News from dookie

(InfoWorld) - Several years ago i found myself working for a major metropolitan police department, mainly building specialty databases. All the databases were stored on a single PC in the division office. It wasn’t the best way to do it, but it worked. And it provided the illusion of security. One day the Chief of Police, “Walter Voutie,” announced that the city had allocated money for an actual network. I was pleased -- until the Chief announced that he was hiring an outside contractor (let’s call it “Lacy Systems”) to install the network and to provide an experienced network administrator. Chief Voutie joked that if any of us were any good at computers, we wouldn’t be working for the Department. At least he smiled when he said it. I guess our two master’s degrees, six bachelor’s degrees, and multiple certifications didn’t impress him. Finally the network went up, and “Harry,” the new network administrator, appeared. Harry was completing his last year of night school. As far as I could tell, he still hadn’t taken any networking classes. I sat there steaming, with my degree and my network certifications -- apparently “unqualified” only because I didn’t work for a hot-shot contractor. At least I had plenty to keep me busy. I got all my databases moved and user accounts set up. Then, two weeks later, I got a panicked call from the sergeant in Homicide. No one could access the databases they needed, derailing several ongoing operations. When I checked, I couldn’t get in either, and I was supposed to be administering those databases. I called Harry, but he didn’t answer his phone. I tried paging him. After 30 minutes I walked down to his office. No sign of him. Meanwhile the sergeant at Homicide was calling every 10 minutes. Officers were in the field without information they needed. I paged Harry again, and again, and again. After an hour and a half, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and started trying to hack the password for the Administrator’s account. It wasn’t his wife’s name, it wasn’t his daughter’s name, or his dog’s name either. In desperation, I hit Enter without a password, and suddenly I was in. Yes. Our network expert had never even set a password on the Administrator account. Now that I had access, I looked at the permissions Harry had set for the Homicide division. What a mess! I spent half an hour resetting all the access information using proper syntax and removing reserved characters. While I was at it, I upgraded my own account to give me more access in the future. And where, you might ask, had our mighty network administrator been all this time? He had been schmoozing with Chief Voutie at a fancy restaurant, lobbying him to throw more work to Lacy Systems, the contractor that had brought him on. Harry had deliberately left his pager in his office, on vibrate, because he didn’t want to be distracted during his sales pitch. Apparently it was a good pitch. Lacy Systems is still consulting for the Department, even though Harry is long gone. After he graduated college, he got the Department to pay for his certifications (without any conditions) -- after which he quit for a better paying job. I guess if you don’t know much about the technical side of networks, that other kind of networking will do just as well. Maybe better.

(InfoWorld) - Just when the Mono Project was beginning to gain traction, along comes Sun Microsystems to take the wind from its sails. I can`t help but feel it`s a mixed blessing. Mono gave Linux developers something they`d never had before. It`s a full application development platform, based on a fast runtime engine and virtual machine. It offers advanced, modern features, including Just-in-Time compilation, a "sandbox" security model, and automated memory management. It supports multiple programming languages and it isn`t tied to any one processor. Best of all, it`s fully open source. It`s also based on Windows technology. Mono is a "clean-room" clone of Microsoft`s .Net development platform, written for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. When Novell`s Miguel de Icaza first began work on Mono, people said he was crazy. Why would such a talented open source developer want to devote himself to copying Microsoft technology -- with all the potential pitfalls that entails -- when there are so many other projects worth pursuing? Critics of Mono point out that Microsoft`s C# language and the CLR (Common Language Runtime) virtual machine, upon which Mono is based, are really just imitations of features already found in Java. When Microsoft first launched the .Net platform, it offered incremental improvements over Sun`s Java technology, but recent releases of Java have done much to close the gap. Why go over to the dark side when established, mature technology is already available? Although correct, this argument overlooks an important point: Running Java on Linux has long been problematic. Although versions of Java were available for Linux, Sun offered Java under a proprietary software license that was incompatible with the Gnu GPL (General Public License). This made it impossible to bundle Java with Linux distributions, such as Debian, that adhered to strong intellectual property policies. It also called into question the licensing of any software that relied on Java to run. Together, these issues limited Java`s popularity on the Linux platform. Mono, on the other hand, was offered under a mix of open source licenses from the very beginning. In one if IT`s more bizarre ironies, the platform derived from Microsoft technology was more compatible with Linux than the one that was designed from the ground up to be cross-platform and OS-neutral. No more. Last week, Sun formally announced that it would be releasing the source code to Java under the GPL. It was a bold move, an admirable one, and for many Linux developers it came not a moment too soon. Microsoft`s recent partnership with Novell only underscored concerns about Mono -- particularly given that Novell is the primary sponsor of the project. Foremost among these has always been the issue of intellectual property. Critics warned that, despite de Icaza`s and Microsoft`s protestations to the contrary, Mono exists solely at the whim of Microsoft. Anytime Redmond felt like pulling the rug out from beneath them, Mono developers could find themselves subject to patent-infringement lawsuits. As part of its agreement with Novell, Microsoft has now enumerated a short list of those categories of developers that it promises not to sue. The implicit message is that everyone else should watch out -- and watch out they shall. The availability of Java under the GPL now gives those developers who want modern language features an alternative to Mono, and they need never look back. If they didn`t, though, it would be a shame. Java is a welcome addition to the oeuvre of the open source community, but it takes away nothing of the technical merit of Mono. With both platforms available under open source licenses, a commingling of their technologies could lead to a new, open system that`s an evolutionary step ahead of either of today`s offerings. Sun, which has some experience navigating patent issues, could assist in guiding this effort. Unfortunately, I suspect that the fallout of the Microsoft/Novell deal will succeed only in balkanizing the open source community, such that projects like Mono will fall by the wayside over ideological differences. If that happens, I fear Microsoft will have won yet another victory.

