Software Development Times Blog

Gartner Magic Quadrant case dismissed

drubinstein.nospam@nospam.bzmedia.com (ahandy) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:55:00 -0500

The lawsuit filed by ZL Technoogies alleging that Gartner favors its paid clients when choosing who gets into the magic quadrant was dismissed by a judge before the real trial began, yesterday. The dismissal, however, can be refiled with some amendments, according to the judge. Here's what ZL Technologies CEO, Kon Leong, has to say about the decision.

"While we are disappointed that the court has dismissed our lawsuit as filed, we are pleased that it has given us leave to amend our complaint, over Gartner opposition. We believe the market should take note that the defense on which Gartner prevailed was its argument that its reports contain “pure opinions,” namely, opinions which are not based on objective facts. In ZL’s view, that is directly contrary to the statements Gartner makes to its customers when selling its allegedly sound research. ZL intends to amend its complaint and refile within 30 days.

"ZL believes that Gartner’s overwhelming influence on large corporations’ purchasing decisions, and its inaccurate ratings, including its bias in favor of large vendors, combine to pose major competitive hurdles that hurt smaller innovative vendors across all technology sectors. The harm falls not only on new and innovative companies like ZL, but on the enterprise customers who receive faulty purchasing advice, and as a result overspend on inferior technology."

ApacheCon Live

drubinstein.nospam@nospam.bzmedia.com (ahandy) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:39:00 -0500

Just a quick note to all of you out there in the tubes that ApacheCon is going on now. I am off to the 10th anniversary party, here in my home town of Oakland. It should be a fun bash, especially because Microsoft and HP are some of the sponsors. The conference continues tomorrow, but the party goes all night tonight! I've uploaded our pictures of the event. they can be seen on Flickr. Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums also declared today officially ASF Day in Oakland.

Beware of ldd

drubinstein.nospam@nospam.bzmedia.com (ahandy) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:37:00 -0500

If you use Linux and you program, you've probably used the ldd command to track down a dependency or two. If you use it with any frequency, you definitely need to read this article. Peteris Krumins explains that ldd is not an innocuous little utility, devoid of malicious possibilties. From the blog entry:

For example, you can put a malicious executable in ~/app/bin/exec and have it loaded by ~/app/lib/loader.so. If someone does `ldd /home/you/app/bin/exec` then it’s game over for them. They just ran the nasty code you had put in your executable. You can do some social engineering to get the sysadmin to execute `ldd` on your executable allowing you to gain the control over the box.

Proposal to solidify Python

drubinstein.nospam@nospam.bzmedia.com (ahandy) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:24:00 -0500

Guido van Rossum sent an e-mail to the Python-Ideas mailing list today, in which he proposed that Python 3 be the Python forever. Well, almost forever. I'll let him explain in his own words, below:

I propose a moratorium on language changes. This would be a period of several years during which no changes to Python's grammar or language semantics will be accepted. The reason is that frequent changes to the language cause pain for implementors of alternate implementations (Jython, IronPython, PyPy, and others probably already in the wings) at little or no benefit to the average user (who won't see the changes for years to come and might not be in a position to upgrade to the latest version for years after).

The main goal of the Python development community at this point should be to get widespread acceptance of Python 3000. There is tons of work to be done before we can be comfortable about Python 3.x, mostly in creating solid ports of those 3rd party libraries that must be ported to Py3k before other libraries and applications can be ported. (Other work related to Py3k acceptance might be tools to help porting, tools to help maintaining multiple versions of a codebase, documentation about porting to Python 3, and so on. Also, work like that going on in the distutils-sig is very relevant.)

Note, the moratorium would only cover the language itself plus built-in functions, not the standard library. Development in the standard library is valuable and much less likely to be a stumbling block for alternate language implementations. I also want to exclude details of the CPython implementation, including the C API from being completely frozen -- for example, if someone came up with (otherwise acceptable) changes to get rid of the GIL I wouldn't object.

