Monthly Archives: June 2007

Emerging, Open Source, Ramblings

…then you win

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win” -Ghandi

“You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.” –Arlo Guthrie

The Portable Consultant has been silent on recent developments involving Microsoft and Linux. This is not because of lack of interest – I’ve been busy working out my own open source issues primarily upgrades to this blog site and my company site – but because it is being so fully covered elsewhere (and especially here, and here).

It seem that Microsoft has finally realized that open source is more than Linux or OpenOffice… it is, in the immortal lyrics of Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant, a movement (“…and all you’ve got to do is sing it next time it comes ’round on the guitar.”)

If there is anything that Microsoft doesn’t want to miss out on, it’s a movement. I mean, that Internet thing really did catch on after all, didn’t it?

Ok, so in Microsoft terms “joining them” means threatening the Linux community and their business clients with FUD in the form of 200+ patents while forging some relationships where they may figure they will have the upper hand. Novell, Xandros, and Linspire are not likely to bring down the house that Bill built, right? Ah, but will MS enter into an similar open source agreements with IBM? Hmmm… In any case, a few Linux “partners” may prove useful some day (probably in court).

It’s very early days yet, but I have the feeling that Microsoft may have jumped the shark with respect to Linux. In their own way they are now treating Linux, and all open source, as the popular movement it really is.

All together now… “You can get anything you want…”

Cheers,
-pmh

MS Linux

ps: Apologies to those sensitive readers who abhor boomer references.

Open Source, Reviews

Novell and Capgemini team up on open source

the open source maturity model
A couple of years ago The Portable Consultant came across Bernard Golden’s timely book Succeeding with Open Source. In it Mr. Golden sets out the criteria by which open source software, together with the communities that create it, might be measured in terms of suitability for enterprise use.

Golden describes the Open Source Maturity Model (OSMM) which enables us to judge how scalable, manageable, and supportable a particular open source product might be. As might be expected, a lot of this depends on the open source community that manages and contributes to the project. By assessing the project and the product itself, among other things, the level of maturity and what I would call sophistication can be determined. This, in turn, can help determine how suitable the product might be for a given organization. Suitability depends to a large extent on the role of the product as well as the capabilities of the organization.

As the back cover states, this book points the way to…

  • assessing open source business models
  • managing risk, including licensing issues
  • evaluating and selecting open source software
  • locating and assessing technical support, training, and documentation resources

SeriouslyOpen.org
Around the time that I was reading this book my open source research took me to SeriouslyOpen.org which is jointly sponsored by Capgemini and Intel, according to the site’s footer – Capgemini, it seems, has a limited partnership with Intel. It appears that Capgemini has extended some of the criteria found in Golden’s book and provided the sort of comprehensive methodology of which such consulting firms are fond.

a partnership with roots… or teeth?
All of this goes some way toward explaining why today’s announcement of Novell and Capgemini’s open source partnership may actually have some roots. Capgemini is the only one of the big consulting firms that I am aware of that has gone so far to provide their clients with a formal framework for the consideration and selection of appropriate open source products. Novell is, obviously, doing its level best to raise open source solutions, primarily its own products, to the point where they might be considered on a par with proprietary solutions.

Personally, I’ve thought for some time that Novell has the goods. Whether they have the skills required to market and deliver them is still up in the air. I see some potential for progress here, but whether Capgemini can help drive big business clients to become Novell customers will depend on how well this partnership is executed.

Come to think of it, given Microsoft’s recent patent pronouncements concerning open source, this partnership might do better with teeth rather than roots.

Cheers,
-pmh

  • disclosure: the author of this blog has a financial investment in common stock of Novell Inc.
New Paradigms

What’s in a name?

domain auctioning gone mad?
Why do I find this CNN Money/Business 2.0 article on Kevin Ham, master of Internet domain names, so depressing?

He does what he does very well. To a certain extent his work serves a purpose and society values it to the amount of some $300 million.

Perhaps it’s depressing because it speaks to some of the weaknesses of today’s Internet:

  • from the users’ side – the problem of finding things
  • from the business side – the insatiable desire to monetize web traffic
  • from the developing world’s side – a pathetic response to the digital divide

In any case, it is a fascinating article on the value of Internet domain names.

Do you own a .com domain? Try yourdomainname.cm (don’t forget to drop the ‘o’) and see how well Ham’s ccTLD system works.

sigh…
-pmh