c0t0d0s0.org

Yesterday was really one of my worst days in the last months ... no ... in the last years. I forgot the rule "You should never go to a dentist on a Friday". My dentist made some new inlays (so i don't have a single amalgan inlay now, just composite(?, the white paste) ones) but a root canal treatment, too. And the later one gave me the mother of all toothaches over the day. It was that bad, that i had to visit the dentist emergency service in the army hospital here (they are an regular hospital, too. At foremost they do the emergency service for dentistry in the evening) in Hamburg. This was the most brutal visit at a dentist i ever had, but now the tooth doesn't hurt that much any longer. However i had still toothache after the treatment there, so i walked the 5km back home through the relatively cold weather. However when i arrived at home, the toothache was acceptable low.

When you really want to hear a scary dentist story i should report about a apicoectomy 16 years ago:

Joerg: "Mum, they told me, that they use a new method. They carve a bone platelet with a chisel out of the jaw, cut the root, and lay it back. Carve ... doesn't sound enjoyable ..."
Mum: "Jörg, don't be such an coward. I assume that chisel is just the name for an medical tool. They won't use a hammer and a chisel".

Well, that was a misjudgment This still gnaws at her conscience when i'm joking about dentists. 14 years later i've learned, that the "bone platelet method" was just a short fashion in dentistry.

The ft.com/alphaville-blog reports about strange news. According to a russian governmental web page, Oracle is said to have withdrawn a regulatory filing in regard of the Sun Oracle/Merger. The strange thing:

29 октября 2009 г. в ФАС России поступила просьба компании «Оракл Корпорейшн» (Oracle Corporation) об отзыве ходатайства вх. № 33986 от 4 августа 2009 г. о получении согласия на приобретение прав, позволяющих определять условия осуществления предпринимательской деятельности ООО «Сан Майкросистемс СПБ», ЗАО «Сан Майкросистемс» и ООО «Май Эс Кью Эл» без вынесения решения по существу.
30 октября 2009 г. ФАС России данную просьбу удовлетворил.

Or in English via Google Translate:

October 29, 2009 FAS Russia received a request from the company Oracle Corporation »(Oracle Corporation) to withdraw the application Rin. Number 33986 dated 4 August 2009 for consent for the acquisition of rights allowing to determine the conditions of doing business OOO Sun Microsystems SPB, JSC "Sun Microsystems" and OOO "May Ess Que El" without ruling on the merits.
October 30, 2009, FAS Russia granted the request.

The FAS website announced yesterday, that it had granted the request today? WTF? Anyway: I wouldn't draw any conclusions in regard of the merger out of it. Perhaps Oracle thinks that the request is unnecessary or they want to file a new one. I will just wait for an official comment by Oracle. And by the way: Why should Oracle issue a new FAQ paper about future intentions with Sun products on October 28th when they want to withdraw the offer? Really strange ....

There is a new overview/FAQ document regarding the planned Oracle/Sun merger available at oracle.com. I will cite some key passages in this article.

In my humble opinion the objective of this "Oracle shouldn't get Mysql" is pretty clear now. The Register reports about an discussion with Florian Müller in "Sun's MySQL fork survival theory ripped".

It isn't about the source. It isn't about the technology. It isn't about competition. It's about the brand.

"The value of the brand is huge - that's why the valuation is so great. MariaDB [the MySQL fork created by founder Monty Widenius] - it would take a long while to get there."

I assume, that Mr. Widenius has recognized that that MariaDB is an horrible name for marketing and wants the "Mysql" back. The critics of the Oracle/Sun merger don't want to establish a new name. Some of the proponents just saw that you can't sell the cake and eat it, too.

I think the article "MYSQL FOUNDER OUTLINES SOLUTION: INSTEAD OF LETTING SUN SUFFER, ORACLE SHOULD SELL MYSQL (ORCL, JAVA)" from Mr. Widenius is really interesting:

In order to support the regulators' work on the case, Widenius' new company, Monty Program Ab, works closely with Florian Mueller, a MySQL and EU affairs expert. Widenius said: "Florian gave MySQL strategic advice from 2001 on and was a shareholder until the sale to Sun in 2008, and with our support led an award-winning campaign against a proposed EU law on software patents. In August he helped us to demonstrate to the EC the need to investigate this merger and he is now on board again to meet the information needs of regulators, journalists and analysts."

In my opinion, Mr. Mueller is not much more than a lobbyist for the interests of Monty Programm Ab. At least this press release reads this way.

I can imagine how the proposed solution should look like: Oracle wants to stop loss, sell Mysql for a few million back to Monty AB (he has enough money due to the acquisition of Mysql by Sun) and Mr. Widenius has perfected the eat and sell cake.

Sorry ... Sun paid a large heap of money to purchase Mysql ... not only for this code, but for the brand, too. As i assumed before, it's just the money that surrounds the mysql ... it's not about Mysql and it's development. "Hey ... selling it to you was a big mistake, we want it back ... but hey ... we keep the money". It doesn't work that way. This behaviour isn't that far away from blackmailing: "I was able to block something important for you, and i will only step out of the way, when i get what i want". Disgusting. They play with 30.000 employees. But i'm pretty opinionated, that Larry shouldn't give in to such a behavior. Really, really disgusting.

By the way: Establishing a new fork is really simple because of the way, most Mysql installations were distributed to the customers. Just get Fedora, Debian, Suse and let's say Ubuntu into the boat when you fork Mysql and the branding is no issue at all. Because most of the Linux admins doesn't search for their packages at the internet ... they just ask their package manager.

