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Blog: Pete LoshinFebruary 20, 2008OpenID Taking Over the InternetYou may remember reading about OpenID last November, here (OpenID: Another Approach to Identities), but back then there was significant uncertainty over whether it would catch on. No longer, though. As reported recently on Slashdot (OpenID Foundation Embraced by Big Players), the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! all joined the OpenID Foundation board. Seems like a big "game over" for the other contenders for the OpenID niche. Not sure that anyone else was contending for that niche, other than Microsoft, but now they're on board with OpenID, expect to see a Redmonized version of OpenID that's been embraced and extended. September 10, 2007Windows: Defective by DesignI've got to say, I truly wonder why so many corporations willingly cede complete and utter control over their software infrastructure to proprietary software vendors. Let's face it, when you are a proprietary software vendor, your entire business rests on how good you are at preventing people from using your software unless they've paid for it. The only practical way to do that is to build extra software that makes sure only authorized users use the product software. In other words, part of what you are paying for with proprietary software is an extra piece of software that decides whether or not you can use the software you've paid for. If that software doesn't work right, you can't use your own software. Even if you've done absolutely nothing wrong, until the vendor fixes the problem. Got it? That's how Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage works. If the server goes down (as happened recently, read the comments for some great user opinions on the MSDN blog entry about it here), or if something else breaks, you can't use your software. If I had to run Windows, I would seriously consider buying a pirated version (in addition to the "legal" version) just so I wouldn't have to worry about just this kind of thing. This isn't news: twenty years ago, PC support staff at small/medium sized companies routinely used commercial copy-protection cracking software so they could re-install Lotus 1-2-3 (et al) when the users lost key diskettes or misplaced their activation codes. If you were big enough, you could get more special-purpose software to manage your licenses; if you weren't, you had to go out and spend a few hundred bucks every time your users trashed their systems and needed to replace their applications. Just in case you had any illusions about what your software is doing and who is in charge, consider this: Windows Update updating without permission! Basically, the story here is that the blogger didn't want Windows Update to update without permission, but the fact is that the EULA for Windows says that Microsoft is in charge of how that software works, not you. But it is galling nonetheless. This little titbit, I Warned Ye... may be flip, but it sure is true: don't go rushing into the latest and greatest for no other reason than your vendor wants you to. Vista may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but according to this report from W3Counter.com, Vista has only about 3.46% market share, versus 83.48% for Windows XP (Linux is climbing, having just beat out Windows 98 at 1.34%). So what are you paying your software vendors for? September 6, 2007++Change == SameThe more some things change, the more they stay the same. It's interesting to see how some stories keep popping up, over and over--and then it's even more interesting to see what happens when things turn out different. So, RIP to my favorite resource for Microsoft FUD and unintentional support for open source software, Microsoft's "Get the Facts" website: purportedly a repository of good, un-biased information from third-party researchers about how much better Windows Server is than Linux. The story of the demise (as well as some of the good stuff that made it so juicy) is here at Linux Watch: Microsoft kills off anti-Linux 'Get the Facts' site. I wrote about "Get the Facts" earlier this summer on my Linux Cookbook website ("Microsoft's "Get the Facts" (tm) Campaign, Deconstructed"), and was hoping to make a mini-career of deconstructing all that propaganda. Now, I'll just have to look for the FUD in new places, but the good news is that Microsoft's replacement, windowsserver/compare, looks like it'll be chock full of FUD-goodness. July 18, 2007JasperSoft and Ingres in Open Source OEM PactLast week JasperSoft and Ingres announced an OEM deal that should help spread deployment of the JasperSoft Business Intelligence Suite. You can read the press release here; the key take-away is that JasperSoft will allow Ingres to private-label and resell the JasperSoft BI Suite under an OEM deal. Pricing is yet to be set (look for it in the fall). It's a win-win-win deal for all concerned--including consumers. Ingres gets to add