the.Inevitable.Org/anism

I have to admit that I really like Virtual PC
on Windows XP. I still use XP as my primary laptop/desktop
operating system. Virtual PC extends what I can do tremendously
… I now carry a SCO UnixWare machine with also … virtually.
And I am experimenting with a variety of other kernels and operating
systems virtually. The other day I saw a reference to a new release of Darwin v7.0.1
… and I thought about checking it out. I’ve downloaded the ISO
… booted and installed it … I was able to get X configured
and working with the basic ‘twm’ window manager. I have now been
working on getting the LAN driver working … the DEC Tulip driver on
the CD was for Power PC … I’m now close with the OpenDarwin Tulip driver … got it to make with some assistance … it’s not quite installed.

What’s fun is that I am now downloading and carrying around numerous
ISO images of various operating systems … and booting them at
different times to experiment and learn. It’s like carrying
around a bunch of PCs … all within my laptop. Also, with the
“Undo Disks” I am able to boot, experiment and see how far I can get
… if I can’t get things working, I just close the Virtual PC and
discard the disk changes … rolling me back to my last “known-good”
point.

I just saw a new build of ReactOS
… I was going to take another look at it tomorrow … the last
version would start to install, but failed to partition the hard
disk. I’m also going to continue to work on Darwin also … both
of these are interesting efforts!  Both of these also appear to be
free of the current issues surrounding the Linux kernel …

Virtual PC rules!

Wow. There is almost too much to think about after BrainShare
2004. Being that I worked at Novell four different times, in
numerous different roles, I can see there is a lot that has changed … and a lot
that is still the same. It was great to see a lot of my friends
and former co-workers …

First, although I really loved NetWare as an operating system and a
kernel, it is obvious that its days are numbered. The “100%
Linux” message being communicated at the conference seems to seal the
fate of this, once-dominant, operating system. It will be very
interesting to see how quickly the $300mm-$350mm revenue stream
generated from NetWare sales will shift to the new strategy proposed by
the leaders of Novell. Customers who are still committed to
NetWare, IMHO, are going to find themselves painted into a corner if
they do not quickly begin the progress of planning their
migration. These types of migrations are complex and will take
time … and they will have to look at NetWare as the old 8-track or
cassette player in their stereo rack … it works, but don’t expect
much of a future out of it. In addition to that, it seems that
Novell customers are being pushed to adopt the “100% Linux” strategy
… which brings into question the Novell strategy on two fronts.

First … what is Novell going to provide to customers if they are not
interested in moving from their existing desktops to GNU/Linux
desktops? What if customers are just fine with Windows on the
desktop? Will Novell be able to offer them anything? I
believe that the world has been - and always will be - a place filled
with multiple-choices, and heterogeneous environments. Windows is
not going away anytime soon. We are working on solutions that
bring the best of UNIX and Windows together in our customer
environments … that is what they are asking us for. In
addition, we are looking for ways to leverage the best of the Open
Source world … within the law.

The second big issue … what is the impact to the Novell strategy as
the intellectual property issues continue to expand? Jack and
Chris made a really bold move in altering the foundation of the
business … they moved from one where they had a sinking platform, to
one that is on shakier ground! I can only imagine that they are already
accounting for the impacts on their business as the issues are resolved.

Novell’s future hinges on somehow resolving the revenue issues -
replacing the dying $300mm+ stream with a $40mm+ stream - and surviving
the transistion period … not to mention dealing with the implications
of the lawsuits surrounding the new foundation. Quite a risky bet.

Outside of that, I have to admit that I am also surprised by the amount
of “misinformation” or poor marketing when they continue to represent
UNIX-compatible software as “Linux software”. As I wrote through
my week of blogging … there are numerous areas and projects where
they seem to alter the “truth” and grab for the “Linux” market hype …
at the expense of customers and partners. I’ll be experimenting
with many of their projects on UNIX since they are completely
UNIX-compatible … and demonstrating where the “Linux” that they are
talking about is just a UNIX-compatible kernel.

And did things pile up while I was out of the office! Bummer … ;-(

Erin Quill and Ted Haeger are presenting this one … two people that I
have a lot of respect for, and that I’m glad to see owning the
directory. Few people understand the power of directory services,
and how to effectively implement them within a system. Even OpenLDAP has evolved to encompass the majority of what is required for directory-based management to be implemented.

They are going to be covering eDirectory, the recent releases, the upcoming releases, and then a “Project Destiny” Preview.

They started by showing the market, and the market leaders … and how
directories are being commoditized. Ted indicated that Novell’s
target market is “gigantic” directories, or the “high-end”
market. These start at 50,000 identities, and go to
hundreds of thousands. They focus on: Scalable, Compatible,
Reliable, Manageable, and Securable.

Erin took over to talk about the recent releases and what they
added. In v8.7 they added: Hot Continuous Backup, Dynamic
Groups, eDirectory Event Monitoring, Extensible match LDAP search
filters, Novell iManager 1.5.2, Novell iMonitor 2, Novell eGuide 2.1

With v8.7.1 they added: support for Red Hat Advanced Server 8,
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, Solaris 9, and HP-UX 11i, Universal
Passwords, DIBclone (creates exact copy of local directory set), More
Dynamic Group enhancements, Novell iMonitor 2.1, and bundled iManager 2

With v8.7.3 they added: support for Windows 2003, UNIX
package-based installer, Novell Cert ificate Server 2.7, iManager
2.0.2, Novell Modular Authentication Service 2.3, eGuide 2.1.2

Moving on to Upcoming Releases, they outlined the features of “Rosalind” v8.8(?):

Install and upgrade enhancements
- they are making a variety of scripting enhancements and command-line
options. In addition they are altering the rights requirements to
install or upgrade, providing more health checking, making it more
“patchable” with tighter version labeling, and all of this leads to Red
Carpet support for deployments.

Data Import (Bulk Load) - they
are getting huge performance increases ~7x, along with more selectable
options - No schema check, Indexing off, Skip validity checks.
Much of this is driven by customers who do not use DirXML (the old
name) but instead do daily mass imports

Priority Sync - Used for
instant convergence for real-time attributes like passwords. This
will be configurable per attribute, and writes to all replicas at once.

Multi-Instance Support -
this is primarily intended to increase the search speed. It will
allow more than once instance of eDirectory running on a server. Each instance must have a dedicated IP address.

Backup/Restore - Oops …
they skipped this one for now!  Ok they came back to it after the
encrypted stuff. They are adding an LDAP Extension to allow for
backup, and an archive bit that can be reset.

