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Matt Asay’s big break is a big one for open source 02/05/10
I have a confession to make.
I’m a huge Matt Asay fan (right). Always have been.
Matt is the Anthony Bourdain (below) of open source. By that I mean he cooks better than most cooks, writes better than most writers, and he has made himself a big time brand. He’s also hungry for more.
One might compare his move to Canonical, the parent of Ubuntu, with Bourdain’s move to The Travel Channel. It means he now has a palette big enough for his talents.
This should not be taken as a knock against Alfresco. A content management system is an important thing.
But it’s a bit like Food Network. It’s about software, like Food Network is about food. And while Matt Asay can program, while he knows software, he has always shown — especially through his writing at C|Net — that he is about something more than that.
I believe what Matt is about is selling transformation. He’s also about putting things together, and then executing on that understanding.
This is what Canonical, and Ubuntu need. They have a great story to tell. Ubuntu is a big success. But it is a limited one.
Ubuntu sells itself as a desktop, but its money comes from servers. Ubuntu sells itself as universal, but its success comes from localization. Ubuntu is a wonderful dream, but a prosaic reality. It sells itself as the shining city on the hill, when it’s really just a small attractive village.
Matt Asay can change that. His new title is chief operating officer.
“As COO, I am tasked with aligning the company’s strategic goals and operational activities, the optimization of day-to-day operations, and leadership of Canonical marketing and back-office functions.”
Matt is going to try and make the trains in London run on time from his base in Utah. A neat trick.
But I think he’ll pull it off. He can give Ubuntu strategic, practical directions, and he has the operational experience to know when goals are being met and when they aren’t.
In other words he now has his own show, which he can take anywhere in the world he wants to go. No reservations.
Five More Essential Ubuntu Features 02/04/10
A few weeks ago, I wrote about five features that make Ubuntu so much more enjoyable to use than certain less-Free operating systems. The comments on that post got me thinking about several other great features that I didn’t mention. So to give those their due, here’s a second list of five things Ubuntu does that I couldn’t live without.
Symbian phone software now available for free 02/04/10
The Symbian Foundation says the software that powers the most smart phones in the world is being made largely available for free for anyone to use.
Google and open source, who needs who more? 01/29/10
Matt Asay has a great piece over at C|Net today, describing attempts by open source to become more independent of Google, and essentially asking Google whether they are going to let open source leadership slip away from them.
But the question can also be looked upon another way. Who needs who more, Google or open source? (Picture from Wikipedia.)
Many important open source projects, like Firefox, are dependent on Google. The Mozilla Foundation draws most of its budget from the Google box on its software, even after Google has gone into competition with its Chrome browser.
Google is proof that the open source way is the profitable way. It has aggressively pushed code out the door, mainly under the Apache license, and has regularly hosted (even hired) important open source developers.
But Google is not dependent on open source. Google’s contributions can easily dominate a project simply because of Google’s size. The Chrome browser could have come out closed-source — it still lags in the area of add-ons, which are a key benefit to being open source.
Google has grown beyond the open source movement in other ways. Its Android project has evolved into a corporate club of carriers and manufacturers, as it needed to in order to gain market traction. HTC doesn’t support Google because Android is open source, they do so because it’s profitable.
The same could be said of Google’s Chromium project, a full operating system based on Chrome. Here again what Google is looking for is not the help of individual programmers, but of corporations, makers of hardware and complete applications.
There have always been two strategies in to open source, a business strategy and a development strategy. A development strategy, the kind Mozilla is based upon, depends on having a collection of allies, large and small, none of them dominant. A business strategy, the kind Google engages in, depends on leadership and control of a corporate ecosystem.
You can see the conflict. What is good for Google and good for an open source project may not always be the same thing. Google is big enough to deliver its own complete projects, licensed as open source, in order to fulfill its business goals. Open source project developers need more balance to their force.
It may just be that Google has grown up beyond open source. It’s like the tiger raised by a dog. It needs to be on its own, both for its own sake and the dog’s sake.