a product to its own line, JasperSoft gets wider distribution for its product, and JasperSoft BI Suite users get more options when they need support--especially those who already use Ingres. July 16, 2007Talend Updates: More VC $$$ and New ReleaseIt's been a busy time for open source data intregration vendor Talend: last week, they rolled out version 2.1 of their Open Studio data integration suite. This week, they're announcing $3.5 million in second round funding from AGF Private Equity and Galileo Partners. While not the only (or first) open source ETL/data integration software (here's a roundup of open source Java-based ETL packages), but Talend is the first vendor to put together a comprehensive open source data integration suite. July 12, 2007Btrfs, Oracle's New Open Source FilesystemDid you know that Oracle has a new open source filesystem project called Btrfs? According to Oracle: ... we are facing a number of challenges with scaling to the large storage subsystems that are becoming common in today's data centers. Filesystems need to scale in their ability to address and manage large storage, and also in their ability to detect, repair and tolerate errors in the data stored on disk. Sure, there are already plenty of filesystems for Linux, but Btrfs is important for a couple of reasons, even if, at this early stage in development, "Btrfs is not suitable for any uses other than benchmarking and review." Number one, it's a good reminder that Oracle actually is giving back to the open source community. Check out Oracle's Open Source Software page for more about Oracle and free/open source software. And be sure to check out the list of projects hosted by Oracle. And number two, it's a good reminder of the kind of value that a commercial/proprietary software vendor can add with open source software while not diluting the value of their own proprietary software. June 19, 2007Research Now Predicts Significant Open Source SoftwareIT industry research giant IDC released a new report last month. The press release, Worldwide Revenue from Standalone Open Source Software Will Grow 26% to Reach $5.8 Billion by 2011, IDC Research Indicates. The actual report will set you back $1,500, but the press release is free, and two of the key points people are taking away from the release are that, first, "[w]orldwide revenue from standalone open source software reached $1.8 billion in 2006." In other words, companies are currently selling open source software for real money. And second, "[t]his revenue will reach $5.8 billion in 2011...." In other words, not only are they generating real cash flows, but those revenues can be expected to continue growing at an annual rate of 26% for at least the next few years. This report is getting a lot of attention, though most outlets are covering it as they would almost any other press release about a research report. Harper Mann, "IT Troubleshooter" at InfoWorld, did some real reporting by talking to a dozen CEOs at open source friendly companies, CEOs Weigh in on Latest IDC Open Source Research. It's worth a look if only to see the list of companies that rely on open source software. My biggest question: what exactly is "standalone open source software"? I assume that the answer is in the body of the $1,500 report; some of the online commentary tells me that "standalone OSS" refers to software that isn't bundled with anything else--which I find unsatisfactory, since most of the volume of software included with any Linux distribution is bundled from an assortment of sources. A slightly more satisfactory definition comes from Allen Bernard at CIO Update, in his story, Open Source Adoption Continues Unabated, where it's defined as "OSS that has a revenue model associated with it like SUSE Linux or RedHat". A couple of billion in revenue with double-digit growth for the next few years is very noteworthy, but to put it in perspective consider this: Oracle's revenues (per Yahoo! Finance) were $17 billion for the last year; Microsoft's were almost $50 billion. The thing about IT industry research is that you've got to take it with several grains of salt. The research firms don't get paid to produce unspectactular results: most research is funded by companies that expect to benefit in some way by the results (and the suspicion that some research results may be skewed as a result can never be escaped). At the same time, the research firms often err on the conservative side simply because most of their customers have big investments in the status quo. Bottom line: I'm quite sure that the OSS business will produce results that are at least as good as IDC's numbers--and I would be very surprised if their results over the next five years are very much better. June 4, 2007Windows Pricing: Economics of Competing Against FreeIt's fun to keep track of how much Windows costs these days when Microsoft must compete both with pirates, who sell Windows cheap and send nothing to Redmond, as well as