Oracle's Open-Source Shopping Spree

February 10, 2006 Leave a comment

I don't have too much time to put this post together (my plane to SCALE 4X leaves in about 2 hours) but I wanted to make a quick comment on this article about “Oracle's Open-Source Shopping Spree”. This worries me a bit. One great thing about Open Source projects, and one reason I think they are so successful, is that they are free to make technically correct decisions without having to worry about marketing department input, meetings, PHB's or any of the other things you're likely find in a large organization. They are simply free to innovate. Basically, they often avoid this problem. Another benefit is that since most Open Source projects are independent of each other, we get a large amount of choice…and so do they. The Open Source arena may look much different in a few short years if the current trend continues, and I'm not sure it's for the better. If a handful of very large corporations own the majority of successful Open Source projects, I think we lose a lot of the benefits. Now, there are things to gain for the projects – money, stability, a steady pay check, additional resources, etc. If the projects benefit, of course we benefit too. The “price” you pay for that however, is extremely high. Basically, you lose most (if not all) control over direction. I know a flurry of “but the code is Open Sourced, so it doesn't matter” comments may follow, but the reality is that it does matter. If all the developers go with the sale, the amount of work needed for another group of developers to get up to speed is significant. That is if another group of developers as talented is even interested. That is *far* from a given.
The most surprising name in the linked story in my opinion is JBoss. With Oracle having a directly competing project, where would that put the future of JBoss? When Larry says things like: “We are moving aggressively into open source. We are embracing it. We are not going to fight this trend. We think if we're clever, we can make it work to our advantage.” it doesn't instill a whole lot of confidence in me. Clever?? What I'm wondering, is will the Open Source projects of tomorrow simply become a proving ground for a company/technology so it can be swallowed up by one of the huge players. Will successful Open Source companies like MySQL become a thing of the past? It's a great win for the corporations, that's for sure. Why waste money on R&D when OSS will do all the work and you can pick only the choicest winners. You get only cream and expend no real time doing so, just money. Money that you already have and are guaranteed to get more of by filling your stable with only proven winners. I hope that isn't what the future holds, but the current indicators all make me think it may become inevitable. What the means in the long run, I'm not entirely sure. I do have a long plane ride to think about it though. See you in LA.
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page, Open Source

Sun *not* Urged to Give up OpenOffice Control

February 8, 2006 Leave a comment

A follow up to this post. Andy Updegrove points out that the title of the vnunet article is greatly exaggerated. Indeed it was, which disappointingly is becoming the norm these days. Anything to grab some eyeballs. I'd not go as far as to say it's a non-story though and he focuses a bit too much on ODF, which isn't the issue in this case. IBM and Sun are working on ODF together, which is fantastic, but as it stands IBM will to my knowledge not contribute code to OO.o itself. This is one place a Foundation might help. I've also seen a fair amount of people who contractually couldn't submit code to a project owned by a corporation such as Sun, but could to an independent non-profit. I'll leave the legality and stupidity of those type of contracts to another post though. In the end though, as I mentioned in the last post, it's Sun's code and they should be able to do with it what they think is best.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Sun Urged to Give up OpenOffice Control

