Wednesday May 31, 2006 links for 2006-06-01
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Feel free to tell me when I get this boring. Gently, of course.
Posted by webmink
( May 31 2006, 06:18:54 PM PDT )
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Workstations on Free Trial
I've mentioned the Try & Buy scheme before - where Sun sends you a free system to try for 60 days, after which you either pay for it & keep it or send it back at Sun's expense - and I hear it's been so popular that the excellent Ultra workstations have been added to the scheme. You can now get an Ultra 20 or an Ultra 40 to try - wonderful!
Posted by webmink
( May 31 2006, 05:26:00 PM PDT )
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Tuesday May 30, 2006 Ubuntu on SPARC
I can now breathe a sigh of relief because the other half of the news I have been working on with Mark Shuttleworth concerning Ubuntu GNU/Linux is now public. When the new server-oriented Ubuntu 6.06 LTS comes out next week, it will be supported on the Sun T1000 and T2000 CoolThreads servers - the new systems that use the UltraSPARC T1 to get amazingly high performance at really low energy costs. What's more, Canonical will be offering commercial support packages so you can actually take it into production.
Why Ubuntu? Well, it's by far my favourite GNU/Linux (and I'm not alone - it was the system NexentaOS GNU/OpenSolaris was built from too), it's based on the rock that is Debian and best of all the company behind it has a very Software 3.0 approach to business. As Cote is quoted as saying on TechTarget, the possibilities with Ubuntu are fascinating.
What's especially interesting is the role that OpenSPARC has played in the process. Because all the chip designs for the UltraSPARC T1 were available under the GPL, it was possible for the UltraSPARC support in Ubuntu to be completed much faster than expected. We'd been expecting it to be ready for the second half of the year, with generic SPARC support now, but the open source chips allowed the version for the T1000 and T2000 to be completed in almost half the time and thus for compatibility testing to be moved up into the release timescale - Mark has more, including huge kudos to the Linux-on-SPARC community for their amazing work, especially David Miller.
Posted by webmink
( May 30 2006, 07:43:45 PM PDT )
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Monday May 29, 2006 links for 2006-05-30
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I've seen the Manhattan Solstice happen once, and it's awesome. I'd not realised it was so rare, though.
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Danish Ministry of Science opts for ISO26300 (OpenDocument). The shift to really-open continues.
Posted by webmink
( May 29 2006, 06:17:29 PM PDT )
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Saturday May 27, 2006 links for 2006-05-28
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Helpful evaluation notes for those considering an upgrade.
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"O'Reilly needs to choose whether it's going to retain control the word "Web 2.0" for conferences, or retain control over the shifts that created the Web 2.0 phenomenon." -- Cory Doctorow
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It really is time the UK and Europe started heavy political action against the evil dictators in Burma.
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The advantage ISO26300 has is that it has a transparent process staffed by many experts as well as having many live implementations to learn from.
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"Alain Lamassoure, a member of Jacques Chirac's UMP party, is proposing to add a tax of about 1.5 cents on text or SMS messages and a 0.00001 cent levy on every e-mail sent." SMS: fair enough. E-mail: impossible.
Posted by webmink
( May 27 2006, 06:18:28 PM PDT )
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MeTube
I missed the BBC World documentary "The Codebreakers", which explores the power of Free and Open Source software to bridge the digital divide, but I just found Episode Two on YouTube: 2:1, 2:2, 2:3. You may recognise a few people in the programme, and also be amazed by some guy from Microsoft claiming they love open source.
Posted by webmink
( May 27 2006, 04:14:01 PM PDT )
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Friday May 26, 2006 Forks Aren't A Problem
I keep hearing people claiming that the biggest problem that would be caused by making Sun's Java SE implementation open source is forking. But I have to disagree. The implication is that all forks are incompatible forks, but the two are not synonyms.
A fork happens when a group of developers take a body of source code and continue its development independently of the governance of the community from which they took the code. There can be bad reasons (personality conflicts for example) and good reasons (targeting a platform in which the original community has no interest), but the creation of a fork says nothing about the nature of the code in either community. Both bodies of code can be completely compatible with a file format, API or other specification.