with non-Windows open source software who likewise pay nothing to Redmond. What does Vista cost? List price on Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate is $399.95; Amazon.com has it for $339.99. But it's cheaper if you buy a system with Windows pre-installed. While Dell doesn't make it easy to compare on their website, according to this report on Ars Technica, the "Microsoft tax" for Dell systems--how much more you pay for the same hardware with Vista pre-installed--is about $50. Of course, that's for Home Premium or Business version of Vista, both of which list for about $200 or so if you buy a shrinkwrapped box at retail. Then, there's Microsoft's own effort to get something from developing nations: Microsoft offers $3 Windows package for poor nations. Three bucks for a stripped-down version of Windows and Office, if you're in the right (or wrong) part of the world. That's a deal, but it's also the going rate for pirated versions of Windows and Office in places like Lagos, Nigeria. According to this (which you probably can't reach, since a flood of hits shut it down) the Google-cached version is here, Nobody Knows Linux. What it says, basically, is that OS prices in Lagos depend on how many discs the OS fits on. Since Vista fits on one disc and Linux takes up four discs, Linux costs more than Vista. So, Microsoft retains its monopoly through the efforts of the pirates: if consumers can't afford to pay the full freight for Windows, Microsoft may not like it that people are buying pirated versions, but they'll take it over the alternative of having people buy open source software instead. May 2, 2007More About MySQL: Google Fixes MySQLOne of the great things about open source software is you can make changes to the code if you need to tweak it or if you feel you can make it work better. You're not even obliged to share those changes, as long as you aren't publishing the new improved software. That's what Google did with MySQL, according to Google Releases Improved MySQL Code. Rather than hoard those changes for some elusive competitive advantage (they don't impact on Google's core search technologies), Google is making their code public, not just so others can benefit, but also to get the benefit of having their code reviewed by the global MySQL community. And that's another great thing: you get the benefits of improvements made by the original software project developers--as well as any improvements and fixes made by anyone else who uses the software. So if you want a world-class database, with fixes provided by another world class software company, check MySQL. January 31, 2007MySQL AB to Go PublicComputer Business Review Online is reporting that open source vendor MySQL is getting ready to go public in MySQL prepares for IPO and reveals Oracle endorsement. According to the article, MySQL CEO Marten Mickos told CBR Online that although MySQL still hasn't spent more than half of the VC money it's already raised, they may be ready to roll out an IPO by the end of this year. Read the article, and, discuss. January 24, 2007Dell Sells Open Source PCsCheck it out: Dell's "naked" PCs w/o OS. As Dell writes on that page, "Are you looking for a desktop on which you can run Linux® or other open-source operating systems? Look no further!" Now, try to get to that page from Dell's home page, www.dell.com. I haven't even tried it yet, but I'm going to bet it's not so easy. Find out what I found out, inside. Continue reading "Dell Sells Open Source PCs" » December 13, 2006Open Source BenchmarkingJonathan Ellis ran an interesting note about MySQL and PostgreSQL database benchmarking (Benchmark: PostgreSQL beats the stuffing out of MySQL), with pointers to some work done at the Netherlands tech website, Tweakers.net. Jonathan points out that while MySQL's own benchmarks tend to favor MySQL (just like any vendor and their own internal benchmarks), he points out that when the benchmarking is being done by independent third-party, PostgreSQL seems to do significantly better. Benchmarking is an interesting field, producing interesting results, but performance on standardized tests must be balanced against the performance on the actual task in question as well as the suitability of the product to meet that particular challenge. The original content (in English, thankfully), is here and here. December 7, 2006Just How Much Indemnification Does Oracle Linux Give You?Oracle outlines the details of its indemnification program (warning: link to PDF document). A couple of items of interest here. First, open source blogger Matt Asay made some interested points under the headng Just what is Oracle indemnifying, anyway after he read Oracle's license and then read the description of their indemnification program (see above). Worth reading. My favorite line was the last one of Oracle's statement, "NOTE: NO CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS ARE FORMED EITHER DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY