April 15th, 2008
Sun debuts MySQL 5.1 with no licensing change
Sun Microsystems announced today that MySQL 5.1 will be available this quarter.
When this quarter? Sun won’t specify the date of the “pending” release but was good enough to post a “near final” release candidate today at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/.
The upgraded open source database, which Sun bought along with the company in February, features enhanced partitioning and replication as well as a new event scheduler and an upgrade advisor for the databae’s enteprise monitor. MySQL 5.1 was launched at the sixth annual mySQL conference this week.
For example, version 5.1 will offer table and index partitioning, which allows for faster query responses, and two new forms of replication: row-based replication and hybrid based replication. The row based option replicates just the changes to data while the hybrid approach allows for the chnage only, the delta between master and server slave servers, or statement-based replication.
The event scheduler is also a new feature that allows users to schedule recurring tasks and the new upgrade advisor for the monitor, available only MySQL Enterrpise subscribers, automates rules that monitor the database.
As usual, MySQL 5.1 will be available as a freely available community server that is licensed udner the GPL , an enterprise server with subscription support, and an embedded edition for OEMs that wish to bundle the sofwtare with their hardware.
And no, there are no changes to MySQL licensing under new ownership, Sun says.
April 15th, 2008
My kid hates Linux too! (so what?)
Christopher Dawson’s admission that his 15 year old hates Linux has drawn quite a blogswarm.
My kid hates Linux too. He’s 16, loves games, and finally stopped whining for a GameCube when he learned his Windows DVDs could also be played online.
Now you can’t get him away from the thing.
If this were sending his grades down the PC would be gone. It’s not.
But for a kid to say he “hates” Linux is simply mistaken, on the kid’s part. If he uses Google, or thousands of other sites, he loves Linux.
What young Mr. Dawson hates is “desktop Linux” and he is right to do so. Most desktop Linux software is applications, serious stuff. Serious as homework.
Game makers have flocked to the Windows platform over the last few years, due to its ubiquity, and their patience has been rewarded.
Of course, being game makers they stress the system, trying to stuff a true game machine experience into a PC operating system. Typical Linux virtualizers won’t run them. In my own son’s case, we had to get him a 750 Gigabyte hard drive just to store his stuff.
Still, what Mr. Dawson is doing, as a high school computer administrator, makes perfect sense. The best way to make certain a school system can only do homework is by making sure that’s all it can do.
Linux is good for that. Homework, that is. Do your homework. Is your homework done?
OK, now you can play.
April 15th, 2008
Can DimDim change the conference game?
Russell would have loved DimDim.
Combining VOIP and open source into a free Web meeting tool was right up his street.
Of course, no doubt he did know all about it. DimDim has been undergoing a soft launch since September and its official release this month is essentially a formality.
The product sells itself. In fact the company has set up special meetings with its top executives which do just that. (Most are Indian veterans of Computer Associates.)
If your set-up is up-to-date, with an integrated camera and microphone in your Windows XP (or later) laptop, and a broadband connection, DimDim is a quick five-minute download.
Meetings are free up to 20 participants, and even the Pro version is just $99. Cheap as chips.
The question is how much of the market is DimDim ready, because I’m ashamed to say I’m not.
While the necessary peripherals are standard on Macs, they’re not standard on PCs, at least desktop models. My own attempts to DimDim with CMO Steve Chazin were laughable.
All my fault, I assure him. I’m sure Russell would have handled it with great aplomb.
The timing for DimDim sounds just right. With gas prices high and rising, with PC prices low and falling, with bandwidth increasingly abundant, a low-cost open source competitor to firms like WebEx should be hitting the sweet spot.
If they take advantage of the community to build the add-ins experienced users have been clamoring for, they won’t look DimDim at all.
Not as dim as me, at any rate.
April 15th, 2008
Windows (in)security and open source
Windows security is a good gig. (Picture from BuyersMLS, which has many other old TV mash-ups.)
McAfee Inc. is worth over $5 billion and Symantec (which also does other things) is worth over $14 billion.
Both have risen to prominence based on proprietary models and deep, rare expertise. Knowledge about data security and anti-viral technology is closely guarded.
I was able to study a rival of both companies last year, and without giving anything away there’s no magic here.
It takes time and money to research threats as they appear, but much of that work takes place online, in chat rooms, on mailing lists, and in e-mail connections with customers.
The myth these companies sell is that secrecy is integral to the business. If everyone knew how to write viruses everyone would, so all knowledge of this world must be kept close.
