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What if Novell is a really good poker player?
Last October Novell changed from a reluctant open source supporter into and open source abuser, according to some of the most vocal supporters of the open movement.
The company cozied up with Microsoft and, even worse, promised to start paying the company for its patents.
Of course the deal had to be greased up, so Microsoft paid $240m to purchase 70,000 SuSE Linux coupons. Microsoft also will pay $108m up front in a cross-licensing deal, which will be offset by a $40m payment (minimum) by Novell for the Linux patent license. Total profit to Novell: $308m.
Then the Free Software Foundation responded by changing the terms of the upcoming GPLv3, which will block the deal.
Novell in last week's annual report warned that the GPLv3 could mean
the end of its Microsoft deal. It would mean a resounding victory
for the FSF, but you have to wonder if Novell didn't see this coming.
In fact, what if Novell planned things this way all along? What if a Novell lawyer found the loophole in GPLv2 that allowed for the Microsoft deal. They then courted Microsoft which was desperate to get on the good side of Linux while coercing license fees out of the open source community – desperate enough to cough up $308m.
Novell could have waited until GPLv3 had been finalized. It then would have been much harder for the FSF to plug the Microsoft loophole, which existed in the first two GPLv3 drafts as well as GPLv2.
Novell also could (and should) have expected that the religious part of the open source community would be outraged about the its patent deal, or any deal between Microsoft and Linux for that matter.
Now Novell essentially diagnosed a problem with the GPL and in the process coerced $300m out of Microsoft.
But if this actually was the case, I doubt that we will ever find out.
May 31, 2007 at 01:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Getting touchy feely with Microsoft's coffee-table-PC (video)
Microsoft is having another go at the entertainment market with its new Surface tabletop display.
The display functions as a touch screen but is also able to recognize items. Put a glass on the display and the device will offer the user a selection of drinks and the ability to order.
Place your casino loyalty card on the display and you'll automatically be able to order services paid for with your frequent gambles points.
Microsoft might be the first to bring the concept to market, but the idea has been floating around for some years. Mitsubishi Electric in 2004 showed off a similar device.
Bill Gates also used Surface at his CES keynote last January, although at the time he never identified the device.
May 31, 2007 at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
HP closes in on the self-ordering e-commerce fridge
HP today unveiled its Retail Store Assistant, a kiosk that will take customer loyalty cards to the next level.
The card offer consumers shopping lists and recipes of the week, but the most obvious benefit will be in the personalized special offers and rebates. Today valuable profit margin is wasted on consumers who collect coupons from multiple stores and purchase only items on sale. Those sales really are intended to reward loyal customers or to drive cross sales: a bottle of wine to go with that steak.
Personalized offers are the best way to keep out the cheap shopper while rewarding loyalty and driving cross sales.
In the process, a kiosk can offer instructional videos on how to prepare your meal or build a deck for your back yard, a shopping list for all the required items and a map that displays where they can be found.
And don't forget: HP needs solutions like this retail kiosk to drive sales of its servers, PCs and printers. Because integrated into a kiosk, the competitive picture changes significantly. You're no longer selling a PC and printer, but you're selling a complete system of which the PC and printer are mere building blocks.
May 30, 2007 at 01:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Partial nudity ruins innocent slaughter experience
Microsoft is thinking of the children for once. The software company has decided to delay the retail launch of Halo 2 for Windows Vista, allowing retailers to add warning labels to the box that informing that the box contains "partial nudity".
The problem lies in an image of a bare-bottomed person that is included in an error message inside Halo 2's map editor – not the game itself. The error message is aptly named the ".ass error".
Boxes that have already shipped to retailers will be marked with warning labels that clearly identify the buying perverts at the check-out stands. Those consumer can repent by applying a 2Mb patch.
Pixelation included to protect your innocent minds.
May 26, 2007 at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Dell crawling out its black hole
Dell on Thursday started shipping its first Linux PCs, marking the first major PC manufacturer to do so.
A $409 investment buys you a 1.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo machine with 1GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive running Ubuntu (no monitor included). An identical system running Windows Vista is $80 more expensive. Guess what the OEM price for Windows Vista could be?
Around the same time, Dell unveiled a retail partnership with Walmart that will see Dell computers showing up in the cramped aisles of the discount retailer's stores. The partnership is significant because it marks the end of Dell's exclusive direct model.
Dell had to change. The company first saw its profit margins slide as buyers flocked to inexpensive computers that make up a market segment that is crowded with low cost Asian providers. As the company tried to move up the food chain, it los the battle over features and design from HP. That ultimately resulted in a market share shift that saw HP overtaking Dell for the number one spot.
But given the history of Dell's declining market share, the Walmart deal should raise a few eyebrows. The retailer excels in low cost, low quality products for low wage consumers. Not exactly a place to boost your profit margins.
The Linux computers at least demonstrate a willingness to gamble, but desktop Linux is as of yet an unproven market.
