Is Open-Source "Freetarded"?

Is open-source "freetarded"? I just ran across an article by Christopher Keene pointing out that open-source has to be about more than free and that vendors have to start thinking that way. And he is absolutely correct!



If software is only free, you are addressing only part of having software be valuable and having a low TCO. As the article above points out, if you can't get the software installed and working, or you can't find talent to be able to work with the software, that "free" software starts to get pretty expensive.



In order to fully deliver on the promise of open-source, software must have three qualities:

1. Free and easy access - This is kind of assumed with open-source, but must be stated so we don't forget it. For most users it isn't about the source, but rather is about free and easy access to a binary or distribution. While I have to confess that I have downloaded source and built my own binaries for a variety of apps and even newer versions of Linux kernels (and I'm probably even proud of this fact), most users don't have the aptitude or desire to do that, so having binaries is a must.


2. Easy to use - This is extremely important and sometimes forgotten with open-source projects. If you download something and can't get it installed, or after installation can't get it configured or working, you can end up wasting a significant amount of time losing the "free" aspect of the software. Worse, if that initial experience is bad you may not come back again to try it and worse yet, word of mouth and hmmm, blogging, can spread the word about a product being difficult to use very quickly.


3. Vibrant community - This last piece is also very important. Without it you don't get the collaboration and feedback that help drive innovation and help make the software better. Furthermore, if there is no community, adoption suffers and that leads to small pools of talent resulting in higher costs for organizations wanting to use the software.

You only have to look as far as the Apache Web Server and Apache Tomcat, or more recently GlassFish to see examples of where these three qualities have led to successful open-source projects that have had and are gaining widespread adoption and use and have driven down TCO for organizations that are implementing the software. And while it isn't as large or mature as those mentioned, Open ESB is also applying the qualities to create a successful open-source project.



A related question that deserves its own blog entry but I'll mention here is, if software is free, how does a vendor make any money off it? See Mark's blog from some recent interaction with our customers to see their views on paying for "free" open-source software, and stay tuned for more on the subject.

Visible Source Software

I spent the last three days at Gartner's Application Architecture, Development, and Integration (AADI) Summit in Nashville. I had attended the AIWS conference in December and many of the themes were similar but there was some new information and predictions made that was great to hear.

I also had a chance to talk with several analysts, one of which, Mark Driver, has open source software as one of his focus areas. Something we talked about and he subsequently presented on is that many companies are positioning themselves as building open source software but that it isn't always the case that it is really open source. In fact, he says that Gartner will be changing their identification of some from open source to something else. This is because companies are using open source licenses that aren't truly open, either through not being able to use and extend the code or not being able to contribute back in any way.

Mark liked to think of this as accessible source software (doesn't result in a good acronym, although perhaps appropriate) and I suggested we talk about this kind of software as visible source software. In his presentation he talked about this as gated source software.

I like visible source as I think it properly distinguishes between those companies that are truly open, have a community, and opportunity for "outsiders" to join the community and contribute, and those that simply make their source available and try to benefit from the open source label but don't really allow for anyone to directly participate or become a contributor or committer. For all intents and purposes, the software is simply "visible" to others.

At Sun, we clearly believe in true open source software and this is evidenced by the contributors and committers in Project Open ESB. There are 7 companies listed as Community Partners, many of which are building components for the platform and several of those in open source with commit rights to the project, plus a growing number of individuals with commit rights that are building and contributing to components being developed in the project and community.

If you are interested in joining a truly open source community, come join Project Open ESB.

2016 Olympics

I was reading the Track and Field News website and saw a link to an article about whether the US should nominate Chicago or Los Angeles as the host city for the 2016 Olympics.



Now I wasn't expected an unbiased and rational story since it is in a Midwest newspaper, but the support for Chicago to be the host isn't even close and frankly isn't that strong. And not that I'm terribly unbiased either, but there are many reason Los Angeles would make a much better host city:

• Successfully hosting the games twice before with the 1984 games perhaps the most successful and model for future games since.


• Absence of heat and humidity; this is an athletic event after all. And to the rebuttal that the smog will kill the athletes, smog levels are way down from 20 years ago when they weren't nearly as bad as expected for the 1984 games.


• If you are concerned with the "experience", how can you beat sandy beaches and the Pacific Ocean?


• And as far as sports history goes, I don't even know why the article tried to justify Chicago beating Los Angeles in this regard. Just to name a few:




• The aforementioned Olympic games, including Carl Lewis' 4 golds in 1984.


• The Lakers 9 championships spanning many years and different superstars from Wilt to Kareem to Magic to Shaq to Kobe and more.


• The Dodgers 5 World Series including 1988 with Gibson's memorable home run. And many stars from Koufax to Fernando to Hershiser and more.


• The Angels of all teams winning the World Series in 2002.


• The dynasty that is UCLA with basketball during the Wooden era and beyond (11 championships and 2 straight trips to the final 4 the last 2 years) but across all sports with more national championships than any other NCAA institution with 99.


• The history of USC football and 7 Heisman trophy award winners from the school.

And when it comes right down to it, who really thinks the Cubs are going to win the World Series by 2016? :)



In the end, the right choice for the USOC would be to submit Los Angeles as the candidate, but the right choice isn't always made.

