In response to commercial open-source demand, many new projects are being commercialized early in their maturity phases–often by a dot-com startup, and before a broad community “network effect” is firmly established. These projects are often under the patronage (if not authoritative control) of a single vendor that employs nearly (if not entirely) all key code contributors.

I’ll buy that. Frankly, whether it ultimately costs me more or less is somewhat immaterial. I don’t buy Macs because they’re cheaper. I buy them because they’re better. In like manner, I buy open-source products because they are often much better, in several ways, than proprietary alternatives. Not always, but often enough that if you’re not at least considering open-source alternatives, you’re missing out.

Forrester, too, called this out at OSCON, articulating that while many companies adopt open source to save money, and do, they discover a myriad of other benefits along the way. Increased flexibility, higher quality, and more.

For example, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration argues that “Being able to look at source code is a huge benefit, instead of just getting a black-box executable we can’t even look at….[I]t’s always nice to be able to modify something on our own. We count on [open-source vendor] Progress to do the heavy lifting, but we do keep our own options open.” The FAA depends on Progress, without being dependent on Progress, and gets a great deal of benefit from both the open-source software and the open-source vendor.

But it’s not just Linux. Is Drupal adversely affected by Acquia? Lucene/Solr by Lucid Imagination? MySQL by MySQL? Jasper Reports by JasperSoft? And so on.

Given the momentum behind open source, and how it has grown through the economic downturn, it’s not surprising that more and more vendors are getting involved to commercialize open-source projects. What is perhaps surprising, however, is how early in the open-source project lifecycle that commercialization is emerging, as Gartner indicates in a December 2008 report (”Predicts 2009: The Evolving Open-Source Software Model”).

Regardless, Gartner is right to highlight the significant benefits of open source that transcend price tags.

While Gartner suggests that this trend will lead to cost parity with proprietary solutions 50 percent of the time, the facts don’t bear out this assertion. For example, Forrester finds that 87 percent of enterprises surveyed reduced costs through open source.

Adopters will continue to receive benefits from open-source solutions, but these benefits will be increasingly realized by advantages in investment protection, innovation and technology alignments, rather than by simple cost savings alone.

Pixie dust comes and goes
Still, Gartner has a point. It’s true that there are trade-offs that come with commercialization of open-source projects. Some of the magic pixie dust arguably evaporates when a company is behind a project.

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For those that think community-based support is the way to go, consider CentOS, a clone of Red Hat Enteprrise Linux. CentOS recently had its leader go AWOL. While the situation was eventually resolved, a serious vendor like Red Hat mitigates the vagaries of community whims, like Red Hat’s Alan Cox deciding to stop working on tty development.

Here’s Gartner’s:

In part, this is due to commercial open-source vendors charging dramatically less than their proprietary peers. We can pass on sales and marketing cost savings in the form of maintenance savings.

Gartner suggests that by 2012, “50% of direct commercial revenue attributed to open-source products or services will come from projects under a single vendor’s patronage.” What this means, however, is open to interpretation.

Driven by expanding mainstream IT adoption, open-source usage profiles are shifting to more-conservative, risk-versus-reward dynamics. As a result, new adopters now place an increasing premium on commercial support channels to establish service-level agreements on par with closed-source alternatives.

But other “magic pixie dust” appears. Polish. Documentation. Enterprise acceptance. And more.

commentary

It would be nice to discount this cost savings as transitory–a near-term phenomenon that dissipates once vendors control open-source projects–or related to community-based open source. But Forrester’s Jeffrey Hammond, supported by IT executives from Virgin Mobile and San Francisco International Airport, argued at OSCON in July that open source, commercial or community-based, saves money in deployment costs, acquisition costs, and ongoing maintenance costs (if any).

Was Linux hurt by Red Hat’s involvement? Hardly. Linux has thrived in tandem with Red Hat’s prominent role in developing the Linux kernel.

(Credit:
Forrester)

The major sticking point in the contentious rewrite of a 1978 electronic-surveillance law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was whether to grant so-called retroactive legal immunity to telephone companies being sued for their participation in the warrantless surveillance program secretly begun by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks.

