- OSDL response to MS platform face-off
- The marketing meaning of "Open Source"
- Moglen: Linux Trademark Needs to be Policed
- Sun's Utility Grid actually works
- OSDL General Counsel on Patent Commons
- Matt Asay says the world really is flat
- Asianux landing this week
- Where are all the open source marketers?
- IBM creates VC panel to ward off evil
- Sun launches open-source digital rights plan (Huh?)
August 29, 2005 | Comments: (0)
OSDL response to MS platform face-off
Last week the news came out that Microsoft's Martin Taylor asked OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen to conduct a jointly funded Windows vs. Linux research study. Stuart's response below:
Martin Taylor of Microsoft invited me to meet with him to discuss shared research and other topics at LinuxWorld and I accepted. Martin proposed that our meeting stay confidential in order to be as productive as possible and I agreed. When reporters contacted me about the meeting, I first asked Martin how he wanted us to respond to questions about a confidential conversation. He said he's looking into how the press was notified and he promised to get back to me. As far as working with Microsoft on a study, I explained that Microsoft could probably find one negative line on Linux in a 100-page research report that it would spend $10 million marketing while ignoring the other 99 pages. Why would OSDL want to participate in that?
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 29, 2005 10:11 PM
August 26, 2005 | Comments: (0)
The marketing meaning of "Open Source"
Forbes is running a story about how VA Software appears to be co-opting open source as nothing more than a marketing slogan. In actuality, many "open source" companies are in fact hybrid, offering some level of closed source functionality or features not available in the open product. SugarCRM is an example of the hybrid, whereas Sleepycat is more 'pure'. As the market is still so nascent, none of the business models are entirely proven, and each has benefits and weaknesses. Ultimately, people create businesses to make money, and while its great to be noble and assume everything should be free, it's just not realistic.
In terms of how these companies market themselves, it should come as no surprise that people tie themselves to what's hip in the marketplace even if they are only quasi-related. There is little question that the open source moniker and associations are being used in questionable ways. VA Software is no different or less conflicted than Novell who have closed and open products or IBM who push Linux and yet still sell the closed WebSphere etc.
What's important to realize is that open source will be usurped by marketing just like Grid, virtualization and every other emergent technology. The only advantage we have in this market is the transparency afforded by the community. Is Slashdot conflicted because it's owned by VA? Hard to say. The guys who work there would likely be saying and writing the same things regardless of who signs their paychecks. I can't tell you how they feel about it, but don't think that people aren't aware of the parasites that are trying to corrupt the open source movement and use it to their advantage.
Related:
My posting Where are all the open source marketers has resulted in a bevy of emails from people asking about jobs in open source, people looking to provide jobs, and recruiters wondering who the companies are that are looking for staff. I am in process of responding to all and will post some summary data in the future.
The voodoo of marketing an open source project
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 26, 2005 10:24 AM
August 26, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Moglen: Linux Trademark Needs to be Policed
Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center says any company in the U.S. using "Linux" as part of a name should sublicense the mark.
"The root of the matter in the United States is the Lanham Act, which says that the test of trademark infringement is the 'likelihood of confusion' for consumers as to the source or origin of goods in interstate commerce,"
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 26, 2005 10:05 AM
August 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Sun's Utility Grid actually works
Sun software partner CD02 completed a trial of its financial services software on Sun's grid utility platform. More than an endorsement for Sun, this shows that Grid can be accessible and viable for enterprises of various sizes. This also underscores the importance of companies like Univa who support the open source Globus Toolkit, giving enterprises a support mechanism for building Grid apps regardless of where they get deployed.
I like Sun's utility model and it speaks to the general enterprise application and infrastructure story, unlike the DRM announcement this week which I am still puzzled by.
IT Architect has an article on the strategy behind Sun's utility play.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 24, 2005 08:56 PM
August 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
OSDL General Counsel on Patent Commons
Diane Peters, general counsel for OSDL recently did a Q&A with ITBusinessEdge on what the OSDL patent commons project means to patent holders and software users.
With increasing frequency, institutions, companies and inventors want to formally signal to open source developers, distributors and users that software patents they hold are not a threat or inhibitor to the development or use of open source. The patent commons gives them a forum in which to do so. As for patent holders who assign their patents to OSDL, they are relieved of the administrative burdens associated with licensing their patents to various players in the open source community. Those holders are assured that the right to enforce the patent is held by an organization dedicated to promoting the development and use of open source software. And for everyone who contributes or who participates in open source, the benefit is the increase in innovation that occurs when developers invent without fear of running afoul of patents that have been donated to the Commons.Link to full text
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 24, 2005 03:33 PM
August 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Matt Asay says the world really is flat
In his tireless quest for knowledge, Matt Asay, founder of OSBC and Linux Programs Director at Novell has been reading something like 4 books a day and doing book reports on his blog. Today he posted on The World is Flat by Tom Friedman.
Excerpt below:
If you're an American or European reading this (or, as you should be doing, reading it straight from Friedman's book - never accept second-hand knowledge), you should be growing nervous. Why? Because flattening of information streams tends to...flatten people, too. That's why Friedman advises those in the currently developed nations to become "untouchables" (playing off the Indian caste system). Untouchables are workers who are special (The Bill Gates of the world - very few of these people), who are specialized (Workers with specialized knowledge of their particular field, like an attorney who has a practice in open source law, for example, tend not to get marginalized by the flattening economy), who are anchored (face-to-face jobs like cashiers that can't easily be exported), or who are really adaptable (constantly learning new skills to stay ahead of the flattening "curve." (238)
Contrary to the belief that I only watch reality Tv, I recently read Freakonomics. While not so much an actual story it's a very interesting exercise in research and drawing conclusions. Helpful for anyone trying to figure out a market.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 24, 2005 01:39 PM
August 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Asianux 2.0, will be introduced Thursday and was developed by Japan-based Miracle Linux Corp., China's Red Flag Software Co. and Haansoft Inc. of South Korea. The companies have been working on the system since last year with the aim of making a product that competes with Microsoft's Windows operating system and reduces the reliance of Asian companies on it.
If you are wondering why this matters, the creation of a pan-Asian standard will encourage Asian software and hardware companies to certify their products on Linux and further tip the balance against Windows in the region. Last month, Neil McAllister wrote about China at LinuxWorld.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 24, 2005 01:33 PM
August 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Where are all the open source marketers?
In the process of finishing the third piece of my Release 1.0 report Open Source Community: How to win friends and influence developers, I spoke with a number of people who asked if I knew of any VP of Marketing types to join their open source company. The truth is I came up pretty much blank. Word on the street is that no less then six open source related companies are looking to fill that role (email me openresource at this domain.com and I will tell you who they are). So why is it so hard to find?
