Perens hits out at Sun over OpenOffice
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Open source developers who contribute to OpenOffice should stop donating their code to Sun Microsystems, open source advocate Bruce Perens has urged.
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Ziff Davis - The company will launch an OpenSolaris site on Friday, but an open-source version of Sun's operating system is still a long way off.
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ZFS file system can't be un-open-sourced, Schwartz says on his blog. And if Sun wins, it'll donate some proceeds to open-source and patent reform causes.
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Sun Microsystems has decided to offer support for the OpenOffice.org suite, charging $20 per user per year to companies that distribute the open-source software.
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Three years ago, we attended Sun&#39;s quarterly network computing day. It was the heart of the Bust, and we were treated to pot shots directed at IBM and Microsoft and were told that Sun was the true &quot;open standards&quot; vendor.
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(InfoWorld) - SunÂ has created software that will provide translation between the file format in Microsoft's Office 2003 suite and ODF (Open Document Format for XML). The plug-in lets people who use computers with assistive technologies to access documents written in ODF. A preview of the software, called StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology, is expected to be available in mid-February with a final release on Sun's Web site by the middle of June. The software enables two-way conversion between Microsoft Office 2003 and ODF, a standard format approved by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) for office documents. Certain applications and devices that use assistive technologies -- such as screen readers for the blind and technologies that allow people who are quadriplegic to operate a keyboard -- come with drivers that are compatible with Microsoft Word 2003 or earlier, said Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun. Vendors developing the assistive technologies have reverse-engineered Office 2003 interfaces to create the applications and devices, he said. "Right now, our focus is to ensure that people using assistive devices are able to join in with OpenDocument workflows," Phipps said. "Because Microsoft hasn't published interfaces for those devices to use, they are all hard-wired to Office 2003, and their users can't migrate to other software." Currently the state of Massachusetts, which is in the midst of a project migrating all office documents to ODF, is using the converter. Sun said it eventually plans to offer the converter for versions of Office that are earlier than 2003, and possibly for Office 2007, the newest version that was released last month. To create the converter, Sun built a library from OpenOffice.org that provides the same file conversions that are found in the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice productivity suites, Phipps said. Sun then added ODF support as a file format to all the places in Word using that library. Sun is not the only company that offers software to do ODF translation. IBM, which, along with Sun, is one of the most fervent supporters of ODF, has developed APIsÂ that specifically enable assistive technologies to talk to ODF-based applications. Through Project Missouri, IBM developed an API called iAccessible2 that make it easy for visuals in ODF-based applications to be interpreted by screen readers that reproduce that information verbally. Microsoft, which does not support ODF natively in Office, has funded the development of software that offers two-way conversion between the default format in Office 2007, Open XML, and ODF. The software, called the ODF Translator, was made available in 1.0 form last week on SourceForge.net. However, Microsoft did not include native support for ODF in its Office 2007 software, though it supports 30 other file formats in that suite. Microsoft hopes Open XML will follow the same path of ODF and be approved as an ISO standard; the file format is currently under consideration by the organization. However, Open XML is having trouble getting through the ISO approval process because certain countries are unhappy with the specification the way Microsoft submitted it, according to sources familiar with the process. Â
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Ziff Davis - Open-source leader Eric Raymond spells out his objections to Sun President Jonathan Schwartz's contention that the Java Community Process is truer to open-source ideas than is Linux.
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Even as such open source software developers as Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) and OpenOffice.org wax enthusiastic concerning enterprise deployments of their respective Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Office alternatives, industry analysts are urging caution.
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If you had any doubts about Sun Microsystems? commitment to open source, it?s time to set them aside. Sun put its money where its mouth is Wednesday, with the announcement that it would buy open source database vendor MySQL for a whopping $1 billion. If the price tag set tongues wagging, however, it was no more tantalizing than the question that immediately sprung to the minds of IT managers everywhere: Now that Sun owns MySQL, what on earth does it plan to do with it?Sun has toyed with the idea of a database offering of its own for at least two years. But in a market where basic relational database functionality is increasingly considered a commodity, competing successfully is no mean feat, even when playing the open source card.Certainly, Sun isn?t the first to try it. In 2001, leading Linux vendor Red Hat launched its own branded version of the open source PostgreSQL database, only to scrap the project a year later after deciding that servicing and supporting a database was not its core competency. Similarly, Computer Associates opened the source of the Ingres database in hopes of