Routers in Space

Since Infoworld has gone online only, I was reading their site and one of the headlines was about putting routers in space. It certainly makes sense as a way to cut down on the traffic, but it makes one think, when will we ultimately put servers in space too? Wouldn't that cut down the traffic and improve performance even more?



It probably isn't going to happen, or at least be widespread, in the next couple of years but I don't doubt it will happen. Who will be the first Space Web/App Hosting Provider (SWAHP)?

Difficult Sudoku

I blogged about Foxtrot and Sudoku a while ago and it garnered a lot of interest. Given that, I thought folks may be interested in some difficult traditional sudoku puzzles I have come across.



The way I actually determine difficulty is from a program I wrote that solves the puzzles. The program implements a number of techniques to solve the puzzles and determines how hard it is based on the techniques that must be used and how quickly it can be solved. I hope to have the solver hosted where you can get to it soon, so stay tuned.



In any case, here is the hardest puzzle I have come across.

7 9 1     8	1 7	4 8   2
6 7	5 9   7 3	7 6
2   8 6	9 5	6     1 2 9

And another difficult one.

4   5       2 1	2	2   9         7 3
7 3         4	1   9       5   2	5         1 3
7 8         9   1	7	6 5       7   4

Give them a try!

More on Linux or Unix

Ok, I recently blogged about Solaris being unfairly portrayed along with the "other" Unix vendors, and I now see that Sun/Solaris is being portrayed as less open and flexible than IBM and AIX!



In another SearchOpenSource column the author this time talks about how moving from Sun to IBM would give more flexibility because IBM's POWER5 architecture supports both Unix (AIX) and Linux. He does this while completely ignoring that Sun's SunFire line of hardware not only supports Unix (Solaris) and Linux, but also Windows, giving more flexibility than IBM's solution.



He also ignores that Solaris is open source and that it runs on industry standard hardware giving customers even more flexibility by not being locked in to a single hardware vendors.



The scenario is couched as being "hypothetical" but grossly misrepresenting the real facts should not be stood for.

Linux or Unix

I am subscribed to a bunch of technology news newsletters, one from SearchOpenSource.com that is generally informative and interesting. However, an article they had recently on Linux or Unix was missing some info that I just have to comment on.



The article highlights the pluses and minuses of both Unix and Linux, but it only speaks generally about Unix and groups Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX together. Given what Sun has done with Solaris over the past few years this is a mistake and paints an unrealistic picture of where Solaris is today.



First, the article says flexibility is a downside of Unix highlighting that Linux is open source and "you actually have the source to the kernel, and if you have the knowledge, you can actually make the changes yourself!". Hello, are they not aware that Solaris is also open source?



Next it dings Unix on price saying that companies must buy a license to a proprietary Unix and then pay for maintenance on top of that. Hello again, but are they not aware that Solaris can be downloaded for free? Yes, if a company wants to be supported they can purchase a license and support but they are not required to.



Then it mentions difficulties in a company separating from a specific vendor due to lock in due in large part to the operating system only running on hardware from that vendor. Hello yet again, are they not aware that Solaris runs and is supported on commodity (Sun and non-Sun) x86/x64 hardware? There are over 700 x86/x64 systems on the Hardware Compatibility List.



The article goes on to highlight as advantages how Linux doesn't have some of the issues above and those are similiarly incorrect when comparing with Solaris.



Does Linux have a place in corporate environments. Sure, but not for the reasons identified above.

FoxTrot and Sudoku

I'm a big fan of the comic strip FoxTrot and today's strip is classic.

In it, Jason (the geeky youngest child) creates his own Sudoku game where instead of having numeric clues to start, the clues are various different math problems. There are square roots, cube roots, numbers in base 2 and hexadecimal, summations, integrals, and more. His sister aptly calls it "Sudorku".

Well, being a huge Sudoku fan and a bit of a geek myself, I had to try to solve it. First, I got to do all the math and dust off a little of gray matter that hadn't seen the light of day in a while (product management doesn't require integrals very often :)). Then it was a pretty straight forward Sudoku solution of medium to hard difficulty.

I've also recently started doing Killer Sudoku which adds a new twist to things. There are actually a few different variations, one that starts with no starting numbers as clues, but instead adjacent cells are grouped and a sum of those cells is indicated. In another there are no numbers at all and instead cells within a 3x3 box have a > or < between them indicating whether the values is greater or less than each other. And then they have a combination of the two.

Try them and have fun!

The other side of the world

I recently had the privilege of traveling to India for business and it was a fantastic experience, ... other than the travel!



Getting there took 36 hours of travel time and getting home took 27. Everything in between went very well. And to be honest, the Changi Airport in Singapore really is a nice place to have a layover with lots of shops and free internet available. I was able to get a little work done and using Skype, make a few calls home during my layovers.



On the trip, I had the opportunity to meet with other folks from Sun as well as a number of partners to talk about integration, SOA, composite applications, and the Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite.



I also had the opportunity to participate in a 3 city event on "How IT fosters Enterprise Agility" put on by the Jasubhai Group where I spoke on how identity management and SOA are key components of an agile enterprise, and how Sun provides products for this with Java CAPS and the Sun Java Identity Management Suite.



Thanks to my hosts that knew just the right places to go, I also had the chance to experience the myriad different cuisines in India.



All in all, a great trip. If only it wasn't so far away.