Really simple: the more people who surf the web, (i.e. the more page views that occur) the more money Google makes. Right now a very small minority of mobile phone users access the internet. If Google can change that, they win, and disproportionately relative to any other web businesses.
Here are the differences we can spot from Splunk's website. Would love to hear from some Splunkers on this.
Splunk seems pretty cool. While it does give you a view of a lot of data, there are no probes (so you can't see inside of apps that are broken to fix them, and it doesn't tell you when something is wrong), and apparently no advanced search/matching technology (e.g. pattern recognition) above and beyond human-operated search. One of the things our signature matching does is spot correlations that would be hard for most humans to see.
The biggest difference is that Splunk does not offer 7x24 support, it offers search and a database (hosted and product).
Splunk also doesn't have notifications (security, vulnerability or code) it's something you search. It doesn't seem that it proactively reaches out and grabs you to let you know something might be wrong.
Splunk seems like a great resource for IT shops, and maybe a potential SourceLabs partner.
Over time, IP infringement litigation will occur. This is not an actuarial risk, it is a mathematical certainty. Software patent holders have many tens of billions of dollars of market value at risk here, and as open source continues to gain traction in higher innovation categories (DBMS, AppServer, Web Services etc.) they have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to fight back with everything they can, including their IP portfolios. $10M of IP infringement insurance provides a token prize pot for these plaintiffs, but certainly does not address the IP infringement concerns of more conservative IT users who are exploring open source.
Patent pools are a Potemkin solution here, designed to create transitory goodwill for the grantors without actually removing the concern. Using an IBM-granted patent from a pool in a product or service doesn't prevent another patent holder, or indeed IBM itself, from suing my customer for infringement in some part of my code. The end message to the customer is that the safe choice is the company than can afford the most lawyers.
The credit for DOS success, (and also for the very long shot success of Windows 3.0/3.1 against OS 2), is due to Microsoft's exceptional prowess at creating and managing distribution channels.
Microsoft was, maybe more than anything else, a distribution company. It sold OEM's the ability to allow DOS programs to run on their boxes, and then ensured an adequately consistent user experience through things like the OAK (OEM Adaptation Kit) and other similar investments and programs.
The Kildall incident may have been the Gavrilo Princip moment of Microsoft hegemony, but the real success of the franchise was due to a few dozen hard core sales people led by Joachim Kempin, Richard Fade and Steve Ballmer, that made DOS the de facto standard through very hard selling and shear force of will, and by well executed ISV evangelism and education efforts led by Jon Lazarus, Peter Neupert and Cam Myhrvold.
More than anything else it was just a ton of hard work. And so it doesn't really matter whether it "should" have happened or not. It happened because a small number of highly motivated people worked hard to make it so.
(Microsoft alumnus 1989-1998)
Remember that the value of Microsoft's massive R&D investment depends entirely on the continued viability of the software patent concept. Anytime Microsoft (or anyone else) licenses a patent to a licensee, the softare patent system is bolstered. In a litigation scenario, license agreements help convince the court that the patent is valid. "see it's real: someone was willing to pay for it."
We think there is an opportunity to make a very significant business in open source software, and also to fundamentally disrupt the cozy status quo of proprietary software. Customers of all shapes and sizes are fed up with being locked-in to proprietary API that force them to ransom their applications back from aggressive sales people year after year.
Licenses for infrastructure software (databases, middleware etc.) were worth more than $14 Billion last year. The companies riding that gravy train are not going to cede that revenue without a fight. To win this battle, the open source community is going to have to do things differently, and that doesn't mean adopting the Windows playbook or locking the customer into a cradle-to-grave services embrace. We think a new approach is required, and while we're just getting started, you can read more about our plans at http://www.sourcelabs.com/plan.htm.
In a nutshell, we don't think customers should have to submit to being locked-in to software vendors' business models to get the dependability, convenience and support they need to run their software. And we think that a lot of customers will pay to set themselves free.
Yeah, I work for SourceLabs. Maybe you can too http://www.sourcelabs.com/jobs.htm
It doesn't make business sense for Palm to continue fighting this. They hold the critical (expensive to duplicate) cards, i.e. worldwide retail distribution, OEM licensees and strong consumer brand recognition.
Xerox exerting this claim and failing to reach biz terms with Palm is a huge failure. It insures that they will never receive a drop of license revenue from this IP. What OEM is going to bed down with them now, when Palm (the standards maker, due to its distribution) is shipping a competing, viable alternative, already supported on the MS stuff?
