I've been following this car in the news for a while - funny but right on target article and great photos...
0 to 60 in 4 seconds - 250 mile range
Can't wait to plug it into my solar panel and fly past the gas station
We've got a new website...its a ton of work, so thanks to theresa and sandra on our team who put it together. We've had a lot of feedback during the past months, and they have done a terrific job of getting the info our customers and partners have suggested on to the site. I'm particularly proud to be able to show the names of some of our customers and partners - our business is based on our relationships with them, and its great to be able to feature them.
There is a lot to comment on at the moment - the google announcement about opening up a repository for OSS, the release of a new draft of GPL 3, some copyright news regarding youtube etc. so should be a bit more to blog about.
I spoke (briefly) at the always on conference last week. well attended - saw lots of friends and former colleagues - lots of interest in what we're doing here. I was glad to see Vinod using his speech to talk about alternative energy. I think the opportunity for entrepeneurs to step in with innovative ideas has never been better.
The deal to sell Knight Ridder closed today. So the San Jose Mercury News is officially on its way to its new owner - it actually has to get sold twice before its over. Its too bad. As a longtime reader, I can see the energy and quality leaking out. The editorial page is a fraction of what it used to be. Its a case of shareholder value and editorial value in conflict. I'm more than a little worried about newspapers these days...we need them, but they don't seem to be able to find the new formula for life in the online world.
Its Java One time just down the street, and I saw a few minutes ago that Sun execs made the statement something like "its not a question of if..." regarding open source java. I think thats a terrific idea. The java community has been waiting for this message. And some have not - based on the range of other alternatives. Nothing would insure that Java remains an critical technology more than making it open source. I hope it happens promptly.
ISO is the international standards organization – most well known I suspect for the ISO 9000 quality certification, but active in lots of other areas as well. I noticed today an article in which ISO announced that they are preparing a standard for software asset management. Their web site does not have a lot of detail at this point, but the fact that they are actively pursuing this area is important. My reading of this is that they are addressing the acquisition and license management of commercial software – i.e. “How many copies of Microsoft Office do I have and did I pay for all of them?” Obviously this is an important question to vendors of commercial software.
But there is a larger impact as well – done properly, this may lead to a more standardized way to identify software – and not just commercial software. Most organizations today are already in the “mixed code” zone. In other words, they use software from many sources – some commercial, some open source. And there are many motivations to answer the question, “What's in my code?” – IP, security, vulnerability, etc.
We proposed last year the concept of IP Ingredients – a way to label the ingredients of software that is analogous to food labeling. Admittedly this is not exactly what the ISO initiative seems to be about at this point. But as the industry progresses toward a view that software is an asset, and needs to be acquired, maintained and used much like other assets, having some standards to assist would be welcome.
Just read this article, and can't help but comment. Open Logic has announced a plan to build a support service for open source software. The interesting point is that they propose to do it by enlisting members of the open source community who will then be compensated for the issues they resolve. One of the more memorable points is that you can have your choice of money or swag like x-boxes in return for resolving an issue.
It would be easy to dismiss this as a stunt - and clearly it won't fit all support situations by any means. But wait - there is probably a space somewhere between a cry for help, and a big (and expensive) support contract.
The analogy might be with the people who make a living selling on ebay. They need to be pretty good at what they do to survive. If you are a world expert in an open source project - maybe you could make a living by taking support calls. It could even lead to an online auction, with qualifications, customer satisfaction and other metrics as part of how you set your price.
Maybe this is already happening somewhere, but if not...good luck open logic
I am hearing the word "multisourcing" more often lately. It was part of a recent Gartner conference, among others. While the word in itself doesn't mean much - there is a nuance here that helps a little to explain what's going on in software development today. It's not simply sending your development task off to someone else to do for you (outsourcing), it's more about using the best source for appropriate code - and probably several. So today's software projects almost certainly use some open source code, they may have commercially licensed code, probably some written in house, as well as some developed elsewhere under contract. All targeted to a single architecture. When done successfully, the result should be better code, sooner - and potentially at lower cost. All of which makes the question "what's in your code?" more important than ever.
The rumors were right - scott mcnealy has turned over his 22 year ceo job to jonathan schwartz. As I've written about before, I spent about 10 years at sun, some of that time working directly for scott. He is a smart, personable guy - I wish him well in this next phase of his career. The story of Sun can be written by others, but as I often thought during my 10 years, the computer industry is better with Sun in it. There are a lot of hardworking, dedicated people there - and I hope this change works out well for them.