Marketing is already hard, throw in the open source angle it gets even harder
Open source, in general is so new that there isn't a pool of long time experts. You can count the influencers on two hands (Tim O'Reilly, Matt Asay, Larry Augustin, Brian Behlendorf etc.) but how many marketing guys do you know besides Zack at MySQL? Compounded by the fact that marketing is such a nebulous task and that few business schools are teaching people how to market in this atmosphere, it's going to be a tough slog. The person in the VP of marketing role is one who has to understand and communicate with the community, in addition to standard marketing fare like competitive analysis, PR, and channel strategies. Either of these is a tall order, but both requires a unique skillset.
Finding the needle in the LAMP stack
On the corporate side, there are two main weaknesses in the VP of marketing search methodology. First, most recruiters, even the highly paid retained search firms, don't really understand the market and tend to focus on the wrong type of background. I spoke with several recruiters all looking for someone from big, generally proprietary companies like Adobe, Macromedia, BEA because of a perceived understanding of the enterprise space. And while I would expect those candidates to understand the marketing side, I don't see them really understanding the difference in open source marketing. This may also be a function of the issue above, that open source is so new and the candidate pool is so small. Second, the companies that are currently searching don't always know what they want, or may actually be wrong in their assumptions. While it's tough to take a risk on hiring someone who was not a VP of marketing already, or are not from the target market (meaning security, BI etc), I don't see any choice but to find smart people who understand the market, rather than force a set of criteria that may not be entirely correct. And, in startups, it's the utility players-people who can do more than one thing that make the difference.
Ultimately, it becomes a trade-off of which is more important and relevant to the company-marketing expertise or market understanding. With these open source companies, I think the market understanding matters more. It's much easier to learn how to do competitive analysis than it is to understand the developer psyche.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 23, 2005 12:18 PM
August 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
IBM creates VC panel to ward off evil
IBM is forming a brain trust of prominent venture capitalists in a bid to encourage innovators to develop products for IBM instead of Microsoft. I think many VCs are well aware of the merits of open source startups, but not too many of them understand the market yet. There are many signs of hope-just look at the recent Univa funding led by Arch Venture Partners or the ActiveGrid funding led by Worldview Technology Partners.
"The upside is all about this battle for the hearts and minds for the best partners," said Drew Clark, a director of IBM's Venture Capital Group. "We're working feverishly to attract the best and brightest startups."Mr. Clark said Microsoft has been trying to bully VCs into avoiding investments in open source.
"To us, that's a new low," said Mr. Clark. "It's gotten to the point where I think they’re scared they're going to lose the best and brightest innovations. The VCs aren't buying it."
The VC advisory council includes VCs from Accel Partners, Darby Overseas Investments, Draper, Fisher Jurvetson, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, 3i, U.S. Venture Partners, and Walden International.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 23, 2005 11:03 AM
August 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Sun launches open-source digital rights plan (Huh?)
As if Simon Phipps didn't already have enough to do in his new role as Sun's chief open source officer, Jonathan Schwartz announced the Open Media Commons and DRM software called Dream.
I can't figure out what relation this has to anything Sun has announced in the last several months. A quick highlight reel:
Open Source ESB
Sun buys SeeBeyond
JBI has minimal traction
Java remains closed source
Sun makes a laptop
Admittedly, I'm barely even interested in DRM, but it seemed like Sun was starting to focus on enterprise infrastructure-and specifically open source applications in the enterprise. I suppose DRM could be important for enterprises, but it seems awfully tangential. Sorta like they made this cool thing in the lab and now they want to productize it. Even Uncle Walt gave iTunes service and licensing the thumbs-up.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 22, 2005 09:29 AM
August 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Univa lands $8 million VC Funding
Univa, founded by Grid computing pioneers Ian Foster, Greg Tuecke and Carl Kesselman, announced an $8 million Series A investment.
Univa delivers vendor-neutral, enterprise-hardened Grid infrastructure software for next-generation datacenters. Univa's products are based on the open sourceGlobus Toolkit.
"Univa is at the intersection of two exploding markets -- open source and Grid infrastructure software," said Patrick Ennis, managing director at ARCH, and Univa board member. "By using open source and open standards, companies are able to extract more value from existing IT investments, while ensuring long-term agility and competitiveness. As a result, enterprises are pulling Globus into the corporate datacenter to take advantage of these business benefits."
The investment will allow Univa to accelerate development of its Grid infrastructure software and grow its sales, engineering, business development and marketing operations. It will be used to attract new talent, helping Univa keep pace with market demand from independent software vendors (ISVs) and corporate customers.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 22, 2005 07:59 AM
August 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
When we talk about open source development models, much of what we are talking about the is collaborative efforts of individuals to make a larger whole. The model isn't unique to open source, or software in general. In fact, artists, writers and researchers have been doing collaborative work for years.
This weekend the San Jose Museum played host to a number of collaborative painting groups, including my friends in the DPI (Dizzypearing Inc) Collective who did a series of paintings together, and did some cool mix/mash/whatever-ups with my wife Karen, who is an illustrator and designer operating under the name Moongirl. For the collaborative effort "Moongirl vs. DPI", Karen had Trillium Press print her illustrations on canvas for the DPI guys to paint on. She and the DPI artists met a number of times to discuss how to best do the work and how they would sell it. It's no different than any other collaborative project, software or otherwise. When people or companies challenge the notion of the open source development model I think it's safe to point to collaborative efforts in art, music etc and cite the historical precedent. It's also an important note that this stuff has been going on for a long time and that while it's relatively new to software, history shows many successful projects.
These guys (and many others) do this collaborative work as a community effort knowing that the end product can be more interesting and unique. There's a lesson to be learned here for certain companies who share but aren't open.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 21, 2005 08:53 PM
August 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Sun's new chief open source officer (Verdict: good move)
Congratulations to Sun for instituting Simon Phipps as chief open source officer. Many people, including myself, give Sun a hard time for the muddled message around its open source leanings. But, Sun has long been an open source donator and contributor despite the communications challenges of late.
It makes sense for Sun to have a chief open source officer. Matt Asay and I always push startups and their VCs to hire a similar type of chief community officer-a role that any company that bases any portion of its business on open source development or distribution models should consider. Sun has a large community of developers around Java and Solaris who identify with guys like James Gosling, but it's hard to point to a current Sun executive that the open source community takes as one of their own. Phipps is smart, highly technical and less of a company shill than many of the other execs, so I think he has a shot. Going back a bit on Sun's open source programs, Danese Cooper (now at Intel) developed great relationships with the open source influencers, but didn't seem to be embraced by the developers.