But the moratorium would clearly apply to proposals for anonymous blocks, "yield from" (PEP 380), changes to decorator syntax, and the like. (I'm sure it won't stop *discussion* of those proposals, and that's not the purpose of the moratorium; but at least it will stop worries elsewhere that such proposals might actually be *accepted* anytime soon.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/

Darl McBride ousted from SCO

drubinstein.nospam@nospam.bzmedia.com (jfeinman) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:36:00 -0500

Looks like the sun has set on Darl McBride's controversial tenure with The SCO Group.

As part of its restructuring under a U.S. bankruptcy court trustee, SCO has given CEO Darl McBride his walking papers. McBride was seen as the main driving force behind the seemingly endless lawsuits against Novelll, IBM and Red Hat over who is the true owner of UNIX. COO Jeff Hunsaker, CFO Ken Nielsen and General Counsel Ryan Tibbitts remain, at least for now.

We will have more shortly.

Gartner's Magic Quadrant in court

drubinstein.nospam@nospam.bzmedia.com (ahandy) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:44:00 -0500

As I am sure most of you already know, Gartner Inc. is probably the largest and most trusted (or at least widely used) technology analysis firm out there. Gartner analyzes a lot more than just technology, but in our industry, they seem to have a death grip on the title of top analyst firm.

I've spoken to many analysts there, and I've attended some of their conferences, and I have to say that the company deserves its reputation as a source of quality and truth. But there is one aspect of the Gartner world that has long irritated me: The Magic Quadrant.

Now, the primary reason I dislike this Magic Quadrant is that most of the companies who make it in there immediately seize on this fact in their PR work. I've gotten countless calls that suggest I should cover a company simply because it is in Gartner's Magic Quadrant. I'd just like to state for the record here and now: We will never cover any company based solely on its appearance in a Magic Quadrant.

ZL Technologies is also upset about the Magic Quadrant. So much so that they've decided to take legal action against Gartner. The ZL claim is that Gartner only places its clients in the Magic Quadrant. Could be. I know that I've seen some suspicious looking quadrants in my day. And as a publicity stunt, this is doing a lot of favors for ZL, a company I'd never heard of before the lawsuit.

But I do think they have a valid point here. Gartner sells a lot of reports and services to a lot of companies, and it also includes many of those companies in its research. If IBM is going to pay Gartner millions of dollars for a report on the future of Z/OS in the market, is it possible that the contract is balanced upon a Magic Quadrant inclusion?

These types of lawsuits aren't black and white. I'm sure there is a lot of gray here, and Gartner probably walks the line with many policies in place to act as a firewall.

The actual report charts certainly support ZL's claim that Gartner favors massive companies in its Magic Quadrant. IBM effectively lives there in almost every category, and it's rare that a non-public company makes it in there. It does happen, though.

But on the other side of the fence, when it comes to gigantic projects, like world wide coordinated enterprise software development, it is the gigantic companies that are best suited to execute, when speaking generically. I think that ZL Technologies, and many Gartner report purchasers, miss the fact that many of the firms in these charts are well suited to very specific needs. Gartner reports focus on the very broad, unless you pay them lots of money for a custom report. In very broad terms, of course IBM is going to be your best bet: No matter what weird edge case you have, IBM has probably dealt with it somewhere.

But that doesn't mean a smaller firm can't be just as effective at executing on a project. Gartner's simply showing off the generalists. The United States usually wins the most gold medals at the Olympics, but that doesn't mean it will always win the Biathlon.

Finally, Gartner does employ some supremely smart people, and it's $10,000-a-day consultants are worth every penny. But at the end of the day, no consultant can replace your own time-consuming, painstaking hard work and research. Gartner and any other consulting firm are not remedies; they are a tools to be applied where most effective. They are also sources of information. But you wouldn't let your hammer and radio choose what kind of engine you put in your car, would you?

ZL Technologies is putting out a call for like-minded Gartner haters.