BY THIS DOCUMENT." All capitals, all italicized. I'm certainly not a lawyer, so don't ask me what it means--ask your lawyer if you are considering Oracle's deal. December 4, 2006Linux, Oracle, Red Hat, Novell and MicrosoftThe open source turbulence generated last month by Oracle and Microsoft's moves on Linux is slowly but surely clearing. I've been looking at the issues in some depth for full-length articles to be published here in the next month or so. But at the moment it's kind of tough to figure out what exactly it all means. Rather than try to figure it all out as it happens, I'm going to be pointing to some of the particulars of the issues here in my blog. As a starter, here are links to some of the key announcements from Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat and Oracle: Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Linux announcement on October 25. Red Hat Unfakeable Linux response to Oracle's entry into the Linux market (with a rebadged version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux). "Microsoft and Novell Announce Broad Collaboration on Windows and Linux Interoperability and Support", the broad outline of Microsoft's deal with Novell, from November 2. We Believe response from Red Hat to the Microsoft/Novell announcement on November 2; here's an FAQ from Microsoft on agreement and a resource page on the deal from Microsoft. Novell's resource page for the Microsoft/Novell collaboration. Here's Novell's Open Letter to the Community dated November 20, in response to Steve Ballmer's comments about the possibility that Linux incorporates Microsoft intellectual property. Microsoft announces that they "agree to disagree" with Novell on November 20, after the first wave of controversy unleashed by Ballmer's statement that Linux users owe Microsoft for intellectually property. November 8, 2006Oracle, Microsoft, Red Hat and NovellJust in case you're looking for the low-down on what Oracle's announcement of Unbreakable Linux and Red Hat's "We Believe" and Unfakeable Linux responses mean, and how Microsoft and Novell fit in with their news, about Microsoft support for SUSE Linux, check back here in the coming days. I've downloaded Oracle Linux, and will be giving it the once-over in the coming days, while also applying the microscope to the fine print everyone's license agreements. So check back here! And let me know if you have specific questions that need to be answered, so I'll know what I need to find out for you! October 20, 2006More Rumors about Oracle LinuxIt makes sense that a company selling a full-spectrum of business intellgence/database management software would want to be able to package it all together from the OS on up. And the world continues to speculate on the possibility that Oracle might just be getting ready to do that (see my previous post, Oracle to Microsoft: Drop Dead?). Computer Business Review/Online ran another article about the possibility just a few days ago, Oracle Linux rumor puts pressure on Red Hat. The biggest news is that now an analyst with investment bank Jefferies and Co is repeating the rumor that started circulating last April. Whatever you think about Oracle, Linux and Microsoft, it's worth looking at the Slashdot.org discussion. If you don't mind sifting through the chaff, there's a lot of good wheat there. For one thing, if Oracle were to offer an Oracle-tweaked and optimized Linux distribution, it would likely work better for more users out of the box. It would certainly be easier and faster to install on a new system. For another thing, Oracle could partner wth a hardware company to offer a "complete database-backed application server in a box" product line, with OS, webserver, database, and whatever other (open source) software is necessary to deliver a turnkey product. When the bottom is falling out of the market for software because so much high-qualty software is now available for free, smart software companies will get into the business of selling something else--whether it is turnkey hardware or software services (another possibility if Oracle goes down the Linux path). August 8, 2006Data Mining, Terrorism and Open Source SoftwareIf you haven't already seen it, check out this CIO Magazine article, IT Versus Terror right away. And though it isn't highlighted as such, it contains an interesting nugget of a big open source win. It's mostly about how the Department of Homeland Security is trying to harness data mining for its anti-terror efforts. Unfortunately, the conclusion I drew was that it's easy to waste money on magic bullets like automated terror prevention with little or no oversight. According to the article, a 2004 GAO survey discovered 199 data mining projects, with 14 explicitly dedicated to catching terrorists and preventing attacks--but the total would surely be higher if you counted the agencies that didn't respond, including the CIA and NSA. In all that activity, CIO senior writer