But Wait, There's More

The Linux Revolution Comes to Cuba

It is a bit surprising, to be honest, that Cuba hasn't taken to Linux a whole lot earlier, but Cuba is a relatively poor country where having a computer is a bit of a luxury or is a relatively expensive business tool. But, as the Cuban daily newspaper Juventud Rebelede reports, the Cuba government and people (Is there supposed to be a difference?) has formally joined the Linux revolution.

Roberto del Puerto, director of the Oficina para la Informatización de la Sociedad (the Office of Computerization of Society), issued a statement that said it would be moving the government's computers from Windows to Linux. He said the island nation has 1,500 Linux users already and is building a Linux developer community that is spread across multiple cities. The island's Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas (University of Computer Science) has 6,000 students, and they will be encouraged to participate in the indigenous development of Linux programs as part of Cuba's Linux initiatives.

Mainsoft Launches Visual Studio for Linux

Mainsoft, one of the two companies that had access to Windows source code over the years and that offered Windows runtime environments on mainframes and Unix servers, is still in the game of trying to bridge operating systems and their architectures--but the game is a little different now than it was a decade ago.

Last week, Mainsoft announced a product code-named "Grasshopper" and sold as Visual MainWin for J2EE Developer Edition, which is a plug-in for Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET development tool that allows Visual Studio developers to kick out Web applications for both Windows and Linux platforms. Mainsoft has partnered with Project Mono, the open source implementation of Microsoft's C# compiler and its related Common Language Runtime (CLR) environment, which is being spearheaded by Novell. What Grasshopper does specifically is expose the ASP.NET and ADO.NET class libraries of Mono to Visual Studio. The enhancements that Mainsoft and the Mono Project have made to make this possible will be incorporated into Grasshopper as well as the open source Mono code.

OSDL Lays Off Some of Its Staff As It Goes Global

Open Source Development Labs, the Beaverton, Oregon, organization that is the focal point where IT industry giants and open source developers work together to advance the creation and use of open source software, has had a layoff. This may come as a surprise to some people, who think anything related to Linux or open source generates money. OSDL did not divulge the extent of the layoffs, but the organization apparently has about 60 full-time and contractor positions, and as many as 10 of those positions might have been eliminated. OSDL has been trying to expand into Europe and Asia and the workforce reductions are aimed at allowing some positions for OSDL in these geographic regions. OSDL will continue to employ Linus Tovalds, Chris Wright, Andrew Morton, and other key developers, and is absolutely going full steam ahead on its desktop, data center, and carrier grade Linux initiatives. A statement from OSDL said only that it had reduced employee headcount in sales, marketing, business development, and programming.

Being funded entirely by industry giants, OSDL is more or less subject to the economic conditions and budgetary pressures they all feel. Many of the key companies expounding the use of open source who are members of OSDL are feeling an economic pinch. So getting extra funding to push Linux and open source in emerging markets in Asia and Eastern Europe was probably not in the cards. Hence, the prioritization and the cutbacks. Still, the move sounds a lot like offshoring to people watching from the United States, as jobs disappear in Beaverton and new jobs will be created overseas.

Gartner Says IT Staffs Will Contract by 15 Percent in Five Years

Just when you thought it could not get worse, maybe it can. According to Gartner, by 2010 the number of people in the IT profession is expected to contract by 15 percent. Moreover, the company is projecting that within five years, six out of ten people affiliated with IT organization will have business-facing roles (rather than being isolated in coping with hardware and software), which at midrange and large enterprises could mean that up to a third of employees vanish compared to staffing levels in 2000. There are a lot of forces behind this trend, but Gartner expects that business units will start managing their own IT infrastructure, which leaves IT people out of the loop. Utility computing and other services-style computing are also part of this expected trend.

Red Hat, IBM Work Together on Linux Training

Having just read those projections above from Gartner , you might think, "What are the current and future programmers of the world to do?"

Become experts in open source, of course, and compete with the millions of programmers around the world who will be doing exactly the same thing. Open source is a meritocracy, so connections, geography, and economic class only help so much. Education and skills are the key, and both Red Hat and IBM are going to play up their skills in getting your skills up to par--and take your money, too.