Encrypted Attributes and Replication
- this is where attributes become encrypted in the DIB, and where the
replication traffic is encrypted. This is for government
requirements.

SASL GSSAPI support - skipped …

Case Sensitive password Policies - skipped …

Next set of high-level features - Project “J.C. Bose”: more
installation improvements, Replication Policies, Optimized Referrals,
Group Enhancements, inetOrgPerson can be a container, Clustered Linux
support, and Solaris, LDAP Sounds-like searches, Federated Attributes,
and …

“Project Destiny” … What is Kepler? This is some pretty good
stuff for directories. They are creating a “reverse-proxy
directory server” that allows you to point to *any* corporate identity
server (be it a directory or database) and have the LDAP requests
proxied through to it. This allows Kepler to augment requests
with its own attributes and information, while preserving the “glass
house” identity server. This is a very interesting stuff …

Alan Nugent kicked off the keynote … and the microphones wouldn’t
work. They eventually ran a new mic out to him and he got
going. He indicated that this was the “techy” keynote, with a lot
of demos … he then went into some background information.

He offered his perspectives of the core points of Technology Strategies

• Devotion to Customer Satisfaction
• Focus (know your limitations)
• Compliments and substitutes
• Temporal Constraints (2-4 years)
• Forward, into the past

I like these in general.  Obviously, committment to customers
is the primary goal … they are the ones paying for solutions. 
The rest are also fairly obvious …

He also offered some “General Trends” …

• Customization
• Commoditization
• Consolidation./Convergence
• Consistancy
• Complexity
• Compliance (Regulatory)

He then reviewed “What does it mean to Novell?”

• Support/Facilitate customization/personalization
• Embrace Commoditization
• Drive and Manage consolidation
• Reduce complexity and risk
• Increase Predictability

Under his command, the office of the CTO is looking at the following areas:

• Open Source and Linux
• Wireless
• Grid Computing
• Wireless Grids
• “Autonomous” Computing
• Virtualization
• Service Oriented Architectures
• Trusted Computing
• Identity-based Computing
• Context-based Computing

He then said that he would focus on things that are really being worked
on …even if only in an investigation stage. He then showed a
slide of “Ubiquitous Linux”. After completing a quick brush of
this slide, he showed an intro SGI video and introduced Rich Altmaier,
VP of Storage and Software at SGI.  Interesting partner …

Rich began by introducing the SGI solution for it’s markets. He
talked about their Numaflex architecture, and adoption of the Linux
kernel. He indicated that the are using the Intel Itanium - “the
fastest processor on the planet.” He then walked down on the
floor to show one of the SGI 3000(?) machines. One of the VPs
from SuSE then began a demo using ‘linpack’ benchmark running 32 and 64
threads … and he showed a bunch of graphs showing activity … uh,
not that impressive since most people probably don’t get the context of
what is occuring. Wow … SGI is done … he left. That was really short …

The SuSE VP then went through what is coming in SuSE Linux 9.1 …
Linux Kernel v2.6, KDE 3.2.1, GNOME 2.4.2, OpenOffice 1.1, KDevelop
3.0, SLP support, and support for Intel and AMD (32 and 64 bit)
processors. Note that everything listed (except for the Linux v2.6 kernel) is all UNIX-compatible software.

Cluster Resources, Inc. - a Utah company - came on stage to talk about TeraGrid, and grid
computing. They demonstrated their software, submitted a job into
TeraGrid, and explained some of the optimizations and resource choices
that are made to pick the appropriate. He indicated that they are
now using Red Carpet to automatically deploy the resources to be able
to run any particular application. This is much like what we have
been working with in our Application Substrate.

Nugent then introduced the Chief Architect of Xiotech, Rob
Peglar. He talked about Storage Clustering and Future Storage
Design. Ok … he had some good examples of the evolution of
storage and storage networks … his “jokes” were a little weak. Ugh … the
jokes are continuing …

He is showing (in between the “jokes”) a variety of Storage
Clustering
architectures. These are very similar to the types of storage
systems that I was working with as Chase Manahatten. He expanded
to touch on clustering in general … and leading to grid
computing. They are unifying much of their architecture around
directories and LDAP. He mentioned that “CPUs are peripherals”
… an interesting concept.  His point is that “memory” is where
the data is … and that CPUs are just peripherals that manipulate
memory.

Robert Wipfel from Novell then came on stage. I worked with
Robert for years while at Novell and he is an amazingly bright guy when
it comes to clustering. They again emphasized their adoption of
CIM from the DMTF … and are showing a demo of extending a filesystem
in real-time, while mounted and in use, based on the disk free space
exceeding a threshold. This *is* the future of storage systems
… where you will add bulk disk to a storage network, and have it
allocated to servers on-demand. There are numerous vendors providing
this type of solution. They went on to show a cluster failover
demo.

Miguel and Erik showed up to do the Mono demo. They indicated
that their objective was to improve Linux developer productivity, and
ease application migration. Miguel went through the current
Mono stack and architecture, and talked about the .NET libs that they
currently have. He then went on to create a very simple app, and
showed it running on SuSE and Windows. He is going to expand the
demo using Glade … he’s doing his browser demo again. This time
he showed some of the power of this environment, icluding the language
support. He talked about this being a part of the power of using
the stock components. Erik then showed off their “Wiki-Doc” for
Mono … this is a very good idea for docs and how to allow for
contributions to documentation … so it’s “Open Source” docs … not
just code. Miguel then showed the SOAP/Web Services capabilities built into the .ASP server.

Nugent then showed the Novell Student Videos winners.

Then up came
Ed Reed … I forgot that he had returned to Novell. He is now a
part of the Office of the CTO working on security. He showed the
ability of the Linux Security Module capabilities of the v2.6 kernel to load “policies” to restrict what can be done on a system .

Martin Buckley came up to show a Windows 98 to SuSE Dektop
migration. There were numerous issues that were not addressed …
but the overall migration demo was impressive.

They went into the drawing for the Segway … and that is the end of the keynote!

This session was over at the Marriott … that’s a first.  The
projectors are not working … there is no audio … and Juergen Geck
couldn’t make it here.  Bummer.  The VP of R&D is doing
the presentation … I didn’t catch his name.

He defined SuSE as a new business unit of Novell … I hadn’t heard
that before, but it makes sense.  He also expanded into discussing
the difference between Open and Closed Source companies … “the
difference isn’t that big” … SuSE simply takes Open Source projects,
tests and certifies, and supports.  So they are really selling the
process … not the product.  It’s cool to hear this since I used
to argue this at Novell … we used to have people that thought we sold
NetWare … but we really sold the development and support services
.  At least that is what customers were paying for …

SuSe has been going forward with the 2.4 kernel, and has been adding
features of the 2.6 on their own.  They are now embracing and
integrating the 2.6 kernel in their latest products.

