Everything is a Freaking DNS problem

Fosdem 2010 was my 10th fosdem Edition (including the first OSDEM)
As every year Fosdem suffered even more from it's own success.

On Friday evening ther was the obligatory Beer event... however as people need to eat to .. the Devops crowd fled the scene

I had made reservations for a 20 something group and with the CentOS crowd joining us (as there was some overlap anyhow) we were 25 when we arrived in the restaurant .

Dinner and Discussions were great .. I learned about some new projects and we had some insightfull dicussions on how fat your thin foil should be ...

After dinner we went back to the Beer Event were lots of Free Beer was tasted ...

Saturday was the first full day of Fosdem, as usual Fosdem was the victim of it's own success , too much interresting stuff to see .. too little time.

Lots of Devrooms had the "FULL" sign put up more than you want as a visitor ...
I never even made it into the Drupal or NoSQL rooms :(

Sadly I had to correct Ploum's first law but for a lot of people .. Fosdem each time means the battle choosing which presentation you'll go to ... If you can even make it to the talk .. as usually the the hallway track is much more interresting :)

The MySQL devroom was on sunday but on saturday the crowd met in an Italian place nearby the Fosdem campus to get to know each other and chat a lot ..
The discussions ranged from French vs Canadaian and the future of Forks

During Saturday afternoon @patrickdebois suggested a Devops Meetup for Breakfast ... and some how that also happened ...

When I arrived at Fosdem on sunday morning they were still there :)

I spent the biggest part of Sunday in and around the MySQL devroom listening to a bunch of interresting talks

My own talk went fairly well given the time constraint .. sqeezing content for an hour in 20 minutes means you can't really go deep into the topics ...
My initial plan was to only focus on Pacemaker integration however the community had voted for the overview talk :)

After my own talk it was almost time to head to the Janson auditorium for the Footnote of Greg Kroah-Hartman, and as on any Fosdem .. there once again had to be Beer

Technorati Tags: devops drupal fosdem mysql nosql open source

So when you setup an aggregator there's this one thing you miss from a regular planet ...the list of blogs with their individual Feeds.

I wanted to use this for planet.loadays.org again and realized I don't know where I got this snippet from or if I wrote it myselve or whatever .. but I do realize that unless I document it here I won't be able to point other people to it again :) So just create a block like this one :

<?php
 
 
 $subscriptions = db_query('SELECT title,link,url FROM {aggregator_feed} ORDER BY title');
 while ($list = db_fetch_object($subscriptions)) {
      print "<a href=\"$list->link\">$list->title</a> (<a href=\"$list->url\">feed</a>)<br>\n";
 
      }
 
?>

Technorati Tags: code drupal open source php planet

Lots of people writing about Snorkle again today ,Monty Says, help saving MySQL

He gives us different options, a , b or c .. but I , and some others, want an option d

No I don't trust Oracle, it's not like they have been a very good Open Source Citizen, yes they contribute to the kernel and other projects but my feeling says it's only because they have to (Kernel, Xen and others ) not because they Want to (thinking about Unfakable etc) , if they would really want to they probably would work with the CentOS community more etc, and as Monty mentions their InnoDB track record could be better.

But on the other hand I don't think the EU should block the deal because Monty wants his baby back , cheap , as honestly imvho that's what they really want, be able to buy MySQL back for a nice price, either beceause Oracle is being forced by the EU to split up Sun, or eventually the deal doesn't come trough and they can buy MySQL back when Sun really goes belly up (which is what probably happens when option a) is chosen.

According to CNN , Oracle has made some pledges about MySQL earlier today.
My main question there however is about the Opposite of option 5. which is exactly what created the problem.

5. Support not mandatory. Customers will not be required to purchase support services from Oracle as a condition to obtaining a commercial license to MySQL.

Yes we want support, but no we don't want a commercial license with it, we want support on the GPL version, which is a problem lots of Open Source vendors struggle with , some of them
force people wanting to buy support to go for the commercial license. And it is exaclty that upselling that got MySQL in the troubles it has today .

Josh Berkus has a point declaring
Dual Licensing dead, just as I he sees much more future in the Percona like model than in the Dual License model MySQL used to have ..

