Once More unto the Breach

SCO Group Finale!

Stephen Shankland says it all. 

Copyright ©  Despair, Inc.

Update (24-Sep-2007, 19:35):  A friend pointed this comic out.  I got into this battle while I worked at Microsoft and SCO Group first sued customers.  I pointed out it was a suicidal thing to do if they were a "real" company, and not the anti-VC (i.e. a company that acquires old technology and litigates money out of the marketplace.)  Vendors will occasionally sue customers in 1:1 situations e.g. a license dispute, in a similar way that customers occasionally sue vendors in one off disputes for non-performance, but a vendor NEVER sues customers over general things like IP infringement.  It sets a tone for all customers that is ... suicide.  Your top sales people will simply leave.  They know customers are now viewing business with the vendor as possibly tainted by lawsuits.

I also pointed out that IBM wasn't going to let anything bad happen.  A company investing a BILLION dollars in Linux could afford to weather even a few tens of millions of dollars of legal debate over several years while they determined how bad it may or may not really be.  Frustrating and distracting?  Certainly.  So what?  The customer is king. 

Ubuntu Live! (Day One)

It's 9 AM on SUNDAY morning and at this unconscionable hour I was sitting in a room with 200 people for Mark Shuttleworth's opening keynote at Ubuntu Live.  This three day event runs Sunday 22 July through Tuesday 24 July, and has been organized by Canonical and O'Reilly Media. 

Mark gave an excellent keynote (as he is prone to do), talking about the rise of Ubuntu over the past three years, and looking forward to the evolution of quality, engagements, and commerce over the next three years.  He acknowledged his partners at Dell, Sun, Intel and Open Moko, building on the themes that the time is now to demonstrate that open source has arrived beyond the data centre, and it's time to take Linux to a much broader audience. In doing so, however, he was NOT looking at Ubuntu as simply a better desktop, but rather enabling people beyond the desktop. 

As he pointed out with the Playstation 3, the future of computing does not necessarily look like a desktop and there are many interesting places where people "do computing".  There is no reason why a full platform couldn't be delivered on the PS3.  (I remember having this debate over the XBox inside Microsoft almost five years ago -- pointing out that they all ready had a Windows machine in the living room, it just needed a bigger disk and a wireless loop.) 

Stephen O'Grady (Redmonk) was the next keynote.  He built on the morning's keynote theme of collaboration, pointing out that apt-get is sufficient magic (per Clarke's Third Law on Predictions), and going on to explore the idea of distributed support.  Essentially connecting the community and the software would be like app-get for people (support) and not just software. 

Jeff Waugh provided the last keynote of the morning.  In his inimitable style, he gave a presentation on "Fierce Freedom" and "Fierce Commerce".  Jeff walked people through some of the learnings of the Ubuntu community that came from the Python, Gnome, and Debian community experiences. 

He then provided a historical perspective on technology and commercial innovations enabling social change, walking us through Gutenburg's innovations around movable type, the use of paper, and the development of the printing press, on through Luther's social changes, and onto the Tyndale translation of the Bible.  (There was a wonderful shot on Stephen O'Grady's behalf, suggesting Gentoo was the do-it-yourself Bible in the Linux world.) 

In the end he pointed out that software freedom is not just for geeks, and that we are the next translators.  ("Be the signal!")

The afternoon keynote's were kicked off with a great presentation by Eben Moglen.  He discussed his satisfaction and pride in the community in the development of the GPLv3, not because it's a better license, but in the demonstration of collaborative community development in an open and democratic process that transcended the entire free software community (corporate, academic, legal, and development). 

Mitch Kapor was next up.  He talked about his own evolution from proprietary developer in the mid-eighties to his belief in free and open source software development.  He then made a number of interesting observations about the social implications of open source.  Early developers at this point (early as in high school aged people) are living in open source worlds -- it is quite possible that the socialization of open sourcce will mean the next generation of developers will believe that this is the way it's always been.

Mitch pointed out that open source software has moved from margin to mainstream in a single human generation (~20 years).  Open source software is enormously empowering, especially to those in marginalized situations, and he built on the theme that it is also an amazing model for getting things done in a transparent and collaborative way.  Indeed, it is a form of democratic renewal that is so badly needed socially. 

Jim Zemlin (Linux Foundation) finished the afternoon's keynotes, outlining the mandate of the Linux Foundation and their commitment to helping the community. 