He brought up an interesting chart of “Effort” and “Committment” …
what you get with what product.  With SuSE Linux you get “no
committments” … with the Enterprise products you get “availability of
support” and “availability of maintenance”.  They have a model for
their “Technology Strategy” … he has a great chart … Customer Value
across the bottom (with build, manage, and integrate) and then
Competitive Advantage up the left side (with technology, platform, and
integration platform) … from this he explains that  they began
at the “build-technology” … moved to “build-platform” … then to
“manage-technology” … and now to “manage-platform”.  I might
have to recreate this diagram … it’s interesting.

Again … they emphasize the power and value of their “AutoBuild”
process .. . and I would agree … it’s this automation that enables
them to deliver.  He indicated a database of ~4000 packages that
they track.  Updates are detected, patches are created, builds are
created, QA and Doc are notified, eventually they are released to
maintenance.  There are both manual and automated aspects … some
of the original tests and security checks are manual.

The Support cycle is:

• Phase One - bugs reported/found
• Phase Two - temporary patch released to reporter of bug
• Phase Three - recertification/testing
• Phase Four - customer deployment

Ok … now I’m really bummed.  They aren’t talking about futures
at all … this is the same stuff that I have heard in several SuSE
presentations.  What the products are … how AutoBuild works …
what’s in each product … what is different between products.  I
understood this the first time I heard it.

Wow … he just finished his presentation!  People are grumbling
out loud … they are as shocked as I am …  No Futures! 
This is the worst presentation that I have been to … not that he
didn’t present well, it’s just that he didn’t touch on *anything* that
the title and synopsis mentioned … this sucked.

I spent some time in The BrainShare Lab after the first session … it
seemed a little “empty” compared to previous years.  Not a bad
thing … since there was a lot to look at and see.  I ran into a
lot of friends, and had a blast talking with people about their
projects.

One thing that I am glad to see is that I found almost no negative
people … even when they knew or were told that I worked for SCO …
and most realized that it will be great in the future when our
companies can collaborate in the future.  It’s great to be able to
have professional technical conversations with professional technical
people. 

I spent a bit of time over at the eDirectory booths … they are still
continuing to do amazing work with LDAP and directory technologies in
general.  They have a new “Embedded eDirectory” product, but is
not what I would ahve thought.  It’s more like a “Bindled
eDirectory” solution that allows an application vendor to bundle
eDirectory with their application.  The main purpose is to act
like an LDAP directory and proxy … with some added features.  It
can store local users, or if configured, if can proxy requests through
to an alternative directory.  This allows an application to extend
the “local” schema and add application specific attributes … and then
pass through all other information to the corporate (or upstream)
directory.  It’s a very powerful capability.

I also saw a company that is embedding LDAP clients into some wireless
gear … for directory-based management of wireless radios.  I got
me thinking about something that could be added to the Linksys APs that
are out there that have Open Source firmware.  This is something
that I was trying to do at Novell years ago … and now it’s looking
real.

There were a number of other booths on NetWare, SuSE GNU/Linux, and
their other products.  I’ll have to think about what hit me as
really cool or valuable … there were too many things to see in a
short amount of time … I’m off to the SuSE Linux Futures session …

The speaker - Malcolm Yates? - is a great presenter … he’s
quite an interactive and lively presenter … it’s apparent that he
enjoys his job. He joked about the acquisition and pondered what
you get when they combine?

• Novell & SuSE
• No Se?
• No Use?

He progressed through the various versions of SuSE … Personal,
Desktop, Professional, Standard Server and Enterprise Server.
Professional is really the one that has everything for the “power”
user. Web interface for all administration and services.
You can also use YaST … written in NCurses. They also have Open
Exchange Server …

Enterprise Solutions … SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 … of SLES 8
… he then went through his “picture presentation” that
was great. What a kick … this is just getting better and
better. He was giving away prizes for the people who could figure
out what each picture represented …

He then went through the various customer/partners … Mobile, Ford,
Deutsche Bank (2000+ servers world wide), Catapillar, Safeway,
SmithBarney … 80%-90% of mainframes running Linux are running SuSE.

He then went through all of the certifications - Carrier Grade (Jun
2003), EAL 2+ (Aug 2003), EAL 3+ (Jan 2004) … most of these within
the last year in partnership with IBM. He indicated that this is
the fastest that anyone has ever got EAL 3+ certification after their
2+ certification.

“We do not sell software” … “We sell our experience, our support, our
ability to provide tested maintenance, our integration capability, our
development effort …”

Their process is:

• Open Source Community (~3000 packages) ->
• SuSE Common Code Base (Configuration and Test ~6000 packages) ->
• AutoBuild (Automated system identitifes incompatibilities) ->
• QA + Doc (Manual Regression, Automated Regression, Feature Test) ->
• Production

Their products have a 5-year life cycle. Releases of new version
every 18-24 months. So there is overlap between versions, and
customers understand the schedule and when they will have to
update/upgrade.  No questions and this obviously allows them to plan their revenue stream.

He listed all of the SuSE firsts … Enterprise Class Linux, 5 year
maintenance support, Linux for S/390 & zSeries, iSeries, 64bit on
all eServers, Global support contract with IBM, AMD Opteron support,
2.6 kernel features on a 2.4 kernel, Enterprise Desktop, EAL 3+
certified … and 1st class world class partner for business …

And some caveats about using Linux?   There are some obvious
ones that he won’t say … there are conflicting things … there are
some that he can not say.

It was an amusing presentation, and quite entertaining … he did a
great overview of the products  … however I am not really sure
that I learned anything about the “Partner Program” and what is it, or
what it has to offer. 

This session was pretty full … I chose to stand in the back and
listen.  This appeared to be a German company, based in
Germany.  They started to review the details of the company, and
outlining the Windows/Citrix solution that they had been using. 
He indicated that they had a huge savings in licensing fees … someone
asked ho much and the speaker indicated that he was not allowed to say.

I listened for a bit more, and then got another call … busy day.  ;-(

I came to Eriks advanced presentation to see what else I could pick up
on Mono and where its going. I ended up entering a completely
dark room … except for the projector. Miguel was here writing a
quick “mini-web browser” using Mono, Glade, and a Mozilla
component. It was very cool to see him work, and how quickly he
got it close to working. I say “close to working” since he was
pressed for time and had to run to a meeting … the app ran, however
the Mozilla component was not showing in the window … Miguel left.

