Open Source Venture Fund Unveiled

May 23, 2005 Leave a comment

I mentioned Simula Labs in the latest LinuxQuestions.org Podcast, but looking a little closer at the article, this is not exactly what I thought it was at first. From the article:

The business model Simula intends to set up with these planned ventures is very similar to that of Gluecode. Companies will employ the important engineers behind an open-source project and sell subscription services for support, training and more functional products based on the open-source code.
Simula executives will take an active role in company creation, acting as co-founders and providing expertise.
This means, they aren't looking to do what a traditional venture capital firm does (ie. give money to a team of entrepreneurs who have a good idea in the hopes they will eventually turn a humongous profit or get acquired), they are looking to start the companies themselves and hire members of the projects they decide to use. This invariably will mean less money for the people from the projects (as opposed to if they started the company) but also, of course, much less risk too. Not sure how I feel about this one quite yet, but it's a much different thing than I thought at first.
–jeremy

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Google and the Slippery Slope of Portaldom

May 22, 2005 Leave a comment

As Jeremy points out, Google is on the slippery slope to “Portaldom”, despite what CEO Eric Schmidt says here. The thing is, I don't really see anything wrong with this. They say that the clean search-only page will be the default and until they prove otherwise, I believe them. Somewhere along the bubble, “portals” became bad. But I don't think they are bad, they were just done poorly and over-hyped (to say the least). A clean, well thought out, page where you can see a bunch of different things that interest you and access a bunch of tools you use just makes sense. It's great for the vendor too, since if you use their portal you are more likely to use more of their services. The battle here continues to heat up, and the winner is us.
–jeremy

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Of Microsoft Execs and Employees

May 20, 2005 Leave a comment

Looks like it happened again. While Microsoft employees were off in one direction (in my opinion the correct direction) and doing something good, an exec goes and says something completely opposite and contradictory. This seems to be happening a lot lately. It's hard to argue with the fact that Gates and Ballmer have lead the company to huge successes, but one has to wonder – are the two holding Microsoft back at this point? Their vision and need to dominate are really stopping Microsoft from changing, and change in some areas they need quite badly. What was at one point one of their biggest strengths may in the end turn into their biggest weakness.
—jeremy

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Michael Dell Comments on Red Hat Investment

May 20, 2005 Leave a comment

Looks like Michael Dell has commented on the Red Hat investment I blogged about a little while back. From the article:

Dell played down the investment, however, saying that while he meets with MSD's management once every couple of months, he is not personally involved in its investment choices. “I didn't know they had made this investment,” he said. “That's not the sort of thing we talk about.”
That news sure hasn't slowed down the stock, which has gone up considerably in the last week. Whether or not he knew about the deal before hand, I still see the investment as an affirmation of the business potential that Linux holds. As I mentioned earlier, I thought the acquisition rumors were a bit far fetched anyway. This is still good news.
–jeremy

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James Turner and Dee-Ann LeBlanc Interviewed

May 18, 2005 4 Comments

Just posted an interview with James Turner and Dee-Ann LeBlanc, who recently stepped down from Sys-Con. The levels came out much better this time and the content was very good. We also have a BitTorrent tracker up now, which should help with the bandwidth issues. I'd like to thank both Dee-Ann and James for taking the time to be on the show.
–jeremy

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LQ Wiki Upgraded

May 17, 2005 Leave a comment

The LQ Wiki has been upgraded. Let us know if you notice any problems. Remember – we are trying to build the largest free general Linux knowledge base on the web and you can help. All content is licensed under a creative commons license. Thanks goes to david_ross once again.
–jeremy

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KDE + KHTML + Apple + Safari + Webcore – Know the facts!

May 16, 2005 Leave a comment

I blogged about this here and we also discussed it a bit on the first LQ Radio show. Here is some information that will hopefully clear things up. Seems my first assertion, that this thing was being blown a bit out of proportion, is indeed true. Good to see that since the article the Wecore and KHTML folks have discussed how code could be shared easier. Due to the differences in implementation (X11/QT/KHTML/Konq vs. OSX/Aqua/Webcore/Safari) it's clear that not all code will always be able to go back and forth, but open discussion is a fantastic start IMHO.
–jeremy

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LQ Radio Episode #1 Has Been Posted

May 15, 2005 Leave a comment

I am proud to announce that the inaugural episode of the LQ Radio Show has been posted. We had to work through a couple of technical issues, but overall I think the show came out quite well. Thanks to Robin, John and Dave for agreeing to be the first panelists. If you have any feedback on the show, please post it to the LQ Radio site. I've attached one last audio reminder that the RSS feeds have moved from my blog to the LQ Radio site, to catch any last podcatchers that may be pointed here.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, podcast

An OpenLDAP Followup

May 14, 2005 1 Comment

After this post I received some feedback and also noticed this post asking why I though Red Hat was dropping support for OpenLDAP. From a session I attended at FedoraCON, that was the idea I got. Looking into it further, it seems this is untrue and that Red Hat will likely be supporting both. I apologize. I think supporting both is probably best anyway – choice is always good. The linked post also makes a good point, and one that I actually meant to mention last time but didn't (while I didn't read all 62 pages, I did read the page referenced). Comparing AD and OpenLDAP really isn't fair – AD is a purpose-built system that is a native User Management mechanism in win2003. Much effort has gone into that integration. OpenLDAP is not a native User Management mechanism in RHEL, nor has much effort gone into any integration. Additionally, OpenLDAP is a full featured LDAP implementation that in the end in infinitely more flexible than AD. I think this brings out one of the great things about the blogosphere. We can have frank and honest discussions about things and learn from one another.

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Safari vs. KHTML

May 13, 2005 Leave a comment

This seems to be another case of the media playing something up way beyond what it is. They sure do like a fight, don't they? Some KDE/KHTML developers recently made comments about how they were unhappy with the way the Apple/KHTML relationship had worked out. Next thing you know, you have articles with titles like “Open-source divorce for Apple's Safari?”. From my POV, the KDE guys made it clear that Apple is following the licensing requirements. The ability to fork is something inherent in Open Source, so being angry that Apple is taking WebCore in a different direction then KHTML seems a bit odd to me. To be fair though, I've really not looked into the details of this enough to form a valid opinion on who is right or wrong here – if anyone even is right/wrong). Sure, it'd have been ideal if both teams had the exact same vision and code fluidly moved back and forth. This is not an ideal world though. Ben Goodger, the lead Firefox engineer, also had something to say about the matter. One comment in his post struck me as odd though. It seems to me that rushing features to hit a deadline really isn't them Open Source way. Release it when it's ready. Of course, there is a line you have to walk – you don't want to have no releases at all while you tweak things beyond belief (which is what I think he was trying to say), but cutting corners to hit a release date will in the end come back to bite you.
–jeremy

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