Last week, Red Hat and IBM announced that they would collaborate on curricula for their respective Red Hat Academy and Academic Initiative for Linux programs, an expansion of a partnership that the two companies have had for Linux training since 1999. In this case, Red Hat and IBM are developing Linux courses that will be provided either free or for a fee (there's that money thing again) to colleges and universities so they can beef up their open source curricula. Red Hat's current courses and tests are based solely on the Web, while IBM has a mix of traditional paper-based and Web-based courses.

Two Top Intel Execs Jump Ship

Paul Otellini took over as Intel CEO two weeks ago, and two top executives at the chip maker have already headed for the door. Abhi Talwalkar, who shared the general manager position of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, which was formed in January of this year, with Pat Gelsinger, the company's former chief technology officer, has left Intel to become president and chief executive officer of chip maker LSI Logic. Talwalkar has taken over those positions from LSI Logic's founder, Wilfred Corrigan. Corrigan will become non-executive chairman of LSI Logic, and Talwalkar has been named to the board of directors.

Intel lost another top executive, too: Sandra Morris, vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobility Group Operations, which was created during Intel's January reorganization from the former Communications Group. Morris was in charge of Intel's marketing operations in these areas, which include wireless and wired connectivity products. Prior to being named general manager, she was one of two CIOs for Intel itself, and spearheaded Intel's own use of Internet technologies. Before joining Intel in 1985, Morris was a researcher at RCA's Sarnoff Research Center, where she prototyped the use of PCs in multimedia. Her experience at Intel as well as at Sarnoff and the University of Delaware, where she was a faculty member who studied the use of PCs by families, will probably be useful in her new role as vice president and general manager of Eastman Kodak Company's Digital Imaging Services Group, which runs the EasyShare Gallery (formerly Ofoto) online photo sharing service, which Kodak bought in June 2001.

IBM Pushes Grids for Economic Development

For instance, last week, IBM announced a partnership with OneCleveland, based in the formerly industrial center of Cleveland, Ohio, to try to use grid technology to bolster collaboration between branches of the government in the greater Cleveland area, its citizens, and public facilities such as hospitals and schools. IBM and OneCleveland are going to build a grid, called the Economic Development Grid, using technology that has yet to be determined.

If you are not familiar with Cleveland, that is where Standard Oil of Ohio, part of the Rockefeller empire, was based and where shipping and railroad infrastructure was dense and manufacturing and distributors were located in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. According to OneCleveland's president, Scott Rourke, the non-profit Internet service provider has been getting donations of fiber optic bandwidth to build a network that serves northeast Ohio, which has a population of around 1 million. Public schools, universities and colleges, hospitals, government offices, and museums pay OneCleveland for access to this network, which is run by IBM. Having built the network, IBM and OneCleveland want to take the system up a notch and use grid technology to allow collaboration across that network. For instance, one of the early projects will be to allow patient records to be shared across all hospitals in the region, thus eliminating redundant and incomplete record keeping for patients that go to different hospitals in the area. Eventually, OneCleveland hopes to add in K-12 school records, which will allow preventive medicine to be performed on students in the area. This ultimately cuts healthcare costs and improves the quality of life in the Cleveland area.

According to Ken King, vice president of grid computing at IBM, IBM is cooking up other schemes to use grid computing to drive economic development. He says that there are natural centers of information around the world, which could become centers of research and collaboration if this information becomes gridded. Think of where the petroleum, medical, pharmaceutical industries are clustered. The establishment of such grids could even be used to foster a new business. For example, a city with good pizza delivery near a rural setting and low costs for living could decide to set up a grid to attract software developers out of Silicon Valley and to a new area. The software companies could not only collaborate over the grid, but actually use the grid to code, test, and distribute their wares. King says that IBM is starting out small with these economic development grids, and will stay in the United States with them for now. But he says that there is nothing unique about the U.S. that makes the idea work. IBM just wants to get some experience before it goes global.