Archive for the 'Open Source Software' Category
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
Obama chooses IBM’s David Kappos to head USPTO
I think this is great news for potential patent reform (long overdue). David certainly has experience with open source licensing and IP issues related to open development.
While many will see the press generalizations about David’s views on IP reform, why not listen to his interview with Scoble from August of 2007 and hear for yourself? In the interview David talks about collaborative innovation, open standards and open source which I think many will still find very interesting.
Scoble Interview: http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/3286371/
Ars covered the news here:
The Obama administration’s choice to head the US Patent and Trademark Office, IBM’s David Kappos, appears to be getting rave reviews, which can only partly be attributed to the fact that Kappos has been a prominent advocate of patent reform.
And this is a link to the official announcement.
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
Consider this… Vista vs Netbooks
Why are Netbooks such a threat to Microsoft? It’s not just the abundance of Linux shipping on them. It’s their profitability flying off the shelves (or via UPS these days…)
- Consider: 1 license for Vista Home Basic $199 at Best Buy
- Consider: 1 Dell Mini 9 Netbook with Vista Home Basic for just $299
- Consider: 1 Dell Mini 9 Netbook with Ubuntu for just $249
So, for $199 you can get a software license for Microsoft. For just $100 more, you can get a working netbook with that software license. Or, for just $50 more, you can get that same Netbook with Linux.
If you had just $300 to spend, who wants to pick the software license?
Now, consider what this is doing to Microsoft’s margins… Your premium pricing power has just been put under pressure – not by Linux, but by the hardware underneath the OS that just dropped from days of $1,000 laptops to $299. Microsoft can’t justify doubling the price of the product just for its software license. And Ubuntu is clearly offering hardware vendors a key counterpoint in their negotiations with Microsoft.
Microsoft is also in a bind as enforcing its premium pricing will either
- invite priracy b/c who can look at the offerings and justify paying that much retail for the OS, and which hurts their margins more (a paying customer is better than a pirating one…)
- 2) alienate a new set of younger, price conscious buyers entering the market (not just in the US, but around the world)
Clearly Microsoft is in need of a strategy refresh – and fast. I see the tide turning where their downstream users and upstream suppliers will create a challenging negotiation. Michael Porter would have fun with this analysis.
And with that… I may just order myself a Netbook soon. They’re almost as cheap as iPods now…
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
Sun – Oracle Analysis
I just read Stephen O’Grady’s classic Q&A on Sun-Oracle. Another through analysis. There are certainly many angles to this one… and many questions that will play out over time.
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2009/04/21/settingsun/
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Linux kernel 2.6.29/30: with a preliminary Btrfs
I just read a “cute” article at The Register talking about the 2.6.29 kernel release which includes a preliminary release of Btrfs. P
lease note this is still a fast changing filesystem technology and should not be used on anything near production workloads.
I can’t wait to see 2.6.30 release and this is one technology I will try out right away. For more information on Btrfs, you can check out this page.
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
IDC’s Al Gillen Covers the Red Hat / Microsoft Virtualization Announcement
I just saw Al Gillen covered the news from Red Hat and Microsoft on virtualization. Note the differences between this announcement and the Novell-Microsoft announcement. Two approaches that both achieve the same general customer result – which approach is better is up to you to decide/discuss ;-)
What’s also interesting is that so far, Red Hat has only submitted for Windows certification on KVM and not yest on RHEL/Xen (which is currently shipping).
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=lcUS21686409
The Red Hat and Microsoft agreement simply is about cross-validation/certification and does not have any IP or financial implications.
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
Bob Sutor takes on a new (Linux-related) role in IBM
Congratulations to Bob Sutor on his new role in IBM’s Linux team:
Now that it’s been announced internally, I can briefly spill the beans that I have a new and expanded role in IBM. My standards and open source IP/membership/policy team and I are moving to the Software Group, and I am picking up…
Monday, January 19th, 2009
Is Samba 4 going after the Windows Active Directory stronghold?
Admittedly I have neither read or heard much about Samba 4, but it sounds like they’re gunning for Active Directory replacement (finally). I’d be very interesting in seeing a comparison table of what features are supported (and in what DC roles) vs AD… if you know of such a comparison, please let me know. I checked samba.org and wikipedia but didn’t find anything.
