Planet JM

Category: Syndicated

  • So VMware bought Zimbra: now what?

    Many of you no doubt already know about VMware’s snagging of Zimbra away from the clutches of Yahoo! If I’m a Zimbra employee or executive, I might be breathing a sigh or relief, or I might be disappointed. But one thing’s for sure – I’m definitely wondering what’s next. Stand back, for I, John Mark Walker, have dared to gaze in the crystal ball. Zowie!The one great unknown has to do with developer communities and the open source projects that VMware currently stewards. How will VMware build an open source ecosystem and create a community environment necessary for future success?Click the link below to read the article:

    http://ostatic.com/blog/so-vmware-bought-zimbra-now-what (view on Google Sidewiki)

  • Law Firm’s IT Director Discovers Open Source

    If you’ve ever wondered how IT departments come across and adopt open source software, consider Lance Rae. Lance is an IT Director for a mid-sized law firm in New York City. We were chatting about his firm’s use of open source, and we decided it was worth recording our Q & A for posterity – and posting on OStatic.In this conversation, we discussed Nagios, the process of evaluating software, MonitoringForge, and how utilizing one open source tool can lead to a cascade effect, with others surely to follow.Click below for the full article:

    in reference to: Law Firm IT Director Discovers Open Source (view on Google Sidewiki)

  • Linux and Your iPhone / iPod Touch

    Not content with the roadblocks Apple had erected for users who wanted to connect to their digital devices (that they had paid for, natch), Apple decided to up the ante with its iPod Touch and iPhone series. This meant that a whole new round of reverse engineering was necessary just so that, and this bears repeating a thousand times, users could connect to a device that they paid for and actually access content they legally possess. Does that make sense to you? Me neither. Welcome to the 21st century.First the good news – with recent developments in the libgpod library, as well as ifuse and iphone libraries, it’s relatively simple to enable your Linux box for iPhone content syncing with gtkpod. The bad news is that things are still a bit rough around the edges, but I’ll demonstrate the workarounds.Click below to read the rest:

    in reference to: Linux and Your iPhone / iPod Touch (view on Google Sidewiki)

  • Monty Responds

    Michael “Monty” Widenius wrote a nicely-worded response to my previous post “Oracle, Mysql and the GPL: don’t take Monty’s word for it”, and I thought it deserves more visibility, so I’m quoting it below. For the record, I’m not an Oracle “fan” and am in agreement with Steven O’Grady, who wrote that Monty mostly just wants to get the band back together and is pursuing the shortest path to that destination. I can’t fault him for that. What I objected to was what I felt was a conflict of interest that hadn’t been seirously reported. That, and I really dislike how this brouhaha has resulted in unfair attacks on the GPL and dual-licensing in general.

  • Oracle, MySQL and the GPL: don’t take Monty’s word for it

    In the continuing soap opera of Oracle’s battle against the European Commission for the right to acquire Sun, and with it, MySQL, we have had to rely on the bloggers and analysts to get it right, because the media surely has not. Before you read any further, stop right now and read Matthew Aslett’s excellent summary of Oracle-MySQL through last week, Pamela Jones’ excellent piece on the matter (and her later update), and Matt Asay’s highlighting of Monty Widenius’ conflict of interest in opposing the Sun acquisition.One of the more damaging consequences of this case is the opportunistic piling on against the GPL license. Every BSD Tom, Dick and Harry with an axe to grind about Richard Stallman, the GPL, and GNU has stepped up to the plate, on cue, to deliver unsubstantiated rants against the GPL. I suggest that readers follow the money and look into the reasons why each party takes the stance it does. Oracle’s bias and intent in all of this is pretty clear, but the opposition has not been so forthright.Read more below:

    in reference to: Oracle, MySQL and the GPL: don’t take Monty’s word for it (view on Google Sidewiki)

  • Have an iPod? Use Windows? Get Songbird

    Following up on my last article about using your iPod with Ubuntu, I decided to take a crack at what open source tools are available for those iPod owners who use Windows. As it turns out, there isn’t much. While a download of Amarok for Windows is available, good luck getting it to recognize or sync with your iPod.

