These Things Matter to Me
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The new Fortune Magazine story on Microsoft, Linux, and Patents. Steve Ballmer, you so crazy! But not in a new way.
Yes, Steve Ballmer has said cruise-azy things about Linux and Microsoft patents. Yes it'd be very disruptive if every corporate, private, and government user of Linux had to answer to Microsof. But this story has nothin' new.
Microsoft talks about patents and Microsoft intellectual property in Linux all the time. It most recently came up in relation to the Microsoft/ Novell deal, when in the aftermath of the Linux community's hostile reaction, and the business community's confused reaction, Steve Ballmer claimed that every user of Linux uses Microsoft intellectual property. And people freaked out. Not because they were surprised that Steve Ballmer would say that, or that they were concerned it was true. Most of the drama was because the person who said that was now an ally of a major Linux distribution (the Novell-managed SUSE Linux), and while people were used to Steve Ballmer saying ridiculous things about Linux, they were not-so-used to Linux companies having scary deals with companies run by people who said such ridiculous things.
(deep breath)
And today Fortune magazine has a relatively in-depth summary of Microsoft's Linux patent claims. It's really not that great of a story, and has some misleading references in it, but it has a dramatic title, "Microsoft takes on the free world," and yet another mention of Microsoft wanting compensation for the intellectual property it claims exists in Linux, "...It wants royalties from distributors and users." But Microsoft has said this before. And Steve still won't say he'd actually sue Linux-using customers:
Here's what the interview should have been:
A commenter on Patent Law Blog, Patently-O:
Microsoft talks about patents and Microsoft intellectual property in Linux all the time. It most recently came up in relation to the Microsoft/ Novell deal, when in the aftermath of the Linux community's hostile reaction, and the business community's confused reaction, Steve Ballmer claimed that every user of Linux uses Microsoft intellectual property. And people freaked out. Not because they were surprised that Steve Ballmer would say that, or that they were concerned it was true. Most of the drama was because the person who said that was now an ally of a major Linux distribution (the Novell-managed SUSE Linux), and while people were used to Steve Ballmer saying ridiculous things about Linux, they were not-so-used to Linux companies having scary deals with companies run by people who said such ridiculous things.
(deep breath)
And today Fortune magazine has a relatively in-depth summary of Microsoft's Linux patent claims. It's really not that great of a story, and has some misleading references in it, but it has a dramatic title, "Microsoft takes on the free world," and yet another mention of Microsoft wanting compensation for the intellectual property it claims exists in Linux, "...It wants royalties from distributors and users." But Microsoft has said this before. And Steve still won't say he'd actually sue Linux-using customers:
If push comes to shove, would Microsoft sue its customers for royalties, the way the record industry has?So there is no new story here. Microsoft has claimed IP in Linux before, and has stopped short of saying what they'd actually do about it before. As a Slashdot commenter said, "
"That's not a bridge we've crossed," says CEO Ballmer, "and not a bridge I want to cross today on the phone with you."
Here's what the interview should have been:
Microsoft: It's a fact that Linux and free software infringe hundreds of our patents.Microsoft still won't say exactly what Microsoft patents exist in Linux, so as outrageous as some of the ideas in the Fortune feature are, they're not new. If there's any info here, maybe it's that Microsoft has now specified the amount of patents, (235), but still not what those patents are.
Journalist: Which ones?
Microsoft: Well, the kernel violates 60, the GUI violates...
Journalist (interrupting): which 60? Where is the list?
Microsoft: I'm not prepared to disclose that at this time.
Journalist: Well this is a big [effing] waste of my time, isn't it?
Journalist: I went through this same dance with Darl McBride. Call me when you have something to say, bye
A commenter on Patent Law Blog, Patently-O:
That's like a poker player saying "I win" without showing their cards (code).Recommended or related:
- Tara Hunt's Okay, we won. But what’s the prize? (especially the part about Non-zero Sum Economics)
- Matt Asay's Making sense of Microsoft's open source fetish
- Robert Scoble's Microsoft about to enter into patent war
- James Turner at O'Reilly's ONLamp Looks like Microsoft is ramping up for Son of SCO (I disagree with the "do or die" part, but he's got some great comparisons to SCO here.)