Touted by Republicans as a “compromise,” the bill, passed on a 293-129 vote, would not provide retroactive immunity, per se. It would, however, shift the debate behind closed doors, allowing U.S. district courts to dismiss lawsuits if there was written documentation that the White House asked a company to participate and assured it the surveillance was legal.

While expected to pass in the Senate next week, the White House-backed bill could have a harder time in that chamber, where a small minority is better able to block legislation from proceeding. Time is of the essence, as Congress nears a planned July 4th-week recess.

In its filing to Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor William Chandler, Yahoo states:

We strongly disagree with Plaintiff’s statements made in support of their Motion for a Trial Date (and supplemental letter) in connection with Yahoo!’s Change in Control Employee Severance Plans. It is obvious that Plaintiffs devoted much time in preparing their submissions in support of the Motion. We intend to oppose the Motion and plan to submit our opposition papers to the Motion by Monday. We also plan to file a Motion to Dismiss the Amended Complaint no later than Monday. We very much hope that this schedule is acceptable to the Court.”

The brief note foreshadows actions Yahoo plans to take by Monday to preserve its controversial employee severance plans.

As previously reported, the employee severance plans could be triggered if Yahoo shareholder and investor activist Carl Icahn successfully unseats Yahoo’s current board with some of his dissident directors slate. For full-time employees to cash out on the severance package, over the next two years following the election, these workers would either need to be terminated or resign due to a change in their job or responsibilities. If all full-time employees take advantage of the severance plans, Icahn and the lawsuit noted it could potentially cost the company more than $2 billion in severance costs.

In order to attend the annual meeting, you must be a stockholder of record or a beneficial owner as of the close of business on June 3, 2008, or hold a valid proxy for the annual meeting. If you are the stockholder of record, your name will be verified against the list of stockholders of record prior to your admittance to the annual meeting.

You should be prepared to present photo identification for admission. If you hold your shares in street name, you should provide proof of beneficial ownership on the record date, such as a brokerage account statement showing that you owned Yahoo! common stock as of the record date, a copy of the WHITE voting instruction form provided by your broker, bank or other nominee, or other similar evidence of ownership as of the record date, as well as your photo identification, for admission.

Yahoo, meanwhile, laid out the logistics of attending its shareholders meeting on August 1. Only shareholders of record as of June 3 are allowed to attend the meeting, which will begin at 10 a.m. PDT at the Fairmont hotel in San Jose, Calif.

Yahoo on Wednesday said it plans to ask the court to dismiss an amended shareholders lawsuit and noted it would also oppose the plaintiffs’ motion to seek a speedy trial to invalidate its employee severance plans.

If you do not provide photo identification or comply with the other procedures outlined above upon request, you will not be admitted to the annual meeting.

Any shareholder who plans to attend needs to also keep this in mind, according to Yahoo’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

(Credit:
The Industry Standard)

International Data Group is launching a Web-only version of The Industry Standard on Monday that will feature news and analysis items about the tech industry. The items in a quick glance on Friday appeared to be predominantly from IDG News Service, IDG’s internal wire service (where I used to work). There is also a prediction market section where readers can make forecasts about events in the industry and bet on whether they will happen.

The Industry Standard originally launched in 1998, in time to chronicle the rise of what was then dubbed the “dot-com economy.” The magazine was soon a hit, becoming the fastest growing magazine in U.S. history. Ad inventory was selling like hotcakes and writers were being hired so fast they ran out of places to put them (I was one of them from 1999 until 2001). A big splashy billboard greeted the city-bound commuters on the Bay Bridge, elite conferences were organized and lavish parties were thrown in San Francisco City Hall and Europe.

The company eventually blew through at least $30 million raised in a private-equity round and when the Internet start-ups started going under, the ad dollars dried up. Following several rounds of layoffs, the company closed in August 2001.

For the gory details on what went wrong, check out Starving to Death on $200 Million: The short, absurd life of The Industry Standard by former Industry Standard Editor James Ledbetter.