I don't just make this stuff up, I have spent an inordinate amount of time researching and understanding the open source marketplace and driving factors of the movement. Having a relationship with the developer community is the single largest factor for success.
Wanna learn more about community development? Go read part 2 of my Release 1.0 article--Open Source Community: How to win friends and influence developers. Want me or Matt or both of us to come and tell you how we know everything? Send email to openresource {at} infoworld dot com and we'll fuel up the open-source-mobile. (Sadly it's a '86 Corolla. You can't make money with open source, remember?)
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 18, 2005 08:27 PM
August 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Open Source Community: How to win friends and influence developers--(Part II)
Part two of my Release 1.0 article on open source community building is now live for your viewing pleasure.
The first part of the series outlined the importance of building a community to support any open-source project or company. It also described the first of the three community models I discovered in my research: the Founding Technologist model, in which the community is built around a technologist who is visible and vocal in the open source developer world. The example companies profiled were MySQL and Sourcefire. The second model, covered here, is the Built from Scratch model and features SugarCRM, Zend and Sleepycat. In this model, companies base their community development efforts on the merits of the products they produce. The third model, covered in the final part of this series, will outline the Established Leader model, in which the community is based on a non-founding but established leader in the open-source or other technology space.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 18, 2005 10:44 AM
August 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Open Source Business Intelligence Possibilities
Following up on Jeff Angus' Seeing the future with BI and my quest to replace every piece of packaged software with an open source counterpart I provide below a list of open source BI packages. Neil McAllister wrote a bit about these in InfoWorld's Open Source Special Report. I also interviewed JasperSoft CEO Paul Doscher a few weeks ago.
Forgive me for the marketing speak in the descriptions--I pulled them from the respective websites.
Greenplum is pioneering the use of open source databases for enterprise-class Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. Greenplum's family of database products, called Bizgres, comprises solutions suited to installations ranging from departmental data marts to multi-terabyte data warehouses.
JasperReports is the world's most popular open source reporting solution. JasperSoft is committed to enhancing JasperReports through continuous product advancements and comprehensive offerings for service and support. JasperReports is rapidly becoming the industry standard. JasperDecisions is our embeddable server-based operational reporting solution for applications that require industrial strength information delivery in real-time. JasperDecisions provides a highly interactive report development environment along with a powerful end-user self service capability for ad-hoc report customization.
The Pentaho BI Project provides enterprise-class reporting, analysis, dashboard, data mining and workflow capabilities that help organizations operate more efficiently and effectively. The software offers flexible deployment options that enable use as embeddable components, customized BI application solutions, and as a complete out-of-the-box, integrated BI platform.
Actuate BIRT Report Designer includes everything that's in the Eclipse version for building reports quickly plus certified maintenance, support and indemnification from Actuate. Actuate BIRT Chart Engine is fully integrated into the Report Designer and provides multiple ways to graphically visualize reports including pie, line and bar charts.
Greenplum, Jaspersoft and Kinetic Networks also offer a complete open source BI stack.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 18, 2005 09:39 AM
August 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Worm Outbreak: It's still Microsoft's fault--just switch already
Despite my obvious leanings toward open source, I don't have much of the anti-Microsoft bloodlust left in me. But every time one of these large Windows worm/virus/whatever outbreaks occurs I feel obligated to mention a few things.
Virus/Worm/Malware writers are displaying aberrant behavior that we are unlikely to control, so the best we can do is attempt to be safe about it. Businesses have a responsibility to their shareholders to keep generating revenue and to their customers to keep their valuable data safe. And yet, Windows has roughly 90% of the desktop market share. This remains after countless viruses, worms, exploits, blue screens of death and so on. Microsoft's responses to the security issues are passive, if not actually neglectful. All of today's articles about the recent outbreak quoted executives from anti-virus companies, but few from Microsoft. So where does Microsoft stand on the issue--an issue that stems exclusively from their operating system? Largely silent (at least as far as I can find) with the exception of an update to the security bulletin website.
So, when I see articles like Microsoft switches on to LAMP I know I needn't feel concerned that Microsoft will actually present a threat to LAMP adoption, as they have yet to present a significant threat to the security attacks that continue to plague Windows and IE. I like to think that end user security is more important than web development with Visual Basic, but who knows.
Martin Taylor, Microsoft's platform strategy general manager, told The Register SQL Server 2005 Express would allow tables and files to be stored on a web page to increase a site's functionality while simplified programming would be provided in Visual Studio 2005.
People already exploit IIS, IE, and Windows, so let's really go crazy and include customer tables and files on web pages, certainly nothing to see there.
For the record, I mainly use a Mac G5, and travel with a Thinkpad T42 that dual boots Windows XP (yes, it's patched) and Suse Linux. I am also installing various Linux desktops on a test machine to see what works for me. If you think that you can't be safe in your desktop computing AND have access to the applications you need you are wrong. You can do anything on the Mac or Linux that you can do on Windows, even running Windows apps under VirtualPC for Mac or CrossOver Office for Linux with zero threat (for the moment) of virus, worms etc. And the cost argument doesn't fly when you are talking Linux, and really isn’t your business important enough to be safe and secure?
Thanks to extreme comment spam (see? bad behavior effects everyone) we can't do comments on the InfoWorld blogs right now, but feel free to harass me openresource (at) this domain.com and I will post your comments.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 17, 2005 04:28 PM
August 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $150 million to operate and enhance the Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF)—aka "TeraGrid." Researchers and educators around the country can now access a range of computing resources that will accelerate advances in science and engineering TeraGrid has been used for complex data modeling tasks such as seismic modeling and understanding dark energy.
The $150 million award includes $48 million to provide overall architecture, software integration, operations and coordination of user support. An additional $100 million will provide for operation, management and user support of TeraGrid resources at eight resource provider sites.
TeraGrid uses the open source Globus Toolkit as part of it's infrastructure design.
In other Grid news, IBM is donating Blue Gene Supercomputer resources to Argonne's Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE)
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 17, 2005 12:11 PM
August 16, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Ian Foster on Research and Enterprise Grid
In the latest Globus Consortium Journal, Ian Foster presents the case that Grid has fallen victim to vendor FUD and specifically to the notion that proprietary solutions are somehow more enterprise ready than open source solutions developed in eScience and academia (such as the Globus Toolkit.) While it seems logical that a Grid research lab would have different requirements for production needs, it doesn’t make much sense that researchers would be less concerned with security or performance than proprietary vendors would.