Erik got going and presented the “What is Mono?” pitch. It
was going for a while, and then one of the other attendees asked the
question … “Is this the Advanced Mono or not?” Erik expressed
that due to the fact that Miguel had to leave it was going to be an
“evolved intro” … bummer.

He again touched on where Mono is doing better than .NET … besides
the breadth of language support, Mono has a wide range of platform
support. He then went into MonoDevelop
… an IDE for Mono. It looks pretty good and has project
support, integrated debugging, project templates, code completion,
etc.  I’ll still be interested to see if they might choose to move
this to Eclipse in the future.  I could see where they might not
… although they ought to find a way to integrate it …

Erik then went into MonoDoc … the documentation engine.  He was
talking about how it’s like a Wiki … and then I realized what time it
is.

It sucks … today I am being interrupted for all kinds of calls. I had to leave. ;-(

The session began with the usual oneNet pitch, and then went into the
discussion of what Open Enterprise Server is … or will be. The
speaker reviewed the Strategy that was being followed:

• NetWare 6/6.5 - Emphasis on the Services
• NetWare 6/6.5 - Open Source Technologies (AMP)
• Novell Linux Services 1.0
• Ximian and SuSE Acquisitions
• OES Announcement

OES is the combined solution to: Protect your investment, Leverage your
infrastructure, Infuse agility to your environment, Manage costs,
Benefit from Open computing, and Keep your choices open.
This lead into some discussion of other advantages for the customer.

Some of the current GNU/Linux inhibitors were listed:

• Fitness within current strategic plan
• Service and support responsibility
• Ease of useability and interoperability
• Third-party applications and integrated solutions
• Total cost of ownership considerations
• Legacy applications

It was indicated that these were being addressed. One by one …
knocking them out. He then addressed a lot of “frequently asked
questions” …

What happens to NetWare and NetWare 7?
- Its going to keep moving forward.
What happens to Novell Linux Services?
- Customers will have support moving forward.
When will OES be available?
- This year.
What version of SuSE will come with OES?
{I missed the answer}
Can I use SLES?
- Yes.
Will SLES continue to be sold seperately?
- Yes.
Will OES be supported on Red Hat?
- Yes.
How will OES be priced?
- We’re working on that.

Man … he ripped through these so fast I almost couldn’t keep up!

What enterprise services are in OES?

• Open User Experience
• Identity and Security
• Enterprise Management
• Business Continuence

Virtual Office is being promoted as a major component of their Open
User Experience. iFolder is also a big part of
this. I can see where these two products combined
begins to provide a Groove-like solution. They are saying that it
can work both server and client based. iPrint is also included in
this for printing. He also mentioned Seamless File Services
… mixing and matching client and server protocols.

eDirectory, of course, is the cornerstone of the Enterprise Identity
and Security pitch. Features of this are Enterprise Access
Control , Role-Based and Delegated Administration, Global Management
and Deployment.  iManager was talked about as the “console of choice” going forward.  They also indicated embracing CIM and WEBM from the DMTF. 
I’m surprised in a way … HP is doing much more exciting stuff via Web
Services that I believe are longer term solutions.  Maybe there is
some good integration between the efforts.  {Note to self: 
Go look into DMTF recent work …} 

Wow … he just talked about OpenWEBM and that it works on Caldera
Linux and UnixWare!  I’ll have to check into that also …

There was a review of the products and capabilities in the Storage and
Backup area, along with the Clustering capabilities.  I think they
said that 2 node clusters are free and included with NetWare … I
wonder if they are doing this for GNU/Linux also.

2004-second half will bring lots of new things … NetWare is getting a
Bash shell(!), RPM support, Python scripting, and the Red Carpet
agent.  Both kernels will get migration tools, Virtual Office
enhamcements, Workgroup iFolder, CIMOM instrumentation … GNU/Linux
will get NSS volume support, Clustering, NCP Server, and iPrint Client.

2005 will bring Shared iFolders, Cluster File System, Virtual Office
integration with iFolder and GroupWise, Business Clustering for
GNU/Linux, Hybrid Clustering (NetWare and Linux!), and more.

That wrapped it … a lot of interesting stuff to look forward to.

It sucks … I’m on a conference call during the keynote, so I’ll have
to watch the recorded version later.  The presenter from IBM, Jim
Stallings, is talking about their thoughts and efforts in the GNU/Linux
market.  He showed a lot of slides with growth rates, and analysis
of market trends … all showing the growth of GNU/Linux and the
“inflection point” that he indicates occurred in the last year or so.

IBM is outlining their strategy on how they will capitalize on the
growth of GNU/Linux … and their extensive world-wide resources. 
It is amazing how they are setting themselves up to truly benefit and
dominate in “selling” and “supporting” a product that cost them almost
nothing to have.  Impressive.  IBM is a very mature company
…

Jim then expanded on what he said was the sales opportunities for IBM and Novell:

• 2 Million+ NT Servers
• 2 Million+ “down rev” NetWare servers
• 6 Million+ Windows 2000 servers
• 1 Million+ OS/2 servers
• (I missed the last bullet …)

He wrapped up and Chris is now introducing the next part of the keynote
… Dave Litwack.  They are going to do some demos .  I
missed all of this while still listening to my conference call
…  ;-(

I also missed the next set of demos … I’ll catch up via the on-line replay.

Next was Martin Fink (VP Linux, HP)  and he presented the breadth
and depth of the relationship between Novell and HP.  He also
outlined their commitment to GNU/Linux, and their extensive use
internally - 4500 GNU/Linux servers!  He also talked about the
fact that HP and Novell have been working together for ~20 years, and
that they had a strong partnership with SuSE (including capital
investment) since 1999.  As my call ended (my cell ran out of
battery!) I only caught the end of his comments.

I had an interesting conversation last night with some Novell folks
about Open Source and the GPL. They were indicating that iFolder
had been put into “Open Source”, but that they would also be selling an
“Enterprise Version” of the product. Sounds good … a way to
make money on Open Source.

What surprised me was that they then indicated that they were not going
to release the “Enterprise Version” into Open Source. What?
I thought the GPL had the “viral” effect. Nope, they said …
they are retaining the copyrights. On top of that, they are
requiring anyone contributing to the projects to sign over their rights
and copyrights. Whoa … now this sounds weird to me.

I
have to admit that I don’t understand a lot of this, however this seems
extremely counter to the GPL. I’m going to investigate more,
however it appears that the following is somehow the path that Novell
is pursuing:

• Release projects into Open Source under the GPL
• Retain all copyrights
• Require contributors to transfer all rights to Novell
• Release proprietary, commercial versions of the software for money
• Include Open Source contributions in proprietary, commercial versions
• Prevent anyone else from creating commercial versions using the GPL

Is this correct? Can anyone really do this?