Slashdot Mirror
Really simple: the more people who surf the web, (i.e. the more page views that occur) the more money Google makes. Right now a very small minority of mobile phone users access the internet. If Google can change that, they win, and disproportionately relative to any other web businesses.
Here are the differences we can spot from Splunk's website. Would love to hear from some Splunkers on this.
Splunk seems pretty cool. While it does give you a view of a lot of data, there are no probes (so you can't see inside of apps that are broken to fix them, and it doesn't tell you when something is wrong), and apparently no advanced search/matching technology (e.g. pattern recognition) above and beyond human-operated search. One of the things our signature matching does is spot correlations that would be hard for most humans to see.
The biggest difference is that Splunk does not offer 7x24 support, it offers search and a database (hosted and product). Splunk also doesn't have notifications (security, vulnerability or code) it's something you search. It doesn't seem that it proactively reaches out and grabs you to let you know something might be wrong.
Splunk seems like a great resource for IT shops, and maybe a potential SourceLabs partner.
Cornelius Willis
co-founder, Sourcelabs
Over time, IP infringement litigation will occur. This is not an actuarial risk, it is a mathematical certainty. Software patent holders have many tens of billions of dollars of market value at risk here, and as open source continues to gain traction in higher innovation categories (DBMS, AppServer, Web Services etc.) they have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to fight back with everything they can, including their IP portfolios. $10M of IP infringement insurance provides a token prize pot for these plaintiffs, but certainly does not address the IP infringement concerns of more conservative IT users who are exploring open source. Patent pools are a Potemkin solution here, designed to create transitory goodwill for the grantors without actually removing the concern. Using an IBM-granted patent from a pool in a product or service doesn't prevent another patent holder, or indeed IBM itself, from suing my customer for infringement in some part of my code. The end message to the customer is that the safe choice is the company than can afford the most lawyers.
The credit for DOS success, (and also for the very long shot success of Windows 3.0/3.1 against OS 2), is due to Microsoft's exceptional prowess at creating and managing distribution channels. Microsoft was, maybe more than anything else, a distribution company. It sold OEM's the ability to allow DOS programs to run on their boxes, and then ensured an adequately consistent user experience through things like the OAK (OEM Adaptation Kit) and other similar investments and programs. The Kildall incident may have been the Gavrilo Princip moment of Microsoft hegemony, but the real success of the franchise was due to a few dozen hard core sales people led by Joachim Kempin, Richard Fade and Steve Ballmer, that made DOS the de facto standard through very hard selling and shear force of will, and by well executed ISV evangelism and education efforts led by Jon Lazarus, Peter Neupert and Cam Myhrvold. More than anything else it was just a ton of hard work. And so it doesn't really matter whether it "should" have happened or not. It happened because a small number of highly motivated people worked hard to make it so. (Microsoft alumnus 1989-1998)
Remember that the value of Microsoft's massive R&D investment depends entirely on the continued viability of the software patent concept. Anytime Microsoft (or anyone else) licenses a patent to a licensee, the softare patent system is bolstered. In a litigation scenario, license agreements help convince the court that the patent is valid. "see it's real: someone was willing to pay for it."
We think there is an opportunity to make a very significant business in open source software, and also to fundamentally disrupt the cozy status quo of proprietary software. Customers of all shapes and sizes are fed up with being locked-in to proprietary API that force them to ransom their applications back from aggressive sales people year after year. Licenses for infrastructure software (databases, middleware etc.) were worth more than $14 Billion last year. The companies riding that gravy train are not going to cede that revenue without a fight. To win this battle, the open source community is going to have to do things differently, and that doesn't mean adopting the Windows playbook or locking the customer into a cradle-to-grave services embrace. We think a new approach is required, and while we're just getting started, you can read more about our plans at http://www.sourcelabs.com/plan.htm. In a nutshell, we don't think customers should have to submit to being locked-in to software vendors' business models to get the dependability, convenience and support they need to run their software. And we think that a lot of customers will pay to set themselves free. Yeah, I work for SourceLabs. Maybe you can too http://www.sourcelabs.com/jobs.htm
It doesn't make business sense for Palm to continue fighting this. They hold the critical (expensive to duplicate) cards, i.e. worldwide retail distribution, OEM licensees and strong consumer brand recognition. Xerox exerting this claim and failing to reach biz terms with Palm is a huge failure. It insures that they will never receive a drop of license revenue from this IP. What OEM is going to bed down with them now, when Palm (the standards maker, due to its distribution) is shipping a competing, viable alternative, already supported on the MS stuff?