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Saturday, August 30
Borg Watching the Penguins
 It was interesting at LinuxWorld (back near the start of August) to see how many people from Microsoft were attending. Indeed, at both my session and the one with Sterling Ball, a show of hands revealed a row or more of Microsoft employees (sticking together for mutual protection).
Josh Ledgard was there, and while I must have been speaking a bit fast (I've never worked for MSFT, I was just an ordinary developer in the Word beta program, back in the days before MSDN made it into a business) I think he's on target with his report (even the StarOffice crash). As he notes, the 3D graphics innovations Sun is bringing to Linux were a big hit:It seemed the most innovative demo was Sun showing off " Project Looking Glass". This was a three dimensional desktop environment for Linux that looked like some mix of OS X(Complete with that funky pop-up start bar) and Longhorn. The audience went crazy for this. I'm particularly pleased by the way Sun's approach to Linux showed through as more grass-roots and genuine than that of others - notably IBM, who as Ashlee Vance also points out have a very schizophrenic attitude towards Linux and a partisan view of open source, avoiding projects that Sun participates in for apparently no reason other than that Sun participates:IBM claims to have put more than $1 billion behind open source software, but the company is failing to pay even a modest amount of lip service to one of free software's most needed products. Indeed, companies like IBM don't like Linux as a place to actually work, as Josh notes: I saw plenty of people with windows laptops and plenty of OS X notebooks, but outside of the booths and Sun sessions I was surprised at the lack of people running Linux. Sure, their slide decks talked a big game, but it looked a lot like Powerpoint and Windows XP underneath for Dan Powers(IBM VP of Grid Computing and Emerging Technologies) and several others. For presenters and general show goers I saw it felt like the order was MS > OS X > Linux. It surprised me enough to mention it I guess. But as Vance points out, unless you use the stuff you promote, you're lost:Linux on the mainframe might be interesting to a few customers, but it's not the OS's future. If IBM wants its Linux investment to keeping paying off, the vendor should push solid open source achievements instead of plugging Microsoft where it's convenient. Meanwhile, the benefits of liberty and openness extend to more than just the price tag the people you're paying to get your software have to pay. There's also the promise of no visits from the BSA (software's answer to the Thought Police) looking for even spurious license violations to persecute - as Josh notes: I'm also not even sure what the details of our licensing policies are, but if you were at LinuxWorld you were educated on how evil they are. No one at the show claimed that Linux was free, but one company that made the Linux switch did claim that no evil lawyers have come after him since they switched for being 8% under licensed. It just depresses me to lose customers because of this. There were also more Microsoft staff than other companies at the Harvard/MIT Free/Open Source Software conference earlier in the year and I'd like to congratulate the technical side of the company on its open-mindedness (there was even a Redmond contingent at JavaOne), which in time will lead to the sort of behaviour massively-connected customers are demanding - as long as the prejudices of Microsoft's kings-of-the-hill can be fixed.
[Also posted to java.net]
posted at 10:45 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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Friday, August 29
Open source and forks
 Robert Scoble comments on the fork of JBoss by the Elba project but doesn't dig any deeper. In particular, one might come to the conclusion that forks like this are an every-day occurrence. In fact, external forks of established projects like JBoss happen once in a blue moon and when they do are a sign of a much deeper malaise. Yes, all society is driven by human interactions (otherwise known as 'politics') but a substantial fork like this is a real rarity and deserves scrutiny.
Elba was intended by its creators to be part of Apache's Geronimo project, announced at LinuxWorld - the FAQ explains:This project was originally going to provide code that allowed Geronimo to run in JBoss™, but since there seems to be a policy of removing anyone that works on Geronimo from the JBoss™ project, we decided we had to fork. Apache aren't happy with this idea according to Noel Bergman, and Apache seems likely to insist code gets rewritten or closely scrutinised to avoid any commercial taint, but even if Elba isn't part of Geronimo its creators are and their intent is clear. I've been anticipating the creation of Geronimo ever since JCP 2.5 was ratified and now it's started wish it every success.
It would have been obvious for this project to have worked hand-in-hand with JBoss - after all, pretty much every other J2EE-related open source project has joined the party. But in this case, it turned out that wasn't going to happen. Not just because of the JBoss LGPL license usage cited on the Geronimo FAQ though. In fact, some of the committers from the JBoss project had their ability to participate in the JBoss community revoked unilaterally because of their offer of their own code to Geronimo (I also have this first-hand). As one comment says,The fact that so many key developers have left the JBoss project over the years indicates that at least for some, there is a significant problem with the JBoss project.
Sure the code is open - but the process is not. Even when on the JBossGroup mailing list, many discussions took place behind closed doors and were not negotiable.
I do not wish to diminish the massive job that MF has done to get JBoss to where it is today - that is something that only incredible hard work and dedication could have achieved. However, in return for his organizational contributions he has obtained a near monopoly on the development process and commercial exploitation of the project. So it seems this forking rarity is a response to widely-recognised issues, not with the JBoss code or even with the JBoss project, but with the eponymous company pulling the strings behind the scenes. As Stephen commented, prima facie the Apache project was getting special treatment with regard to J2EE certification but in fact the issue was deeper and darker.
What do we learn from this? Well, the big lesson I'd send back to Robert is that, when it's open source, there is a remedy. It's rarely used as it's extreme medicine, but I predict it will work in this case. Now, what's our remedy for the code-base that's causing most of us extreme e-mail stress at the moment? Seems we just have to keep on trusting or switching...
[Modified to reflect Noel's comment]
posted at 10:35 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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Thursday, August 28
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Oh yes, we're home! The flight from Australia was on Thai, an airline which is slightly delapidated and out of date but nonetheless gets you there eventually. Everyone is now in various stages of recovery around the house. Today's picture shows the view across Australia's answer to the Grand Canyon, the vast and surprising Jamison Valley in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales (about 90 minutes drive west from Sydney) where we spent a delightful winter weekend. At the bottom of the huge cliffs is a rich rainforest from which bird and frog songs rise deliciously as brilliant white cockatoos fly in flocks across it.