Looking at the article /. linked to, this may be a while off with Bartlett saying, “we don’t know what people need”
“Enterprise networks now have an alternative choice to Microsoft Active Directory (AD) servers, with the open source Samba project aiming for feature parity with the forthcoming release of version 4, according to Canberra-based Samba developer Andrew Bartlett. Speaking at this year’s linux.conf.au Linux and open source conference in Hobart, Bartlett said Samba 4 is aiming to be a replacement for AD by providing a free software implementation of Microsoft’s custom protocols. Because AD is ‘far more than LDAP and Kerberos,’ Bartlett said, Samba 4 is not only about developing with Microsoft’s customization of those protocols, it is also about moving the project beyond just providing an NT 4 compatible domain manager.”
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
IBM takes on Desktop cost challenges (with Linux)
Interesting news out of my employer today. Here’s the thing, everyone who hears “Linux desktop” has a knee-jerk reaction and thinks of all the things they do on their own PC, laptop, Mac. The reality is you’re probably not the target market for virtual desktops. The market is large desktop environments that have thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of users and who are not doing consumer-oriented work (or shouldn’t be). The cost savings of moving from physical PCs in a 1 user to 1 PC model to a managed model with virtual terminals can be significant. We’ll see where the market goes for this model, but I know of a few very large companies that want to make this model very real. The economic situation and the impact on IT budgets may act as an accelerant.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the IBM solution runs on Ubuntu and can be easily deployed on RHEL/SLED too ;-)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/04/ibm_linux_lotus_virtual_desktop/
IBM is working with Virtual Bridges and its VERDE (Virtual Enterprise Remote Desktop Environment) product to ship a virtual Canonical Ubuntu Linux desktop, with Lotus email, word processing, spreadsheets, unified communication, and social networking software included, to a variety of end-point devices. Virtual printing is also included.
…
When we look back several years from now, I think we’ll see this time as an inflection point when the economic climate pushed the virtual Linux desktop from theory to practice. The financial pressures on organizations are staggering; the management of PCs is unwieldy, and traditional office software innovation is paltry. Today’s virtual desktop is delivering superior collaborative software, an innovative delivery method, and an open-source operating system that is demanding clients’ consideration.
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Seen on campus: 2 Ubuntu Laptop Success Stories
I have two younger sisters who are currently in college – both at the same school. It’s a private college and has what I would consider your average IT setup for a campus.
Within the first two weeks, both had their laptops infected by viruses separately – different viruses, different times. One was running XP, the other Vista on you basic Dell laptops. Of course, who did they call? Answer: me.
Well, I took in both laptops and tried to fix them. I found that viruses today are far more advanced – one modified the MBR and the other completely wiped out the Dell recovery partition – savvy indeed. I did my best to try re-installing their respective Windows OSs, but I found that Microsoft’s licensing practices prevented me from succeeding. First, I only had Pro CDs of XP and Vista so the Home license keys on the underside of each laptop were of no use. I’d install the OS, then Microsoft Genuine Advantage would block me… thanks Microsoft.
So I had them try calling Dell – of course, no luck. They wouldn’t send a replacement media for Windows. If I had the time and energy, I’d file a lawsuit against them tomorrow.
So I turned to my laptop OS of choice: Ubuntu. No chance for a license key or media obtainment problem.
My sisters had both seen me using Ubuntu before so they had seen “what it looked like” but they never knew it wasn’t Windows. When I loaded it on their laptops, they actually didn’t know it wasn’t Windows. In fact, the first thing they both did was try downloading/installing iTunes from Apple.com. No luck – Apple, where’s an Ubuntu client?
So I set them up with all the software they needed for iPods. They actually installed their own printers without even calling me (HP printers – great compatibility). They use OpenOffice for their papers/spreadsheets/presentations, Firefox was not new to them, and Evolution is just as easy as Outlook.
They’re now both about to close out their first semester – both made it on Ubuntu alone. And the best news – not a single virus.
