Warp 35

Soapbox of a GNU/Linux lovin' guy.
FOSS just works.

My Photo
Name:
Location: Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

I'm a Dutch guy born in 1974. Growing up I went from a dreamer to halfway mature. In 2002 I met my life partner and I'm living happily with hime ever since. I'm seconded at Stork Technical services since 2001. Right now I'm pretty happy with where I'm at.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Interesting times

We're living in interesting times when it comes to FOSS. Right now I am a little lost as to where the currents flow. There is much going on, but it is all in its early stages. Overall it looks pretty stagnant, but the things that are brewing have the potential for major shifts.

We have Microsoft frantically pushing for Software Patents in Europe. Threatening sovereign states with jobloss if they oppose MS. (Ofcourse purely off the record, because it was "a missunderstanding").

MS is also patenting prior art and the moon to build a bogus portfolio, that will prove to be too expensive to defuse, in effect making it "valid". Does it matter if one patent can be overturned at high expenses, when they have a few thousands more to harass the competition with?

Then they are smudging the lines between Windows XP SP2 and the next UeberWindows, Longhorn. Indigo and Avalon are being backported to WinXP. What's up with that? Wasn't Longhorn supposed to be the must have to get WinFS (withered at the vine), Indigo and Avalon? Even IE 7 will be a standalone again. The only thing of the marketing buzzwords left is WinFX, but that is also partially available as the dotNET stack on XP.

One has to wonder what MS is aiming at. Is MS planning to cancel official releases and provide you with "Windows", an ever changing creature that gains and loses abilities as soon as MS releases or removes them?

Sun Microsystems. Ah, the tragic note of today. Sun is trying to save itself and its Crown Jewel, Solaris. It seems that their bid to make them and Solaris relevant again has been turned down. The FOSS community looked at OpenSolaris and "Cuddle" and said "Thanks, but no thanks." Our big hope is that Sun can gather enough Sun afficionados to build a little "Cuddle" community, like Apple with Darwin. But even then, Apple's Darwin community survives because of the cool gadgets Apple sells. Sun only has mediumsized iron and no iPods.

SCO vs IBM. Well, the SCO part is pretty clear. The plane has caught fire and is hurtling towards the ground. It is not a matter of if it crashes, but when it crashes. The part that is unclear here is the mildly related Noorda vs Canopy Management suit. What does it mean if the founders of Canopy accuse daily management of embezzlement through dubious transactions with Canopy companies (like SCO) and stock deals? No saying how this will unfold.

As for Europe itself. The patents on software question will give an answer on another question. Will Europe prevail with the democratic process or will it succumb to the pressure of the dictatorial lobbying?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home