Microsoft Reaches Out to Open-Source Community II

May 1, 2005 Leave a comment

I've seen some people say that this is just a knee jerk reaction to Microsoft uncharacteristically missing their Wall Street projections. While it's possible, I'd say it's fairly unlikely. Microsoft traditionally doesn't do too many things in a knee jerk fashion. They don't have to. Even when they miss the boat like they did with the Internet, they don't panic. They about face, and get to work. They have enough cash at this point that they still don't have to worry. As I mentioned before, it's possible that they think they can make more money long term by not completely ignoring that Open Source exists. Don't forget also, to really be able to compete with something you need to understand that something (keep your friends close and your enemies closer also comes to mind).

Filed under Linux, Main Page

Microsoft Reaches Out to Open-Source Community

April 30, 2005 Leave a comment

It appears that Microsoft is reaching out to the Open Source Community. While my immediate response was something along the lines of “What are they up to now?”, after reading the entire article and thinking about it for a bit – I think they may be genuinely interested. Why? First, the culture over there has slowly been changing. With a company the size of MSFT this may take a long time, but it's a change that is coming from the inside out. That is, developers within the company are leading the drive. I've talked to numerous Microsoft employees at recent conferences that really some to “get it” and that's encouraging. Second, I think at a higher up level they are starting to realize that, from a business perspective, it's in their best interest to cooperate at this point. They aren't going to be able to squash this Open Source thing as easily as they probably thought they could. There is finally a case where cooperating may help them ship more units and it appears they may be willing to do so. I'd guess it's the middle tier in the company that will be the last to understand all this, but isn't that what you'd expect? So, in the end I would welcome open dialog. In fact, if anyone from Microsoft reads this, I'd even be willing to participate in open dialog. One final note, if you really want to “extend an olive branch”, how about proving that you are serious this time? Opening up document formats would be an outstanding start.
–jeremy

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Still Taking Back the Web

April 29, 2005 Leave a comment

has now hit 50,000,000 downloads. Amazing. If you aren't using Firefox yet, you should really try it out – regardless of what OS you are using. Keep up the good work FF team.
–jeremy

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BPLUG Presentation II

April 29, 2005 Leave a comment

The BPLUG presentation (mentioned here) went well (at least I think it did). There were quite a few other presenters and I learned a bit from each of them, which is always good. If you're in the area I'd recommend you check out the next meeting.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page

Open Wallets for Open-Source Software

April 28, 2005 Leave a comment

I mentioned this a while back, but that post focused more on acquisitions. The trend is continuing and VC is now coming back to the Open Source space. JBOSS recently got $10 Million and the articles reports that almost $150 Million was raised by Open Source companies in 2004. Luckily, the funding seems to be a little more rational then it was during the bubble. Hopefully it will stay that way.
–jeremy

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Apple Gets Silly – Again

April 27, 2005 Leave a comment

continues to do its best to make people not like them, which is a shame since they make some really cool products. You may remember they recently sued sites giving them free press. They have now completely pulled all books published by Wiley from their stores, as a result of them publishing a biography on Steve Jobs that they didn't like. Amazing. Imagine if a company like Microsoft did something similar to this…you'd be enraged, right? You should be just as enraged that Apple is doing it (unless the book it factually incorrect and libelous, which it doesn't appear to be). I hope Apple stops acting like this before it is too late – eventually people are going to start caring.
–jeremy

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LQ Radio Interview #1 – Tom Adelstein and Sam Hiser

April 26, 2005 Leave a comment

A little overdue, but LQ Radio is finally getting off the ground. The first LQ Radio show should be available next month and the first LQ Radio interview has been posted. The interview features Tom Adelstein and Sam Hiser. We cover a variety of topics and I think the end result is fantastic content wise. Skype gave us a huge amount of problems and we ended up ditching the p2p bit and I called both Sam and Tom via Skypeout. Let me know what you think.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, podcast

Deception in Texarkana

April 25, 2005 Leave a comment

It's unfortunate to see both the Open Source community and a small town taken advantage of like this. Kudos to Robin 'roblimo', both for taking the time to do the reporting for that article and for having the patience and fortitude to be able to have a discussion that long with some one who is clearly lying and pandering. It's a reminder that just because someone uses the words ““, it doesn't make them right or necessarily good intentioned. This guy is most certainly not OSI approved.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page

BLUG Presentation

April 22, 2005 Leave a comment

For any of you who may be in the area, I'll be presenting at the next Buffalo Professional Linux Users Group meeting. The main topic I'll be covering is . If you'll be in or around Buffalo next Thursday, make sure to stop by the meeting.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page

LinuxWorld Canada Keynote – Paul Tsaparis of HP

April 20, 2005 Leave a comment

The second Keynote of the day was from HP Canada CEO Paul Tsaparis. A large part of the keynote was a “Power of Linux” video, which was basically a testimonial from Dreamworks. The video has some interesting bits, but was a little too pro vendor IMHO. The video explained that over 50% of Shrek 2 was rendered remotely “On Demand” (it was all rendered on Linux). This “On Demand” system allowed them to hit rendering peaks and make the deadline for the movie while only actually having to purchase enough infrastructure to do the average amount of computing. This is the direction that a lot of computationally intensive apps seem to be going, and I know that IBM has a similar service. While this is obviously only something that a couple niche industries would use, it is very slick. The best quote from the movie was from a Dreamworks employee (the CTO if I recall correctly), which said point blank “We are interested in Linux”. He then went on to say that Dreamworks went with HP because they understood Linux. Hopefully other companies will listen to statements like this one. While it wasn't disclosed in the video, I'd say the dollar amount for the products and services purchased for Shrek 2 were substantial.
The presentation also explained that HP deploys Linux internally. They don't do so to “eat their own dog food” as some companies claim, but they do if for the same reasons they recommend it to their clients. They have over 13,000 internal devices with Linux installed, their Linux email cluster (15 machines) processes over 3TB of email a year, their entire DNS infrastructure (160 servers) runs Linux, they use Jabber for internal secure IM and much of their wifi network is Linux based.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page

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