But cops-and-robbers isn’t a secret game, either online or in real life. Neighborhood watches, an alert citizenry, community interaction — these are the best tools for cutting crime in the real world. And the online world as well.
So why the Joe Friday “Dragnet” routine? Self-interest. If the community were organized to meet the security challenge, as it is other challenges, the challenge might be met.
And where would that leave the security guys? Instead of looking like heroic FBI agents or Men in Black they’d be seen as security guards, fat asses behind desks, looking at monitors all day.
They’re not really Joe Friday at all, it turns out. They’re Barney Fyfe.
Can’t have that.
But get behind the curtain and that’s what you’ll see. So the best tactic, from a business sense, is to keep you from doing that, to claim that’s risky, and that open source knowledge, rather than secrecy, is the real threat.
That’s the only way to justify the market premium we place on closed source security, with every renewal check we write.
April 14th, 2008
Iona exec: open source unit not for sale, Mule is “not ESB”
Iona may be on the block but it is not looking to spin off and sell off its nine-month-old open source business unit, said one key exec.
Larry Alston, vice president and general manager of open source at Iona, acknowledged that the company is exploring strategic options after receiving an unsolicited bid earlier this year but he insists that selling off its open source unit is not an option.
“We’ll try to keep these rumors to a dull roar,” said Alston, intimidating that such gossip, which spread before the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco last month, likely emanated from an unnamed competitor. “Neither Iona nor anyone retained by Iona has been shopping the open source division separately. It’s not true.”
The Dublin, Ireland and Waltham, Mass. based company, which acquired open source SOA vendor LogicBlaze last April and officially launched its Fuse open source business suite and open source division last July, has captured more new customers in the last six months than Iona has in three years, including several large enterprise deals, Alston said.
At JavaOne, Iona will “make a big deal” out of its upgrade of Fuse based on the Apache’s upcoming OSGi-based ServiceMix 4.0, being shown in preview by the Apache Software Foundation this week, the iona exec added. The Fuse upgrade will ship later this quarter.
And later this year, the 17-year-old company will release another major upgrade of its Artix suite of enterprise SOA-ESB suite.
Iona’s open source business is growing nicely and there are no plans to dump it, he reiterated.
In fact, Iona releases its open source software under the Apache 2.0 license and recently became a financial sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation, he said. Its revenue model is based on support, consulting and training for the Apache ActiveMQ project and Apache ServiceMix project , which was pioneered at LogicBlaze.
Alston had some fightin’ words for open source rival MuleSource, which has gained notorietary as one of the next big open source companies in 2008.
“We don’t think of MuleSource as a competitor. Mule is not ESB. It is intelligent routing and mediation engine, much like [Apache] Camel project,” Alston said. “Mule at its base does not have its own container; it is Spring-based. And they don’t provide service enablement or messaging. Most of Muleforce [customers] use the Fuse message broker. Mule doesn’t have a reliable messaging bus.”
He said the MuleForce engine is nice but “it is a little piece of the whole puzzle. It is positioned as ESB but technically it is not because it doesn’t have its own container and most versions of the connectors are done by third party vendors,” Alston added. “Camel will overtake Mule in the next couple of years, easily.”
Alston also said that MuleForce will have a tough time competing against Iona, which now has more than 350 employees, a full ESB integration and middleware suite and a support staff capable of dealing with its Fortune 20 customers such as AT&T, Southwest Airlines and Lehmann Brothers, which are all moving to open source.
“When we acquired LogicBlaze, they were in the same position as Mulesource is today … a 30 person company,” he added.
MuleSource, a Java-based integration platform company, identifies itself as the “world’s most used open source Enterprise Service Bus” and earlier this year launched its Mule 1.5 Enterprise Edition with support for Apache CXF web services framework. Later this year, Mule plans to launch an enterprise, commercial version of its recently launched Mule Community Edition 2.0.
Iona also competes on the open source front against Sun’s OpenESB and Progress Software’s Sonic ESB.
Open source still represents a fraction of Iona’s revenues relative to its proprietary software business but the unit beat its 2007 estimates in its first six months of operation and “we’re seeing a tremendous uptake since we launched last July,” Alston said. “In the transition, there’s been some confusion because we have Ardix ESB and Fuse ESB but by the end of the year the confusion will be gone.”
But that all depends on whether Iona is scooped up by another vendor. Alston would not comment on potential bidders or a timeframe for a buy. “We’re in a process here and its soemthing yet to be determined,” Alston said. “This management team has not been managing Iona to be sold.”