Ben Worthen was able to uncover only one instance of a data mining success: sorting the sheep from the goats among Guantanamo detainees. The key pieces of software? One was a commercial product from I2 Ltd., for building up relational charts from all data available about the detainees. The second piece? Open source Proximity, "a system for relational knowledge discovery designed and implemented by the Knowledge Discovery Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst." August 6, 2006Monitoring Telecommunications Traffic Requires BIG DatabasesThink your database is big? Unless you're in the phone call business, AT&T's databases of call details are probably larger than yours. AT&T Labs Research is home to some serious software for industrial strength problems, and they offer a variety of open source and free for non-commercial use software. Check out the Daytona project overview at the AT&T Labs Research page, and here's the Daytona Project home page, for more about "Managing Data at AT&T Scale". May 30, 2006Oracle's Latest Open Source Release, Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition 3.0Oracle bought Sleepycat Software just a few months ago, and they've already released the first major revision to Sleepycat's Berkeley DB developer database, Berkeley DB Java Edition 3.0. Oracle now publishes the Berkeley DB (BDB) family of products, a.k.a.Oracle® Berkeley DB, under the kind of dual-licensing program that benefits the vendor as well the developers who use it. Continue reading "Oracle's Latest Open Source Release, Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition 3.0" » May 11, 2006Red Hat, Oracle, and Open Source Enterprise SoftwareWith Oracle continuing its prowl for enterprise software in the form of open source-based companies, talk of Oracle selling their own Linux distribution continues. But now, Bill Snyder at TheStreet.com is suggesting that Oracle could sell Red Hat's own Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) here Oracle Seeing Red Hat. It's true that RHEL is open source, and there's no legal reason that Oracle couldn't compile the underlying source code and then sell support for it. Others, like CentOS have been doing exactly that for years, distributing the binaries at no cost; still others like Pie Box Linux offer RHEL binary-compatible distributions for a fee. The big questions:
I'll have more to say about open source enterprise quality software and support over the next few weeks, so stay tuned, and let me know what you think! May 1, 2006Amazon to Google: Drop Dead?The blogosphere is April 10, 2006Red Hat Scoops JBossRed Hat announced that their purchase of JBoss was a done deal. Mr. Ellison, read it-- Red Hat Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire JBoss--and weep. The rumor mill had Oracle looking to buy JBoss for $200 million, but back n February JBoss boss Marc Fleury, who said the company was not for sale, was also said to be looking for at least $400 million in any sale. Red Hat's press release spelled out the terms, under which Fleury seems to be likely to get what he wanted: "Red Hat will acquire JBoss for approximately $350 million in initial consideration, plus approximately $70 million subject to the achievement of certain future performance metrics. The transaction consideration is composed of approximately 40% in cash and 60% in Red Hat common stock. The acquisition is expected to be completed around the end of Red Hat's first fiscal quarter (May 2006), subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval." April 5, 2006More Free and Open Virtualization NewsIf you haven't read my article, A Virtualization Primer, go read it; if you have, read it again. And then go read these articles about the latest virtualization news. First off, VMware took the next step in turning their standard for virtualization into the industry standard for virtualization. Monday's announcement, VMware Introduces Open Virtual Machine Disk Format Specification , speaks directly to the need for a strong move toward openness. VMware stated "its virtual machine disk format specification for defining and formatting virtual machine environments is now openly available, downloadable and free of charge. This will enable use by all developers, software vendors and projects and includes open licensing compatible with those operating under open source licenses such as the GPL. In addition, VMware is committed to supporting any other open virtual machine disk formats broadly adopted by customers and working toward converging on open standards in this area." It's nice to see a company that "gets it". In other news on Monday, Microsoft showed that they don't quite exactly "get it": Market Bulletin: Microsoft Announces New Price, and Availability of Linux Support, for Virtual Server 2005 R2. The gist of the announcement is that the new price for Virtual Server 2005 R2 is $0.00. In other words, you can download it for free (though the software