Posts by Greg 12 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2007
2 points
1. on Canonical --> Red Hat, there's a big difference from my POV. Landscape is optional for support subscribers, whereas RHN is required.
2. As for open source alternatives, the fedora project (how's that for irony) has a new tool called func that people should look at
I think Landscape is better compared to Red Hat Network than Hyperic, Zenoss, Nagios or other open source monitoring tools. Yes, from your article and other reports, Landscape will provide basic monitoring (as does Red Hat Network), but I don't think Hyperic, Zenoss, Nagios etc. perform the package management that Landscape and RHN provide. And I think it's safe to say that RHN users (and future Landscape users will) primarily use these tools for the centralized, many-as-one package update and provisioning capabilities. Most mid-sized to large businesses are going to want a monitoring tool that looks across OSes and that includes lots of device types.
Solomon, you're way too pessimistic. One does not hear such stories of bad open source citizenship about IBM or HP, and they are two of the richest companies on earth.
profits and open source can coexist, but it isn't easy. oh, here's another success - SugarCRM - they've enabled their community contributors to make money by providing a marketplace for add-ons to their CRM system.
this is good change.
I have a question: Can someone please explain to me the problem with the non-commercial limitation to the patent thingy? In the article, Jerry says it's meaningless, and POPE Mad Mitch says above "nobody could use [OO with the Microsoft APIs] without having to pay microsoft a patent royalty tax."
I think this is incorrect. As I understand the release, if it's non-commercial distribution, no patent license needed, no lawsuit. How is that meaningless?
Excellent report! I read it quickly and plan to spend a good hour with it. Thank you el reg and freeform
I wanted to bring to your and your reader's attention a discussion happening now at the reinvigorated open management consortium about how various systems management vendors (some open source, some closed, some mixed) are trying to find a common agent thateveryone can agree, and standardize, on. It's in early stages, but if successful, I believe it could go some ways towards alleviating the fragmentation that so many respondents struggle with every dayaccording to the report.
Here's the link: http://www.openmanagement.org/community/monitoring/omc_open_agent?view=discussions
Kelly,
It would be really interesting to know who else was bidding on this deal and if EDS was in the mix. And it would be interesting to know if/how HP plans to leverage their new Opsware technology to deliver the services. As you prob. know, EDS was Opsware's first big customer and they actually bought the ASP part of Loudcloud from Andreessen so that he could do Opsware. Talk about biting the hand that feeds IT!!
The proposition that mashing up youtube videos with location somehow meets a need or want among GoogleEarth users seems pretty far fetched. Here's a crazy idea Google: why not steal a page out of the playbook from all the open source software you use and let USERS decide which pieces of your (or is it their?) information they want to combine and how they want to combine it?
I generally like Google and I admire their manner of public experimentation, but this and other recent moves that look aimed at trying to replicate / extend their ad-supported search success (ads in gadgets, youtube ads for adsense partners, etc.) increasingly smack of futility and even a little desperation. Makes one wonder to what extent the ad-supported model is transferable to non-search online and computer-related activities.
PS Hey Reg - how come no evil / angelic Google icons? is it 'cuz no one would recognize Schmidt even if they saw him sunbathing naked?
excellent article Ashlee.
5-10 years ago, when Microsoft rose to prominence, the name of the game to "winning" in the software business was erecting high and strong barriers to entry. Microsoft mastered this.
Today, at least 3 forces have eroded the ability for any software company to successfully erect and defend barriers to entry. These are hardware commoditization, open source and ubiquitous broadband access. Put together, these enable anone to quickly and cheaply become a SaaS provider. These forces have enabled Google to become the powerhouse that they are. But they also allow ANY company to become an equal powerhouse. Nothing prevents me or any other Google user from dropping them for another provider, and as soon as I find a service that offers me more goodness, I will. Just like eBay did.
Google knows that the only true competitive advantage they have in today's hyper-competitive software/IT market is their people, which is why they treat them like kings. It won't take long for other companies to figure this out, and once they do, Google's lead will go away.
Greg Wallace
NetDirector Project Lead
is a valuable exercise, but it ought to be an open discussion and one in which all parties are honest about where they are coming from. if it's fair to label products with attribution clauses in their licenses as "badgeware," then what would the appropriate term be for products that require the use of a closed source product in order to get support, as is the case with RHEL, which requires a subscription to the closed source Red Hat Network update system? Perhaps "Ball-and-Chain Ware" or "Hinderware" would fit.
So, let's all ask ourselves - what's worse - badgeware or hinderware? At the end of the day, customers don't care, so this is really just a dispute amongst vendors. Red Hat doesn't like badgeware but loves hinderware. And badgeware providers want to get credit for their work and want to avoid getting ripped off. For my two cents, I think badgeware providers are being more honest.
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