“TOM-Skype is censoring and logging text chat messages that contain specific, sensitive keywords and may be engaged in more targeted surveillance,” the report concludes. “What is clear is that TOM-Skype is engaging in extensive surveillance with seemingly little regard for the security and privacy of Skype users. This is in direct contradiction of Skype’s public statements regarding their policies in China.”

The keywords that trigger action include words related to Taiwanese independence, the banned religious group Falun Gong, and political opposition to the Chinese Communist Party, says the report from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.

The service also routinely logs and captures millions of records that include
personal information and contact details for any text chat and voice calls placed to TOM-Skype users, including calls from Skype users, the researchers found.

Not only is the data collection suspect, but there are inadequate safeguards to protect the privacy of the TOM-Skype users, according to the report. The records and information needed to decrypt the log files are kept on servers that are accessible by the public.

“This is the worst nightmares of the conspiracy theorists around surveillance coming true,” Ronald J. Deibert, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, told The New York Times. “It’s X-Files without the aliens.”

Representatives from eBay did not immediately respond to e-mails seeking comment on the report.

According to the company, Wal-Mart has pulled all Linux-equipped computers off its shelves because it “didn’t attract as much customer attention as Windows machines.”

“This really wasn’t what our customers were looking for,” said Wal-Mart Stores spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien.

Gee, really? To see if its customers wanted Linux, the company stocked the $199 Green gPC in about 600 stores to see if people really wanted to try out a new, far more advanced, operating system. And although the company won’t announce sales figures, it looks like its decision to sell Linux-based machines was doomed from the start–in stores.

Ironically, the gPC has performed much better online and Wal-Mart will continue to sell it on its e-commerce page.

Wow. What exactly did Wal-Mart expect? Did its buyers truly believe that a Linux-based machine would do well in a store where the majority of its clientele have never heard of someone named Linus Torvalds?

Suffice it to say, Linux lacks mass-market appeal. And although some Linux apologists may attempt to tell me it doesn’t, how can any other argument be proven?

Most surveys put Linux market share at or around one percent and Wal-Mart–the retailer that exemplifies mass-market–won’t even consider selling another Linux-based machine in stores to save its life.

Doesn’t a “mass-market” product have “mass-market” control over the industry? Wouldn’t the masses know more about it? Wouldn’t the average person put it up there with the rest of the operating systems when they need to buy their next computer?

The fact of the matter is Linux is a great operating system for those who know what they’re doing and want the greatest level of adaptability. But for the average person, who many in the Linux community are simply out of touch with, they don’t want anything of the sort. Instead of discussions on GNU, the average person wants to know why they can’t use Internet Explorer. Instead of talking about Linus Torvalds, the average person wants to discuss Bill Gates and how he made his fortune. Instead of command line, the average person wants a mouse and keyboard.

And it’s that average person who frequents Wal-Mart and is more than willing to buy a computer that offers an operating system they know–Windows. Linux folks can talk until they’re blue in the face saying that Linux is safer than Windows and people can do more, but until it’s as easy to use as Microsoft’s OS, it’s in as many offices as Windows and it’s on the nightly news, the chances of people switching are nil.

Linux must stay true to its roots and remain the bastion of hope for all the people in the world who want an advanced operating system and the option to modify it as they see fit.

Linux will never be a mass-market product, so why push it?

Belkin FlyWire: A wireless HDMI product that’s due later in 2008.

(Credit:
Belkin)

HDMI has certainly had its growing pains, but the connection is finally beginning to deliver on its original promise: a single-cable solution for delivering high-bandwidth, all-digital HD video and multichannel audio. HDMI is nearly universal in the home video market, present on all current HDTVs and Blu-ray players, as well as nearly all HD-capable cable and satellite set-top boxes; DVRs; game consoles; AV receivers; upscaling DVD players and recorders; and network video streamers such as the Apple TV. In fact, you realize just how convenient HDMI is when you come across a product without it–I’m looking at you,
Nintendo Wii–and then have five cables (three component video wires plus two-channel stereo) instead of one crowding the back of your home entertainment system.