becoming a one-stop shop for customers in need of an enterprise application stack, but had little luck winning market share away from the likes of IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. CA spun Ingres off into its own company in 2005, where it continues to nurture a small installed base.In his blog announcing the MySQL acquisition Wednesday, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz remains characteristically effusive. ?Until now, no platform vendor has assembled all the core elements of a completely open source operating system for the Internet,? he wrote. ?No company has been able to deliver a comprehensive alternative to the leading proprietary OS.?Yet CA?s and Red Hat?s experiences seem to discredit the idea that a stem-to-stern platform offering from a single vendor is what customers really want. Not to mention the fact that Sun already offers enterprise support for PostgreSQL, a competing open source database that is widely perceived as being technologically superior to MySQL. Schwartz reaffirmed Sun?s commitment to PostgreSQL in a conference call Wednesday, causing some analysts to speculate whether the MySQL acquisition was anything more than a billion-dollar PR stunt.But there may be method to Sun?s madness. The considerable goodwill that MySQL has cultivated among enterprise customers could have benefits for Sun that technology alone never could.?I think the answer is simple: ubiquity,? says Andy Astor, CEO of EnterpriseDB, which markets a high-performance, commercial database product based on PostgreSQL. ?[Sun is] a big company; to move their needle, they need to see millions of potential users, which MySQL provides.?According to MySQL?s own estimates, there are already some 11 million active installations of the MySQL database worldwide. What?s more, MySQL is virtually the de facto standard relational database for rapid application development, particularly for the Web. In future, as these fledgling sites mature and their needs broaden, they will become natural customers for Sun?s enterprise support offerings.Sun?s new role as steward of MySQL is sure to ruffle feathers in the software industry, as well -- particularly at Oracle, which, with its recent acquisitions, increasingly competes with Sun in the enterprise application platform arena. In 2005, Oracle bought Innobase, makers of a plug-in component that adds advanced features to MySQL, in what was widely perceived as a competitive swipe at the open source upstart.For his part, MySQL CEO M?rten Mickos has repeatedly denied that his company?s aim is to displace high-end databases such as Oracle?s. And that?s only appropriate; for those customers who demand Oracle?s most advanced features, no other product will do. But Mickos? protestations verge on false modesty. On the low end, MySQL is an absolute pandemic, and it?s already making headway into the mid-tier territory traditionally owned by the likes of Microsoft. That trend is only likely to accelerate with Sun?s backing.What is unclear, however, is whether Sun will take any steps to alter MySQL?s license terms. Licensing and project governance have played key roles in MySQL?s success, and as a result, MySQL?s license policy is somewhat more restrictive than the one that Sun has used for the rest of its software portfolio.Although all MySQL code is available under the GNU GPL (General Public License), the product is developed primarily by full-time employees of MySQL. Furthermore, the MySQL company requests that community developers sign over copyright to their code contributions to the company before those changes become part of the main MySQL code base. This allows the company to offer a separate, commercial version of its database for enterprise customers who don?t want to be bound by the terms of the GPL. Initially, this license structure was used mainly to allow companies to embed the MySQL database into their own products, but the MySQL company was criticized last year for making it more difficult for non-paying customers to download the enterprise version of the database.By comparison, Sun has been freer with its own code, foregoing separate, commercial versions of its products in favor of a subscription-based enterprise support scheme. PostgreSQL is arguably even more free; it is governed in a much more distributed, community-based fashion than MySQL, and its permissive license even allows proprietary derivatives, such as EnterpriseDB.Ironically, however, MySQL?s stringent intellectual property policy may be precisely what makes it so appealing to Sun. Red Hat Database and Sun?s own version of PostgreSQL were merely different retoolings of an existing open source software product, one that customers could just as easily download from elsewhere. To the enterprise IT community at large, however, there?s really only one MySQL -- and from now on, that name will be indelibly associated with Sun. Remember, for all Sun?s talk about open source, this is a company that banks so heavily on its trademarks that it had its stock ticker symbol changed to JAVA.Ah, but there?s the rub. Sun open-sourced the Java platform in 2006, and while the move has been widely hailed by developers, not everyone in the business community was as thrilled with the idea of Sun giving away its crown jewels. As former Sun vice president Larry Singer put it, ?We [at Sun] were spending all of our time and attention ? on things that were important from an intellectual standpoint, important from an innovative standpoint, [but it was] hard to understand how they were going to drive revenue for the company.?So far, MySQL has built a solid business selling open source database software. Whether Sun has the strategic acumen to take that success to the next level, however, remains to be seen. But stay tuned; after all, $1 billion gives Sun a hell of an incentive.
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II&#39;m reading everywhere that Sun is making Solaris 10 free and open source ( http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=106224). environment.
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Insider sales at Sunrise have spurred a shareholder to demand the appointment of an independent monitor to investigate the accounting.
