Michael Dolan Dot Com

Archive for the 'Open Source Software' Category

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…

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

LinkedIn runs on the LAMP stack – and it’s suddenly news?

I couldn’t help but find myself perplexed when I got an email on my iPhone yesterday from a well known figure in the Linux world. He (and subsequently I) were baffled that Sun must be combing through existing LAMP users for new references – LinkedIn uses LAMP. Well call me shocked… don’t 90% of the web companies out there run LAMP? (excluding those Microsoft has bought) I’m guessing the “new news” is that Sun signed up LinkedIn for a MySQL support contract for the first time, but are we going through a second LAMP hype cycle?

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080728/20080728005247.html?.v=1

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

SFLC files another GPL enforcement suit on behalf of BusyBox

The SFLC continues to enforce the GPL on behalf of the BusyBox developers, this time against Extreme Networks. As usual, a lawsuit is filed after trying to work with the defendants to remedy the situation first.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Extreme Networks, Inc. on behalf of its clients, two principal developers of BusyBox, alleging violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

“We attempted to negotiate with Extreme Networks, but they ultimately ignored us,” said Aaron Williamson, SFLC Counsel. “Like too many other companies we have contacted, they treated GPL compliance as an afterthought. That is not acceptable to us or our clients.”

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

WordPress for iPhone is here

WordPress for iPhone is here. I just tested it and there appears to be some bugs still. When I setup my blog on the iPhone app, it auto inserted a couple of blank posts that did not have anything in them. Hopefully we’ll see an update soon ;-)

One bigger issue is that the iPhone still does not have copy/paste support.

Introducing the first Open Source app that lets you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.5.1 or higher), users of all experience levels can get going in seconds. Download it now!

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

WordPress 2.6 is here and rumors of an iPhone interface coming?

I still need to update to v2.6, but it’s officially here. There are a host of cool new features including Gears-based acceleration.

I also noticed this link indicating an upcoming iPhone application for easier use of WordPress.

Good news on all WordPress fronts.

Monday, July 14th, 2008

Linux Kernel 2.6.26 is out; so is Gentoo 2008.0

I actually haven’t been using Gentoo at all recently. It’s on an older laptop that just doesn’t keep up with all the compiling. However I have a very fast AMD64 desktop at home just waiting to try out the latest Gentoo. I was also waiting for the latest kernel to come out b/c there are some KVM, webcam, and other driver updates I’m interested in taking advantage of. In other news, 2.6.26 adds KVM support for S/390 (IBM Mainframe), PPC (IBM Power) and Itanium processors.

I also noticed KGDB (kernel debugger) supports x86 and SPARC right now – SPARC? Hmm…

You can read more about the new kernel features here: http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_26

And you can get the latest Gentoo LiveCD over here: http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

Bob Sutor goes 100% Linux on the desktop; Mac surges; where’s Windows?

Nice to see Bob Sutor has made the complete switch to Linux for laptop use at work. I remember the day I wiped out my Windows partition on my laptop – it was memorable. I then went an entire year booting Windows in VMWare only about 3-5 times.

It’s great to see the transition starting to happen everywhere. Even if some of the transitions are to Mac, it’s greater choice.

This is all going to be even easier as technologies like Firefox, OpenOffice/ODF and open standards start to permeate the set of options available to users.

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

The Register Open Season Podcast

This was another interesting podcast. I’m obviously a fan of Mr. Vance (has anyone ever called him “Mr.”?) – maybe I’m the first. I also need to meet Matt Asay at some point… have much to discuss.

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Shameless Analyst Report Plug: “IBM & Linux – 9 Years Later”

A colleague sent me a link to this analyst paper today that takes a look at whether IBM has made good on the Linux promises it made back in 1999. I’m obviously biased, but I’m interested in hearing if anyone has thoughts on this topic.

Here’s the report: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/linux/pdfs/GCG_IBM_and_Linux-9_years_later.pdf

The opening teaser:

In 1999, IBM issued a series of announcements fully committing the company to supporting Linux. IBM vowed to Linux-enable all of their hardware platforms, including their non-x86 based mainframe, mini, and RISC-based systems. They also promised to release Linux versions of their software products and develop
Linux-centric service practices. Moreover, they pledged significant resources to the Linux community with the goal of advancing Linux and open source technology.

