Tag: Open Source

Open Source Contributors

With the recent news of Sun Microsystems buying MySQL AB for one billion dollars (insert Dr.Evil’s evil laugh here), I hear plenty calling Sun the largest contributor to open source. I beg to differ.

Sun is doing a lot for open source, there is no argument about it, and whatever they do is much appreciated. But calling them the largest contributor to open source, is a little bit too far fetched, I think. First of all, let’s see what we are talking about. Here is the list of open source stuff from Sun (according to their open source initiative page):

  • Solaris Enterprise System / OpenSolaris
  • Linux from Sun
  • StarOffice / OpenOffice.org
  • NetBeans
  • OpenSPARC
  • Java

That’s something, but doesn’t qualify for the number one contributor. First of all, these are mostly Sun’s own offerings. Secondly, some of these (Java and OpenSolaris) have been opened to be saved. They were open when it was pretty much obvious to everyone that if they are not, they aren’t going to last very long. Or, at least, they won’t prosper as they should. Thirdly, the effort that was put in some of these (StarOffice / OpenOffice.org) by Sun isn’t all that impressive. I mean, yeah, they bought and opened StarOffice. People jumped on it and started to improve it. And it improved a lot. But it’s still huge, bloated, and clunky, after all these years…

As I said, it’s still appreciated. There is plenty of good in Sun’s open source initiative. But I think there are companies that have done more good to open source than Sun did. I think that IBM did a great deal more. And it did it before anyone else, when open source needed help the most. Then, I think Google has done plenty and is still doing a lot. And, I think it’s not fair at all to forget Red Hat. These guys made a lot of money on open source software, but they were more than willing to share and invest those money back into the community.

#cyprus IRC channel on UnderNet

Somehow I ended up connecting to the Undernet IRC network today and joining #cyprus channel.  Last time I did it was a good 10 years ago.  Maybe even more.  Back then IRC was a huge thing in Cyprus and all Internet clubs were full of kids chatting for hours.  I remember, it was so packed, that I had to buy a club membership to get some priority in queue for my HTML hacking.  And, of course, I did IRC too.  What was happening back than on #cyprus channel?  It was exactly as it is now.  Here is a screenshot for you (I won’t go as far as posting a log of this noise).

#cyprus@undernet

What is different about it now?  Well, it looks like they use a tiny bit less of colors.  And they have their own web site now.

Me? I’m living on the FreeNode these days.  That’s where most of the open source fun is happening (#fedora, #wordpress, #perl, #php, and others).

What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007?

Slashdot runs an excellent discussion on the topic of “What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007?“.  If you want to learn more about what people on the Web had changed their minds in 2007, try this Google search – plenty more there.

What did I change my mind about in 2007?  Short answer: Google.  Continue reading for the long version.

Continue reading What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007?

On Microsoft and Linux

Remember the other time I was agreeing with Matt Mullenweg’s prediction of Microsoft opening sources of Windows by 2017?  Remeber I wrote a list of bullets with my reasons?  Remember the first one being:

Neither Microsoft in general, no Bill Gates are stupid.  They are very much profit oriented. Whatever makes them more money, they’ll go for it.

Well, here is another piece of news that confirms that.

Quote #1:

Novell was paid a whopping $355.6 million by Microsoft in return for software licensing

Quote #2:

Microsoft purchasing 70,000 licences for Novell’s SuSE Linux enterprise server, which accounts for much of what Microsoft was paying for. Microsoft, in turn, then sells these on to its customers.

Quote #3:

“This is to bridge the divide between open source and proprietary source software,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the time, in what amounted to an abrupt about-face on his part given his previous criticism of Linux. “It gives customers greater flexibility in ways they have certainly been demanding.”

On open source and innovation

OK, open source innovation might be chaotic because it lacks direction. There’s no PR-department at ‘the Linux community office’ to ask what the current innovations are, what’s going on and what’s new. Instead of being lazy you have to find it out for yourself. Even someone who spends a part of the day reading news stories about open source software, finds at least ten innovative new programs he has never heard of in a list of 100 recommended open source programs (that’s what happened to me today). No, I’m afraid people who think open source doesn’t bring innovation and don’t see how the closed source model hinders innovation just failed their trendwatcher exam. Wake up, it’s 2008!

Here is an excellent post on how open source helps the innovation.