LinuxWorld Boston Wrapup

April 14, 2006 Leave a comment

Taking a quick look at my last post (which is tagged LinuxWorld, I realized that I never posted a LinuxWorld wrapup. LQ once again exhibited at LWE in the .org Pavilion. We've been participants in numerous cities from New York to San Francisco to Boston to London. Exhibiting at LWE is always a fantastic time. The .org Pavilion always has a very fun set of both visitors and exhibitors. This year was no different. In fact, the “Best of Show” winner OpenSuse with located directly next to us. The LQ booth was a little less staffed than normal for us. This was the result of a last minute issue that came up for a traveling mod. The show was a little quieter than normal though, so Robin and I had no problems manning the both with just two people. Asking around a little, most (if not all) exhibitors said the show was quieter this year than last, and almost all attributed it to the location (which was BCEC this year and Hynes last year). The new BCEC is very nice, but the location of Hynes is much better. Back to the show itself, it started off with a bang when the Unisys booth literally caught on fire. Things settled down from there though and the rest of the expo went as expected. One interesting thing to see after exhibiting at these for a fair number of years now is the shear number of people who are either LQ members or at least remember getting help from the site. When we first exhibited in New York, the most popular question, BY FAR, was “what is LinuxQuestions.org”. That is no longer the case by a long shot. The shear number of people who come over to the booth just to shake our hand and say hello is staggering. It makes it all worth while (and then some). As usual the after expo festivities were in full swing in Boston. We didn't make the SugarCRM party unfortunately, but some of the Fedora guys said it was a great time. I got to chat with the TLTS guys quite a bit and they're a great group. All in all another great LWE. I hope LQ is once again invited to San Francisco, if we are I'll see you there. On the conference note, I have confirmed my trip to San Diego for DLS, so if you'd like to connect there, drop me a line.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, LinuxWorld, Main Page, Open Source

Real networks, DRM and Linux

April 11, 2006 6 Comments

It looks like Jeff Ayars from Real had the following to say at LinuxWorld in Boston:
“The consequences of Linux not supporting DRM would be that fixed-purpose consumer electronics and Windows PCs would be the sole entertainment platforms available,” Ayers said. “Linux would be further relegated to use in servers and business computers, since it would not be providing the multimedia technologies demanded by consumers.”
A couple comments here. First, Linux is not nearly currently anything that would even come close to resembling a consumer entertainment platform. 9 out of 10 distros still don't support MP3 out of the box. Before you chime in with shouts of livna (which is fantastic and I use and recommend), note that we are talking consumer here. If you think the answer to playing the most widely supported audio format is “first, enable this yum repo and then install the following packages”, then you're clearly not the average consumer. So that brings us back to a topic I have talked about on this blog time and time again. What are we going to give up in the Linux community to get that much talked about “mass adoption”. My guess is, you're going to find out very soon. I'd say 12-18 months at the most and we'll start to see some of the myriad decisions start to unravel. I've said it in the past and I'll say it again. I'd prefer not to hit 90% market share if it costs us much of why most people think Linux is good. What market share do I think is the max if we don't conceded on some of these issues and what market share is acceptable for the major Linux vendors out there? The former is a question I've been thinking a lot about lately and one that I had a lengthy discussion about at LinuxWorld. I'm still thinking though, so I don't have an answer yet. The latter I really have no idea about, you'd have to ask them.
So, that brings us to the next topic. DRM. Like most others, I really don't like DRM. I'm pretty sure consumers are not clammering for DRM. What they want is the content, and the media companies currently seem to be insisting on putting DRM on that. One problem with DRM though, is that it barely even slows down piracy, but is a major hindrance to people trying to do legitimate things in a way that the content industry may not have thought of. Something as simply as purchasing a song in iTunes and playing it in Linux for instance. The reality though, is that not only do most people not care about DRM – they don't even know what it is! I think that will soon change though. Why? Let's break people down into four basic groups. This may be a bit of an oversimplification, but I think it will illustrate my point.
1) The average user
2) The person who will pirate everything, for no other reason than to do it
3) The technically savvy crowd who dislikes DRM not because they want to pirate, but because of the privacy and convenience issues
4) The few people technically skilled enough to actually figure out and circumvent DRM and then distribute tools for groups 2+3 to use.
Right now, DRM really only impacts group #3 (which I would put myself in – I have *no* problem purchasing 100% of the software and content I use, but if it doesn't work on my platform of choice I have no problem simply finding something else to use/watch). Group #2 uses the tools that group #4 created and has 300 movies download of which they have probably watched 4. This group should be considered non sequitur for the content industry, since nearly NONE of them would likely purchase any content no matter what. That brings us to group #1, which represents the vast majority of the content purchasing public. Right now, DRM probably has not inconvenienced them too much. However, if the content industry gets their way with some of the proposed asinine implementations, they will be severely impacted. Who will they turn to when their file doesn't play, their movies doesn't load or whatever other content they have doesn't work? If you're in group #3, you're probably smiling, because you know it's you. The content industries are getting greedy now. They are turning record profits (pun intended) but they want more. But their greed will be their undoing. Once group #1 becomes sufficiently inconvenienced that they start listening to what group #3 has to say about DRM, there can be only one outcome. The same outcome that always eventually happens when a company or group tries to do something that is inherently not in the best interest of the masses. Revolution. The sad part here is that DRM could legitimately be used in a whole host of interesting ways. It seems greed my just not allow that though.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Jboss vs Red Hat, who is more Open Source