(InfoWorld) - Ephraim Schwartz, InfoWorld’s fearless editor at large, has waded into roiling waters once again. I’m talking about his ongoing coverage of the SKIL (Securing Knowledge, Innovation and Leadership) Bill, which would raise the yearly cap on H-1B visas, allowing qualified foreign workers — many in IT — to work in the States. Schwartz has been following the visa dispute for years, getting a steady stream of both hate mail and attaboys in the process. But as U.S. citizens continue to struggle in the IT job market, the debate has intensified. Case in point: Schwartz’s most recent blog entry on the subject has already drawn more than 20,000 fiery words from folks on both sides of the issue. Public sentiment aside, the SKIL Bill is expected to pass both chambers of Congress easily, with broad bipartisan support. Despite the much-politicized nature of the issue, you simply can’t map this debate along party lines. It’s not your typical Republican vs. Democrat question; it’s more of a Big Business vs. the People thing — with the pols aligning with the biz side. In truth, though, the issues are far from clear-cut. Yes, U.S. companies have laid off scads of employees and continue to hire foreign-born workers, sometimes at less-than-market rates; but many employers still can’t seem to fill open IT positions. Then there’s outsourcing: Will the availability of fewer foreign workers simply push companies to send more jobs overseas? Would it be better to have those H-1B workers here, where they pay taxes and contribute to our economy? Complex questions, indeed. And Schwartz cautions against simplistic assumptions. We live in “a complicated world,” he writes. “Looking for easy … answers — like no immigration, no outsourcing, or becoming completely self-sufficient — is unrealistic.”

(InfoWorld) - Can you name some top technologies and companies that jeopardize or have jeopardized Microsoft’s hegemony over the operating system world? If you asked me that question, I would have said Apple, Linux, Java, and the Netscape browser owned by AOL, all of which at one time or another have been considered a good alternative to the Windows platform. But it was Microsoft’s latest agreement with Novell — in which it agreed to pay Novell $536 million and promised to share technology in order to have Windows and Suse Linux interoperate — that rang a bell. So I checked the archives. On Aug. 6, 1997, at MacWorld in Boston, Bill Gates stood onstage with Steve Jobs to announce a broad product and technology development agreement. “To further support its relationship with Apple, Microsoft will invest $150 million in non-voting Apple stock,” Gates declared. On May 29, 2003, Microsoft and AOL Time Warner announced an agreement to, among other things, a “royalty-free” seven-year license of Microsoft’s browsing technology. Microsoft paid AOL $750 million. And it was on April 2, 2004, that Steve Ballmer took the stage with Sun’s Scott McNealy and announced “a technology collaboration agreement to enable their products to work better together.” As part of that deal, Microsoft gave Sun a total of $1.95 billion. Does anybody else see a pattern emerging here? Of course it’s part of Microsoft’s overall strategy on how to deal with its antitrust problems. For example, you can add BeOS to the list. On Sept. 5, 2003, Microsoft paid Be $23.5 million to settle an antitrust suit. The Microsoft press release also noted that “Be is currently in the process of completing its dissolution.” But there is more to it than that. The reality is that for every Windows Server that Microsoft doesn’t sell, it is in danger of losing the entire stack, the services, and the applications on top of it. “It’s like losing the keystone in an arch,” Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, tells me. So what are these deals really buying Microsoft? Some might say, as Ballmer did at the Novell press conference, it is just listening to what customers want. But there is an old curmudgeonly reporter in me who sees something else. Despite promises of interoperability, Microsoft does not disclose the technical linkages between its desktop products such as Office and the server-side products such as e-mail. You need these disclosures for full interoperability. Although the spin promises interoperability, with Apple, Sun, and Novell, I wonder if it isn’t a brilliant ploy to ensure that IT will get locked in to using Microsoft products. Take the latest deal with Novell. Novell in essence has done nothing less than validate the Microsoft path. Microsoft now has a Linux solution coupled to Microsoft, adding legitimacy and the Linux cachet to Windows. Further, the cynic in me says that through virtualization, Microsoft will surround Linux so that Linux will run as a guest on a Windows platform, with Windows underneath. In time, Microsoft might improve the function and performance on the Windows side, but Linux will somehow get disadvantaged. Then, says the Microsoft salesperson, “You are already running Windows. Why don’t you use Windows up and down the stack? It works better anyway.” Five or 10 years from now as Microsoft continues this strategy, IT will wake up and discover it is not the heterogeneous shop it thought it was. And I wonder: If that happens, will we ever get the full benefits of innovation and competitive pricing?