A News.com report on the community and the software.
Messman memo to Novell: Rally behind Hovsepian
Novell Chief Executive Jack Messman has asked employees to support Ron Hovsepian in his new role as president and chief operating officer of the server software company.
"I ask that each of you put your full and complete efforts behind his strong vision as we continue to work toward building a stronger Novell," Messman said in a memo sent to employees Tuesday and seen by News.com. Novell, based in Waltham, Mass., declined to comment.
Newly promoted Hovsepian is the executive leading layoffs and other restructuring activities likely to be announced this week at Novell. He also led smaller changes elsewhere at the company, including 120 to 150 layoffs at Novell's European operations.
Those credentials are an asset, Messman said. "Ron's promotion is a direct result of the positive and transformative changes he has made since joining Novell in 2003," he said.
Hovsepian will run the core parts of Novell. "In his new role, Ron will have responsibility for product development, field operations and marketing," Messman said.
Hovsepian has kept customer needs in mind, but shareholders also will benefit from his influence, the CEO added. "Both the board and I are convinced that Ron's leadership will deliver strong results for our customers, employees and shareholders," Messman said. "Ron's focus on meeting customer needs has played an important role in driving the organization to be more customer focused, as well as delivering strong operational efficiency in the areas where he has had responsibility. It is now time for Ron to apply his skills and energy to a larger part of our organization."
SCO describes alleged IBM Unix misuse to court
It took more than two and a half years, but the SCO Group finally has disclosed a list of areas in which it believes IBM violated its Unix contract, allegedly by moving proprietary Unix technology into open-source Linux.
In a five-page document filed Friday, SCO attorneys say they have identified 217 areas in which the company believes IBM or Sequent, a Unix server company IBM acquired, violated contracts under which SCO and its predecessors licensed the Unix operating system. However, the curious won't be able to see for themselves the details of SCO's claims: The full list of alleged abuses were filed in a separate document under court seal.
The Lindon, Utah-based company did provide some information about what it believes IBM moved improperly to Linux.
"Some of these wrongful disclosures include areas such as an entire file management system; others are communications by IBM personnel working on Linux that resulted in enhancing Linux functionality by disclosing a method or concept from Unix technology," SCO said. "The numerosity and substantiality of the disclosures reflects the pervasive extent and sustained degree as to which IBM disclosed methods, concepts, and in many places, literal code, from Unix-derived technologies in order to enhance the ability of Linux to be used as a scalable and reliable operating system for business and as an alternative to proprietary Unix systems such as those licensed by SCO and others."
SCO, whose Unix business continues to struggle, said it will file a final report on the alleged abuses on Dec. 22.
Office - OpenDocument 'filter' planned
An Australian company has devised a way to add support for the OpenDocument format into Microsoft Office.
Phase N earlier this week spelled out its plans for creating an OpenDocument filter which would rely on a server to convert Office documents into OpenDocument documents.
OpenDocument is a set of recently standardized document formats developed at the standards body OASIS. Microsoft has said that it does not intend to offer native support for OpenDocument file formats in the next version of Office and instead rely on filters.
Phase N intends to do exactly that, a task which it expects to take a few hundred hours of development time. It calls its project OpenOpenOffice.
Rather than client-side software to do the conversion, OpenOpenOffice relies on a server running a Perl application, according to the technical description.
The company hopes to have an open-source project started on SourceForge shortly.
IBM bemoans Joomla-Mambo split
It's unfortunate for the Mambo open-source publishing software project and for its customers that its developers had to decamp with their source code to start the Joomla project, according to a high-ranking IBM software executive.
"It does look like the company that was shepherding this along got a little bit off track on their interests vs. the open-source community's interests," said Rod Smith, vice president of emerging Internet technology for IBM's Software Group, in an interview Tuesday. "That's a bad thing," because Mambo had a lot of traction, and the "fork" undermines that, he said.
Corporate customers dislike such conflicts, Smith said. "They're not scared of open-source software. But what they are scared of is what just happened to Mambo," he said. "If it blows up on them, they might have to do a lot of rework."
Joomla appears to have inherited the momentum, though, said David Boloker, chief technology officer of the IBM group. "The community shifted--I won't say overnight, but much faster than I thought," he said.
Smith also praised AJAX, technology that brings a richer user interface to Web browsers through browsers' JavaScript abilities.
"We like AJAX," Smith said. "I think Google Maps put it on everybody's' radar scope, and a company called Zimbra has a nice toolkit. We think over time there's going to be some momentum growing around that."
Yahoo's new Web-based e-mail software, based on technology the company got when it acquired Oddpost, uses AJAX, added David Boloker, chief technology officer of the Emerging Internet Technology Group. The new mail software is under development.
AJAX's Achilles heel today is that it's technically difficult to program in, Smith said, despite the fact that there are more than 30 different programming toolkits available. "It is not for people who are not JavaScript-experienced. It is difficult. There are some things we think need to be done around tooling to make it easier for developers."
AJAX will help reclaim ground that was lost when browsers became common, Smith said. "When browser came out, we took three steps backward in the user interface," but what the industry lost in user interface it gained in the spread of technology. I think ajax can go quite a ways. It'll take some fancy footwork and good tooling, and I don't think it's going to be a quantum step forward, but it'll be a good step forward," Smith said.
Companies expect open-source desktop software
On the same day that programmers released version 2 of OpenOffice.org, survey results showed a significant opportunity for the open-source rival to Microsoft Office.
