>In fact RedHat makes over a billion dollars a year,
Just fyi but, Red Hat's trailing 12 month revenue is about $400M.
>else they risk dwindling mindshare.... and unltimately marketshare as well.
I've been keeping track of WebSphere's public growth figures. The WebSphere division competes vs. the JBoss product set. I think you'll agree that our growth has been well above the market and growing at such a rate from a base of several hundreds of millions is much more difficult than growing from a much smaller revenue base.
I do work at IBM (in the WebSphere division), so maybe I'm biased, but the financial results are difficult to argue with.
Yes, but they're not passing any new rights with the GPL's code. Every SUSE customer gets the same patent protection....none.
The "we promise you that MSFT won't sue you" right is being passed along with the support contract, over which the GPL has no say. And it also means that if you want to keep the safety net, you have to renew your subscription yearly (until 2012 when the Novell/MSFT agreement runs out) and then who knows what will happen.
Very interesting blog by Dave Dargo, who, according to Matt Assay, used to lead Oracle's open source strategy, about the Oracle Linux announcement.
An interesting point from Dave:
I'm mostly curious as to why Oracle's first real support network is for someone else's product. Where's the Oracle Database Network and Applications Network and PeopleSoft Network and Siebel Network? Where are the support infrastructure networks for Oracle's own products to automatically distribute fixes, patches and alerts?
And this quote made me laugh:
It's amazing that they can provide all that for a mere $399 for a competitor's products, but not for their own $200,000 product.
Based on reading the Apache Geronimo dev mailing lists, it seems like Geronimo is looking to have some JEE5 preview features in their 1.2 release (maybe later this year?), with full JEE5 support likely coming in 2007.
To me the main open question about 1.2 is whether we can certify on j2ee 1.4 with jee5 spec libraries. If so it is fairly simple to include jee5 preview features.
The 'horror' stories about 'Indian programmers' are interesting because I wonder why Indian outsourcing providers like Infosys and Tata Consulting are doing so well if 'Indian programmers' as a whole are not able to deliver what Western clients expect. Or why companies like IBM, Intel, Oracle and Microsoft are investing heavily in the region.
We had/have a team of engineers working in India on WAS CE and many of them also contributed to Apache Geronimo. I don't remember a situation that was caused by a lack of skill or experience on their part.
I'm not discounting any of the bad experiences that people have had with overseas programmers. But the West has had a very big head start with computer science compared to Asia, and how long until the gap is narrowed? India already has a goal of shifting from a large consumer of open source technology to being a major contributor of OSS. Something that is already beginning to happen with Sri Lanka....
"Apache Axis2 is the first piece of middleware that has been largely created in Sri Lanka. This is not outsourcing- this is rock solid innovation all the way from the other side of the world. Apache Axis2 is not a brainded implementation of some JCP specs- in fact, we rejected the JCP specs and created our own way of doing things: not because of arrogance, but because those JCP specs don't quite cut it technically. It is innovation in its rawest form." Source: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/sanjiva?id=128
But the move to ubicomp does not necessarily call for an end to the datacenter as we know it. The underlying systems that will make Weiser's vision a reality is the availability of computing devices that range from 'inches', 'feet' to 'yards' (mm, cm, m for us metric kids). What Weiser is saying here is that there isn't going to be one major form factor for computing (as was the case with the mainframe, the desktop PC and the laptop), but multiple form factors.
Some devices will be measured in inches and be able to perform a specific task, and others will be measured in feet and perform various other tasks and so on. And yes, all of these devices will be networked. However some devices will be better at certain things like sensing information and others better at things like processing the sensed information to make a decision. As a result, there will be room for the drill bits, the Disney dolls and the datacenter. And as pointed out by others, the networked world will likely require even more centralized computing.
I can't really find anything to verify or debunk your claim. But for arguments sake, let's say IBM did invent software patent. I think this announcement is definitely a step in the right direction around software patents specifically:
According to this press release from IBM, we've been awarded the most number of patents for 13 years running.
