Tag Archives: InfoWorld

Keyloggers: An Interview With HP

Simon spent time on Friday with Mike Nash, HP’s vice president of consumer PCs, to discuss the keylogger that was found in one of their device drivers. Nash was open, honest, accepted responsibility and demonstrated that HP already had the problem addressed despite the researchers who found the issue being less than effective.

The whole incident shows how vulnerable our Windows-dominated approach to IT is however. Stateful desktops delivered in a cut-throat-competitive market are beyond the oversight of any individual and as the Wanacry worm shows malware can spread rapidly using a defect just like this one.

Simon ends by suggesting “Maybe we need to break that problem apart — stateless desktops, open source code, cloud-hosted statefulness — if we’re to avoid disaster.”

Read more over on InfoWorld.

How Do VCs View Open Source?

The sort of alpha personalities who invest venture capital are good at sounding plausible and authoritative. It’s not until they veer into an area where you’ve got a high degree of expertise that you realise how they really view the world. An article in TechCrunch gave a window into the world of two high-flyers; the former CEO of MongoDB and the former managing director of Intel Capital. Both could be expected to have a good understanding of open source, and both now have executive roles at a major VC, Battery Partners.

What’s visible through that window is disappointing to say the least. Riven with serious factual errors that are probably the expression of the authors’ worldview, it’s clear that these VCs don’t see open source the same way the open source community does. Read more on InfoWorld.

 

Microsoft and Red Hat Make Peace

That’s in the cloud at least. The deal that’s just been announced is certainly more comprehensive than the join marketing and hosting deals that usually show up.

  • .NET will soon be shipping in RHEL and included in OpenShift
  • support staff will be co-located so hybrid cloud customers have a single point of contact
  • there’s some kind of patent standstill between Red Hat and Microsoft

But claims “Microsoft Loves Linux” are premature; this is just the Azure team throwing big money at credibility, not a decision by the whole company to end hostilities. To do that they would need to join OIN.

Full story on InfoWorld.

Options in Place of New Foundations

For the majority of projects a software foundation is not the next step. There are plenty of other options available to developers looking for a way to protect the interests of their project and contributors. Using existing fiduciary hosts and fiduciary and governance hosts allows you to take advantage of proven approaches and experienced stewards. Read more in today’s InfoWorld article.