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The luxurious Leight Star is a modern yet sophisticated vessel where no detail was left untouched. With 143 feet of contemporary external lines, four levels of spacious deck space, modern luxury interior and professional crew, she is without a doubt the premier charter yacht of the West coast.
- 18ft tender for offshore excursions
- Oversized Jacuzzi
- Master and four guest suites
- Helicopter-deck (accommodates up to Agusta A109S)
- Grand dining room
- Sun deck
- Observation tower
- Gym/Steam room

subset: commoncrawl


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By Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Email the author | Follow on Twitter on April 24, 2014 at 2:54 PM, updated April 24, 2014 at 3:30 PM
Nicole Tinson was speaking last April at a Dillard University scholarship luncheon in Los Angles, her hometown. She acknowledges that she probably shouldn't have been handed the microphone. Because when got it, she said made a bold promise. She said that as president of Dillard University's class of 2014 she was going to make sure that President Barack Obama spoke at commencement. It was only after she announced her plan that she said to herself, "I'm going to (have to) figure this out."
Tinson failed at her stated task, but it doesn't appear that anybody at Dillard cares. Because even though she didn't convince the president to come to campus for the May 10 commencement exercises, she did convince his wife, Michelle Obama.
Marc Barnes, vice president for institutional advancement at Dillard, said that Hillary Clinton spoke at commencement in 2007, after her husband Bill Clinton had been president and she had been elected to the Senate, but next month's speech by Michelle Obama will be the first one Dillard has heard presented by a current occupant of the White House.
When asked why she aimed so high in searching for a speaker to address her class, Tinson told a story that illustrates the continuing importance of historically black institutions such as Dillard. Her college counselor didn't think she should apply to college.
Nicole Tinson, political science major and senior class president of the graduating class of 2014
by hbcudigest.com
Dillard University today announced U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama as its spring commencement speaker, but many at the New Orleans historically Black college are heralding the senior class president for the historic appearance.
Nicole Tinson, a senior political science major and president of the graduating class of 2014, knew that it would take a special kind of commitment to make good on her promise of delivering a memorable commencement speaker on May 10. Tinson, named in February by the Department of Education as one of the nation's 75 'HBCU All-Stars,' wrote to the First Lady requesting that Dillard join the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Spelman College, North Carolina A&T State and Bowie State University among the FLOTUS' HBCU graduation day stops.
"I never allowed others doubt in getting a great commencement speaker to bother me," said the Los Angeles native. "I told my story [and the Dillard story] in a letter to Mrs. Obama and kept my faith. As senior class president, I made a vow to our class that we would have someone amazing for commencement and we have the FLOTUS. I don't think it gets any more amazing than that."
Dillard President Walter Kimbrough says that while the entire campus community is excited about Obama's visit, Tinson deserves the credit.
"We are so excited to host First Lady Michelle Obama as our commencement speaker. But I am more excited that our senior class president, Nicole Tinson, used her Dillard tenacity and grit to get Mrs. Obama here. Nicole did this on her own and I am so proud of her."
Dr. Beverly Wright
Dr. Wright is the founder and director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ), and is also a professor of Sociology at Dillard University in New Orleans. She has veteran advocate for environmental justice, committed DSCEJ to focusing on restoring the city of New Orleans and its residents affected by Hurricane Katrina. In 1994, her exemplary research and advisory to former President Bill Clinton landed her a place at the White House signing of the Executive Order on Environmental Justice.
By John Pope, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Email the author | Follow on Twitter on April 19, 2014 at 6:02 PM, updated April 19, 2014 at 6:05 PM
Don't let the spelling fool you. There is no "I" in Millie Charles.
Whenever the legendary social worker talks about her long life, in which she has confronted the forces of segregation, taught generations of students and done as much as she could to ensure that poor people got a fair shake, it's always in terms of a group.
"We always did things as a group," she said on a recent afternoon. "It was never an 'I'; it was always a 'we.' . . . I didn't do any of this by myself. Not any. . . . We had to work together to accomplish things. One person can't do it alone."
That statement is typical of her attitude, said Ronald McClain, president and chief executive officer of Family Service of Greater New Orleans, who earned a master's degree in social work when Charles was dean of the School of Social Work at Southern University at New Orleans.
"It's never about her," he said.
But this time, it is about her because Charles, 90, has been chosen to receive The Times-Picayune Loving Cup for 2013. The Loving Cup has been awarded since 1901 to men and women who have worked unselfishly for the community without expectation of public recognition or material reward.
"I was really surprised" by the accolade, Charles said. "I appreciate that so much, but there were so many of us together. It wasn't just one person; it was the togetherness we had."
Throughout Charles' career, "her commitment to children and families and vulnerable populations has been amazing," McClain said. "For a long, long time, she has been committed to being a change agent, to committing her life to changing things for the better."
The New Orleans-born daughter of a Baptist preacher and a woman who believed in the value of education, Millie Ruth McClelland entered Dillard University when she was only 15 and graduated with a degree in secondary education.
Click to read more at NOLA.com
First Lady Michelle Obama
(New Orleans, LA) – First Lady Michelle Obama will deliver the address at Dillard University on Saturday, May 10, when 243 students of Dillard University's Class of 2014 walk down the Avenue of the Oaks during the commencement ceremony at 10 AM.
A product of Chicago public schools, Mrs. Obama studied sociology and African-American studies at Princeton University. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1988, she joined the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin, where she later met the man who would become the love of her life.
After a few years, Mrs. Obama decided her true calling was working with people to serve their communities and their neighbors. She served as assistant commissioner of planning and development in Chicago's City Hall before becoming the founding executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program that prepares youth for public service.
In 1996, Mrs. Obama joined the University of Chicago with a vision of bringing campus and community together. As Associate Dean of Student Services, she developed the university's first community service program, and under her leadership as Vice President of Community and External Affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center, volunteerism skyrocketed.
Promoting Service and working with young people has remained a staple of her career and her interest. Continuing this effort now as First Lady, Mrs. Obama in 2010 launched Let's Move!, a campaign to bring together community leaders, teachers, doctors, nurses, moms and dads in a nationwide effort to tackle the challenge of childhood obesity. Let's Move! has an ambitious but important goal: to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation.
As First Lady, Mrs. Obama continues to work on the issues close to her heart — supporting military families, helping working women balance career and family, encouraging national service, promoting the arts and arts education, and fostering healthy eating and healthy living for children and families across the country.
Michelle and Barack Obama have two daughters: Malia and Sasha. Like their mother, the girls were born on the South Side of Chicago. Follow First Lady Michelle Obama on Twitter@FLOTUS.
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About Dillard | Academics | Admissions | Current Students | Athletics Alumni | Administration | Contact Us | College.Gov
Dillard University does not discriminate in admissions, educational programs or employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, or veteran/Reserve/National Guard status and prohibits such discrimination by its students, faculty and staff. Students, faculty and staff are assured of participation in University programs and use of facilities without such discrimination.


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- 2 years ago by Hayley Hoover
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If you're a little bit terrified of Taylor Momsen– in a good way– feel free to join the club. More
If you're a little bit terrified of Taylor Momsen– in a good way– feel free to join the club. More
As we mentioned, Celebrities love fashion week. Here's front row looks from Christina Hendricks, Taylor Momsen, Dita von Teese, and more. More
Taylor Momsen is naked and reciting some embarrassing lyrics. Granted, every 19-year-old who writes lyrics writes embarrassing ones, so it's not really Taylor's fault (though we are inclined to blame her eye makeup, which has gotten out of control). More
SHE'S AN ADULT, YOU GUYS. More
You know what I think of when I see ripped stockings? Taylor Momsen. That's right, I don't care how trendy you think that you are, I think of obnoxious, angsty teenagers when you walk around with holes in your tights as if you're defying the Man. More
Tiny terror Taylor Momsen can be seen showing off her signature goth rock style in the latest issue of Zink Magazine, which, as far as I can tell from its website, is about fashion, Canada, and something called "vaporization." But while the clothes may look like she got them at Hot Topic circa 1997, they're actually by luxury brands like Geoffrey Mac, La Perla, and Dolce & Gabbana. I'm sure they're super well-made and everything, but I'm struck by how similar fancy rocker gear tends to look to goods that can be purchased at cheap-to-mid-priced stores like H&M and Trash and Vaudeville. In any case, Momsen rocks them the way only a genuinely angsty teen can, and looks quite comfortable in her own pale skin. Maybe it's because she reminds me of high school me, but I actually find her pretty adorable. I just hope she finds a female mentor to tell her that those hair extensions are not very punk. More
Do you recognize this person? We almost didn't! That's former Gossip Girl Taylor Momsen attending last night's Marchesa show, and when we first saw the image–accompanied by a reference to someone named "Taylor"–we thought, "Well, that would be Taylor Swift's notion of edgy." …But no! It's Momsen! More
Our favorite angsty blonde fashion disaster Taylor Momsen has a super pervy cover of FHM for March–they might as well have included a shrieking countdown to announce her 18th birthday and the removal of her pants.
Mind-boggling playhouses for kids. -ShelterPop
The '70s will dominate Spring is every possible way. -Betty Confidential
Khloe Kardashian would like some attention today, too. -Celebuzz
What do "forty beads and a bowl" have to do with adding spice to your marriage? -MyDaily
Condoleezza Rice on George W. Bush's "curious mind." -XX Factor
Hanging with Taylor Momsen. -Buzznet
More photos of Karl Lagerfeld with a chocolate Baptiste Giabiconi. -Styleite
50 amazing Spring dresses for under $50. -The Frisky
…And 15 spectacular metallics to add some shine to your wardrobe. -College Candy
The preternaturally lovely Michelle Pfeiffer's style evolution. -StyleList
Would you wear "hair feathers"? -Haute Box
Wow! Taylor Momsen really covered up for her band's performance at the Hard Rock Cafe. Which means 1) the Hard Rock Cafe still exists! and 2) she must be on her way to church or something! More
The Kid's Choice Awards happened. I don't even know what that means anymore. Judging by the red* (*orange) carpet, neither do the organizers. Here are the arrivals, featuring some favorite stars of children everywhere, like Melissa Rivers, Star Jones and Tisha Campbell-Martin. More
"Do you guys like Marilyn Manson?" More
Nicole Kidman showed up to the premiere of Just Go With It in a leather skirt suit. Then I got really anxious and had to sit down for a while. More
Taylor Momsen is no longer the face of Material Girl. -Styleite
'Translating publicist horseshit' LOLs with Jay-Z and Beyonce. -Fashion Indie
Congrats to Rihanna for landing her first American Vogue cover! -Jezebel
The unstoppable Lindsey Wixson, Louis Vuitton goings-on, fun with blue nail polish and More


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Dorna has indicated that Suzuki will need to source its grid places from an existing team. What load of rubbish, why when there are so few bikes on the grid ? I remember the good old days with full grids !!!