    But what I did find was the latest version of Songbird, and that might just be all you need. Songbird is built on the Mozilla platform and has an extensive list of community-contributed addons. The last time I checked out Songbird, it was probably still 2007, and while interesting, it didn’t strike me as particularly useful. That is, until I started using Windows. What seems rather mundane and just one of many options on Linux becomes a rock star on Windows.

    Read the full article on ostatic.com

  • On CNET: The VA Linux Systems IPO Retrospective

    I wrote a guest post on Matt Asay’s The Open Road blog, over at CNET. December 9, 2009 marked the 10 year anniversary of the VA Linux IPO, and I wrote a piece marking the anniversary and noting the significance, such that there is any, of the IPO and its aftermath.Read the piece here.

  • Using Your iPod with (K)ubuntu 9.10

    After a rocky beginning, I’ve been able to do many neat things with my Black iPod Classic with 120 GB, but it hasn’t been without its trials and tribulations. In this post, I’ll write about the tools I use to sync music, add photos, and transcode videos to the correct format. Being a Kubuntu user, note that my bias is towards KDE tools. If you use others, please list them in the comments. As with many things on Linux, there’s more than one way to do it. (Apologies to Larry Wall)Those who know me well are familiar with my unhealthy dislike for all things Apple. Perhaps it’s the way they attach DRM to everything they touch. Or maybe it’s the cult of Steve. Or maybe it’s because they make shiny, overpriced goods that they push to the gullible. Naturally, when my wife looked for something to give me on my birthday, she purchased an iPod. To her credit, she told me what she was thinking before the purchase, and I made a mad dash to Google to see about alternative, friendlier devices. In all honesty, I couldn’t find a better device for the money, and so an iPod it was.Read the whole post:

    in reference to: Using Your iPod with (K)ubuntu 9.10 (view on Google Sidewiki)

  • SugarCRM Gets a True Open Source Visionary in Larry Augustin

    I was pleasantly surprised to read that Larry Augustin had been named SugarCRM’s full-time CEO. After spending much of the last decade as an investor and board member extraordinaire for many (most?) companies grouped in the commercial open source category, it is good to see Larry back in the CEO saddle. This is a vindication of sorts for Larry and his vision of an open source future. After years of attempting to explain just how ubiquitous open source was going to be, he can now take the reigns of a company at a time when most customers and vendors take as a given that a substantial portion of any solution will consist of open source code. This was not always the case, especially when Larry was still CEO of VA Linux Systems, at the time the premier vendor for servers running Linux.To give you an idea of what SugarCRM is getting, Larry is a guy who saw the value in building a center of gravity for open source developerment before most; a guy who counseled LinuxWorld Expo to look to the developer audience and eschew the bad advice they were receiving from their vendors. That they ignored him and subsequently failed is a testament to his vision.Perhaps the best example of this vision was a move he made almost 10 years ago that many, including yours truly, openly questioned at the time: the acquisition of Andover.net by VA Linux Systems. Some of you may remember that Andover.net was the media company that had purchased Slashdot.org and Freshmeat.net. VA was then still gleaming with post-IPO sparkles, which had taken place just two months prior to the Andover acquisition.

    (follow the link below to see full post.)

    in reference to: SugarCRM Gets a True Open Source Visionary in Larry Augustin (view on Google Sidewiki)

  • Crazy Google Kids at it Again with Chrome OS

    Google kicked off the launch of its Chromium OS project today with a presentation on Chrome OS. The first thing you’ll notice is that the name of Google’s consumer product will be Chrome OS, while the open source project is named Chromium OS. My guess: Google will bless the usage of the Chrome OS name by granting trademark rights to those who comply with Google’s standards. Google didn’t say that, but that’s what I would do.The next thing I noticed is that Chrome OS will be completely “cloud-based”. As in, no local data. As in, all web apps all the time. As in, it’s only useful to the extent that there’s an internet connection. This will likely prove to be a Google Rohrschach test. Those already predisposed to disliking anything Google does will find this horrifying. Those who think Google is the bee’s knees will conclude that it’s not completely evil and, indeed, is the next logical evolution of desktops-in-the-cloud technology.

    in reference to: Crazy Google Kids at it Again with Chrome OS (view on Google Sidewiki)