From Foster's conversation with Charlie Catlett of Teragrid:
"It's an unfair oversimplification to say that the enterprise has somehow more constraining requirements than universities do," said Charlie Catlett, TeraGrid's director, and former chair of the Global Grid Forum. "We certainly are in different businesses, and we have more freedom to experiment with some things, but that is not to say that we don't also have production requirements that we have to meet just as industry does. By not focusing on trying to differentiate between research and enterprise Grid requirements, and by not creating that sort of divisiveness... we're going to make much better progress with Grid."
Foster's sentiment is also reflected in an excellent CIO mag article Grid Held Hostage
The landscape is further cluttered by the conflicting claims that vendors make about their grid offerings in this hot, new market, says Carl Claunch, a vice president at Gartner Research. He says grid computing has been "hijacked by the marketing folks." And even some vendors agree (about other vendors): "What all the vendors have done is to put grid under their umbrellas, [regardless of whether their solutions really qualify]," says Ken King, IBM's vice president of grid computing. "That has created hype around grid, and confusion."
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 16, 2005 11:34 AM
August 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
'Evil Empire' warms to open source
The Seattle Post Intelligencer (Microsoft's hometown paper) has a good write-up on the state of Microsoft's feelings towards open source and the efforts of guys like Bill Hilf to make everything work together.
But Microsoft increasingly acknowledges that its destiny is to co-exist with the open-source movement, not to extinguish it."We've certainly recognized that it's a big world. Open-source software is here to stay. Hopefully, commercial software is here to stay, as well," Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel, said in an interview last week. "It's important for us to find opportunities both to collaborate and to compete."
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 15, 2005 09:18 AM
August 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Bill Hilf on cover of Seattle Post Intelligencer (Thanks for playing Bill!)
Why Supervillains like Linux
Jerk-o-meter
Gas Prices are insane
OS X running on PCs
Lots of news from LinuxWorld
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 14, 2005 01:27 PM
August 12, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld Wrap-up: The Maturing Movement and Marketplace
As a wrap-up to my LinuxWorld coverage and introduction to my new position with OSDL I thought I would try to elucidate why the world can't seem to stop talking about open source and why we shouldn't.
LinuxWorld: Taking the temperature of the open source marketplace
I attended the first LinuxWorld back in 1999 and have attended consistently since. In the beginning the event was put on by VA Linux and targeted toward developers. This was largely because business types didn't really care. Linux itself was on the periphery of the big Unix HW vendors like Sun and SGI, not terribly threatening to Microsoft and was still very experimental. In the ensuing years Linux started to make its way into big companies and became legit (as did Apache etc.)
What we're seeing now at LinuxWorld is an evolution of the audience that matches the maturation of the market. The guys who were developers in 1999 are now management--the managers in 1999 are now executives. I myself am an example of this, as are many of my cohorts. That’s not to say that everyone chose this path, but sadly most have realized they have to figure out a way to make money. We can't be angry (actually, being angry is a lot of fun, just not applicable in this context) or feel cheated by the corporate interest. The money in the market helps foster new .orgs and projects, gives developers a home to build open source software, and contributes toward a greater good.
Richard Waters covered LinuxWorld for the Financial Times this week and wins my informal award for his eloquent explanation of the maturation of the market and the movement:
Something has happened to the open-source software movement. It is losing some of the intellectual purity that first drew in the ponytail crowd. It is being subverted to the interests of bigger technology companies - something that makes the idealists who created the movement angry and perturbs the romantics who like to see in it proof that individual human ingenuity can still outsmart faceless corporate power. That, though, is the wrong reaction. In fact, merging with the corporate mainstream is the logical next step. It signals the success of open-source pioneers in reshaping the software landscape, not the end of a dream.
Another testament to the business-ifcation of open source is inherent in just who wrote the above paragraph. The Financial Times, WSJ, NY Times and BusinessWeek all covered LinuxWorld, most publishing articles based on research they did while at the event. To a large extent, this is just the right time in the market for mainstream press to be covering Linux and open source, but it’s meaning is actually much deeper than those of us who live this stuff daily realize. We see that the market is there, we see that we shouldn’t have to fight the Microsoft battle anymore, and we see that open source software is not only good-enough but in fact is becoming better than proprietary applications. But, much of the rest of the world is only now beginning to believe the message. The fact that the mainstream business press are writing about Linux to such an extent signifies a big shift in perception and is a vote of confidence and legitimacy to the open source movement.
So, despite being sick of hearing myself talk about it, write about it, and fighting with Matt Asay about it :) I will continue to bang the drum for open source. In my new role as Principal Analyst at OSDL I will be doing outbound communications, market analysis, strategy, writing and editing, and other things TBD. I will also continue to work on LinuxWorld and try to make the keynotes more exciting. Admittedly, I am a glass half-empty kind of guy, but as we get older and realize that everywhere we look the emperor wears no clothes I am happy to continue to push the open source movement along and fight the good fight.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 12, 2005 02:08 PM
August 11, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld: Xandros wins best desktop productivity biz app
I very rarely gush about technology, but I think that Xandros is one of the best products available at LinuxWorld. Xandros is the only product that ships with Codeweavers Crossover office preconfigured which lets you run Windows apps and store files natively in the Linux filesystem. Basically, you can run MS Office (even Visio), Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Lotus Notes, Quicken and other (see their website) applications on Linux. And really, how many other apps are people using applications beyond that.
The main push at LinuxWorld is the upcoming Xandros Server Product which is an SMB server, due to ship Q1 2006. It's clean, easy to use and harnesses the power of Linux with a low learning curve.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 11, 2005 11:39 AM
August 11, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld: Black Dog USB Server
Black Dog makes a self-contained Linux server-it's the first of its kind that's powered entirely off a USB port. It has biometric authentication and in the not-yet-released enterprise version allows for centralized management. Through this technology you can create and assign permissions to users and create secure endpoints. This idea of Linux on a stick is really pretty cool, we’ll see how the developers like it.
The key difference is that you can plug the device into any Windows XP or Windows 2000 machine and take an entire Linux box with you. Developers can store their work on the device, move to another machine and just keep going, kinda like Sun's Java Card but usable on many more machines.
The device is $199 on the website.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 11, 2005 11:34 AM
August 10, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld: Versora on migrating to Linux
Not all of the attendees at LinuxWorld are actually running Linux in their environments ... yet. Every year, a number of folks that are still running Windows come to LinuxWorld for the latest perspectives / technologies related to making the switch.
Earlier today, I caught up with Jon Walker, CTO of a company called Versora. This year, they exhibited in the Novell partner pavillion, where they showed off their new Progression Desktop 1.1 automated tool for migrating from Windows to Linux. I asked Jon a few questions, and here's what he had to say:
How should an organization decide which Linux distro to use?