So, nine years later, did IBM deliver on these promises? Was their commitment to Linux genuine or just lip service? This report examines IBM’s current Linux products, services, and community support in light of the promises they made in 1999…

While I think it’s obvious IBM has been a huge investor in the Linux community, one thing that I noticed reading the report is just how much IBM is actually different from other community members. There are some noticeable differences in the investments and approach to supporting the Linux platform and community. I often forget to just take in all the Linux technologies IBM has been heavily involved in from Xen, KVM and libvirt to filesystems, to systemtap, kprobes and then there’s RAS, scalability and performance enhancements.

Another interesting thought to reflect on is just how important it has been that there are multiple investors in this field. If this report captures just what IBM did, think of the industry combined. IBM couldn’t have done anything this big with Linux if it weren’t for co-creating with a community of enthusiasts, researchers, governments, Intel, AMD, Google, Nokia, Motorola, Oracle and thousands more. What would the report look like if you compiled all the investments and work the entire community leveraged across the industry. Linux is “bigger than huge” when you stop to think about it. This is also why I’ve said for a couple years now when you extend the investment model 3 to 5 years into the future, Sun and its anti-Linux,  Solaris push against the tide of the industry loses in the end. I think we’re starting to witness that now. Sure, OpenSolaris is a great idea… it’s just 9 years late and it’s too late to matter now.

I’m interested in outside perspectives too – where do you think IBM stands? Has the community development and investment model worked? Where will this lead in the future and what will be the next evolution of the model? Red Hat seems to think the model will evolve to include increased customer co-creation – I tend to agree. Why? Because the incentive model to invest aligns very well – and when you have alignment, it almost naturally will happen.

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

McKinsey: “The next step in open innovation”

There’s a great article over at McKinsey Quarterly’s website on the next step in innovation. It offers a peak into where companies are headed now that they’ve (well some at least) established basic means for tapping into open innovation through communities. To access the full article you need a login.

Here’s a teaser:

For most companies, innovation is a proprietary activity conducted largely inside the organization in a series of closely managed steps. Over the last decade, however, a few consumer product, fashion, and technology businesses have been opening up the product-development process to new ideas hatched outside their walls—from suppliers, independent inventors, and university labs.

Executives in a number of companies are now considering the next step in this trend toward more open innovation.¹ For one thing, they are looking at ways to delegate more of the management of innovation to networks of suppliers and independent specialists that interact with each other to cocreate products and services. They also hope to get their customers into the act.

I was particularly interested in the hurdles to evolving towards a more participative value chain model. These are the four hurdles McKinsey identified:

• Attracting and motivating cocreators
• Structuring problems for participation
• Governance mechanisms to facilitate cocreation
• Maintaining quality

I would add a fifth challenge which is maintaining visionary leadership. The challenge is that when a company open up to such participation, it’s too easy to justify investment in innovation to solve what customers, suppliers, etc are asking for today. What’s difficult in an environment with tons of user input is to also step back and recognize where you *should be* beyond what’s being asked for today. Think of Apple. If Apple had asked and listened to its customers about what to do next with the iPod next, customers would have posted a million points about X, Y, … N feature enhancements they’d like to see. What Apple did instead is look beyond what was right in front of everyone and set a strategy to take over the mobile device people carry with them. Apple looked further ahead and built an SDK platform for enterprise applications. They set a brilliant strategy that has now resulted in the iPhone becoming the next generation of what was just a music playing device. How many people will carry and iPhone and an iPod? Now look at the boost to Mac sales and you can see Apple has executed this strategy very well.

This challenge is also present in open source communities. Often the community will set many resources to what gap is in front of someone willing to speak up and complain or advise. The challenge is for that community to look a step ahead and identify what are the needs your users will want 3 years from now, not today.

I’ve diverted from my starting post, but while I thought the article was great, I felt compelled to add my personal addendum. The bottom line is that I think companies need to build into their open innovation model a means to capture this longer term vision either from the community if possible (without community NDAs) or through internal means.

Friday, June 20th, 2008

Red Hat bridges patents to the GPL – without coupons

Red Hat made a very interesting move in resolving patent litigation and opened a new intellectual property bridge between GPL software and patent rights. Red Hat fought for the community on this one settling with provisions to also protect up/downstream developers and distributors. This really was a crafty move and the SFLC appears to have blessed it as well. Groklaw quotes Eben saying:

“Red Hat’s settlement of outstanding patent litigation on terms that provide additional protection to other members of the community upstream and downstream from Red Hat is a positive contribution to the resources for community patent defense. We would hope to see more settlements of this kind–in which parties secure more than their own particular legal advantage in relation to the third-party patent risk of the whole FOSS community–when commercial redistributors of FOSS choose to settle patent litigation. SFLC welcomes Red Hat’s efforts on the community’s behalf.”