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Such scenes ar...
Google has tested its self-driving cars in states like Nevada, Washington and Arizona. Locals near its home base in Mountain View, California, have become accustomed to seeing teeny cars that look like a koala at stoplights.
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Pregame Preview: Padres visit Dodgers, weather permitting
LOS ANGELES After heavy rains blasted much of Los Angeles Friday, the sun broke through the skies over Dodger Stadium around 5:30 p.m.
Looks like the Padres and Dodgers will play as scheduled at 7:10 p.m. (TV: Fox San Diego).
The pitching matchup is a rematch of the Padres 8-4 win over the Dodgers last weekend with left-hander Clayton Richard opposing former Padre Aaron Harang.
Last Sunday, Richard retired the first nine hitters he faced and allowed only two hits and two unearned runs over seven innings. Harang gave up four runs (three earned) on seven hits in 4 1/3 innings.
The Padres are opening a six-game road trip in Los Angeles after going 2-5 on their season-opening homestand. They will play three games at Dodger Stadium followed by three games at Coors Field in Denver. The Padres lost three of four to the Dodgers last week in the season-opening series at Petco Park.
The Dodgers are 13-3 over their last 16 games against the Padres. The Dodgers were 7-2 against the Padres at Dodger Stadium last season and 13-5 overall.
The Padres, who are hitting .179, have adjust their lineup, leaving only two right-handed bats starting against Harang. Jeremy Hermida, who is 7-for-15 lifetime against Harang, will start in right with Will Venable moving to left. John Baker will give Nick Hundley, who is off to a 0-for-19 start, a night off at catcher.
PADRES (2-5) at DODGERS (6-1)
Time: 7:10 p.m. / Game 1 of 3
TV: Fox San Diego
Radio: 1090-AM, 1700-AM; 860-AM (Spanish)
Padres LHP Clayton Richard (1-0 this season, 0.00 ERA in one start)
Richard vs. the Dodgers: 5-1 career, 2.18 ERA in eight starts.
Richard at Dodger Stadium: 2-1 career, 2.70 ERA in three starts.
Richard last Sunday retired the first nine Dodgers he faced and did not allow a hit until the fifth inning. The first two Dodgers who reached base, reached on Richard errors.
Dodgers vs. Richard
A.J. Ellis: .667 (2-for-3, SO)
Mark Ellis: .000 (0-for-1)
Andre Ethier: .105 (2-for-19, 2B, 2 SO)
Dee Gordon: .000 (0-for-3, SO)
Jerry Hairston Jr.: .000 (0-for-7)
Aaron Harang: .000 (0-for-1, SO)
Matt Kemp: .333 (7-for-21, 2 2B, HR, 2 SO)
Adam Kennedy: .000 (0-for-2, BB)
James Loney: .200 (3-for-15, SO)
Juan Rivera: .000 (0-for-3)
Justin Sellers (.000, 0-for-3, SO)
Matt Treanor: 200 (1-for-5, SO)
Juan Uribe: .429 (9-for-21, 3B, 2 HR, 2 BB, 4 SO)
Dodgers RHP Aaron Harang (0-1 this season, 6.23 ERA in one start)
Harang vs. the Padres: 3-5 career, 4.24 ERA in 11 games (10 starts).
Harang at Dodger Stadium: 1-2 career, 3.65 ERA in four starts.
San Diego native and San Diego State grad Harang, 33, was 14-7 for the Padres last season with a 3.64 ERA in 28 starts. The Padres have a lifetime .247 average against Harang.
Padres vs. Harang
Yonder Alonso: 1.000 (1-for-1, BB)
John Baker: .300 (3-for-10, 2B, 4 SO)
Jason Bartlett: .333 (1-for-3, 2 SO)
Kyle Blanks: .333 (1-for-3, HR)
Jesus Guzman: .333 (1-for-3, SO)
Chase Headley: .500 (2-for-4, 3 BB, SO)
Jeremy Hermida: .467 (7-for-15, 2B, 2 HR, BB, 2 SO)
Orlando Hudson: .222 (2-for-9)
Nick Hundley: .333 (1-for-3, 2B)
Cameron Maybin: .400 (4-for-10, HR, BB, 3 SO)
Andy Parrino: 1.000 (2-for-2, HR, BB)
Clayton Richard: .000 (0-for-1, SO)
Will Venable: .000 (0-for-2, BB, SO)
San Diego Padres
1.Cameron Maybin, CF -- .214-1-2
2.Will Venable (L), LF -- .211-0-1
3.Chase Headley (S), 3B -- .174-1-5
4.Yonder Alonso (L), 1B -- .190-0-1
5.Jeremy Hermida (L), RF -- .500-0-0
6.Orlando Hudson (S), 2B -- .130-0-1
7.John Baker (L), C --.250-0-1
8.Jason Bartlett, SS -- .250-1-1


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Peregrinations Patrick Finch's Blog https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/feed/entries/atom 2008-07-04T18:58:58+00:00 Apache Roller https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/pedal_pup_propulsion_novell_style Pedal-pup-propulsion, Novell style patrickf 2008-07-02T07:44:52+00:00 2008-07-02T14:44:52+00:00

 Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier, the puppy-kicking Novell community manager for OpenSUSE, has clearly been reading from the same press briefing as Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian.

 At the Red Hat summit in Boston, pooch-punting Zonker (not being disrespectful, I understand Zonker prefers to be called "Zonker") revealed that he is "very disappointed" that Sun hasn't "bitten the bullet and participated in Linux". By which he means, presumably, the Linux kernel, as Sun certainly does participate in many projects which are upstream of Linux distributions; indeed, it's been recorded that Sun has more code in the average Debian distro (including the software in the repositories) than anyone else.

 Beagle-booting Zonker's comments also seem to echo criticisms made of various popular Linux distros by employees of companies who produce less popular, green-themed Linux distros when they complain that the work is all downstream: "The work that's done for Solaris is done only for Solaris." Well, let's get two things clear:

 1. a lot of the work funded by Sun on OpenSolaris finds its way into projects upstream from Linux, including X.org, GNOME and important applications
 2. a lot of the work funded by Sun on OpenSolaris finds its way into other open and closed-source projects including, DTrace into Linux

 Zonker, if you must kick that puppy, please remove your misinformation boots first.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/ghost_writer Ghost Writer patrickf 2008-05-27T04:02:14+00:00 2008-05-27T11:04:19+00:00

 Seriously, is there a worse technology journalist than Sam Varghese? His column Open Sauce - A GNU Perspective (geddit?) is a train-wreck. He's very poorly informed, self-important (he considers that if he gives a product a poor review, it's "a major PR disaster"), but what's even worse: he simply can't write.

 This is the open-minded individual who insists on writing "(sic)" when quoting americanised direct speech. This is the wordsmith who crafts nonsense like Bruce Perens made what would be a move with huge repercussions, and the brainless Stormy by name, not by nature (on Stormy Peters of OpenLogic). I could go on. And indeed, I have.

 Anyway, I'm revisiting Mr Varghese's column after reading his review of OpenSolaris. I will admit that I was waiting for this one, fully expecting it to be littered with factual errors and what we might kindly describe as failures of intellectual curiosity. And I wasn't disappointed. His opening salvo:

 One still has to go through a requester/sponsor arrangement to submit a patch to the OpenSolaris project. (By contrast, the Ubuntu Linux distribution started by Canonical is now a little more than three-and-a-half years old - and there is no need to detail what it has achieved).

 We all admire Ubuntu, and no one is going to deny it has done a fantastic job in both gaining admirers within the Linux community and, crucially, growing the popularity of Linux with people who might otherwise have not used it. But still, (and ignoring the massive differences in starting points for these projects) the truth of Mr Varghese's statement really depends on who you are. There are, after all, non-Sun committers to OpenSolaris. Sure, we want more, but I challenge Mr Varghese to put back a patch to Ubuntu without a sponsor. One will always have to go through a request/sponsor arrangement unless one has committer status.

