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spacewalk-list@redhat.com : currently has over 250 members…
spacewalk-devel-list@redhat.com: currently has about 120 members…
The first patch from inside Red Hat came within three days of the opening of the mailing list.
The first patch from the community came within eight days.

I’ve suggested before that the company that owns the heart of open-source monetization would be sitting on a massive opportunity. Yes, there are alternative ways to monetize open source (e.g., Google’s advertising model), but for many years to come vendors will make money by distributing software, not merely advertising around that software.

In the nine weeks or so since the debut of Spacewalk, we’ve been blown away by the level of interest, the contributions, and the excitement generated by the project…

To achieve this more effectively, however, Red Hat needs to reach out to the commercial open-source ecosystem and evangelize the benefits of building on Project Spacewalk, rather than creating silo’d “Red Hat Network-esque” offerings. To date, Red Hat seems to have taken an “If we build it, they might come” approach to Spacewalk. It needs to be a bit more proactive.

Last week, Red Hat posted an update on the project, now called Project Spacewalk.

As such, a community effort around a network service, such as Red Hat’s Project Spacewalk, is hugely important. It’s important because it provides Red Hat a way to corral the growing commercial open-source ecosystem.

Back in early 2007 Red Hat let slip that it was planning to release its Red Hat Network code as an open-source project. In June of 2008, Red Hat officially announced that Red Hat Network Satellite would be open sourced.

One reason this walled garden approach benefits cellular operators is that they get paid both by subscribers and by content providers. With open Internet access, only subscribers pay. Another benefit is that their approach reduces use of limited 3G bandwidth, meaning carriers don’t have to build a more robust network.

It should be noted that these, too, have an opportunity in open access. I continue to believe that broadband providers (like their cellular cousins) could be collecting ASCAP-type royalties for each broadband provider, then passing on a portion of these fees to the entertainment industry (or other industries that are losing money to free content).

commentary

More adoption should be a good thing. More use should be a good thing. Only the cellular world wants its customers to use less of its service (but pay more)….

Mozilla’s
Firefox browser is truly one of the grand success stories of open source. This week Mozilla is celebrating 500 million Firefox downloads. Yet for all its success, it can’t seem to crack the mobile wall, which is almost shameful given the innovation and competition it has sparked on the desktop:

So perhaps Mozilla could take a percentage of fees for Google search placement (as it does now), and then shares those fees between itself and the carrier? Or maybe it enables mobile ads and shares those fees? Etc.

I guess the big question is whether the cellular providers can hope to make more money with open access than with closed access. I’d like to think that open wins in the end, but it may require the cellular providers to change their business models a bit or they risk becoming the “dumb pipes” that broadband providers have become.

So, because mobile Firefox might benefit customers more than cellular providers, it’s shackled. At least we can safely say this has nothing to do with a fear of open source. Rather, it’s a fear of customers getting value, which the carriers spread to all software providers, open source or not.

Bozos.

Ghosty, one of my favorite satellite radio DJs, he’s on Sirius Disorder, urged listeners to email their favorite weird and obscure music. Never heard of any of the records, but it set me to wondering about some of my more out titles, and if I had to pick one I’d go for, The Rotor Rooter Good Time Christmas Band LP. It came out in 1974 and yes, I bought it for the wacky title, but it’s actually a really good record, I’ve played it many dozens of times. Mixing equal parts polka, psychedelic, rock, classical and just flat out bizarre, Rotor Rooter is a blast from start to finish. If I had to pick just one cut, it would have to be “Fanfare/Buick LeSabre.”

What format is it on?

Did it come from a “real” record label, or was it just something you found on the net?

Tell us about your most obscure music, and why you like it.

Where or how did you find it?

A group of vigilantes calling themselves Anonymous have posted a video explaining the recent attacks against the Church of Scientology.

A copyright violation claim by the Church of Scientology against the posting of one of its videos to YouTube has prompted a full-on assault by a group calling itself Anonymous.