VS 2010 beta 2 could be days away

drubinstein.nospam@nospam.bzmedia.com (dworthington) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:41:00 -0500

Yesterday, I was told that Microsoft developers were using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 internally. I believe it to be true, even though Microsoft has been cagey about saying whether or not it will have a second public beta.

This news follows corporate vice president Scott Guthrie's recent statements to a .NET user group that Microsoft was close to the milestone. I also expect to hear more from Microsoft about Visual Studio in the near future.

It will be interesting to see how much Microsoft has invested in improving Visual Studio's testing tools, which, according to an expert that I interviewed for October's special report, were the buggiest part of Beta 1.

Oracle OpenWorld as Soap Opera

drubinstein.nospam@nospam.bzmedia.com (ahandy) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:29:00 -0500

We in the media have often been accused of making small issues much larger for the benefit of our drama organs. The press, you see, has a crying need for drama, and as such, has collectively developed a new set of internal organs that require drama to survive. But no matter what you think of the press, there is no denying the drama behind this year's Oracle OpenWorld: and it is not drama created by the media.

A friend of mine, Alex Peake, described drama as "lulz you are too close to." As such, much of the OpenWorld drama is full of lols, because no one but Larry Ellison and Safra Katz are anywhere near it.

Anyway, enough lead-in, allow me to enumerate the multiple points of drama at OpenWorld. Please note that almost none of these have anything to do with software development.

Trauma Versus Oracle

This was a very big bit of drama with far-reaching tendrils. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom recently got married to an actress, Jennifer Siebel. Siebel recently landed a gig on the TV show "Trauma," a ham-fisted action/drama show based in San Francisco. I've watched one episode, and in ten minutes I saw an electrocution and a helicopter crash at the same site. Way overblown.

Anyway, Trauma is filmed in San Francisco, and Mayor Newsom is very happy with his wife's work. So much so that he's been handing the Trauma team permits to film wherever they like. That means they were allowed to block off 280 in downtown, so that a tanker truck could be detonated, and drama filmed around it.

So a few months back, Trauma booked a ginormous warehouse that belongs to the city. They probably wanted to film Godzilla attacking some portion of the city, or something. Come to find out, after the permits were signed, that Oracle had been waiting to rent said warehouse for its customer appreciation party.

Uh-oh! Newsom backpeddled, and had Oracle move its party to Treasure Island. In exchange for creating all this drama, Newsom had the city pay for the $200,000 tent in which Three Dog Night would play. So, the city of San Francisco's tax payers footed the bill for some of Ellison's party. Drama!

Aerosmith Versus Each Other

The headliner for that customer appreciation party was Aerosmith. In case you hadn't been keeping up, there are more rumors floating around about this band than any other I can think of. Earlier this year, lead singer Steven Tyler was forced to cancel some show dates due to pneumonia. Then, in August, he fell off the stage at a concert and hurt himself. He is 61, after all. The Oracle concert last night was the first time the band has played together since that accident, and before the show there were copious rumors that Tyler wouldn't even show. The band was fueding, it was said.

Then, when Tyler did show, he was a bit out of sorts. He was out of tempo a lot, and couldn't hit the high notes. But hey, he's 61 and he still danced like a demon.

But he did have a few things to say to the crowd. First, Tyler said "We almost didn't make it here tonight, but not because of B***S*** you've heard in the media. Apple wanted us to play tonight, but when we compared Apples to Oracles, we knew which was the right choice. Thanks Larry!" said Tyler.

Next, Tyler stopped between songs to ask the audience: "What's the difference between Windows and viruses? Viruses keep getting better."

But the best zinger was not intended as such. Tyler stopped again, and asked the audience, "What's it like to be the Oracle?"

Well, Steven, nobody here really knows that answer, because Oracle employees were not invited to the customer appreciation dinner. In fact, only the board members and C-levels were there, along with a smattering of salespeople who were told to close anything they could, even if the customer had a beer and was on the ferris wheel.

