Open Sauce Software

Someone asked VMware's chief about open source, and he made a predictable answer. Does that mean the company is going to open source its hypervisor?

"VMware's hypervisor to go open source?" said NetworkWorld. Apparently VMware boss Paul Maritz had been asked about open source at a press conference. "We have thought about whether we want to open source ESX,", he said, and went on to praise the way the open source model gets participation.

That's a long way from any move to open source VMware's crown jewels, and before we extrapolate anything, let's remember where Maritz is coming from (Microsoft) and what VMware is up to (positioning and extending its ESX as the uber-OS for data centres).

VMware is the incumbent here. It's offering the basics of its product for free. It it has some pretty significant open source projects and products.

But I don't think it's about to open source the crown jewels. From the rest of the story, it sounds like the company is unwilling to welcome any other hypervisor into its world, so I don't see it opening up its code.

I have to admit Software Freedom Day has passed me by so far, but from the sound of it, I'm not alone.

The day is intended to promote and celebrate free and open source software, taking to the streets to give out CDs and educate people.

There's a fair amount of activities worldwide, but not much in England as far as I can tell. The biggest event in the UK looks to be in Dundee, while south of the border, there may be events in Birmingham and Colchester - though it is hard to distinguish this year's plans from last year's on the SFD Wiki.

Devon and Cornwall look like coming up trumps with a demonstration (I assume, as in "exhibition" rather than as in "protest") and a live link to Cameroon - which seems appropriate, since most of the energy in SFD'08 seems to be coming from the developing world.

And London? Well, Kingston-on-Thames has a plan (again, undated):
* Meet outside school or train station at around 1300.
* Go into Kingston town centre, make some noise and hand out many Ubuntu cds, flyers, balloons etc
* Unfortunately no speakers were able to speak, so no talks and straight into the social.
* End and begin a social evening in nearby public house, restaurant etc.

Blogger Fordiebianco says:

"Now, call me a notorious moaner, but is that all London has to offer? No install fest, no radio interviews, newspaper articles, tables on highstreets full of glittering compies?

"Sad. Very sad.

"P.S. And for those of you wondering why I’m not doing anything this year, I have not even been able to contact my local LUG. Apparently it’s extinct.I'm wishing all the best to those who go."

I have to agree. I've got other duties on Saturday, and hope the gallant Linux users of Kingston and elsewhere have a good day.

Good news: I was invited to a preview of Sony Ericsson's spiffy Xperia phone, at a London venue.

Bad news: It was a webcast. Fifteen eager hacks were packed in a tiny room, watching the preview on a screen.

Good news: The Sony Ericsson pundits were next door - as soon as the webcast finished, the filtered through to show us their phones.

Bad news: They didn't actually have anything to say about it. Everything we wanted to know - including how much it will cost, and are there other X phones on the way, was shrugged off with "We can't answer that now."

Good news: I arrived fifteen minutes late so I missed the two minute Bourne/Momento-style viral video. It's well made, and does hint at what the phone does (it has nine panels you know?) but do we need it?

Strangely: the PR said "Oh really?" when I said I was surprised to be invited in for a webcast.

Better news: There was lunch. You can't do that on a webcast.

When news trickled out that Lenovo was dropping Linux from part of its line, they tried to convince us they support it. Instead a different picture emerged.

The story, as now reported in Computerworld is that the company pulled the plug on a US trial selling Linux-equipped laptops to home users through its web site.

A flack called Ray Gorman bleats that the company really does like Linux or something (but presumably it's still too tough for home users?).

Meanwhile, here on ZDNet, David Meyer was given a list of links on the UK site, where Lenovo is supposedly selling Linux laptops.

All but one of those links go to a recommendation for Windows. And the other one goes to a partner, not Lenovo.

One of the interesting things about yesterday's Red Hat press lunch in London was the emergence of a desktop strategy from the open source giant. The other was that the strategy is based around Windows.

OK, that's two exaggerations. RHEL Desktop has existed for a long while, but it's not had any major marketing that I've seen, and the company recently stepped back from making a consumer desktop product.

As to basing its strategy around Windows, Red Hat now has VDI (virtual desktop) software, which it is placing firmly amongst its management products. The meeting was mostly about server vritualisation, but we heard about desktops too.

Essentially, while servers are getting consolidated and managed better, the desktop is still a nightmare (despite moves like Intel's ongoing vPro effort).

Windows is the problem, in other words, and the answer to any problem in IT is to virtualise it. So maybe it's easier to persuade users onto a virtualised, centralised Windows, than to prise them off it and onto a replacement Linux desktop?

(And yes, I know that's just a new version of the old, and ever-more-plausible thin-client story).

What's clear is that Red Hat doesn't see any money in desktops themselves, only in the management of desktops.

That doesn't stop it having plenty of desktop software. Fedora is going from strength to strength, from all accounts, but it's a community release, not part of the main strategy.

We got an idea just how often Red Hat has to explain that, when we asked about Fedora.

"Fedora is not a product," the Red Hat CTO and president answered. In unison.