More amazingly, the overall number of “support requests” have gone down. Even when they had Windows there were other reasons for calls, but now… only an occassional “how do I?” type question here or there. It’s been great. They easily download from the digital cameras, they manage their music collections (no corrupted iTunes libraries), and they use all the latest social media networks. Now they would both prefer to get a Mac, but that’s the really interesting part – they have no need for Windows.
We’re making progress. Ubuntu is leading the way.
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
Did hell freeze over? Broadcom releases an open source, Linux wireless driver
I had to read this article twice to ensure I was actually reading it correctly. Then I visited the Broadcom website and downloaded it just to be certain this wasn’t a hoax. Yes, Broadcom, the most open only about not supporting Linux has released an open source Linux wireless driver. And it’s really under an open source license. The source files I opened were clearly GPLv2.
So Dell and Canonical forced them into it – but they did it. I’m honestly shocked.
Linux has hit a critical mass. It may not be taking over the desktop world, but it has at least reached “Mac” support status.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/new_linux_broadcom_wi_fi_drivers_arrive
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
NY Times: “Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?”
Interesting article on the last ditch efforts of Sun to keep Solaris from dying. Personally, I think Solaris will die a similar death as IBM’s OS/2 did – slowly, with stalwarts hanging on as long as they can.
http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C400693880002574CE00371FE1.html
I’m not sure UNIX in general is dead as AIX and I think even HP-UX have seen fairly strong growth recently, but Linux is certainly tearing up the industry like the good disruptor it is. I think another angle that was missed is the outstanding growth of Linux on Power and mainframe platforms – heck, even Sun has tried to put Solaris on an IBM mainframe.
Another point that is often overlooked is that a lot of Solaris migrations also go to Windows. It’s the drive to high volume platforms that triggers the shift.
However, aside from those minor conflicts in views, Jim Zemlin is right on. I think this quote says it all. It amazes me that any company would try to compete with that level of momentum head on and not try to join in on the growth opportunity. Just look at Red Hat’s earnings yesterday if you’re still skeptical.
By contrast, Linux is the overwhelming choice for new deployments on x86 systems, Zemlin says. Sun has had its strength in applications such as ERP systems with a seven- to 20-year life cycle, he adds. “What’s starting to happen is those life cycles are starting to be completed,” and those customers are moving to Linux.
That move to Linux is accelerated by Linux’s strength in Web applications, where developers today are focused, Zemlin adds. “You can’t really talk to any Web-based application company these days that’s not using Linux,” he says.
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
Red Hat beats estimates and Ohio Linux Fest is Almost Here
I can’t make sense of the “all eggs in a Solaris basket” strategy Sun is on especially when I see Red Hat just launched economic concerns back into the faces of Wall St. analysts by posting 24% growth over last year. Jim Whitehurst seems to be doing just fine in the new role – the Qumranet buy was also brilliant. I have high hopes for what we might see come from the acquisition.
And in other news, Oracle launched its own branded storage hardware product (made by HP) that is based on Linux. All around it’s been a positive day for accelerating growth of Linux.
And for those who haven’t registered, Ohio Linux Fest is coming up soon. I’m proud to say that IBM is once again the primary platinum sponsor (thanks for the funding Alena!). You can sign up here. I can’t say for sure yet, but it looks like Brian Warner from IBM’s Linux Strategy team will be joining me in person. If you’ll be present, send me an email and let’s meet up. There’s a great list of speakers for the event. I’ve never met Joe Brockmeier but I’m hoping to introduce myself at some point.
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Shameless Plug: IBM offers developers, customers access to its Chiphopper tools
The Chiphipper program is an interesting program where IBM gives its ISV partners access to a toolset that allowed them to validate their x86 Linux applications for Linux on POWER and z mainframe platforms. It may seem trivial, but ask any developer and the challenge of moving from one architecture to another without tools can be a pain.
With Chiphopper, the process becomes fairly automated in discovering what needs changed before starting a port and makes it fairly easy to offer an application on multiple platforms. Developers use these tools on their x86 code so you don’t even need access to Power or mainframe hardware to use them. You can even use the tools with open source applications.
Now IBM is offering these tools to any developer or customer that wants to port their x86/Linux application to Linux on Power or System z (mainframes). The IBM team has been collaborating with the Linux Foundation and I think some of the tools overlap with the LF’s LSB application testing tools. If fact, these tools can be used as a step toward LSB certification of your application.
