Wow, soo much change in the past few weeks! The Democrats winning both the House and the Senate, Saddam sentenced to hanging, Rumsfeld resigning, Oracle releasing Unbreakable Linux, Novell partnering with Microsoft, and Sun open sourcing Java!
First off, it's definitely time for change in the US. I don't think most Americans have been happy with the handling of Iraq, North Korea, Iran, or even things here at home. Seeing gas prices drop all of a sudden definitely adds to the fire. It's definitely refreshing to see that we elected our first female Speaker of the House. I hope that congress will become more diversified over time to acurately reflect the population. I'm hopeful that things will change for the better.
Soo many crazy things are happening in the Linux world, and it seems Red Hat stands to lose or atleast see it's market value drop to something less bloated. I'm not surprised that Oracle decided to jump into the Linux market and cause some disruption. I think it's a smart move by Oracle to solidify a complete stack to offer small businesses. While many see this is a huge blunder, I think it'll work out in the long run purely due to Oracles marketing and capital. Now add Microsoft's partnership with Novell and things getting a little scary. While it maybe good for SuSe Linux to get some backing from Microsoft, it begs the question about the IP protection Microsoft is flogging. The SCO vs. IBM ordeal is very unpleasant and interestingly enough has only hurt SCO. If Microsoft goes after Red Hat or some other distro for IP issues, I think it'll cause some backfire for everyone involved. It could cause bad publicity for Microsoft, market share decline for Red Hat or Novell, and place customers in an uncertain environment. In the end, it's really the customers that will get hurt the most. Hopefully, this won't happen and if anything Microsoft will work on better relations with the UNIX and Linux communities.
It has been known for a while that Sun would open source Java. It was just a matter of time and dealing with legalities. It'll definitely make it easier to port to other OS's such as Linux, BSD, etc. It'll also open the door for developers to contribute to Java. It's only been in the past few years that companies and programmers are realizing the capabilities of Java beyond simple applets. The next release of Java, 6, will offer some major performance enhancements. It's interesting how every year Java gets faster and more capable. It definitely makes me want to pick it up again, I haven't done anything with it since 1.2 :(