 Mr Varghese then demonstrates his ability to work the Google machine, regurgitating criticism of OpenSolaris (much legitimate - we're not claiming perfection here) from IBM employees, and then his inability to RTFM by complaining that he can't find OpenOffice.org. But then he unleashes his final barb,

  But the licence is what jars the most. It pops up in all its glorious detail right at the start of proceedings, the Community Development and Distribution Licence. It isn't compatible with the General Public Licence, an indicator, again, that Sun is still in two minds - should we (really) give it away or should we still continue to be control freaks?

 Like many people, I have a lot of respect for the GPL, but let's be clear: only the GPL is compatible with the GPL. And the CDDL is an open source license by any - any - reasonable definition, and certainly the one to which Mr Varghese appears to subscribe. Does he even read his own column? So when he writes:

  There are two Sun components that would be of interest to Linux developers if they were licensed under terms that made them portable - the ZFS filesystem and DTrace. But by the time Sun decides on whether it will open source these two, it may be time for me to bid goodbye to this world.

 Let's hope not, as that would date Mr Varghese's demise as January or December 2005. Happily, DTrace and ZFS are both now available on Solaris, Mac OS X and BSD - DTrace is even available on QNX. But should Mr Varghese read this (although the evidence is that he reads very little, at least, until he has decided what his opinion is), "open source" does not equate to GPL compatibility. If it did, why would we even have the Open Source Definition? We would just have the GPL.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/the_inadvertently_interesting_matt_asay The Inadvertently Interesting Matt Asay patrickf 2008-05-26T06:04:12+00:00 2008-05-26T18:20:46+00:00

 I've just been enjoying the vociferous complaints on the Register's semi-informed podcast Open Season by celebrity blogger Matt Asay about his "innocuous suggestion" (read: simplistic and ill-advised comment) that non-paying users are detrimental to open source. You can read it here, but before you click, you might want to consider the author's own opinion of his writing ("I almost fell asleep typing it, it's so bland.").

 Mr Asay shifts his ground between the first piece and the follow up, here. But essentially, he says this: "free riders" (which he holds to be non-paying, non-coding users of open source software) are a problem for commercial open source companies because they may encourage other paying users not to pay. Or, as Mr Asay puts it, "Why should you be the only sucker paying for what everyone else is using for free, and quite comfortably?".

 Now, it seems plausible that there is a situation for which Mr Asay's proposition makes sense: perhaps even his own business. But it's worth bearing in mind that if your customer does not know what they are paying you for, perhaps they are, indeed, a "sucker". Perhaps you have sold them something they don't need. Surely a better strategy is to have paying customers who know and value what they're paying for: be it support, indemnity, warranty, training, etc. There is seldom a free-rider problem with products that have a cost per marginal unit produced.

 As for Mr Asay's shrill complaints, he hints that it is destructive behaviour and counter to the interests of open source to disagree with him. Well, maybe. But, open source, even "commercial open source" is a broad church of motivation and business models, and it's very hard to speak for everything in the domain (never mind non-commercial open source). Much less if you're falling asleep while writing.

 So, for one thing, the term 'free riders' is a pejorative one to my ears, and implies over-consumption and/or problems in production (and frequently implies that a public good ought to be communally produced). While I doubt that Mr Asay meant to be rude about people who use open source software without paying for it, by using a term which has come from a very precise vocabulary (even if it is more commonly used these days), it might seem as if he did.

 Further, Mr Asay's comments are only applicable to projects which monetize directly. Mozilla Firefox does not charge for usage, nor does it exist on donations (although I am sure they are welcome). He appears to miss many elements of the bigger picture: that a large and growing market share leads to its own opportunities. And by regarding "contribution" only in terms of money or code (which he later expands to other activities), Mr Asay misses the point that a large user base makes it easier to grow a user base, by making your software both more accessible, and more attractive to others to develop. He seems to think that non-paying/coding users only offer the benefits that a) they are at least not paying your competitor and b) they provide an "emotional safety net who want to buy with the herd". Charming.

 Free access to software can drive growth. It can allow businesses to add capabilities which they would not otherwise have explored. In other words, they wouldn't have paid money to anyone. What's more, rather than having an emotional value, a large "non-contributing" user base can have a genuine economic value.

 Mr Asay claims that his argument was entirely uncontroversial, restating it to, "we need to find ways to get more code or cash from communities". Given the rampant success of open source, it's dubious that it needs to do much differently, but all the same, we know what he means. I'd prefer to restate it this way: to build a business in open source, usage of the software must translate into some economic benefit for the producer.

 If indeed, Mr Asay had made this highly intuitive point, his indignation at people disagreeing with him would be understandable. But by his own admission, he was sloppy in making this point, and didn't really make any others. And so, those who hold that increasing the benefit for a producer of software does not in all cases mean having a higher proportion of users to pay for access to that software could only disagree with him.

 Cheer up Matt, at least they read your blog.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/last_time_i_checked Last time I checked patrickf 2008-04-01T04:02:11+00:00 2008-04-01T11:02:11+00:00

 Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian, ("ill considered" - Redmonk), not content with the murkiness of his own company's patent arrangements with Microsoft (the two companies laughably "agreed to disagree" on whether or not their November 2006 agreement was an ackowledgement that Novell was infringing Microsoft patents), has decided to throw some mud in the general direction of OpenSolaris.

 "Rather than focusing on Microsoft, Zemlin pointed Hovsepian to Sun and Open Solaris, where his comments were unusually pointed.

 "I believe OpenSolaris has had about 60,000 downloads last time I looked," he said. "When you look at Linux downloads just last year [there were] over two million of just SUSE." Hovsepian also attacked the OpenSolaris license directly.

 "I would suggest to the customers and to the community, be careful. The way they've written their contract as soon as you look at it, you can't go back and look at Linux.

 "It's a very dangerous contract from my perspective for someone who wants to work on Linux."

 Attacking the license? Well, any old fule knows that only GPL'd code is compatible with GPL'd code. But presumably, Mr Hovsepian is scaremongering that those who work with OpenSolaris code have been exposed to patented methods and may face encumbrances if they want to put back to another code base. Is that what he's getting at? (Incidentally, his criticism remind me more of Microsoft's covenant not to sue open source developers who use Microsoft-patented methods for "non-commercial" use than anything else. Now that's dangerous.)

 Anyway, last time I checked, Sun is pretty clear on software patent policy. You can read about it from
 Mike Dillon (General Counsel), Simon Phipps and again here (Chief Open Source Officer and, ahem, my boss), Greg Papadopoulos (CTO) and Jonathan Schwartz and again here (CEO).

 Secondly, Ron Hovsepian's reported figure on OpenSolaris downloads wasn't too clear. Did he mean source code? Or binary distributions? When did he last check? And who did he check with? Of course, since Sun opened the Solaris source code, there have been millions of downloads of Solaris 10, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of downloads of Solaris Express, and I don't know how many downloads of source code, but I would put it in the tens or hundreds of thousands (I tried to calculate this, but gave up - you have the full tarball, and specific consolidations...hits per file, data transferred per file...it gets messy and I couldn't generate a figure I could stand behind). We've also had tens of thousands of downloads of the developer preview of the binary distribution coming out later in the year. Which isn't bad for an operating system that hasn't been launched yet.

 Ron, left, not right

 But enough about us. Last time I checked, Microsoft's intepretation of Novell's patent licensing agreement was,
  "If a customer says, 'Look, do we have liability for the use of your patented work?' Essentially, If you're using non-SUSE Linux, then I'd say the answer is yes," -Steve Ballmer.
More on this in the latest episode of the Register's Open Season podcast (27:20 minutes in) -this is not necessarily historical issue.

 Now this isn't Mr Hovsepian's first ill-informed and misleading attack on OpenSolaris, but I don't think that's it's really our fault. Simply put, he has a shortage of targets. I mean, who else is he going to attack? Given his position, he can't very well attack another Linux distro, and he's hardly going to attack Microsoft. Apple? For successfully porting of OpenSolaris technology into their operating system (without licensing any patents, we might point out)? Doesn't really work, does it?

 Open source needs better leadership that this.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/only_trust_a_flamboyant_braggart Only trust a flamboyant braggart patrickf 2008-01-21T06:24:25+00:00 2008-01-21T18:27:09+00:00

 Make sure you don't miss the insight of industry insider John Dvorak's coverage of the Sun-MySQL deal. He isn't falling for the clueless mainstream line that this deal actually makes any sense for the parties involved. Uh-uh.

 So what if
 "Sun has busted right into the vibrant gut of the Linux market by grabbing the M. Red Hat can sit on the box. Sun will go ahead and own your data layer though, thank you very much."

 So what if
 "In addition, Sun gets the attention of thousands of developers, including many of those P[Perl, php, Python] folks."

 "This deal stinks from top to bottom", explains Mr Dvorak. "I'm close to being convinced that Oracle wanted to buy MySQL to kill the product, but knew that it couldn't pull off the stunt itself. It would be too obvious, especially to European Union regulators. So it sent in a stooge to do the job."

 This isn't any old embarrassing pile of speculation hastily cobbled together by a self-promoting hack who needs a contrary opinion to maintain his profile. Mr Dvorak's track record on explaining the ins-and-outs of Silicon Valley is second to none. What's the secret being Google's great success?

 "Working both harder and smarter...That's all there is to it; the rest is smoke and mirrors."

 Ah, but if it's really so simple, how come no one else is doing what Google is doing? Mr Dvorak saw that one coming:

 "Right now, nobody wants to do that."  Now you know.

