VMworld, virtualization software company VMware’s big conference was a few weeks ago.
Among the stuff presented was VMware Fusion. Even though it’s not the first virtualization product for Mac OS X , it’s definitely the one people have been most excited about.
I’ll let the video do the talkin’.
Our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. To claim otherwise is to further sow fear, uncertainty and doubt, and does not offer a fair basis for competition. When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents. We strongly object to the usage of our agreement to suggest that members of the Linux community owe Microsoft any remunerations.
Social news site Reddit was recently acquired by (mostly print media company) Condé Nast. In his personal blog (recommended!), Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz describes the how the bigger, more expensive I.T. and facilities infrastructure Condé Nast provides inhibits more than it helps.
… Nobody else seems to get work done here either. Everybody’s always coming into our room to hang out and chat or invite us to play the new video game system that Wired is testing. The upside is that while we haven’t gotten much of our work done, we have managed to do many other people’s. Various folks from around the office have shown up to have us help them with their technical problems, which we usually solve fairly quickly. We joked that we should get transferred to their IT department instead of Web development.There’s a company Internet connection, which routes everything through the IT HQ in Delaware, presumably the better to spy on us on. On Day 1 they took our laptops and “backed up” the drives to ensure they had a copy of all our data. (We scurried to get our MP3 collections and worse off first.)
Then they issued us company-approved laptops: terribly-slow iBook G4s complete with Conde Nast desktop and screensaver with spy software pre-installed. When they gave us the machines we didn’t even have administrator access on them. The clock was set to the Eastern time zone; I needed an IT department person to change it to show me California time.
The company laptop is necessary to read our company email which, being on a Microsoft Exchange server, requires a special Microsoft email client to read. You also need to be on a company laptop to access the company network, where you can log into a maze of PeopleSoft web sites to file expense reports and change your health benefits.
Wowza… so much hub-bub yesterday about Sun open-sourcing Java. It almost drowned out this news:
Using patents as competitive tools in the free software world is not acceptable. Novell, as a participant in numerous debates, discussions and conferences on the topic knew this to be the case. We call upon Novell to work with the Software Freedom Law Center to undo the patent agreement and acknowledge its obligations as a beneficiary of the Free Software community.
And somehow this gets connected to the Sun Java announcement. Samba isn’t the only one bugged by the Microsoft/ Novell arrangement. While Sun already had plans to open source Java, they had not decided on a license. It turns out that Sun decision to use the GPL is directly related to the Novell/ Microsoft agreement.
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz writes:
… one of the strongest motivations to select the GPL was the announcement made last week by Novell and Microsoft, suggesting that free and open source software wasn’t safe unless a royalty was being paid. As an executive from one of those companies said, “free has to have a price.”That’s nonsense.
Free software can be free of royalties, and free of impediments to broadscale, global adoption and deployment. Witness what we’ve done with Solaris, and now, what we’ve done with Java. Developers are free to pick up the code, and create derivatives. Without royalty or obligation.
Those that say open source software can’t be safe for customers – or that commercially indemnified software can’t foster community – are merely advancing their own agenda. Without any basis in fact.
They’re also fighting a rising tide.
Related:
Sometimes I get annoyed with Spam, but I’ve laughed out loud a couple of times recently.
I think they’re trying to make him look like Steve Jobs there. Even that little media player (that’s just there for show, there’s no real movie), is really Quicktime-y.
But anyway… shoe company Fleuvog is offering designers the opportunity to submit designs that will be public domain, and that they may manufacture. No, the designer won’t get paid. At first I thought they weren’t really feeling the open source vibe here, but the more I read it, the more open source it does seem. It’s not just open to designers who’d normally get paid for their work. It’s open to people who just don’t see the shoe they want to wear out there, and want somebody to make it.
Plenty of people have already submitted designs, which you can browse. And they even have a little page about “real” open source software.
TECHNORATI TAGS: fashion, fluevog, open source, crowdsourcing, public domain