Take as an example NeoOffice. It's a fork of OpenOffice.org aimed at providing Mac OS X users a version of the office suite that works just the way one would expect (as opposed to requiring geek skills). The team that develops it is independent of the main OpenOffice.org community and has its own governance. Yet NeoOffice is file-format and menu-layout compatible with all the programs in OpenOffice.org. It's a fork, yes, but it's compatible, and it has grown the market for the OpenDocument file formats.
In fact it would be unthinkable for it to be otherwise. The whole value proposition for NeoOffice is that it works just like OpenOffice.org, only on a Mac. This is not to say that an incompatible fork isn't possible, just that it's not inevitable for forks to be incompatible. In fact, in a market where there is a strong precedent for programmatic compatibility, I'd suggest it's unlikely that a fork will be incompatible. It might be used for unfair advantage but that's another issue altogether.
Posted by webmink
( May 26 2006, 12:00:00 AM PDT )
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Thursday May 25, 2006 "Gimme Yer Dinner Money Or I Break Yah Legs"
You may recall that, when OpenOffice.org started its "Get Legal!" campaign, people doubted the assertion that buying software from market monopolists was the start of a cycle of fear of prosecution? Well, just as the monoculture warning has now come home to roost, so has this one. ZDNet UK reports that the UK's software mafiosi enforcers, FAST, have decided the next target for their rich masters is to be the British state education system.
"The message is clear: if head teachers, schools governors and even LEAs allow the use of illegal software then it may be a fast track to a criminal record," said John Lovelock, director general of FAST.
"FAST track" indeed. This is what happens when you get mass-market software with dangerous end-user license agreements. As soon as you step on the treadmill, you are on the hook for endless inconvenience and threats-by-proxy - from the moment that you buy it (yes, you are not even trusted to use software you have legitimately purchased [kudos to Robert for disclosing that but shame on his employer for imposing it]) to the moment you finally break free.
Why put up with this sort of customer abuse (and it's not just schools that face the software equivalent of the money lender's mobsters)? Mark Taylor is on hand to advise:
Taylor said that education professionals are focused on dealing with "violence, drugs, bullying, truancy, shrinking budgets and escalating government regulations", not "worrying about whether they've got licences for anything anyone has ever installed on their ageing networks".
Taylor said that if he represented a school on the receiving end of these threats, he would start researching open source software.
"I'd begin to move away from the people locking me into proprietary solutions whilst threatening me with criminal proceedings, and towards open standards, open source-based software that gives me options, dramatically and permanently lowers my costs, and won't get me a criminal record," Taylor added.
In other words, and I quote: "Get Legal! Get OpenOffice.org!". What the old world - of charging for the privilege to use - calls "pirates" are what the new world - of providing service to ubiquity - calls customers.
Posted by webmink
( May 25 2006, 12:00:00 AM PDT )
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Wednesday May 24, 2006 links for 2006-05-25
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Dynamic language + framework + JVM = heaven. Yep, it's Groovy on Rails.
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OpenSolaris distribution now offers Java SE support.
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Enquire Within Upon Anything.
Posted by webmink
( May 24 2006, 06:17:47 PM PDT )
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No Unfair Advantage
One of the strong notes at JavaOne last week was hearing Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green underlining that compatibility is key to open sourcing Sun's implementation of Java SE. That's the code from which the reference implementation is derived, and which is the source of most commercial Java implementations. While some are pretty uncharitable about compatibility, others like Ian Murdock join me in regarding it as the single most important aspect of the Java platform - Peter Galli reports my views. Understanding why I think this requires some explanation.
There are two dimensions to compatibility. The one everyone with developer genes can grok is about having the same APIs doing the same thing everywhere the word "Java" is used to describe a virtual machine environment. It's obvious this is a primary benefit of the Java platform and I would expect everyone to protect this dimension of compatibility, enforced or not. The market will self-select and reject any attempt at a Java SE implementation that doesn't work right. This aspect of compatibility needed heavyweight protection back in the 90s but these days is probably protected by market forces and will likely be enhanced, not diminished, by a switch to a F/OSS license (as well as by projects like Apache Harmony).
