Unfortunately, at the moment the open source world has moved into it’s full blown soap opera stage. That is, the questions are typically not around technology and how software is used, but around who likes who, what different groups are doing with each other or not doing with each other, and other relationship concerns. As someone said, it’s not that this is like high school, it’s more that high school was training for all this.
I’m not bemoaning that state/stage at all: that’s actually an extremely positive sign that “everyone” takes open source very seriously and is involved. As one of my former co-workers pointed out, I’m fascinated by people and culture dynamics even more than technology…which is saying a lot. From that vantage, it’s fun to watch.
With that context established, given all the open source news of late — Microsoft/Novell and Java — it should be little surprise that the IBM open source panel largely revolved around figuring out the soap opera dramas and cultural issues:
- everyone wants to know what IBM think of Microsoft’s (thinly veiled?) patent threats around Linux
- asking about Harmony now that Java is GPL’ed is a fun sharp stick to use
- how does anyone expect a systems management standard to ever work out given the “grave yard” of systems management standards out there.
Indeed.
There was some interesting discussion around the JCP. IBM, of course, is not happy with Sun “owning” the JCP, but there was actually some kind words for how far the JCP has come to being more what IBM would like.
To that end most of the meat in the notes below are in the questions. I’ll let you enjoy them raw and unfiltered:
Disclaimer: IBM is a client, as is Sun.
Tags: opensource, linux, java, jcp, standards, ibm, ibmanalystconf06, ibmswgbriefing06
How about coverage of Aviva Canada whose primary business isn’t technology but insurance and how they were the creators of the JBoss ESB…