Heading to the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit

I'm heading to Sunnyvale this afternoon to participate in the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit at Google's Mt. View campus for the next few days.  I'll be staying at the Wild Palms.  I head home Friday evening out of San Jose.  By all means give me a shout if you're around.

Microsoft Advertising Windows Embedded on Google

I googled "microsoft xandros".
While I typically don't notice ads, I happened to notice the first sponsored link on the right side of the page:      

Linux Download
Customize your Operating System.
Learn more about Windows Embedded.
www.Microsoft.com

You end up on the Microsoft Windows Embedded page. 
The word "linux" appears nowhere on the page. 
Sort of wrong and funny all at the same time on multiple levels.

Innovation at Nokia: Thinking ahead with the Nokia 770

Mikko lent me his Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and I've started to explore the device.  Unfortunately we were in Beijing at the time, so I was missing the documentation and a cable, but that's only encouraged me to start to explore the related websites.  I discovered some of the applications work browsing from the tablet itself.  I found and loaded Gizmo, a VoIP client. I registered Gizmo and sitting at home on the home wifi network "dialed" the house ... and the phone rang.    

And then it hit me.  What if I'm holding the future in my hand?  The Nokia 770 is clearly Not-A-Mobile-Phone, but ....

• We're rapidly approaching a world of city-wide wifi networks and WiMax, and that assumes you don't already move through a mesh of wifi networks (paid and free) in your daily life.  While the mobile cell phone is the technology interface of choice in developing economies today, it's already changing in the developed economies and urban centers.
• The news around the announcement of Apple's coming iPhone pointed out that all the handset manufacturers were probably excited because they may finally be able to break the tyranny of the network mobile operators (NMO) once Apple demonstrates people will pay for device appeal.  But what if we didn't care about the NMO anymore?
• It's a Linux device.  So Nokia has already dodged the bullet of per device royalties from Symbian and/or Microsoft.  (Symbian and Microsoft still think they'll make money with "smart phones" in China.  They're both doing the wrong arithmetic.)
• It's Wifi.  So specific national and regional comms stack requirements from the government via the NMO, supported through the device OS vendor, are also gone. (Really ... what if we didn't care about the NMO anymore?)
• Screen real estate is awesome compared to any cell phone or Blackberry I've seen.  I can read email and PDFs here.  I can browse the web here.  The work Google did for the Gmail mobile browser is hugely helpful when I'm stuck with ONLY my phone, but reading "full" Gmail on the Nokia 770 screen is much much much better than my Motorola Razr.  (Just need to figure out how to turn javascript on.) 
• I can't imagine why anyone wants to read Word docs through a 5cm by 4cm viewer on a mobile phone, but here I can imagine a simplified ODF viewer.  Or Google docs.  (I must find that javascript enablement on the browser.)
• Input methods easily span the stylus, handwriting recognition, and a finger appropriate touch pad.  I'm still becoming proficient in all three, but I also think I like all three in different application settings. 
• Google's laying down city wide wifi.  Forget the Google phone, Google should be pounding down Nokia's door to work on the Nokia tablet series together.  At the very least, Google's apps teams should show up en masse in the maemo community. 

Nokia has even gone out of its way to attract developers.  They've published the platform as open source.  Aside from the Linux platform base, they're building out an applications development community as well.  While the home page is stark, and I've barely begun to scratch the surface, there's a wealth of material here.  I knew Nokia was already experimenting with open source software communities around MUPE.  Here they're raising the bar. 

I do not begrudge Apple from locking out app developers initially from the iPhone, because their internal cult-of-customer-design makes me a happy customer on my PowerBook, iPod, etc.  But they're still thinking about how to turn a small computer with great screen appeal into a phone, and managing the entire customer experience.  Nokia is being brilliant and throwing open the doors on a tablet device that isn't a mobile phone.  But from which I can make calls ....

www.flickr.com

And then I started thinking again ....

Apple and Microsoft are gearing up for the Living Room Wars as the ultimate media experience.  They're each staking turf as the real "set top box" which we've heard promised for a decade.  They're each approaching it as a PC company -- so the set top box must be a PC.  They're each doing business with the music labels and Hollywood, so they think like media channel partners.  I trust Apple to get the user experience "right".  (Windows OS security pop-ups during movies notwithstanding, the Mac media UI is just easier.) 