(By the way, did you know that the name IONA is not an acronym but rather an island in the Irish sea where the Book of Kells was written).
April 14th, 2008
Moodle your way out of the education muddle
What’s the biggest bottleneck in both open source and education?
Time. Time to write code, time to learn the tools and get value from them.
It is a muddle. So why not Moodle?
Moodle is an open source course management system. It’s software for creating online learning communities or courseware.
If I were trying to organize the teaching of anything — K-12, college work, community organizing — I’d start the project by downloading Moodle. Here are some demos. Here is a company selling Moodle training.
This won’t solve the main problem in education and technology — a lack of time to use the tools — but it will solve a big part of that problem.
Obsolescence.
I’ve watched it for over 20 years now, ever since my children were born. Educators get excited over a technology — PCs, networks, multimedia, the Internet — but by the time it’s bought, installed, and training has begun, what you’ve got is obsolete.
Moodle solves this problem. It’s backward-compatible. It’s online. If it takes you a year or two to learn how to use it, and adapt it to your classroom, it will still be here when you’re done and ready.
But what of the cost? Free. Well, you’ve probably got PCs and Internet access already, both in your school and at home. So free to download, and free to use. But not really free.
We’re asking the same commitment of you we ask of everyone in open source. Your time.
The time to muddle your way through to a solution. The time to download and report bugs on beta code. The time to join forums and help document the software.
Most of all, dear teacher, the time to adapt it to your own use. Your use, your department’s use, your school’s use.
But with so many generations of technology gone by, and so much time spent learning, buying, installing, wasted, will anyone listen?
That’s the real muddle.
April 14th, 2008
Is “working on it” just open source FUD?
Sun is pondering an open source codec. No they’re really working on it.
It even has a name. Open Media Stack. Part of the Open Media Commons initiative. Oh, it’s royalty free. Look, here’s a blog post. And a news release. (And a diagram, from the blog post.)
The way to get to a royalty-free codec is to start with H.261, a video compression standard approved in 1989, outside the 17-year patent window. They can’t look at H.264 (used in MPEG4) because that requires payment of royalties.
So we go back a full human generation and grow from there. Probably with Xith Vorbis.
All of which sounds wonderful, except for one thing. Who’s paying for all this work?
Sun indicates it’s contributing, but how long will it take for them to replicate 20 years of codec progress on its own? And who is helping?
Asked all these interesting questions at last week’s Open House Rob Glidden, global alliance manager for TV & Media at Sun, made an unintentioned funny. “Stay tuned,” he said.
Smells like open source FUD to me.
Now wait, you say. Unfair, you say. Great projects start with a vision and a sponsor. Here Sun is offering both. Plus a structure in which to get it done.
All true. But with no clue on budgets, and no timelines, we’re also staying tuned while the world goes on without us. Those royalty-bearing codecs aren’t sitting still, and there are royalties to fund their development.
I would be far less skeptical and snarky on this if, say, Google were making the announcement. They have the money and bodies to get this done lickety-split.
I’m just afraid that with Sun we might be talking more Lemony Snicket.
April 11th, 2008
The Linux lesson Windows needs
Gartner analysts are running about in Las Vegas, hair on fire, shouting that Windows is collapsing. Or about to collapse. Or something.
This is easy to get snarky about, but there is a real issue here. With each new release of Windows, it adds capability, it adds code, and it gets bigger. It’s the Moore’s Law of Windows, Gates’ Corollary.
Windows Vista is a bigger piece of software than XP was, XP was bigger than Windows 98, etc. etc. etc. With all those dependencies there is bound to be trouble, and if you run Vista, you know what that is.
What’s the solution? Linux followers may consider me apostate for mentioning this, but just take a page from Linux’ book.
Linux is Linux, but not all Linuxes are created equal. The Linux you run on a mobile phone is not the same as the Linux you run on a blade server. The former contains only those kernel functions it needs to do what it needs to do.
That’s what all these various Linux vendors are really up to, slicing and dicing and parsing and picking what the Linux Foundation delivers into something custom made for their customers, like cooks creating meals from an ingredient list.
Microsoft has never done that. It’s tried to, with things like Window Mobile. But eventually everything it touches turns to bloatware, in the name of compatibility.
There’s your problem. Instead of looking at Windows as one product, Microsoft might do well to look at it as an ingredient list for a host of products, custom-made by Microsoft’s wizards (and its ecosystem) for your delectation.
For Linux’ sake I hope it never happens.