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(InfoWorld) - A patent-infringementÂ lawsuitÂ filed by Network Appliance against Sun Microsystems on Wednesday could escalate beyond the storage arena to become this decade's major test case for open-source software, according to storage analysts. NetApp contends that Sun's ZFS file-system technology, which wasÂ donatedÂ to the OpenSolaris.org open-source community earlier this year, infringes on seven NetApp patents. Andrew Reichman, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, said that NetApp's effort to stop Sun from developing or distributing the file-system technology could catapult the sticky issue of open-source software ownership squarely onto the public stage. "This will be a banner case to test the viability of open-source storage software, which Sun has been touting for some time," said Reichman. Sun, he added, "is too committed to the idea of providing storage technology to users without charge via the open-source community" -- a process that "the likes of NetApp and EMC are very hostile to." The other companies, he noted, fear that open-source storage technology would cut them off from significant sources of revenue. "I think [the legal scuffle] will drag on for a long time and likely become the major test case for open-source software this decade," he said. Reichman also noted that NetApp may have difficulty convincing a judge to force Sun to pay for using the patents, given what he called Sun's convoluted revenue stream from a system that provides users with some intellectual property without charge. Mike Karp, an analyst at Enterprise Management Associates in Boulder, Colo., said that issues being raised by NetApp over ZFS in many ways mirrors theÂ legal battleÂ between Novell and The SCO Group over Unix ownership. "This is not the sort of thing that is likely to be resolved overnight. My guess is that this is going to be a very expensive suit for both sides to prosecute," said Karp. "Neither side can afford to lose this thing." Given what he calls a fragmented approach by Sun toward its StorageTek technology and reseller relationships, Reichman said he perceives ZFS as the company's "make or break" storage technology. Whether by design or not, NetApp's lawsuit will likely distract Sun's fledgling storage effort, he added. "[Sun] already has significant challenges in productizing ZFS-based storage offerings and emerging as a force in storage, and [the lawsuit] will only compound that," Reichman remarked. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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MacCentral - Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday said that it is looking for ways to work more closely with developers of the Open Office open source project, while at the same time, apparently reserving the right to sue them, according to a legal agreement between Microsoft and Open Office's major sponsor, Sun Microsystems Inc., made public this week.
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If you were expecting a sneak peak of an open source Solaris or to buy the new commercial version next week, don&#39;t hold your breath.
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Ziff Davis - Sun's open-source license proposal for Open Solaris will surely be unpopular.
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The OpenOffice.org project has turned four years old, celebrating its birthday on the anniversary of Sun's donation of StarOffice to the open source community. With 31 million downloads and counting, the free office suite has helped push for mainstream acceptance of open source software by offering an alternative to Microsoft's pricey Office System. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is set for release next spring, complete with an open equivalent to Microsoft Access.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. senator has called for the U.S. government to cancel an ongoing purchasing contract with Sun Microsystems Inc., but the company says Senator Chuck Grassley's request is based on bad information. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has repeatedly criticized Sun for allegedly overcharging government agencies while on a government-wide purchasing schedule at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) called a multiple award contract. The GSA's inspector general has accused Sun of overcharging government agencies by more than US$25 million in contracts dating back to June 1997. Grassley, in a letter to the GSA last Friday, asked the agency to cancel Sun's contract. Grassley accused the company of not complying with information requests from the GSA's contracting officer and inspector general. The information was necessary for an audit requested by Grassley, the senator said. "I do not understand why Sun would refuse to cooperate fully with this audit," Grassley wrote to GSA Administrator Lurita Doan. "Why is Sun apparently afraid to open its books for inspection? It makes me wonder: Does Sun have something to hide?" Sun, in a statement released late Monday, said Grassley is "misled" about the company's cooperation with inspectors. The company has responded to "multiple demands" from the inspector general and other agencies, the company said. "Ironically, in the same week the senator accused us of not producing sufficient information [inspector general] officials canceled a meeting to discuss these matters because our document production was so voluminous that they needed additional time to review," Sun said. "We have produced tens of thousands of documents, plus transactional data covering billions of dollars in sales, while being subjected to deadlines that appear to be designed to ensure the demands cannot be met." The questions about Sun's contracts surfaced in September 2004, when the GSA Office of Inspector General received a hotline complaint about the company's pricing, according to March congressional testimony from Inspector General Brian Miller. In July 2005, the GSA told Sun resellers the agency was cancelling Sun's contract, because the company was allegedly charging government customers more than some commercial customers. But Sun avoided a cancellation by agreeing to drop some prices. Sun remains a defendant inÂ an Arkansas lawsuit alleging a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme involving IT vendors'Â work on numerous U.S. government contracts. Sun has accused the GSA's Miller of being biased and prejudiced against the company. Part of the problem, the company says, stems from a conflict between Doan and Miller after Doan questioned the inspector general's auditing tactics. Miller has defended his actions, saying he's doing his job. "The president and Congress sent me here to GSA to root out fraud, waste and abuse and to ensure that GSA programs are run with efficiency, economy, and effectiveness," he said in his March testimony. Doan in August 2005 rushed to keep Sun on the GSA contract even though there were continuing questions about the company's pricing, Miller said in his testimony. Doan was worried GSA's IT contracting division "could be destroyed" without Sun participating, he said. Grassley, in his Friday letter, called on the GSA to give Sun 30 days to comply with audit requests and cancel the contract if the company did not comply. The GSA should follow the lead of its inspector general, who has called for Sun's contract to be cancelled, Grassley said. But Sun, in its statement, said Miller's reports on its contracts "are riddled with inaccuracies and conspicuous omissions of multiple know facts." Grassley and Miller have not attempted to compare Sun's contract to contracts by other IT vendors, the company said. "The only party who would be hurt by a cancellation of the Sun GSA contract is the American taxpayer," Sun said. "Our pricing is very often better than our competitors, and the contract offers the government extremely aggressive discounts and contractual protections." Â