But Nokia core competencies don't just involve small hand held devices.  They do have some experience in "bigger" equipment.  What if the home network hub was a device near the front door on which I drop my keys, [ultra small and cheap] mobile phone [which is just a camera/phone], and tablet at the end of the day and it:

• syncs the phone and tablet (if indeed they don't actively live in sync via bluetooth),
• syncs the phone and tablet contacts,
• checks for tablet email and routes it appropriately (possibly uploading and sending the tablet off-line outbox),
• syncs any documents I updated,
• uploads the next TiVo episode for watching on tomorrow's commute [or at lunch] because I really don't need yet another US$400-$800 dollar device in my living room,
• ... <what would YOU like it to do> ...

Oh, and inductive charges the two active devices. 

This is actually a second game changing innovation opportunity they could develop, beyond the idea that "the mobile phone company" is developing mobile devices that make mobile phones irrelevant.    Let Microsoft and Apple hammer away at each other over media centers, phones, and hand-held media players. 

Now I just need to figure out how to get the Nokia 770 to talk to my Mac to get some real file sharing going on.  Then I'll think about my killer app ....

Ian Murdock Joins Sun

Ian Murdock announced yesterday that he has joined Sun Microsystems as Chief Operating Platforms Officer.  Ian describes his move on his blog.  Stephen O'Grady at Redmonk has a good commentary and summary of other blog commentary. 

This is a great move for Sun, the Linux Foundation, and Ian. 

For Sun:
Sun (as most UNIX OEMs through the 1990s) invested heavily in ISV relationships.  Sun was hit hard by the Bubble bursting.  Linux was cheap "UNIX" in the eyes of many customers, bought out of their PC hardware catalog as it were.    Gravity shifted for the ISVs away from Sun and over to the dominant Linux vendors through the excellent efforts of the Free Standards Group and others.  As Sun begins to reassert itself as a cool computing platform again, they need to re-engage with ISVs (both new and old alike).  Having Ian on board with his background in Linux binary compatibility opens up new opportunities for new discussions with those ISVs.  This doesn't mean that this is the strategy, just that it opens possibilities that wouldn't otherwise exist without the relationships and history that comes with Ian.

The Linux Foundation:
First, while they're losing a CTO, they're gaining a strong champion in a vendor that is on the rise again and has long supported UNIX standardization, and will remain LSB chair.   

Second, everyone always wants to understand why Red Hat plays so coy with the LSB.  As the dominant Linux vendor, the last positioning they want is "we're just like everyone else."  Solaris on Intel opens interesting new opportunities for Sun customers looking to transition to new less expensive hardware.  They didn't want rewrite costs to Windows (their backlog is growing not shrinking so re-writes are uninteresting) and were considering Linux.  Red Hat has interesting competition again.  If Sun starts to play well with the LSB, Red Hat will participate more.  They can ignore Novell et al.  It would be dangerous for them to ignore Sun the same way. 

For Ian:
Read his blog entry.  He's clearly excited.  Sun lost its cool for a while.  It's great to see it getting its game back.  While both Microsoft and Red Hat may scoff for various reasons, and wave market share numbers around as "proof" of its insignificance, what neither of them realize (or possibly want to admit) is it's about profitability and installed base, and not market share.  Sun is becoming cool again and Ian's in an awesome position to help it.

Congratulations!

Novell's Link to the Microsoft TCO Linux Message

Last week, Novell got caught in a press release with Microsoft in which an HSBC IT operations manager makes appropriate noises about TCO of Windows over Linux per the Microsoft messaging of the past 5 years.  This is too bad really.  It emphasizes the points Brent Williams made in his presentation with respect to Novell:

• Novell thinks the problem is catching Red Hat: They need to formulate a brand identity for SuSE other than "We're not Red Hat." (slide 14)
• Shows that even Novell believes it can't stop Red Hat alone. (slide 15)

Here's a slightly different way to look at the messaging:

Red Hat began messaging at least a year ago around the use of Red Hat linux in value creation.  Here's how the logic flows from a Michael Tiemann presentation at the 2006 Red Hat Summit:

• Companies spend on average 4-8% of income on IT (Financial companies 8-12%)
• So regardless of how you carve up the cost savings, you're messing around with something that will NOT move the stock price anytime soon.
• IT focusing on the value creation side of the bar can help by delivering better customer service (and retention), market growth, competitive advantage. 

