Open Sauce Software

I'm sad to say this is my last post here for at least the next little while. I'm taking a full time job elsewhere, and hope to see some of you over on a rival site - whose name it would be unsporting to plug here.

I've had great feedback from other ZDNet people, I've learnt a lot, and I'll miss what is developing into a helpful, useful community.

It's a joke, and it's in poor taste, if you're a Nortel employee, but you have to admire open source router company Vyatta's readiness to take the responsibility (and the free publicity).

"We didn’t mean to do it… you’ve got to believe us," said Kelly Herrell, CEO of Vyatta, in a press release apologising to Nortel after the network giant filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. "No one is more shocked than we are. Even my mother is upset."

More seriously, Dave Roberts, a former enterprise marketing vice president at Nortel, who's now marketing VP at Vyatta, blogged the sad decay of Nortel. "The current global recession will test everybody, I think, and we'll see who is strong enough to make it. "

The Magelhaes (Magellan) initiative of the Portuguese government is giving every child in the country an Intel Classmate PC for 50 euros - and they are dual-boot machines running XP and a local Linux called Caixa Magica.

This couldn't happen in this country - either because (as the government says) it would be wrong to impose a single PC on schools, or else (could it be?) because it's not got the cojones to challenge Microsoft's virtual stranglehold on education software here seriously.

There may also be another reason. I was told at the BETT educational technology show today, that the Portuguese government didn't spend its haul of money from the 3G licence auctions at the end of the 1990s. I'm not sure how feasible this is, but I was told that money had been saved, and is only now being spent, on 500,000 3G-equipped Classmate laptops for primary-school children, and bigger, less-subsidised laptops for older children.

The move has been welcomed, and is being followed by a more ambitious project in Venezuela, which will give
out a million Classmate PCs, all running the local Canaima version of Debian.

Open source is pretty much a given in cloud computing, but this year we're going to see more efforts to define the way those clouds are built and used.

According to both Citrix and Red Hat, open source computing rules cloud computing - although if you extend the conversation things look more complex.

For instance, open source licences say you should get the source code, but does that apply if you are merely using, remotely, an application based on that open source code?

Also, as Glyn Moody points out, even if you are using an open source application, your cloud vendor could still lock your data in and extort the usual demands we've seen before (Glyn doesn't give an example though - any thoughts?)

There is a body out there that could help though - the Open Cloud Consortium, which is making standards for interoperability, and transfers, between clouds.

As you'd expect, the group is working with some intriguing ideas (including UDT or UDP-based data transport, which speeds up communications in a cloud by using UDP (and which won a bandwidth challenge at Supercomputing 08).

It's also technology-focussed. “I’m not a marketing guy,” says Robert Grossman, who chairs the Consortium in a Network World article. Grossman also heads the US National Center for Data Mining and the Laboratory for Advanced Computing at the University of Chicago.

I think some basic technology, combined with good thinking about the licensing issues of clouds, could be exactly what we need. We have more than enough cloud marketing experts already.

Just as we were all closing down before Christmas, Linux kernel developer Alan Cox announced he is moving from Red Hat to Intel this month.

The move is important. According to most accounts, Cox was second only to Linus Torvalds in the early Linux days, working on the kernel from version 0.11, and sorting out the networking. In the last ten years, he's helped Red Hat establish Linux as a commercial operating system, and become an advocate in debates on patents, privacy and civil liberties.

So what does the move mean? Possibly two things.

1. Red Hat doesn't need so much low-level coding work. It's going "up the stack", according to Matt Asay at Cnet, and creating "partner ecosystems" and "value-driven IT solutions" which are "about as far from hacking kernel code as you can get", according to Glyn Moody at Computerworld UK. Moving to a hardware company, where those issues are central will be "good news both for Cox and for the free software world", says Moody.

2. It might just be a sign of Intel turning on Microsoft. "Intel has been very quietly developing itself into a Linux powerhouse," says Charlie Dermerjian at The Inquirer.

What if Intel decided to stick the boot in Microsoft, just when it's wringing its hands over the PR disaster that is Windows Vista and Windows 7?

It's an interesting thought - though low-level kernel skills won't be so crucial as the user interface, if Intel really does decide to back Linux against Windows.

Enjoyable as the speculation might be, it's a million miles from Alan Cox himself, of course. From the tone of his excellent, brisk announcement, it's clear he will be getting on with what he does best, in his usual good-humoured fashion.

Here it is in full:

Subject: Moving on from Red Hat

I will be departing Red Hat mid January having handed in my notice. I'm not going to be spending more time with the family, gardening[1] or other such wonderous things. I'm leaving on good terms and strongly supporting the work Red Hat is doing. I've been at Red Hat for ten years as contractor and employee and now have an opportunity to get even closer to the low level stuff that interests me most. Barring last minute glitches I shall be relocating to Intel (logically at least, physically I'm not going anywhere) and still be working on Linux and free software stuff.

I know some people will wonder what it means for Red Hat engineering. Red Hat has a solid, world class, engineering team and my departure will have no effect on their ability to deliver.

Alan
[1] I note that both the family and garden probably think I should