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How IBM (and Open Source) Won eBay
DemonBrew wrote to us with a new article in Business2 how IBM beat MSFT, Sun, BEA Systems to win the contract for the new eBay. Cool part is that it's based on Websphere, which has major open source components.
They waited until the very last second and then squeezed their bid in.
Bastards!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
It did seem very interesting. The article mentions that IBM is still loking for something to "light the fire" and produce large amounts of revenue... maybe hey don't need an internal change, but an external one; businesses realizeing the power and cost savings of open-source software and switching back to big blue.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
What the hell are you talking about? Major open-source components? Which? Last I checked, (I have the Websphere Studio download sitting here, right from IBM's partner site - and I see nothing about open source anything. Is java open source? Or XML?
Open Standards and open-source are 2 different things, and hell - Java isn't an open standard, nor is it open source in the truest sense. What a bunch of bullshit propaganda. Go Microsoft.
what they are going to do with the old hardware. I can see it now your very own piece of ebay right at your house!
I also found this amusing (emphasis mine):
While Java could be called "open," compared with, say, the Windows API, I don't believe Sun has turned control over the language specification to a standards body.
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
JCP - Java Community Process
To take right from their website:
The JCP is the way the Java platform evolves. It's an open organization of international Java developers and licensees whose charter is to develop and revise Java technology specifications, reference implementations, and technology compatibility kits. Both Java technology and the JCP were originally created by Sun Microsystems, however, the JCP has evolved from the informal process that Sun used beginning in 1995, to a formalized process overseen by representatives from many organizations across the Java community.
Come on people, do your research before you blab this stuff.
There has been a fair number of posts about whether or not Java is really an "Open-Standard". The first thing to remember is where this article originates, Business 2.0.
Taking that into account, Java is an open standard. Are there other compilers for Java? Yes. Are there multiple interpreters for Java? Yes. Is the standard published on how it works? Yes (Addison-Wesely publishes several books on it). So, for the average intended reader of business 2.0, Java is an open standard.
I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but something doesn't have to be controlled by an international standards organization to be open.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go prepare for flames as I've posted something that people are going to have problems with.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
I wish I had mod points, I'd mod this -1 has no clue.
The ebay software/business logic is highly proprietary and difficult to understand. The story is how IBM sold ebay to use their software which is based on open source technology including apache, linux. Then of course there is java which isnt open source, but "open standard" (ymmv).
Anyways, peer review of complex business logic by people who don't understand it won't help nothing.
But did they meet the reserve? They might be bragging and lose again.
I really like the closing quote from the article:
Hey, any additional fodder for my efforts to convince my boss to move over to completely open-source technologies is fine with me! It's really heartening to hear a company like IBM say that though. More reinforcement that this paradigm is here to stay, and isn't just some sort of post-modern fad.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Are you insane? Ebay uses Oracle to run it's database. You really think that MYSQL can handle a database that size with so many users at once?
IBM Cited In Massive Online Scam
Reuters, Inc.
Ebay (www.ebay.com, NSDQ: EBAY), the world's largest online auction site, is reporting that it has been hoodwinked in an internet scam, involving International Business Machines (IBM), Inc.
"They promised us all of these great services, and even showed us pictures and everything", claims Dave Hubnard, Ebay's CTO.
"It looked so, perfect. They responded to all of our emails quickly and professionally. I really don't know what happened. They even sniped in at the last minute with an ultra-low bid."
Shocked and bewildered, Ebay employees are uncertain when, or if, they will ever see the new services promised to them by IBM.
Attempted telephone calls to IBM headquarters were returned with a "disconnected service" answer.
Just hours before the deal was closed, IBM had the address of its corporate headquarters changed to a PO Box address in the sourthern section of Jacksonville, FL.
Its interesting to see the existence of Java being linked to IBM more than Sun these days.
What with IBM having the fastest java compiler Jikes,
a Java-base development environment VisualAge,
some stellar java development at DeveloperWorks,
and talks of IBM acquiring Sun
The statement below is true.
The statement above is false.
My first thought was that it was a shot at Java and country music, but that would be "Java:code::country:music". Then I thought, well, maybe the reference to "country" is really to "country music", indicating that Java is a superset of code just as music is a superset of country music. Or maybe Java is patriotic...
I give up. Not 'nuff said, apparently.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
On the one hand, Ebay's backend is now based on some very cool, open source technology.
On the other hand, they use Microsoft Passport, which raises a whole bunch of privacy and security issues.
Are they good or evil? Seems more like a shade of grey to me.
that if MS would have won the bid we would have had something in windows to let us bid and list auctions on ebay automatically. Ebay make a nice tool called mister lister to bulk upload your auctions. It could have become part of the next version of windows. Now MS will have to build it's own auction site from scratch and integrate it into windows.
Ebay Computer Contract
Item # 4886798269
Category: Computers: Contracts
Currently: $12,378,462
Quantity: 1
First bid: US $10
# of bids: 3
Seller (Rating): Ebay (999999999)
High bid: IBM (10)
Description
You are bidding on a contract for providing software and hardware to power the next generation of e-bidding monstrosi-sites...
I suspect this is not a coincidence.