is still proprietary and still subject to restrictive Microsoft licensing terms). More interesting, though, is news that Microsoft will now officially support nine different Linux distributions! Count 'em: SUSE and Red Hat. That's right, NINE! Five different releases of Red Hat, and four versions of Novell's SUSE Linux. Further muddying the waters is maneuvering by Microsoft and newcomver XenSource to flank VMware. This article in the Register, Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux spells out how XenSource, in a move that may prove either brilliant or disastrous, is aligning itself with Microsoft by licensing Microsoft's VHD, or Virtual Hard Disk Image Format Specification. Microsoft hasn't offered VHD to VMware, which may have prompted VMware to actually release their own Virtual Machine Disk Format (VMDK), without licensing restrictions. March 27, 2006Mainstream Business Press on Open SourceFor a mainstream take on Oracle's recent open source shopping spree and the general trend of big corporations as well as venture capitalists looking for open source investments, check out Open Season On Open Source?. This article is worth a look if only because it summarizes some of the key issues related to using open source software in the enterprise. However, for a much more detailed and considered look at the realties of open source, commercial open source, and the potential of open source in the enterprise, there's this article, Open, but not as usual in the Economist. As usual, the Economist digs deeply into the topic and clears away many of the misconceptions about open source. For example, consider that of the many thousands of open source projects that have been announced and released, only a few hundred are actually usable. And an even smaller number are actually suitable for use in production systems. The few truly successful open source projects, the Economist reports, are far from the "anarchic" free-for-alls that you might imagine them to be: leadership, oversight, and good management practices are as important to open source software projects as they are to any software project. March 15, 2006Dispelling FUD: Five Things You Might Not Have Known About PostgreSQLWhether you're considering PostgreSQL as an alternative SQL solution or want someone higher up in the command chain to consider it, this article could help: Five reasons why you should never use PostgreSQL -- ever. Warning: ignore that title. The article is really about five of the top reasons that people think PostgreSQL isn't going to work for them, and how to answer those objections. The article's author, W. Jason Gilmore, handily dispels the fear, uncertainty and doubt associated with using PostgreSQL rather than some commercial product, but his answers to objections such as "it doesn't run on Windows", "there's no professional tools", and "there is no support" can just as easily be applied to any number of other open source software projects. February 13, 2006Oracle Open Source Buying Spree ReportedBusiness Week Online is reporting Oracle's Open-Source Shopping Spree. Though neither Oracle nor any of the targeted companies are talking, yet, word is that Oracle is getting ready to pay as much as $400 million for open source middleware company JBoss and up to $200 million for PHP application server platform company Zend. Oracle's deal for open source database software company Sleepycat Software is expected to be for less money but the unnamed sources report that the deal could be announced as soon as tomorrow (February 13). January 24, 2006Peter Quinn SpeaksFormer Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn gave an interview on Groklaw, where he explains some of the details of his resignation as well as some of the circumstances around it. Quinn is no shrinking violet at this point, and if you want to hear/see him in person, he'll be at the fourth annual Southern California Linux Expo, scheduled for the weekend of February 11-12, 2006, at The Radisson Los Angeles Airport. I wouldn't be surprised if he finds himself booked to speak at other industry "do"s over the coming months. January 17, 2006Pentaho Adds jFreeReport to its Open Source BI PlatformPentaho, a leading open source BI provider, this morning announced the addition of a key open source component to their platform: jFreeReport, a free Java report library that enables users and developers to quickly create reports from their desktops and output them to PDF, HTML, text, or Excel spreadsheet formats. Incorporation of jFreeReport is Pentaho's latest move to build a next-generation BI platform that provides an unequivocal technical win for their clients--and to build it from open source projects, to offer all the advantages that open source software can provide. Thomas Morgner, jFreeReport project leader, is joining Pentaho as Chief Architect of Reporting Solutions; jFreeReport will henceforth be known as "Pentaho Reporting". jFreeReport was originally hosted