Labels: business model, fortune magazine, intellectual property, ip, IT, law, legal, license, linux, microsoft, patents, steve ballmer, suit, technology, windows
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Conan O'Brien @ Intel: I like what you've done with the color
- related: San Francisco Chronicle article about Conan's San Francisco visit, and how Intel was only a co-sponsor of the show, together with Sam Wo Restaurant.
Labels: conan, corporate culture, cubicles, humor, intel, obrien, office, video, work, workplace, workspace
Monday, May 07, 2007
Separated at birth
Just loved.
Looking into my Apache logs tonight, I noticed for the first time, a bunch of Solaris users.
And hey! Requests/ refers from sun.com? For five seconds I got excited by the possibility that somebody from Sun was linking to me. It's no secret I dig Jonathan Schwartz and and many Sun activities. (But at the same time, I don't dig Sun's Java. )
So it was with heavy heart that I realized nobody from Sun was linking to me. They were just embeddeding a gif I have of Tim Oreilly and including it in their blog post. It seems that Tim O'Reilly with a beard reminds some people of actor Dennis Hopper. And this comparison was posted by a JavaOne attendee, which was then aggregated on the JavaOne blog page.
After consultation with an ethicist, I considered my options. Edit the graphic so that my URL would display? No, too stalkerazzi/tmz.com. Change it to a goatse? No, too crass. And besides, the blogger seems really nice, and has a good blog about grid stuff. And his embedding the graphic doesn't really hurt me. But I had to do just a lil something. So I made a little Javalasses joke on the image, and reuploaded the file.
I hope they keep the graphic up, though. We need more Tim O'Reilly. separated at birth memes! (I also heart Tim.)
PS. Javalasses.
Just loved.
Looking into my Apache logs tonight, I noticed for the first time, a bunch of Solaris users.
And hey! Requests/ refers from sun.com? For five seconds I got excited by the possibility that somebody from Sun was linking to me. It's no secret I dig Jonathan Schwartz and and many Sun activities. (But at the same time, I don't dig Sun's Java. )
So it was with heavy heart that I realized nobody from Sun was linking to me. They were just embeddeding a gif I have of Tim Oreilly and including it in their blog post. It seems that Tim O'Reilly with a beard reminds some people of actor Dennis Hopper. And this comparison was posted by a JavaOne attendee, which was then aggregated on the JavaOne blog page.
After consultation with an ethicist, I considered my options. Edit the graphic so that my URL would display? No, too stalkerazzi/tmz.com. Change it to a goatse? No, too crass. And besides, the blogger seems really nice, and has a good blog about grid stuff. And his embedding the graphic doesn't really hurt me. But I had to do just a lil something. So I made a little Javalasses joke on the image, and reuploaded the file.
I hope they keep the graphic up, though. We need more Tim O'Reilly. separated at birth memes! (I also heart Tim.)
PS. Javalasses.
These Links Matter to You. Monday May 7, 2007
(ideally this cat pidgin will be charming, hilarious, and familiar to readers of i can has cheezburger and Anil Dash)
(ideally this cat pidgin will be charming, hilarious, and familiar to readers of i can has cheezburger and Anil Dash)- This commenter on Matt Asay's InfoWorld blog has a theory that IBM will buy Novell (to get SUSE), that IBM helped Novell buy SUSE, and that ex-IBM execs are already slowly filling Novell VP spots
- Comcast is going to use open source + commercial application Zimbra to manage 12 million + mail accounts
- Ubuntu working with Intel on a mobile/ embedded edition of Ubuntu.
- Sun is helping port OpenOffice on the Mac with two dedicated engineers.
- New York Observer magazine recently relaunched their website using Drupal. With notes on the how. And why yes I will continue to document major commercial implementations of open source software like Drupal until y'all bow down and concede that open source is just fine for "mission critical" applications. Sheesh.
