LinuxWorld Ireland 2003

Ireland is a small country. North and
South, the population does not exceed six million people.
Paradoxically, when it comes to the IT industry, Ireland is a big
player. For years, Ireland's IT claim-to-fame has been the fact
that it is the second largest exporter of shrink-wrapped software
in the world (next to the US). There are a number of reasons for
this, but the main one is Ireland is the European operations center
for a large number of US-based companies. Microsoft, Symantec,
IBM/Lotus and many others have a large presence here. But, it's not
only software that's big; Intel has a chip fabrication facility an
hour west of Dublin. HP, Dell, Apple and Sun are large employers.
And, recently, Google announced that Ireland would host its
European headquarters.LinuxWorld came to Ireland on April 3rd, 2003. Sponsored by
IBM in association with ILUG (the Irish Linux Users Group), the
conference never was going to be very big. It was scheduled to take
place on the last day of ICT Expo, Ireland's Information and
Communications Technology Event. The small number of Linux-specific
stands at the show were stuck in the middle of a mix of everything
from data projector companies to accounting software suppliers.
Cyclades was there, as was IBM, whose stand hosted ILUG. Red Hat
boxes were everywhere, and ILUG handed out Knoppix CDs to as many
delegates as they could. An Irish company, OpenApp, was on hand to
discuss how it successfully is delivering IT solutions to clients
using primarily open-source technologies.The big draw (for me, anyway) was that John "maddog" Hall was
scheduled to give the keynote. In addition to kicking-off the
conference with the keynote, maddog spent as
much time as he could at the ILUG stand, fielding questions and
helping out.
Figure 1. Helping to spread the word: "maddog" at the ILUG stand
(hosted by IBM).
Seating was available in the conference hall for about 200
delegates, and it was two-thirds full for "maddog". This was to be
the largest audience for any of the six talks on the day.The keynote was entitled "Total Cost of Ownership...More than
You Think", and "maddog" highlighted the real cost of software. The
mantra was "no software is without cost", and TCO is not only about
hardware, software and services. "maddog" talked with some passion
about empowerment, the quality of solutions, the balance of
payments, IT quality, security, future cost and control. In doing
so, we were treated to a tour of the world, "maddog"-style. The
discussion roamed to China, Venezuela, India, Brazil and the US,
with each case study showing regular people leveraging the work of
others to get their own work done, all with open-source software. I
initially tried to keep up with "maddog" while taking some notes,
but about ten minutes into the talk, I decided to sit back and
enjoy it. It was great.It was not going to be easy to follow "maddog", and the task
fell to the unfortunate David Valentine of IBM. David is IBM's
Linux Leader for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and he's a
Sales and Marketing guy. David was all blue-suit, traditional,
conservative IBM. The audience was more jeans and t-shirt than
suit, and David pitched his talk at the wrong level. If we had all
been C-level people (CTO, CEO and CIO), David's talk would have
been great. Unfortunately--for all concerned--the IBM talk was,
well, boring. Even "maddog" had trouble keeping his eyes open.
Although David's message was that, as far as IBM is concerned,
Linux is ready for prime-time, the message got lost in a blur of
buzzwords, marketing speak and sales pitches for zSeries systems.
This, combined with David's decision to present to a Linux
conference using PowerPoint on Wintel, did nothing to endear IBM to
the audience. However, it must be said that it was great to see IBM
supporting Linux (and ILUG) in such a big way. It was just a shame
they presented in the way they did.It was a jaded (and much depleted) audience that Ciaran
McCabe of OpenApp found himself in front of for his talk, which
described Linux as the "next big thing" for Irish businesses.
Ciaran's message was, "Linux is ready! What's keeping you?" He
worked through a selection of enterprise-ready applications in an
effort to show that open-source alternatives are available for a
growing number of them. The likes of ComPiere, Claroline and Kora
were highlighted as case-studies.A short lunch break allowed me to scout quickly around the
rest of the exhibitors. Novell was there, as was Dell. Eircom (one
of Ireland's largest telecoms providers) and Computer Associates
each had a large stand. Remarkably--and I went around twice in
order to confirm this--there was no Microsoft stand.