They indicated that MySQL, SleepyCat, and others are doing exactly this … I’m going to dig further …

As I was leaving the Mono GUI session, I went to say hello to Calvin
and he seemed shocked to see me.  It was actually funny … the
Mono team had been reading my blog in the back of the room and Calvin
told them that he knew me.  They had no idea I was itting in the
class in front of them!

Calvin took me out in the lobby where I got to meet Miguel and Nat, and
took a little time to chat.  Of course, Miguel indicated he was
sorry that I worked for SCO … however we talked about Mono, Simias,
and iFolder.  They are really doing some great work and want to offer a real competitor to Longhorn … before Longhorn.

Novell acquired some real talent with Ximian … these guys are going
to make a real difference in the world.  The most impressive thing
that indicates this to me, is that they don’t waste time talking badly
about Microsoft, etc.  Them seem to really respect with Microsoft
is doing, and what Microsoft is creating … and they are confident
that, even with all of the money and marketing power that Microsoft
has, they can beat them.  They are committed to create something
that sells itself … that provides real value that people will pay
for.  And they seem to realize they don’t have to trash Microsoft
in order to do that.  Good people …

I didn’t get a chance to blog this last night … this was the last session that I attended Tuesday.

I spent a little time in the lab since this session was marked as full
… I was on the waiting list.  I ended up at the room about 30
minutes after it started and got in anyhow.  As I walked in I saw Calvin Gaisford
from Novell.  I had worked with Calvin at Novell and he is a great
guy … and extremely talented.  He gets it.  He bailed to
Caldera when things sucked at Novell, and went back a year or so
later.  He’s very much involved with the iFolder project, and is working with Mono.

Just as I got in the room, one of the people at a PC got up and left
… I had sat next to him in the morning … he saw me standing in the
back and offered his PC to me.  Jackpot!

I flipped through the slides, which were a good overview of  the
.NET architecture, and then got caught up to the development
projects.  Again … I’m impressed.  I worked through the
first couple of exercises, and then got to the Glade
development.  Glade is an awesome tool that I found a long time
ago in Linux … it allows you to rapidly build the UI framework that
you later add code to.  Mono has implemented libraries so that you
can now use Glade to create your UI, and then add the C# (or VB?) code
later.  GUI apps in GNOME, on UNIX or Linux, written in C# or
VB.  Amazing …

Ease of application development on any platform, IMHO, is key to
success.  And these guys are moving rapidly to provide a full -
modern - development environment with rich tools for the creation of
these applications.  Mono rocks!

During the session the speaker introduced the “crowd” in the back of
the room … Erik the PM, Miguel the leader, Calvin of iFolder,
etc.  I wanted to get a chance to meet Miguel and chat with him
… when I completed the development exercises I turned around and they
had left.  Bummer.

Anyhow … I can’t wait to continue to explore development with Glade
and Mono … I want to see how quickly the progress with VB
occurs.  IMHO, VB is a *huge* with for UNIX and Linux when Mono
supports it … there are a *lot* of VB developers out there.

The Mono sessions alone made the conference worthwhile!

Hyperion seems to have some very powerful tools for Business
Performance Monitoring.  I want to chat with them about our
WebFace solutions for creating powerful new monitoring
applications.  It would really fit well

Dashboards … I agree with the speaker about the power of 
“Business Dashboards”.  He is indicating that Dashboards require
the ability to display information, and also provide controls to effect
change.  He also distinguished between Dashboards and Scorecards,
and also talked about some of the overlap:  Alerting,
Benchmarking, Metrics, Graphics, Reporting, and Metadata.  He
feels that they are both combining into a single solution.

Most of the demonstrations that he is showing are static HTML pages of
data and images.  The rep from Hyperion indicated that they tend
to always go to HTML due to the advantages of “no install”.  He
said they do some level of Java applets, however they are minimal.

I’m going to go to the lab to see their demo … they indicated it’s a little thin …

It was funny … at the beginning of this session was the first time
that I paid any attention to the first slide … the Novell “one Net”
vision slide.  I hadn’t really heard it yesterday … this time it
was with a German accent so I took notice.

The vision of Suse, is to build one universal operating system for all
platforms.  This is not so far from the original NT vision at
Microsoft … cross-processor OS.  I remember when I was
consulting and we tested and installed NT on Intel, Alpha, MIPS and
other RISC processors … I thought it would be impressive.  In
the end, only the Intel platform survived.  There was no real
market for the more expensive RISC machines.

The presenter touched on UNIX history, and the fact that POSIX
compliance really drove forward levels of interoperability.  SuSE,
he says, is the first to then take this even further with one source
code base across 32/54 bit processors, and all platforms.  
He also indicated that their AutoBuild process builds, certifies, and
tests the various “flavors”.

It’s weird, but this part on the build environment of SuSE is going on
and on.  People are leaving … it’s like the presentation could
have been called “This is how we build SuSE products”.  I’m going
to stay a little longer to see where this goes …. I thought I would
hear about features, etc.

He finally moved on to YaST and the power of the feature set. 
Security was next … network monitoring, file system monitoring,
encrypted file system, ACLs, 128-bit SSL, etc.  High-availability
also.

Scalability was next … CPU-scaling via 64-bit processors and 64-way
SMP.  Storage scaling via Multi-path I/O, 1024 NAS-based file
systems, more disk (up to 2,000 devices for 292TB).  Application
scalaing by upping the total memory supported.

Other things … Logical Volume Manager, Journaling File Systems, more Open Source packages.

What’s coming?

• Kernel 2.6
• Multinode failover
• CGL 2.0 (Priority 1 features)
• Redundant Scalable paths to storage
• HD mirroring
• Cluster file system
• Cluster volume manager
• Improved performance of large machines
• SMP, RAM, I/O
• Native POSIX Thread Library
• Restructured I/O Subsystem
• Up to 128 CPUs per system
• More efficient large RAM and NUMA system support
• Hotplug and Persisitent device names (sysfs, udev)

There were also various security additions, adding a CA, new GUI admin interfaces, etc.  They commented on using OpenSLP.

Now he’s flipping through slides like crazy …OpenExchange has a lot
of improvements, but I couldn’t really keep up.  On the Desktop
there is a push for other application compatibility, single sign-on,
and some SAP integration.  More hardware support - biometric
devices, mobile power management, and thin-client support.  Lots
of Desktop lock-down features.

