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Nick Gall's Weblog
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Friday, August 22, 2003 |
Red Hat and Microsoft: Both Enforce Copyrights.A very interesting article (and active discussion thread) on the impact of copyright enforcement on buying behavior. Ernie Ball decided to switch to Linux after being busted by the BSA for copyright infringement of (apparently) Microsoft software.
However, anyone who thinks that by switching to Linux she can make this problem go away is naively WRONG. Here is the REALITY from Red Hat's latest License Agreement (which is the distro Ernie Ball is using):
4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System. During the term of this Agreement and for one (1) year thereafter, Customer expressly grants to Red Hat the right to audit Customer's facilities and records from time to time in order to verify Customer's compliance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Any such audit shall only take place during Customer's normal business hours and upon no less than ten (10) days prior written notice from Red Hat. Red Hat shall conduct no more than one such audit in any twelve-month period except for the express purpose of assuring compliance by Customer where non-compliance has been established in a prior audit. Red Hat shall give Customer written notice of any non-compliance, and if a payment deficiency exists, then Customer shall have fifteen (15) days from the date of such notice to make payment to Red Hat for any payment deficiency. The amount of the payment deficiency will be determined by multiplying the number of underreported Installed Systems or Services by the annual fee for such item. If Customer is found to have underreported the number of Installed Systems or amount of Services by more than five percent (5%), Customer shall, in addition to the annual fee for such item, pay a penalty equal to twenty percent (20%) of the underreported fees. [Emphasis Added.]
Here is a recent debate on the issue. As you can see, the relationship between this clause and the GPL is a bit murky. I agree with the viewpoint that the RH distro contains both GPL and non-GPL code, so it is the non-GPL code that is restricted from further copying. If someone wanted to go through the effort of subsetting out just the GPL code, it would work and be legal to copy widely, so RH is not in violation of the letter of the GPL, but it would be a lot of effort to do so on an ongoing basis. I wonder how the GNU folks feel about it though. I think I will ask them.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the all but one of the older versions of Red Hat (which apparently don't have this clause) go off support at the end of the year, and a bunch of users have to upgrade to RH Enterprise Linux (which does).
Here's the punch line: Red Hat is a member and on the board of the Software & Information Industry Association, which like the BSA, has a piracy watchdog division. So guess what, if Ernie Ball makes unauthorized copies of Red Hat products, someone can drop a dime on it all over again--here's the toll free number.
6:21:43 AM 
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Thursday, August 21, 2003 |
Sync and Stabilize (aka Spiral Concurrent Engineering)
At the XML Web Services One conference on Wednesday, Michael Cusumano, an author and professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, revealed preliminary findings from a yet-to-be published survey of the latest worldwide trends in software development.
What was clear from the research is that a majority of developers are undertaking projects that use the so-called "sync-and-stabilize" approach, in which members of a development project work on modular blocks and then synchronize their code with other members on a regular basis throughout the life of the project. It also requires that they stabilize, or debug, that work on a continual basis as well.
In a study of 150 software projects conducted jointly by MIT, Harvard Business School, the University of Pittsburgh and Hewlett-Packard Co., 64% of developers worldwide said they worked on projects in modules. A majority also produced "builds" -- or individually coded components -- on a daily basis in the early or middle stages of a project. The rates were 63% in the United States, 57% in Europe and 53% in Japan. The exception was India, where only 27% of developers were in the daily-build habit.
Not surprising, except that it's an empirical study and it's from the MIT Sloan School. May be worth checking out.
2:50:22 PM
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WSDM (IBM et al) vs. WSMF (HP et al).
COMMENTARY - WSDM THE MISSING LINK. Web Services will not be used pervasively until we have platform neutral management. We assess two recent and very important announcements in this area, and revise our forecasts. [CBDI Newswire]
A good analysis of the two proposals, though IBM's WSDM can hardly be called a concrete proposal yet. The WSDM presentation currently only outlines concepts and principles.
10:14:59 AM
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A Little Linux Advice is a Dangerous Thing.
Gartner Ignored: Fortune 1000 Adopt Linux.. "As far as their internet presence goes, big companies are doing the exact opposite [of Gartner's 'go-slow' approach to Linux]; over 100 enterprise sites run by probably the very same Fortune 1000 and global near equivalent companies that recieved the SCO letter have switched to Linux since May, including Schwab.com. [Source: Email from Mike Prettejohn of Netcraft in Tim O'Reilly's weblog.]
Amusing set of disparaging comments about Gartner in the comments to the O'Reilly article. To some degree, the disconnect is between the world of IT developers, which is fact based, and the world of IT management, which is perception-based.
8:59:45 AM
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Monday, August 18, 2003 |
Flexible Production -- Another Spanning Layer.I've talked in the past about how IP is a spanning layer, and intermodal shipping is a spanning layer. Here's another example: flexible manufacturing. I just read a New York Times article on flexible production that describes how different types of cars can be produced on the same assembly line. The key?
Flexible assembly plants require three key attributes: programmable welding robots, standardized production practices and one-size-fits-all conveyors for the assembly line. [emphasis added] Automotive News
The last requirement dovetails with my definition of SOA (aka spanning layer), which requires the concept of generic envelope or container processing. The container becomes the fixed point, and everything else is variable:
To make this possible, Chrysler designed a flexible pallet that can convey a variety of models on the assembly line. Chrysler began standardizing production in 1998. [emphasis added] Ibid.
By designing an assembly line with the pallet as the focal point, you can more easily minimize the coupling between that pallet and what it carries. This enables adapting of the design (i.e., the network, the assembly line) itself, not just adapting the components that populate the design.
BTW, it is interesting that in the automotive industry, it is the product (automobile) that is fairly fixed, while the (production process) assembly line is becoming adaptive. Contrast that to the software industry, where the product is adaptive, while the production process is fixed.
10:34:09 AM
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