Everything is a Freaking DNS problem - redhat

Let the customer choose where to buy lunch from !

Kris Buytaert — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:44:44 +0000

Matt Asay is pushing his favorite Open Source model again. The model where the majority of developers of a project work for a company and that company is creating a business around the project. There's nothing wrong with that model, but he seems to forget the other models time over time :)

Matt is absolutely right with 2 of the 3 things he wants you to consider.
A SI in the middle of a $50 million dollar project involving Alfresco not talking to Alfresco is just wrong. An SI not offering a support contract is also just wrong. But an SI forcing his customer to buy the commercially supported version from a vendor ? Where's the customer choice ?

The customer should have the option to choose for a commercially supported version or the free version. And preferably that should be an educated option.

Matt seems to forget about situations where an Open Source project is not managed by one central organization , by one company that contributes most of the code. What companies are in charge of Apache, Linux (and don't reply RedHat here), Xen (No it's not Citrix anymore) , Samba , and lots of others.

If you were in Australia why wouldn't you get a MySQL support contract from Arjen Lenz ? Even if he didn't have MySQL Partner Certification ?

If you were in Germany , as a Centos or even RHEL user would you want to get your critical Samba Support from some support guy at RedHat or from some German guy at a local shop

If Michael Badger were in the SI business , would he be a good partner to support your Zenoss setup ?

3 totally different cases, the ex-employee, the developer not employed by a vendor, the guy who wrote the book.

Not all Open Source projects are backed by 1 clearly identifyable company, lots of open source developers work at SI's and they might be a better source for a specific project than a vendor that just integrated their product.

Worse even .. I've seen tons of traditional SI's jump on the Open Source wagon, by working only with the Commercially backed Open Source tools, as if they were proprietary software. Obviously the commercial Open Source vendors love these SI's they are the best resellers , and probably the worst integrators.

So Matt, please remember, there is more open source on this planet than your corporate backed open source, I haven't seen figures , but my bet would be that the corporate backed part is the smallest one.

In the end the most important thing is that the customer has got to have the educated choice between the locally supported opensource alternative , or the locally supported opensource alternative with commercial backing ..

But then again , it might be the European vs US vision however :)

Distro Synchronisation

Kris Buytaert — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:05:06 +0000

Look Mark , Red Hat and Novell have Synced their releases :)

Well.. not really .. even different Xen versions :)

The Future of Zimbra

Kris Buytaert — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 09:45:31 +0000

The interweb thinks there isn't much future for Zimbra if Yahoo gets swallowed by Redmond. I`m not sure.

There are different alternatives apart from the being extinguished during the takeover.
I have no clue how the core developers and the management of Zimbra was reimbursed when they were taken over by Yahoo, however I hope they didn't waste all their money and still have some money left. As they went this far with the company already they must have some good contacts with financial people that can help them get a new company off the ground ArbmiZ or ɐɹqɯız would be good names ;)

They could either go with a fresh start, or Yahoo could be so smart to have the guys perform an MBO.
Or even sell the Zimbra assests again .. even at loss.

If getting the Zimbra organisation out of Yahoo doesn't work why not hire the key developers away from the company effectively rendering it worthless , big chance you don't have to hire them away from their current job but just be waiting at the front doors when the exodus starts, people either don't want to work for the new company or will be forced to leave as they are redundant.

RedHat has a big opportunity here .. they don't have a relevant mail offering yet, there have been rumors around RedHat going to partner with the OpenXchange folks but I haven't heard from that yet .., but other companies might have look at the codebase also.

Would we need a fork ? We don't know yet ..

But I don't think we have to worry that much .. I think there are bigger things to worry about ..

Matt Asay interviews Jim Whitehurst

Kris Buytaert — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:23:10 +0000

Matt is interviewing RedHat's fresh CEO Jim Whitehurst

Only one answer into the interview and I already love this guy ..

Q:Tell me a little bit about yourself. What are the last three bands you listened to on your iPod?
A: I don't have an iPod (or a Zune). It won't play Ogg Vorbis files.

That's the spirit !