February 8, 2006 Leave a comment

Sun is being asked to create an independent foundation with OO.o, similar to what IBM did with Eclipse and what has been done with the Mozilla Foundation. One of the key reasons behind this, is that IBM is not willing to give code back to the project under the current situation (which requires you to sign rights over to Sun, presumably so they can include it in Star Office as well as OpenOffice.org). At this point, IBM has what basically amounts to a fork in its Workplace product. It's quite easy to see both sides of this one. Sun purchased Star Office for very real money and then turned around and LGPL'd it in less than a year. They employee about 80% of the contributors, with most of the remaining 20% being employed by Novell. Interesting that one of the highest profile Open Source projects doesn't have all that much community participation (although at a code level either does Firefox, to be fair). I've heard multiple reasons for this, but I'm honestly not close enough to the OO.o community to definitively verify. One recurring theme that I see is that the build system is convoluted and the code is overly complex. Basically bad enough that you'd need to be paid to be interested in working on it. The other reason I often see is the aforementioned requirement that contributions be licensed to Sun.
So, Sun has a vested interest in keeping control of the code, so they can recoup their Star Office investment and justify the number of employees working on the project. IBM, understandably, is not interested in paying developers to write code only to have it show up in the commercial Star Office. Sun is in a bit of a pickle it would seem. Now, I don't think they've gotten enough credit in the OSS world for what they did so far with OO.o, but this decision really comes down to what they want to do with the product long term. If they want to continue down the current path, slowly improving the product but bearing most of the associated cost, and selling Star Office in the current manner – we probably won't see a OO.o foundation any time soon. If they are willing to slightly change their paradigm, I think it could work for everyone involved and the only loser I could see would be Microsoft (some of the IBM changes really look nice, especially with regards to performance which is one of the biggest OO.o complaints I hear). A unified and energized OO.o foundation backed by both IBM and Sun could really put a hurting on Office sales. The one thing we often forget in the OSS world though, is that the code is by all rights the property of Sun. Acting like they are the bad guy in cases like this only make the OSS community seem fickle and hard to work with. I think all too often, that scares many companies away. Commendably in this case, project leader Louis Suarez-Potts could not be handling things in a more professional and poised way. He's not making demands, ridiculing Sun or making a huge stink. He's simply pointing out why he thinks it would be advantageous. I think there's a lesson to be learned in that…regardless of how this situation plays out.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

More LQ Social Networking

February 7, 2006 Leave a comment

Work continues on the Social Networking aspects of LQ, which I first mentioned in this post. You can now easily find members using the same or similar Linux distributions as you. This is in addition to the ability to easily see your entire network and your friends entire network (and add/remove members from your network from that view). I have a couple ideas on where I'd like to take this next, but I'm still interested in how LQ members would like to see this progress.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

The Linux Kernel, DRM, GPLv3 and OpenSolaris

February 3, 2006 Leave a comment

A follow up to an earlier post about the Linux kernel and the GPLv3. Linus has given a further explanation on why he doesn't like the current draft of the GPLv3. A lot of it seems to stem from the fact that he doesn't like the anti-DRM clause, but there are other reasons. I tend to agree that the layer of license the GPL fails into is probably not the place to fight this battle (as insidious as DRM is). But, one thing that's very clear is that there is a ton of confusion as to what exactly the anti-DRM clause is stating. Some are taking it to mean that distros would have to release private keys, while other are stating that is unequivocally not the case. Hopefully the next draft will clear things up in this regard. An interesting related story here is that Sun is looking into GPLv3 for OpenSolaris. How ironic would it be if OpenSolaris ended up being GPL'd, but still not license compatible with the Linux kernel because one was v2 and one was v3. How many other cases of incompatibility would arise? For some reason I think that Jonathan Schwartz would relish in being able to say “Hey, we GPL'd OpenSolaris – the fact that it's still not compatible with the Linux kernel isn't our fault”. It should be noted that Alan Cox recently commented that he didn't think the cross-pollination value between the Linux kernel and OpenSolaris would be as high as some had thought. I can't offer any valuable commentary on that, but Dtrace does look pretty sweet.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Goobuntu – What I Think of the Google OS

January 31, 2006 Leave a comment

The rumors are flying about a Google Linux Desktop. My take? It ain't gonna happen. Not a general-OS type release… not any time soon. Now, it's no secret that many engineers inside Google use Linux (BTW, they use Linux on a couple servers too). Last time I was at the Googleplex is was a Red Hat derivative (Gred Hat or something similar) and now it's Ubuntu based. So why don't I think Google will release this as a general purpose desktop OS? Simple – it isn't ready for that. If they released this as a PC, then every random $9 game from Walmart, AOL and all kinds of other things that don't work would be expected to. Is this a knock against Linux? No! For what it's meant to do, it works phenomenally. I've used it as my sole desktop for years, and I can't imagine going back to Windows. But, I also figured out that I needed a kernel recompile because my iPod wouldn't work, so I'm not a good case for a basic consumer study on this. Wine would basically have to work as well as Rosetta for this to work out – the lack of iTunes alone would enrage millions of people. What I do think could happen here is a very nice and very function appliance. One based on Linux. One also based on the web. You see, that hits a completely different market segment… one that may have never even owned a computer. The expectation that anything and everything needs to be compatible goes away. It's cheap, it's fast, it's slick and it's reliable. It's immune to spyware, you don't have to worry about viruses and things just work. For $100-200 you get a device that allows you to browse the web (they employ Firefox developers), chat both online and via VOIP (they employ the main Gaim developer and have GoogleTalk), check your email (you may have heard of this Gmail thing) and perform a myriad of other online tasks. It may even have basic office functionality, be it via standard OOo or more likely some OOo web derivative. That would be step one. That would lay the seed. That would build a base of loyal GoOs fans. As Linux gets more and more ready for desktop prime time, Google can plan its general release. Hardware manufacturers would now have a reason they had to support Linux. The power of Google branding should be readily apparent now. One interesting thing here is, this should worry Novell (and to a lesser extent Red Hat) at least as much as it worries Microsoft. The desktop market is a big piece of the potential OS pie. A move by Google could all but lock other Linux-based options out. The fact that it could potentially be a non-RPM distro makes it all the more interesting…
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