The Governator

The Governator himself was scheduled to appear with Ellison during his final keynote. Unfortunately, he got stuck behind semi that jack-knifed on the bridge and was severely delayed. That meant Ellison had to stretch out his presentation, which was basically no different than his Sunday night keynote. The gist? Allow me to paraphrase Ellison: "IBM has poopy pants."

And that leads us to a bit of drama that has been brewing for years:

Larry Ellison is incapable of not being a smug jerk

Look I don't want to kick mud at Ellison. He's a smart guy who really wants to win. But his behavior in keynotes is getting worse every year. First of all, he started his talk with a five minute video of the Oracle BMW sailboat. It's a multimillion dollar ship, and it's one of the fastest in the world. After the video, Ellison comes on stage with this massively smug look on his face, grinning like he's just bought the last candy bar in front of a herd of little kids at the candy store. His first words? "It's a great boat, you should get one."

Nice Larry. Classy. Anyway, it didn't end there. Ellison's constant taunting of IBM was certainly fun to watch, but it wasn't exactly mature. He sounded like a school yard bully. "IBM ran back to the benchmark council to complain," he said in a mocking tone.

Now, I am not one to say that being competitive isn't a virtue, especially in business. But Ellison takes it to a new level. I half expected him to drop his pants on stage, moon the audience and shout "Neaner neaner neaner," to everyone there after the boat comment. Also, he's the only CEO who can fill a room with 10,000 people, and then say "Next slide, please," for every slide in his super slick, $100,000 PowerPoint deck. Steve Jobs was never this unprofessional.

The Set List

I simply had to give this one its own dot. It's a small point, but very relevant. The rumor at the concert was that Aerosmith was there primarily because Oracle outbid their other gigs. Perhaps that makes it even funnier to know that the first song Aerosmith played, after saying "Thanks Larry!" That song? Eat The Rich.

Liveblogging the Oracle Open World keynote

drubinstein.nospam@nospam.bzmedia.com (ahandy) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:08:00 -0500

To the strains of “Sun” music, the first keynote of Oracle Open World signified the first joint effort between Sun and Oracle. So much so, that the front rows at Larry's opening chat were packed with the likes of Scott McNealy, James Gosling and John Fowler. Before the night was over, it would be these three who talked the most, while Ellison simply kicked mud at IBM.

Blackhole Sun, by Soundgarden, wailed over the PA system as everyone gathered in for the real Sunday keynote.

Scott McNealy took the stage before Ellison, after a long montage of very candid moments from Scott's past at Sun. He began his speech by disparaging the lawyers who said he couldn't talk about what he really wanted to talk about. He then broke into one of his famous Top 10 lists. Mostly, he plied the audience with jokes at the expense of IBM, Apple and Linux.

McNealy said Sun had “kicked butt, had fun, didn't cheat, loved our customers, and we changed computing forever.” Engrave that on Sun's tombstone.

“We're not a capital equipment company with big fabs. We are all about innovation. You have to keep inventing. You have to keep creating. We did that with a lot of great people. We were one of the world's top R&D companies. Think about putting Oracle's large R&D budget with our R&D budget, and you have one of the biggest R&D budgets of all time,” said McNealy. He's right: Sun spent over a billion dollars a year on pure R&D. Its problem was that little, if any, of it yielded new revenues, let alone profits.

McNealy did eventually discuss the things we all wanted him to, though he only addressed each aspect of Sun's business through some quotes taken from Larry Ellison. Here's Larry in the room, 10 feet away, and McNealy is showing his words on the screens behind him.

Then, McNealy threw numbers at us: “There are over 216,000 SPARC servers out in the markrt today. Seven million processors shipped this decade. We went and asked Oracle what are their plans. They are going to spend more money developing SPARC than Sun does now. What about Solaris? This is the No. 1 platform for Oracle. We're everywhere. We have OEM agreements with Dell, IBM, Fujitsu Seimens and HP. Don't take our word for it. Larry says we're going to spend more money developing Solaris than Sun does now, so feel comfortable about that innovation,” said McNealy.

