The LinuxWorld Blog

I was very pleased last night when I received an email from Nat Friedman telling me he could do the conference kick-off... which is good, considering that I hatched the idea after watching Nat on stage at the Desktop Linux Summit. At that time, it occurred to me that we didn't have any highlight events for the conference, so I went about creating one. The result of this brainstorming activity is that on the first day, August 14, following the tutorials and labs, Nat will be the kick-off speaker.

If you're not familiar with Nat, you might be familiar with some of his pet projects - He co-founded Ximian with Miguel de Icaza, which was later bought by Novell. His title is VP of Linux Desktops at Novell, but that doesn't put his many contributions into context. He's been on the forefront of desktop free software for some time now, driving projects like Evolution, the enterprise groupware client, and now all sorts of interesting 3D stuff that is making its way into the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED).

Every year for the last eight years, there are always a few that want to announce "the year of the Linux desktop". The truth, however, is that Linux has gained features and market share on the desktop, albeit slowly, at a steady clip, and there may never be a single moment that is easily singled out as the time that Linux hit the desktop tipping point. For now, it's good to know that there is progress, and we at LinuxWorld love to highlight the good stuff for our attendees.

Posted by John Mark at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeremy Allison is a household name among the open source-aware, having co-founded the SAMBA project, continuing his role as a lead developer there, and currently serving as one of several rock-star developers now employed by Novell.

In this podcast, Jeremy Allison explains why *all* software is going free and why it's all due to the GPL. You also get to listen in as a special guest drops by to visit.

Listen to the edited version (23 mins.):

linuxpip.org/jallison.mp3

OR get the raw, uncut, full version (50 mins.) with lots more on Microsoft, patents, and other goodies:

linuxpip.org/jallison full monty.mp3

As always, you can get the latest LinuxWorld podcasts at linuxpip.org/lwpodcast.rss

Posted by John Mark at 04:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the first podcast, Jim Zemlin sounds off on the Linux desktop, free standards, and being the Switzerland of Linux-land. Jim has much to add to the standards debate, and he's done a lot to make freestandards.org worth mentioning again. Listen to Jim clarify the difference between open standards and open source:

Jim Zemlin podcast

In the next podcast, you get to hear it straight from the open source Godfather, Larry Augustin. The "other" Larry of Silicon Valley talks about his historical involvement with open source, and where things are heading in the commercial open source world. It's all about commoditization, innovation, and bad hygiene... ok perhaps not so much the latter. Somewhere in between, Larry forces me to agree with Eric Raymond.

Larry Augustin podcast

Posted by John Mark at 03:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To many of us in the world of Linux and open source, it seemed pretty clear that open source development and the democratization of software - not to mention commoditization - was turning software as product development into a 2-way street. The trend was away from nice snazzy development kits that software vendors would release every 6 months and transforming into open development processes. This required giving something of value to prospective developers in the hopes that they would find a vendor's software compelling enough to contribute to its development, whether in the form of QA, documentation, bug reports, or in a small number of cases, writing actual code. This new 2-way street forced vendors to rethink their 3rd party development strategy, because simply viewing developers as consumers wasn't going to cut it. To remain competitive, vendors had to develop communities and ecosystems, partner with individuals outside the company, and generally convert their entire development process into an SOA.

Continue reading "Open Source Developers: The New Customer/Partner" »

Posted by John Mark at 02:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Things are getting interesting in the world of Linux. In case you're keeping score:

1. Oracle buys Innodb and Sleepycat
2. RedHat buys JBoss
3. Larry Ellison says Oracle is considering getting into the Linux and "complete software stack" business (with lots of folks commenting on what this implies for Red Hat and Novell, the leading Linux distribution companies at the moment).

One gets the impression that things are just warming up. Until now, there haven't been any bitter rivalries among open source-related companies that really resonated with the general public. The jury's still out on Novell and Red Hat, although I still have hope, but with the announcements today as well as the recent actions by both Red Hat and Oracle, this could be the coming-of-age story for commercial open source companies. Oracle may not be an open source company yet, but they appear to be headed more and more in that direction.

There's a ton of speculation about this, but what's emerging so far is 1. Red Hat beware (Oracle competitor) and 2. Novell beware (Oracle acquisition). It's impossible to predict which way this will shape up, but it looks entertaining, at the very least.

Posted by John Mark at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I sat down with Clint Oram, General Manager of Sugar Online at SugarCRM, and we had a nice chat about open source communities, the CRM market, where SugarCRM fits in, and how one goes about converting downloaders into paying customers. He makes several interesting points, including talking about "passion-ware" - the deciding factor between open source and proprietary software:

LinuxWorld Podcast with Clint Oram - Part 1

Unfortunately, we were sitting outside behind a local cafe, when the garbage truck paid a visit. So, I stopped the recorder and resumed after it left:

LinuxWorld Podcast with Clint Oram - Part 2

Posted by John Mark at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now you can get the straight (audio) dope with the LinuxWorld Podcast RSS feed, instead of wading through all of the posts in the LinuxWorld Blog - get the podcast feed here.

With interviews from Larry Augustin, Jim Zemlin, and Jeremy Allison coming up, you won't want to miss it.

Posted by John Mark at 07:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)