I need to spend more time thinking about all the implications of this, but one thing is clear… Steve Ballmer was not required to build this “bridge” ;-)

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Red Hat adds more virtualization and KVM into the mix

Anthony points out some interesting news regarding Red Hat, virtualization and in particular, KVM. IBM is also involved in building out these capabilities. If you read my site often, you know I’m already a big KVM fan.

“IBM works closely with Red Hat and the open source community to drive innovation within the Linux kernel,” said Daniel Frye, vice president, open systems development at IBM. “IBM has a heterogenous approach toward virtualization, with KVM one of several options. KVM leverages the core features of the Linux kernel, including paravirtualization interfaces contributed by IBM engineers. By combining Linux virtualization infrastructure with open management interfaces such as CIM and libvirt, we gain a solution that eliminates lock-in and open source community innovations, we are able to offer our customers a solution with outstanding performance, scalability and agility.”

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

Wall Street’s Linux Frenzy continues; so does FUD

Just saw this on Slashdot today:

Market watcher Tabb Group estimates that Linux adoption among the 14 biggest investment firms this year will reach more than 72% of the installed operating server base vs. 60% in 2006

I’ve always known the financial markets companies in NY were big on Linux, but even I was a bit surprised the percentage has gone up from 60% to now being 72% of the installed OS base. 72% – wow!

Now aside from that reference to Linux dominating the install base, this article was very, very poor. It’s littered with nonsense about open source software licensing being an issue and companies being fearful of having to give up the code they change. Rubbish. First, I know that the investment firms that would have been surveyed know far more about open source software licensing than just about any IT user set. They know exactly what they’re doing, and believe me, they’re not afraid (heck, they’re using Linux everywhere!).

I don’t know Ellen, but I really wish authors would spend more time talking to the users they portray knowing insights about and not vendors or analysts pushing an agenda… Perhaps Ellen cross-checked with actual users, but knowing who I’ve spoken to, this is not that big an issue with the Wall Street crowd as the article makes it out to be.

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

NetworkWorld: “Red Hat Linux pulls as much as 12% less power than Windows 2008 on identical hardware”

URL: http://www.networkworld.com/research/2008/060908-green-windows-linux.html

An amazing story of the value the Linux community development process brings to the table in solving user problems. Now that Microsoft knows there’s a problem, their engineers have to spend months identfying where there’s a problem, months identifying who will have to fix the problem and how, and months fixing the issue. Then the issue(s) may have to wait until the next Windows release, or do they roll out in an update.

Either way, the community developing Linux saw the pain point right away a long time ago and built in “green” features that today show up in the stable RHEL kernel. This is just another example of when community based development can outperform because of the open contact with user communities.

For this test, we examined power consumption as a way to judge whether Windows Server 2008 or Linux is, in fact, the ‘greener’ operating system. As the price of power hits record heights, power reduction mechanisms shipping within an operating system should play a key role in you energy conservation plan.

…

The results showed that while Windows Server 2008 drew slightly less power in a few test cases when it had its maximum power saving settings turned on, it was RHEL that did the best job of keeping the power draw in check across the board.

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Acer is betting big on Linux for portables

It looks like Acer is going big for Linux in its portables lineup. This is great news and offers greater options. The big question is when will ISVs start porting their commercial apps over… come on Adobe – it’s time for CS5 to support Linux!

Acer describes its 3 motivations as follows:

“We have shifted towards Linux because of Microsoft,” he said. “Microsoft has a lot of power and it is going to be difficult, but we will be working hard to develop the Linux market.”

Acer sees two killer apps with Linux on computers: operation and cost. Its flavour of Linux will boot in 15 seconds compared to minutes for Windows, and the open source operating system can extend battery life from five to seven hours.

At the same time, the company expects that the price differential of Linux will make the offering attractive for consumers at the low-cost end of the market.

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Google Gadgets for Linux Open Sourced / Reviewed

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080605-google-gadgets-open-sourced-for-linux.html

Google has announced the official release of Desktop Gadgets for Linux and is distributing the source code under the open-source Apache software license. Although there are still bugs and the implementation is not yet entirely complete, it works well enough for day-to-day use.