The other is more subtle. It's about ensuring no major vendor - Sun included - gets an unfair advantage in the market because they have been able to exert control in a way that yields a competitive benefit. While we are criticized for controlling java we also hear people ask 'How come you guys don't make money off Java? You control it'. That's the whole point! This sort of compatibility is not protected by market forces - indeed, market power is the chief vehicle by which the damage is done.
Imagine if there had been no JCP control over the Java platform when the WS-* wars started. We would have seen each of the powerful vendors involved modifying the Java implementations they distributed to reflect their view of web services - while remaining "compatible", of course. We would have seen those modified versions distributed with volume products like application servers and developer tools. They would have been everywhere, creating a playing field that wasn't level for everyone to compete. Preventing this took control, and was to everyone's benefit. That's why it's wrong to treat all control as damage. In this case, control prevented damage, which is presumably why those who were thwarted were and are critical to the point of being grudging even about praising what's obviously good.
It's also wrong to assert that open source is a panacea in preventing unfair advantage. James got very close to this concept when he mentioned hands-off control. That's one of the consequences of focussing on licensing instead of governance in an open source community, and it's exactly what I'm keen to avoid in the future of Java SE. I do believe it's possible to build governance where the participants are prevented from exerting undue self-serving control - Apache is probably closest to an ideal arrangement in that regard - but it's also possible to create structures that make sock puppets look independent.
It's interesting to see who is whining loudest right now and who is being helpful and thoughtful. The corporations with the most to gain from being able to subtly influence and direct the Java platform to their benefit through "hands-off control" have their staff dissing Sun as loudly as they can, even as the Java platform heads towards open source. Their attitude confirms for me that compatibility - in the sense of preventing anyone getting an unfair advantage - must remain the number one priority for an open source Java platform.
Posted by webmink
( May 24 2006, 05:38:39 AM PDT )
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Friday May 19, 2006 links for 2006-05-20
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Great article with a stupid headline. Who writes these headlines?
Posted by webmink
( May 19 2006, 06:18:11 PM PDT )
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Thursday May 18, 2006 No Monopoly on Good
There I was thinking we'd done something useful and good, getting the DLJ written and decent packages produced for Java SE 5 on GNU/Linux and OpenSolaris, and not pretending it was open source Java yet. I understand there's a lot of history here, but for goodness sake give me a break and see it for what it is, a positive token of good-will and intent to deliver in a new context despite the prejudices of history and the tensions they've produced. If there are issues with DLJ I'll address them, but there's no monopoly on good.
Posted by webmink
( May 18 2006, 11:38:19 PM PDT )
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links for 2006-05-19
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Wow! And the version of NetBeans that won wasn't even the latest, 5.5, which is at least an order of magnitude better.
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My guest editorial for JavaLobby covers the new DLJ
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Blue moon; pigs fly; 3 Redmonks...
Posted by webmink
( May 18 2006, 06:17:58 PM PDT )
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Plays Well With Others
I had a great time at DebConf over the weekend, where Tom Marble and I were working with several members of the Debian and Ubuntu communities to get the packages and press release ready for the announcement of the Distro License for Java. The DebConf folks were great, even to the point of keeping the news community-confidential after I announced it to them on Monday at lunchtime.
So, does this co-operation mean Sun is "Inching towards Debian"? Does it imply we are "making a partial move" and perhaps implying we're ditching OpenSolaris? That's the way eWeek and InfoWorld would want to see it, if their headlines about Eclipse today are anything to go by. Terri Molini has it right:
It is an easy mistake to make since Sun is involved in so many open source communities such as FireFox, Apache Derby, GNOME, and OpenOffice.org. But it is still a mistake to confuse generosity with a change in company strategy.
Apart from perhaps a little too much excitement, Mike is right to characterise this as "good sense" rather than "strategy shift". I'm keen for Sun to "play well with others", but doing so says nothing about our top-level strategy.
Posted by webmink
( May 18 2006, 03:22:14 PM PDT )
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