Other News
Free and Open Source Software
News from around the web about Free and Open Source Software News.
etc: A new lightweight open source image editing application called Pinta aims to give casual users a simple alternative to the GIMP. 02/09/10
A new lightweight open source image editing application called Pinta aims to give casual users a simple alternative to the GIMP.
Read More: Pinta Project
Mozilla dropping 10.4 support with next Firefox release 02/09/10
The next major release of Firefox will not be compatible with Macs running Mac OS X 10.4, also known as Tiger. This comes from a mozilla.dev.planing discussion on Google Groups started by Josh Aas, a Mozilla-employed developer working on the project. The change will go into effect later this year when the browser’s Gecko rendering engine makes the jump from 1.9.2 to 1.9.3.
The Mozilla Foundation estimates that there are currently about 1.4 million Tiger users using Firefox 3.5 every day and approximately 36,000 using version 3.6. Those numbers total a little under 24 percent of daily Mac Firefox use.
According to the discussion, Mozilla stopped supporting Tiger on mozilla-central, the most “cutting edge” repository, in September of 2009. Much of the old code was left, however, in case Mozilla had a change in heart. The decision means that the code specific to the old operating system will be removed soon, along with any hope of future 10.4 support.
Users of the open source Web browser who are still using Tiger will be able to continue to use Firefox 3.6 for as long as they want, but the browser will stop receiving updates “several months” after the release of the next major update. This means that any security issues found in the browser after that date would be unlikely to be addressed by the team, and, in turn, left unpatched.
Unsurprisingly, there is a vocal minority speaking out against the move. Individuals with older hardware are no doubt concerned that their old hardware will become even more obsolete and less usable as the rest of the world soldiers on. Mozilla isn’t concerned however, citing past data that shows no significant market share loss occurs after support for an older version of the Mac OS has been dropped. The company also claims that it usually supports older versions of Mac OS X longer than most companies.
Canonical Hires Matt Asay As Chief Operating Officer 02/08/10
I must concede: Sometimes I worry Canonical is trying to do too much too soon with Ubuntu. … But just when I get really worried, the company makes a major move that impresses me. A case in point: Open source expert Matt Asay has joined Canonical as chief operating officer. It’s a big move for Canonical, Ubuntu and Asay. Here’s why.
Securing PostfixAdmin 02/08/10
Many administrators who use Postfixadmin, a web based tool to manage virtual domains on Postfix, would like to secure the transactions between the PostfixAdmin program and the administrator. At the same time often you do not want to add the extra burden of SSL on the whole domain but just want to secure one directory.
Alternative Browsers: Beyond Chrome and Firefox 02/08/10
Looking for a new flavor of Web browser? If the mainstream favorites aren’t doing the trick, or you just want to test drive something new, we take a look at several of the “alternative” Web browsers for the Linux desktop.
Torvalds’ Nexus One endorsement may be regretted 02/08/10
Linus Torvalds is not Bill Gates.
He’s a programmer, and an honest man. So when he finds something he likes he says so, without artifice, and that’s all it means.
I hope people will understand that following Torvalds’ blog post extolling the Google Nexus One.
Apparently Linus has the same problem my son does (along with millions of other people). Directions are not his strong suit. So for him, Google navigation was a killer app.
Trouble is, in many ways Linus Torvalds is not “just a programmer.” He’s a brand name. He is, however reluctantly, a celebrity. So a simple blog post can read like an endorsement.
Put it this way. If Steve Ballmer picked one of the many Windows Mobile phones and said, “this is the one I like,” other makers of Windows Mobile phones might be upset. So he doesn’t.
Linus just did.
Google is trying to build a competitive ecosystem in Android, and Android is not the only Linux-based system in the mobile space. It’s like saying which one of your children you like best.
If you want to go the full paranoid on this one, you could even call Linus unpatriotic. After all, Motorola has staked its future on Android, and here he is making nice with a device from HTC, a Chinese company! (I know. Motorola has had its stuff made in China for years.)
This is as crazy as Jay Leno appearing in an ad for David Letterman’s TV show. It’s inconceivable! (I don’t think the word means what you think it does.)
Ellison puts Screven over mySQL 02/08/10
Turns out the biggest surprise in the Oracle-Sun drama was not the split within open source over mySQL.