I’ve been reading about Nat Friedman for a while, and reading his
blog. He’s a good presenter, and a really smart person. He
is doing the presentation so far, and has been showing examples
of the evolution of the desktop on Linux. Starting in 1992,
he showed just how crude things were … and then moving forward to
1995, 1997, and then to today. He feels that Netscape on Linux
was one of the biggest things to drive the adoption and usability of
Linux.

2001 brought Mozilla, OpenOffice, Evolution, and GNOME/KDE. These
first releases were used and the feedback was absorbed through
2002. 2003 the next real iterations arrived of all of these
projects. 2004 is bringing all sorts of new efforts and
contributions to the desktop.

He commented on one of the largest installations of Linux
desktops … in Spain. 400,000 Linux desktops installed in
Extramadura and Andalucia. He commented on the classic issue of
new installs vs. migrations … new installs are so much easier.
He also pointed to the Google Zeitgeist
page where stats show that Linux is still at ~1% of the machines
querying Google … he wanted to now what the rounding is … does the
1% really mean .8% or 1.4% … what’s the real number?

Nat then showed a Linux Desktop Scorecard where he rated various
aspects with A+, A, A-, B+, etc. The worst aspect (rated a D) is
“Application Availability” … he stated that Linux still doesn’t have
all of the apps to do your job. Not in all cases, but many.
Related to that is the Application Interoperability issues. You
might open a Excel spreadsheet in OpenOffice and it doesn’t work.

They outlined the “Linux Desktop” as being:

• Groupware - Evolution
• Web Browser - Mozilla
• Office Suite - OpenOffice
• Other Components - iPrint, iFolder, and more

He commented on a number of books … one in particular called “The
design of everyday objects”. He was joking about the “Apply”
button in Windows … and that in the Linux desktop they chose to just
have things occur when you select options. He demonstrated
what appears to be a MVC architecture behind the desktop configuration
settings … showing that when settings are altered in one interface,
they are reflected elsewhere.

He commented on Novell’s Open Source efforts, and the “Unification” of
the GNOME and KDE desktops. They also emphasized their efforts to
contribute to Open Source development based on their own internal pain
… for example contributing to Mozilla to make it more IE compatible.

Beating Longhorn to the punch … they are working on Desktop search
(iFolder/Simias), Rich widget toolkits (Avalon/XAML, Cairo, XUL,
Mozilla, Gtk), and High-level multilanguage runtime (Mono/OSS Java).

Talking with Nat after the presentation, I asked him about kernel
dependencies … he indicated that he could not see where there would
be any kernel specific code introduced.  So (per the GNOME
homepage) it will remain that “GNOME is a Unix and Linux desktop suite
and development platform.”  More UNIX-compatible software …

The first session that I attended this morning was a Mono “hands-on”
developer session. I have to admit that I continue to be
impressed by .NET and C# … and the Mono implementation.

In the session we actually looked at and created some basic .ASP
scripts and ran them using the Mono server. Overall … it just
worked. The presenter did explain a lot of what still isn’t quite
there … but the basic C# is working, and the breadth of database
connectors is growing.

I’m going to continue to experiment and follow this project … it is
also a UNIX-compatible project … fully cross-kernel … nothing tied
to the Linux kernel.

This session seemed a little weak … probably because I am too
involved in both XP development processes, and web services..  It
started off with a consulting/product company - Picasso Software
- going through some very high-level “case studies”.  Really they
were just bullets and stories of the successes … some good
high-profile customers.

Now I’m watching the second presenter talk about exteNd Director and
Composer.  These are very similar to work that we are doing with
our Host Encapsulator and WebFace solutions.  I believe that the
“legacy application to web services” aspects are nearly
identical.  He is now showing the UI generation, and it is very
“HTML page” oriented (they even call it PageFlow) and based on
XForms.  He did show (and answer my question) that they are able
to create composite web services in their tool … although they are
not yet BPEL compliant.

The third presenter is now talking about what Novell is
delivering.  He is promoting the Novell Development Center … an
actual facility where customers can (pay?) go and develop a solution
for a real business problem.  They offer business and technical
experts to assist.  This appears to be an aspect of their
consulting services.

I got in the room a few minutes late … the presentation had already
began.  One thing right off the bat … it is truly refreshing to
hear this conversation.  So far the speaker has been very
complimentary to C# and .NET … expressing the power and value of what
they provide.  He expressed the adoption of  .NET and C#
within IT organizations, and the broad availability of information,
training and certifications.  He spent some time to express the
advantages of .NET and C# over C/C++ and also over Java.  I agree
with him on all counts.

In discussing the “Internal Impact on Novell”, he addressed the value
of Mono … extending Novell’s application reach to many new operating
system platforms.  What he expressed is his understanding that
abstracting away the operating system - and the kernel specifically -
is a valuable offering.  Mono is allowing Novell to provide
solutions on both the NetWare kernel (I am going to look for actual
examples of this in the lab!) and the Linux kernel.  In
addition,  it appears that this would be a route to get these same
applications to FreeBSD, Mac OS-X … or other UNIX systems.

He talked about MonoDevelop … the Mono IDE.  It looks nice, however I was confused since Novell seems to have committed to Eclipse … I am hoping they are just going to integrate the functionality into Eclipse.

The Mono project is governed by three different licenses: GPL, LGPL,
X11  Different parts use different licenses.  They expect to
release v1.0 this summer … C# compiler, VM with JIT and pre-compiler,
IL assembler/disassembler, development and security tools, .NET v1.0
and v1.1 APIs, etc.

It was interesting that he took some specific time to address that this
is “*NOT* the Novell commercial product … this is v1.0 of the Open
Source project.”  I am curious why this distinction … so Novell
is going to sell and charge for their Mono product?  It will be
interesting to watch.

I asked about support for Mac OS-X and the speaker indicated that he is
running Mono on Mac OS-X right now!  So it is going to be (and
stay?) a fully cross-operating system solution.  Nothing specific
to the Linux kernel here …

The demo was great … but I’ve already been playing with Mono and am very impressed …

This was an interesting session … the presenters addressed a lot of
issues.  They indicated that it used to be about the costs and
availability of support for alternative desktops like GNU/Linux. 
Now, they say, the real issue is the migration cost.  It will be
interesting to see what they say are the biggest on-going costs …

One thing they mentioned was that you get saving through less
staffing.  This was due to adopting a “Universal OS” …
committing to only running GNU/Linux.  I’m surprised by this …
since it seems that IS&T in most organizations will always end up
running a wide range of systems … many different types of 
operating systems also.  I can get in very small businesses and
even medium businesses where there is some flexibility, however most
will have a variety for some time.  Does this mean that if the
customer chooses to use Windows, Mac, UNIX, and UNIX-compatible
solutions there is not the ROI that they promise?

