I am sure the last thing you want to rely on in a crisis is someone fumbling with a RAID array full of SSDs. Far better to encrypt the data. Power off the unit, you loose the key and all you have is a random collection of 1 and 0.

Superfast broadband is great, but are there really economic and social benefits?

Fast broadband makes a difference to entertainment but hardly necessary for employment, communication or accessing public services. Unless the government has plan to put high end tech jobs out in the depths of the Scottish highlands I would have thought that 4 MBps would do just fine. I struggle to see why I should subsidise some farmers access to NetFlix.

Who commissioned this report again? Any danger of the LSE coming to the conclusions the client wanted?

An internet enabled TV is going to be irresistible to TV companies. Perfectly legally they will get together with the manufacturers to personalise you TV experience. Given half a chance they will monitor your viewing, suggest programs, personalise adverts, maybe even personalise the news. Not so bad you might think: I never have to see Sarah Palin on the TV again. More likely, if they think you are an independent voter in a swing state, it is back to back political adverts for you for the next six months. Don't be surprised if your remote dont seem to work half way through a PAC spot. Remember If You're Not Paying for It; You're the Product

We are considering changing the name of the Foundation due the confusion, but we haven't decided yet. We will leave the decision to the next Board of Directors.

If you read the article you will see that I am not at Microsoft any more. I left in September to join a new company in Silicon Valley (you can see it here: http://sonoasystems.com/ and our service at http://apigee.com./ The company's product is a Linux-based cloud services controller.

While at Microsoft I focused on promoting open source, and on building interoperability technologies between Windows and Linux, as well as Eclipse and Firefox support and integration.

My work at the CodePlex Foundation is on a volunteer/pro bono basis. To get a better sense of what we are trying to do you may want to consider that our directors and advisors include Monty Widenius, Miguel de Icaza, Stuart Cohen, Larry Augustin, Bob Gobeille, William Rowe and others whose careers demonstrate a strong commitment to open source.

Correct; these drivers were not originally built according to the kernel coding standards. At the time that was not a requirement.

The incredibly cool thing is that kernel community developers submitted over 200 patches to the code. The team (Hank Janssen, Haiyang Zhang, and Hashir Abdi and a small test team) have spent their time integrating and testing the results to ensure that there were no regressions. As an example, the team spent roughly three weeks tracking down a crashing issue in the kernel that turned out to be fixed in the 2.6.31-rc8 release. For a first release and integration with the kernel I am happy with the results, and appreciate the work that Greg KH has put in to accept the changes and educate us on both process and coding style.

With the regressions resolved and testing complete from this initial integration phase, the team is back to dealing with net new issues as well as adding features according to the customer roadmap. One of the top requests we've had is to add SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) support, so that is on the immediate term development list. This is a dedicated, long-term team that is still learning the cadence of kernel development and communication.

Cheers,

Sam
sramji@microsoft.com

This is the only post so far that seems to have gotten it right.

We've done this pragmatically, have identified the reasons in detail, and have nothing to hide. We believe that of the range of open source licensing options for this code, the GPLv2 was the right one. Our decision was not based on any perceived obligations tied to the GPLv2 license.

This was a project we began in October of last year, and which we have been working on ever since.

Our diligent adherence to the standards of the Linux kernel community, including the license used, the process, and the changes we are now seeing we need to make to the coding style of the source code, are driven by our goal of having the code accepted into the kernel. This will make it far easier for any developer who wants to modify their distribution to run on Hyper-V, for solutions providers to modify and support these features, and for customers to obtain Hyper-V support for their Linux distribution of choice. We have been endorsed by both Greg K-H and Jim Zemlin for the approach we've taken, and we believe that this process will be good for Hyper-V's capabilities and customer adoption.

Sam
sramji@microsoft.com

It was specifically talked about. We considered other licenses (like the Clear BSD) which is considered "GPL-compatible" but the best choice was clearly the GPLv2.

This was the gentle advice we got from Greg K-H and we took it seriously. The more we thought about it, the more it made sense to follow Rosen's first law of open source licenses - "use the license of the community that you want to contribute to."

Sam
sramji@microsoft.com

First, the Hyper-V high-level specification is available under the Open Specification Promise; this can be used by 3rd parties to implement Hyper-V compatibility.

Second, we have a roadmap for the drivers that includes improvements to performance and manageability, including features like SMP support. These have been requested by our customers and are part of the engineering plan for these drivers.

Third, our maintenance plan for the drivers includes submitting patches to the kernel maintainers; and the process that Greg K-H and the team follow is designed to ensure that drivers can continue to be compatible with the kernel even if the kernel's model for device drivers changes.

Ultimately it will be the market success of this technology that will ensure its ongoing development by Microsoft - as we do with any product. So far the signs are good.

Sam
sramji@microsoft.com

You are really funny! Actually, I'm the head of Open Source and Linux Strategy for Microsoft Corporation. I'm from Oakland, California.

Sam
sramji@microsoft.com

Our use of the GPLv2 license, as requested by the Linux community, means we will not charge a royalty or assert any patents covering the driver code we are contributing.

Sam
sramji@microsoft.com

I managed the IT for a couple of organisations in Cambodia and then Lao for a couple of years. Environments not so different from Bangladesh I suspect.

My experience was that it was best to buy standard mid range kit (IBM, or Dell Poweredge servers in tower cases worked just fine) and then invest in some physical infrastructure and climate control. It was generally straightforward enough to find a secure corner of an office and put install a small self contained rack with a UPS or two. Or even better get someone to wall up a corner of an office and put in an aircon. That kind of skill was in plentyful supply.

Lugging around some serious kit in that kind of environment would give me sleepless nights. The chance of it getting dropped, rained on or stolen is just too high. (We had a couple of laptops stolen while I was there, and you aint going to be happy chap if you come back to your hotel one night and find your server has gone walkies.) I advise you try and travel with what you need, preferrably a run of the mill inconspicuous laptop and find a secure base or two for your servers.

We do work with Novell on running Windows Server on Novell SUSE Linux (Xen), as well as Novell SUSE Linux on Microsoft Hyper-V. This work is done by a dedicated engineering and testing staff working for me both in Redmond, WA and in Cambridge, MA. We do joint engineering, low-level white-box testing, and hardware validation and support proof-of-concept work. This lab also does Windows-Samba compatibility testing in concert with Novell and the Samba team.

Cheers,

Sam Ramji
mailto:sramji@microsoft.com

It may be appropriate to reassess what you consider "Microsoft management". I am Microsoft management, and I established the current strategy and approach for engaging with Samba based on discussions with Jeremy Allison, Andrew Tridgell, and team in early 2007. That's why we've been able to get the engineers connected directly.

For more context you can review here: If you're surprised, you're not paying attention.

Sam Ramji
Sr. Director, Platform Strategy
Microsoft Corporation

You have hit the nail on the head.

I work for a small company where we recently considered moving to Linux on our workstations. The Operating System was not an issue, but the cost of retraining our staff to use OpenOffice out-weighed any benefit we might gain. Taking even half a day to train a busy executive would cost the company more in lost time and productivity than we could ever hope to gain in savings through licencing costs.

Meanwhile at home I have switched to OSX without any drop in productivity (well apart from time wasted playing with all the pretty widgets) because I can use Word with no time spent relearning the system. Someday I will try iWork but I am just too busy right now.

Microsoft may create a version of Office for Linux, but it will be after they have lost the battle for the desktop not before.