And how large is your database? How many users connect to it? To how many sites do you replicate it to? How many transactions does it process?
MYSQL isn't even a relational DB. How is it going to run Ebay?
Biz 2.0 readers likely understand the difference between a true open standard and reverse-engineered documentation.
Funny thing is that music is for the most part subjective. Country music is by far the most popular form of music. At any rate, one could not even come close to objectively stating that country music is better than say rock (whereas one may be able to make an argue for classical music being better than either of the two).
On the other hand, I think one can make a very good objective argument as to why Java is a much worse language than say C++. So, while I'd be inclined to agree with your analogy (if you actually said it right, since I hate both Java and country music), it doesn't really work as an analogy.
Perhaps:
Java is to programming as N'Sync is to rock.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
I wish I had mod points, I'd mod this -1 has no clue.
...java which isnt open source, but "open standard"
Hi...kettle...this is the pot, you're black.
Ummm...Java *is* open source. The source is available at Sun's site. I've downloaded the source to all the JDK's since 1.1 (the code is often the best documentation).
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
http://www.stores.ebay.com/ibm
This is IBM's store at eBay. The cool part is that you can get some really great deals on IBM equipment here. I have already bought from here twice. I work for IBM, and I can tell you that the deals here are better than the employee discount!
eBay has a bunch of idiots for IT guys. They setup one of their oracle machines to core dump onto the root partition. A bug in Solaris 2.6 would overwrite the whole partition if total memory was greater than total disk space. Sun told eBay about this, they didn't listen and install the patch. Guess what, their oracle db cored, and took their whole OS with it. They were down for days...
IBM is doing the Right Thing in capitalizing on the open standards, high reliability, free beer, community-developed software floating around.
All the other vendors give you a single unmistakeable route into a closed box of their design. If I was buying a solution, a vendor that didn't insist they had the One True Way® (and that it cost money) would get more of my trust. I would feel I had a backdoor alternative with a rack of Linux machines and open source software.
IBM acknowledges that you might want to run part of your business on extremely low cost tools.
Then, if you want tools that are a step up in sophistication, then they are there to fill in the gap.
However, in all fairness, IBM's been able to do this because of the huge reputation as ultra conservative banking mainframe vendor types and the foot in the door that they consequently have. That's why small random open source companies would have a harder time replicating IBM's kind of success.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
What color is the sky on the little world you live on?
Let the above post be an example of just how intelligent MS supporters are. Is this how you apply to be an MS "expert witness"?
This post will be modded down for no particular reason by a sweaty 14 year old who is not allowed out past dark.
I think that when you see those periods of 'maintenance' they are really out getting spelling lessons...
The other poster was not quite right about it being free though - if you want to contribute to evolviing Java standards, you can join as an individual for only $100. That gives to the right to propose changes and make comments on drafts of standards before they go public.
They also have company memberships, but those of course cost quite a bit more (a few K I think).
What other standards bodies let ANYONE in that easily?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think this is great news for Ebay addicts like myself. Ebay is down for scheduled maintainance 2 hours a week. This equals 4 days of downtime a year which is unacceptable for a company as large as Ebay. This doesn't even include unscheduled downtime which we know is a lot higher! Yes, I am your typical Linux loving Micro$oft hating Slashdotter, but you can't tell me this downtime has nothing to do with Ebay currently running a Microsoft shop. I unfortunately admin a Win2K network at my job and the results are pretty much the same.
Okay, but they were due to hardware failures:
0 003
A message on the site said that its servers began experiencing problems Thursday night. Shortly after midnight, the company said it was rebuilding a "corrupt system disk."
http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20011207S
<sarcasm>Yep, all due to IIS.</sarcasm> (not that you said that or anything, but minds tend to wander around here...
Here's a brief summary of what eBay are currently running....
For the middle-tier and back-end they've got a couple of Sun Starfire E10K servers (with a third on standby for hot-swap fail-over). The back-end db is Oracle, most of the other software is by Veritas. This all uses a 400 disk RAID array (also made by Sun), which is also mirrored in real-time.
They're using seven Sun Enterprise ES450s to provide the iron for searching, and the web front end is served by sixty-or-so Compaq servers.
It seems impressive! ....but it's worth noting that some of the above may be a bit out-of-date, as it's based on the info in these articles, which are quite old now:-
Article on Internet Week about eBay's steps to ensure performanceSun's page on what-they-do-for-eBay part way down the page, an article entitled: An Integrated, High Availability Cluster Solution)
You gave several examples of open source software, but those aren't open standards.
If Java was an open standard, independent and compatible implementations would be possible. That's not currently the case with Java, although it seems to be changing for the better.
...and they thought it was the Department of justice. Well, it's an honest (sic) mistake; the appeal is going so well.
Infuriate left and right
to have read the article before posting, and naive enough to admit it.
You'll learn.
Infuriate left and right
On the other hand, I think one can make a very good objective argument as to why Java is a much worse language than say C++.
Nope. There are 100 OO languages you could have picked to compare Java against, and you picked one of the few that is "objectively" worse. And I'd be hard pressed to call either musical in any way.