Considering that IBM is asserting " that so-called business methods alone -- broad descriptions of ideas, without technical specifics -- should not be patentable."
It would be interesting to know how many of the patents IBM received over the past 5 years would have fallen into this bucket. And maybe take it one step further and announce that these patents won't be enforced. Now that's something that would make it a whole lot easier for IBMers to weigh in on the software patent discussion without worrying about our own backyard!;-)
Red Flag Linux is actualy a distribution of Asianux2.0. Red Flag (Chinese), Miracle Linux (Japanese) & Haansoft (Korean) are all built on Asianux2.0 and targeted for the specific countries listed above. AFAIK, Asianux2.0 is a RHEL clone, so that helps with testing (vs. having to test a completely new distro).
I can't speak for "IBM", but back when I was product manger for WAS Community Edition (WASCE), I know that we decided to support Red Flag Data Center (RFDC) with WASCE right from v1.0 because our Asian customers were asking for RFDC (in addition to RHEL).
You could probably find a commercial software company that supports the open source software. For example, you can get support for many Apache products (HTTPD, Tomcat, Geronimo, Axis) from several vendors (HP, IBM, Red Hat, SourceLabs, SpikeSource, etc). And I remember seeing something about SourceLabs 'Certified Software', so maybe try them?
S
This IDC data for (hardware) servers shipped in 2Q06 shows that servers with Linux installed drove $1.5B in spendng in 2Q06 ( a 12% share of all spending on servers in the quarter. FWIW, Servers with Unix installed represented 35% of spending. Apple isn't mentioned in the vendor listing, but may be in the full report.
Now, if you look here at Apple's quarterly report ending April 1, 2006 and go to pg. 28, you'll find that Apple made $833Mil in a category called 'Desktops' that includes iMac, eMac, Mac mini, Power Mac and Xserve product Lines.
So, even if we imagine that all of the Apple 'Desktop' category would compete against the $1.5B server hardware spending on Linux, you'd still find that Apple has a long way to go.
It could be that Sahana isn't really a company. It's an open source project. Interestingly enough, Sanjiva Weerawarana, the CEO of WSO2, appears to have been one of the initial contributors to Sahana ( http://cvs.opensource.lk/wiki/doku.php?id=dev:team). Maybe it was just meant to be 9 companies and 1 community effort started by the CEO of one of the 9?
PETJ (People for the ethical treatment of journalists)
Minor clarification, Apache is not a company. There are several companies that make money supporting products that are from the Apache community. This is one of the best things about Apache products, no 'company' controls them. Take Apache Tomcat or Apache Geronimo for instance, you can get support from Chariot Solutions, Covalent, IBM, Logic Blaze, Novell and Virtuas. And all of these companies have contributors to the projects, (along with guys that are not affiliated with these companies).
Quoted from Sun's SEC filing on 2006-05-05 (pg. 40): Read [PDF] or HTML
"In particular, we are seeing increased competition and pricing pressures from competitors offering systems running Linux software and other open source software."
If you've seen/believe IDC market share reports of operating systems, you'd notice that the huge growth of Linux was not at the expense of Windows, but rather Unix (they seldom break Unix down into its flavors, but Solaris is the leader, so they'd be hurting from Linux). The IDC data showed that Linux was a competitive threat to Sun back in 2002, and it appears that Sun feels that way still.
You have an intellectually interesting question here. But I think you'll find that it'll be difficult to implement as wholeheartedly as you'd like.
I find two problems with the idea. First the lack of a leader, and second, the notion of 1 person 1 vote.
Very few successful businesses, organization or even sports teams can run without a leader. Decisions take longer to make, and if membership isn't screened somehow, you may find that the majority of your 'employees' have a nack of picking really bad ideas for your company to follow. As this cycle repeats, you'll find that your best talent will want to do something else with their time.
