SunMink

Simon Phipps's other Weblog
(a WebMink in the Sun)

The Sun Model

As time has gone by, a clear "Sun Model" for open source business has been emerging, at least to my eyes. The summary of it is:

1. remove barriers to software adoption between download and deploy;
2. encourage a large and cohesive community of software deployers;
3. deliver, for a fee, the means to create value between deploy and scale, for those who need it.

Each software team at Sun interprets this model in a slightly different way, but the model holds pretty much everywhere and works regardless of the license for the code. As a business model, it doesn't have much to say about the nature of the development community, but I believe dysfunction in that area is a barrier to adoption so it's always an issue if dysfunction exists.

This model is the natural progression of the concept of monetising at the point of value, and I hope to explore it more over the coming weeks. Feel free to ask questions below about the things needing clarification.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 30 2008, 01:52:28 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [14]

links for 2008-10-29

• Sun's 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Report - Open Source
  Take a look at the open source section of Sun's 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Report and let me know what you think (preferably through the discussion facility on the site).
• Jerry Maguire on the future of the free software industry
  Not convinced this is the only answer, but it's an answer and a good one.
• Why Voting Technology Must be Open Source
  Here is the key to democracy: Transparency With Privacy. The world of voting machines is currently all about secrecy in the name of privacy but truly for profit and control, and it is wrong.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 29 2008, 08:02:29 AM PDT ) Permalink

links for 2008-10-27

The "life full" light has been on for the last week, so not much blogging has happened, but there were a few links:

• All MySQL's children
  I think Matt has his conclusions exactly reversed, although I also agree with the commentor who says both activities grow the MySQL community and thus grow the opportunity for everyone.
• Amazon's new EC2 SLA
  "Amazon takes monitoring very seriously and should take the lead by tracking, reporting, and proactively compensating customers when it lets them down." - I'd certainly agree that this SLA is no help to small-medium scale users.
• iNaturalist.org - A Community for Naturalists
  This is a rather clever mashup of Wikipedia (for the descriptive text), Flickr (for CC-licensed images of things), Google Maps and more. The goal is to crowdsource observations of flora & fauna. Hope it does well.
• Untangled
  Roy Fielding in defence of jargon (which I agree with) and in defence of his right to define REST narrowly (which I'm not so sure about).
• Wassup 2008
  Watch it go viral. Lovely bit of film-making.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 27 2008, 06:50:30 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

links for 2008-10-20

• How the financial collapse killed libertarianism
  The editor-in-chief at Slate blames the collapse on libertarians who "are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school". Powerful stuff.
• Powell's endorsement
  A video worth watching. Powell is polite, rational, has a shrewd analysis of the campaign and sums up what I have been hearing from many of my friends - of each political persuasion - about the US election. As Lessig says, an important milestone.
• Boybama - Battleground for Your Heart
  Some people have waaaay too much time on their hands. Pretty good song actually, all things considered, especially the rap break. Personally I can do without the video but then I'm not the target audience.
• Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy - Lawrence Lessig
  Lessig's new book is out - can't wait to read it. Amazingly I am in roughly the right place to attend the launch party on October 29.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 20 2008, 12:41:00 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [3]

links for 2008-10-18

• The Things He Carried
  Rather over-the-top article about security theatre at US airports.
• YouTube - Batman vs. The Penguin: The Debate
  Seems someone's script writer is a Batman fan.
• Microsoft: OpenOffice better than Google Apps
  Seems OpenOffice.org has Microsoft's attention. I must say I think Ballmer misses the point of Google Docs here, which I use in addition to OO.o not instead of it. It's the ODF that makes the difference...
• OpenOffice.org 3.0 Unofficial Builds Includes PPC
  I've seen several people asking for PPC builds for the new OpenOffice.org 3.0 for Mac. This unofficial site contains builds by the community team responsible for the Mac port.
• Announcing the AEGIS project - a €12.6m investment in open source accessibility
  A major consortium of companies gets together to make accessibility for open source even more mainstream. They will focus on desktop, RIA and mobile applications. The work includes the people from Sun who made OpenOffice.org and then GNOME accessible.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 18 2008, 02:56:00 AM PDT ) Permalink

links for 2008-10-17

• First million!
  A million downloads of OpenOffice.org in two days. No wonder the site is reeling in shock.
• OpenOffice.org 3.0 is an incremental improvement
  Pretty good review. The article comments that the look & feel seems old. One reason for this is that retaining the familiarity of look and feel does away with the need for training for most existing users of document packages. As I heard at the ODF Workshop last week, that alone is driving adoption of OpenOffice.org
• OO.o Move to Subversion done
  Another step in the overall scheme to making it easier for developers to engage in the OpenOffice.org source code.
• ODF workshop
  Report on the event by the co-chair, Aslam Raffee. It's OK, Aslam, I was joking about the trademark :-)

