2005/05/31

GrokLaw - Digging for Truth: "In fact, the announcement didn't really give anyone anything. Sun merely reminded us that Solaris is free software and that Sun would not sue us for using that. However, all other free software projects still face the threat of patent lawsuits from Sun."

2005/05/27

Smalltalk Business Models


James says:Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants: A response to my OSS rant:

1)

"The problem with that is, all the Smalltalk vendors already have that base implemented. There's really no motivation to go that way as a result. There's also the fact that the various implementations vary quite a bit."

Then I guess we don't mean the same thing by "base" - I mean something that could be a shared code base. Maybe the Smalltalk community can't afford multiple code bases for commodity functions.
2)
"As to 'trying to business models' - well, I'll make the point again: show me one that works for Cincom Smalltalk and funds the level of development we do."

I'm afraid I can't help you there - it would need a lot of inside knowldege, and will require some experimentation. How about Cincom, Dolphin etc. provide a person each to upgrade some core part of Squeak to industrial strength, then charge the same amount that you do now just for the cool stuff like Web Servers, WSDL....... As the weather is nice, you can muse in the garden, James!

And how did CLR come into the conversation? - I guess James and Alex have spoken before......

chauvinism


What is it about the French? CNET News.com: "Why is it that only a handful of French companies are listed on the Nasdaq compared with more than 100 for Israel, a country with roughly one-tenth the population? The blunt truth is that France, a country with a $1.7 trillion economy, is still better known for its fromage than its technology."

French companies raise money in other ways? Israel doesn't have a big enough exchange of its own? The NASDAQ isn't as important as the author thinks it is ?

Now what about this pair of paragraphs:

"Lots of new technologies are getting developed in France," she said, "such as the ones that went into the Airbus. That's not being widely communicated."

Gauthier may have a point. But no amount of spin and marketing is enough if you don't have the goods. And so far France still has not risen to the challenge.

Sounds like the French might need more spin and marketing - or does he mean Silicon Valley companies need more "goods"?

And as for the first comment !

I'm not French BTW: the ad running by the column pronounced that CNET had now launched in the UK, so perhaps that is why the coloumn was written like that .......




Spotted in Planet Lisp




eats machine resources like, well, like something designed by XML users


An overworked phrase and a more nuance view of Open Source


So first up, I like James Robertson's blog, Bottomfeeder is great as is James' support for it, I've dropped in on #smalltalk. Great.

Second, when James uses the "Cluestick phrase" and I agree with him , I smile.

But we should remember that there are a lot of bright people around, so when they differ from us it could be an opportunity to understand a new point of view. So we come to this:Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants: "Hand me the cluestick" wherein James lamblasts Eben Moglen of the EFF. I don't think Eben is an idiot, and he has been around for a while now.

It is obvious that someone has to pay for software to be developed , and, yes, a small minority of people pay with their own spare time. Other pay people to work on Open Source, so the question is who does this and why? Again, they are not all idiots.

Can a company get (enough) money from services and consulting? Some can. Does the Open Source software drive some other part of the business (as James' Bottomfeeder might be argued to do)?

What else? Now here is a play that might be of particular interest to the Smalltalk ecosystem, especially if IBM ( a big name if not an active player recently) leaves it: Smalltalk companies co-operate on the parts of Smalltalk where there is no worthwhile competitive advantage. i.e. they use a common base and compete on new more interesting areas. Co-opetition. Painful whilst the common base is constructed, but it could save money for each company. This saved money can now be used to either allow survival if customers leave the arena, or allows investment in new areas to compete with Java, C# et al.

So the fact that companies pay people to work on Open source is neither some new revelation , nor a dirty secret. I see it as a sign of people trying new business models - and some are succeeding.

2005/05/26

Where is Big Brother now?


Julie Leung: Seedlings & Sprouts: Seen in the high school parking lot

So why did he do it?


The Open Source Heretic - Forbes.com: "But as of July, McVoy will stop the give-away, saying it has been costing him nearly $500,000 per year to support Torvalds and his programmers. "

Debating tactics


Here is a great ambiguous line of argument: The Open Source Heretic - Forbes.com: "Since 1993, Larry McVoy has been one of the closest allies to Linus Torvalds, creator of the open source Linux operating system. "

Closest ally? He provided a library system.