April 10, 2006 Leave a comment

Sometimes after I blog about something, I click the technorati tags for the post and check out what others are saying about the topic I've posted about. In fact, I did so for the previous post, entitled Red Hat Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire JBoss. Indeed, I found something interesting. There were more than a couple links to this post, from Jboss CEO Marc Fleury. The post is blank, you might say after clicking on it. Indeed it is, but enter the Google cache. The Sun vs Red Hat, who is more Open Source post contains the following (amongst much more):

* So to me both SUN and RH are open source “wannabees”, or as one of my developers put “open source girly men”.
* Today RH *IS* a proprietary vendor.
* RH is a packager, it doesn't create JACK, it doesn't create Linux, it wraps it up in proprietary shit. And no the contributions that they make don't really count. Linus Torvalds creates Linux.
* RH likes to pretend they are the open source community, waiving its flag. While this used to impress Wall Street it doesn't impress us.
Well, you get the idea. Now to be fair, that was posted a long time ago – “28 Sep 2004” in fact. While I don't find it odd or disturbing that Marc said any of those things, nor is there any indication that he still believes those things (at least in that exact form) two years later, I do wonder when and why the post was actually removed. I checked archive.org, but they have zero copies of the page. The Google cache says “as retrieved on Apr 7, 2006 03:44:47 GMT”, but I have no idea how accurate that really is. One of the great things in the Open Source community is the transparency. In the days of blogging and the Google cache, it's hard to hide anything anyway. I'm sure if you search on this blog you'll find something I said in 2004 that I'd vehemently disagree with now. We all live and learn after all. But that's a good thing, not something to hide. I still very much believe that the acquisition is a good thing for Red Hat, Jboss and the Open Source community in general…but curiosity does have me wondering about the exact delete date and what the removal reason was. Maybe he was just getting harassed for continually calling Michael “Tielman” instead of “Tiemann” ;)
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Red Hat Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire JBoss

April 10, 2006 Leave a comment

The rumors were wrong. Oracle isn't going to acquire Jboss, Red Hat is. A very interesting move I think, one that is a little more aggressive than Red Hat has been lately. RHAT went up almost 10% on the news. From the press release:
Red Hat will acquire JBoss for approximately $350 million in initial consideration, plus approximately $70 million subject to the achievement of certain future performance metrics. The transaction consideration is composed of approximately 40% in cash and 60% in Red Hat common stock.
I think this is extremely good news for Jboss and its community. Red Hat gets Open Source. They have proven it time and time again. The end goals, not to mention community and culture, of Jboss are also much more aligned with Red Hat than with Oracle. While Oracle hasn't done anything crazy with InnoDB or Sleepy yet, you still have to admit their long term independence is far from secure. With this purchase, Red Hat is taking another step further away from being a software company and closer to being a services one. That's another nice thing about merging the Jboss product offerings into the Red Hat suite – they're already a subscription based model.
Taking a step back for a moment, this move has all kinds of ancillary repercussions. Red Hat has traditionally had IBM as a very strong partner. They now have a directly competing product though, so we'll have to see how IBM reacts. RHEL has always been one of Oracle's preferred platforms. With Red Hat + Jboss will we now see a minor shift toward SLES from Oracle? BEA is already jumping on this one, claiming that they are now the only independent vendor of application servers, “not tied to a particular OS or database”. They've even gone as far as to say they would potentially leverage Jboss and contribute to the project if the IP model changed. In the end, I think this was a great move for Red Hat though, assuming they can limit the Oracle and IBM fallout. This will get their foot in the door at a whole range of high end installations that they just wouldn't have seen before. Now, they just need to convert that foot in the door to more subscription sales.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

