Open-sourcing my error on XenSource
The unfortunate thing about writing all your thoughts down in a blog is that it makes it very clear just how wrong I can be sometimes. My "code" is online, for everyone to see, analyze, and critique.
And critique you do. :-)
A case in point is my fulminations earlier Thursday on XenSource and its alleged abandonment of the Xen project. John Vigeant, a friend from my Novell days and XenSource's director of Business Development, kindly swatted me in an e-mail for errors in my post.
Witness my sackcloth and ashes (with John's permission--he must have some perverse pleasure in seeing me don this hairshirt :-):
John pointed out that at least one reason for XenSource's strong emphasis on Windows is an attempt to steer clear of the business models of the other vendors that deliver Xen to market. Namely, the Linux distributors. As John noted, although lots of XenSource customers and users mix Windows and Linux on their platform, the use case that is solely Linux-focused is more suited to (say) Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on RHEL or even RHEL on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES).
In short, since the distributions themselves are trying to develop businesses around Xen, by emphasising a platform model--Switzerland of operating systems, if you will--XenSource positions itself against VMware, serves the VMware customer base, and doesn't go head to head with the distributions. This makes a lot of sense to me. Also, since XenSource's view is that very few Windows users will want to install RHEL just to virtualize Windows, it makes sense to have a completely different use model: one that is modeled on VMWare ESX.
John also made the point that forking Xen is not the reason it is separating oversight for the Xen project from XenSource the company. Although there are major and valued contributors in the community, it's still the case that XenSource contributes a majority of the Xen code. XenSource remains committed to the advanced development and transparency of the Xen development process, John noted, and given the reasonableness of what he told me, I admit defeat. I believe him.
I dislike being wrong, but I dislike perpetuating my errors even more. I appreciate John's candid, constructive response, and apologize for misreading the company's intentions. I guess all this means that I believe that XenSource is sincere when it states that doesn't try to game the community, since there is no competitive advantage to be had from that, anyway.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Thank you for your second post and better understanding of our business/business model. I just wanted to be very clear regarding XenSource's intentions and the upcoming plans for Xen. The founders of XenSource, Ian and team, have spent the last six or seven years building the world's very best open source virtualization engine. Open source development is in our DNA. That mission and effort will not change, except that we will have more tenacity and resources to accomplish our mission.
Ian runs an incredibly open and inclusive open source project with Xen and we look forward to expanding upon the project with more vendors and community developers participating. We have had great open source development partnerships with Intel, AMD, IBM, HP, VALinux, Novell, Red Hat and many others as part of Xen - we look for these collaborations on core open source Xen to grow.
Thanks again for the opportunity to chat and for XenSource to clarify our position.
Regards,
John