Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker

Winning with the family

Savio Rodrigues — 2008-05-15T10:24:16-08:00

Last week I learned that Sun has put its 3 database groups (Java DB, MySQL, PostgreSQL) under Marten Mickos. First off, who knew Sun had such a broad database portfolio???? Second, smart move putting them all under Marten. In speaking with Marten's Java DB team I gave them a small nugget of advice that has served us incredibly well with WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE). Simply put win with the strengths of the family, not individual products. I've written about customers wanting choice and flexibility and the challenges of trying to position any product, OSS or not, as... READ MORE

Why Fake Steve Jobs is worth reading

Zack Urlocker — 2008-05-15T07:01:14-08:00

Every now and then I wander over to Dan Lyons' Fake Steve Jobs blog. If you haven't you should take a look some time. Whether you think his caricature of Steve Jobs as a tyrianical artiste is funny or not, you may be surprised by the insightful commentary. Personally, I think FSJ is a pretty good satire, but I wouldn't keep reading it if it weren't for how sharp Dan is. As a Forbes Senior Editor, I think Dan can't help analyzing the IT industry even if he occasionally throws in some humor. Recently, FSJ did a great analysis of... READ MORE

Is "the community" hurting the OSS business model?

Savio Rodrigues — 2008-05-14T12:11:43-08:00

I had an interesting discussion with Marten Mickos at JavaOne last week that I've been meaning to blog about. I was disappointed that MySQL decided to put encryption and compression backup into MySQL Server (GPL license), versus including those features only in MySQL Enterprise (commercial license). Most of you will recall the outrage from "the community" that began when MySQL considered adding these enterprisey features only inside of MySQL Enterprise. I wanted to discuss this situation with Marten. I do not believe that Support and/or Monitoring around an OSS product are viable long term value propositions that will convince users... READ MORE

Is Apple eating into Vista?

Zack Urlocker — 2008-05-14T10:16:44-08:00

Interesting to note that Apple recently posted 51% growth year-over-year in their computer business. While Apple still has a modest 6% market share in the computer business according to IDC, that's double what it was a few years ago. Under Steve Jobs, Apple has defied analyst predictions who left the company for dead years back. For open source developers, the recent growth of the Mac may be less of a surprise. I've noted for several years that open source developer conferences appear to be a sea of Apple laptops. (Not that Apple's OS is open source, but it's based on... READ MORE

Marc Fleury's next project?

Zack Urlocker — 2008-05-12T13:24:33-08:00

Marc Fleury, founder of JBoss and former open source bad boy posted an intriguing update saying he's hanging out with Digium co-founder Mark Spencer, who is now CTO. Who knows what they're up to, but I have a sense it's more than just ATV riding. When I last met Mark at the Open Source Goat Rodeo he said he was completely done and had no interest in getting back into business again. And then he immediately described an interesting project he was working on. So who knows. In Marc's own words, he says he's too smart to try it again.... READ MORE

SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards

Savio Rodrigues — 2008-05-12T05:55:02-08:00

SourceForge.net is opening up its awards program to all open source projects this year for the first time (vs. only projects at SourceForge.net). The open nominations period runs until the middle of June. Finalists will be announced and voting will commence. The awards party will be OSCON in Portland, July 24th. Categories include: Best Project overall Best New Project Best Project for the Enterprise Best Project for Gamers Best Technical Design Best User Support Get involved and nominate the projects you want to see recognized! PS: Kudos to Microsoft for being the "Diamond Partner" for the program. PPS: I should... READ MORE

Questioning Josh Berkus on how to encourage a community

Savio Rodrigues — 2008-05-09T10:40:08-08:00

Like Zack, I too enjoyed Josh Berkus' tongue in cheek session on how to destroy a community. Josh provided an anti-list for those who would like to encourage a community as follows: Familiar tools Discourage poisonous people Document everything Accessible online meetings Minimize legalese Expert liaison Governance simplification Treat licenses with respect Promote outside committer Communicate (Source: Josh Berkus as best as I can remember his list from my chicken scratch notes - Used under Creative Commons License) However, I'd like to respectfully disagree with Josh's patent-pending list. I'll going to go out on a limb and suggest that Josh's... READ MORE

