coexistence, which shows the maturity and solidarity of the Open Source community.
–jeremy
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Filed under Google, Main Page, Open Source

IE7 to be Pushed to Users Via Windows Update

July 27, 2006 Leave a comment

If you're an ecommerce site, you'd better start testing your site in IE7. Why? It looks like they are going to push it out via automatic update, right before the holidays. From the article:
IE 7 will be delivered in the fourth quarter as a “high priority” update via Automatic Updates in Windows XP, Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of IE product management, said in an interview Tuesday.
“The justification, of course, is the significant security enhancements in IE 7,” Schare said. Microsoft recommends that all Windows users install the new browser when it ships, he added.
While it should be noted that users will have the ability to choose not to install the update, I'd guess most will click yes out of habit. Microsoft will also be offering a “Internet Explorer 7 Blocker Toolkit” for businesses. This automatic update could be a mixed blessing. While anything is likely to be more security that IE6, who knows how some sites will end up rendering. The good news for us standards based coders is that we may be ok as IE7 looks to be more compliant than any previous release. If you coded to the quirks of IE6 though, you may be in trouble. I'd still recommend Firefox if you're looking for a better browsing experience, although 1.5.x on Linux has been a bit unstable for me.
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Re-thinking the Windows Refund

July 26, 2006 1 Comment

Just came across this LXer article and I think there's a fairly large oversight in there. From the article:
Consider Microsoft Windows in a similar light. It has the lion's share of the desktop market. It has a huge selection of applications that people can choose from. Yet, because of its historical instability, insecurity, and because it's practically impossible to fix without re-installing the whole OS, for which the vendor no longer includes any media, it has lost tremendous value. Indeed, one needs to deduct about 10% from the value just for the Windows Registry alone. I won't mention Internet Explorer. In fact, Windows has lost so much value, that computer manufacturers can actually dump Windows PCs on the marketplace cheaper than they can offer computers without any OS.
The contention is that Windows is actually decreasing the value of a computer. While I'm as pro-Linux as almost anyone, that thinking is a bit extreme. Maybe this is a common misconception though, so let me explain what is actually going on here. Companies like AOL pay companies like Dell to have their software preinstalled. So many companies pay in fact, that for the large manufacturers the money they bring in on these deals actually exceeds the cost of a Windows license for them. In essence, you're getting a subsidized version of Windows as someone is paying for it, it's just not you. Now, don't take this to mean I don't think the current OEM situation is criminal, it's just a bit too ideological to think that just because we see the flaws in Windows that it will devalue a piece of hardware to the general public.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Yes, Virginia, there will be a Flash Player 9 for Linux

July 26, 2006 Leave a comment

Somehow I missed this, but there has been confirmation from Adobe/Macromedia that they will be releasing Flash Player 9 for Linux. While this is likely not of interest for the 100% OSS-at-all-costs group, I think it's encouraging. As much as I loathe flash ads, many interesting things do happen in flash. Increasingly, those things require Flash 8 or greater, which is frustrating. This will bring Linux in line with Windows and Mac. If Flash Player on Linux is a topic that interests you, the Penguin.SWF blog tracks its development and is an interesting read. Some of what's posted is good new, some is not but it's great to see an honest perspective from an insider. Still no word on a Photoshop port though :)
–jeremy
Linux, Flash, Adobe, Macromedia, Open Source, ADBE

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

What can we Learn from Microsoft

July 25, 2006 Leave a comment

Steven Vaughan-Nichols lists his top five things Linux can learn from Microsoft. This list is:

1. MSDN
2. Common Interface
3. Common Format
4. Marketing
5. OEM Support
While I don't 100% agree with every ascertation he makes, he brings up some very valid points. I think Marketing and OEM Support are going to be absolutely critical if we ever want to really cross the chasm. I'd still contend that once we get to the other side we might not like where we are, but that's a separate topic. As for number 1, better documentation for developers is something we sorely need and I've heard a recent rumor that OSDL will be putting one full time staffer on this. That would be extremely helpful and a single person dedicated to this could make a substantial impact. Let's hope they follow through. In the end, all too often I think we're too quick to just ignore or blindly hate Microsoft, which is not in our best interest. It's good to get a reminder sometimes that we need to stay the path, focus on where we are doing well/where we can improve and focus on what's important.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

A New Google Service

July 25, 2006 Leave a comment

I was already disappointed that I wasn't able to attend OSCON this year (it's an absolutely fantastic event). Then I saw this. At a talk on Thursday, Greg Stein will be releasing details about a new Google Service for the Open Source community. Let the speculation begin. Is it an Open Source code repository searchable via Google technology? A SourceForge-esque operation? A source repository from Google? We'll see in about 48 hours :)
–jeremy
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Filed under Google, Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Ottawa Linux Symposium

July 24, 2006 Leave a comment

Another conference that I meant to go to that has slipped by (yes, that means I am missing OSCON as I type this). Newsforge has posted a very thorough wrapup, which includes the closing keynote by Greg KH. To summarize:
Linux supports more devices than anyone else. Linux progresses by evolution, not design. Closed source drivers are illegal. Linux can use help with reviews and testing.
That's an overly succinct summation though and if you're at all interested in Linux kernel development you should read the entire thing. I've made a note in my Treo to remind myself about this conference next year, so hopefully I'll see everyone there. Notes from previous days are also available.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

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