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Talk to Sun's 'Open Source Diva'
Danese Cooper is Manager of Sun's Open Source Program Office. A Google search on Danese turns up more than 1000 results. She's a frequent speaker at IT industry events and conferences, and is, without question, Sun's staunchest internal Open Source advocate. Sun is moving toward Open Source in fits and starts, and Danese is behind a lot of that motion. Feel free to ask her anything you want (one question per post. please) about the trials and tribulations of being an Open Source person within a company that hasn't yet fully grasped the concept, and how she goes about trying to change that. We'll post her answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions within the next week or so. The only question she can't answer is whether/when Java might be Open Sourced. I already asked her, and she replied, "Sadly, I have no news on that..."
Is Sun moving to put more resources into the
OpenOffice initiative?
http://www.WinWithRealEstate.com/
In light of this do you believe that it is possible to make money from open source/free software alone or does a company need a hardware arm like Sun?
This might seem like a thinly veiled attack in the form of a question, but it doesn't appear the StarOffice has really made a dent in Microsoft's ownership of the office suite market. Did Sun waste their time and money on this project?
While it's true that a lot of "attractive/sexy" work can be done via open source methods, there's still some areas that traditional programming models (i.e., closed source) still function better (even though ESR says otherwise in The Cathedral & the Bazaar ). What, in your opinion, is the proper balance between open source and closed source methods Sun should strive to?
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
The popularity of Linux, *BSD, and other open source operating systems has continually increased over the last 10 years, and in many cases, it is replacing the proprietary technology offered by traditional UNIX vendors.
Does Sun feel at all threatened by the increasing awareness and usage of other open source UNIX-like operating systems? Does Sun feel open-sourcing their software is a necessary step to compete with the free operating systems and software?
Since Solaris X86 is not going to be supported any more, is there any chance of getting that 'donated' to the user community?
I appreciate that there's a fair chunk of intellectual property in there (and probably a fair amount of overlap with Sparc), but it'd be nice to see.
But how is the internal climate?
Stephan
I work for a very large company (fortune 100), and we are, very slowly, moving towards using open-source programs like Linux, Apache, etc. The IT department likes and supports these applications, but it's very difficult to convince management that these applications have the same stability and reliability that commercial applications do. What is the best way to approach management to help evaluate open soruce solutions to the problems we face?
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
When I try to explain open source to people who are pure capitalist, I have a hard to time explaining what can be gained. For people who are used to the concepts of Copyright and Patents, the idea that you can create value and profit from giving away ideas seems counter intuative.
How do you explain Open Source to people driven by profit in a persuasive way?
There has been some speculation that Sun is uncomfortable with certifying JBoss as a J2EE-compliant container. Mark Fleury, president of the JBoss team, has said "Sun quoted a price for that certification suite that is beyond the current financial resources of the JBoss team." Is there any possibility that Sun will relax these certification fee requirements for open-source initiatives such as JBoss, especially when they meet the technical requirements as specified by Sun?
- Rev.I was wondering what contributions of the OpenOffice group actually made it into StarOffice 6.0 beta? Did only contributions make it in or is 6.0 based off of OpenOffice code?
Also, will Sun try this year to combat the misconception that buying Sun means spending big bucks on hardware?
After all the $999 Netras and Sunblades have played well in Unix-only houses but the common IT professional still seems to think they have to beaucoup bucks to be a Sun house?
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ACK
What are the internal resistances (from upper management, for example) that you face on your daily work to promote Open Source inside Sun?
What arguments are people that work with you using to counter-attack your proposals? And do you feel (or know) that this is also how other big companies react inside their offices to Open Source in general?
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Do you think companies use Open Source as a political statement to say that they support individual consumers freedom? By allowing individuals to see how a product works and to contribute back to it. Or are companies finding that Open Source can give them an economic advantage over closed source in the software industry?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Me, too. Me, too.
This is the only thing that interests me, and I've often felt the way to keep the Microsoft wolves at bay was to Open Source Java, which I feel would push it much further than Sun can. Keeping a lid on Java may be the best gift to Redmond in terms of .NET acceptance, not that having hoards of PHB's saying, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM^H^H^HMicrosoft", hurts their efforts.
If I had a question, which she may be demurring on already, it would be, "What's the big obstacle? Or is it one of those Committee things, where nobody will accept respobsibility for standing in the way and points fingers at the Committee"? I'll understand, if in the interests of preserving her position she can't answer that, either.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Articles keep comparing J2EE and .NET. One of the unquestionable advantages of J2EE in an enterprise environment is its cross platform capabilities (specifically the ability to run on powerful high-end UNIX servers). With the Mono project building an open source, cross platform, .NET compatible framework, do you have any fear that the .NET style framework for web services might become more of a competition to J2EE than without the Mono project? Would Sun ever consider supporting Mono to enourage interroperability between J2EE and .NET components, or is this an example of an open source project potentially damaging Sun?
Will you support JBoss and Tomcat for the Java community?
For independent individuals to become J2EE experts, they need a web container to train on. The only inexpensive solution is Tomcat and JBoss (both open source solutions). And JBoss is the first to support the newest version of EJBs (2.0).
I would find it in your best interest to support both projects. What does the future hold for Sun, Tomcat, and JBoss?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Do you see Solaris incorporating some of the package management features found in Linux systems?
Also, Unix vendors many times have very feature-incomplete versions of utilities compared to their respective GNU versions. For instance, GNU tar (while lacking some of the Solaris tar options) has many features that are extremely handy. Do you see Unix vendors in the future incorporating more free tools over the proprietary ones they have, and if so what do you think the time frame is? Do you think that Unix vendors that move towards GNU tools and make their installations more "Linux"-like will have an edge, or will moving to unfamiliar tools be a hindrance?