This is actually backed up nicely by studies over the past couple of years around ROI and TCO, where executives are more interested in the ability of IT to improve customer satisfaction and business information access than ROI, and recognize that they can't measure TCO particularly well. 

So to bring it all home for Novell readers:  If you were a billion dollar financial services company, you're arguing over saving the customer some money on a $100M IT budget, BUT the sort of money you're really talking about is 10% (according to old IDC Windows vs. Linux numbers) over several years for particular workloads, so $10M, and the reality is it's smaller than that because they're running a heterogeneous environment and aren't about to swap it all out soon.  And that assumes you can accurately measure the cost savings.

Red Hat is pitching value creation on the other $900M in revenues.  Moving the ball by 10% there (i.e. $90M) is a whole lot more interesting than 10% on the cost side.  As the CIO, do you want to help save a bit of money, or grow the business?  Which one moves the stock?  Which one makes you a hero and grows your bonus? 

The message is all about the customer as hero.   

Repeating History: The OSDL and Free Standards Group Merge

[Update (2007 Jan 25, 20:35):  Stephen O'Grady and I are generally complementary in our thinking, but more aligned.  Here's his excellent analysis. I think I'm showing my age.]

Monday saw the announcement of the creation of the Linux Foundation by merging the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) with the Free Standards Group (FSG).  Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the FSG is now executive director of the entire organization.  The news link is here.  The interesting thing here is that we are watching history repeat itself in this technology generation. 

In 1984, the BISON group (Bull, ICL, Siemens, Olivetti, Nixdorf) evolved into X/Open. It's purpose was to be a specification and certification organization supporting applications portability around the European UNIX system vendors.  Over time the X/Open Portability Guide (XPG) was born, aligned with the ISO/IEEE POSIX standards, and evolved into the Single UNIX Specification and the UNIX branding program in 1995. 

[The IEEE POSIX work started in 1985, delivered the first standard for applications portability in 1988, and then began forwarding work into ISO for subsequent standardization in 1990 and 1992, and onwards.  Remember the UNIX standardization efforts, lovingly referred to as the "UNIX Wars" were about standardizing the mini-computer away from DEC.]

In 1988, Sun and AT&T began discussions as the Archer Group about an aligned UNIX offering.  (The Archer Group became UNIX International.)  This provoked DEC, IBM, DG, Siemens, Apollo, Nixdorf and HP to form the Open Systems Foundation (OSF).  They quickly adopted their own specification for applications portability on UNIX, which also immediately aligned with the POSIX standards.  [I'm sure rumours that "OSF" stood for "Oppose Sun Forever" weren't true.]

The more interesting aspect of the OSF, however, was their desire to deliver a shared operating system, and OSF/1 was launched.  DEC later used OSF/1 as the core of a future release of Ultrix, and IBM having contributed technology from AIX to help build OSF/1 also back ported parts of the technology into AIX. 

All of the OSF vendors differentiated the platform offerings on things other than the operating system.  It was a perfectly reasonable thing to collaborate and share the engineering costs of the kernel development. 

Eventually UNIX International collapsed, and even Sun joined the OSF.  There was substantial overlap in the membership of the two organizations over time, and some members started acquiring other members.   

So we had two organizations with substantially the same vendor members spending big sponsorship dollars to each organization each year.  One was a specification and branding (certification) organization, and the other was developing a shared operating system kernel. Each organization was a not-for-profit. 

In 1996, the two organizations were re-organized and thrust together to form the Open Group (TOG).  DEC had collapsed by then -- UNIX had won.  It was a more efficient way at that time to manage the costs of complementary programs. 

Each organization was formed for a very specific market purpose.  Over time, the purposes broadened, but eventually the sponsoring members of each came to re-focus the organizations on the core expertise and value proposition they had each started.  Once the market need changed, they were streamlined further into one organization by their respective overlapping members. 

Eventually OSF/1 faded away.  Hardware architectures were evolving and the costs were commoditizing.  PC-based hardware was going "up market" into the server space.  This meant Microsoft was evolving their desktop juggernaut into NT and into the server world. 

