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How real are the 451 findings?: Dan Farber is featuring news of another 451 Group study showing that open source is "just about" to take over the system management business.As Yogi Berra once said, "it's deja vu all over again."I have been giving, and getting, this prediction since I first joined ZDNet almost three years ago....; Tags: support, Security, Network Administration, middleware, Infrastructure, General, Enterprise Policy, Applications; Blog posts 2007-08-01
Getting your new Unix server: I know a dozen or more people who work as Unix sysadmins for big organizations in which most of the really critical stuff runs on Unix, but Windows get pretty nearly all of the money, all the people, and all the attention. In every case the Unix gear is either...; Tags: Productivity, Linux, Infrastructure, Enterprise Policy; Blog posts 2007-08-01
Unopposable Linux vs immovable ignorance: Last week's discussions on why desktop Linux often fails in big organizations drew, among many knowledgeable comments, this note from "webninja": Interoperability and integrationI tried Linux at home for a couple months, just to see how real it was as an alternative. The one...; Tags: Productivity, Linux, Enterprise Policy; Blog posts 2007-07-31
Leveraging Linux to sell yourself: If you work at a fairly junior level in the typical corporate IT environment your bosses will probably be treating you as a technician of categorised skills whose opinions and expertise outside of the narrow job box they have you in are neither of interest nor of value. Basically...; Tags: Strategy, Productivity, Linux, Infrastructure, Enterprise Policy; Blog posts 2007-07-30
WHurley spins BMC into open source: William Hurley, who goes by WHurley, has been an open source advocate and organizer for many years.When he left Qlusters recently for BMC Software, the Houston-based company which began with accounting software and grew like a snip of oilpatch, I wondered how far he could spin that company toward open source.The...; Tags: Strategy, management, Enterprise Policy, business models, BSD, Applications; Blog posts 2007-07-27

Popsicles vs Fruitsicles: Words trigger emotional responses well before they convey factual information. Our five year old, for example loves Dole's fruit Popsicles but I've had to teach him to ask his mother for them only as fruitsicles - because the pop reference predisposes her to say "No," while a fruit reference has...; Tags: Sun, Productivity, Enterprise Policy; Blog posts 2007-07-27
Whose is the most popular open source database?: Well, mySQL of course, why?Well, because PostgreSQL has sent out its take on the recent Alfresco survey which shows that it's where the action is.Here are the key numbers: Community usage: 62% MySQL; 9% PostgreSQL Evaluation usage: 50% MySQL; 23% PostgreSQL Deployment usage: 40% MySQL; 28% PostgreSQLThe PostgreSQL take on this is people...; Tags: Infrastructure, Enterprise Policy, Database Management, Applications; Blog posts 2007-07-26
Sugar sweet for GPLv3: The big news today is that SugarCRM has bowed to community pressure and will release the next version of its CRM software under an OSI-approved license.The bigger news may be the identity of the license, GPLv3.Currently Sugar uses a version of the Mozilla Public License, adding a non-standard "attribution" requirement...; Tags: Strategy, Software Licensing, resellers, Legal, General, Enterprise Policy, Applications, GPL; Blog posts 2007-07-26
Appliance computing: Last week's comment on the increasing futility of fighting the PC security wars on current terms drew a comment from a discussion contributor I don't remember hearing much from before. Here's part of what "Gary" had to say: The problem is that we're fighting...; Tags: Productivity, Linux, Infrastructure, Enterprise Policy; Blog posts 2007-07-26
Why desktop Linux fails in big organizations: I believe that the key reason Unix hasn't taken over the generic office desktop has nothing to do with the technology and everything to do with the people and processes involved.Thus the generic corporate PC user I talked about yesterday would be completely unaffected if someone snuck in overnight and...; Tags: Enterprise Policy, Linux, Productivity; Blog posts 2007-07-25
What really drives PC churn?: Most of the regular contributors to the discussions here appear to have at least some technical knowledge in the computer field and even those who profess allegiance to Microsoft clearly have some experience with its products. In contrast the overwhelming majority of business PC users have no personal interest in...; Tags: What users care about, Vistabulations, Productivity, Enterprise Policy; Blog posts 2007-07-24
Judging development project quality: I've developed what I think of as a forearm rule for forming snap judgements about the quality, and therefore likelihood of success, of software development projects. The rule is simple: exceptions are inversely proportional to quality.The rule applies most directly to project scope, but has a coding and design corollary....; Tags: What users care about, Infrastructure, Enterprise Policy; Blog posts 2007-07-23
Fatal Attractions: technology, judgement, and the big four: Ever since Arthur Andersen's destruction in the aftermath of the Enron debacle, people have been wondering when the remaining big four accounting firms will become the big two or three, and why.Since 1980 six of the then top ten firms worldwide have disappeared - four of them through mergers, one...; Tags: Unanswered questions, IT Retardants, Enterprise Policy; Blog posts 2007-07-20
Optaros EOS will take the licensing question seriously: Optaros has launched its Enterprise Open Source Directory.It is a very good thing, better than a plate of Martha Stewart bran muffins. That is partly because it has listing criteria, including only those projects which are truly enterprise class.But in doing this it also includes projects like SugarCRM whose open...; Tags: support, Standards, Software Licensing, Legal, General, Enterprise Policy, content, Applications; Blog posts 2007-07-19
Open source value in corporate blogs: Blogging itself is 10 and so technically is corporate blogging, since Dave Winer right was running Userland Software when he launched Scripting News in 1997.Enough time has now gone by to draw some conclusions, about the value such blogs may have and who should be doing them.The best corporate blogs, like...; Tags: management, General, Enterprise Policy, content, Blogroll; Blog posts 2007-07-19
Sharpening that personal productivity axe: As many of you will remember we had an extensive discussion here last week about my belief that externally imposed work processes ultimately lead to standardised ways of thinking about those work processes. Kind of a Nixonian thing: grab them by their work processes, and pretty soon their hearts and...; Tags: What users care about, Unanswered questions, Enterprise Policy, Apple; Blog posts 2007-07-19
Sell magic: Every once in a while I get credible seeming "deepthroat" e-mail -unfortunately these aren't always completely right, as witness this report last January from an Apple insider saying that the iPhone's application processor would be a PPC enabled core made by Samsung. Although he may have been completely right...; Tags: Sun, Hardware, Enterprise Policy; Blog posts 2007-07-18
Trying to clarify the Sun Ray difference: Frequent contributor Erik Engbrecht had this to say last week in response to my comment that the Sun Ray does no processing and isn't, therefore, a client-server client: thin, fat, or otherwise: Smart, Thick, Thin, DisplayIt's all word games. Depending on how you define...; Tags: Sun, Security, Linux, Hardware, Government, Deploying Sun Rays, Enterprise Policy; Blog posts 2007-07-17
Does open source make business decisions political?: Of all the relationships changed by open source, perhaps the most nagging is that between business and politics.There's another taste of that in today's news, word the BBC is looking to make an open source version of its iPlayer.The BBC had made a business decision to work with Microsoft in...; Tags: politics, Microsoft, Legal, Government, General, Enterprise Policy, Applications; Blog posts 2007-07-16
Securing the PC: An interesting report by Robert Lemos on Security Focus last week got me thinking about the money and effort going into what the PC people think of as "security."What the report was nominally about was the difficulty PC defenders have in shutting down bot-net attacks where control moves across...; Tags: Government, Enterprise Policy; Blog posts 2007-07-16