It just depends on what their objective is. For most mainstream enterprise environments, the most appropriate distros today are probably SuSe, Redhat or Novell Linux Desktop. For a pure open source, GPL implementation -- Debian is the best fit. If you want an environment that's easy for Windows users to adapt to, Xandros is a good choice. Gentoo has been proven to ease the pain of software installation. And for general ease of use, Ubuntu and Mepis are popular choices. There are different pros and cons associated with each -- and plenty of information in the public domain that an organization can tap into to make the decision that's best for them.
What are the toughest technical challenges in Windows-Linux migration?
First handling applications that will not run in the new environment, especially line of business applications. Second migrating a user's system settings, application settings, and data in a way that makes the user's experience in the new Linux environment a good one. Our new version of Progression Desktop helps with the latter challenge and we have a number of partners that help with the first challenge.
What does an organization do with Windows-only apps when migrating to Linux?
They have four choices, really. One is to port the applications, if they have access to the source code. Two is to re-write the application, which most organizations don't have the time luxury to do. A third is to discontinue the use of the application. And the fourth is to run a thin client, Win4Lin or emulator (in this case, if the applicaiton in question is on the codewaever list, you're in luck).
What are the most common approaches to Windows to Linux Migration?
I have seen a broad spectrum of approaches all the way from little to no migration of the end user settings and data up to fairly sophisticated homebrew scripted approaches. For anything over a 10 user migration we of course recommend using automation to to perform the migration. You might be surprised to know that the typical medium sized organization of about 1000-1500 users has hundreds of supported applications. I was involved in a Windows migration involving the U.S. Navy a few years ago and during the planning phase we discovered that they had over 65,000 officially supported and sanctioned applications in their IT environment. A fortune 500 company would typically have thousands to tens of thousands of applications that they support.
Why should folks migrating from Windows to Linux talk to Versora?
We help to ease a lot of the pain associated with migrating to Linux by automating the process. This saves our customers time and money and increases end user productivity and satisfaction. We also come from the Windows migration market so we have extensive knowledge of both the Windows and Linux platforms and how to solve the problems associated with integration and migration. Lastly, we can scale simultaneous desktop migrations across the enterprise by integrating with systems management tools
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 10, 2005 08:48 PM
August 10, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld: Scalix Community Edition
Scalix launched a free edition of its Linux based email software this week at LinuxWorld. Scalix community edition contains all the functionality of the pay product and provides 5 enterprise licenses...any additional users only lose shared group scheduling and group folders. (basically the collaborative features)
According to Scalix founder Julie Farris "Scalix Community Edition was born out of customer need for 2 main categories of users: those who need more powerful Outlook-esque features; and those who need basic messaging functionality."
"We generally think that everyone has email, but it's only really been deployed to knowledge workers there is a need for a cost effective solution for organizations. The barrier to access to email should be low and our goal is to lower it accordingly. The advantage for mixed user organizations is that they can give Enterprise edition to the power users and Community edition to the rest of the workforce. This allows everyone to run on one common email platformCommunity edition really raises the bar for free email-this is an unprecendented amount of functionality, robustness and reliability. A GUI based installation allows a 15 minute install.
The web client, now freely available is so powerful, we're seeing customers deploy just the web client because the functionality is so strong."
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 10, 2005 08:42 PM
August 10, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld: EnterpriseDB wins Product Excellence
As if Levanta wasn't enough, I just found out that EnterpriseDB won the Best Database Award at LinuxWorld I am like some kind of psychic with the companies I highlight here.
BTW-I have nothing to do with the awards, but next time may consider some sort of geek-gambling on the winners.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 10, 2005 08:06 PM
August 10, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld: Levanta wins Most Innovative Hardware
Levanta won the Most Innovative Hardware award at LinuxWorld yesterday (that's right I told you Levanta was cool)
The myth that Linux is unmanageable or expensive to maintain is largely based on people costs, according to Levanta CEO Matt Mosman. The Intrepid M allows anyone to be able to manage Linux workstations, virtual machines and desktops. In the last few years the cobbling together of projects was a hindrance to Linux adoption, this device lowers the bar for adoption.
"Even if you take Windows tools, you still have to set them up and configure them. With this product you have everything setup in the box already. It’s click and drag, five minutes later you are up. The complexity goes way down."
Levanta's David Dennis: "Winning the Most Innovative Hardware award is like winning a techie Miss America pageant. It's huge for us in terms of visibility and support of our products."
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 10, 2005 10:34 AM
August 10, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld: Mark Webbink Keynote
According to Red Hat Deputy Counsel Mark Webbink, patents are no longer being used for innovation. Instead, they are ammunition for companies to maintain monopoly. Citing Microsoft's recent attempt to patent the insertion and removal of white space in documents and MS 14 patents on mouse cursor positioning, Webbink stated that patents are presenting a serious problem and in fact are making it difficult (maybe soon impossible) for companies to innovate and succeed. The economics ($5000/per patent search) work against any business who might be at risk.
150,000 patents and growing
With Microsoft attempting to get 3000 patents this year and the patent office issuing new patents 10-12k per year that would give Microsoft about one-third of the entire patent base winnings.
Patent Reform in Europe
- CII directive defeated
- Defeat new directive on criminal penalties
- Assure interoperability
- Assure software code alone is not patentable
Patent Reform in the US
- Seek restoration of the 2nd opposition period
- Seek limitation of injunctive relief
- Seek establishment of a USPTO prior art database for software
- Seek a study of the impacts of patents on software
Create an independent patent commons for open source
Ask Microsoft to respect open source
- Promise not to sue independent developers with individual patent claims
- Stop approaching end users-work with software developers (leave customers out of it)
In conclusion, Webbink said "Innovation and patents are not the same thing. Patents are problematic to the industry, they are there to constrain and decrease innovation."
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 10, 2005 10:29 AM
August 09, 2005 | Comments: (0)
OSDL launches an effort to "pool" patents.
The idea is that a pool of software licenses and software patents (issued and pending) are held in something like a virtual trust for the benefit of both developers and users of open-source software. In general, the vendors who make this pledge are promising not to litigate against people and companies whom they might otherwise sue. These pledges help reassure companies who run open-source software in their business.We like this idea so much that we're about to take it one step further. We're establishing an OSDL patent commons project that aims to centralize the good works of these vendors, as well as future individuals and organizations who may wish to pledge patents.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 9, 2005 10:24 AM
August 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)
InfoWorld's Open Source Buyers Guide
InfoWorld just released the Build your business with open source special report so go take advantage of all the hard work and see what the editors have learned and are now passing on.