The first set of tools used in the Chiphopper offering comes from the Linux Standard Base (LSB), a project of the Linux Foundation. When using standard interfaces, the developer can have confidence that these interfaces will be stable over time. Developers can focus on adding new functionality to enhance the application instead of having to rewrite over and over for changing interfaces. Developers can use the LSB Application Testkit Manager, located on the Linux Foundation Web site, to check whether the interfaces used by an application are part of an LSB standard.
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
Red Hat Acquires Qumranet For $107M
Red Hat announced today that it will acquire Qumranet, the company behind KVM. Now Qumranet does not make its money on KVM, instead it uses KVM as part of its desktop virtualization solutions. Qumranet is also behind the very efficient SPICE protocol. I think this is a great move on both sides and I’m excited to hear a former IBM colleague’s bold move into a startup has paid off. I knew it would only be a matter of time before Qumranet was acquired, but it’s great to see it finally went through. Great ideas and technology leadership deserve to be rewarded.
I think you can expect to see an increase in KVM usage in RHEL going forward ;-)
I saw the press release here:
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Firefox gets a major Javascript performance boost
I always like to see innovation in open source software development because it flies in the face of many critics. Ars is reporting the Mozilla team has identified methods to improve Javascript interpretation performance by up to 40% in some case. Their goal is to make the interpreter faster so that many of the glitzy “web 2.0″ apps that we’re getting used to perform well enough for users. Obviously there seem to be no downsides here, but it also appears the new tracing optimization technique also opens the potential for future gains as well.
ars benchmark graph
Monday, August 18th, 2008
Savio Rodrigues: “Are vendors afraid of open source?”
Savio posted a blog entry a little while ago that I missed until now (yes, I’m way behind on my RSS feeds). Anyway, after reading my blog post here on Microsoft’s annual report statements regarding risk from open source, Savio went and looked up what other software vendors state in their annual reports regarding potential business risk from open source software. The results are indeed interesting. Check out Savio’s analysis here:
http://saviorodrigues.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/are-vendors-afraid-of-open-source/
Monday, August 18th, 2008
BusinessWeek “Open Source: An Open Question for Red Hat and Others”
Wow, some great quotes are included in this BusinessWeek article on Red Hat and open source software. It’s great to see Jim taking control at the helm. Certainly I agree with much of his views, however, I also see Red Hat in a business that needs to continue contributing to community efforts. While I know he’s guiding that as well, it does not really come out in these comments.
I definitely agree with Aaron about the bleak future for those open source companies who “don’t get it”. I talk about the blunders I see all the time, but I suspect over the next couple years we’ll finally see them go under. I was less inclined to buy into Aaron’s comments inferring that having a free version hurts the market opportunity for selling. That “free version” running on a server the customer deamed not necessary to support is exactly why Red Hat is in the position it is today.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2008/tc20080815_938079.htm
Meantime, life has been rough for many of the companies that have bet their business more specifically on open source.
“Open source is not a get-rich-quick scheme,” says Marten Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL and now a senior vice-president at Sun. “You have to have patience.” He adds that the company was 13 years old when it sold.
Many investors won’t wait that long. Venture capitalists invested $196 million in U.S. open-source software companies last year, after pouring in $265 million in 2006, according to market researcher Dow Jones VentureSource.
…
Whitehurst, [..] is shifting engineers and marketers away from nice-to-have projects toward areas where Red Hat gets paid. He’s pulling resources out of consumer desktop Linux, and he shuttered an online store that sold other companies’ open-source programs. “I took a look at that and said, ‘We’re not eBay,’” he says. “Red Hat is open source, but that doesn’t mean we do everything in open source.”
…
“A pure service business is not particularly defensible,” says Whitehurst. “Some open-source companies have not truly figured that out.” If the open-source movement, now in its second decade, is to realize its promise for vendors and investors, more of its purveyors will need to get the message soon.