2005 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards

January 30, 2006 Leave a comment

Voting is now open for the 2005 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards. This is the 5th year we've done the awards, and turnout has gotten better every time. The response from both the community and the award winners has been outstanding. We've revised categories a bit based on feedback and improved the logic a bit. This is your chance to be heard, so go vote!
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Just Booked my SCALE 4X Trip

January 29, 2006 Leave a comment

Just booked a trip to LA for the upcoming SCALE 4x, which LQ is a sponsor of. Made this one a short trip – I'll be in LA less than 48 hours. I missed SCALE last year and it looked like a great show, so I'm glad I'm going to catch this one. From the looks of it, I'll be attending quite a few conferences this year, which is alway a great experiance. If you'll be at SCALE 4X and would like to connect, let me know. For once I'm actually staying at the conference hotel.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Linux Kernel and GPLv3

January 26, 2006 Leave a comment

A quick follow up to this post. It looks like Linus has responded to the question of whether Linux will be released under the updated version of the GPL. The answer:
No. You think “v2 or later” is the default. It's not. The _default_ is to not allow conversion.
Conversion isn't going to happen.
Seems like s pretty definitive answer. I find two interesting things about the LKML thread. First, it seems Alan Cox doesn't necessarily agree with Linus on this and second, the thread starter is one Jeff V. Merkey – the same person who offered $50,000 for a BSD copy of the Linux kernel. You have to wonder what he's up to. One also has to wonder though, how close the final version of the GPLv3 will be to the currently released draft. Some of the new clauses do seem a bit restrictive, especially from a business perspective. It almost seems a bit too political. While I dislike DRM as much as the next person (actually, I'd guess I dislike it much more than the next person), I'm not yet convinced that a “Free Software” license is the place for that battle. It's a slippery slope. Where's the line? Will other items the FSF doesn't like creep into the next version? What happens when something the FSF doesn't like isn't something that people hate as much as DRM? Will the precedent already have been set? We'll have to wait for the final version is released to know what impact v3 will really have, but with it being incompatible with v2 (via it's additional restrictions) we could have quite a headache with some projects sticking with v2 and some going with v3.
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page

Ask Microsoft's Security VP

January 26, 2006 Leave a comment

An extremely interesting read, Slashdot has sent questions over to the Microsoft Security VP Mike Nash, who agreed to answer them with no PR scrubbing. A ton of information is in the response, which is a fairly long read. As you may have guessed, so of the information is good news and others is not. It's clear that the original Microsoft security push in 2002 was nothing but lip service. It's also clear that, while security clearly has a much higher priority now, some within Microsoft are stilling ignoring that and just don't get it. An anonymous Microsoftie points out a specific example in one of the questions. The article also gives you a little appreciation for just how large Microsoft is. The shear number of initiatives, acronyms, procedures and policies in place is astounding. It's no wonder it's taking so long to turn the security train around. Old habits die hard and business pressures are currently clearly very high at Microsoft. Given the option of not getting a product shipped on time or shipping it on time with security flaws, I think most Microsoft teams are still choosing the latter. It is fantastic to see someone this high up at Microsoft speaking directly to users though and there is a ton from the Q/A that I didn't cover here….so I recommend you read the full article.
–jeremy
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Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

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