I think what you want to do is apply aspects of the open source business model to your company. Little things like the leader/ceo typically knows what he is talking about and in a crunch, could actually do the work of his employees. This is something that Toyota has been very successful at. The book 'The Toyota Way' (get it at your library), talks about how every boss can do the job of his employees better than the employees themselves. This notion is carried all the way to the top of the organization. Actually, bosses are viewed as teachers more than managers. Another key aspect is that everyone's opinion is valued in finding a better way. That does not mean 1 person 1 vote, just that your idea is considered...because some will surely have bad ideas;-)
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>In fact RedHat makes over a billion dollars a year,
Just fyi but, Red Hat's trailing 12 month revenue is about $400M.
>else they risk dwindling mindshare.... and unltimately marketshare as well.
I've been keeping track of WebSphere's public growth figures. The WebSphere division competes vs. the JBoss product set. I think you'll agree that our growth has been well above the market and growing at such a rate from a base of several hundreds of millions is much more difficult than growing from a much smaller revenue base.
I do work at IBM (in the WebSphere division), so maybe I'm biased, but the financial results are difficult to argue with.
Yes, but they're not passing any new rights with the GPL's code. Every SUSE customer gets the same patent protection....none.
The "we promise you that MSFT won't sue you" right is being passed along with the support contract, over which the GPL has no say. And it also means that if you want to keep the safety net, you have to renew your subscription yearly (until 2012 when the Novell/MSFT agreement runs out) and then who knows what will happen.
Sneaky.
An interesting point from Dave:
And this quote made me laugh:
Based on reading the Apache Geronimo dev mailing lists, it seems like Geronimo is looking to have some JEE5 preview features in their 1.2 release (maybe later this year?), with full JEE5 support likely coming in 2007.
From the Geronimo dev mailing list:
To me the main open question about 1.2 is whether we can certify on j2ee 1.4 with jee5 spec libraries. If so it is fairly simple to include jee5 preview features.
We had/have a team of engineers working in India on WAS CE and many of them also contributed to Apache Geronimo. I don't remember a situation that was caused by a lack of skill or experience on their part.
I'm not discounting any of the bad experiences that people have had with overseas programmers. But the West has had a very big head start with computer science compared to Asia, and how long until the gap is narrowed? India already has a goal of shifting from a large consumer of open source technology to being a major contributor of OSS. Something that is already beginning to happen with Sri Lanka....
Savio
What Jonathan is describing is the slow move towards ubiquitous computing that was put forward by Mark Weiser (the 'father' of ubicomp) in 1991.
But the move to ubicomp does not necessarily call for an end to the datacenter as we know it. The underlying systems that will make Weiser's vision a reality is the availability of computing devices that range from 'inches', 'feet' to 'yards' (mm, cm, m for us metric kids). What Weiser is saying here is that there isn't going to be one major form factor for computing (as was the case with the mainframe, the desktop PC and the laptop), but multiple form factors.
Some devices will be measured in inches and be able to perform a specific task, and others will be measured in feet and perform various other tasks and so on. And yes, all of these devices will be networked. However some devices will be better at certain things like sensing information and others better at things like processing the sensed information to make a decision. As a result, there will be room for the drill bits, the Disney dolls and the datacenter. And as pointed out by others, the networked world will likely require even more centralized computing.
Savio
I can't really find anything to verify or debunk your claim. But for arguments sake, let's say IBM did invent software patent. I think this announcement is definitely a step in the right direction around software patents specifically: According to this press release from IBM, we've been awarded the most number of patents for 13 years running.
;-)
Considering that IBM is asserting " that so-called business methods alone -- broad descriptions of ideas, without technical specifics -- should not be patentable."
It would be interesting to know how many of the patents IBM received over the past 5 years would have fallen into this bucket. And maybe take it one step further and announce that these patents won't be enforced. Now that's something that would make it a whole lot easier for IBMers to weigh in on the software patent discussion without worrying about our own backyard!
Savio
Red Flag Linux is actualy a distribution of Asianux2.0. Red Flag (Chinese), Miracle Linux (Japanese) & Haansoft (Korean) are all built on Asianux2.0 and targeted for the specific countries listed above. AFAIK, Asianux2.0 is a RHEL clone, so that helps with testing (vs. having to test a completely new distro).