Posted by webmink ( Oct 17 2008, 03:38:00 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

OpenOffice.org and archiving

At the ODF Workshop last week, a number of the delegates were asking about the right way to handle archiving of their documents. Obviously ODF offers a baseline file format that promises long-term readability and editability, but the question remains of how best to handle files. With the release of OpenOffice.org 3.0, there are now two alternatives, and we heard at the conference of a third alternative coming in the future from ODF.

1. ODF plus PDF

   Most of the archivists I have spoken to have insisted that one should always keep the original document in its original format, regardless of other choices. The easiest option for archiving is to retain the original file, with an optional copy filtered to ODF if the original is not in ODF, and then accompany the file with a PDF image. Technology exists to automatically create all this.

2. PDF Container

   OpenOffice.org includes extensive new PDF handling features, including PDF/A support, access to PDF's distribution and use controls and the ability to include the original ODF in a "container" inside a "hybrid PDF". This last feature offers a fine archiving alternative, where a single file is created but within it the original ODF is retained for future use.

3. Read-Only ODF

   At the workshop, we heard from Jomar Silva on the future of ODF 1.2. One of the features he described was signed, read-only ODF, allowing the preservation of the document exactly as used (it's on slide 4).

Choosing which to use is obviously a decision for each archiving authority, but the richness of the new PDF support means that the options open to arhcivists just grew enormously.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 14 2008, 04:01:45 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [8]

links for 2008-10-14

• Steal This Comic
  xkcd points out that anyone who engages in the DRM-haunted part of the music market is bound to break the law in the end.
• Sun's 4-chip CMT system raises the bar
  If you remember "Thumper" (which puts 24TB of reliable storage into a 4U box), then you might identify this amazing new system Sun just released as the "Thumper of CPUs" - 255 processors in 4U yet still energy efficient. And the processors are open source.
• Sun Student Technology Camps
  The next one is in the San Francisco Bay area and covers open source. High school kids welcome too. Looks pretty cool.
• Ministers shelve 42-day detention
  Amazing it took this long for them to spot the problem with their legislation, but welcome nonetheless.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 14 2008, 01:04:00 AM PDT ) Permalink

links for 2008-10-13

Manually aggregating links for the last week:

• Anatomy of an attack: The New York Times on Solaris
  Paul Murphy does an excellent job analysing the smear piece that the Linux Foundation presumably placed and shows how well it was put together by Krill. Well worth reading regardless of your views, just to see a pro at work.
• TSA Wants to Screen Passengers of Private Jets
  After getting over "you mean they don't already" amazement, this seems overwhelmingly sensible. Not because the checks are any use (see Bruce Schneier's blog if you're not already aware) but because I doubt we'll see effective political pressure to get it sorted until the people who pay for the politics feel the pain as well.
• Linux.conf.au 2009 Hobart Conference Announces Keynote Speakers
  I've never been to Tasmania, so I'm looking forward to this one even without the energetic audience I know I'll have.
• Doonesbury: Why McCain wants to stay in Iraq
  This has to be one of the most disturbing explanations I have seen, becuase I can imagine how it resonates with a certain group of people.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 13 2008, 05:22:00 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

ODF Going Global

If you've been wondering where I have got to (go on, humour me), the answer is I am miles from home in South Africa where I came on Tuesday to participate in the second International ODF Workshop. The South African government were perfect, gracious and attentive hosts, personified in conference co-chair Aslam Raffee, and the attendees were from a wide range of countries.

Content highlights for me were hearing from the Belgian and Brazilian delegations on their progress with adopting ODF as a standard; the infectious enthusiasm of Justice Singh from the high court in Allahabad, India speaking of how and why his court is embracing ODF; practical, sensible questions from so many people; and the announcement from the Venezuelan delegation of their decision to adopt ODF.