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
How to participate in the Linux kernel development process/community
There’s a great book published over at the Linux Foundation that helps developers who are interested in participating in Linux kernel development and the process for contributing. This is a great resource and is probably one of the most difficult “cultural” and procedural issues for new, aspiring kernel hackers. I think it’s absolutely fantastic the kernel community itself has published a guide on how to participate. This will help significantly as the developer community has scaled already to a very large number of participants.
The LF should publish a PDF version… I’ll send them a suggestion. One other suggestion would be about how a developer should work with their internal legal team to get permission for submitting code. Perhaps we’ll see that in version 2.0.
Oh, and of course it’s free (as in beer) – until O’Reilly buys the rights ;-)
http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/book/how-participate-linux-community
Thursday, August 7th, 2008
Virtualized Linux on Power Boom
Internally within IBM we get to see a number of great adoption statistics for technologies and IBM products. One that has been increasing over time is the usage of Linux virtualized on Power Systems (e.g. POWER6 processor based servers). These systems were always considered “UNIX servers” and that was true in the old days. Today, with virtualization, how do you count a system that has 30% of its capacity dedicated to Linux partitions and 70% to AIX? How about 90% Linux, 10% AIX? The same trend for adoption of Linux on scalable systems is true for Mainframes as well. These systems offer customers a significant amount of flexibility to match workloads and applications to the best hardware without disrupting the OS, tools, etc.
Every now and then IBMers know we’ve clearly done something the competition is unlikely to ever catch up to even if we let them know it’s working. The numbers below speak for themselves. It takes commitment to drive change. To use a poker reference, if you know the odds are in your favor, go all in pre-flop or someone without the odds will potentially take you out on the river card. If Sun had a real Linux strategy, this could be Linux on UltraSPARC Tx. If HP had a real processor strategy, this could be Linux on Superdome.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2223362/virtualisation-booming-ibm
The company is reporting a threefold increase in the number of virtualised Power Systems servers sold. Sixty four per cent of Big Blue’s customers opted for a virtualised Linux setup on the new servers, compared to just 21 per cent a year ago.
“Even I was stunned by the uptake,” admitted Scott Handy, IBM’s vice president of Power Systems.
Monday, August 4th, 2008
Proof Microsoft still does not “get open source”
You need look no further than the most recent Microsoft annual report to understand that Microsoft still does not “get open source”.
Let’s start with page 12, “Item 1A: Risk Factors”, first risk section:
Challenges to our business model may reduce our revenues and operating margins. Our business model has been based upon customers paying a fee to license software that we develop and distribute. Under this license-based software model, software developers bear the costs of converting original ideas into software products through investments in research and development, offsetting these costs with the revenue received from the distribution of their products. Certain “open source” software business models challenge our license-based software model. Open source commonly refers to software whose source code is subject to a license allowing it to be modified, combined with other software and redistributed, subject to restrictions set forth in the license. A number of commercial firms compete with us using an open source business model by modifying and then distributing open source software to end users at nominal cost and earning revenue on complementary services and products. These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the software. Some of these firms may build upon Microsoft ideas that we provide to them free or at low royalties in connection with our interoperability initiatives. To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline.
No where in this section covering “open source” software does Microsoft hint at or acknowledge the possibility that Microsoft could leverage this model to strengthen its developer community, offer attractive licensing into emerging markets, leverage community based development to lead in web server standards, etc.
This is more interesting, because the entire section lacks anything that Microsoft may do to counter, compete with, or embrace the risk it identified: open source software.
Now take a look at the other paragraphs in this section 1A Risk Factors of the annual report. ALL of the other items called out as significant risks have something at the end of their paragaphs – what Microsoft will do about them. For instance:
Advertising Subscription Business Models: “We are devoting significant resources toward developing our own competing software plus services strategies. It is uncertain whether these strategies will be successful.”
Platform based ecosystems (vertically integrated model): “We also offer vertically-integrated hardware and software products;…”
Piracy: “Throughout the world, we actively educate consumers about the benefits of licensing genuine products and obtaining indemnification benefits for intellectual property risks, and we educate lawmakers about the advantages of a business climate where intellectual property rights are protected.”
And it goes on and on… but where is this wonderfully open painting of Microsoft collaborating with the open source community? Will Microsoft ever embrace it enough to have a chance of extending it?
To be continued…
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