Linus Torvalds is not Bill Gates.
He’s a programmer, and an honest man. So when he finds something he likes he says so, without artifice, and that’s all it means.
I hope people will understand that following Torvalds’ blog post extolling the Google Nexus One.
Apparently Linus has the same problem my son does (along with millions of other people). Directions are not his strong suit. So for him, Google navigation was a killer app.
Trouble is, in many ways Linus Torvalds is not “just a programmer.” He’s a brand name. He is, however reluctantly, a celebrity. So a simple blog post can read like an endorsement.
Put it this way. If Steve Ballmer picked one of the many Windows Mobile phones and said, “this is the one I like,” other makers of Windows Mobile phones might be upset. So he doesn’t.
Linus just did.
Google is trying to build a competitive ecosystem in Android, and Android is not the only Linux-based system in the mobile space. It’s like saying which one of your children you like best.
If you want to go the full paranoid on this one, you could even call Linus unpatriotic. After all, Motorola has staked its future on Android, and here he is making nice with a device from HTC, a Chinese company! (I know. Motorola has had its stuff made in China for years.)
This is as crazy as Jay Leno appearing in an ad for David Letterman’s TV show. It’s inconceivable! (I don’t think the word means what you think it does.)
Turns out the biggest surprise in the Oracle-Sun drama was not the split within open source over mySQL.
It was the split within Oracle over mySQL. (Picture from Oracle’s Collaborate 2007 event.)
Ken Jacobs, who was one of CEO Larry Ellison’s first 20 hires, says he is leaving the company after seeking to run mySQL and being turned down.
Jacobs gets credit for keeping InnoDB moving forward after its 2005 acquisition. This was a big win for open source.
InnoDB was an integral part of mySQL, and there were fears then Oracle planned to box-in mySQL by controlling its storage engine. But that didn’t happen, Oracle was able to claim open source bonafides.
Now Edward Screven, Oracle’s chief corporate architect, is in charge of mySQL, which could lead to the same fears expressed over InnoDB when Jacobs took it on.
Screven, however, also has some open source mojo. He was interviewed by Linux Foundation head Jim Zemlin in 2008, touting the company’s commitment to Linux. “We didn’t view GPL as something that was going to get in the way of business in the least,” he told Zemlin.
Trouble is that while Linux is an enterprise product, and has long had substantial server market share, mySQL began as something smaller and simpler, not scaled. The code base was moving toward greater scale before Oracle bought it, but during the debate even open source advocates like Matt Asay admitted it wasn’t a direct competitor.
This was always at the heart of the dispute. Would open source be allowed to develop a true competitor to Oracle? Would Web start-ups have to make a costly switch from open source as they scaled, or commit to open source in their business plans, raising costs substantially?
Internet success happens in Internet time. A start-up subsisting on pizza, even a small open source project, can be discovered by the masses and become world famous within a year. Will there be an easy migration path, or will that path be slammed shut?
Ask Edward Screven.
Paula Hunter will differentiate CodePlex from sites like Google Code and groups like the Linux Foundation by trying to bring enterprise IT shops into the open source mainstream.
Hunter was named the new executive director of the CodePlex Foundation late last week, and spoke to ZDNet Open Source.
The CodePlex Foundation is based in Seattle, but Hunter lives in New Hampshire and works in the Boston suburbs. That may prove an asset as Hunter works to distance the foundation from its roots as a Microsoft open source site.
“My responsibility will be to embrace the business community,” she said, adding she plans on hiring a technical director soon. She also plans to develop something like the old Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) user advisory board, covering a range of industries beyond software.
“One primary area we’re trying to focus is the commercial software development area, and certainly the east coast is not only a center for software companies but large enterprise IT shops,” she said.
Hunter is the foundation’s first employee. Even the permanent board of directors has yet to be named. This gives her enormous influence on the group’s direction. But she emphasized to ZDNet that the direction has already been set, and that her plan is to execute on it.
“It’s not necessary for one company to shoulder the burden of this effort. There are plenty of companies that can benefit. Over the next few weeks I’m going to create a program and set of benefits for those people we want to sign on board.”
The direction was described by Sam Ramji, a former Microsoft executive now with Sonoa Systems, when the new foundation was set up last year. That is, provide a way for Fortune 500 companies outside the software industry to make contributions, gain the benefits of open source, while maintaining some code control.
Andy Updegrove is pleased with the appointment, noting her work with United Linux and the OSDL, which was merged with the Free Standards Group to create the present Linux Foundation.
“Paula knows her way around the block,” he wrote, and most stories about the appointment emphasize she’s an open source “veteran.” This makes me feel old. Hunter got her degree from Bentley College in 1983, when I was five years into my own journalism career.