Over on Simon’s personal blog he writes about the rediscovery of patronage as a model for people creating art, analysis and other works of creativity. If you have appreciated the posts on this site we invite you to become a patron too. Continue reading
Oracle Gets It Right: NetBeans Heads To Apache
In a surprise move, Oracle has submitted a proposal to the Apache Software Foundation Incubator to adopt the NetBeans IDE — written in Java, for Java — as an Apache project. The proposal is very well written, easy to understand and well worth reading. I was at Sun when it acquired NetBeans in 2000 and have been a fan of the project in varying degrees ever since. Here are my views about the move to Apache. Continue reading
HPE “Buys” SUSE & Offloads Its Legacy Software
In a move reminiscent of the departure of its consulting wing to CSC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a complex transaction involving a reverse takeover of legacy software specialist Micro Focus PLC of the UK. They described it as a spin-off and merger. First they will create a spin-out company named Seattle SpinCo Inc comprising all the many enterprise software assets HP has accumulated over the years. That company will then merge with Micro Focus, who will pay for the transaction with $2.5 billion cash and a 50.1% equity stake. The result, expected to complete late in 2017, will be a company half owned and with a majoority of the board selected by HPE but still run by Micro Focus’ existing management and headquartered in the UK. Continue reading
FRAND And The Clash Of Industries
The largest forces in technology today – consumer-facing companies like Google and Facebook, business-facing companies like Salesforce, now even first-gen tech corporations like Microsoft and IBM – all increasingly depend on open source software. That means collaborative inter-company development of the software components and infrastructure technology these enterprises use for their business success. It’s enabled by the safe space created when they use their IP in a new way – to ensure an environment for collaboration where the four essential freedoms of software are guaranteed. Continue reading
What Is An API? The Clue Is In The Name
At the end of my testimony in the recent Oracle v Google trial in San Francisco, Judge Alsup asked me to explain what an API is. My answer aimed to simplify the answer for a general listener while remaining recognizable to most programmers. Here’s what I said.
The Java source code of OpenJDK usefully follows a layout convention. Up front of each file is a copyright and license statement. After that come a sequence of definitions of the various standard functions that complete the Java programming language. Together, a set of related definitions comprise a class library.
Each of those definitions comprise three parts. There is a function declaration, which defines the name of the function and the order and data types of the parameters used by the function. After that is a comment block with a summary of the specification for the function, tagged to allow it to be…
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FRAND Is Not A Compliance Issue
The European Commission has been persuaded by lobbyists to change its position on standards to permit the use of FRAND license terms for patents applicable to technologies within those standards. This is a massive mistake that will harm innovation by chilling open source community engagement.
Thunderbird Evolving
Since December, Simon has been working on a report describing the options the leaders of the Thunderbird mail client community have for hosting their project now that Mozilla is ready to take the last steps of separation they have long trailed. The report was published today and is now being considered by the Thunderbird community. While it considers a number of potential destinations, it recommends a choice between the Software Freedom Conservancy, The Document Foundation and a new, arms-length status at the Mozilla Foundation. Continue reading
Launching TravelSpirit
We have been working with Transport for Greater Manchester for several months on a fascinating idea; an open source community for a Mobility-as-a-Service platform. The idea has finally emerged into the daylight as the TravelSpirit community. You are invited to apply to attend the launch event and take a part pioneering public transport for the 21st century. Continue reading
It’s The Daylight Twilight Zone again! Expect the unexpected…
If you, like us, have a mix of meetings with European and US residents, the next two weeks will inevitably involve some mis-timed meetings since the USA just started daylight savings time and Europe won’t do that until March 27th. One tip is to set an event in your calendar (or, better, a shared events calendar, which is what we use) marked “DST Twilight Zone” as a reminder that peculiar things are going to happen!
Daylight twilight
Community Credentials
Simon was surprised when he went to the Microsoft press release page looking for the news about Linux support for SQL Server and joining Eclipse. He found that the only press release related to Linux was about patent licensing. He’s written about it today on InfoWorld and expanded the thought on his blog.
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