It was the split within Oracle over mySQL. (Picture from Oracle’s Collaborate 2007 event.)
Ken Jacobs, who was one of CEO Larry Ellison’s first 20 hires, says he is leaving the company after seeking to run mySQL and being turned down.
Jacobs gets credit for keeping InnoDB moving forward after its 2005 acquisition. This was a big win for open source.
InnoDB was an integral part of mySQL, and there were fears then Oracle planned to box-in mySQL by controlling its storage engine. But that didn’t happen, Oracle was able to claim open source bonafides.
Now Edward Screven, Oracle’s chief corporate architect, is in charge of mySQL, which could lead to the same fears expressed over InnoDB when Jacobs took it on.
Screven, however, also has some open source mojo. He was interviewed by Linux Foundation head Jim Zemlin in 2008, touting the company’s commitment to Linux. “We didn’t view GPL as something that was going to get in the way of business in the least,” he told Zemlin.
Trouble is that while Linux is an enterprise product, and has long had substantial server market share, mySQL began as something smaller and simpler, not scaled. The code base was moving toward greater scale before Oracle bought it, but during the debate even open source advocates like Matt Asay admitted it wasn’t a direct competitor.
This was always at the heart of the dispute. Would open source be allowed to develop a true competitor to Oracle? Would Web start-ups have to make a costly switch from open source as they scaled, or commit to open source in their business plans, raising costs substantially?
Internet success happens in Internet time. A start-up subsisting on pizza, even a small open source project, can be discovered by the masses and become world famous within a year. Will there be an easy migration path, or will that path be slammed shut?
Ask Edward Screven.
Symbian is Open Source – Really? 02/08/10
In recent news, the Symbian Foundation announced that “All 108 packages containing the source code of the Symbian platform can now be downloaded from Symbian’s developer web site”. This is great news!
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Hunter pushes CodePlex as a business-oriented foundation 02/08/10
Paula Hunter will differentiate CodePlex from sites like Google Code and groups like the Linux Foundation by trying to bring enterprise IT shops into the open source mainstream.
Hunter was named the new executive director of the CodePlex Foundation late last week, and spoke to ZDNet Open Source.
The CodePlex Foundation is based in Seattle, but Hunter lives in New Hampshire and works in the Boston suburbs. That may prove an asset as Hunter works to distance the foundation from its roots as a Microsoft open source site.
“My responsibility will be to embrace the business community,” she said, adding she plans on hiring a technical director soon. She also plans to develop something like the old Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) user advisory board, covering a range of industries beyond software.
“One primary area we’re trying to focus is the commercial software development area, and certainly the east coast is not only a center for software companies but large enterprise IT shops,” she said.
Hunter is the foundation’s first employee. Even the permanent board of directors has yet to be named. This gives her enormous influence on the group’s direction. But she emphasized to ZDNet that the direction has already been set, and that her plan is to execute on it.
“It’s not necessary for one company to shoulder the burden of this effort. There are plenty of companies that can benefit. Over the next few weeks I’m going to create a program and set of benefits for those people we want to sign on board.”
The direction was described by Sam Ramji, a former Microsoft executive now with Sonoa Systems, when the new foundation was set up last year. That is, provide a way for Fortune 500 companies outside the software industry to make contributions, gain the benefits of open source, while maintaining some code control.
Andy Updegrove is pleased with the appointment, noting her work with United Linux and the OSDL, which was merged with the Free Standards Group to create the present Linux Foundation.
“Paula knows her way around the block,” he wrote, and most stories about the appointment emphasize she’s an open source “veteran.” This makes me feel old. Hunter got her degree from Bentley College in 1983, when I was five years into my own journalism career.
InfoWorld review: Windows on the Mac (InfoWorld) 02/08/10
InfoWorld – Why choose between Windows 7 and Snow Leopard when you can have both? A Mac with virtualization software is a great platform for running Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, or other Intel-based operating systems, all at the same time. There’s also Mac OS X’s native Boot Camp, but it only supports Windows and doesn’t give you access to Mac OS X without rebooting.
