Thursday January 29, 2009 Open Source Drives The New Sun
The Register article reporting Ian Murdock's move to Sun's new cloud computing group seems to have irritated Ian and it does indeed seem to be an attempt to gather as many half-understood-half-facts as possible and sensationalize them.
Far from being a "shift in Sun's thinking from the open-source software mindset of two years back and into the nebulous cloud market", the restructure of Sun's business units (happened last November actually) demonstrates Sun moving to the next level with open source, since all three business units - that's the whole company, for those keeping count - are driven by the three viable open source business models:
- Payment at the point of value
- The Application Platforms group covers infrastructure software like JavaEE (Glassfish) and MySQL and its primary business model is the one I discussed a while back where Sun drives adoption of the software and then sells the means to sustain value as the customer scales deployment.
- Open Source Firmware
- The Systems group covers storage, servers and the software chiefly associated with them and sells high-value, low price-point systems where the open source software is the operating system or firmware. You could often make the same systems yourself if you wanted; Sun does it better, at lower cost and with full support. Take a look at Open Storage and its use of OpenSolaris, ZFS and DTrace to get the idea.
- Cloud Computing/SaaS
- The new Cloud Computing group that Ian has joined (leaving his job running developer marketing - he's not been at OpenSolaris for quite some time) plans to run its cloud on open source and sell a reliable, supported, scalable service over the network.
From this you'll see that, far from moving away from open source, Sun has put it at the heart of every business unit. Maybe that would have made for an even more sensational story if the journalist had asked?
Posted by webmink
( Jan 29 2009, 04:04:19 AM PST )
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Tuesday January 27, 2009 Intellectual Privilege
Speaking at conferences like linux.conf.au (where I delivered a keynote last Friday) and OSCON is great fun. It's challenging to speak to an audience that's so diverse that it includes both the creator of the Linux kernel and students who just discovered it exists. It's humbling to know that the intelligence and achievement in the audience dwarfs anything I've ever done. And I admit that sometimes it's frustrating that there's a requirement for political correctness!
There are political correctness landmines littering this domain. For example, using the terms "open source" and "free software" is often taken as an indication of either one's cluefulness or of one's affiliation to a particular world-view. Personally, I consider the two expressions complementary - open source communities collaborate on a free software commons - but there's rarely a chance to explain that before I speak.
An especially frustrating one is the expression "intellectual property". The term is used widely in the business and legal communities, and it becomes second nature to speak of patents, copyright, trademarks and trade secrets collectively in this way. The problem with doing so is that the expression is factually wrong, and a legion of open source developers (you know, the ones working on free software) take the use of the phrase "intellectual property" as a genetic marker for "clueless PHB-type" at best and "evil oppressor of geeks" at worst.
Why is it wrong? Well, none of those things is really "property". In particular, copyright and patents are temporary privileges granted to creative people to encourage them to make their work openly available to society. The "social contract" behind them is "we'll grant you a temporary monopoly on your work so you can profit from it; in return you'll turn it over to the commons at the end of a reasonable period so our know-how and culture can grow."
Using the term "intellectual property" is definitely a problem. It encourages a mindset that treats these temporary privileges as an absolute right. This leads to two harmful behaviours:
- First, people get addicted to them as "property". They build business models that forget the privilege is temporary. They then press for longer and longer terms for the privilege without agreeing in return to any benefit for the commons and society.
- Second, they forget that one day they'll need to turn the material over to the commons. Software patents in particular contain little, if anything, that will be of value to the commons - no code, no algorithms, really just a list of ways to detect infringement.
Working on the legacy of this sociopathy is the subject for another time, but I believe we need to change the way we talk about the subject. Both Lakoff and Lewis agree; the words we use to describe things change the way we perceive them. The term we use probably needs to allow us to speak casually of "IP", so that we don't find every conversation to be a minefield of political correctness. Various suggestions have been made, but each of them seems to me to be so slanted to the opposite agenda that there's little chance of practitioners using them.
However, the term "intellectual privilege" seems to work. It's got the right initial letters, which is a huge win! But it also correctly describes the actual nature of the temporary rights we're considering. After having written most of this, I then searched to see if anyone else thought the same and found that someone is actually working on a book, endorsed by Lawrence Lessig, that has that as the title!
I doubt I will get the chance to explain all this before my next conference keynote. So if I don't, accept my apologies. When I said "IP" just now, I meant "intellectual privilege", and I think it's the right phrase for the job.
Posted by webmink
( Jan 27 2009, 02:21:52 AM PST )
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Sunday January 11, 2009 Weekend link roundup on January 11
- FTC Town Hall to Address Digital Rights Management Technologies
In Seattle. Looks worth a contribution, US-ians. - On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog
I have this cartoon on my wall, and it's once again relevant as people bemoan their inability to distinguish celebrities from pranksters on Facebook and Twitter. - Campaign For Special Torture Prosecutor Takes Change.gov Site By Storm
The proposal is to investigate rights abuse including torture and illegal surveillance. Instinctively I believe Obama will choose not to pursue Bush, preferring to leave history to its own means to judge him. - The Long Tail - Wired Blogs
Absolutely delicious satire mashes up Long Tail, Black Swan and Tipping Point into one truthy infographic. - Green Hill Music Digital Sampler on Amazon US
Some deliciously laid back tracks here that I'm enjoying a lot (apart from track 2). Well worth the download, especially for the David Arkenstone tracks.