By 2010, 22 percent of companies surveyed by Saugatuck Technology expect their core desktop productivity programs will be open-source software. The survey polled more than 100 senior executives, about 80 percent in the United States and the rest from other parts of the world.
"That's a big number when you consider Microsoft has about 95 percent market share," said Saugatuck president Bill McNee.
Among areas, 28 percent said open-source software would at the core of their operating system software by 2010, 28 percent for development tools, 26 percent for application servers and 24 percent for database software.
The survey also showed a significant willingness to use open-source software for core business applications that handle a company's critical computing tasks such as accounting and customer relationship management, with 20 percent saying they expected to use open-source software by 2010. "That blew me away," McNee said of the result.
The survey also polled users on where they expected not to use open-source software. The category with the most reluctance there was database software, where 34 percent said they wouldn't use open-source software by 2010. Next was desktop productivity software, where 27 percent said they'd stay away.
Brace yourself: Spell checking in vi?
Disclaimer: I imprinted on the vi editor on a Unix system in 1990 and never could bring myself to figure out Emacs.
But I am not alone in my preferences. The text editor ships in one form or another with every Unix, Linux or BSD system out there, and sysadmins can count on it even when X servers give up the ghost, network connections are too pokey or fancier editors aren't installed. So loyalists will be delighted to know that one widely used incarnation--Vim, short for vi improved--has been upgraded to version 6.4. Vim, an open-source program, ships with Linux from Red Hat, Novell and many others, and Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems make it available for their versions of Unix.
Granted, the new version consists mostly of a bunch of bug fixes. But according to VIM's main programmer, Bran Moolenaar, more dramatic changes could be in store if people fund his work enough to produce version 7.
"If I keep getting donations from sponsors and registered Vim users, I will be able to add several 'big' features. One of the new features is spell checking," he said in the Vim 6.4 announcement. "It already works quite well."
Moolenaar lets those who contribute at least 10 euros to the project vote for new features in Vim.
Wiki founder leaves Microsoft for Eclipse
Ward Cunningham, the father of the the Wiki concept, has left Microsoft after a two-year stint, taking up a new post at the open source Eclipse Foundation.
Cunningham is leaving to become the developer tool maker's director of committer community development, according to Eclipse Foundation chief Mike Milinkovich, who posted news of the hiring on his blog.
"I've had the pleasure of interacting with Ward at several points in the past, and I've always found him to be a truly rare bird: someone who is both brilliant but also blessed with a warm and engaging personality," Milinkovich said on his blog.
At Microsoft, Cunningham worked as part of a team that gives customers guidance on how to architect their systems.
IBM exec urges OpenDocument adoption
Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of standards and open source, is urging computer users to pressure software suppliers, company executives and governments to support the OpenDocument format, a standardized file format for word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software. Widespread use of OpenDocument could undermine one way Microsoft keeps people coming back to its dominant Office product, whose file formats are proprietary.
In his blog last week, Sutor urged people to take several actions:
• "Insist today that the provider of your office applications is committed to support the OASIS OpenDocument...by January 1, 2007.
• "Insist today that the office applications you deploy allow users to easily set the OASIS OpenDocument standard as the default 'save' format.
• "Ask your CIO (chief information officer) when you will be able to use office applications that support the OASIS OpenDocument standard.
• "Ask your local and federal governments when they will be supporting the OASIS OpenDocument standard."
The open-source OpenOffice.org effort begun by Sun Microsystems was the launching point for OpenDocument. The project's fifth anniversary was last week, and the new OpenOffice.org version 2.0 is imminent. Sun and Google pledged to help boost OpenOffice distribution earlier this month.
Businesses still iffy on Vista plans
Businesses are taking a wait-and-see approach when it comes to plans for Windows Vista.
According to a Merrill Lynch survey of 100 North American CIOs, two-thirds of businesses are waiting for more information before planning their upgrade schedule to the next version of the operating system, which is due out late next year.
Just 8 percent said they are planning to upgrade in 2007. Twice that many are planning upgrades in 2008, while 5 percent said they plan to wait until 2009.
Meanwhile, just over half of those surveyed said they planned to increase their spending on Linux, with the lion's share (43 percent) favoring Red Hat and 9 percent leaning toward Novell. The remaining 48 percent of those surveyed aren't planning on stepping up Linux use.
Open source: Big and getting bigger
ORLANDO, Fla. -- If you're knee-deep in an IT infrastructure project, the following will come as no surprise: Open source is popular and it's gaining ground.
"It's simply growing up the stack," Mark Driver, an analyst with Gartner, said on Monday. Driver, speaking at Gartner's annual Symposium/ITExpo conference here, said one reason for the building popularity of open source is the growing adoption of open source code by proprietary, closed-source software makers like IBM and Sun.
"The brutal reality is that more and more software from (proprietary vendors) will have open source in it," he said.
A growing number of software makers see open source support as a key part of their competitive strategies, Driver said. "Why do you think that IBM likes Linux? Do you think they looked at Linux three or four years ago and said this is superior to AIX, an operating system they spent billions to develop? I think not. They like it because it is bad for Windows and Solaris."
Open source products continue to pose a challenge to server software from proprietary vendors. Gartner predicts that by 2008, open source software will directly compete with closed source products in all infrastructure software markets.
Open source is "moving from an under-the-radar technology, to IT organizations having a formal policy," Driver said. "If you are a software vendor you have to have an open source strategy. You have no choice."
Driver said even greater adoption is likely being held back by a number of commonly held myths related to open source. "The myth is that open source is only used by hackers and technology elites. It is inappropriate for mainstream IT. That's just not true," Driver said.
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