But one aspect of the HDMI promise remains unfulfilled: wireless HDMI. It’s an attractive idea, especially for anybody with a wall-mounted flat-panel TV or a ceiling-mounted projector: have all of your HDMI-capable gear running into an AV receiver or HDMI switcher with a wireless HDMI transmitter, and have the TV equipped with a matching receiver–thus allowing you to have all your AV sources across the room from the actual display. We’ve been hearing about it for years, but to date, there are few–if any–products that you can actually buy. Here’s a quick update on the wireless HDMI products we’ve heard about to date–including when (or whether) we can expect to see them:

Philips Wireless HDMI Kit: At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2007, Philips showed off a wireless HDMI kit that offered the promise of wirelessly connecting any HDMI source and any HDMI TV. It was due to be released in mid-2007, but the year ended with the product never materializing. In November, Philips claimed that the product had been delayed until 2008. However, our attempt to get a clarification from the company’s PR agency last week went unanswered, so we’re going to move this one into the vaporware column until we hear differently.
» Crave: Philips introduces new wireless HDMI kit
» CNET TV video: Philips Wireless HDMI at CES 2007

Samsung FP-T5094W Wireless Plasma: This is another CES 2007 product. This one wasn’t wireless HDMI per se, but it delivered the same de facto experience, thanks to a base station unit brimming with inputs that wirelessly transmitted to the standalone plasma panel. The product actually began shipping by the end of 2007, but the user reviews on Best Buy’s Web site complain of terrible lag when playing video games.
» Crave: Samsung’s wireless plasma TV snips the wires
» Crave: Samsung’s wireless plasma coming in November
» CNET TV video: Samsung FP-T5094W

Gefen Wireless HDMI Extender: The Gefen Wireless HDMI Extender debuted at the NAB show in April 2007, and Gefen even began accepting preorders later that summer. The product reappeared in late 2007/early 2008 with a different look, but it remains only available for preorder on Gefen’s Web site. Gefen’s press representative says, “The unit is still moving forward, but FCC and other testings still need to be completed.”

Belkin FlyWire: Despite the go-nowhere state of wireless HDMI in 2007, Belkin threw its hat into the ring at CES 2008 with the FlyWire. The unit one-upped the Philips one-in/one-out concept by including capacity for six AV sources, including HDMI, component, S-video, and composite ports. Originally slated for summer, Belkin says the FlyWire is now due in October and should retail for $500.
» CES blog:Belkin FlyWire wirelessly transmits six AV sources to your HDTV
» CNET TV video: Belkin FlyWire

While that list isn’t a comprehensive selection of wireless HDMI products, it’s enough of a cross-section to show that the technology hasn’t hit the consumer mainstream yet. Likewise, that complaint about laggy video could be a major hurdle for gamers if it extends to wireless HDMI products across the board, since even a fraction of a second is quite noticeable when doing any interactive activities. But with many of these products using similar chipsets and integrated solutions from vendors such as Amimon, don’t be surprised to see the trickle of wireless HDMI products become a flood just as soon as the baseline components and technology are ready for prime time.

Who really gets screwed here? That is, if the computer never turns up, who is out the cost of the machine? Lenovo? UPS? One of their insurance companies? If you know, please leave a comment below. Thanks.

UPS delivered a new Lenovo computer yesterday. It was supposed to go to my wife, but no such luck.

Update. January 18, 2008. After dealing with UPS for a day or so, and getting nowhere, Lenovo agreed to build and ship a second computer.

Update. February 15, 2008. The replacement computer showed up today. Finally. The majority of the delay was on Lenovo’s end rather than from UPS. For whatever reason it took Lenovo a much longer time to build the second machine than the first one. Both were made and mailed from Mexico. If I had to do it again, I would cancel the original order, make sure the credit card company didn’t bill me for it and place a new order - one unrelated to the original order. That would have saved about three weeks. Neither Lenovo or UPS ever got back to us about what happened to the original computer.

But is the computer really at 777 East 77th Street? As I write this, it has been about 20 hours since the first of multiple phone calls to UPS. No one there knows exactly what happened to the package. Their first reaction was to trace the package, a process that takes a week. A week, as if it were 1977 again.