 So, why is the deal taking place at all? Regular Dvorak readers will know all about that: it's the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act. The high cost of regulation is forcing companies to remain private and therefore they become attractive acquisition targets. And the charming Mr Dvorak is the man to expose this fact for two reasons. He's brave and he's certainly not overpaid:

 I'm not sure if the reticence to openly carp is because of [the executive class'] generally inflated salaries that would make them look like whining divas or if it is a simple lack of courage. Probably both.

 Mr Dvorak's inescapable conclusion: if you want to eliminate deals that "stink", regulate less.

 Any sceptics who still might think that this deal will work out well for Sun, for MySQL and for MySQL customers and MySQL users will have the last vestiges of doubt blown away by the knowledge that the price Sun paid for MySQL was especially unfair, being simultaneously too high:

 "Sun cannot actually afford to spend a $1 billion on a company producing a mere $60 million in revenue and working outside its core competencies."

 and too low:

 "and there should have been a publicized bidding war resulting in a much higher price than $1 billion."

 Any student of economics knows that pricing imperfections result from a lack of information. So, who's to blame? The diplomatic Mr Dvorak reluctantly points out,

 "Part of this silence stems directly from the fact that MySQL is a Swedish company, and heaven forbid the Swedes announce their intentions or do anything that would appear flamboyant or be interpreted as (gasp) bragging! "

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 A traditional Swedish lack of flamboyance

 Swedes don't brag, see. Although this may come as news to Norwegians and Danes who recently learned that Stockholm anointed itself "capital of Scandinavia". For all that, Mr Dvorak is correct. Swedes don't boast. So as a non-Swede living here, let me note, that Sweden has been rated as

 the world's most democratic country; the best country for women (take that any way you want); performing the best on climate protection performance; the 3rd biggest exporter of music (and easily biggest per capita); the best at helping foreigners integrate; the world's leading nation brand; the world's most sustainable country by the OECD; the world's biggest investor in R&D per capita. So, why no bragging? Well, perhaps because Sweden has the world's best behaved children.

 Another piece of Mr Dvorak's that caught my eye was this one about media consolidation on the internet:

 "The only papers or news organizations that can expect to survive will be those with lots of original content available only at their individual sites."

 Well, with content this original, I'm sure we can expect to enjoy Mr Dvorak's writing on Marketwatch for a long time to come.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/just_because_it_worked_it Just because it worked, it doesn't mean we did it patrickf 2007-08-30T13:40:45+00:00 2007-08-30T21:34:55+00:00

 So is standardisation a game or a process? I ask this after reading Jason Matusow's staggering act of disingenuity about Microsoft's apparent offering of incentives and ready-formed opinions to partners (mostly Swedish IT resellers) for them to join the Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) and vote in favour of accepting Microsoft's not uncontroversial Office Open XML specification\*.

 After Computer Sweden broke this news, Microsoft helpfully clarified that they didn't actually do anything wrong because they, er, realised what they were doing was wrong. And so 18 Microsoft Gold Partners joined SIS and voted to approve Microsoft Open Office XML last Monday, in spite of these incentives being retracted. Mr Matusow says that incentives were only offered to two partners in the first place, the quote in Computer Sweden said it was "a few" ("ett fåtal").

 infinitives, hairs...whatever

 Mr Matusow wants to be clear - the incentives were retracted, and any other lobbying was not actually against any rules, and therefore fair game:

 "It is critical to note that the addition of voting members at that time was completely within the rules of the national standards body.
 ...While there are many arguments to be had over the relative merits of this rule…it is a rule nonetheless.
 ...The process and vote at SIS were not affected."

 Well, we do rather have to take his word for it, but either way, it would be only be "critical" if all you are actually interested in is the formal approval of a respected international standards body - or "playing to win". If you were seeking to make a good standard (i.e. submitting to the process), wouldn't it be critical to note that the 6 months of work that SIS delegates did examining the specification will not now see the light of day because of addition of so many parties to the vote at the very last moment?

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 \* we're told it was a "zealous" employee. For an idea of just what a zealous employee might look like, click here.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/mr_serious Mr Serious patrickf 2007-08-27T09:48:14+00:00 2007-08-27T16:48:14+00:00 Last week it was suggested that I had made a somewhat frivolous criticism of Steven J Vaughan Nichols' journalism.

 Not guilty.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/journalist_read_thyself Journalist, read thyself patrickf 2007-08-13T03:11:10+00:00 2007-08-14T10:27:16+00:00

 Self-styled Cyber Cynic Steven J Vaughan-Nichols published this piece suggesting that recent developments in the IBM-SCO case may compromise the OpenSolaris project.

 To be clear, I think that people like Steven J Vaughan-Nichols do an important job. There are times when self-conscious cynicism should be one's guiding light (as anyone who has recently wasted three hours of their weekend trying to get rid of a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesperson can tell you). Moreover, I can't comment upon the legal merits of his argument, being under-qualified (i.e. not qualified at all), not authorised and generally lacking the requisite ambition. But I can comment on the article itself.

 To wit:

  "Sun's Jonathan Schwartz -- then Sun VP of software and today Sun's president and CEO -- said in 2003 that Sun had bought "rights equivalent to ownership" to Unix.

 SCO agreed. In 2005, SCO CEO Darl McBride said that SCO had no problem with Sun open-sourcing Unix code in what would become OpenSolaris."

 As I read this, Mr J Vaughan-Nichols seems to be implying that Sun believes it bought the rights necessary to open source Solaris from SCO.

 However, clicking on the link he provides that quotes Jonathan Schwartz, one quickly realises that Mr Schwartz appears to assert rights equivalent to ownership to Unix based upon Sun's agreement with AT&T in 1992. Which is not the impression I got from Mr Vaughan-Nichols' piece. With that in mind, the article may, perhaps, seem rather less Slashdottable.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/something_must_be_done Something must be done patrickf 2007-08-08T03:25:47+00:00 2007-08-08T12:36:15+00:00

 Disparaging? Possibly. Disingenuous? Never in a million years.

 Linux kernel maintainer Andrew Morton, reports ZDNet, was rather dismissive of OpenSolaris at LinuxWorld yesterday, inviting all to rally behind the cause of, er, monocultures.

 Well, we don't expect Mr Morton to trumpet the great advances that OpenSolaris has made (which, not unreasonably, many in the GNU/Linux community are unaware of), and indeed, leading figures in the Linux community have in the past made even gloomier prognostications for Solaris.

 But Mr Morton is right on the money (in the parlance of our times) with this comment:

 It's a great shame that OpenSolaris still exists...They should have killed it...They've fragmented the non-Windows operating system world and they continue to do so

 Quite right. And let it not end there. Surely Sun might be further castigated for the UltraSPARC T2, which is continuing to fragment the non-Intel processor world. And it's a great shame that the Opera browser still exists, for they are continuing to fragment the non-Internet Explorer world. And let us not forget Gmail, which has fragmented the non-Hotmail world. And I really think it's time that O'Reilly pulled the plug on OSCON, fracturing, as it is, the non-LinuxWorld world.

 Mr Morton also goes on to say that SystemTap will eventually have all the capabilities of DTrace. For reasons why that may not prove to be the case, you can have a look at Adam Leventhal's recent postings here and here.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/three_anniversaries Three Anniversaries patrickf 2007-06-14T03:37:19+00:00 2007-06-14T10:38:38+00:00

 There are three anniversaries I'll be celebrating this week. First, it's 10 years since I joined Sun. My first job? Cold-calling customers who had stopped calling Sun. Yes, I was a tele-marketeer, and I can tell you, it is tough and thankless work. And so, whenever I get a tele-marketeer on the line at home, I try to be as sympathetic as posible while I tell them to get stuffed. Anyway, that was 1997 and I had just arrived in the Netherlands. I was looking for work and grateful for the opportunity, just as I'm grateful now that I could transfer with my family over to Sweden.

 The second anniversary this week? OpenSolaris. It's 2 years today since it was launched on a suspecting public. As a user, I think the experience of an OpenSolaris distribution on the desktop is coming on in leaps and bounds. And although I don't want to dwell on the negative, I was pleased to hear Linus Torvalds talk about OpenSolaris this week, even if I don't especially like, or agree with everything he says. I think that contrasting his comments this week with those from February 2005 shows the relevance and success of OpenSolaris.

 Let's hope he and Jonathan can have dinner soon.

 Which brings me to my third anniversary: on the 21st, our daughter Emma turns one. There is a concept in philosophy called "qualia", such as yellowness, or the taste of coffee, the properties of the senses which seem irreducible and can only be described by themselves. I'd say that being a parent is similar: the feeling of parenthood can only be described, I am sure, by being a parent. I don't think that you know love, or fear, until you have a child.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/busted Busted! patrickf 2007-05-18T06:12:08+00:00 2007-05-19T11:07:05+00:00

 It is with regret that I read Sam Varghese's critical report of Sun this week, Solaris can never be Linux. This wasn't just any old nonsense from a blogger posing as a jornalist after all, but the man, the Varg. Is there a better writer out there?

 An elegant wordsmith,
 The latest bit of spiel which juxtaposes these words,

 but always to the point,
 If anything, trying to morph one in order to make it like the other will result in something that is neither fish nor fowl. And we all know what happens when things turn out that way.

 with a fabulous command of literary references,
 Statistics are often the refuge of scoundrels

 and quick to forgive the failings of others,
 To put it in his own words:"This paper emphasizes [sic] quantitative measures"

 while maintaining his own high standards,
 There is no hyberbole, no escessive putdown.

 and, as always, in consummate good taste.
 Microsoft: shades of Saddam Hussein.