Dries points to one of the comments on
Lukas Kahwe Smith 's Come On Money er Monty article stating
Monty walks away with several millions in hard cash, while [PHP +] MySQL cheerleaders who bet on "MySQL" franchise only walk away with a cute dolphin T-shirt

Which makes me wonder when I`ll be getting a nice Acquia T-shirt :)

Technorati Tags: acquia drupal eu mysql open source oracle php snorkle

I've have never been a really an HTC fan, because of the platform they used before, I have been a Ericsson GA628, SH888, then Sony Ericsson fanboy for all my life T39m, K700, K800i , so this is my first attempt into using a different brand of phone , I've been wanting an Open Phone for ages.. but I've been waiting for Godot, er the openMoko, for way to long now so with the introduction of the HTC and my K800i being long overdue for a replacement.

The Good,

So in gereral I`m pretty satisfied with my HTC Hero so far, it's quick/reactive , the wifi has good reception , screen quality is good, the touch screen however will take some time to get used to .. it already happened a couple of times that I accidently started calling the wrong person while I was still browing trough the addressbook. But in short .. I like the phone ..

However there's lots of people out there warning us that the Android isn't really an Open phone, true, lots of the software on it is proprietary, and lots of the software in the Market is cripple or pay ware. However imvho it's a step in the good direction going from a fully closed phone so something already more open...

The Bad

The volume button is to easy to use when in your pocket , hence putting the phone on silent by walking around is not unusable and Camera Autofocus is pretty bad .. no I'm not comparing to my EOS 400D, but to my previos Ericsson phone. the quality of the pictures is shaky and there is no way to cover the lens.

As for the The Ugly I'd have to say Bluetooth support, hey I want to be able to browse / download my addressbook from my Phone to my Bluetooth enabled car , this is a feature I had on my previous phone, and the phone before that ..I want to be able to upload and download files over Bluetooth, works on both my previous phones , I want to be able to send phonebook entries over bluetooth .. so that's pretty much my biggest annoyancy
(unless someone knows solutions for this ?)

So when will Sony Ericsson release their Android in Europe ? I`m hoping they'd keep the features they already had on their previous phones , so I`m hoping for better camera and better bluetooth support ..

We have come a long way for Linux to be present in our daily life , even for Joe Average, at home we watch TV using MythTV, my alarm is a Chumby, the phone in my downstairs office is a TuxScreen ... So I`m wondering when I finally will get a car that is running Linux,

Technorati Tags: android bluetooth htc hero linux open source

There is this constant discussion about Open Core vs Open Source vs Proprietary Software , Fauxpen Source, Open Source Business models etc.. you probably know all the usual suspects involved, first up lets agree that nobody will ever agree on what's best, (off course it's pure open source.. ) , but one of the important aspects is to know what values are important for you and your customers

Simon Phipps thinks we should build a scorecard that lists the different values we attach to a certain level of openness

He'd like a rating to questions such as , Is the license OSI-approved? , Is the copyright under diverse control? ,Is the community governance open?, Are external interfaces and formats standards compliant? , Does your community operate under a patent peace arrangement? Are trademarks community controlled? etc ..

Do we need one ? Matt Aslett , whom I finally met last week in London , thinks not as it will has the knife will cut on both sides, but then also thinks yes as it might clear up confusion to outsiders.

The comments on his post however is where the real discussion starts, the one where the Open Core fanboy tells about HIS customers not caring, and the Open Source zealots comment that the open core customers don't care as they already settle for the best of worst world (ok ok , I added that myselve :))

We are old and smart enough to decide ourselve .. aren't we ? Fact is that plenty of us already use this kind of scorecards for themselves, We prefer Open Source over Open Core , but still Open Core over proprietary software, we look at the community, we look at the source , we look at who's contributing and who's using. Sometimes we value a vibrant user community over a vibrant contributing community , sometimes we don't like projects with only contributions from 1 company .. we do that exercize daily

On the other hand, as Matthew Aslett states, the outsiders probably don't know yet, and as someone else in the discussion said, some customers are just stupid ..