The report takes a broad view not only on open source applications but also the business impacts. It's a great primer and a great start by the IW team in putting a stake in the ground on how to evaluate the ever-moving open source targets. Don't see your favorite CMS or ESB? Make it a community project and let them know.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 8, 2005 09:26 PM
August 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld: Funambol announces funding
Open-source mobile application server vendor Funambol (LinuxWorld Booth #865)has secured US$5 million in venture capital (VC) backing, the US company announced Monday. Funambol plans to use the money to hire more engineering and sales staff, according to the startup's chief executive officer.
Matt has an explanation of why Funambol is a good idea.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 8, 2005 09:06 PM
August 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld Note: Grid and Virtualization for all
IBM plans to unwrap a bundle of software, hardware and services called Grid and Grow at the LinuxWorld show in San Francisco. The company hopes the bundle will act as a starter pack for mid-size and large companies wanting to move into grid computing, according to an IBM executive.
Platform Computing wants to make the foundation on which enterprise computing grids are built. At the LinuxWorld show in San Francisco on Monday, the company began discussing a new platform it's developing to offer customers a centralised management system for disparate applications running across an enterprise grid.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 8, 2005 04:15 PM
August 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Leon Shiman, Secretary, X.org is on hand for a number of LinuxWorld programs including the Linux and Open Source and Government Day (the third in the LinuxWorld series) as well as representing X.org in the .org Pavilion.
Why is X.org so important to open source?
X.org is unique among the major open source projects both because of the history of it’s use and the underlying technology that underlies all of the Linux desktop—it’s a layer that’s necessary to have a windowed desktop. The X.org organization is the really the precursor to the community. The people that founded the project still contribute today (nearly 20 years)…and X is neutral--vendor, platform, and OS independent. It runs on everything and is network transparent.
X.org is run, owned and managed by the community. Membership is free and open and members elect the board of directors who are fully responsible for the technology. This was a part of our reorganization two years ago to achieve complete community ownership.
What has been the growth of X?
There are nearly 1000 contributors, the membership list has over 200 members and there have been 5 releases in the last 18 months and two new major innovative releases will come out in the fall.
How about your interest in government issues?
The X windows system has been friendly to close collaboration between proprietary and free architectures which is particularly important in relation to government IT demands. Open standards need to be brought into government at a fundamental level. These interests are also very important on a global basis-Europe, Asia, and developing nations are all intensely interested and the support has been very dramatic.
Most of the major revolution points of innovation in the last 20 years have come from open software-sendmail, perl, apache, HTML etc. These have forced standardization and innovation on proprietary solutions. As an example Google would never have been possible without free software.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 8, 2005 01:17 PM
August 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld Day One: March of the Penguin
March of the Penguin
San Jose Mercury News
LinuxWorld outgrows original outfit
News.com
Linux fans to flock to Moscone--Open-source firm is expecting 11,000 convention visitors
SFGate.com
Linux feels growing pains (subscription required)
Wall Street Journal
Business Trumps Technology at LinuxWorld
eWeek
Learn, shop, gawk at LinuxWorld San Francisco
NetworkWorld
HP Fights Viruses With Open Source
InternetNews
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 8, 2005 12:19 PM
August 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Open Source and Business Intelligence
While business intelligence may seem like an oxymoron, the fact is it's a $4 billion market. Q&A with Jaspersoft CEO Paul Doscher follows.
Open source started out as infrastructure, but now its moving into applications like ERP, CRM and Business Intelligence. Why is this happening?
Open source appears where standards have emerged and software becomes commoditized. You see this within operating systems, compilers, databases, application servers and application environments. Increasingly, you'll see open source entering markets like business intelligence, CRM and ERP where required functionality is well defined and not technically challenging. Then it becomes a financial equation and open source offers TCO typically an order of magnitude lower than commercial products.
Why has business intelligence been the recent focus of so much open source activity?
Like other categories, business intelligence solutions are built on top of open standards like relational and XML databases, J2EE application servers, and java-based web servers. Increasingly, many additional components of BI Solutions are becoming standard as well, such as report engines. Which is why JasperReports is the world's most popular report engine and is installed in over 10,000 companies around the world.
Will open source impact every software category? Is any software category immune?
A: It will impact every software category where standards have emerged, and a core set of features have become essential to every solution. To the extent that standards do not emerge within a software category, it will be much more difficult for an open source solution to get traction. Within BI, JasperSoft sees both a market for open source infrastructure, like report engines, analytic engines and rules engines, and at the same time we see an opportunity for commercial software solutions that run on top of those infrastructure pieces that add advanced functionality. In this new open source world, commercial solutions must deliver value that is well beyond what is available via open source, or there won't be much of a value proposition. JasperDecisions is our commercial and offers advanced capabilities for advanced commercial users.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 8, 2005 11:58 AM
August 07, 2005 | Comments: (0)
One of the most interesting new startups to watch this week at LinuxWorld is Splunk, which today announced the free public beta of the Splunk "Personal Server." This new search engine is targeting a need that systems administrators struggle with today -- the ability to make machine-generated data more easily understood and actionable.
In the typical datacenter today, a single Web server or app server is generating hundreds of megabytes of logs per day. And if you look at an enterprise data center that might have a Web server, app server, database, three-tier infrastructure servicing one or more Web-based applications, you're talking in the terabyte range of data being generated today.
What this means for sys admins is that when there's a system failure, they are tasked to sort through thousands of lines of machine logs to try to find the one little descrepancy that might have compromised the system. And they sort through this data in a labor intensive way using tools like awk, sed or perl.
Michael Baum, Splunk's CEO (or as the company says, "Chief Splunker,"), has experienced the pain firsthand. As a former VP of e-Commerce at Yahoo!, Baum oversaw the 2200 dual processor BSD machines running Yahoo! Finance. Whenever a system went down, he noted how much time was spent by sys admins manually digging through machine data to understand what had happened in the logical infrastructure. When something went wrong, Baum's best IT guys were chewing up all their time digging through log files -- across administrative domains -- struggling to figure out the root cause of problems as they occurred.
With the new "Personal Server" tool from Splunk (available for free download), systems administrators can search this log data in an intuitive way, narrowing in on abnormalities in system behavior, and much more easily identifying where the given break-down might have occured. Where consumer web search engines like Google focus primarily on similarities in results, Splunk also focuses attention to anomolies, pointing users towards atypical events between machines that might indicate a problem.
If the "Personal Server" search engine works as well as the Splunk team claims it does, the company has overcome a major technical challenge. Unlike Web search, where the underlying language is made of only a few flavors (HTML, PDF, etc), machine data varies from one machine to the next, one OS to the next, one platform to the next, and so on. Machine data isn't nice and uniform, like web pages -- and many organizations are simply unable to make any logical use of it.