April 11th, 2008
Google Cloud draws open source
The delivery of the Google App Engine may turn out to be the biggest story of this year.
Google has always told its new employees to imagine what they would do with unlimited capacity. Now, as of April 7, it’s telling application developers the same thing.
The key question is, of course, what’s the best way in? You can take your company into GoogleLand, or you can go in through a another door. An open source door.
That’s what Appcelerator is offering. The Atlanta-based Java tools outfit is porting its software over via its developer network, and offers a step-by-step method for using its tools on the service.
Not to mention a running demo application.
I fully expect lots of other folks to offer similar side-doors into Google Apps very soon, so this isn’t an ad for Appcelerator. The point is that questions about the business usefulness of Google Apps may be greatly overblown.
April 11th, 2008
Linux or open source?
The name of this blog is “Linux and open source” but the question Microsoft wants you to ask yourself is, simply, Linux or open source?
While Linux is an open source operating system, it’s not always free. There is a lot of free open source for Windows. It’s quite easy to have both open source and Windows. I do. You probably do, too.
In such an environment, the battle comes down, again, to where will you find the applications you most want and need?
That’s the question Linux needs to answer as it, too, becomes just another Windows application. That’s not the way Mark Shuttleworth puts it. That’s not even the way Matt Asay puts it.
That’s just the way it is.
What makes Linux so strong in the server space is the applications which run on it. Web applications, database applications, business management applications — they all run fast, they all run well, they run together, the IS department is happy.
What makes Windows so strong in the desktop space is the same thing. Windows applications, open source applications, even Mac applications (like iTunes) all generally work.
It’s now quite easy to run a Windows box in which the only proprietary program you have is Windows. Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, The Gimp, and Google together make for a pretty nice office suite.
So the release of a Windows Installer for Ubuntu LTS 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is more than “very cool.” It’s a turning point.
Once you get the Windows installer, and the Hardy Heron flies, you really need to try those open source applications you’re used to in their native habitat.
That’s when the real comparison starts. That’s when the market battle begins. When you’re no longer running Linux or Windows, or Linux or open source, but Linux and open source.
April 11th, 2008
Can Ironman save Microsoft?
From IO9 (via BoingBoing) comes word that the next edition of Invincible Iron Man will have our hero, Tony Stark, battling open source?
Series writer Matt Fraction actually says the battle between his hero and new villain Ezekial Stane is an allegory for the battle Bill Gates has waged with Linux for years now.
The interview with Fraction, who writes for Marvel Comics, is actually with Comic Book Resources, and in it Fraction describes the danger of open source as letting “anyone have access” to the technology of tomorrow.
Open source advocates may be pleased to know that their anti-hero is going to put the good guy through his paces. Says Fraction:
I’m looking forward to Tony, the man, becoming a stand up guy again. I’m going to grind him down into the dirt and smash him like a car compactor. He’ll be put through a crucible and we’ll see, when you destroy everything he is, when you take everything away, what’s left?
It actually makes great sense for a comic book with a movie tie-in to indoctrinate kids in the proprietary way, and to see open source as a threat.
While software companies have mainly adapted to open source, content providers have yet to find a business model which replicates their accustomed revenue streams and profit margins.
The comic also asks a good question of open source advocates. Where in our business models will we find the money to fund this kind of compelling content?
The first issue in what is advertised as a 10-comic “arc” of Invincible Iron Man adventures is due for sale May 7.
April 10th, 2008
Whispers will not kill fair use
Boingboing reports, via Google lawyer William Patry, that some large entertainment companies have launched a “whisper campaign” aimed at killing fair use.
Governments are being told, in effect, that the U.S. Copyright law is incompatible with the Berne Convention, an international treaty on which copyright laws worldwide are based.
Specifically it’s being whispered that Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act violates the “three-step test” under which coyrighted works can be copied.
Patry calls this an attempt at swiftboating fair use. Convince enough governments that fair use is incompatible with Berne, and you can force it out of U.S. law.
This is, of course, nonsense. Fair use reproduction of copyrighted works can’t be eliminated as a matter of fact, let alone in law.
Why not? You’re soaking in it. Right now this piece of copyrighted work lives in thousands of places, on server caches, and on the hard drives of readers.
This constant digital copying is, in fact, the best protection copyright works have of living to the end of their copyright terms, especially under U.S. law.
Want proof? Consider A Man to Remember, a 70-year old RKO film which features a Dalton Trumbo screenplay and was the directorial debut of Garson Kanin.