The event also encouraged me to think about the words that will shape the global ODF adoption community going forward. My presentation, Seven Words, traced a little of the history of both ODF and the Free and open source software communities that created it. It went on to consider adoption philosophies and practicalities, including a sketch of a migration plan I created by consolidating the various stories I heard from adopters on the first day.

Marino Marcich of the ODF Alliance pointed out that there are now organisations from 62 countries represented in his membership, and I'm left with the strong of impression of a growing global community of practice in governments of every kind, both politically and geographically. From small roots ODF has grown to both a global movement and a strong technology, spreading wherever fair-minded people are willing to take a stand. It's been worth the trip.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 10 2008, 09:16:00 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [6]

links for 2008-10-06

• ODF Olympiad 2008
  The number of spontaneous software freedom activities coming out of India reflects the diversity and drive of the people. This international scheme promotes creative expolration of the potential of ODF - wonderful stuff that I'd encourage school-age students to join in with.
• Momentum behind ODF in government grows
  I am still in awe of the consequences of the act we performed in 2002 of opening up the specification for XML-described documents that had first emerged from StarDivision in 1999. When we offered the document to OASIS and formed the first working group it seemed such a small seed, a gesture of defiance against the monopoly stranglehold that was making the world forget its history. ODF has grown into both a movement and a long-term format for the world. Maybe I dream too small?
• Chef Dies After Hot Chilli Dare
  I never have understood why people want to eat hot vindaloo and unmitigated chilli.
• Disaster Capitalism, State of Extortion
  Naomi Klein's July analysis of the motivations behind the decisions of the UK & US governments rings even more true in the light of the Wall Street bail-out, which she foreshadows in this article.
• technological determinism, open exceptionalism, defensive politicisation
  Love the analysis, although the buzzwords may need a little work!
• Abu Ghraib Halloween Costume?
  Amazon keeping up with the times I see.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 06 2008, 01:34:00 AM PDT ) Permalink

The Conference That's Worth Attending

I speak at loads of conferences, but there's one I have been attending for nearly a decade which I'd like to recommend you consider. Every year I go the content is spot on, and I know I have to find new insights for the audience in my annual keynote because they are all probably more qualified to be speaking than I am.

This conference:

• Features technical sessions of depth and current relevance to practicing enterprise software developers without hyping a particular fad;
• Features speakers who are current practitioners, all of whom have high speaker-quality ratings from previous events;
• Schedules each talk to run two or three times so you can attend everything you want to;
• Includes a daily open town-hall meeting for questions and problem solving;
• Is a favoured destination for long-term open source contributors, especially from Apache;
• Just announced they will be making the most of Apple dropping the iPhone NDA to include an iPhone developer track with real code from real developers;
• Is a non-partisan, privately-run event with no exhibits, no "sponsors" skewing the agenda and no marketing hype allowed and no marketing droids presenting;
• Has been running for seventeen years paid for solely by attendee fees, and has the highest repeat attendee rate of any event I know;
• Is a family affair, run by a family for their extended family of friends and soon-to-be-friends;
• Is held in a beautiful high mountain retreat where everyone, delegates and speakers, stay all week and meet and eat together. Delegates go home with a rich contact list as a result;
• Has great food;
• Is probably the best technical conference in the world.

If you're an enterprise developer with a leaning towards open source and the Java platform (in all its modern incarnations), you should consider attending this event, despite the fact I will be presenting a keynote there for the ninth time. Try Dave Landers for a second opinion.

The event?  Colorado Software Summit, in Keystone, Colorado. I hope I'll see you there.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 05 2008, 01:04:00 AM PDT ) Permalink

links for 2008-10-04

• Cambridge (F-10) Beta release announcement
  Fedora 10 includes NetBeans...
• Cloning Jay Pipes
  MySQL is hiring.
• Obama releases iPhone recruiting, campaign tool
  Interesting platform leverage.
• US Election Game on Facebook
  The company that built the Olympics game on Facebook with zembly has now built a US Election game for Facebook (and, it seems, MySpace eventually).
• Screenshots of The First Application That Supports ISO/IEC 29500
  And it was written (at least in part) by Richard Stallman.

Posted by webmink ( Oct 04 2008, 07:25:00 AM PDT ) Permalink