 So, when I read that whenever Mr Vaghese hears "the words Sun Microsystems and open source mentioned together [he] can't help but laugh", well, naturally, I'm concerned. And Mr Vaghese deals out a proper savaging with his irresistable combination of astute observation,

 Sun keeps talking about its dedication to the open source ideal and holding on to its code.

 quality prose,
 Last year, Sun was literally dragged kicking and screaming to the table to release Java under the GPL.

 razor-sharp reason,
 For years there have been calls to do this but Sun resisted. The act was finally done but who is interested any more?

 And industry-insider prescience,
 It isn't going to happen. Solaris isn't Linux and will never be anything like it.

 No, few survive a mauling from the pen of Mr. Sam Vaghese and laugh it off.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/it_s_feisty_alright It's Feisty, alright patrickf 2007-04-21T15:13:45+00:00 2007-04-21T22:13:45+00:00

Like many, I was tremendously excited to try the new Ubuntu release, Feisty Faun (7.04). So excited, perhaps, that I may have cut the usual corners, like backing up critical data on my laptop. Well, one gets so blase, doesn't one? The machine (an Acer Ferrari 4006) has Win XP on one partition, Ubuntu Dapper on the second and Solaris Express Developer Edition on the third.

 Anyway, this morning I bravely plunged in with my freshly burned copy of Feisty, and hit the wall imemdiately. And this, really, is my error. So used have I become to Ubuntu practically installing itself that I was surprised that I actually needed to read instructions during the process. Unbelievable. After 20 minutes of swearing and repeatedly trying the same, failed operation, I read the instructions and actually specified my root partition as requested...and the rest was as easy as ever.

 What I had not realised, however, was that the GRUB boot loader that a GNU/Linux OS installs does not work with Solaris. Naively, I had just expected to edit the GRUB menu from Ubuntu and bobs-your-uncle, triple boot again, as I have done so many times from the GRUB menu in Solaris. Not so. What I understand, having spent a thoroughly objectionable hour this morning (and naturally, entering into the same spirit myself) is that Linux's GRUB won't recognise the Solaris file system, which judging by the error messages I have researching (can one say regoogling?) this morning, adds up.

 Anyway, I'm happy to say, docs.sun.com came to the my rescue. If, like me, you upgrade a Linux partition on a machine with a Solaris partition, and, like me, you're an idiot, here is what I recommend you do:

 0. (Because I forgot to) Write down the GRUB entry for your Linux image
 1. Boot one of the OpenSolaris live CD distos (Belenix works very well)
 2. Mount your Solaris root partition
 3. Reinstall your original GRUB using /sbin/installgrub
 4. Reboot into your Solaris environment and add the Linux entries to GRUB

 Really, I was quite surprised that Ubuntu's GRUB doesn't support Solaris filesystems. Apparently the fix has been submitted to the GRUB project and will be integrated eventually...

 Anyway, someone once said, experience is knowledge, everything else is merely information.

 So, Feisty's up, and it's very impressive. It is fantastic to be able to apt-get Java packages, it's full of nice surprises (and naturally, one or two disappointments), and generally feels very polished indeed. I do, however, rate the chances of getting my Broadcom wireless card up on a ndiswrapper or getting Beryl up on my ATI card as slim-to-narrow, at least, not before bedtime.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 pps. if anyone manages a more cack-handed install than that, please do let me know

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/what_if_i_do_like What if I do like brown? patrickf 2007-03-29T14:56:08+00:00 2007-03-29T22:58:48+00:00

 I reckon I'm the first person ever to get a kicking on LugRadio for using Linux. But yes, I quite agree with Jono that you should eat your own \*\*\*ing dogfood (as he put it. I believe that the phrase used around here is that we "fly our own planes"). This is why I do boot Solaris Express, Ubuntu and Win XP on my laptop. Windows only to evaluate software and to use Second Life - the Linux Second Life client seemed flaky as you like to me.

 Anyway, thanks for the clarification, chaps. Solaris Express definitely is ready. I'm using it almost exclusively for work, and Dapper for play.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/in_defence_of_red_hat In defence of Red Hat (sort of) and trademarks patrickf 2007-03-28T03:56:58+00:00 2007-03-28T12:00:42+00:00

 Is Red Hat Acting Like Microsoft? was the question posed by eWeek this, er, week, in relation to this blog, accusing Red Hat of distinctly Redmond-like behaviour. Specifically, Red Hat sent a cease and desist letter about the use of a trademark to a Mr Bill Dudney whose company is offering training courses on Hibernate, a Red Hat-owned JBoss product. Mr Neward concludes,

  Folks, RedHat has officially moved into the "Big Corporate Entity Seeking Profit At Any Expense" category. So much for the Open-Source-Can-Really-Make-Money-Too-We-Swear poster child, if you ask me...

 After appearing in the trade press, Mr Neward has gone futher, claiming that the issue isn't about the use of trademarks (which he sporadically confuses with copyrights and "IP issues", whatever they are), but that the use of the trademark "Hibernate" appears to denote a relationship with RedHat - which sounds like the use of a trademark to me.

 Trademarks have really had a bad press recently. Naomi Klein's influential No Logo made trademarks (and brands) the object of ire for a generation disaffected with the evident results of globalisation. I don't hold with Ms Klein, thinking that sweatshops and extreme (and even mild) poverty and inequality are the things we should fight against and that free trade, in most forms, is a good thing (although I'm dubious about the coerced liberalisation of foreign capital markets). Of course, Ms Klein's book helps those in the west react against globalisation by giving them something near at hand and easily identifiable (by design) to attack: logos. In my view a better take on the potential harm of globalisation (from an economic perspective, rather than a cultural one), would be Joseph Stiglitz' fascinating Globalisation and its discontents.

 As for trademarks which facilitate brands, they play an important economic role:

  Trademark law... was not intended to promote any particular way of acting, but simply to enable buyers to know what they are buying. Richard Stallman

 Some brands have, as we know, taken on their own cultural significance for better or for worse, but by and large they help us identify who we are doing business with and they help us hold them to account. And accountability is important, a point apparently lost on the three conference attendees who asked not to be identified in the eWeek article. (of course, anonymity is important too). Trademarks require a degree of policing. Google know this, as do DuPont (nylon) and Otis Elevators (elevators).

 And why is accountability especially important to Red Hat? Open source represents, from a certain perspective, the liberalising of the software market. It vastly reduces barriers to entry for suppliers, and barriers to exist for users. This is a good thing. Given that a company is supplying open source software which is, in theory, able to be compiled to binary by any Tom, Dick or Harry, how do you differentiate? It's your trademark. That's the brand that certified your operating system is supported, and that applications are supported on your operating system. And that is the value that Red Hat brings to its customers and it's what their business is and it's why I agree with Mark Shuttleworth (and the rest of the known universe) that it will be tough for Oracle to fork Red Hat. I don't consider this anti-community. Open source is not a free-for-all: it is fair-for-all, and Red Hat surely have a right to their trademark without being labelled "seeking profit at any expense".

 Although the actions of large competitors like Oracle might well explain why Red Hat are twitchier about their trademarks than might otherwise be the case, allegations that Red Hat is behaving like Microsoft are surely wide of the mark - they are behaving like a company who is concerned about the use of its trademark. There is such a thing as "fair use" of a trademark (whether or not it is applicable is lost on me though, not being a lawyer), but any question about the Red Hat's behaviour is about wisdom, and not morality. It is surely about the extent to which they are able to encourage a community for their technology at any (as perceived by them) expense of the integrity of their trademarks. Not something I'd know about.

 What I do know is that there needs to be an open source equalivalent of Godwin's Law. As an open source companies mature, the probability of a comparison involving Microsoft approaches one.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer, I am not a lawyer and know nothing of trademark law (this is advice to no one), and I don't mean to specifically associate Microsoft with any totalitarian ideologies of the mid 20th Century.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/the_map_and_the_signpost The map and the signpost patrickf 2007-03-21T23:38:05+00:00 2007-03-22T07:38:05+00:00

 No disrespect to Microsoft employee Brad Abrams who makes a lot of good noises according to this article in Internetnews, but he makes the oft-repeated mistake (amplified by the reporting journalist) that open source style guru Eric Raymond's famous essay, "The Cathedral & the Bazaar" makes a simple distinction between proprietary software development (cathedrals) and open source development (bazaars).

  During a morning keynote, Abrams declared that Microsoft is not the cathedral and that open source isn't really a bazaar when it comes to AJAX, a claim that undermines one of the core underpinnings of the open source movement...Among open source's many core tenants the book highlighted is that proprietary vendors such as Microsoft are closed, monolithic structures – the cathedral -- while open source operates in bazaar fashion where things are all done out in the open and with the community.

 Those who have actually read Mr Raymond's essay (and I would tend to think that this includes only a minority of people who refer to it in conference keynotes) know that the distinction being drawn is actually between different project governance models and that they may apply to software development in any context: proprietary will tend towards cathedral-style development, but there are plenty of open source projects that follow the model too. It's neither a core underpinning, nor a core tenant.

 The brilliance of Raymond's essay is, at least in part, that it uses a metaphor for the title which lets everyone feel they've understood it before they've read it. One might question Mr Raymond's views on politics, race, religion, firearms, sexuality and software package management, but he certainly understands a thing or two about marketing.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/class_acts_and_first_but Class acts, and first but-no-class patrickf 2007-03-20T01:35:02+00:00 2007-03-20T09:35:44+00:00

 There's lots of coverage in the media about the greatly respected Ian Murdoch joining Sun as Chief Operating Platform Officer. With the kind of informed insight for which The Register is famous, it has a bash at interpreting Ian's comments on the importance of usability.

