BitMover Madness

October 20, 2005 Leave a comment

While I've not seen a lot of news about this, it seems quite asinine to me. When a vendor can tell a customer what its employees can do on their own time, something is wrong. I'm sure most of you remember the BitKeeper Linux kernel debacle from a little while ago, but this really kicks things up a notch. It would be like Ford saying that once you purchased a Ford, you couldn't work at any other automobile manufacturer. Even Microsoft doesn't have a policy this insane, and I have no doubts that if they tried they would be sued for anti-competitive practices faster than you could commit a patch with git. Larry seems to have completely lost it as this point, IMHO. I'm quite frankly surprised that this story hasn't created more noise.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

MySQL Innobase Follow Up

October 19, 2005 Leave a comment

A quick follow up to this post. Not a whole lot of details have surfaced unfortunately, but a little moire information is available here. I'd love to get a hold of some of the “speculation” that was edited out (even off the record), but so far I haven't been able to ;) This is turning into a huge story though, and even Forbes has covered it. Daniel Lyons is right up there with Laura Didio and Rob Enderle though, so watch where you step. The one thing I did notice is that just days after the announcement, Heikki was on the support list as usual – helping random users (which I think shows some class). I'd still guess that MySQL AB is kicking themselves for not acquiring Innobase when they had the chance, and they certainly can't be looking forward to having to renegotiate their deal for InnoDB with Oracle. Ellison is ruthless when it comes to competition and something as simple as making all products containing InnoDB to be GPL'd would throw a huge wrench into the MySQL revenue stream. This will get interesting (and probably messy).
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–jeremy

Filed under Main Page, Open Source

Microsoft Says "Maybe Someday" on OpenDocument

October 18, 2005 1 Comment

A follow up to this post, it looks like Microsoft may consider adding OpenDocument support after all, based on “customer demand”. I'd guess that just one or two state Governments alone would be enough demand. I hope MA stands firm here. Unfortunately, one thing I can see happening (which could potentially be quite damaging) is substandard support. By adding deficient support, Microsoft could make using OpenDocument sufficiently painful that it would almost be useless. They'd have the “supports OpenDocument” checkbox to get the contracts, but people who had to use it would suffer. This could have two possible outcomes; 1) People hate OpenDocument and just keep using .doc out of a fundamental lack of understanding what the problem is. 2) People turn to a Word alternative that properly supports OpenDocument. I could see either happing depending on the situation, so it would certainly be a calculated risk on Microsoft's part. They have done something similar in the past with WordPerfect support and we know how that ended up. This story keeps getting more interesting though, and is definitely one I'll be keeping a close eye on (hint: you should too).
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–jeremy

Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Ward Cunningham leaves Microsoft for Eclipse

October 18, 2005 Leave a comment

Ward Cunningham, the father of the Wiki, has officially left Microsoft and will be joining the Eclipse Foundation. Luckily for Ward, when Ballmer said “just tell me it's not Google”, he could calmly say no and avoid another aeron getting tossed. This marks a huge change for Ward. Not only is he going from proprietary to Open Source, but he's only Eclipse's 10th employee. His new title is Director of Committer Community Development, but the article seems to indicate that he'll be doing more than just that (which you'd expect in an organization of 10). It's great to see names like this join the Open Source world and hopefully at some point, moves like this will stop the silly you can't make any money with free software that Microsoft and other keep spouting off. This is a great time to check out WardsWiki or the LQ Wiki, which aims to be the largest general Linux knowledgebase on the web.
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–jeremy

Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Desktop Apps Coming to the Web: Google

October 18, 2005 Leave a comment

In this article, a Google engineer makes a couple comments on Google Maps. That's not what I find interesting though. While Google Maps is amazingly slick, it has some major usability holes IMHO (no ability to save your location, no ability to do multiple-stop trips, an odd propensity to label streets with names that no one actually seems to use). Those problems aside, there is no question that the design of Google Maps fundamentally changed what people expect out of a Web app – and that is a good thing. So, if I didn't find the Google Maps bit interesting, why am I pointing you to the article? About half way down, you get this: “A number of people are now working on a Linux port of Google Earth, but Rasmussen did not offer a release date.”. Fantastic to see that Google is continuing their commitment to support Linux in their apps. I've commented on this before and was extremely happy to see this reaffirmation. I also found the comment “According to Rasmussen, Google's design philosophy centres on end user loyalty not money, going beyond the browser's lowest common denominator, to develop simple Web applications that are as dynamic as native applications, and to launch early and often to learn from users.”. I'd have thought it was clear that, for Google, “end user loyalty” and “money” are inextricably tied and quite possibly always will be. The kind of lockin you see with Microsoft just will never be possible for Google. In the online world, the barriers to using another search engine, another ad publisher, or another are exponentially lower than switching something like an OS.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