Posted by webmink
( Jan 11 2009, 01:42:00 PM PST )
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Thursday January 08, 2009 Thursday's Links, January 8th
- OpenOffice.org vs. Go-OO: Cutting through the Gordian Knot
Interesting and reasonably balanced article on the endless and fruitless debate Novell is generating. I'm not aware that the author sought any input from Sun; I'd be pleased to explore some of the things he's asked. - Sun buys Q-Layer, should create the "Open Cloud"
The way it's described here sounds very compelling. Must go dig some more internally. - Obama picks RIAA's favorite lawyer for a top Justice post
Well, at least this shows Obama's team isn't unduly influenced by the opinions of key supporters. Pretty bad news for progressive thinking, though. - SecretTweet.com - Post your secrets anonymously to Twitter
PostSecret, Twitter-style. I'll see how long I can cope with its darkness - at least PostSecret only happens weekly.
Posted by webmink
( Jan 08 2009, 05:00:00 PM PST )
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Tuesday January 06, 2009 Link roundup for January 6
- Debian, Philosophy, and People
Where angels fear to tread. "So if even the sixth and eighth commandments admit to exceptions, why is it that some Debian developers approach the first clause of the Debian Social Contract with a take-no-prisoners, no-exceptions policy?" - Police set to step up hacking of home PCs
Oh for goodness sake, surely someone has both a clue and a conscience in British politics? Most upsetting phrase? "step up". They are already doing it. - Spinning the war on the UK's sex trade
Excellent look at how interest groups and politicians spin issues to create bad legislation that serves their campaigning ends. The same process goes for anything involving the word "drug" as well. - Gaza conflict: Who is a civilian?
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." - Open source: a different approach to developing software
From the customer viewpoint, a lot has been made of the cost benefits of free software. Simon Phipps, chief open source officer and evangelist at Sun, denies that this is the main attraction. "It is not about getting free stuff. If you hear a CIO say he is going to reduce his costs by not having to pay for software licences any more, then he has the wrong idea. Open source is about having control over what you pay for, what you hire for, and what you do not pay for."
Posted by webmink
( Jan 06 2009, 11:26:00 PM PST )
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Monday January 05, 2009 The first weekend's links of 2009
- Propaganda war: trusting what we see?
Interesting, insightful and informative article examining the propaganda war around the events in Gaza. - A prediction that's a safe bet
"Excess wealth is gone like the codpiece. The free market will continue but any respect for the idea of free money is all over." - Amtrak photo contestant arrested by Amtrak police in NYC’s Penn Station
What for? Why, for trying to enter the competition by taking a photograph, of course! Personally I think the competition is a cunning scheme by Amtrak to flush out all the subversives so the police can arrest them and snuff out this disgusting train photography hobby for once and for all. - OpenTable: So Web 1.0 It Hurts.
Mirrors my experience. OpenTable is definitely ripe for a competitor that is about gathering an epicurean community and delivering it to deserving restaurants. - Cornyn promises filibuster on Franken
Any system contains within it the games that will be used to play it. Corollary: The more complex the system, the easier it is to find ways to game it. Corollary: Complex systems get gamed for longer than simple systems.
Posted by webmink
( Jan 05 2009, 06:11:00 PM PST )
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Saturday January 03, 2009 Today's links, January 3rd
- Unusual disk latency
Don't shout at your hard disks; it upsets them. (Watch the video - yes, it's been everywhere, but it was on my Twitter feed first) - The 2008 Chutzpah in IT Marketing Awards
Not sure I really understand these, but the Sun vs IBM one is priceless. - Free Endangered Species Ringtones - Center for Biological Diversity
Some great and unusual sounds here that no-one else will be using. Well, apart from everyone that reads Webmink!
Posted by webmink
( Jan 03 2009, 07:44:00 AM PST )
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Friday January 02, 2009 The First Links of 2009
- Profile: Terry Pratchett
That's SIR Terry Pratchett from now on. I wonder which town he'll pick as his "of"? Great choice for a knighthood, combining genius, philanthropy and an adoring public. - Pioneer of cyberspace honoured
Congratulations to Wendy. There ain't nothin' like a dame. - Predictions for 2009 - Paul Murphy
Some interesting insights here - see especially Sun and IBM. I really hope we'll be able to prove him wrong. - The 10 Coolest Open Source Products Of 2008
Top of the list? OpenOffice.org 3.0 (the first page of the sequence is the title slide).
Posted by webmink
( Jan 02 2009, 01:35:00 AM PST )
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Thursday January 01, 2009 Tidying away the last links from 2008
- OOoCon 2009 - Call for Location
Want to host the next OpenOffice.org conference? the 2008 event was in Beijing so I'd have to guess a location in Europe would stand a good chance this year... - Dan Gilbert researches happiness
Just watched this TED talk from 2005 and it's a brilliant and entertaining explanation - which seems so obvious in retrospect - of what influences our choices and why we are so often wrong. Unusually for a TED video there's also a Q & A at the end that's worth watching. - On Christmas Day in the morning
25 million downloads of OpenOffice.org 3.0. Regardless of the self-interested whining from some quarters, it's clear something about this release gets it right for the people who really matter, the users of the software. - FUD from the Linux Foundation or: Mr Zemlin again
"Using FUD is a good fear detector in my daily business. The amount of spreaded FUD is proportional to the amount of fear. Thus i have to assume that Mr. Zemlin of the Linux Foundation is really afraid of Solaris." - Matthew Alexander on Torture
"I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo." (the book looks interesting too). - Blog Response guide
Excellent flow chart by the USAF PR team for responding to commentary on blogs that captures what many of us already learned and try to practice (even if we do end up feeding the odd troll). - Ring flash
Fascinating idea - a ring-light that works by redirecting and diffusing a normal flash.
Posted by webmink
( Jan 01 2009, 11:13:43 AM PST )
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