Plogging

August 12, 2004 1 Comment

An interesting article has been posted over at the IT Garage. From the article:
The game is plogging — short for presidential blogging, and it bypasses the entire PR apparatus, as well as the traditionally blah forms of published speech by CXOs. Think of it as DIY PR for the people best positioned to make hay with it.
The two plogs pointed out are from Sun Microsystems President & COO Jonathan Schwartz and Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks. I have been reading Mark's Blog for some time now and have to say that some of the things he posts are really great (http://www.blogmaverick.com if you have never been there). What got me checking the site regularly were the posts about the Steve Nash deal. Here was an owner, getting into very specific details (including names, numbers, thoughts, etc.) about a huge deal. Not only that, he realized that the fans were really impacted and he wanted them to know the truth! In a world or backroom deals and secrecy I find this a very refreshing change. While not a CXO, I am the founder and admin of LinuxQuestions.org. In my blog I'll try to maintain some of the open and honest communication that I have run LQ with from day 1. It's good to see that this may be a trends that larger companies may also be moving toward.
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

Circuit City moving to Linux

August 12, 2004 Leave a comment

Looks like IBM announced that consumer electronics retailer Circuit City expects to be running most of its critical day-to-day computing functions on Linux by 2006. From the press release:
Richmond, Va. and Armonk, N.Y., August 10, 2004 — Circuit City Stores, Inc. and IBM announced today that they are launching a technology transformation of Circuit City's more than 600 stores, designed to update Circuit City's point-of-sale (POS) systems and other in-store technology to where it is one of the most advanced in the retail industry.
“This new technology initiative, a vital part of our store revitalization effort, will move our store systems from customized, proprietary systems to a system based on open standards,” said Michael Jones, chief information officer of Circuit City. “Our current POS systems, which contain a feature set designed in the mid-1980s, are overly complex and restrict our business expansion. The new systems will allow us to adopt leading practices and improve store systems integration while optimizing store infrastructure costs.”
Now, kudos to IBM for scoring a large Linux migration and congrats to CC for opting for a better OS. But, what I really want to know though, is when will I be able to walk into a CC and purchase an IBM ThinkPad… with LINUX ON IT!
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

SCO May Raise License Fees

August 12, 2004 2 Comments

Seems that with the litigation failing and the SCOSource revenue not being what it used to be (now that MSFT is not buying licenses), SCOX is resorting to threatening to raise the price of licenses. This means if you don't act quick and grab one now, you may have to pay much more in the future. Of course by not buying one, you will save even more. Excuse me if I hold of on these. On the bright side, they are also not planning any more lawsuits (admittedly, at this point I don't really believe much they say). “Our strategy right now is to focus all of our legal resources on the current litigation with IBM, Novell and AutoZone,” Stowell said in an e-mail. “The outcome of these cases will set a precedent for how we will proceed with any future litigation.” I'd say we all know what that precedent will be, but every once and a while something completely insane happens in a courtroom, so you never know.
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

Delay to Munich's Linux Adoption

August 10, 2004 Leave a comment

It seems that the delay to the Munich Linux migration may have been a bit exaggerated. From the article:
“In a press statement issued on August 4, the city administration confirmed it was “standing by Linux,” correcting press reports that the project had been put on ice. ”
It's good to see that the delays will be small, a maximum of “two to three weeks” to decide whether the EU's Directive on software patents could affect the city's plan to switch to Linux, and it comes as no surprise that this was used as FUD by some. This migration is going to be an important milestone for Linux and Open Source and it will be interesting to see how it progresses.
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

Linux, Patents and OSRM

August 10, 2004 1 Comment

This article has a good overview of the recent report commissioned by Open Source Risk Management. The report found 283 patents that could potentially be infringing, in the Linux kernel. Luckily, there were zero patents that have survived reviews in court and over 100 of them were held by so called “Open Source Friendly” companies. Microsoft does hold several. The part that I find interesting about the US patent system (at least what I understand of it) is that not knowing about a patent actually makes the infringement less costly for you, so it's actually better not to know. This is one reason OSRM is not releasing the details of their findings, as it would making the infringements (and infringors) “willing”. It now becomes a questions of risk mitigation. Is the OSRM insurance worth it vs. the chance of litigation. What do you think?
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

IBM Not Threatened by Sun's Novell Claim

August 9, 2004 1 Comment

It comes as no surprise to me that IBM is not threatened. Why would they be. From the article: “Now that [Red Hat Inc. is] supporting an application server, IBM now finds Red Hat competing against it,” said Schwartz in an interview, referring to Red Hat's J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) application server, which was announced here last week at the LinuxWorld conference.
“What would happen if Sun decided to acquire Novell? What would IBM do?” Schwartz asked. “If Red Hat is competing with them, they are left with only one choice: Novell SuSE Linux. Sun could then end up as the owner of the operating system that runs IBM's mainframe. Wouldn't that be an interesting scenario?”
It seems John gets it about as much as Scott did. He seems to miss that the “operating system that runs IBM's mainframe” would still be Linux (among others), not Novell. Linux virtually assures there will be no vendor lockin, which is one of it's great strengths. Given the relative sizes on the companies involved though, his message is still quite lost. IBM supports Oracle running on their hardware, and Oracle competes directly with DB2. Regardless of what Linux you put on an IBM mainframe, they still sold the hardware. They get money no matter what distro you choose. That's why they like Linux. ..and that says nothing about that fact that, in a pinch, IBM could acquire Red Hat, or a myriad other Linux distro's to take up the Slack. When will Sun learn…or better yet – will they?
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

SCO Litigation Negatively Impacting Business

August 9, 2004 Leave a comment

While it's easy to forget that SCO is not just a litigation machine and actually has (or at least used to have) real products, it looks like all the seemingly frivolous litigation is finally taking its toll. According to this article, “The SCO Group's ongoing legal battle against IBM and others is having a negative impact on the company, leaving it with few new customers for its Unix software and current users reluctant to pay additional licensing fees. Both issues are taking a serious financial toll on the company, which saw its revenue for the second quarter drop by half and sales from its SCOsource division, which licenses its Unix intellectual property, nearly evaporate”.
The question then is how long can SCO keep this up, before they dig themselves into such a hole that coming out in one piece becomes impossible?
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

A New IE?

August 9, 2004 1 Comment

After about a week of posts about LinuxWorld, it's back to the usual posts about Linux and Open Source. It looks like Microsoft has realized that they really are losing ground in the browser war, and are soliciting ideas for IE 7. Meanwhile, many people have realized that Mozilla/FireFox is simply a better browser and are already making the switch. How IE users live without tabbed browsing and with the security holes is absolutely beyond me. On a related note, I was able to attend the Mozilla Developers conference on the Google campus briefly and can say that the Mozilla devs are charged and quite excited about the upcoming 1.0 FireFox release.
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

LQ LinuxWorld Pictures

August 8, 2004 Leave a comment

Looks like I took even fewer pictures then I thought of the LQ LinuxWorld trip. What I do have has been posted. I don't have the links to either of the interviews yet, but I'll post them when I get them.
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

Return from LinuxWorld

August 8, 2004 Leave a comment

I'm back from LinuxWorld and now starting to catchup on all the LQ related items that had to wait while I was away. I'll post the few pics that a took, along with links to my interviews on TLS and SYS-CON radio as soon as possible. The show was a success for us, and it's been great to see how many more people have heard of (and used) the site at each show we go to. The countdown now begins for the LWE in Boston ;)
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

← Older posts

Newer posts →