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Do you forsee Sun having their own OS in 10 years time or do you forsee Sun selling hardware with their own optimsed version of another OS? If Yes, are we likely to see such an evolution climbing up your chain from the small workstations up to the big iron OR will we see a new OS for all boxes at once? Will Sun ever make an offer like IBM's offer for AIX with Solaris i.e. "You can have anything you want from our OS"?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Sun seems to have a lot of credibility problems with the open source community. Moves like SCSL, Jini, and limited support for SparcLinux have all lead to a mixed view of Sun. In some ways, I think the reason for this is that Sun didn't drink the open source "Kool Aid".
So my questions are: do you encounter these credibility problems? Are they a problem for you? Are you (or Sun) doing anything to change these perceptions?
sigs are a waste of space
Sun made an enourmous amount of noise about how it was Java was going to be an open standard. But after trying to prevert the standards process by becoming a "Publically Available Submitter", then withdrawing its application and attempting to get the ECMA to rubber stamp, then withdrawing from the ECMA as well, the simple fact is Java has lived up to none of its standardization promises. It claims a "covanent" with its users that means they all want Sun to milk them dry with licensing fees, but thats hard to beleive. Other standards like Ethernet seem to have done relatively well compatability wise, while using Java across multiple platforms is an exercise in frustration.
.NET are actually allowed to implement the spec freely. I for one am certainly hoping that the folks who play fairly in this space win out, and in that case Microsoft deserves the prize. Is it possible C# will be a standard everyone can use freely before Java becomes one?
At what point do users and developers need to pull the rug out from under vendors who consistently lie, such as Sun? What surprisies me here is that people seem to require no moral or ethical dimension to a company, despite the actual business harm dealing with such a company poses. There have been a number of other cases where soon-to-be open sourced software went closed source, so the danger in these situations is real.
Microsoft, after a long history of BS, actually seems to be doing the right thing with C# standards wise, and I suppose the proof will be in the pudding if go-mono.com and the GNU Portable
Most /.ers work with a number of Unix distros.(Solaris being one of them) I like many others would like to see Sun embrace the Open Source movement more fully. As customers/admins what can we do to help you push Sun more in this direction? Can you give us some practical ways to help you? (i.e. email decisionmaker@sun.com and kindly request more involvement from Sun)
While most discussion revolves around software companies moving to open source, how do you think other large companies such as the international investment firm I work for be convinced to switch to open source? I guess this is a question more of your customers. I want my company to move to GNU/Linux and open source, but being on the Microsoft train for so long they are afraid to even look at other options. How will Sun get their customers to embrace open source? (And any suggestions on how I can convince my company to switch would be much appreciated!)
Developers: We can use your help.
The people over at JBoss are very high on their software (rightfully so in my opinion) and have proclaimed that their J2EE application server will be the death of WebSphere, JRun, iPlanet, etc. Presumably the big draw to JBoss is not only that it works but also that its free and open source. Is Sun planning on open-sourcing iPlanet or making it free to compete with JBoss?
Although hardware, by definition, can't be "open source (code)". But how does/can any of Sun's hardware business meld with the open source concept?
I've been following Microsoft's .NET strategy for quite some time and have been quite interested in the Passport vs Liberty Alliance scenario.
Firstly, what exactly is happening with Liberty Alliance at the moment? I got the impression that the iniative was started as a marketing oppositing against Passport as there doesn't appear to be any visibility of the implementation on the web site.
Secondly, there is also an open source source initially from .GNU for this central authentication service. Essentially both Liberty Alliance and .GNU are trying to provide an opposition framework to Passport - and yet the nature of the concept and the existance of the two projects seem to be self depricating. If everyone and their dog develop a centralised authentication service that spans services across networks - people would probably use Passport purely because of its market share.
Would it not be a good idea to somehow merge the work done to offer a unified opposition to Passport?
Has interaction with the open source community contributed to any changes in Sun's internal development practices and/or toolset and/or do you see this happening in the future? I'm speculating that perhaps the toolset being developed at Tigris may be funded indirectly by Sun via CollabNet with an eye towards internal use in addition to use in Sun's collaboration with the community on projects like OpenOffice, Netbeans, and JXTA.
Way back in the 1990's, Sun bought Lighthouse Design. Lighthouse published a suite of top notch productivity apps (spreadsheets, presentation, diagramming) and other good stuff for NextStep and OpenStep -- the predecessors of Mac OS X.
After these apps were end-of-lifed, an effort was made to tidy up their source code and release them as some flavor of open source. For reasons that have never been clear to me, the release did not happen.
Can you shed light on this? Or perhaps give someone or something a nudge and get the balling rolling again?
Ray Ryan
Former UI Lead of Lighthouse Design
Sun spent money and effort to buy OpenOffice and put resources to improve and develop it. From the impression that we get as outsider, Sun seems to want OO to compete with MS Office.
However, another impression that we have is that Sun wants other companies to use it, but Sun does not. I met quite a few people from Sun, and they don't use OO at all. A few Sun developers have downloaded it and played with it, and went back to MS Office. Funny thing is, those Sun presenters make jokes about Microsoft during their presentation, but they are all using MS Office and MS Windows. For that, I think it's not even funny.
Is this OO initiative a political game only, or is Sun serious about pushing OO to the enterprise environment? What are the efforts inside Sun to push OO as the standard office tools? What office tools do you use? Same for Scott McNealy.