The most interesting intimation came next: “The one thing I hear a lot about is MySQL,” said McNealy, pointing out the biggest sticking point for the European Union's approval of the acquisition. “Is it going to get clobbered? I don't think so. Larry has said it doesn't compete with the Oracle database, which is true. This competes with Microsoft. This competes with Microsoft SQL Server. It doesn't compete with Oracle or DB2."

He then pointed out that Oracle had previously purchased Innobase, which builds one of the most popular transaction engines for MySQL.

“We shouldn't be worried,” said McNealy. “MySQL is GPL. If Oracle messes with it, the world will fork. There's not quite an issue here, we're not sure why it's held up, but we're working with the authorities to make sure they understand that.”

Java was another hot topic, and McNealy then brought James Gosling, vice president and the father of Java, on stage to discuss the future of the programming language and ecosystem. Long story short, the pair agreed that everything would be peachy for Java.

They bantered about how they now have a huge collective pool of programmers when Sun and Oracle mix their developer networks.

“I've never worked for a software company, so I am looking forward to it,” said Gosling.

“It won't be a software company after we get done with them,” replied McNealy.

In an attempt to prove this, John Fowler was then brought on stage to disucss a wildly powerful new flash storage array, and to discuss the future Oracle database systems they are building. Privately, Fowler remarked that Ellison had been keeping the Sun systems unit busy with new performance mandates.

Ellison then came on stage and went over, point by point, the ad that Oracle released in August, which promised monetary commitments to Sun's existing product lines. He added a new line to the previously four-point list, this one promising MySQL would also receive more money for development and research.

He then described a lengthy benchmark-related dispute between Oracle and IBM, culminating in an actual benchmark of the new Sun Oracle database server.

“One man's sunset is another man's sunrise,” said Ellison, before launching into a lengthy enumeration of the problems with IBM's servers. He even played one of IBM's own ads, which advocated the use of its computer systems to find new oil wells. “In the immortal words of Sarah Palin, 'drill baby, drill,'” said Ellison.

If any companies want to fund the development of their new database-driven application, Oracle will put up $10 million for anyone who can build an application that will not run twice as fast on Sun gear as it will on IBM gear. He then asked IBM to enter the contest for said money.

After that swaggering gauntlet throw, McNealy came back on stage and rehashed his starry eyed endorsement of the acquisition.

“I believe our shareholders made an exciting decision given the choices that they had. I am counting on Larry and the Oracle team to take very good care of a very important legacy of mine, and of the founders, and the employees and shareholders of Sun Microsystems,” said McNealy.

And with that, the beer and music began, and the new Sun/Oracle database system was forklifted off stage and put back in its crate.

A whole lotta Scala!

drubinstein.nospam@nospam.bzmedia.com (jfeinman) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:04:00 -0500

I just completed a story about an open-source testing framework that is scheduled to drop on Monday the 12th, and while writing the story, I took a deep dive into the world of Scala. Here are a few tidbits I learned about Scala while studying up on it:

-It does static type checking, and can support generic classes and abstract types. The static type is a feature that it shares with its big brother language, Java.

-Its functional programming capabilities can make it faster, according to some. While Java is mostly an object-oriented language, Scala brings a functional-object hybrid that combines the best of both styles.

-It was designed by Martin Odernsky, who also designed the Java extension known as Pizza. I like him already.

-Libraries allow developers to add new language constructs, and any method may be used as an infix or postfix operator.

On a side note, when I Googled "Scala", the Google Maps feature brought up the location of one my favorite hometown Italian restaurants, La Scala, located on Vanderbilt Parkway in Commack, N.Y. So I think it is suffice to say that Scala is ONE SPICY MEAT-A-BALL!