They made a very good point about legacy documentation compatibility
and support.  They indicated that most organizations do not
require the ability to do “mass conversion” of stored documents, but
can implement a plan to do conversion on demand.  They are
promoting .pdf as a good format to convert to … something that can
not be altered easily.  I would think that most documents are for
archive purposes, and that newer solutions - like Wiki software -
provide a better solution for “living” documents.  They also
pointed to a Microsoft URL
that shows a Microsoft XML document standard.  They indicated that
you have to be careful of “advanced” features and their use … these
(I agree) are where the lock-in occurs.  I was surprised they
didn’t mention the Oasis Open Office XML work on this …

There is an issue with Macros, and the use of VBA, in Office
files.  They said there is no easy way to convert these, and that
they do tend to comprise a significant corporate investment. 
Again, this is an area where there is significant (at times)
intellectual property and business logic that has to be
preserved.  I would tend to agree that you want to extract this
from the Office environment anyhow … or look for ways to standardize
and make the code more portable.

As for Migration Approaches, they indicated to core strategies - “Rip
and Replace”, and “Go Forward Migration”.  With their Go Forward
approach they talked about the issues with vendors and applications,
and suggested that a “dual boot” solution might be

In their case-study - OpenOffice.org - they showed graphs where they
believe they will see a 5-year Net Present Value, 84% Internal Rate of
Return, and a Payback Period of 30 months.  I asked them about
what the biggest real contributor to this is, and they said the
Microsoft licenses.  This seems to be a little light since
Microsoft can always drop prices …

They closed with a pitch on Ngage consulting services … I’m not sure if they included this in their case study costs …

They started with a demo of YaST … pretty cool … it’s the
integrated management “console” they want to promote across all
GNU/Linux distributions.  (the wireless just went down again)

Next, Nat came up and did a demo of the new Open Source 
iFolder.  They indicated that it is entirely written in C# using
Mono.  He also indicated that it’s all out there today and both
Windows and GNU/Linux code was available.  They also used GAIM,
and indicated that both the front-end (of course) and the back end were
out there in Open Source.  Cool stuff.  They also showed the
printing support.  GNU/Linux Desktop stuff … not anything really
thrilling to the current GNU/Linux user …

JD Nyland (a great guy!) is now showing a demo of mounting NetWare NSS
volumes in Linux … this is obviously part of their migration tools
support.  I’m curious if they are going to demonstrate how the
user rights are going to be handled … this is the most complex issue
related to this type of capability.  Nope … they didn’t address
that issue.

He then went on to show Red Carpet delivery of .RPM packages to a
NetWare server.  It was a good demonstration of how they are
moving to standards like RPM and providing a consistant
interface/implementation (Red Carpet) across the two kernels.  He
installed and removed a VNC RPM on a NetWare server.  Lastly, he
showed off their Virtual Office solution … a web-based integration of
numerous Novell products.

Chris closed up the demos … and that was the Monday keynote.  Interesting stuff …

I have to say … Enterasys again blows!  This wireless network
absolutely sucks!  It has been up and down non-stop during the
keynote … and it just plain pitiful.  It’s too bad they couldn’t
find a better partner to do this … I remember last year that I pushed
the Novell Brainshare Team about this issue … they were afraid that
no other partner would step up.  It’s really too bad they don’t
get how important it is … Novell the networking company … that
can’t do wireless networks.  ;-(

Jack asked what is next for Linux?  Linus indicated that he only
works on the kernel.  He indicated that the v2.6 kernel is coming
… and will have to be tested.  “There will always be some issues
…”

Jack asked if you started over, what would you do different? 
Linus indicated that he wasn’t sure what he could have done
better.  He believes that making it GPL is what made it work.

Chris asked what could threaten Linux?  Linus answered that it’s not technical issues … software patents are one area.

Chris asked what is missing in his life?  Linus said he’s happy so far.

Jack:  If you weren’t doing this, what technical interests would
you have?  Linus: Hardware.  He likes low-level stuff …

Chris:  What is the best compliment to Linux?  Linus: 
The strength is not a single niche.  Not a single space. 
It’s very broad …

Audience Question:  Where do you see Linux in 20 years? 
Linus:  Way to hard to answer.  Even 5 years is too
much.  Not a believer in that … it’s sure failure to look that
far out.  In the next few years, it’s the desktop.

Audience Question:  (guy from Argentina) Comment on the government
adoption of Linux?  Linus:  I have a policy about not caring
who uses Linux.  If it’s made good enough … people will use it.

Chris wrapped and said to move to the demos …

Chris started off with talking about certain “myths” that exist about
Open Source.  He did allude to SCO a couple of times, however
again refrained from mentioning names … good job.  During his
discussion about these myths, he indicated that Open Source is still a
capitalist business.

He is pushing that Novell is going to provide an alternative desktop
solution … the Linux Desktop.  The benefits being more choice,
less cost, and increased security.  What is again facinating is
that he blurs the lines about what is “Linux” and what is not.  He
seems to continue the “myth” that all of the applications software is
“Linux” … Linux is the kernel.

He is commiting that all of Novell will move off of Microsoft Office to
Open Office by mid-Summer 2004.  Half employees on to Linux
desktops by the same time.  All Novell employees will be on Novell
Linux by late 2004.

They have a strong emphasis on Web Services and Digital Identity. 
They are pushing their relationship with the Liberty Alliance.  It
is good to see that they are embracing Web Services … I’ll be looking
for more details on how they are Web Service enabling their products
and solutions.  How many of these are available now, or soon?

It’s interesting to hear his current section on the Future of NetWare
… he is on the verge of  saying that “the kernel doesn’t matter”
… which is exactly what I believe.  He talked about the fact
that customers ought to be looking at the “upper layers” of software
and applications.  And then he says these are Linux … but they
aren’t.  Linux is the kernel.  The upper layers are GNU, and
Open Source software … more specifically - UNIX-compatible
software.  They are serious about hardening the Linux v2.6 kernel,
and increasing hardware and software support,  more multimedia and
wireless support, and again increased security.

For developers, they are committed to Eclipse, and continuing to
develop the Mono project.  Both of these are good moves …

“Linux has injected new life into Novell” … I would agree.  And
it’s more than the Linux kernel … it’s what could have happened years
ago … just new management.

Ok … they just showed a “Lord of the Rings” rip off video that was
pretty funny …  and they just introduced Linus Torvalds … live
and on stage!