So this McVoy has moved away from Open Source? Well, no, there is no evidence in the article that he has ever "bought into it"; he convinced someone from the Open Source community to use his (non-OS) stuff. Seems like both sides of that deal are unhappy now.

Notice we are tempted to think that BitKeeper is an innovative product which can't be Open Source - but there is no concrete evidence. Actually isn't Linus writing something to replace it?

I don't really understand what people find so difficult about Open Source. You can give the software away 'cos you have already made a mint, or you can charge for service, or consulting, or to share development costs when the code is not a competitive weapon. Or others.... No one is forcing you - its your code!

But don't let people tell you they have the complete and final analysis of Open Source's value in business; especially people with a great bias.

2005/05/24

Chocolate and Vodka :: Main Page: "Who needs men when you've got an iBook?"

I'd rather have the iBook too.



Spotted in Smalltalk and my misinterpretations of life




Why is everything I write about my ego?


I would have thought the author could answer that himself; did he mean "Why do people think everything I write is about my ego?" ?

Timeless Elegance


Jon Udell: Tools for dynamic languages:
"It's one of those deeply elegant principles that can take decades to unfold."

Who would have thought that the read-eval-print loop would seem like breakthrough technology in 2005?

2005/05/23

Got it in one

Physicists Uncover TV Show Biases:
"Wogan is the only reason to watch, he's fantastic."

Mais oui!

Coop's Corner | French commission: Say 'non' to blogs | News.blog | CNET News.com:
"France's Commission generale de terminologie et de neologie words to link wants to replace the use of the term blog with bloc-notes."



Spotted in Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants




News Corp is paying filet mignon prices, but is probably getting ground chuck level information...


2005/05/20

Investors to commercialize open source | CNET News.com: "One of the first ventures will be the creation of a company called LogicBlaze, which will be built around an open-source project called ActiveMQ, Damarillo said. The ActiveMQ software is an open-source version of standardized Java-based messaging software for sharing data between applications."



Spotted in Phil Windley's Technometria




Why Scheme? Because I've never been a fan of Common LISP, but happen to believe that LISP offers significantly more abstractive power than other programming languages. You may not agree. In fact, if I'm right, I hope you don't since that gives me a competitive advantage. :-)





Spotted in Phil Windley's Technometria




If I were starting a small Web-based business today, I wouldn't even consider Java. I'd stick with a dynamic language like PHP, Perl, Python, or (gasp) Scheme.





Spotted in Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants




It's been joked that Java was a conspiracy by Sun to sell more hardare. Frankly, it's not far off the mark


Smalltalk and my misinterpretations of life: Smalltalk Coding Contest Submission: "Because we use VisualAge we cannot use Seaside - it requires continuations."

2005/05/19

Oh man here we go again


As with many people I suppose, I got started with blogs by tuning into Dave Winers often quirky stuff. I have to say I have enjoyed the content less of late, and there also seem to be more attacks on people that he perceives have done him wrong.

Here is the latest round in his spat with Adam Curry: Scripting News: 5/19/2005: "For now, I'm not going to go deeper into the rift between myself and Adam Curry, only to acknowledge that now he's saying more things that are untrue in press interviews, punishing me for thinking he was ever a friend. My generosity with him is, in an ironic and unfair way, a gift that keeps on giving."

Now I have no idea whether Adam Curry is a paragon of virtue or not, but, whether he invented the podcast concept or not, he certainly has a popularised it. I'm sure he'd like to make money from it, but , hey this is real life and so long as he doesn't foul it up for everyone else, OK.

But I think we can all agree that it is easy to get misquoted by journalists - if I could be bothered I know I could find Dave Winer saying this had happened to him ( if he hasn't editted them away). So what is more likely, a simple misquote or ommission by the journalist, or some futile conspiracy by Adam C to brainwash the world into believing he single-handedly invented podcasting.

And as per an earlier entry of mine, look at the lack of specifics. "But these lies have gone on and on, he just doesn't stop." Which lies, where?

Adam Curry has responded ( very reasonably i seems to me) on his podcast.

Dave on his , tells us that anyone who says nasty things about him is getting revenge for some wrong that Dave has done to them in the cause of humanity or some such.

He also tells us he feels he has a great voice for podcasts - well not in my opion, and he really can't sing.
<>PS: Is there an easy way to ref. podcasts?

Press freedom?


