Posted on August 6, 2012 by Simon Phipps
Despite Oracle pulling out, OpenSolaris lives on as Illumos, which is a loose-knit open source community with multiple downstream projects. One of those is the new OmniOS operating system built by consulting company OmniTI.
OmniOS is described as a “JEOS” (Just Enough Operating System), the smallest possible subset of Illumos that’s able to self-host (that is, act as a build platform for itself with no external dependencies). As such it’s the perfect starting point for the sort of devops programmers building a high-integrity platform who would in the past have started from Solaris and removed code until they had their perfect platform.
OmniTI CEO Theo Schlossnagle joined me for a discussion about OmniOS, its uses and its relationship to IllumOS.
[youtube http://youtu.be/9h817UTOxmk]
Filed under: MinkCast, OpenSolaris | Tagged: DevOps, Illumos, OpenSolaris | Comments Off on MinkCast: Explaining OmniOS
Posted on August 6, 2012 by Simon Phipps
How do you do open procurement for ICT solutions? The answer, according to the European Commission, is to ensure that all procurement that requires tendering (and not all does) is specified in terms of the functions required rather than expressing a preference for the brands involved in the solution. But despite the clear regulations there seem to be plenty of public authorities across Europe which ignore them. This is bad news for European businesses and very bad news for open source, as I explain in ComputerWorldUK today.
Filed under: ComputerWorldUK, Procurement | Tagged: European Union, Procurement | Comments Off on EU Procurement Failures
Posted on August 4, 2012 by Simon Phipps
Back at Sun, I believe much of the blame for the company’s failure between 2001 and 2004 – from which the later, otherwise successful open source and hardware appliance initiatives under Jonathan Schwartz were unable to rescue it – came from allowing rapid, indiscriminate hiring of new sales and marketing staff in the 1999-2001 window as a result of the wave of success Java mindshare generated for Sun in the Web bubble.
That led to a huge growth in new, largely non-technical hires who didn’t necessarily share Sun’s traditional, open values and who didn’t rely on technology leadership as their prime guide. These new hires came to dominate the company’s software business, allowing marketing-led thinking to take precedence over pragmatic engineering. They went on to create strategies that just couldn’t deliver, including the disastrous “Sun One” middleware strategy. It matters who you hire.
My column for ComputerWorld this week asks if Twitter is falling into the same trap.
Filed under: ComputerWorldUK | Tagged: Sun | 2 Comments »
Posted on August 3, 2012 by Simon Phipps
My column for InfoWorld this week considers the unseen value open source brings into the economy, and references this keynote from OSCON by Tim O’Reilly.
[youtube http://youtu.be/Kbcgmf6eDKU]
Filed under: InfoWorld | Tagged: OSCON | Comments Off on The Open Source Stimulus Plan
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