  We guess that means getting a Solaris install down from a day to about an hour.

 Well, maybe it's me, but with the recent updates to the installation process, I found the install of Solaris Express Developer Edition not too bad at all. I backed up my user account, repartitioned my disk, and did a new install in just over an hour. I did it last Sunday while looking after my baby daughter. Now it certainly isn't as easy as Ubuntu, but I had more problems when I tried Fedora (not a dig, by the way, just a confession of incompetence). I urge Drew Cullen of The Register to give it a go.

 Elsewhere, and as Barton says, at the risk of seeming a suck up, I also saw that eWeek anointed my boss the 58th most influential person in IT. I'm not saying Simon is demanding, but I am sure he will want to know who got 57th place. (Kidding Simon!).

 Meanwhile back in the Register I read this story about a Mr Paul Trinder, who it seems was flying first class from Delhi to London and was inconvenienced no end by the grieving relatives of a woman who had died on board ("Then the relatives were allowed to sit in First Class and spent the next five hours wailing and weeping"). No doubt it was an unpleasant experience for all concerned, but it seems that Mr Trinder's first class ticket didn't just cost him £3,000, but also any sense of empathy and compassion.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/backtracking_with_diginity Backtracking with diginity patrickf 2007-03-18T23:22:26+00:00 2007-03-19T07:22:26+00:00

 Great .NET blog

 "It really annoys me when journalists just don't get it"

 well, quite.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/the_land_where_time_stands The land where time stands still patrickf 2007-03-14T05:26:54+00:00 2007-03-14T17:51:25+00:00

 I had to doublecheck the date on this article again. Former Sun employee Adrian Keward has been busy laying into, er, Sun. According to Techworld, Mr Keward "knows where the bodies are buried -- and he's been showing us around the graveyard."

 I took against this piece for two reasons. Firstly, when did this use of double hyphens come in? I see it all the time -- these days. What's the purpose of this redundant punctuation? Anyone know?

 Secondly, I think that any independent observer would say that there has been a sea-change at Sun, in Solaris, in open source and in hardware, over the last three years. Mr Keward's perception of Sun's failings circa 2004 is hardly news. (Incidentally, Mr Keward appeared in the first season of LugRadio, while still at Sun. Respect. You can hear him  here.)

 Quickly, or as quickly as possible, let's rehash his arguments. He was responding to my colleague, (and I should say friend and fellow Liverpudlian), Jim Craig who made the point that Solaris is being adopted on the x86 platform and that sometimes, people buying what they think is a substitutable Linux distro on a white box are not realising all the benefits they expected. (Red Hat on Itanium, anybody?). This, of course, gets reported as "trashing Linux".

 Anyway, Mr Keward's less than cogent argument is says that Sun's focus is hardware and that software is entirely subservient to this, that OpenSolaris is an act of desperation, that Sun is pushing a proprietary platform and that support outside US is not good enough ("there's only two people in the Europe").

 He goes on to say that Sun has lost $5bn and is "propped up" by "Microsoft patent money" (not the first time I've seen a Novell employee try to confuse their own controversial deal which rather circumvents the spirit of the GPL with Sun's out of court settlement for antitrust and patent issues).

 Well, my goodness me. Do you think that George Bush will get reelected? I wonder what effect the expansion of the EU will have. Looking forward to the Athens Olympics?

 Sorry for the whithering sarcasm, but this is laughable and I'm astonished that it's reported without moderation. Mr Keward is apparently out of touch with Sun's x86 and x64 hardware lines, the GPLing of the T1, Sun's great investment in Solaris prior and subsequent to OpenSolaris, Sun's leading position in eco-responsible hardware, the hundreds of sustaining engineers that Sun employes across Europe. And the $5bn? Clearly, he's overlooking Sun's recent acqusitions, including Storagetek ($4.1bn).

 But it was the end of the article really raised my eyebrows. Mr Keward describes Sun's approach to open source as "opportunistic" and expresses a hope that Sun will "do the right thing", but sadly, "the market's moved on."

 How, I wonder, does he explain 4 consecutive quarters of market share growth and a return to profitability? And, (even) closer to my heart, how can he describe Sun's enormous contribution to Free software as "opportunistic"? And lastly, what should Sun learn from Novell in order to be "doing the right thing"? I'm all ears.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/proof_that_monocultures_are_a Proof that monocultures are a bad thing patrickf 2007-02-02T03:21:42+00:00 2007-02-02T11:21:42+00:00

 OK, it isn't a publication I read very often, but I will be less and less inclined to turn the pages of Express Computer, India's "only IT business weekly". The time-travelling editorial (dated 5th February 2007) surveys the future of Linux. It has this to say about Sun:

  Then there's OpenSolaris, Sun's gambit in the Open Source game. It threatens to muddy the waters of 'free as in speech, not beer' software.

 Two sentences, two misrepresentations. Firstly, OpenSolaris is hardly the extent of Sun's interest in open source. But that's unimportant. What is important is the second statement, implying that OpenSolaris is licensed under a gratis but not free-in-the-sense-of-freedom license. Clearly, Express Computer thinks it knows something about Free Software that the Free Software Foundation doesn't. Either that or India's "only IT business weekly" published a poorly-researched editorial.

 Who is really muddying the waters here?

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/a_week_is_a_long A week is a long time in technology journalism patrickf 2007-01-05T04:22:07+00:00 2007-01-05T12:22:07+00:00

  Schwartz's decision regarding Java will be remembered as a high point of 2006, and further proof that commercial vendors must find a way to ride, not fight the open source wave.
 Infoworld's Paul Krill looking back at 2006, December 11, 2006

 In fact, the Java open sourcing might parrot the Year 2000 switch: much talked about and much feared by some, but in the end, it registered a resounding thud and life went on as it always had.
 Infoworld's Paul Krill looking forward to 2007, December 18, 2006

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/if_the_devil_is_in If the devil is in the details, this man is a saint patrickf 2006-12-12T01:52:53+00:00 2006-12-12T12:53:34+00:00

 Bigger-picture CEO of Active Grid, (and former Sun employee) Peter Yared recently offered his own perspective on the Novell-Microsoft detail. If we, in the mot du jour, parse, what the Mr Yared was saying, it boils down to this. Critics of the deal don't understand what is good for open source and the IT market. In fact, it represents a maturing of the sector, that Microsoft is "learning to play well with others" and compete on more equal terms.

 I am not sure I agree with what Mr Yared wrote. Firstly, and most perhaps most trivially, Yared casts some FUD in the direction of NetBeans contrasting this deal with the Microsoft antitrust settlement with Sun of a few years ago:

  It [the antitrust settlement] did not, however, cover open-source developers. So let's say you download an open-source project like the NetBeans tool from Sun, add some cool features and redistribute your version of the tool. You have now violated hundreds of Microsoft patents on tools, and they can come after you.

 You see, the Novell-Microsoft deal included a statement that Microsoft wouldn't assert patent rights against non-commercial developers (and Microsoft helpfully clarified that this meant people who are not employed to write software, but that this did not apply to any software works they may create). The irrelevance of this seems to have escaped Mr Yared. No major corporation is going to spend a lot of money to take a non-commercial developer to court. They will almost certainly assert any patent claims against any commercial distribution or use of the resulting software.

 More materially to Mr Yared's argument, is the claim that that the deal is about competition, with Linux vendors getting to terms with Microsoft:

  The reality of the technology business is that virtually every deal between big companies includes bilateral patent protection. Company A cross-licenses its patents with Company B. Neither acknowledges that the other is ripping off any intellectual property. Rather, each now has a finger on a legal atomic football that threatens to blow up both businesses if either goes to court to litigate for some bogus market advantage.

 And if you're uncertain of what an atomic football looks like, here's a picture:

 £4.00 from JJB Sports

 Mixed-metaphors aside, I think we understand the model. We're talking about a stand-off of companies with large patent portfolios all agreeing not to use them to disrupt eachothers' business. But it is here that Mr Yared loses touch with the press release.

 A lot of people are saying Novell is paying "royalties" to Microsoft. Microsoft is paying Novell $108 million for Novell's patents, and Novell is paying Microsoft $40 million for Microsoft's patents. Or if you can do simple math, Microsoft is paying Novell $68 million for the patent agreement and then hundreds of millions more for Novell Suse Linux licenses and marketing expenses. Novell definitely came out on top here.

 Well...yes, a lot of people are saying that Novell is paying "royalties" to Microsoft incluing Microsoft and, er, Novell, in their press release annoucing the deal:

 Novell will also make running royalty payments based on a percentage of its revenues from open source products.

 So this is most assuredly not a one-off cross-license deal as Mr Yared represents it, but an ongong royalty payment from Novell to Microsoft on open source products, which Novell presumably thought would garner some "bogus market advantage", as Mr Yared would put it. Whatever Novell's subsequent protestations, there is an implication that open source vendors with a similar product portfolio are somehow beholden to Microsoft. Mr Yared seems unaware of this, otherwise how could he write that it is good for open source?

