I’m a big fan of Open Source Software. But I can also understand that making money is important nowadays. And to be honest I feel more confident when a company is involved in the development of a tool/product/application. I think communities are great – but a company with real QA and who needs to make money out of a tool/product/application has a motivation to make the best out of the tool/product/application.
Now the question is: How do you make money with this in mind? Simply by selling support contracts? I have seen companies fail with that model.
A good idea might be to release the code in open source but as a company do development of new features in a closed repository. Make a clear release plan which shows the upcoming features (and distribute it). When a customer needs one of these upcoming features etc. he can either:
develop them himself or
buy a license to get the access to the current version or
wait
Next to that Support contracts might still be an option 🙂
Crucial point is here the right choice of a source code control system. Because the community still might develop cool features which you want in you closed repository as well…But distributed SCMs do the job…
Since I have to give back my so beloved x300 laptop to my former employer it was time to find a new cool laptop. What I totally like about the x300 was the weight, screen-size, the SSD, and the dual-core Intel CPU. Still the x300 was to big to work on in trains, planes etc.
So I went on to look around – the only machines who had a chance to get bought where a Apple or a Lenovo. The follow up model of the x300 called x301 (how creative :-)) but is way to expensive. The apple notebooks well are just apple notebooks – your’re paying for the apple logo. So I went on to have a look at the x100e. It is small and energy saving…
So finally I bought one – I totally like the keyboard (which is even better then most Lenovo/ThinkPad keyboards I know), the size, and the weight. In the beginning I felt the screen might be too small (x300 had 1440×900 resolution – the x100e just 1366×766) but I think it’s okay for the price 🙂 Performance had to be improved so I bought a SSD and upgraded to 4Gb of RAM. Now there is not a big difference between the x100e (single-core AMD 1.6Ghz, 4Gb RAM, 80Gb SSD) and the x300 (dual-core 1.2Ghz, 3Gb RAM, 64Gb SSD).
Conclusions is that the price of the x100e is great compared to what you get – so you can save a little and upgrade to a SSD and more memory…
March 22nd, 2010 • Comments Off on Leaving Sun – Kick butt and have fun!
I decided to leave Sun Microsystems/Oracle and move on to a new position which start 1st of May. I was looking around for a while and reached out to some people and decided that moving on is the best bet for me.
Don’t get me wrong: Working for Sun has been great! I met very bright, great, important, impressive and most of all innovative people – and the company supported me in creating things like OCCI. It was a great experience! Most certainly I’m a bit saddish about this. Sun was a dream-come-true when I started and I’m extremely happy that I had the chance to be part of this history.
Now I move on for various reasons which I might explain to you while having a beer…I will continue to work on Grids and Clouds and hopefully I can push OCCI even more! I will keep on blogging on my blog. My blog at blogs.sun.com/intheclouds will probably vanish sometime (*sniff*) but you can find me using the known website: tmetsch.org. But for now: Kick Butt and Have Fun!
February 21st, 2010 • Comments Off on How to replace yourself with a script
Nice presentation by Hilary Mason. I like the concept of the Ignite presentations:
In talks that are exactly five minutes long, Ignite presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds.
February 21st, 2010 • Comments Off on Striking Lufthansa Pilots??
Okay the Lufthansa pilots are going on strike starting tomorrow for 4 days. I’m flying Lufthansa…But that is no issue. I fly with Augsburg Airways which is part of the Lufthansa organization. Weird is that Lufthansa uses the Augsburg Airways brand to pay pilots less then they have to when they would work for Lufthansa. Now guess what: The Lufthansa pilots (salaries between 60.000 and 240000 Euro annually) are going on strike. Those pilots working for Augsburg Airways whom earn less are not going to strike…something is wrong here…