Labels: comcast, drupal, embedded, intel, mac, mobile, open source, openoffice, oss, social software, sysadmin, ubuntu, zimbra
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Enterprise Linux's exaggerated value #2: the support you're forced to buy
Yesterday I began what will probably end up becoming a series of posts about how y'all need to rethink the meaning of the word "enterprise," and related, the value of support. In specific, I called out how "Enterprise Linux," (usually meaning Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell's Suse/SLES/SLED) is overvalued because the packages you pay for often need to be replaced with packages you don't pay for.
Another problem with Enterprise Linux is the way it's sold. You buy the bits and support together. People might think it's hard for an open source software vendor to just sell the bits, when technically, so much of it is "free," and its easier to just imagine all those software dollars are actually paying for "support" (representing commercial man-hours, not free) but the simple fact is many organizations would love to pay for the bits they could technically get for free, and just do without the facade of expensive support, when the support they get from other resources is more responsive.
Photohosting site smugmug was in that boat, and blogged about their issues with Novell and Redhat.
WHAT WE CAN DO
Many of us who use Linux in commercial situations are more than happy to pay for it. Let's feel comfortable paying for it in different ways. We need to get over the traditional model of a single, central body of developers and supporters being embodied by a single company. There are different currencies and parties involved. Give back to your providers creatively with money, bug fixes, documentation, and sharing your best practicies. Take the time to identify the upstream developers and projects and consider funding them directly. Publicly share your challenges and success stories on the internet, the attention will help future users and the developers by making their project less of an unknown quantity for future users.
But most importantly, be willing to break free of this totally broken tradition of thinking paying a bunch of money to a central body in some way solves your technical problems and protects you. It may make certain people in your organization feel safe, but take the time to run some numbers. What value have you really gotten out of support in the past? Put the burden of determining value on those who sell it.
Another problem with Enterprise Linux is the way it's sold. You buy the bits and support together. People might think it's hard for an open source software vendor to just sell the bits, when technically, so much of it is "free," and its easier to just imagine all those software dollars are actually paying for "support" (representing commercial man-hours, not free) but the simple fact is many organizations would love to pay for the bits they could technically get for free, and just do without the facade of expensive support, when the support they get from other resources is more responsive.
Photohosting site smugmug was in that boat, and blogged about their issues with Novell and Redhat.
...we loved Red Hat Linux, we loved how good they were at building & testing their software, we loved their mechanism for delivering software updates. We just didn’t need support.The company ended up going with CentOS, a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux I'll write about another time. Again, you'll notice the author isn't trying to avoid paying for the software, he just doesn't want to pay for a service ("support") he doesn't need.
We got on our knees, begging and pleading with Red Hat to let us pay for a “software updates only” license. They wouldn’t have it. “Support comes bundled with updates”, I was told, “no ifs, ands, or buts”. I *want* to pay Red Hat for the valuable service they do for us and the community. I just don’t want to pay for the part we don’t need - human support.
I would really like to pay Red Hat for all their hard work building and testing the software. .. It’d be the right thing to do. But Red Hat won’t let me.
WHAT WE CAN DO
Many of us who use Linux in commercial situations are more than happy to pay for it. Let's feel comfortable paying for it in different ways. We need to get over the traditional model of a single, central body of developers and supporters being embodied by a single company. There are different currencies and parties involved. Give back to your providers creatively with money, bug fixes, documentation, and sharing your best practicies. Take the time to identify the upstream developers and projects and consider funding them directly. Publicly share your challenges and success stories on the internet, the attention will help future users and the developers by making their project less of an unknown quantity for future users.
But most importantly, be willing to break free of this totally broken tradition of thinking paying a bunch of money to a central body in some way solves your technical problems and protects you. It may make certain people in your organization feel safe, but take the time to run some numbers. What value have you really gotten out of support in the past? Put the burden of determining value on those who sell it.
Labels: business, cent os, centos, enterprise, linux, novell, open source, red hatredhat, sled, sles, supports, suse
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
These Links Matter to You. Wednesday May 2 2007
- even old-school business analyst Forrester says organizations are using open source for "mission critical applications." A less breathless, more helpful informative summary here, courtesy the very articulate Matt Asay.
- ya habla Español Dell. puro en directo. Dell's new Spanish blog, Dell en Directo. You already know about the English juan.
