Podcast: Just like old times: Are Oracle and Sun back?
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Oracle, Sun make headlines; the latest from Macworld; and stock-option scandal nails tech exec.
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Novell's quarterly Linux revenue...Santa is scarier than clowns...BeOS and PalmOS guys talk Google Android...dumping the Nikon D2Xs for the D300...is Sudoku passe?
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The Story: What?s in a name? Back in the days of the Gingrich revolution, the nastiest label you could pin on a politician was ?liberal.? And now that open source has become an essential technology, the quickest way to get a rise out of an open source executive (and to get flamed on dozens of blogs) is to say his or her company is ?commercial.?[ Slideshow: 2007's top underreported tech stories ]                                                    No matter what you call them, open source companies have been steadily integrating parts of the hated commercial software subscription model into their business. First it was support, and now it is software access. Say it ain?t so, Linus.MySQL, for example, will charge users of its enterprise edition to use the code, not just for support as has been the traditional open source business model. ?We are looking for ways to extend our offerings in a way that can be monetized,? bluntly says Kaj Arno, the company?s VP for community.Chander Kant, founder of the open source storage software company Zmanda, is likewise frank about the need to drive revenue. Speaking of the open source community as a whole, he says, ?We are not a charity. We need to monetize.?Recognizing that charging to use open source software flies in the face of the original open source premise of freely sharable code open to everyone, Arno is quick to note that the paid version of Workbench has code and features not found in the free version ? and that the free version ?is not crippled.? Arno calls the move an experiment, and acknowledges that MySQL needs to move carefully to avoid upsetting the often quick-tempered open source community.Is this a trend? Red Monk analyst Stephen O?Grady says it is: ?Ultimately when you look at a high-profile firm like MySQL embracing it, it?s difficult to conclude anything else.?InfoWorld blogger (and IBM employee) Savio Rodrigues notes another example. In a recent blog post, he looked at changes to JBoss since it was purchased by Red Hat Software and concluded: ?The Fedora/JBoss subscription is just like the software subscription business model that commercial software vendors have been using for decades.?Does that mean a company that adopts the usage-based pricing model isn?t really open-source? That?s an interesting point, since as Zmanda?s Kant acknowledges, ?the litmus test of open source is control of the code.? Open source software delivered through appliances keeps the access ? and thus control ? away from users, he notes. But code binaries distributed as software remain open to their users ? for now, at least.The Bottom Line: Have MySQL and Red Hat run away from the principles of open source? Who cares. The real point is that the open source business model is evolving away from the ?free? model and toward an alternative development approach for commercial software. If you adopted open source due to its cost, you may not save as much as you thought. If you adopted open source for the access to source code or the community-supported development approach that is supposed to result in better software, it?s not yet clear if the greater commercialization will enhance those aspects or drive away the true believers and make open source no different than the old-fashioned commercial offerings.Complete list of 2007 underreported stories: 1.? Java is becoming the new Cobol 2.? Sun Microsystems is back in the game 3.? Hackers take aim at Mac OS X 4.? There are some threats you can worry less about 5.? Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits 6.? Open source?s new commercial strategy 7.? End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives 8.? Blade servers arrive for the masses 9.? BI is dead; long live BI 10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
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The Motley Fool - Open-source software leader Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT - News) reports earnings after the bell today, and analysts are expecting a doozy. With on-again-off-again reports that Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL - News) may enter the Linux market, Red Hat's stock has certainly been volatile, but management has been quite sanguine about further competition from the database giant. Is this one huge strategic misstep or savvy thinking? Read on for my thoughts.
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Ziff Davis - In an eWEEK interview, the Sun exec says he sees Solaris, Linux, Java and even Windows coexisting.
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InfoWorld - If you had any doubts about Sun Microsystems??? commitment to open source, it???s time to set them aside.
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Lukas Smith has posted some ominous thoughts about the future of the LAMP stack in the online development world - specifically asking if the popularity of the grouping could be what might ultimately cause its downfall.   The issue is that there is simply not enough top qualified talent that knows LAMP well enough to hire. Or maybe its just too hard to find them? It seems all the good guys are already hired. As a result companies end up looking for other technology, not because they actually believe that these technologies are any better or worth the license fees that these usually require to be paid up...   He suggests two things that could be possible lead-ins to the "demise" of LAMP - the fact that LAMP just isn't taught along side other languages in school and that, since PHP is only just now getting into the offices of the "major players", there hasn't been enough time to prove to them that PHP has worth in their business.   Be sure to check out some of the great comments on this one.
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TechWeb - Sun's recent decision to open-source some elements of Java is pretty exciting -- but a few years overdue, says &lt;i&gt;InformationWeek&lt;/i&gt; columnist Eric A. Hall
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Blog: Oracle just reported its earnings for Q4 2006, and knocked the proverbial ball out of the park.  In the land of the proprietary vendors, Oracle may well be king.
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Chris Shiflett has posted his own recap of the (just passed) php|works conference up in Toronto over on his blog.   I've been traveling non-stop since php|works, so I haven't had a chance to reflect on the conference, what I learned, who I met, and things like that. (Zak has been doing a good job of this lately, and I'd like to follow his lead.) I've probably forgotten more than I remember, but this is my recap.   Included in the things he mentions are:  The people he was able to meet (like Joshua Eichorn and Sebastian Bergmann) The talks he gave ("Truth about XSS" and "Agile PHP Testing") His interview with Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone The PHP 5 Certification and Wez Furlong's "Not PDO" talk
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MySQL developers turn to an unlikely source for database tool: Microsoft. Also: SGI visualizes Linux, and the return of Java veteran Kim Polese.
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The Pro::PHP Podcast has released their latest show another newscast hosted by Sean Coates an dPaul Reinheimer discussing some of the recent events in both the PHP and general online communities.   Topics mentioned in this show include:   a mention of their Rant line - 1.888.401.3750 the announcement of php|works Terry Chay's post about PHP and Ruby PHP's rank in the TIOBE Index and the transformation of XUL -> PHP-GTK   Check out what Sean and Paul have to say on these and lots of other topics in this most recent show and while you're listening, subscribe to their feed to get future episodes brought straight to you.
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Start-ups came back in style. IPO fever gripped Silicon Valley. Internet advertising rebounded. Blogging went mainstream, as did Internet phone service. Phishers sent a blizzard of bogus e-mails, looking for all the world like they really came from Citibank or American Express.
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It's not every day that the entire technical press goes bonkers over news in the open source world, but that's what happened last week, when Sun announced that it was buying MySQL.  Doubtless, the pleasant roundness of the sum involved - $1 billion ??? helped, as did the fact that most of that was cash.  But leaving aside the sense of satisfaction that events in the free software world should be suddenly thrust centre-stage, Sun's move does raise a larger question about the fate of all open source start-ups. read more
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It's not every day that the entire technical press goes bonkers over news in the open source world, but that's what happened last week, when Sun announced that it was buying MySQL.  Doubtless, the pleasant roundness of the sum involved - $1 billion â helped, as did the fact that most of that was cash.  But leaving aside the sense of satisfaction that events in the free software world should be suddenly thrust centre-stage, Sun's move does raise a larger question about the fate of all open source start-ups. read more
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Craig Conway discusses his latest board appointment and his nemesis Oracle.
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Sun Microsystems is trying a new marketing strategy ... giving away its new Solaris 10 operating system for free! &quot;Hewlett Packard sells a printer at a low price and makes a lot of money on printer cartridges.