Different Open Core vendors have different approaches, we should use our own brains to see the difference between Marketing Driven company squashing out buggy but open code and community driven company looking for a business model. If you, such as Sander claims constantly are trying to outsmart your community , don't you think your customers will realize that ?

An aftertought If Simon Phipps gets his wish granted, what do we do with the blogs etc, shouldn't Matt then change the subtitle of his blog to The business and politics of open core ? and his title to Open Core Executive to ? Or do we just call him the Richard Stallman of Open Core ?

Technorati Tags: fauxpen source open core open snore open source open source business models

Repost from our corporate blog

Last monday some Inuits quickly crossed the channel for a day of speeches and talks regarding Open Source and its Adoption, the event organised at BT brought together a mixture of techies, legal persons and management to listen to and discuss about the current state of Enterprise Open Source adoption

The short introduction was done by JP of Confused In Calcutta , who mainly introduced Mark "I`m from outer space" Shuttleworth. Mark keynoted about Ubuntu .. he talked about Aubergine being the new Brown ... ranted (as everybody) about the Cloud , talked about a stronger focus to services rather than product building , talked about the ecosystem of "people close to you" for supporting solutions .

Steve Bouch, of the Synapse Project at BT discussed ao the decisions they had to make, the varialbes they took in to account when starting
to use Open Source , discussions such as the reputation of the project, the internal skill zet, the ease of importing and exporting data in and
out of the project, and the different license terms were covered.

Andrew Katz , legal guy , who's also working on the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review gave an overview of the legal impact of Opensource . We learned that his customers have similar questions as ours, such as when to publish the code, what code to publish, when to look for alternative licenses etc

There was avid discussion regarding the Affero GPL license and using Open Source as a key component to build your killar webinfrastructure while not contributing back etc.

During the pannel discussion questions like Software Patents, and the fact that Ubuntu One won't be fully Open Source were tackled For us , most of the event was confirmation that what we are doing is the right thing to do, And that is worth a lot !

Technorati Tags: bt conference london open source

James Dixon has some polls on his blog, they let you choose between being a free software junkie, an open source hacker or what I'd call a an incompetent moron ;)

I had mostly 2's , no 3 in case you'd wonder.

Technorati Tags: free software freesoftware hacker junkie open source opensource

I`m gonna have to quote Tarus once again :

For years now I’ve been struggling to educate the market on the fact that the business around open source software is not about software. It’s about solutions.

Let me repeat that .. it's not about selling software ...

It's about solutions

And obviously FLOSS is the Ideal platform to build value for your customers

Technorati Tags: open core open source open source business models

There is once again a lot of fuzz going on about Open Source Business models,

First on my eyballs was the article that Customers don't seem to like openCore what a big surprise ..

So that's not the one that makes the customers happy ,

Then there is the other side of the coin, the people that create open source
Authors realize the dual licensing model comes hunting back at you after a merger or a hostile acquisition, yes they still have the source code to build on but they can't sell commercial licenses to their customers anymore they way they used to.

So that's not the one that eventually makes the authors happy,

Then there is the RedHat model, which tends to please a lot of people, which tends to be something traditional IT resellers can take in their portofolio, but partnering with a RedHat style company as an open source expert consultancy company isn't easy , as the expert consultancy companies have the knowledge themselves and won't push reselling subscriptions.

So that doesn't make the Distribution Vendors happy

Back when XenSource came on the market we asked them if they could help us supporting some of our customers with Xen deployments, they didn't care they wanted to build a product and a fast exit ..

That didn't make us as an integrator nor the customer happy.

You'd think us opensource folks are really unhappy wouldn't you ?
Wrong.. as we are all in it .. Just for Fun

and the money!

Technorati Tags: business licensing mysql open source opencore

About 2.5 months ago while I was on a highspeed Belnet connection at UZA after Amber got born I ran in to some annoyancies with my fresh Fedora 11 and multiple batteries, upon replacing the CD drive with an empty battery (to be charged) while I was on AC power the machine shut down.

I filed a bug , while going trough my post holliday inbox backlog I noticed it got fixed . Thnx Richard !

This is how open source works ..

Technorati Tags: bugs fedora gnome open source