at jFree.org, home to a number of related open source projects such as jFreeChart, a Java chart library and jCommon, a general purpose Java class library, used in jFree projects. Object Refinery, Ltd. sponsors jFree.org and related projects. December 29, 2005The Network Really IS the DatabaseI just finished reading this article, The Great Software Platform Hoax, and it got me thinking about IT stacks (something relatively new) and networking stacks (a well-established idea). One of the more confusing concepts I had to master as a TCP/IP networking engineer was the Management Information Base, or MIB, as used in network management. Basically, it's a standardized metadata schema for building network information into networking hardware. RFC 4133, Entity MIB (Version 3)" is as reasonable a starting point as any for understanding how Internet-standard entities are supposed to store data about themselves. MIBs make it possible for network management systems to crawl a network, as well as to probe a network entity, for management information with a standardized format and independent of manufacturer or vendor. MIBs turn your network into a self-documenting database. I got to thinking about MIBs and the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) (RFC 4311, "An Architecture for Describing Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Management Frameworks" should get you started). So, what about IT stacks and network stacks? They abstract out of the system a lot of the functions that every network or IT system need to be able to support; things like responding to network requests or ways of accessing databases. How you approach the creation of your stack will determine how you spend the bulk of your IT/network budget. In that article I mentioned at the top, Greg Gianfort, CEO of RightNow Technologies, suggests that it's in the vendor's interest to get you all excited about "platforms". He suggests that Microsoft and Oracle and SAP and others all want their customers to buy into a "platform" and then use that platform to solve all of your business problems. And that's wrong, because all it does is lock enterprises into using these proprietary platforms to solve every problem instead of allowing them to look for the best application and not worry about what's running underneath in the "IT stack". Instead, Gianfort tells us, dump the proprietary stacks and use open source software to create a commodity stack; then, stop worrying about platforms and focus on applications (that is, solutions to customer problems). It reminds me very strongly of the way the Internet works: everyone uses a TCP/IP network protocol stack to process network messages. The protocols are all open standards, and anyone can write their own. Instead of having to build your own protocol stack from scratch (or buy it from proprietary vendors who lock you into their platform), you can concentrate on your application and use the standard stack to do basic networking. Using an open source IT stack means that we can all stop messing around with these proprietary solutions that benefit only the vendors who can keep selling support, upgrades and licenses forever once they've locked us into their "platform". If we can focus on solutions based on an understanding that all the systems are compatible and running the same basic IT stack, the solutions can be turned out that much faster. For example, the C/C++ Source Code Search Engine I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, or the new service that Alexa rolled out last week and that I'm blogging about this week. Once you commoditize your "platform" into a standardized set of protocols that every node on the network can be assumed to support, you no longer have to build the entire "architecture" from scratch and you're freed to concentrate on the applications. That, of course, turns into a big win at the bottom line. December 27, 2005Alexa Web Search Platform: The Network IS the DatabaseThe cost of building a website or webservice based on webcrawling just dropped. By a ton. Alexa just announced availability of Alexa Web Search Platform beta; fees start at $1. That's $1 per hour of CPU time, $1 per GB/year of user storage, $1 per 50 GB processed, $1 per GB uploaded/downloaded, and $1 for every 4,000 user-published web service requests. As the announcement says: you can now get "public access to the vast web crawl collected by Alexa Internet. Users can search and process billions of documents -- even create their own search engines -- using Alexa's search and publication tools. Alexa provides compute and storage resources that allow users to quickly process and store large amounts of web data. Users can view the results of their processes interactively, transfer the results to their home machine, or publish them as a new web service." Alexa offers up this Camera Image Search application as an example of what you can do, but I imagine that there will be some much more