Dell is trying really hard to ignore HP. That company has based its PC comeback on design and unique features that appeal to end users.
Dell claims it is innovating, but its innovations are hidden from plain view: they involve cooling technology and monitor connectors. Dell has yet to create a unique or innovative computer form factor (beyond a plain big ass notebook computers and monitors).
Currently HP has the moral high ground. It's up to Dell to proof their features and design strategy wrong.
May 25, 2007 at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
SOA goodness in practice (video)
For all its fuzziness, service oriented architectures (SOAs) will excel in letting employees make changes and configure new applications without touching a single line of code.
The beauty of SOA lies in the fact that SOAs will hide all the complexity from the end user, even though the actual application crosses multiple physical servers and applications. The video below demonstrates how a business user can diagnose a problem and make changes in the company's workflow with a few clicks. Three years ago he would have been unable to diagnose the problem as fast as he does now, and changing the workflow probably would have been a manual process.
May 22, 2007 at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
The road to SOA nirvana is riddled with pitfalls
IBM at its Connect 2007 conference today made a case for using services to prevent an "SOA mismatch". As it turns out, companies are investing in SOAs because it saves IT cost.
Speeding up application development allows companies to more quickly respond to new business trends, but try measuring that effect. Early SOA adopters take the time savings and apply it to their IT bottom line. Without an IT benefit, they fail to build a case for SOA.
Furthermore, you don't want to be caught with an SOA that is misaligned to your business. If your application take another road than your business processes, you'll have a hard time expanding your network, cautioned IBM software chief Steve Mills.
IBM's solution involves business services. No surprise there.
But there is another risk to SOAs: more than half of all the SOA projects fail because companies focus on reusing internal code only – even if that code is not that great. As it turns out, writing software services that can run in a componentized way is different from writing black box applications.
Besides, why build if you can buy from outsourcing? One analyst firm projects that service sales for SOAs will reach $17bn by 2013.
IBM's senior vice president of software Steve Mills
May 22, 2007 at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Sizing up the SOA market
For all the buzz that service oriented architectures are attracting, the market is remarkably small – and hard to track.
Worldwide there are currently less than 9,000 companies actively engaged with SOAs. Those projects however cost a combined $1bn. That make SOA an expensive hobby at more than $1m per 'engagement'.
The real shocker lies in IBM's market share. When you measure the number of application server, portal servers or SOA repositories that are actually applied to SOA, IBM comes out claiming 53 per cent of the overall market, according to data compiled by Wintergreen Research. Microsoft follows at 8 per cent. The remaining vendors get the crumbs with none of them exceeding 3 per cent market share.
SOA middleware is clearly in the early adopter stage. But even as the market evolves, it revenues will stay limited. The real money is in the services themselves.
Because those same early adopters are finding that there is limited value in reusing code internally. The true market, Wintergreen founder Susan Eustis projects, will be in providing a market place for services and certifying that services work together and bring the world to automation nirvana.
Because ultimately, individual users will be able to create "business processes" by clicking an icon, select the desired functionalities and building a brand new application. Developers get to what they are good at: developing code. But they will no longer be able to prescribe how users click through menus and applications.
May 21, 2007 at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Innovation Dell-style
Dell and product innovation don't go together very well, but the company is very hard trying to change that very image. Because despite having an image to the contrary, Dell does innovate.
At a company event in San Francisco, the company today showed off its Displayport connector cable (shipping later this year), as well as a mock-up of an ultra thin notebook display that the connector will enable (no news on if it will ever ship).
Dell created the early version of the standard five years ago, boasted Dell CTO Kevin Kettler to illustrate the innovative forces at play within the company.
The computer maker earlier this month was the first to ship notebook computers powered by SanDisk's new Flash memory based hard drive. And don't forget about the H2C cooling system that Dell designed for its high end PCs, allowing consumers to overclock their CPUs without burning down the house.
Dell is known for creating a supply chain that is able to produce really cheap PCs and laptops. But really, they also innovate.
one cable
A mock up of a flat panel HD display featuring integrated microphone and speakers. All connected through a single cable. The image on the monitor is actually a sheet of paper pasted on plexiglass, so don't get too excited.
From the side
May 18, 2007 at 01:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Google redefines search
Whoever thought that online search was all about finding web pages is obviously wrong.
It just happens to be so that search engines have largely focused on search web pages. But that changed today, when Google unveiled its Universal Search.
The company from now on will start offering results from the web, books, news, images and videos. All of these are ranked based on relevancy. So a search for "steve jobs" first offers images and then a wikipedia entery.
"Nosferatu", a classic thriller movie, gets you the IMDB entry, followed by an embedded video from Google Video.
The introduction is especially important for online video. As Google co-founder Sergey Brin pointed out, video has just been promoted from entertainment to a research medium.
May 17, 2007 at 03:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
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