20 Years of Windows

October 14, 2005 Leave a comment

Microsoft Windows just turned twenty. For a full history of Windows, here's the Wikipedia article. What I find ironic, and didn't know, is that the very first version of Windows shipped quite late and vastly understated hardware requirements. Seems not much has changed ;) Truth is, I never used Windows 1.0 so I can't testify to how it was. My first version of Windows was Windows/386. From there I went to 3.1->3.11 and finally the “Chicago” (Windows 95) Beta. That beta was the last version of Windows I have used as my daily desktop. I've played with various versions of Windows after that, from 2000 up to and including 2k3. The one notable exception is XP, which sans a single class I took I've never really logged into. While Windows 2003 isn't all that bad, to me the sad part is that it's not all that good. There's finally some semblance of stability, but it still has myriad security issues, questionable architecture decisions and lacks so much basic functionality that it's astounding. To me, Windows represents just how far you can get in the computing world by being good enough. In fact, Microsoft seems to have turned that into an art. Rarely the first to market, rarely the best value and rarely the best. BUT, they are perceived to be good enough and are a known commodity. The reality though is that after billions of dollars and twenty years of work, Windows is still only good enough. To me that is a monumental failure. It could have been so much more. When you put it in that perspective, I think Linux has made great strides and has done so with way less money behind it and only twelve years of development. In the Windows world, twelve years puts you just past Windows95. Linux is way beyond that in comparison, IMHO. Now, Linux still has a long long way to go and has a ton of places where it needs improvement. We'll get there though and it's been a pleasure to be along for the ride.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Open Debate About OpenDocument

October 13, 2005 1 Comment

FOXNews recently ran a story about the MA decision to move to an OpenDocument standard. The article was quickly blasted by their own readers, who pointed out that the article was one sided, full of FUD and neglected to mention that the author was funded by Microsoft. From the followup article: “The column “Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument” that appeared on FOXNews.com Sept. 28 identified author James Prendergast as executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership, but failed to disclose that Microsoft is a founding member of that organization.”. Now, it's good to see them update the article, but why is this practice so prevalent? Kudos to the readers who took the time to mail FOXNews, you clearly made a difference. It's time news agencies started doing more news reporting and less headline grabbing. Educated viewers and readers is what is going to get us there.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Nessus Closes Source

October 11, 2005 2 Comments

Looks like as of version 3, Nessus will no longer be an Open Source app. In doing a little research here, it looks like many people have been suspicious of Tenable Security for a while now though. One of the main reasons Renaud gave for this change was “A number of companies are using the source code against us, by selling or renting appliances, thus exploiting a loophole in the GPL”. That's not a “loophole”, one of the main ideas of the GPL is to avoid vendor lockin. Tenable doesn't seem to get this and clearly wasn't able to differentiate themselves in a way that allowed them to make money. He also claimed that there were very few contributions made from the community. This seems to be a direct result of the attitude of the Tenable, as I've seen more then a few “we tried” stories around. In the end, having a successful Open Source project is about so much more than having good code. I've said this dozens of times – IMHO the success of Linux has more to do with Linus' personality and leadership skills than his coding ability. I stand by that. Now, this doesn't mean that he's not a good coder, just that you need so much more. Here's the CNet article and also a response from Fyodor. It's good to see that nmap won't be following suit. I had the pleasure of meeting Fyodor and can say that he really gets it – both from a technical *and* non-technical perspective. His response has some good pointers. It should be interesting to see if someone forks Nessus2-GPL (I am already hearing rumors that someone will) and what will become of Nessus3 (the non-GPL version) and Tenable. I also wonder how they will handle code that was contributed to Nessus under the GPL by non-Tenable employees.
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–jeremy

Filed under Main Page, Open Source

The Value Dell Puts on Microsoft Windows

October 11, 2005 1 Comment

Anyone who's dealt with Dell knows the voodoo involved in their pricing. It does seem odd though, that a PC with no OS would cost more than one with Windows. Now, I know the argument – the companies that pay to preload Windows only trial software offset the cost of the Windows license. But is the claim seriously that it covers that and the price of a 17″ LCD? If so, I need to get into the preload trial software business I guess. The reality would seem to be the Dell is still quite inextricably tied with Microsoft. Why else would they make non Microsoft systems so convoluted and difficult to find? Now, they are a business and need to do what the can to maximize their profits, but it's just another case of the consumer coming absolutely last. On a side note, it was interesting to see that Dell accidentally hosted their anti-Sun campaign on Solaris 9 for a while due to an ISP snafu. Hilarious.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

CheckPoint Acquires Sourcefire

October 11, 2005 Leave a comment

The money sure was flowing while I was in the UK, wasn't it? By acquiring Sourcefire, CheckPoint gets the Open Source Snort IDS along with Marty Roesch and a ton of other expertise. In a letter from Marty, he states: “I’ll start by stating again what I’ve stated in the past, Snort is now and will continue to be free to end-users.”. What definition of free that is remains to be seen, but I've dealt with CheckPoint long enough to know their sole motivation is money. Marty has been a really stand up guy and Sourcefire has been a model company in the Open Source world, IMHO. They made money, but still usually did the right thing. I hope this trend continues while under the thumb of CP, but I have my doubts. If nothing else, Open Source in the business world is certainly being legitimized. Should be an interesting OSBC next month (which , incidentally, LQ is a sponsor of).
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

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