interesting applications to come. So look out for a whole lot of drastically new and fascinating applications to start cropping up as clever people start playing with this new toy. December 20, 2005How Great is Open Source Software?Author and open source contributor Andrew Brown recently wrote about the dark down side of open source software in the Guardian, Unlike the usual rah rah cheerleading about open source software that comes from dilletantes like myself, or the pooh poohing of open source software that comes from Microsoft-owned industry hacks, Brown knows OpenOffice both as a sophisticated user who writes best-selling books with it, and as an open source contributor who has kicked in his own macros. Brown makes some excellent points:
Brown points out just how bad OpenOffice really is, and how the only way it will ever really succeed is if for-profit corporations (like Sun, which created OpenOffice in the first place) invest in fixing it. But he also reminds us that it's still pretty early for OpenOffice - and that he still prefers OpenOffice for projects like 60,000 word books. December 6, 2005Open Document FolliesThere's been a lot happening on the Massachusetts Open Document Format (ODF) and Microsoft story over the past couple of weeks, so I thought I'd try to do a little roundup of interesting and relevant links here. Nothing conclusive has happened yet, and nothing conclusive is likely to happen any time soon, but there sure is a lot of turbulence around this issue, which is just as it should be.
I'm always open for comments; but I'm also always in favor of open standards. More New Software: Fedora Directory Server 1.0Sure, it's good to know about new software releases, but you don't need to come here for that kind of information. What's nice, for me as blogger, about new software releases is that they give me an opportunity to write a little bit about what the software does and how it is (or isn't) significant in relation to open source enterprise and business intelligence applications. So: here's the announcement of Fedora Directory Server 1.0. What's that? The Fedora Directory Server Project is " a robust, scalable open-source server designed to manage large directories of users and resources", based on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (technical specification in IETF RFC 3377). What's good and interesting here? For one thing, scalability. The project claims support for "thousands of operations per second, tens of thousands of concurrent users, tens of millions of entries, hundreds of gigabytes of data SSLv3, TLSv1, and SASL for secure authentication and transport." That's pretty good. For another, there's the professionally written documentation. Well, it's actually documentation for Red Hat Directory Server, but that's more or less the same thing as Fedora Directory Server, because the Fedora Project is more or less where Red Hat tries out technology, in an open source way, for their enterprise-worthy commercial releases. So, if you need enterprise calibre open source systems, you can try out Fedora at no cost and, if you need the enterprise calibre support you can move easily to Red Hat. Another thing that's nice about this is that open source directory servers use an open standard, LDAP, that was developed as an open technical standard through the same organization, The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that developed all the other protocols that run the Internet. And, as usual, it reminds me of how it seems to me that Microsoft has historically approached the implementation of open standards: start out with a competing closed standard instead, and then eventually give in to market pressures and support the open standard by extending and embracing it. Here's a Microsoft technical report on LDAP, Active Directory LDAP Compliance. November 28, 2005Talking about BenchmarksIf you're wondering about how best to compare apples and apples when looking at open source and proprietary database software, you're not alone; check this Slashdot discussion, What Would You Want to See in Database Benchmarks?. Slashdot is one of my favorite resources for the practical aspects of using open source software, for actual applications, in the business world. November 15, 2005What Hath Sony Wrought?The difference between comedy and tragedy is this: when it happens to someone else, it's comedy; when it happens to me, it's tragedy. It's ten years since I've been a music CD consumer, and Linux systems seem unaffected by Sony BMG Music Entertainment's digital rights management (DRM) rootkits, so to this Linux-using, radio-listening guy the whole drama is nothing but pure, unadulterated, high-concept comedy. The storm, a series of incredible and increasingly outlandish revelations about Sony and their insidious machinations to assert Dr. Evil-style dominion over how their loyal customers use computers to listen to music, started on Halloween. Read on for more hilarity. |