- Arizona State uses Drupal, and documents their set-up
- Dell's improved Linux forums (I haven't figured out how they're improved yet. Taking their word for it. It's possible they're manipulating me in a state of post-Ubuntu-announcement bliss.
- some belated notes on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Labels: community, dell, dellendirecto, forrester, forums, linux, matt asay, research, ubuntu
Enterprise Linux's exaggerated value #1: its "tested" packages are too old to use
One of the supposed benefits of enterprise (what that word really means reserved for another post, but a good place to start is here) Linux is that the included packages are "tested" and "hardened" (what does that even mean??!?) for the enterprise. The problem is, in the time it takes to test, these packages have grown quite old, increasing the chances that a sysadmin will need to replace them with software from elsewhere. For security reasons, and technical compatibility reasons, you're often forced to upgrade packages.
And you can't just grab updates from the vendor, because even the updates are really old, only marginally newer than the package that you're trying to replace. So you uninstall the vendor package, and either grab a package from elsewhere, or compile the source. And try to remind yourself what exactly you're paying for again...
An example? The just-release Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 comes with an RPM for Firefox 1.5.x. What?
A common dismissal of Ubuntu (not typically described as "enterprise linux") is that "it's fine for the casual user, but not for the enterprise."
Frankly, its packages are more appropriate for the enterprise than any enterprise linux i've seen. For this reason alone I'm very excited about its increasing acceptance in the business community. Even if it starts at the periphery...
And you can't just grab updates from the vendor, because even the updates are really old, only marginally newer than the package that you're trying to replace. So you uninstall the vendor package, and either grab a package from elsewhere, or compile the source. And try to remind yourself what exactly you're paying for again...
An example? The just-release Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 comes with an RPM for Firefox 1.5.x. What?
A common dismissal of Ubuntu (not typically described as "enterprise linux") is that "it's fine for the casual user, but not for the enterprise."
Frankly, its packages are more appropriate for the enterprise than any enterprise linux i've seen. For this reason alone I'm very excited about its increasing acceptance in the business community. Even if it starts at the periphery...
Labels: business, enterprise, linux, novell, red hat, redhat, ubuntu
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Dell's new Ubuntu deal, and vendor support. Do we still need vendor support?
Some interesting thoughts over on Slashdot's coverage of the Dell/ Ubuntu announcement.
For one user, the announcement is actually a deciding factor in a purchasing decision:
I'm very excited that Dell and Ubuntu have a relationship with each other now, and there's no way it can hurt the quality of Linux on Dell hardware. But let's not wait for announcements like this before we feel comfortable pursuing technologies that otherwise trump their commercially supported peers.
related:
Dell interview with Mark Shuttleworth about the announcement, how Linux gets adopted differently in different parts of the world.
more analysis:
For one user, the announcement is actually a deciding factor in a purchasing decision:
Personally, I have resisted the siren call of Dell for a long time. This changes my mind. I need a new machine and this could be just the ticket -- it was either that or refurb an old HP with a new HD and a copy of Feisty Fawn. I like the idea of it pre-loaded.And yeah, that's the kind of response Dell and Ubuntu want to hear. But I think it's time we really question the value and definition of support in the way it's been thought of in the past. Support is extremely overvalued, and lack of support is too often used as a reason to squash a great tool or piece of software. Let's examine our commercial support relationships and think of what we really get out of them. Are our bugs fixed faster? Features added more quickly? Do we find out about upcoming products from our vendros before the blogosphere does? When we have a configuration question, whose documentation is more helpful? Community sites and mailing lists, or the official documentation?
I'm very excited that Dell and Ubuntu have a relationship with each other now, and there's no way it can hurt the quality of Linux on Dell hardware. But let's not wait for announcements like this before we feel comfortable pursuing technologies that otherwise trump their commercially supported peers.
related:
Dell interview with Mark Shuttleworth about the announcement, how Linux gets adopted differently in different parts of the world.
more analysis:
- transcript of the video interview with Mark Shuttleworth above (zdnet)
- BBC news coverage of Dell + Ubuntu announcement
- open source advocate Dawn Foster's FastWonder post
Labels: business, business model, canonical, community, dell, disruptive, information technology, linux, support, ubuntu