Java One: diversity and freedom

Zack Urlocker — 2008-05-09T07:11:29-08:00

While this was by no means my first Java One conference, I had not attended in the last four years. Just as the market has changed, so has Java One. Two observations struck me about the conference: it's more diverse than ever and secondly, there's a lot more emphasis on freedom. In terms of diversity, Java One has now become much more interesting to programmers using a wider variety of languages. In the past, Sun had been critical of scripting languages, missing out on much of the growth of web application development. That's changed with the broad availability of languages... READ MORE

Borland sells CodeGear to Embarcadero for $23 million

Zack Urlocker — 2008-05-08T12:55:30-08:00

After more than two years, Borland has finally sold its CodeGear division to Embarcadero a database tools company for a mere $23 million. It's a sad ending to one of the great software companies of the 1980s and 1990s. And it shows just how badly a company can suffer when it misses out on major shifts in technology or business. Borland's developer tools, including Delphi, JBuilder and C++ defined the state of the art Integrated Development Environment (IDE) since the company's early days with Turbo Pascal. OK, maybe I am being sentimental; I worked at Borland in the 1990s and... READ MORE

Josh Berkus on how to destroy a community

Zack Urlocker — 2008-05-07T10:22:55-08:00

It's been interesting to see a large number of non-technical open source presentations at Java One this year. It's a sign that indicates that not only has Sun embraced open source, but they are also attracting a new audience that is interested in open source. It's not quite OSCON, but it's definitely a more diverse audience than just a few years ago. Josh Berkus, Sun Community guy, gave a tongue in cheek discussion about how to destroy your community. He made the point that many companies that start to adopt open source like the licensing model and the distribution mechanism,... READ MORE

Ever wanted to create a Blu-ray disc?

Savio Rodrigues — 2008-05-06T09:14:26-08:00

I'm sitting here beside Sun's A. Sundararajan before the JavaOne keynote starts. He is one of the core developers on Sun's HDcookbook project. I didn't know this, but all of our Blu-ray players have a J2ME JVM inside. So, if you want to create a Blu-ray disc, you'll need to write some Java code. A. Sundararajan and team are tying to make this easier by offering libraries and tooling for developers. It's all under the BSD license, so have at it. Apparently Canada's Neil Young is here at JavaOne to make an announcement about Blu-ray... Captain Canada over and out.... READ MORE

Fortune's 20 most profitable tech companies

Savio Rodrigues — 2008-05-06T07:11:03-08:00

RedMonk's 2nd annual unconference rocked

Savio Rodrigues — 2008-05-06T06:53:51-08:00

I learned too much from the audience at last year's RedMonk Unconference at CommunityOne last year to not attend this year. I got there a little later in the day, so I missed some of the early sessions, especially on TaskTop ;-( The discussion on Cloud Computing was very well attended and nearly everyone at the table contributed. Interestingly enough the discussion centered on the security of data that lives in a cloud. Someone from the audience made a comment to the effect: "the biggest issue isn't multi-tenancy, it's data concurrency; it’s your data sitting next to someone else’s". Atlassian's... READ MORE

Un-Conferences at Community One

Zack Urlocker — 2008-05-05T22:05:54-08:00

Before kicking off Java One this week in San Francisco, Sun held their second Community One conference, pulling in several thousand developers for a free technical conference. While there was a large keynotes in the morning featuring Ian Murdock of Debian fame and Rich Green, head of Software at Sun, the real appeal was in the smaller sessions throughout the day. In many ways, Community One was not a single conference, but rather a gathering of mutliple different conferences (and un-conferences) under one roof. There was RedMonk's un-conference which covered topics ranging from business models, to Twitter best practices. There... READ MORE

3G iPhone?

Zack Urlocker — 2008-05-01T07:35:23-08:00

Sorry if I'm a bit iPhone obsessed lately. But what the heck. Since my buddy Joe seemed to know all about the iPhone 3G release, I figured I'd share what I learned from him and from a bit of web research. Looks like the new iPhone is slated for release in June and will include a new firmware upgrade 2.0 as well as some new capabilities from the Infineon SGOLD3H 3G chipset including 3G support, the possibility of a 5 megapixel camera, video recording and playback, FM radio and a capuccino maker. Ok, I'm kidding about the capuccino maker. And... READ MORE