The video, in which Tom Cruise proclaims, in part, that Scientologists are the only experts on the mind, was pulled by YouTube over the weekend at the request of the Church of Scientology as part of a long-standing effort to keep copyrighted material from appearing on the Internet. Other sites have since posted the Cruise video in full.

In response to the take-down of the Cruise video, a group of vigilantes–calling themselves Anonymous, or Anon–have retaliated against what they consider to be Internet censorship. The group includes computer experts capable of Internet mischief. In recent days, local chapter sites for the Church of Scientology have been defaced, and in some cases denial of service attacks have also prevented access to the same sites. Real-world attacks have included fax-spamming those same offices.

As an explanation for these attacks, Anonymous posted its own video to YouTube. In the video, a computer-generated voice speaks over a rolling cloudscape, effectively putting the Church of Scientology on notice:

“Over the years, we have been watching you, your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent, your litigious nature. All of these things have caught our eye.

“With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed, for the good of your followers, for the good of mankind, and for our own enjoyment.

“We shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form.”

The video ends, with the following statement:

“We are Anonymous
We are legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget.
Expect us.”

A Web site called Project Chanology details present actions and those in the works by Anonymous and others.

The Church of Scientology, founded in 1953 by L. Ron Hubbard, is not without previous controversy on the Internet. In 1996, it sued Internet service provider Netcom (now a part of EarthLink) over copyrighted texts posted to the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. In 2003, the Church of Scientology attempted to sue a Dutch woman and her ISP over similar writings but lost. The Dutch case, had it ended differently, could have changed the way ISPs handle third-party links by its customers. In 2007, writer Keith Henson was arrested as a fugitive. Under a California law that criminalizes any threat against someone else’s “free exercise” of religion, Henson was convicted in 2001 for making a comment on the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup about sending a “Tom Cruise” missile to destroy the Scientology camp.

Update at 3:15 p.m. PST January 25: Anonymous has since posted two new videos.

As Oracle heads into 2009, CEO Larry Ellison has a $13.6 million carrot dangling in front of him.

That’s the maximum bonus award the billionaire will be eligible for under the company’s 2009 bonus plan, which was approved by shareholders during Oracle’s annual meeting last week.

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing:

Under the Bonus Plan, participants will be eligible to receive awards based upon the attainment, in fiscal 2009, and certification of, certain performance criteria established by the Compensation Committee. For fiscal 2009:

(a) Mr. Ellison, our Chief Executive Officer; Mr. (Jeff) Henley, our Chairman of the Board; Ms. (Safra) Catz, a President and our Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. (Charles) Phillips, a President, will each receive an award based on Oracle’s improvement in its pre-tax profit on a non-GAAP basis from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009.

But no matter how Catz, Phillips or any other executives perform under the plan, it is based on a fixed multiple of their target bonus and is less than the maximum $13.6 million Ellison is eligible to receive under the plan.

Such a cap is interesting, considering how little the maximum bonus may serve to motivate Ellison, who topped the Forbes list of the best-paid tech CEOs in 2007, with his $1 million base salary and $182 million in exercised and vested stock options. In 2008, Ellison’s compensation package again included a $1 million base salary, but the value of his exercised and vested options was a staggering $543.8 million.

Kudos to Silicon Alley Insider for answering the question about why Sony BMG was not among the major record labels filing a copyright lawsuit against Project Playlist.

Hilary Lewis at SAI reported that Sony BMG is in negotiations with the music start-up.

On Monday, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claimed in documents filed in New York that Project Playlist makes it easier for users to find unauthorized reproductions. The company provides an embeddable music player used at MySpace and Facebook and claims not to infringe on intellectual property rights because it doesn’t host any music files on its site.

A Sony BMG spokesman declined to comment.

What this indicates is that the top record labels are not always in agreement on how to handle copyright cases.

A water fight announcement posted on social-networking site Facebook is being blamed for damaging an award-winning public garden in England.

