"We are a big supporter of the open source movement and have been forever," said Larry Singer, SVP of global market strategies at Sun, in an interview. "We think Linux is a huge movement that is pretty good for the industry and that for some implementations Linux makes sense. We also think there are a lot of people that consider Red Hat for the wrong reasons."

 He went on to say that Linux is not free and stuff like that. Why is SUN so anti-Linux? Because it takes away from its sales. SUN really has to figure out what it is going to do about Linux, it is a much bigger problem for them than Microsoft. Bill can always sell MS Linux and also sell MS Office for Linux when the open source people do a find and replace with Microsoft’s “monopoly“. (Can’t wait to see the EU sue Red Hat). Bill can also port .NET to Linux and VS .NET and developers will write lots of MS centric stuff for MS Linux.

SUN can’t really sell that much. Technically they are a hardware and chips company. They can try selling Java, since they have such a tight control over it. Also Linux takes away from big expensive SUN servers much more than it takes away from Windows 2003 server.

Forget Iraq, the real thing that happens on June 30^th is the Microsoft ends support for Windows NT. There are over a million NT 4.0 clients out there. Good, the world need to upgrade to at least Windows 2000.

I am not a fan of big companies forcing upgrades down your throat, and nobody is forcing anything at all, you can still use the produce Microsoft will just not support it, but this technology is over 7 years old. Time to bite the bullet and upgrade.

Upgrading is a no brainier. Microsoft got it right with both Windows 2000 Server (2003 server is pretty rocking too) and Windows XP Client. I bet the people who “hate” Microsoft and complain most about the “crashes” are the ones running the oldest software. Well starting June 30^th you can’t complain anymore. If you don’t want to upgrade try the “free” Linux. Please report back to me how that works out for you. :)

Please end the trial of Oracle. Let them merge with PeopleSoft. Right now SAP owns the largest market share of ERP/EAS systems with 34%, if the merger were to go through it would create an Oracle of 38% market share.

For starters Oracle is losing market share in the database field and needs something else to survive. If not it will dwindle in importance and IBM and Microsoft will own the database market. Second, in the ERP/EAS field SAP would face stronger competition and the customers would benefit from more innovation and better prices. The market works-only if you let it.

Besides are you going to let a German company be the market leader? Aren't they against us in the war on terror? (Sorry Clemens, couldn’t resist!) :)

So I am back and alive from Alaska. We were snowed in for a few days and I missed a slew of flights (and conferences) but the worst that really happened to me was a bad sunburn.

The climb was great. We all had to rope up just in case we fell into a crevasse and needed to be rescued by our fellow climbers. We had to break trail in snow up to our hips and sometimes up to our armpits.

I am the second person on the first rope.

Eventually we got to the summit.

In Alaska at the base camp of Mt. McKinley (Denali), at 20,320 feet (almost 7,000 meters) it is the tallest mountain in North America, and one of the “7 summits”.

I am in the land of the 24 hour sunshine, I have not seen nighttime since last Thursday. The weather forecasts are a hoot, “party sunny“ and “sunshine“ for the “overnights“.

I am not going to the top of Denali, but climbing a much smaller mountin next door to build up my skills. More to come....

You need to read this blog by my pal Richard Campbell. There are some strange things afoot in the Java and Open Source Community.

http://www.campbellassociates.ca/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=be972f31-02e4-47f5-919a-faa5c7211b60 

Here is a quote from the blog to whet your appetite: “How badly derailed is the EJB 3 development path given the implied manipulation of the working groups?”

Well we win one. After a few years of Microsoft hiring away RDs (Chris Selles, etc), today we stole one from them. Rob Howard was made an RD today. As of 6/1/04 Rob is no longer a Microsoft employee and we snagged him as an RD!  Rob is fulfilling a career goal and has started his own company, Telligent Systems based in Dallas, Texas.

Welcome Rob. This doesn't suck.

I leave on Friday for Alaska to climb some mountains.