Although I agree MySQL is ill suited for medium/large projects (I'm a Sybase ASE man myself) I also used to fall in the trap of 'no foreign keys, so must not be relational!'
e ttemborough / odd12R.html (also here http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~tony/dbms/codds_laws.ht ml)
Codd's "12 Rules" for a 'Fully Relational DBMS' are pretty grueling:
http://newton.uor.edu/FacultyFolder/CK
By those definitions, there are few, if any 'fully' relational RDBMS. MySQL is just really, really 'less' Relational than Oracle, MS SQL, Sybase, etc.
Thanks,
--
Matt
Another example is enhancements to RMI for security. Sun was the proposer, and the proposal was rejected, mostly by J2EE vendors who didn't want to have to change their products to comply with the proposed changes. If Sun really had complete control, they could have rammed it through over the objections of the other committee members.
Are there membership fees for ECMA? IEEE? Of course there are, if for nothing else but to pay for some of the costs of these organizations.
Even the so-called independent standards bodies are not impartial. Every company that sends a representative has an agenda, and it isn't always for the greater good of the community.
Country music is certainly not the most popular form of music, it's one of the LEAST popular forms of music.
maru
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've always thought that java was the key to helping linux gain popularity. Java tools like IntelliJ's IDEA (my favorite IDE) run nice on windows, linux, and my mac. I see cross platform apps written in java as one of the keys to msft's demise. Java is getting better at GUI with every release. If you think it sucks my guess is that you haven't played with the most current stuff. It's getting great. I love it. Vanguard
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
[IBM technology strategist Irving] Wladawsky-Berger says: "Open-source is bigger than IBM".
:)
Such things make me happy for the entire day
IBM is heading back towards BIG BLUENESS
Methinks you're right. It's a curious mixture. By lowering the bar for competition, it becomes harder to compete with IBM. Of course if IBM gets fat and lazy and sloppy, the competition will appear almost overnight. This makes IBM a very safe choice for big business.
"hardware know-how"
That's one way to put it and I can't think of a better term but there's a lot more than just hardware in there. Basically it needs to work under stress and high-load, without things going screwy on the edges and corners. Open Source tends to be better stress-tested than anything you can do with a completely closed system. If you can get the balance right, everybody gains.
Websphere may have sucked in the past, but it's getting a lot better these days, and is still a *much* bigger contender than .NET according to all the surveys I've seen (other than the ZDNet one that Microsoft tried to rig, that is...)
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Of course Java isn't an OS. How is that relevant? The idea is that moving away from Windows-targetted applications to applications that can run equally well on Linux for small solutions or IBM's own systems for larger solutions has the potential to pose a threat to Windows.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Now don't tell me thay have more R&D than any other US company.
Actually more than any other company in the world. $5 billion a year with labs bloody everywhere.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
you don't think he might have meant "beat", what with the 'a' being next to the 's' and all.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
That depends on whether or not the guy's statement is an objective statement or an expression of his/her opinion. Stick "I think" in front of the analogy and it's much more difficult to argue with. I don't think there's enough content in the guy's post to know either way, whether he was trying to make an objective or subjective statement.
I'm having a difficult time understanding how music can be anything but entirely subjective. As opposed to "for the most part" as you say. Music is good or bad based on a scale of how it moves the listener. So it's entirely possible that, for one listener country music is best, classical is second best, and rock is worst. How can you come to the statement that it might be possible to objectively argue that classical is "better" than either rock or country? Objectively judging something that's entirely subjective seems like nonsense to me. So your first statement (that one couldn't objectively state that country music is better than rock) is something that I can easily agree with, but not your parenthetical statement.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Hmmm... I don't agree with this. And the reason I don't is that I think that evil borrows from good in order to succeed. For example, we all know of people and situations and times in our lives when we and others have done good things simply for the sake of doing something good. We don't always do this, but it's not a difficult concept. We can easily imagine/remember a time when we did a good thing just because it was good. We didn't profit from it. Probably no one else even knew. We simply did it because it was good.
On the other hand, imagine doing something evil simply because it's evil. Almost no one does this. It's hard to even imagine such a situation. People are greedy because they want money. People are unfaithful to their spouses because they want sex. People commit crimes because they want security or freedom or whatever. The closest I can come to imagining doing something evil simply because it's evil is cruelty. But even that is done in the pursuit of pleasure or satisfaction.
But in as far as they go, money, sex, freedom, security, pleasure and satisfaction aren't bad things. Most are neutral things, and some are good things. Pursuing those things isn't bad, but raising the pursuit of those things above other more important principles twists those good or neutral things into evil things. For example, raising my pursuit of money above my respect for your property enables me to steal from you. Pursuit of money isn't evil, but raising it above another, higher principle makes it evil.
Which is to say that the evil acts depend on neutral/good things. In fact, if you want to be effectively evil, you need to be smart, patient, charming, logical, etc. Again, none of those things are bad things. They're all good things that have been twisted.
It is this line of thinking that leads me to believe that good and evil are not on equal footing. IMHO, evil is dependant on, and suborinate to good.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
IBM's VM and TowerJ are licensed from Sun, thus not independent. Kaffe doesn't support J2SE.