Jack Messman kicked off the conference keynote by indicating that
Brainshare doesn’t do Windows.  They have pushed that all of the
PCs around the conference are running SuSE Linux Distributions.

As he is going through the “Promises made, promises kept” he is
indicating that they are offering “Flexibility and Choice” …
“Customer Focused” …  “Linux in the Enterprise”.  He is
emphasizing the value of Ximiam and SuSE.  He is also emphasizing
the support that Novell intends to provide to customers - Support,
Consulting, Certification, and Training.  He indicated there are
800 training partners.  Novell is pushing to become *the* “trusted
support partner, 24×7, for Linux”.

Security is the next place that Jack is talking about.  Promoting
Red Carpet Enterprise as a solution for systems management and
maintenance.  He even indicated that if your systems were attacked
and wiped out, Red Carpet can re-image.  What?  I thought it
was all so secure … 

Liability and Indemnification … Novell will provide this with
contracts.  I was impressed that Jack chose not to spend much time
on this, nor even mention the SCO name.

Migrating to Linux … Novell will provide the process to make this
simple and possible.  They are pushing a “Getting Started”
promotion to begin this migration.  He then moved to the “roadmap”
… They are going to accelerate the release of NetWare v7.0 … by
releasing Open Enterprise Server … a product that will include both
kernels.  He continues to emphasize Novell’s “we have answers”
position.  He then moved through the various product lines …
their application development stuff (good move … they are adopting
Eclipse!) … the directory products … open source contributions of
iFolder and YaST.  It seems to me that they are open sourcing YaST
with the new emphasis on Red Carpet.  iFolder in Open Source will
be cool … I’ll look forward to checking out the project.  I saw
a session where they indicated they were rewriting in C#/Mono …

New partner announcements - PartnerNet Program now consists of Solution
Providers, Technology Partners, and Training Partners.  The focus
on these Partners will be: Linux, Secure Identity Management, Resource
Management, and Web Services. 

This week I’m going to be attending Novell’s Brainshare 2004. 
I’ll be blogging about it of course … and having attended Brainshare
for years, I can’t wait to see what they are going to do this year …
after the acquisitions.

Overall I am impressed that Chris and Jack stepped up and did something
so drastic … it was a great move … although the timing and 
immediate revenue will be something to be seen.

One thing that I can say is that Novell picked up some great
engineering talent in Ximian and SuSE.  They are extremely capable
and visionary in creating powerful applications … and the Mono
project is quite impressive also.

I’m in the keynote now … it starts in ~15 minutes …

I came across this announcement the other day, and it really bothered
me at how misleading this information is.  Even the title of the
article starts off with mild misinformation.  It ought to say
“Macromedia to test Wine support” … or even “Macromedia to test
UNIX-compatible support”.  It seems that few people really
understand what *is* Linux, and what is *not* Linux.

Macromedia to test Linux support
Speaking at FlashForward, an annual
conference for developers who work with Macromedia’s Flash format, Chief
Software Architect Kevin Lynch said the company would begin soon by offering
optimizations to allow Flash MX, its main set of tools for creating Flash
content, to work smoothly with Wine, an emulation program that allows Windows
programs to run on a Linux PC. Depending on developer interest, the next step
would be to produce Linux-native versions of Flash MX and other applications.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5170061.html

What is misleading is that Macromedia is not writing anything to Linux
per se … but instead writing code optimized to be compatible with Wine.  What is Wine?  Why
don’t we peek at the Wine web site where they define themselves:  “Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.”

So the article even further blurs the “truth” when it says that Wine
has something to do with a “Linux PC”.  It really ought to
indicate that Wine allows Windows programs to run on UNIX and
UNIX-compatible operating systems.  Linux is simply a
UNIX-compatible kernel … coupled with a lot of UNIX-compatible tools
and applications.  Wine works with Linux because Linux provides
UNIX-compatibility.  Macromedia tools will work with Linux because
Wine works with UNIX-compatible operating systems.

As for the native versions of
these products, Macromedia would be far smarter to write to POSIX APIs,
or stay with UNIX-compatibility.  Why cut out FreeBSD, or Solaris
… or any of the other flavors of UNIX?

As I am catching up on my news reading, and starting post again using
my new Radio v8, I noticed that my last real post was almost a month
ago!  It has taken me 3+ weeks to get Radio working.  And
it’s not even completely working.

It’s frustrating in this day and age that software does not allow for easier updates and migrations.

I installed Mozilla v1.6 a while ago … and have slowly been using it
more and more.  They have come an amazing distance with this
browser.  I really like a lot of the features … although there
are still serious issues with it.

One of the tools for Internet Explorer that I had picked up a while ago
was a tabbed interface “wrapper” called Scope.  Scope allowed me
to open a single browser window, and have it contain numerous “tabs”
that each displayed a different web site.  It was completely based
on the IE engine.  I used this tool extensively and would open
three copies of Scope each morning - each one containing numerous
tabs.  Scope was extremely lightweight and just worked cleanly.

All of this is now implemented in Mozilla.  I have now converted
two of my Scope “tab-groups” into Mozilla tab-group bookmarks. 
I’ll get the third one done this weekend.  I am also impressed by
the pop-up blocking, and some of the other configuration options. 
It comes up quick and just works.

Lastly, the DOM and ECMAScript support that is now in Mozilla is really
good.  Our WebFace libraries are now able to fully support the
Mozilla browser and so now our WebFace applications are completely
cross-operating system.  This is getting very cool …

I have just completed my migration from Radio 7 to Radio 8 . It
has been a long time coming, and was quite a pain to do. There
were far too many details that I had to manage … I wish they would
have had some sort of upgrade program. They actually did … it
upgraded the blog database and some other things. It left my HTML
templates to me, and the HTML templates were not compatible between
versions.

I’m postin this tonight to watch and see that my new format is
working. I still have one more change that I want to make to the
item template. I might try it tonight.

I actually ran into a nasty problem last night, however I believe that
I now have that resolved. I had modified the opening “body” tag
to add a new background image. When I commented out an older
attempt at this (it includes a Radio macro to reference the images
folder correctly) it seemed that Radio had a real issue with processing
the macros when they existed inside of commented HTML.

Anyhow … back to blogging …

ATOM to RSS Conversion

I found this ATOM to RSS Conversion service today … it is extremely helpful for subscribing to ATOM feeds being produced by Google/Blogger.  They recently chose to drop support for RSS feeds, and are only providing ATOM feeds for subscription.

With all of the “wars” going on over these protocols, I’m a little disappointed that Google/Blogger has gone this direction … however it was only a matter of time before a service like this one showed up.  Blog on …