I can't speak for "IBM", but back when I was product manger for WAS Community Edition (WASCE), I know that we decided to support Red Flag Data Center (RFDC) with WASCE right from v1.0 because our Asian customers were asking for RFDC (in addition to RHEL).
Savio
You could probably find a commercial software company that supports the open source software. For example, you can get support for many Apache products (HTTPD, Tomcat, Geronimo, Axis) from several vendors (HP, IBM, Red Hat, SourceLabs, SpikeSource, etc). And I remember seeing something about SourceLabs 'Certified Software', so maybe try them? S
I'm with Recovering Hater on this.
This IDC data for (hardware) servers shipped in 2Q06 shows that servers with Linux installed drove $1.5B in spendng in 2Q06 ( a 12% share of all spending on servers in the quarter. FWIW, Servers with Unix installed represented 35% of spending. Apple isn't mentioned in the vendor listing, but may be in the full report.
Now, if you look here at Apple's quarterly report ending April 1, 2006 and go to pg. 28, you'll find that Apple made $833Mil in a category called 'Desktops' that includes iMac, eMac, Mac mini, Power Mac and Xserve product Lines.
So, even if we imagine that all of the Apple 'Desktop' category would compete against the $1.5B server hardware spending on Linux, you'd still find that Apple has a long way to go.
This is one that a friend created: http://www.missingkidsmap.com/ (and all without the help of a 300 page book)
It could be that Sahana isn't really a company. It's an open source project. Interestingly enough, Sanjiva Weerawarana, the CEO of WSO2, appears to have been one of the initial contributors to Sahana ( http://cvs.opensource.lk/wiki/doku.php?id=dev:team ). Maybe it was just meant to be 9 companies and 1 community effort started by the CEO of one of the 9?
PETJ (People for the ethical treatment of journalists)
Apache. MySQL. Both of those are.
Minor clarification, Apache is not a company. There are several companies that make money supporting products that are from the Apache community. This is one of the best things about Apache products, no 'company' controls them. Take Apache Tomcat or Apache Geronimo for instance, you can get support from Chariot Solutions, Covalent, IBM, Logic Blaze, Novell and Virtuas. And all of these companies have contributors to the projects, (along with guys that are not affiliated with these companies).
Quoted from Sun's SEC filing on 2006-05-05 (pg. 40): Read [PDF] or HTML
"In particular, we are seeing increased competition and pricing pressures from competitors offering systems running Linux software and other open source software."
If you've seen/believe IDC market share reports of operating systems, you'd notice that the huge growth of Linux was not at the expense of Windows, but rather Unix (they seldom break Unix down into its flavors, but Solaris is the leader, so they'd be hurting from Linux). The IDC data showed that Linux was a competitive threat to Sun back in 2002, and it appears that Sun feels that way still.
See: An old IDC report
See: http://www.forbes.com/2002/07/15/0715linux.html Savio
You have an intellectually interesting question here. But I think you'll find that it'll be difficult to implement as wholeheartedly as you'd like.
;-)
I find two problems with the idea. First the lack of a leader, and second, the notion of 1 person 1 vote.
Very few successful businesses, organization or even sports teams can run without a leader. Decisions take longer to make, and if membership isn't screened somehow, you may find that the majority of your 'employees' have a nack of picking really bad ideas for your company to follow. As this cycle repeats, you'll find that your best talent will want to do something else with their time.
I think what you want to do is apply aspects of the open source business model to your company. Little things like the leader/ceo typically knows what he is talking about and in a crunch, could actually do the work of his employees. This is something that Toyota has been very successful at. The book 'The Toyota Way' (get it at your library), talks about how every boss can do the job of his employees better than the employees themselves. This notion is carried all the way to the top of the organization. Actually, bosses are viewed as teachers more than managers. Another key aspect is that everyone's opinion is valued in finding a better way. That does not mean 1 person 1 vote, just that your idea is considered...because some will surely have bad ideas
savio