It starred Edward Ellis (1873-1952), one of those character actors you will see late at night, say “who is that,” then spend the rest of the night arguing about it. He might otherwise be lost to history.
But for this.
As the Hollywood Reporter describes it (and this copy of the story is actually on a server at Stanford University) once restorers figured out the copyright issues, the only restorable copy turned out to be in the Netherlands, with Dutch subtitles.
Many copyrighted films have been lost, in whole or in part, because the only copies, on nitrate film, could not be restored in time.
But this story, as poor as you may consider it, will live forever, thanks to the constant copying required by the Internet, and the fair use which protects that copying.
April 10th, 2008
Astaro calls plain English the open source vendor value-add
A new Astaro report on open source security — available directly from ZDNet – essentially says you shouldn’t be worried.
This is important given that Astaro is not an open source company. They have a commercial license, and a portal you can use to manage your Astaro licenses.
Astaro does, however, use open source as well as proprietary code in their products. This is why they wrote the report, which we here at ZDNet call a “whitepaper” but Astaro calls an “orange paper” because, well, orange is their thing.
The report, by product evangelist Angelo Comazzetto (above), is notable in its use of plain English and its identification of plain English as a major impediment to the adoption of open source in the enterprise.
Plain English is where vendors add value worth paying for, he notes. Plain English documentation, screens which can be understood by people who only use plain English, and of course plain English white orange papers and marketing materials.
There’s irony here. Plain English newspapers complain bitterly of the competition generated by open source and the Internet it is built on. Yet plain English is the real value-add commercial developers provide for open source software.
Oh, and y’all should know that ZDNet bloggers specialize in plain English, with many available for part-time hire.
April 9th, 2008
Will telcos accept an open source switch?
Over at Team Think our own David Greenfield (right) has the intriguing story of an open source “Class 5″ switch dubbed FreeSwitch.
One unasked question is whether telcos will ever embrace this kind of open source and the savings it brings.
Based on 20 years of covering these folks I’d say the answer is no.
These people barely comprehend interoperability. For years I watched as AT&T Lucent, Nortel and Siemens battled for market share in the phone switch market, in a market that was forced to interoperate, yet they all somehow managed to avoid it.
This is where the rubber really meets the road in terms of telco control and open source.
Telephone companies build ginormous barriers to entry, constantly seeking monopoly, and then try to exploit those monopolies in every way possible. That’s the way they are. It’s in their DNA.
To imagine that AT&T or Verizon is going to ever embrace an open source message, and the competition such a message implies, is to believe in the tooth fairy. It will never happen.
They may pretend to for business reasons, as with Verizon and its “open access” wireless plan, but that is always temporary, always limited, and always subject to being yanked back when its purpose has been fulfilled.
The only way an open source switch gains traction is in a competitive telco market. As small players realize savings, big players are obliged to follow suit.
But we don’t have such a market in the U.S. today, and the monopolists are doing everything possible to assure we don’t have such a market in the Internet tomorrow.
The only way an open source switch has a chance is when the monopoly telco market is replaced by a competitive Internet one.
April 9th, 2008
Eclipse co-founder Skip McGaughey on Open Health mission
Skip McGaughey, who was the original co-chair of the Eclipse Foundation while at IBM, has a new mission, to bring that same open source collaboration to health care.
McGaughey, who has been based in Asheville, NC since launching Eclipse, is the first head of the Open Health Tools community, which announced its interoperability framework yesterday.
I was fortunate to catch him for a quick interview this morning.
His main message was that OHT has just started, that it’s based on sound principles, and that its work will be global in scope, encompassing cutting-edge national efforts and a variety of licenses.
April 8th, 2008
State of the Linux union is sound
Before settling down to business at its Collaboration Summit in Austin today, the Linux Foundation heard a state of the Linux union talk from IDC.
In the enterprise space, it’s sound. (This is a picture from last year’s summit. Don’t they look excited, though?)
The key takeaway was a hockey stick graph, showing the Linux ecosystem growing from $21 billion in sales last year to $49 billion by 2011.
The big growth is coming in applications, and deployment software like databases, IDC said, meaning the current VC interest in enterprise Linux is right on target.
Things like CRM, ERP and other database-intensive jobs are migrating off Unix to Linux, the report said, with service industries and government leading the way, and healthcare lagging.
The big challenge remains Microsoft, which holds over half the enterprise market and could gain share in the next few years, even against Linux, competing fiercely to replace Unix in the enterprise.