Figure 2. The guys from Cyclades are committed to Linux, and they
have the neck-ties to prove it!
After lunch, it was Tony Redmond's, CTO of HP's Consulting
and Integration Division, turn to speak. His message said HP likes
Linux but thinks it is not ready for the Enterprise. In Tony's--and
by association, HP's--view, Linux suffers in five key areas:
manageability, support, change, perception and the desktop. The
"change" complaint was that Linux is changing too rapidly for big
enterprises. Poor old, conservative HP. Those Linux upstarts are
upsetting their apple cart and moving much too fast for them.
Again, another PowerPoint/Wintel combination did nothing but insult
the by now much smaller Linux audience. Of course, it may have been
me, but Tony Redmond looked an awful lot like a heavier-set Bill
Gates. And, of course, there was that unfortunate last name.The contrast between Tony and the next speaker, Michael Meeks
of Ximian, could not have been more stark. Up bounded Michael,
black backpack slung over his shoulder; out popped his laptop
running OpenOffice.org. He plugged in, switched to the data
projector and started talking. After about 10 seconds and 100
words, Michael asked if he was talking too fast. Not for an Irish
audience--talking fast is a national past-time. Michael walked,
almost ran, from side to side of the stage, talking about GNOME 2.2
and OpenOffice.org. He was infectious. He was wired. He was high;
not on drugs (he looked too healthy) and not on booze (he was too
coherent). Michael Meeks was high on freedom.
The freedom to do what you need to do with your software, when you
want to do it. It was pure entertainment, and the handful of
delegates that hung around loved every minute of it.Michael rebuked most of what Tony Redmond had to say about
Linux. He also encouraged more developers to get involved with
OpenOffice.org. When asked what he thought of the likes of AbiWord,
gnumeric and Kword, Michael delivered a short, sharp, shock: "They
may not know it yet, but they're dead." This resulted in a loud
groan about three wasted days of effort from an audience member to
my right. When Michael followed up with "Are you a member of the
gnumeric team?", the delegate replied that he was just a guy with
"too much free time on his hands". Michael flashed a smile, pointed
back to his slide on the large data projector screen and said,
"OpenOffice.org". They need more help from developers, and they
need help yesterday. Bribing the audience with
Ximian t-shirts and Beanie Monkeys was a master-stoke, although I
suspect the questions would have come up anyway.The final speaker was James Cleere, Sun's StarOffice
Engineering Manager. Based in Dublin (where a lot of the StarOffice
engineering is occurring), James talked about the
StarOffice/OpenOffice.org offerings. In his view, the lack of a
compatible, interoperable office suite is the main reason for
Linux's lack of penetration on the desktop. He believes, as does
Sun (and quite a few others, I suspect), that the latest
StarOffice/OpenOffice.org offering has the potential to change all
that. James presentation generated the most questions, despite
being delivered to the smallest audience of the day. As an
engineering manager, he came across as someone who would rather not
be the center of attention, and God love him, he nearly choked to
death half way through his talk. Despite this, his message was
clear: StarOffice/OpenOffice.org is ready, and Sun, together with
their partners (such as Ximian), is committed to the technology and
its ongoing development.In the end, the conference showed how far Linux has come. It
is big business now. Granted, IBM sees Linux as a mechanism for
selling zSeries, and HP sees it as a mechanism for selling
services. Both kept harping on about cost savings, the bottom line,
profit and the like. They obviously hadn't been listening to
"maddog", as Linux is about so much more. It's about empowerment,
quality, security and control. Linux is all about community.AcknowledgmentA big thank-you to "maddog" for kindly providing me with a
selection of pictures from the show to include with this report.
Upon browsing the pictures, I came across this one, which may hint
at his real reason for coming to Ireland.
Figure 3. If you've ever needed a reason to visit Ireland, then
here it is.
Paul Barry
lectures at The Institute of
Technology, Carlow in Ireland. His first book,
Programming
the Network with Perl, was published by Wiley in
February 2002. His next book, Bioinformatics,
Biocomputing and Perl, a collaboration with Michael
Moorhouse, is scheduled to be published by Wiley toward the end of
2003.

email: paul.barry@itcarlow.ie