LQ Now Fully Supports Tagging

April 8, 2006 Leave a comment

I've talked about Social Networking at LQ a couple times before. We've taken that a step further today and the site now fully supports tagging. While the hierarchical layout of a forum is great for classifying information, it does lack a little in the way of flexibility. Double posting is frowned upon, so it's not easy to get something into Networking and Hardware for instance. While the forum layout will of course remain, tagging will allow much more granular categorization. You can put your thread in Hardware but tag it with networking, broadcom and whatever else you feel is important. The really powerful part for us is that any LQ member can also tag any post, so you'll really be able to get an idea of what is going on in the LQ community (and therefore the Linux community to an extent). This is just stage one of the rollout, we have a couple of really cool ways to use the data coming up really soon. Enjoy!
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Paul Allen and Microsoft

April 3, 2006 1 Comment

I had always wondered why Paul Allen had exited Microsoft so early and so completely. While he remained on the board for years after his departure, for a founder he never really seemed to have any close ties with the company he helped start. I thought maybe the inequitable setup between him and Bill Gates might have rubbed him the wrong way, but considering how he made out finacially in the end that seems a bit far fetched. Cringely offers more details that I hadn't heard before. This article is certainly fuel for flames Internet-wide, but without more context it's hard for me to join in. When you own a company, it's your fiduciary responsibility to make sure things run smooth. While the topic discussed is an unfortunate one and one most people will never have to deal with, it is one that is just reality. That's were context comes into play, at least for me. It could have been a discussion of the “we need to get these shares before this guy croaks” variety or of the “if he unfortunately does not pull through this, we need to ensure that the company survives” variety. Given the personalities involved, it may vary well have been the former but I'm not in a position to know that. I'm guessing only Bill and Steve (and possibly Paul, depending on how good his hearing is) will ever know. Maybe Bill is so philanthropic now as a result of guilt brought on by decisions like these (or maybe he just needs the tax break). To me the interesting question raised here is, what would Microsoft look like today if Paul Allen had 50% and/or had stayed at Microsoft. Their corporate culture would be different for sure, but they may very well have been less financially successful in the short term (having possibly been less shady). The current deep distrust and dislike by many may have been avoidable then though. Less anti-monopoly lawsuits and less “anything to get away from Microsoft” sentiment. That means many less people (from an end user perspective, not a developer one) may have even considered Open Source. Steve and Bill really are creating their own worst enemy in many ways, aren't they. In the end we'll never know. Paul sums things up from his side quite nicely though – “I made out okay”. At least financially, he sure did…
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Microsoft Delays IE's ActiveX D-Day

March 30, 2006 2 Comments

In a somewhat ironic turn of events, Microsoft is being forced to change how ActiveX works in order to avoid a software patent held by Eolas. So much for proprietary software indemnifying you from patent issues. As a heavy user of the web and a proponent of open standards, I'm really happy to see anything that decreases the use of ActiveX. It's insecure and only works in IE, but that doesn't stop people from using it for some reason. On the flip side though, this is yet another example of why software patents are bad. I'd like to think a light would go on at some companies when a system they support is used against them in a very questionable way, but from some reason I don't think that's going to happen. It should be interesting to watch on April 11th to see how the browser update really does change peoples perspectives on things. Will they start to learn why open standards are good and why software patents are bad? Very unlikely. Will they not care about the technical/legal stuff and simply seek out a solution that just works? Much more likely, which means it could be a good day for Firefox.
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Hilf speaks about Linux through Microsoft eyes