We live in an apartment building that has been accepting UPS packages for over 30 years. The system is pretty well grooved in by now. So it was quite unusual for a package to be missing, seven hours after the UPS website said it was delivered. Also strange was the name of the person who signed for the package; it wasn’t anyone who works in our building.

Update. February 20, 2008. The original computer showed up today. I refused delivery.

Defensive computing even extends this request to the shipping company.

Over the years, my wife and I have had many computers delivered to us. This was the first time anything went wrong. If something like this has happened to you, please leave a comment below.

Last night, my wife called UPS and was told the computer was not delivered to our building at all. Instead of being delivered to 8 East 8th Street (the addresses are fictional but illustrative), it went to 777 East 77th Street. You have to call UPS to learn the actual delivery address because the website tracking says only that the package was delivered, it doesn’t say where.

Needless to say, Lenovo was contacted too. You might think they could lean on UPS to get a straight answer. So far, multiple contacts with Lenovo have produced nothing.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

With all their many computer systems, how can UPS lose a package? Was it stolen or sold rather than lost? Can UPS ever make a final determination about what happened? Is there a Bermuda triangle in New York City? We’ll see. Watch this space.

Seagate's FreeAgent line offers eSATA connections.

eSATA is an external version of the Serial ATA technology used to hook up internal PCs, but today external eSATA drives need their own power supply. But on Monday, the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) announced it’s working on a version that will let external drives draw power over the cable that connects the drive to a computer.

The power link could help eSATA catch up to the two most common connection technologies, USB and IEEE 1394 “Firewire,” which can power external hard drives. But the groups behind those standards aren’t standing still–and of course those connections can link to many other devices besides hard drives.

The standard, called Power Over eSATA, is expected to be completed in the second half of 2008, and the first devices supporting the standard could arrive as soon as this year, too, the consortium said. The technology should be able to deliver enough power to run a single 2.5-inch drive, said Knut Grimsrud, the SATA-IO president and an Intel fellow, and likely will become a regular part of eSATA products.

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If your power strips are as overloaded as mine with cords and bulky transformers, you’ll be glad to hear that eSATA–a standard that gives external hard drives the data transfer speeds of internal drives–is untethering itself from its power cord.

The Power Over eSATA technology will use the same connectors as current eSATA, but will require new cables to carry the power, Grimsrud said. The current eSATA has data-transfer connections only on one side of the plug, so the Power Over eSATA technology likely will add the power connections on the reverse side, he said.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Specifically, Intel and others are working on a new fiber-optic “SuperSpeed” version of USB that should make its transfer speed to at least 4.8Gb per second, 10 times faster than today’s 480 megabits per second. And the 1394 Trade Association is preparing a 3.2Gb/sec specification that should be ratified by February. That should quadruple the current top-end 800Mb/sec IEEE 1394 speed.

“I would expect the powered eSATA (to) quickly become commonplace for applications where eSATA is used,” Grimsrud said of the new technology.

Apple may have decided to showcase its non-Jobs executives at its events in order to assure people that the company is about more than one man. But the practice of sharing the stage is nothing unusual, no matter what color shirt Cook wears onstage.

Could Apple be getting closer to a leadership transition?

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET News)

I wasn’t at the event, having flown back East to attend the wedding of a close friend. But I’ve been to many Apple events over the past several years, and Diaz fails to note that it’s not unusual to see other Apple executives onstage with Jobs.

Jony Ive, Apple's senior vice president of industrial design, was one of several Apple executives to share the stage with CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday.

It’s been an oft-repeated canard this year about Apple: because the company has not shared its succession plans with the world, it must not have any idea what it will do if Jobs becomes unable or unwilling to run the company. But it’s hard to believe that a company that takes its products so seriously, run by a CEO as meticulous as Jobs, has not developed a plan for Apple in the post-Jobs era.

That’s what Sam Diaz at our sister site ZDNet thinks. In this video, he argues that Apple’s decision to have CEO Steve Jobs share the spotlight at Tuesday’s notebook event with other executives such as COO Tim Cook and Jony Ive, senior vice president of design, means that the company is trying to showcase those executives ahead of an eventual departure by Jobs, whose health has been the subject of much bottom-feeding speculation this year.