So ... i just attended the Opensolaris User Group Meeting. From my perspective, it was an insightful meeting:

• Joy - leader of the user group in London - was right with her statement: An OSUG isn't just a sequence of meetings. There must be more. Activities like preparing packages (some members of the HHOSUG already suggested that and we should start this project now) or maybe more contact to universities. We have to do more. I think i will discuss this in the next HHOSUG meeting and on our mailing list.
• The OSUGs are pretty different in nature: The loosely knitted OSUG of Osnabrueck (from my perspective) or the heavily structured OSUG of Serbia. But the challenges are similar. How to convince people to do a presentation ... especially the ones, not working at Sun. And not everyone likes the thought to speak in front of a larger number of people ...
• I really thing there should be vastly more communication between the OSUGs. I think there is a large amount of knowledge to share. And the OSUGs are a good place to do so.
• Was nice to meet Mika in personal as he is reading my blog for quite a time now. Would really like to hold a presentation at the OSUG in ZRH. Would allow me to get an additional mug from Starbucks But at foremost: Help spreading the word on Solaris.
• A huge "Thank you" to Teresa for hosting and moderating the event

Wie dem Blog von Matthias Pfützner zu entnehmen ist, ist jetzt auch im Rhein-Main-Gebiet eine OpenSolaris im Entstehen begriffen. Das erste Meeting findet am 17. November 2009 um 17:45 in der Sun GS in Langen statt. Auf diesem Treffen geht es erstmal um organisatorische Dinge, danach geht es um einen Homeserver mit Opensolaris im Eigenbau. Für einen weiteren Vortrag aus der Community ist dann auch noch Platz. Das Ende der Veranstaltung ist für 21:00 Uhr geplant. Alles weitere im Blog von Matthias Pfützner.

"Die Erde ist eine Kugel? Da spricht doch die ganze Wissenschaftgemeinde gegen. So ein Mist. Die Kugeltheorie ist irrelevant! Löschen!"

Früher wurde wurde man für die Verbreitung von "Mist" mit der Androhung allerlei unschöner Dinge in die Verleugnung geschickt. Heute wird man gelöscht.

The news about the removal of ZFS from Sourceforge resulted in a reinvigorated interest in the NetApp/Sun lawsuit. A multitude of web pages reported about this step. There is a comment from an authoritative source about the "Why?". I will not add something to that.

But i want to say something to the ever ocurring references to this lawsuit: Well ... i have to admit, that this lawsuit wasn't in my focus over the last few months, as i thought "Let the lawyers do their job, this can take a while". But with all this comments a short article looking into the developments since the beginning of this year looked as a necessary choice.

There is one point that i find really interesting: Everyone is talking about the point that Sun may loose ZFS, but out of a strange reason most people aren't talking about the point that NetApp has a similar problem by the countersuing, as they can lose core patents behind WAFL. And they have already loosed some patents or at least important claims.

A source of information is the ZFS Sun/NetApp lawsuit page at Sun. Let's just take the published PTO documents and not the comments by Sun.

To dodge the countersuing, NetApp tried to invalidate some patent (5761662 ("Personalized information retrieval using user-defined profil") for example) but had no success. The PTO send an "Notice of Intent to Issue" after the reexamination. The same is valid for 6591303 ("Method and apparatus for parallel trunking of interfaces to increase transfer bandwith").

On the other side:

• Many claims of NetApps patent 5819292 ("Method for maintaining consistent states of a file system and for creating user-accessible read-only copies of a file system") has been rejected by the PTO in a Final Office Action.
• The PTO issued an non-final office action for Patent 7174352 ("File system image transfer") deleting all claims that have been disputed by Sun.
• In December 2008 all claims of patent 7313720 ("Technique for increasing the number of persistent consistency point images") has been rejected by the PTO as stated in this non-final office action

At the moment i don't think that Sun will get problems in the NetApp/Sun lawsuit. I see more problems for NetApp when core patents are invalidated. However: At court and at sea you are in god's hand.

Rob Savelberg, Journalist der niederländischen Tageszeitung "De Telegraaf" hat gezeigt, dass Journalismus nicht nur in der Entgegennahme von Verlautbarungen besteht. Ich finde es beschämend, dass diese Frage nicht von einem deutschen Journalisten gestellt wurde. Man muss es kaum überspitzen, wenn sagt, dass man in Deutschland gar keine Zensur brauchen würde ... die Presse ist schon staatstragend genug:


Ich hätte mir zur Ehrenrettung des deutschen Journalismus nur einen einzigen deutschen Journalisten gewünscht, der hierauf mit einer weiteren Frage eingestiegen wäre. Nur einen einzigen ....

PS: Ansonsten gilt für das schwarzgelbe Kabinett eh "Kompetenz ist Nebensache". Ich bin ein wenig erschüttert. Schäuble Finanzminister, Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg Verteidigungsminister (wir können hier froh sein, das in den USA mittlerweile eine vernünftige Seele regiert, ich denke der werte Freiherr ist strenger Transatlantiker), Niebel das Ministerium, das er eigentlich abschaffen wollte. Da kann man irgendwie nur mit dem Kopf schütteln.

Okay, Apple dropped the ball, but that doesn't mean, that no one else is capable to play it: ZFS for MacOS. At the end ZFS is opensource and it's available with a license compatible (CDDL) to the one of MacOS. So this was an obvious step after Apple's decision.

Jeff Bonwick writes about this situation:

Apple can currently just take the ZFS CDDL code and incorporate it
> (like they did with DTrace), but it may be that they wanted a "private
> license" from Sun (with appropriate technical support and
> indemnification), and the two entities couldn't come to mutually
> agreeable terms.
I cannot disclose details, but that is the essence of it.

Jeff

The discussion surrounding Mysql is somewhat depressing. At the moment it's a major road block on the way to the merger of Sun and Oracle. When you read all this stuff in the public discussion, you could come to the conclusion that Sun is just consisting out of Mysql. In my opinion it doesn't deserve this role.