 The use of massive libraries of patents used by corporations (even if used defensively) on their own behalf is hardly something to celebrate, and hardly good for open source. It is another barrier to entry to the market, and reduces competition on what should be one of the most level of playing fields. By Mr Yared's logic, it would be very hard for a new company to enter the market for distributing GNU/Linux operating systems unless that company already had a vast patent portfolio, and that's even ignoring (as Mr Yared apparently does) the ongoing royalty payments.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/buy_this_-_it%27s_encumbered Buy this - it's encumbered patrickf 2006-11-22T02:29:21+00:00 2006-12-08T09:31:05+00:00

 As Toby pointed out yesterday the Microsoft-Novell deal does still endure, even if the contentment does not. However, I do not see how this partnership can have legs in the long run:

 I will tell you that at a personal level I've been very impressed with the integrity and the approach they took to creating this working relationship.
Novell, 2nd November

 Since our announcement, some parties have spoken about this patent agreement in a damaging way, and with a perspective that we do not share. We strongly challenge those statements here.
Novell, 20th November

 The thing is, anyone who watched the webcast of the announcement (at which Novell execs were present), cannot be that surprised. About 7 minutes in, Steve Ballmer makes it very clear that it was the resolution of "IP issues" that paved the way for the deal, and the Microsoft lawyer makes it clear that Novell will be paying royalties to Microsoft on open source shipments.

 During the webcast, the deal is trumpeted by Microsoft as an innovative "IP bridge" between the worlds of open source and proprietary software. What I took that to mean was that Microsoft were laying claim to IP that Novell were shipping, but know that under the terms of the GPL, they cannot cross-license their patents in a commercial relationship. What I took the "innovation" to mean was that Microsoft had a non-assert covenant with Novell's customers, thus circumventing the spirit, if not the letter, of the GPL.

 Anyway, the nub of the matter is this: the value of this deal to Novell was that Microsoft would endorse and jointly market Novell's Suse Linux. I would love to hear that sales pitch now. "Microsoft endorses Novell Suse Linux because we believe that it contains unlicensed IP, something we are in dispute with Novell about." I don't know about you, but I'm not buying.

 p.s. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/is_%22agreeing_to_disagree%22_the Is "agreeing to disagree" the same as just "disagreeing" ? patrickf 2006-11-21T06:47:30+00:00 2006-11-21T14:51:57+00:00

 Well, that didn't take too long. The Microsoft-Novell deal seems to have had the longevity of a mayfly. An agreement has broken out between the two companies as reported by ZDNet.

  Microsoft and Novell have agreed to disagree on whether certain open source offerings infringe Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents. The agreement between our two companies puts in place a workable solution for customers for these issues, without requiring an agreement between our two companies on infringement.

 Whether or not the deal contains any "unknown unknowns" or an exception which proves a rule, the plain-speaking spokesperson apparently declined to comment.

 So, is this "workable solution" that Novell's customers pay Microsoft as though they are infringing patents without Novell actually admitting they are? Sounds like a rum deal to me.

 ps. the view expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/read_all_about_it Read all about it patrickf 2006-11-14T04:59:56+00:00 2006-11-14T18:10:59+00:00

 After the annoucement about the open sourcing of Sun's Java platform implementations, we're working on getting downloadable .ogg formats of the videos ready. When they are, they will be here:

 sun.com/opensource/java

 In the meantime, there's plenty to read about following the annoucement:

  I work for a LARGE government contractor and have had a hard time getting management to realize Open Source in general and the GPL in particular aren't bad for business. Open source here has the same connotation as red communism. Can't get many of them to stop calling it freeware. With Sun making Java GPL they won't have the choice of sticking with that attitude anymore. Many of our existing projects use Java already!
 The one reason we hadn't thought of for open sourcing Java technology at Slashdot

  I felt a great disturbance in the slashdot, as if millions of "sun is the next redmond" trolls cried out in terror, and then vanished.
 You can never fail to score with a Star Wars reference.

  one of the strongest motivations to select the GPL was the announcement made last week by Novell and Microsoft, suggesting that free and open source software wasn't safe unless a royalty was being paid. As an executive from one of those companies said, "free has to have a price."

 That's nonsense.

 Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz with some topical comment

  I'm glad it's been done. I guess this will cement Java as a language that can't die until it's userbase says so... I am, however, not sure how this will help Sun. Where I work, most of the systems are Windows and Java. We don't need Sun anywhere. With the license change, we still don't need Sun anywhere...
 Missing the point, but we're happy your Java is Free, a comment left on Jonathan's blog

  You traded the risk of losing control of Java over losing the community. This is great! Now I can stop feeling dirty and having nightmares.
Intruiging comment left on Jonathan's blog

  Sun's strong commitment to open source Java would speed the development of a first class and compatible open source Java implementation to the benefit of our customers and the industry.
 IBM's Super Bowl winning VP of Emerging Technolgy, Rod Smith, February, 2004

 We have discussed with Sun our strong belief that Sun should contribute their Java technologies to Apache rather than starting another open-source Java project
 Well, you can't please everybody. Rod Smith, yesterday.

  The frigging GPL! Come on, you people, celebrate some more! This is extremely good news--it means I can use java. It means I can do my homework (yep, I'm a student and liking it) on my own computer. It means I can do my homework without ethical worries. It means I'll start writing java just because I like the language.
 LugRadio forums excitement

 But what really struck me watching the web conference was Sun's embrace of a permeable, transparent development process across their software engineering organization. I believe that is just as important as the licensing decision.
 A very gracious Mike Milinkovich offers congratulations.

 Frankly, I think Sun finally did this because it had no choice in the matter.
 eWeek's in-no-way-dour Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols manages to remain calm.

 They timed that so good that they could have took the balls off a gnat. LugRadio forums again.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/if_you_love_something%2C_let If you love something, let it go... patrickf 2006-11-07T05:17:01+00:00 2006-11-07T13:17:01+00:00

 I'm following the fallout from the Microsoft-Novell deal with interest. I don't agree that this is equivalent to any cross-licensing deal. The implications for the GNU/Linux community, which does extend beyond Novell, are obvious to all.

 What may not have been obvious to Ron Hovespian last week, but is increasingly obvious to Novell's customers, is the liability they take on by using Novell's Suse Linux, as evidenced by this quote on the thoroughly likeable Ted Haegar's blog:

  Will Novell release a Free and Open version of Linux in the future that is \*NOT\* covered by this Microsoft IP agreement? We long liked and supported Suse Linux, but can't use it if its own distributor thinks it contains protected Microsoft IP. We look forward to Novell releasing a new version of Linux that is \*NOT\* covered by this relationship.

 If you migrate from Suse Linux, it seems that Micrsoft might consider legal action.

  "If a customer says, 'Look, do we have liability for the use of your patented work?' Essentially, If you're using non-SUSE Linux, then I'd say the answer is yes," Ballmer said.

 This is free software without the freedom. Novell say that this is all about serving their customers' best interests. However, their customers seem to recognise that interoperability is poor substitute for the freedom to choose. And being free to choose means being free to leave.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/free_as_in_paying_royalties Free as in paying royalties to Micrsoft patrickf 2006-11-04T05:21:28+00:00 2006-11-04T13:33:43+00:00

 Simon persuaded me to stay up and watch the webcast of press conference of the Microsoft-Novell deal. It started late and we had to sit through music that would have been more at home in a lapdancing club. It didn't end there.

 You can read about the details elsewhere, both from those who are shocked, and those who justify it as doing what is right for Novell's customers.

 It was all about bridges. They were building bridges. They were bridging the divide. The was a new "Intellectual Property Bridge" between the world of open source and that of proprietary software. Hmmm. Why all the metaphor? What is this bridge? And why couldn't they be more explicit about it?

 Later, when clarifying what this "IP Bridge" means, Steve Ballmer corrected himself three times: it was patent peace, no, it was coverage, er, a settlement. Finally, he settled on resolution. It seems that Microsoft agree not to assert patent claims against Novell customers for their use of Suse Linux, and given that Novell consider this part of a deal with Microsoft, they are clearly tacitly endorsing the view that GNU/Linux does infringe Microsoft owned patents.

 Stacked against that, Jeff Jaffe of Novell claimed that open source, and the open source community is very important to Novell and that this deal helped open source in three ways:
 1. Microsoft's decision to enter a partnership was a recognition of the importance of GNU/Linux
 2. Microsoft agreed not to assert patent infringement claims against individual open source developers
 3. Novell and Microsoft would collaborate on certain open source projects

 Well, I would think that most people don't care about #1 and #3 (in fact, they're laughable), but what about #2, which was also flagged in the joint letter to the open source community?

  More importantly, Microsoft announced today that it will not assert its patents against individual, non-commercial developers. Novell has secured an irrevocable promise from Microsoft to allow individual and non-commercial contributors the freedom to continue open source development, free from any concern of Microsoft patent lawsuits. That's right, Microsoft wants you to keep hacking.

 In the mediacast, the Microsoft lawyer clarified this: this applies to individuals not creating code as a part of their job, and that this promise does not run to anyone who employs them. They are welcome to "keep hacking". I actually discussed this very issue with a patent lawyer at Sun a while ago. He said that a corporation would never bring a lawsuit against a private individual in this manner. It is expensive, and the developer's liabilities (a non-commercial private individual developer we're talking about) would be very low. Even if you won your claim, you would lose money. And even if you could prove that the patent infringement was done willfully, a private individual whose code was not used commercially would not present an attractive target for litigation.