Splunk's "Personal Server" collects all of these different kinds of machine data on an enterprise network and works with a set of schema that allows it to take, say -- a MySQL log, a SendMail log, an Apache log, a JBoss log -- and to parse, clean and make sense of that data. And in such a way that in real-time, a sys admin can understand the logical relationships and interdependencies of those machines.
LinuxWorld always attracts a great number of system administrator attendees, so this is a great event for this start-up to make its first big splash. Splunk will be on-hand in Booth 463 to demo the "Personal Server" and VP of Community Patrick McGovern will be speaking on Thursday in the conference program.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 7, 2005 06:18 PM
August 05, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld Pre-Game: Media Preview Panel
Getting media and analysts prepped for an event is a necessity as well as a labor of love. Having been on either side of the fence over the last two years or so, I know the burden on both sides. Conference organizers want media to write about the events so more people show up and media want to know what’s up but don’t want to be hassled by every vendor releasing a new-fangled Linux app. So, today I moderated a pre-LinuxWorld lunch for some of the media and had a panel discussion with Jean Bozeman (IDC), Bob Shimp (Oracle), John Roberts (SugarCRM), Paul Doscher (JasperSoft) and Matt Asay (Novell, OSBC) Just so you don’t feel left out, here are the broad trends we discussed:
The overall generic strategy of open source software is one of differentiation. While cost is a great entry point, ultimately the products that are being built are far beyond "good enough."(think firefox and apache)In today's computing environment security should be paramount, and not an after-thought or initiative. While it's nice to think that it’s inherent to open source (it may not be) it certainly does come easier when you have a test global testing community. What are some of the other advantages of the open source development and distribution models?
We started at infrastructure, OS-level, app servers, databases and now we're moving into business apps. Within ~5 years there will be an open source replacement for everything. Integration and open standards will be vital to any software adoption. But how will proprietary vendors react to this fundamental shift?
These are just some of the meta-trends that I tend towards in discussing the Linux/Open Source movement of late. I'll leave all the cool new product stuff for you to find from exhibitors on the show floor.
BTW: Did you know that Linux server revenue alone is predicted to be $9.3 billion by 2009 (IDC)? That's a lot of cash.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 5, 2005 08:23 PM
August 05, 2005 | Comments: (0)
LinuxWorld Pre-Game: Coverity on the Quality of Linux
Coverity CEO Seth Hallem will be presenting at LinuxWorld next week, discussing the overall security of the Linux kernel. Here is a quick Q&A.
Q: What trends for Linux quality should IT managers consider upgrading to a new Linux kernel or distribution?
A: New hardware devices may be cool, but take a hard look at the maturity of the device drivers available before adding them to mission critical Linux systems. The device drivers are of uneven quality, and even devices that are intended to be highly reliable may suffer because of device driver quality.
Q: What type of Linux kernel patches are absolutely critical for the IT manager to pay particular attention too?
A: Security vulnerability patches are always important. But also important are patches that fix problems in device drivers, file systems, and networking areas of the kernel. Patches that are intended for non-mainstream uses of the kernel should be avoided. Beware of patches that introduce new features at the same time they fix old bugs. Also, patches are not always vetted very well before they get into production systems, so it may be a good idea to wait for patches to mature before applying them -- though this usually isn't a good idea for security patches.
The patches that cannot be ignored are:
(1) security patches
(2) filesystem patches if they fix possible corruption or data loss
(3) patches you know you need already because they fix something that is broken on your systems.
Q: As the hardware support for Linux increases, do software defects increase?
A: As hardware support increases, defects inevitably increase because new device drivers are written, and drivers are hard to get right. But you will likely be immune if you don't have that hardware.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 5, 2005 06:58 PM
August 04, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Sleepycat on open source competition, licensing and development
With tier-one customers such as Cisco, Sun, and Hitachi, as well as inclusion in open source projects like OpenOffice and Linux itself, odds are you have interacted with software and products that run Sleepycat's Berkeley DB. Sleepycat's Rex Wang answers three questions for me below.
Can open source software compete with proprietary software on features, or does it compete most effectively on ROI?
Some open source software can compete on features and performance, not just cost. There's a common misconception that open source software is commodity or just "good enough" and offers 80 percent of the functionality of more expensive proprietary software. This is not the case for all open source software. Just as in the proprietary world, there is open source software that is intended to be "good enough" and there is software that is intended to be best-in-class. Look at Apache, the most popular Web server in the world with more than 65% market share. People choose it because it works well, runs on multiple platforms and has extensible functionality. Mozilla Firefox is gaining impressive market share on Microsoft's Internet Explorer because it offers better features such as faster page loading, tabbed browsing, and spyware/popup blocking.
Sleepycat's Berkeley DB is a best-in-class, open source database that competes on the basis of features and performance. Customers choose Berkeley DB because of technical fit for the type of application they are building, and because it's faster than alternatives, no matter whether they are open source, proprietary or home-grown. Acquisition cost is not the primary driver. But the fact that we reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the customer's application is sometimes a factor.
Why is it sometimes better for the customer of open source software to purchase a proprietary software license for the same software?
Some companies such as Sleepycat, MySQL and a few others are highly successful selling the same software under two different licenses, a no-cost open source license like the GPL and a paid commercial license. This gives customers a choice with benefits from both models. The open source license enables a huge user community, very high quality code, and easier debugging and integration. There are also benefits to the paid commercial license. For customers wishing to keep their code private, the commercial license enables the customer to distribute closed source software that uses an open source component. A commercial license can also offer the customer business assurances such as representations, warranties and indemnification.
Both open source and commercial licenses gives customers certains rights and impose restrictions. With a choice of licenses, customers can choose the set of rights and restrictions that works for them.
How is the open source distribution model different from the open source development model? How does this work for Sleepycat?
Open source distribution starts with giving a community of developers no-cost access to software and its source code. In Sleepycat's case, we also provide full documentation, getting started guides, sample code and test code. This easy and complete access is particularly important for a developer component like Sleepycat's Berkeley DB. Our open source license permits other open source software projects to use Berkeley DB at no cost, and Sleepycat often provides technical support for such use. Through this model, Berkeley DB has gained tremendous popularity and has come to be used by a vast array of open source products, such as Linux itself (all versions), BSD Unix, OpenLDAP, Sendmail, OpenOffice, Subversion and many others. There are at least 200 million deployments of Berkeley DB out there. For Sleepycat, open source distribution give us a huge installed base and many developers who know us and use us.