March 28, 2006 Leave a comment

When I saw the title of this article, I was quite interested to see what Bill Hilf had to say on the topic. As Director of Platform Technology Strategy he's in charge of the Microsoft LinuxLab, which means he must have a pretty interesting perspective on things. Unfortunately, the article was extremely light on what he thinks about Linux or about what Microsoft is actually doing with Linux. It does get a little into what they are doing with Open Source though, which is also a topic of interest for me. The first thing that caught my eye was his reason for pulling out out LinuxWorld AU – “an internal meeting that could not be moved”. Considering his job function, that must be a pretty important meeting. I found his statement about the size of his department quite telling also. “It's a small, experienced and focused team – it usually is around eight to 10 people at any given time.” Reading between the lines a bit, I'd say the department must have extremely high turnover. To be fair, I can certainly see why. The two questions he seemed to dodge, “How does Microsoft plan to make money from open source and Linux?” and “How much does Microsoft view open source and Linux as competition?” were the two I'd liked to have seen answered the most. One thing that comes up in the article is something I've seen said by multiple people from Microsoft from multiple disparate department, both on and off the record. Microsoft is learning from the OSS development model itself and are indeed using some of the methodologies and parts of the paradigm to improve their internal development process. More proof (although at this point I don't even think more proof is necessary) that the model demonstrably produces better code. Even though you know it, it's always great to see it in print in an interview like this. I think an open dialog between Bill and the Linux team at Microsoft could be quite beneficial for all involved. If anyone from Microsoft reading this interested in making it happen, feel free to contact me.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, LinuxWorld, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

More on Vista Delays

March 26, 2006 Leave a comment

The recently announced Windows Vista delays are certainly causing quite a stir, which was expected. The amount of stir being caused within the company itself though seems to be greater than I'd have anticipated. Usually, most Microsoft employees are fairly good at backing company decisions, but many seem to be getting quite frustrated at this point. Some are even calling for exec level firings, which to be honest seem reasonable at this point. They have dropped the ball multiple times now while getting compensated quite nicely. The reality here is that Microsoft has put themselves in a very tight spot. They have really hyped Vista, so when it does come out it has to be good. If it's not the stock price will suffer as will the companies long term reputation. At this point in the game, they can't afford that. I'm sure that's why the painful decision to delay was made. But, the longer they delay, the weaker they seem. The rumblings about whether they can actually produce will get louder and the stock price will suffer as will the companies long term reputation. The proverbial chink in the armor is growing. Now, don't get me wrong, when Vista does finally ship it is going to see wide adoption. Consumer OEM installs will come first and with SP1 corporate America will follow. Microsoft and Windows aren't irrelevant, despite what you might read or want to believe. The marketshare is just too big. But, how many more delays and under delivered releases can they stand before the current status quo changes? It's a very tenuous time for Microsoft on both the Windows and Office fronts. The day when you can walk into a CIO's office and ask “what would it take to replace Windows on the desktop” without getting a blank stare are on the horizon…and I'd guess it's going to come faster than Microsoft had anticipated. Luckily for them, they're diversifying like crazy these days. Let's start a pool for what year neither Windows or Office will be the biggest revenue generators for them company will be :) On a somewhat related note, Scoble points out another case of journalistic stupidity, which is something I've covered here time and time again. If Microsoft could rewrite 60% of the entire codebase in that time frame do you think they'd have delayed the product this many times? That's just nonsensical, but it sure did make headlines.
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Microsoft Updates Windows Vista Road Map

March 21, 2006 Leave a comment

It looks like Microsoft has once again delayed the general release of Windows Vista. The bad news for them on this one? They are going to now miss another Christmas season, where it's reported that up to 30% of all PC's for the year are sold. This gives Linux (and Apple with OS X) more time to improve their product and gain some more footing before the marking blitz swings into full gear. This had to be a really painful decision and leads be to presume that something was seriously wrong with the product. OR, maybe Microsoft has learned from past mistakes – anything is possible I guess. Either way, this really is a critical release for them. After working really hard to convince both companies and consumers that XP was the way to go, they now have to convince them that Vista is a compelling upgrade. The easy part for them though, is that a short time after Vista is released it will be the default preinstall option for almost any PC you see in any store. It's almost hard to fail with that setup, isn't it. If the preinstall situation wasn't like it was (and that's a big if…I know), the computer market really would be such a different animal. How much longer can they keep the kung-fu death grip on the OEM market is the question that Microsoft has to be asking themselves. Once they aren't the default no choice option, they're going to be in a world that looks so much different…a world where there is competition that's based on features, security and stability. At least they'll have their marketing budget to fall back on.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft

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