The best opportunity to counter this, the report said, is through “software appliances” that combine the operating system with middleware, databases and applications. This would grow Linux, but at the expense of discrete applications, the report said.
The conclusion will put some huzzahs into the late afternoon barbecue and beer fests which are de rigeur after a meeting in Austin. A compound annual growth rate of 35.7% for software, and a total market of $49 billion in 2011, tastes mighty fine.
One more point, a quibble really. IDC has decided to replace the acronym SOA, for Service Oriented Architecture, with SOE, for Service Oriented Enterprise. I’m sure they have their reasons, but this constant replacement of buzzwords with more buzzwords makes everything we do more opaque.
Opacity is not what Linux is all about.
April 8th, 2008
Open source will not save education
Bob Zemsky (right) of the University of Pennsylvania had an “ah-ha” moment a few years ago, listening to some people demand grants for open source education.
He described it to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The problem isn’t supply. It’s demand. Teachers won’t or can’t invest the time needed to integrate new technology into their work. So 20 years have been essentially wasted.
I have watched this waste first-hand, as both a parent and reporter, and Zemsky is right. By the time a computer technology is in place, and teachers are given training on using it, it’s obsolete.
On the other hand computing has been a great tool for parents. It has enabled early intervention in our kids’ education, and it has given our kids the power of the Web at ages where their imagination can really take advantage of it.
Computing has also been a powerful tool in the developing world, where time is often in greater supply. Every village which is connected to the Web becomes part of a global village, and can learn at the world’s pace.
With open source direct costs can be minimized. Even a simple Linux box can open up a child’s world. When Everex put 10,000 Linux PCs on sale at Wal-Mart for $199 late last year, they were snapped up for just that reason.
But what any computer technology demands of its user is time. Unless you spend the time to learn what you have, learn what it can do, and integrate that into your life you have an expensive boat anchor.
Even if it’s an open source boat anchor.
April 8th, 2008
Zimbra’s fate hangs in the balance as Microsoft gets hostile with Yahoo!
Will Microsoft embrace or kill Zimbra?
Zimbra is putting on a brave face as rival Microsoft turns up the heat on its bid to buy Yahoo but fear-doubt-and uncertainty is in the air.
Officially, neither Microsoft nor Zimbra would discuss the ramifications of such a massive merger. Zimbra is an open source e-mail and collaboration software company acquired by Yahoo! last September.
But in a telephone interview yesterday, shortly after Microsoft threatened a hostile takeover of Yahoo if shareholders balk at the current $44.6 billion offer, one Zimbra executive said calmly that it’s business as usual. 
John Robb, Vice President of Marketing and Product Management at the Zimbra Business Unit, Yahoo!, acknowledged that his company fiercely competes against Microsoft’s Outlook and Exchange but he was very tight lipped about the prospect of being eaten up by his big rival.
In February, a Zimbra co-founder sought to reassure customers in an e-mail that Zimbra will survive as an open source company, whether the Yahoo board approves or disapproves the deal.
“Even if the board did decide to go in that direction there is a long road ahead. At Zimbra, nothing has changed … We will continue to embrace open standards. That’s our DNA. And we remain committed to doing that,” Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra Co-Founder wrote in an e-mail letter sent to customers in February.
“Many businesses, partners, higher-eds, and ISPs have committed to Zimbra by becoming paying customers. And there is an even larger set that is part of our open source community. We just made an irrevocable contribution of Zimbra 5.0 to the open source. No one can take that away. We will remain true and faithful to our contractual obligations and will do everything possible to make sure that our biggest assets, you. remain confident that we are here to stay and execute,” Dharmaraj wrote.
“Thankfully, I can confidently say that the Zimbra movement is bigger than any one company,” Dharmaraj said.
Really? Bigger than Microsoft?
No one has a crystal ball on this one. Microsoft, after all, would not be the first proprietary software company to buy a hot open source rival. On the other hand, Microsoft could make a big leap into the open source world with Yahoo’s assets and Zimbra’s strengths in the web 2.0 arena and the messaging hosting world.
Yahoo and Zimbra, for example, are currently testing a hosted messaging model and plan to launch a Yahoo branded Zimbra hosting service in 2008, Zimbra’s Robb said.
It could go either way, observers say.
A Yahoo buy would be a “huge win for Microsoft” because it would give the company access to successful Yahoo properties like Yahoo Finance, HotJobs, Personals, and of course search and advertising,” said Alex Zaltsman, co-founder of Exigent Technologies, a Mt. Arlington, NJ collaboration services company that partners with Microsoft and Zimbra.