 As far as I can tell, Microsoft's irrecovable promise is about as profound as Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian's understanding of open source.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/the_economist_on_open_source The Economist on open source patrickf 2006-10-23T16:13:21+00:00 2006-10-24T06:17:07+00:00

 Back in March, I read formerly Iraq-war supporting British weekly The Economist's report on open source, which wrapped up with a quote from no less an authority on open source than, er, Microsoft's Bill Hilf:

 "We have quite a few programs in Microsoft where we take software and distribute it to the community in an open-source way," gushes Bill Hilf, director of platform technology strategy at the company. Open source could enjoy no more flattering tribute than that.

 I disagree: rather more flattering to open source, surely, is Microsoft's lobbying against open source at the European Commission through the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC) (sic). The ISC (sic) is actually comprised of "more than" 280 companies, united by "concerns...that policy makers, through government procurement policies, research funding or standards efforts, may seek to favor one software development model over another." Members include Alnafitha Information Technology (Saudi Arabia), the fantastically-named Baltic Amadeus (Lithuania), Rediversa (El Salvador), and Autodesk, EDS, Intel and Microsoft Corp (all USA). They wrote on the 10th October to the European Commission to offer "added insight into the narrow role governments play in promoting software development".

 One public sector IT offical they need not have concerns over, is Richard Steel of Newham Borough Council, London. According to him, "Open source is a bit of a red herring. It's just a piece of software at the end of the day." Well, it is certainly a piece of software at the start of the day. By the end of the day, hopefully, it is a production installation. But perhaps by the end of the week it is, in fact, some unforseen license costs. And by the end of the month, an expensive customisation delivered by the vendor. And by the end of the support contract, a lock-in to a a vendor with pricing power over you. And by the end of system life, it may be a relinquished control over your technological roadmap. Anyway, it isn't for me to tell Mr Steel his business, it certainly sounds like he has done well for Newham Borough, and, as he says, "I don't want to be risking new technology." As for security concerns, well, "I have technical people to worry about that," declared an apparently insouciant Mr Steel.

 But back to The Economist, where last week I read this piece, about the inefficacy of certain voting machines to be used in the upcoming mid-term elections in the United States.

 In September three scientists at Princeton University got hold of the most popular touch-screen model [of voting machine] and took it and its software to bits. They found serious flaws allowing a competent hacker to infect the machine with a program to transfer votes from one candidate to another. Such a change could be undetectable without a recount (assuming one were possible), and the program could be introduced into the machine far in advance by anyone having access to the machine's memory-card reader for as little as a minute ... Voting-machine companies make things worse by keeping their software secret: were it published, security experts would be able to assess it and recommend fixes.

 The remedy to these security problems?

 open access to machine software.

 Here we have the free-market, anti-intervention, small-government Economist, advocating government procurement policites should favour open source software in procurement policies.

 An increasingly shrill ISC expresses a view that the European Commission is "intolerant to opposing comments that do not fall in line with the Commission's agenda, and thus a closed process has ensued which clearly limits the input from dissenting, or diverging points of view". Including the point of view, it seems, that governments should not prefer software which offers better hope of safeguarding the democratic process.

 ps. the views expressed here, not to mention the sardonic tone, are not necessarily those of my employer

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/bold_as_in_bald_faced "Bold" as in "bald-faced" patrickf 2006-08-17T07:21:01+00:00 2006-08-17T14:26:32+00:00

 Now, I wonder what's is appearing the the IBM executives' briefings these days that Big Blue execs suddenly have the need to be so disparaging about Sun's open source efforts? Jim picked up the first trickle of this at the start of the month, since when the floodgates have opened.

 Dan Frye, IBM's VP of Linux Technology described OpenSolaris as  "a facade" with "lots of marketing". Well, speaking as one of the people working on marketing OpenSolaris, that's very kind of you Dan, but modesty forbids me for taking credit for all the community-driven distros, bugs logged, code contributed, projects started, community discussions, and ports by other communities of OpenSolaris technology. Anyway, it seems that Mr Frye concluded that OpenSolaris is "not a competitive threat" to IBM, and therefore naturally spends his (presumably valuable) time being disparaging about it.

  Well that's Handy

 And there's more: "We're going to be as bold about open source as we are about Linux," says Scott Handy, VP of Linux and open source at IBM. My goodness. Just how bold? We can ask Ross Mauri, general manager of System P business at IBM who two weeks ago told us,

 We're not going to open-source AIX. It's best run on the current model, where we have the expertise. We enhance it. We work closely with our customers to listen to their requirements. But in the end, it's best that we control that source code.

 If you think about it, that is sort of bold, but not quite what I'd imagined. However, Mr Handy agrees as the IBM VP of open source says there is no point open sourcing AIX, nor PowerPC, (the way Sun has done with Solaris and UltraSPARC). The fear of forking and a previously undiagnosed lack of "room" (his word, not mine) are to blame for this.

 What is going on? Why the need to sling mud at Sun's open source efforts? Why, as Rick Ross wrote at Javalobby, would IBM want to engage a public pissing contest in this way at this time, just as Sun finally makes long-awaited moves towards open sourcing Java?

 Why indeed? Perhaps as part of a wider strategy to try to discredit Sun's efforts in promoting fairly-governed, fairly-licensed open source communities, to try and foment disquiet about the governance that Sun will be putting in place around open source Java? That would be very old IBM. And although I do get a certain thrill from looking at grainy footage of moon landings, grassy knolls and prinstine Pentagon lawns, that was a conspiracy theory too far for me.

 And then I read Mike Milinkovich's blog, in which the clairvoyant Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation stands by his "we're all doomed" speech (he did call it a "prognostication" after all) from JavaONE. It seems that Mr Milinkovich's tea leaves have revealed to him that Sun will use the CDDL, that governance will be "all-Sun" and that "people will hate [Sun] for it".

 He also adds, somewhat coquettishly,

 I hope Rich Green hasn't forgotten my email address, as I have to admit that I find Eclipse's conspicuous absence from their lists of examplars to be somewhat disheartening.

 I think that Sun has been very open about how to engage the opening of Java. Just in case you missed it, have a peek here. But more alarming to me are his assertions that people will "hate" Sun for using the CDDL, and his characterisation of the nascent OpenSolaris governance model. The soothsaying executive director has confused the (Sun minorty) advisory board with the governance model they have set about creating: Simon Phipps sets about correcting this on the blog itself.

 Anyway, the Jeremiah of Java leaves himself plenty of room to find fault later on (his vague predictions could be construed to cover copyright, governance, licensing, contributor agreements etc. etc.), and I won't be too surprised to read an "I told you so" or two in a few months. It worked for Nostradamus after all.

 Anyway, my favourite comment is from someone by the name of MJS, identifying the double-speak in all this. As he puts it:

 And don't get me started on the "why don't you come join the eclipse-community?"-thread. If Eclipse had wanted Sun to join them you wouldn't have selected such an offensive (to Sun, at least) name in the first place.

 Well quite. IBM and the Eclipse Foundation both make great contributions to the worlds of open source and Java. Idea: why not talk about those instead?

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/pretentious_is_what_the_caterpillar Pretentious is what the caterpillar calls the butterfly patrickf 2006-08-15T02:46:30+00:00 2006-08-15T09:46:30+00:00

 I read with dismay Dana Gardner's blog Ambiguity over open sourcing Java only serves Sun's detractors in which a self-serving Sun detractor spreads ambiguity about open sourcing Java.

 Especially goat-getting was the implication that the Common Development Distribution License (CDDL), a license under consideration and currently used for OpenSolaris and Glassfish, is "pseudo open source":

  Sun should take the bold and necessary step on SE and go GPL so that Java can be part-and-parcel with Linux and other GPL-oriented middleware stack distributions...How about OpenSolaris while you're at it? Swap CDDL for GPL with OpenSolaris...Otherwise, the developers, ISVs, and enterprise architects will see more complexity and potential for legal and procedural "gotchas" amid a software license stew, and just side-step the whole party....Either totally open Java or not. No pseudo open source...Continue to push CDDL on Sun stuff and further alienate the open source communities and partners.

 Happily, reader "alanonz" responded that GPL DOES NOT EQUAL Open Source. Wonderful as it is, the GPL is not the only license that may fairly be described as "open source". We've noted before, the CDDL is approved by the OSI, and is even regarded by the FSF as a free and open source license. Sun takes issues of license complexity seriously which is why Sun is one of the few companies whose own open source licenses are reusable (and they are reused), and Sun has voluntarily retired superfluous licenses.

 Apple and BSD (another non-GPL'd open source project) both just completed ports of DTrace (licensed under the CDDL) from OpenSolaris to their operating systems. I hope Dana will take the time to explain how this wasn't real open source. Moreover, Dana seems to think that Sun should be guided purely by what license choices Linus Torvalds makes. I think that the powers-that-be at Sun will prefer to make their own minds up about GPL v3, and that there will always be more to open source than GNU/Linux.

 ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/patrickf/entry/bill_hilf_pops_up Bill Hilf pops up patrickf 2006-08-07T02:44:28+00:00 2006-08-07T15:11:48+00:00

 Watched this interview,  Bill Hilf with Matt Asay. If you're interested in open source business models, it's worth it. If you're not, it's slim pickings, frankly. Anyway, I don't think that Bill deliberately misrepresented OpenSolaris, but I'm afraid he did slightly:

 I know OpenSolaris does this. You know, it's free, but then it pops up 60 days in and says 'here's the support offering'.

 Maybe the free Solaris 10 does this, or rather, Sun Update Connection may pop up and ask if you want to buy support for this commerical distribution, but OpenSolaris is a code base and a community: some of its several distros may "pop up", and some may not.


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Here is how your prior accomplishments will help you earn a BSN at Oklahoma City University:
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