Open source development is a community of developers collaborating and contributing code to a project. The community also identifies bugs and prioritizes new features. This works well for projects that are highly modular, like Linux, so that different people can work on different things. One consequence of having many contributors is that really no one controls the intellectual property, and therefore no one has the standing to offer a different license. It is for that reason that Sleepycat does virtually all of its own code development (we employ most of the world's experts in Berkeley DB), so that we uniquely have the standing to offer both an open source license and a commerical license. For pieces we did not develop ourselves, we always acquire rights akin to ownership which allows us to dual license. We still benefit from the community doing QA on our code, so it gains stability and relevance very rapidly. And there are community members creating software that complements our own, for example, language bindings (APIs) for Perl, Python, PHP and .Net, integration with development tools, etc. We are very grateful and appreciative to our community. We really both give and receive from our community.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 4, 2005 03:28 PM
August 04, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Proof of Concept Windows Vista Viruses
Eight days after the beta of Windows Vista was released, an Austrian hacker managed to write a series of viruses that exploit a new command shell code-named Monad.
The viruses were published last month in a virus-writing tutorial written for an underground hacker group calling itself the Ready Ranger Liberation Front, and take advantage of security vulnerabilities in the new command shell. Unlike the traditional Windows graphical user interface, which relies heavily on the mouse for navigation, command shells allow users to use powerful text-based commands, much like Windows' predecessor, DOS.
On the upside, the virus author will be releasing "Windows Beta Hacks" as part of O'Reilly's popular series.
It's just too easy. Give me something more challenging to make fun of.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 4, 2005 03:22 PM
August 03, 2005 | Comments: (0)
ActiveGrid Launches 1.0 LAMP application server
ActiveGrid announced the general availability of the 1.0 release of their flagship product offerings. This includes ActiveGrid Application Builder and the ActiveGrid LAMP Application Server. I had a quick chat with CEO Peter Yared to discuss the company's focus on rapid Web 2.0 application creation and enterprise LAMP in general.
Can you elaborate on the term "enterprise LAMP"?
The LAMP stack has been proven by large websites, but it's still missing several features that enterprises need for large scale deployment-session replication as an example. We've packaged the LAMP stack together into something that's usable for developers and admins and added these enterprise capabilities.
Why do you think Web 2.0 application creation is important?
At this point, people expect rich user interfaces, and they expect various data sources to work together. In traditional IT you have siloed applications with Netscape 3 UI functionality, but with the advent of consumer applications like housingmaps.com people are expecting their IT apps to work the same way.
Anything else?
Go to http://www.activegrid.com/try to sign up and get a free tshirt. Yeah! Free tshirts!
Peter will be speaking at LinuxWorld on 8/10/05
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 3, 2005 10:58 AM
August 02, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Wired Interview with Mike Lynn, Security Researcher
Mike Lynn's well publicized discovery of a Cisco IOS vulnerability is not only a technology issue to be studied, but also a powerful display of how not to handle a sticky PR situation. Great quote from Lynn in a previous article: "IOS is the Windows XP of the Internet." Now that's scary.
Wired has a full interview with Lynn.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 2, 2005 09:56 PM
August 02, 2005 | Comments: (0)
SourceLabs pushes open source Java
SourceLabs announced that it plans to make available a free download of Java related open source tools. They're calling it SASH (Apache Struts, Apache Axis , the Spring Framework and Hibernate) and while I love a new acronym as much as the next guy I think this is a bit of a stretch. I do like the idea that someone has put a stake in the ground for open source Java, but the struggle with these pre-formed stacks is that very few enterprises are running the same versions of the code base and therefore you run into configuration problems pretty quickly.
The commercial stack offering is starting to look more legit as a product offering, now I just need someone to explain how they plan to sustain the business model. Maybe I can discuss with Byron Sebastian at LinuxWorld.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 2, 2005 09:32 AM
August 01, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Pondering business ideas with Matt Asay
Matt Asay, founder of OSBC and Director of the Linux Program office at Novell is trying to figure out some good business ideas. He's been going back through several years of email and blogging some of them looking for discussion.
Idea: Clustered JVM
Idea: Personal concert
Idea: Enterprise content network
I have a few others that he and I discuss all the time:
- open source EAI (many projects, few companies)
- open source storage software (can't find any)
- open source OpenView (I know for a fact at least 2 companies are working on this)
- bring your own phone (BYOP) mobile network
There you go. Take these, build a company and give me 5%.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 1, 2005 03:39 PM
August 01, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Collaboration models: Linux Community and Toyota
The Toyota and Linux communities illustrate time-tested techniques for collaboration under pressure: Share knowledge widely, frequently, and in small increments, and use universally available tools to do it.
If there's anything you learn in business school it's how to apply obtuse concepts to pretty much any business scenario (trust me, I base my entire career on this fact). In this case, the HBS authors draw some interesting analogies in regards to the Linux community and Toyota's collaboration techniques. Listed below are some of the points that explain the similarities.
A common work discipline. The Linux and Toyota communities are both composed of engineers, so members have the same skills as their colleagues and speak the same language.
Widespread, granular communication. In both the Linux and Toyota communities, information about problems and solutions is shared widely, frequently, and in small increments.
Leaders as connectors. At every level, Linux and TPS leaders play three critical roles. They instruct community members—often by example—in the disciplines we've just described.
Full article How Toyota and Linux Keep Collaboration Simple at HBS Working Knowledge.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 1, 2005 10:46 AM
August 01, 2005 | Comments: (0)
IceRocket: Making friends with users
IceRocket relaunched a few months ago after a complete rewrite and reindexing. After trying the blog search this weekend and mentioning it in a post, I got an email from IceRocket CEO Blake Rhodes. Turns out I am not all that special, Blake has been a one-man thank you note for months. This is an exceptional example of building a relationship with end users. A quick email interview follows.
How about a quick overview of IceRocket
We've been around about a year. We are primarily a blog search engine today.
You guys are clearly staying on top of who's paying attention to you. For instance, I received a personal thank you email when I mentioned IceRocket in a blog post. What's your motivation behind this? Obviously you can't send thank you notes to the world. Is this an attempt to build community?
I like to stay in contact with users, if someone blogs about us that normally means that they use our site to some degree. I think it really sucks when people that run companies do not make themselves available to customers or in our case users. Anyone out there can get ahold of me anytime they want. I had my cell phone listed on the site for a long time but had to take it down because of telemarketers.
If there is a problem with the site or someone has a suggestion, I want to know about it. If someone blogs about us and we gain a few loyal users, that's exciting for me and I want to thank that person for the help spreading the word. If I have to stay up all night w/ no sleep to email thousands of people that blog about us or email me, that's a good problem to have and I welcome it.
While search has been highly profitable for a few companies there are a great many more that have faded away, what makes you think that IceRocket is different and how will you compete if Yahoo or Google launch a