More than 350 people descended on the Millennium Square garden in Leeds on Monday with water guns and buckets, leaving plants trampled, turf torn up, and water features full of foam and debris, according to a report in The Daily Mail, which included before and after photos of the garden. The centerpiece garden won a bronze medal at the 2004 Chelsea Flower Show, according to the report.

Organizers allegedly called the event a “success,” but videos posted on YouTube showed participants running roughshod over the garden, with little regard for their impact on the garden, the newspapers quoted an elected official as saying.

“Frankly I’m appalled at the total disregard for people’s ongoing enjoyment of this beautiful city center oasis,” Councillor John Procter told the newspaper. “To destroy years of careful cultivation for a couple of hours of so-called ‘fun’ is unforgivable.”

A T-Mobile executive said Wednesday that the carrier will offer a Google Android cell phone by the end of 2008.

At a wireless conference in Redwood City, Calif., Joe Sims, vice president and general manager of T-Mobile USA’s Broadband and new Business Division, said that he has seen prototypes of an Android handset, and that the first in a series of devices will be available in the final quarter of this year.

Sims confirmed an earlier announcement by T-Mobile International CEO Hamid Akhavan at February’s GSMA World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. During a news conference, Akhavan promised a fourth-quarter launch, but he did not specify which of the carrier’s markets would get it first.

T-Mobile is the first U.S. carrier to set a launch date for an Android device. Though it is a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance, as of December a T-Mobile representative would not confirm that the carrier would even offer an Android phone. Sprint and Verizon Wireless are also members of the alliance, but the two carriers have remained silent on when, or even if, they’ll launch devices.

Sims did not drop any details on the promised device, though HTC is rumored to be developing a device called the Dream. Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and LG are members of the Open Handset Alliance as well.

Though U.S. carriers have long resisted open platforms like Android, T-Mobile’s adoption of the platform is another sign of how carriers have begun to loosen the reins. According to CNNMoney.com, Sims said that though the carrier was at first skeptical, T-Mobile now views Android as a way to encourage innovation and customer choice.

Ever since Michael Moore’s movie Roger and Me, Flint, Michigan has not registered on the list of America’s Joyous Top Ten.

So it’s not strange, then, that the city of Flint is trying to find sponsors for its surveillance cameras.

Well, not very strange.

City officials have become somewhat excited by the success of a surveillance camera at a significant junction, on the corner of Cecil Drive and Jewel Drive.
Now they want more.

(Credit:
CC Glutnix)

But they claim they don’t have enough money, even with the cash they seem to have accumulated from successful drug busts.

So they have hit on the notion that companies will want to have their logos or, who knows, even their messages (”Nike. Just Do It. ‘Cept When You Shouldn’t”) on the outside of the surveillance cameras.

I am all for catching bad people. Or even good people who do bad things. But would I want one of my client companies so closely associated with the catching?

You see, the thought is open to all sorts of controversy and misinterpretation.

Marketing managers might want to choose which cameras they will sponsor. They might only want to be seen in the nicer areas. Which might mean that the nicer areas get all the cameras and the less nice areas get all their cameras stolen from their bedrooms.

And what if you’re, say, Carl’s Jr. and you sponsor a camera and then one of your restaurants gets held up by bad people? Won’t you feel even worse than you would if someone found a human finger in one of your burgers?

It’s one thing promising to quench a thirst, fill a craving or rush you with superhuman amounts of sugar so that you believe you’re a helicopter. But putting your logo on a surveillance camera promises a rather higher level of success and security.

I am not sure any brand would feel it could really live up to that. And, at the time of writing, no one has yet taken up a sponsorship.

Maybe the folks at Enron would have done it once upon a time.

LG Decoy

(Credit:
LG)

The LG Decoy, which we mentioned last week, is now officially available from Verizon Wireless. If you’ll recall, the Decoy is the first-ever handset with a stowaway built-in Bluetooth headset in the back. It’s a slider phone, with a 2-megapixel camera, a microSD card slot, stereo Bluetooth, an MP3 player, EV-DO support, and access to Verizon’s V Cast broadband services. The Decoy is priced at $179.99 with a two-year service agreement and a $50 discount.