It would also give Microsoft access to Zimbra’s innovative features which no other mainstream commercial e-mail system has — built-in instant messaging, file storage, integration with web apps, and message archiving, Zaltsman said.
“I think Microsoft will either kill Zimbra and retire it, or perhaps replace Hotmail with Zimbra technologies, which would make Hotmail substantially more feature rich then Yahoo and Gmail combined,” Zaltsman said. “However, Zimbra is based on open source so Microsoft would have to agree internally to run open source platforms under its own brand. It may even help bring more credibility with the open source community.”
One open source leader said it’s possible that a Microhoo entity would kill Zimbra but that would be a step backward for Microsoft in the Web 2.0 world.
“It’s funny — Zimbra was originally conceived as an extension of Microsoft Outlook/Exchange. It was intended to be a better Microsoft OWA [Outlook Web Access]. A few years later, that’s one thing that Microsoft could do with it. Zimbra is exceptional while OWA is…not,” said Matt Asay, general manager and vice president at Alfresco, another top open source application provider that competes against Microsoft.
Asay is somewhat optimistic that such a deal could be a big turning point for Microsoft – toward open source.
“I actually think that Yahoo! gives Microsoft a chance to open up. I’m convinced that significant swaths of Microsoft are keen to open up (open source, open standards, open APIs) and Yahoo! gives them a convenient excuse to persuade Ballmer that this makes compelling business sense for them,” Asay added.
“They don’t have much of an alternative. There’s simply no way for it to move all of Yahoo! including Zimbra over to .Net and other Microsoft technologies, not if it wants to lead technically and to retain employees,” he said. “So, I see Microhoo as being good for Microsoft and good for Zimbra, ultimately. If Microsoft proves foolish enough to gut Zimbra’s technology, then listen for the bell tolling its demise.
At the Web 2.0 conference last fall, industry analyst John Battelle asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer if he wakes up at 2:00 a.m. worrying about Zimbra. “Well, I like to sleep well and I do,” Ballmer said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t have a lot of good competition.”
Purchasing Yahoo – and Zimbra – would certainly allow the Microsoft CEO to sleep even better. But it could mean a lot of insomnia for folks at Zimbra – and its partners and customers – in the coming months.
Zimbra launched a major upgrade of its collaboration suite in February with an offline desktop, single interface for multiple e-mail accounts and support for Blackberry Enterprise Server. And the shipment of its J2ME client last Friday means Zimbra wil be available on mobile devices such as Motorola’s Razr.
As he signed off on his email to customers in February, however, Zimbra’s Dharmaraj acknowledged that his company’s future is uncertain.
“Thank you so much for allowing us to serve you… we are not planning to stop serving you. I will pro-actively communicate as and when I hear something official and tangible.”
April 7th, 2008
Open source market making arrives with Marketcetera
It can be tougher than getting the winning bid in at an eBay auction.
Traders who want to automate what they do and get the best price have long been saddled with proprietary systems like Bloomberg to run their algorithms.
No more. Now there’s Marketcetera. It’s a GPL Version 2.0 system, written mainly in Java, aimed at automating your trade operations so you can play with the big dogs.
Graham Miller is the CEO. “We built it out of a personal desire to see it happen. We got a small investment from ex-Susquehanna traders. We built out the platform and at the end of last summer decided we would take capital to extend it.
“Open source is traditionally a good way to develop new platforms,” he added. I like it when the words open source and traditionally sit in the same sentence. Shows someone is living fast.
“We have an Eclipse based front-end and a Java-based server back-end . We make use of Rubyscripting in several places – we integrate the JRuby scripting engine in the front-end. We also have a Rails application.”
Still, anything which can build Java code can build Marketcetera add-ons. “We have an integration story for .Net and other languages,” Miller adds.
Miller and CTO Toli Kuznets have been touting Marketcetera for months in open source communities like Eclipse, RCP, QuickFIX and QuantLib.
They also had the good taste to talk with our own Matt Asay, who called it cool and described its advantages for market makers.
I did a piece for Salon on day traders about a decade ago — it’s where the picture at the top of this post came from — so I know a little about these folks.
Day traders come in two types — gamblers and nerds. Gamblers invest like they’re sitting at a blackjack table in Las Vegas, nerds create a system and stick to it.
This will automate the nerds and give the gamblers that much more action.
April 7th, 2008
ThinkGOS using MySpace tie-in for new Linux PC
ThinkGOS and Everex have found a new gimmick for selling Linux desktops — a tie-in with MySpace.