An interesting read:Cowardice in Journalism Award for Newsweek
Goebbels Award for Condi
: "Cowardice in Journalism Award for Newsweek "




Spotted in Making it stick.




Thirty years of research on query languages can be summarized by "we have moved from SQL to XQuery."


Endorsing vs. making markets


Some great points from the RedMonk teamJames Governor's MonkChips:

"PHP isn't suddenly 'enterprise ready' because major vendors are supporting it. One the contrary, major vendors are supporting it, and other P scripting languages, because these technologies are already being used... and often by the smartest developers. Vendors can now make a buck supporting these environments... and offering 'certified stacks' that 'reduce risk'... because a market has been created already."

Read the whole thing.

Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants: "in Smalltalk, you can resume execution from the point where things blew up - because the stack hasn't been tossed by the time you get to the exception."

2005/05/17

So now we know what is wrong with the stockmarket

HP's Hurd faces first big test - was the Compaq buy a failure? | The Register:
"Hurd has an opening here to set more modest projections and be more reserved in his description of HP's prospects.

Shareholders don't tend to respond to this strategy terribly well "


2005/05/16

Steven Kelly on DSM: "Culled mercilessly from Scott Ambler's post in the Yahoo AgileModeling group:

What does the OMG really bring to the table any more? Their marketing brand? Remember, the OMG isn't a standards body like IEEE or ISO, they're merely a self-appointed industry group. Their ability to get people together? Seems to me that we can do that via the Internet. Their ability to attract the right people? Can we honestly say that the right people are involved with the development of the UML right now?

I'm not convinced that the OMG is doing a good job with UML and I think that it's time for a new approach.

- Scott

I have to say that my recent interactions with the OMG haven't exactly filled me with confidence. UML 2.0 still isn't out, and I hear there are over 500 open issues with the current draft. Talking to people at the top of the OMG, IBM and Eclipse I got the distinct impression that those people no longer separate the three entities much. It looks like we're back to the bad old days when UML was de facto whatever Rational implemented in Rose."



Spotted in Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog



It's certainly a good step forward for a company increasingly seen as retreating to isolationism


Really? This is one of these comments that cries out for some references as back up. Otherwise Blogs become snide conversations where innuendos can be slid in to create an impression. I don't mean to pick on this blog in particular, but it is one which has a very evangelistic, some might say competitive, purpose.

2005/05/10

Linux Today - The New York Times/CNET: IBM Buys Start-Up to Advance Open Source:

"'IBM is increasingly betting that it can build a big business around open-source software. The latest step in that strategy is the purchase of Gluecode Software, an open-source start-up.

'The Gluecode acquisition, which IBM announced Tuesday, is small in size but significant in the evolution of the company's plans in open-source software, according to industry analysts...'"

I'd like to see some analysis of the issues of large companies leading open source software - I think it is possible but very difficult.


Which fees would those be then?




Sybase releases free database for Linux | CNET News.com
: "Jacobson said there are issues surrounding open-source databases that will draw customers toward Sybase's free database.

'ASE offers various enterprise features, such as high availability, security and replication. There are also licensing issues--if businesses want to resell open-source software with a GPL license, then they have to pay fees. With ASE, the license is free.'"


Why do journalists not probe beyond these statements?

2005/05/06




Spotted in Planet Lisp : Bill Clementson: Moving to Vancouver


Good luck , Bill - this should provide some good blog fodder in the future. Perhaps more of the tech co-op will start blogging

View from the Mountain: SUSE 9.3 Linux Upgrade a heavy weight compared to Apple's OS X 10.4 Tiger: "I actually find the user interface of SUSE 9.3 more productive than Tiger. Now there isn't an image program as slick as iPhoto but there are lots of other apps with SUSE which don't come with Tiger.

Also as far as getting things done, moving around the desktop, and accomplishing my work, I think SUSE may win the race, but I will give it a few more days.

I just had a problem with the mail.app just refusing to send an e-mail. The icon for send when clicked did nothing. Perhaps Linux tells you more than you want to know about what is happening, but OS X doesn't tell you enough. My experience this year has taught me that a Linux box comes with better tools for fixing problems. With OS X mostly your option is to start from scratch again."
Via James Governor

2005/05/05

The Doc Searls Weblog : Thursday, May 5, 2005: "I think GFP2 is the most important essay I've written in years — just because it might save, or at least change for the better, the life of some kid whose sovereign genius isn't suited for the mill we call school."