Linux was maturing to the point where there really could be a single royalty free kernel.  Every vendor had one, so to speak.  The Linux Standards Base (LSB) was formed in 1999 as a grass roots effort to support -- wait for it -- applications binary portability.  It too centered on the mature standards work that is still maintained as the ISO/IEEE/TOG Single UNIX Specification (with the original ISO POSIX work at its core).  It evolved into the Free Standards Group, with the classic list of vendors sponsoring it, and the certification and branding programs have developed.  During this period the OSDL was created as a hub for the kernel development by the [substantially] same list of vendors. 

I have long teased friends at the OSDL that they are the OSF of this technology generation.  (For the most part, the vendor list hasn't changed all that much at the core.)  And with this week's news we've come full circle.  There is nothing particularly sinister in the overlap histories.  It's just how maturing technology markets evolve and standardize. 

Jim Zemlin will certainly have his work cut out for him, just as Allen Brown did when he moved from managing director of X/Open to COO of TOG.  The specification and branding side of the house is never sexy, but it's incredibly important.  The linux kernel development housed at the OSDL is much better evolved in this technology generation than the OSF/1 experiment or the unwieldy tree of UNIX distros.  The organizational missions align nicely. 

Congratulations, Mr. Zemlin!

Beijing Bound

I am back to Beijing after an absence of almost four years.  This time I will have a week to spend, with a standards conference anchoring the trip, but a little more sight seeing time and a number of meetings set up by friends.

I started with a great meeting with Mingbao Liu, CEO of Beijing SunWah Future Software, and the makers of the SunWah Linux distro. 

It was good to get his perspectives on his Linux and software businesses in China.  China is definitely booming, and everything feels very different from the last time I was here.  It's not simply a feeling of busier times, but more sophisticated times.

I next had the privilege of meeting with Professor Lu Shou Qun, chairman of the China Open Source Software Promotion Union (COPU).  He had many questions for me about standards, open source and IPR, based on my eclectic background.  He shared his views on the importance of open source software to China's future.  I also had the pleasure of seeing his "wall of fame" collection of photographs.  Many people responsible for the successful communities and companies we take for granted in the open source world have visited with Professor Lu.

All in all, an auspicious start to the week. 

(L-to-R: Professor Yuan Meng, me, Professor Lu Shou Qun, Theresa Tang.)

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Oracle Linux Rumours Continue

Rumours began in the Spring around Oracle delivering it's own Linux distribution and resurfaced this week during LinuxWorld on Jeff Nolan's blog, where the rumour suggests the Oracle version will be based on Red Hat's distro.  The fun bit was Jeff's update to his entry:

UPDATE: Oracle’s investor relations group is now saying that the announcement will be pushed out possibly past OpenWorld in October.

So apparently Oracle remains coy about the rumour.  My opinions haven't changed from the blog posting I wrote in the Spring.  Oracle taking on its own distro rather than continuing to contribute to the community is engineering inefficient and a waste of shareholder money, and it doesn't solve the customer's problem any better.  If Red Hat  is unreasonably behind in delivering the platform to Oracle's needs, they could better invest in the relationship than in undertaking to take on their own distro based on Red Hat. 

Dave Gynn and I were part of an email discussion, and he gave me permission to share his ideas as well: 

Creating a distro based on Red Hat ties Oracle to Red Hat's release cycle and roadmap.  It will be difficult and expensive to offer support for Red Hat that can compete with Red Hat's own Red Hat Network offering.  Oracle is just an expensive middleman whose value is unclear.

If anything, this only makes Red Hat stronger.  Oracle will be required by the GPL to make available any modifications they make.  So the Red Hat codebase will benefit.  Developers will continue to target Red Hat since applications that work on Red Hat should work on Oracle's derivative distro.

With their own distro, Oracle will neglect support for the Oracle database and other applications on other Linux distros.  Open source databases like Postgres and MySQL which run well on all distros will continue to be a more flexible solution.

There is no reason to believe that an Oracle Linux distribution would be compelling or successful. 

Well said.  Oracle is still very like some other software companies, praising open source on the one hand around Linux, but with contradictory rhetoric on the other hand around such things as Postgres and EnterpriseDB and MySQL.  Oracle Linux, or Oracle Red Hat Linux, would be bad business for Oracle. 

The Spring posts:

• Oracle Linux: Novell or Red Hat? (Hopefully Neither!)
• Oracle and the Red Hat JBoss Acquisition

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