The MyMiniPC runs a version of GOS Linux and is priced at $499. It’s “optimized” with a host of MySpace applications, and brags they’re delivered just weeks after the MySpace API launch.
The press release on the new box includes this quote from Jim Zemlin, president of the Linux Foundation:
“gOS Space combines an awesome user interface with social networking to take Linux mainstream yet again, this time with MySpace instead of Wal-Mart. To me, gOS Space can be the face of Linux for the MySpace generation.”
There are two keys here.
- The unit is the size-and-shape of an old floppy disk drive, designed for desktop use but easily transportable.
- The idea of tieing-in with a Web site for sales. It is easy to see Everex selling Google PCs and Yahoo PCs now, even eBay PCs. For those for whom one site is plenty enough.
Feel free to use the tag line, guys.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for nearly 25 years. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Recent Entries
- Sun debuts MySQL 5.1 with no licensing change
- My kid hates Linux too! (so what?)
- Can DimDim change the conference game?
- Windows (in)security and open source
- Iona exec: open source unit not for sale, Mule is “not ESB”
Most Popular Posts
- Ubuntu's Shuttleworth blames ISO for OOXML's win
- The Linux lesson Windows needs
- Microsoft wasting no time rejoicing in its OOXML win
- Microsoft's OOXML gets ISO approval ... maybe
- Microsoft claims victory in ISO struggle over OOXML
- Why we still hate Microsoft
Top Rated
- Mozilla CEO blasts Apple for distributing Safari 3.1 for Window on its update site+18 votes
- My friend Russell Shaw+15 votes
- Eclipse launches super run-time project as alternative to Java and .NET+15 votes
- Ubuntu's Shuttleworth blames ISO for OOXML's win+14 votes
- Microsoft's OOXML gets ISO approval ... maybe+11 votes
- Firefox 3 Beta 5 released, RC1 Freezes April 8+9 votes
- Microsoft's Chief Counsel Brad Smith urges open source rivals to compromise on IP issues, co-exist peacefully+7 votes
- Google Cloud draws open source+6 votes
Premier Vendor Content Whitepapers, webcasts & resources from our Power Center Sponsors
- ½ the Power, 2x the Performance
-
With this special limited time offer customers who trade-in 2 Sun Fire V240 servers will get a 50% trade-in allowance when they purchase a new Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 or Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server.
- Start saving now with this great offer >>
- New entries posted to Know Issues, Best Practices and Workarounds wiki
-
Latest Topics: Running virtual machines and DHCP can cause Intel® AMT to be inaccessible; Wildcard certificates are currently not supported for remote; Dell 755 returns a duplicate UUID during activation configuration
- See the latest entries on the Intel wiki >>
Archives
Favorite Links
Blogroll
Favorite Links
ZDNet Blogs
- All About Microsoft
- The Apple Core
- Between the Lines
- BriefingsDirect
- The Core Truth
- Dev Connection
- Digital Cameras
- Ed Bott's Microsoft Report
- Emerging Tech
- Enterprise Alley
- Enterprise Anti-matter
- Enterprise Web 2.0
- Googling Google
- GreenTech Pastures
- Hardware 2.0
- Irregular Enterprise
- IT Facts
- IT Project Failures
- John Carroll
- Laptops & Desktops
- Lawgarithms
- Linux and Open Source
- Managing L'unix
- The Mobile Gadgeteer
- On Sustainability
- Rational Rants
- The Semantic Web
- Service Oriented
- The Social Web
- Software as Services
- SOHO Networking
- Storage Bits
- Team Think
- Tom Foremski: IMHO
- The ToyBox
- The Universal Desktop
- Virtually Speaking
- ZDNet Education
- ZDNet Government
- ZDNet Healthcare
- Zero Day
Popular white papers
- How to Choose an Offshore Outsourcing Development Partner SolovatSoft
- Successful IT Outsourcing to Russia SolovatSoft
- Virtualize and Optimize Your IT Infrastructure PC Connection
- Accelerating Satellite WANs with Riverbed Riverbed
- 5 Steps to Successful IT Consolidation Riverbed
- Live Event: Building a World Class Sales Machine BNET
The Green Enterprise
-
- A look into the enterprise to explore eco-friendly practices and innovations. In this ZDNet video series learn about what's motivating green tech, and how green technologies are impacting IT. 0:42
-
Harnessing the power of waves
3:13
-
Planting solar gardens
5:06
-
Fill your car for $1.10 a gallon?
1:43
- All series videos »
