Open Sauce Software
Tasty titbits from people using Linux and other open source software in business.
Monday 31 March 2008, 9:27 AM
OOXML standard will tarnish ISO
From what I can read, there were enough irregularities in the process, that ISO should refuse to accept Microsoft's Office Open XML as a standard - but I expect ISO will press right ahead and bless it.
For ZDNet UK, David Meyer checked the web on a miserable Sunday morning, and it looks like enough people announced changes to their votes, to swing it in Microsoft's favour. This is still slightly speculative, but better than an exit poll. Some countries may have changed their votes since the last meeting, and forgotten to mention it, but the consensus amongst OOXML watchers is that Microsoft succeeded.
There are suggestions of vote rigging and dubious procedures in several countries, including Norway, Germany and Croatia, with the gory details on Groklaw. There is other coverage on the excellent Open Malaysia, Command Line Warriors and Andy Updegrove's Standards blog.
There is a definite feeling that these are not the only dubious results - only the ones that have come to light.
Given all that, why do I think ISO will rubber-stamp the unfinished and controversial standard, OOXML? Because that is the way it operates as a body. ISO sits in splendid isolation. Technical issues, vendor lobbying and national politics are externalised into sub-committees, so ISO actually operates at a level where everything is fine.
Any attempt to argue with it moves the discussion automatically onto ISO's procedural territory, where there are plenty of experts to argue that all is well. This is why any attempt to challenge the likely approval of OOXML will have to major on voting irregularities, rather than unresolved technology issues.
The point is that ISO believes in what it does. It works this way, because it is convinced this is the best way to make standards. It will say that it is above grubby controversies, while actually wallowing in a spurious purity which it achieves by ignoring and excluding the real issues.
Wednesday 26 March 2008, 12:26 PM
Signs of life in open source routers
I continue to believe network hardware could show some of the strongest benefits from open source. Vyatta, the company leading the charge on open network hardware has a couple of news announcements that bear this out - a low-cost small business router and tests that show it leaving Cisco in the dust, performance-wise.
The Vyatta 514 includes routing, firewall, and VPN in a small box costing $697. The company claims its systems offer a big saving over proprietary routers - and last week tested the claim on its larger product, announcing results from the Tolly Group that show its routers, which cost a quarter the price of Cisco's 7200, perform two to three times better.
Vyatta calculates a 10x performance advantage from this, and says it blows apart the myth that you need the magic of proprietary hardware to get good network performance.
Thursday 20 March 2008, 5:00 PM
Why Novell is happy with Hyper-V
Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualisation technology is becoming less virtual by the moment - in the sense that its delivery is approaching. But as it comes into focus, its Linux support is coming in for criticism.
The software is now a "feature complete release candidate", which means it's nearly ready. But it is being criticised for not supporting the leading Linux versions.
A major point of virtualisation is allowing guest operating systems alongside a host. In practical terms, on customer sites, that is going to mean Linux and Windows.
However, Hyper-V's Linux support is limited to SUSE. That's no surprise, given Microsoft's relationship with Novell, but more users have Red Hat, and other distributions. They won't be able to use Microsoft's virtualisation technology - though to be fair, they will probably be more interested in VMWare or Red Hat's own virtualisation technology.
"We're pleased with Hyper-V," says Justin Steinman, director of Linux marketing at Novell. "SUSE Linux is a first class guest on Microsoft Windows Server." Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has shown SUSE Linux running as a guest, which was "cool", said Steinman.
Novell has its own virtualisation technology, "At Brainshare we returned the favour, and showed Windows Server 2008 running on top of Suse using Xen."
Steinman told us how much Microsoft has done to boost Novell's Linux business - suonds like he expects Hyper-V will boost that.
Monday 17 March 2008, 1:15 PM
Open Source is Gay?
I can imagine Steve Ballmer casting aspersions on Linux' manliness back in the days when Microsoft didn't like open source. But actually, my headline is a tease lead in to a more serious issue - what happens when Open Source is no longer a counter-culture?
Gay identity is a counter-culture - it grew up in response to massive prejudice, and flourished in bars and clubs. But since laws changed, it has wilted, political journalist Andrew Sullivan argued in 2005, in The End of Gay Culture. Gays are getting married, appearing in reality TV shows, and getting on with life - and meanwhile the gay bars are closing down.
The same thing could happen to open source culture, Dan Lyons at Forbes, said in February. Companies like Sun buying into open source, while IBM supporting it, and Microsoft telling us it is open source, all for business reasons, not for the idealism we expect from parts of the open source movement.
This could split the "free and open source" (FOSS) movement, says Matthew Aslett, at the 451 Group. The "open source" part is happy to do business, but the "free" wants to change the world.
It could also dilute the benefits of open source. Microsoft and others are talking about how open source-like their proprietary projects are, much like a heterosexual man discovering he quite likes the look of a moustache.
Aslett thinks the FOSS movement is more like the Green movement - a counter-culture which has always had a critical relationship with mainstream business culture, and which is now seeing parts of its message assimilated.
The Green movement has got everyone to consider the amount of energy they use - and this has launched a burst of "Greenwash" in which companies sell energy reduction as a way to save money, not the planet.
Similar partial adoption could split the Free Software movement from the Open Source Software movement, suggests Aslett: "The Free Software movement has always defined itself in way that excludes it from assimilation by the mainstream and will naturally resist any dilution of its principles. The Open Source Software movement, on the other hand, was formed specifically to encourage mainstream interest."
As open source goes mainstream, he sees "increased tension between a Free Software movement exhibiting a strengthened resolve to stand by its principles, and an Open Source Software movement in which individuals have to decide where they draw the line."
As an aside, he has a lovely suggestion for where a Green-style assimilation might lead: "Perhaps in years to come we will see big businesses boasting about lowering their proprietary licensing footprint through the more efficient use of computing resources, just as today they boast about the efficient use of natural resources. Maybe the laggards could pay someone else to adopt open source for them via proprietary offsetting schemes."
Thursday 13 March 2008, 11:27 AM
Microsoft presses on regardless with OOXML SDK
OOXML is in the balance as a formal standard, but that's no reason for Microsoft not to launch tools for the document standard. However, the OOXML kit which is on its way could cause confusion, as it won't meet the standard being considered at ISO.
Microsoft will have a beta version of the OOXML SDK next month, and a 1.0 release in May, but that won't include the changes currently on the table at ISO, or any subsequent ones.
This means that people who use the kit to build OOXML functionality into applications, won't comply with the formal standard - if OOXML does become one.
Microsoft says this is good: it will "put Microsoft on the hook to keep your app in line with the OOXML standard" according to Miucrosoft evangelist Doug Mahugh. Which is one way of putting it.
Meanwhile, CNet reports that the US is likely to keep its recommendation that OOXML be accepted as a standard. At least that's the view of Mahugh, who is on the committee, and the chair, Patrick Durusau, who also edits the rival OpenDocument standard.
Durusau has an interesting take: oponents to OOXML are just being nasty: ""What is puzzling in this day and age of quarterly reports and returns is that any corporate-governance structure would long tolerate spite as a business strategy. Or that investors would stay with companies that follow such strategies," he wrote in a PDF.
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