I posted four upcoming interviews on the Novell Open Audio home page. You can check them out by looking for “Upcoming Interviews.”
Alternately, you can use this link to see the “Upcoming Interviews” on their own page.
Or, if you’re one of the hardcore NOA listeners, try using the “Upcoming Interviews” feed in your preferred RSS reader (like Bloglines.)
Vacation much needed. Hectic lately. I’m off to warmer climes for R&R. Back on Nov. 27.
While I am gone, perhaps you would enjoy Red Meat.
The new Novell Open Audio is now online for inspection. It features Kurt Garloff and Hannes Reinecke explaining new scaling features in the Linux kernel.
Also, we are finally cutting over to the new Novell Open Audio site today, so please try out the comment feature.
Next week we will post the Open Enterprise Server 2 edition, featuring over 45 minutes of Jason Williams explaining all the exciting new stuff. It’s huuuuuge.
I’m faced with something of a conundrum. When is it okay for a corporate podcast to leave profanity in an interview?
While in Nuremberg, one of the interviews that Erin and I did was with Kurt Garloff and Hannes Reinecke who explain new scaling features in the Linux kernel, including hot-swappable CPU’s and memory. (That’s right…it is possible to hot swap CPU’s…remember back when that was a far out new thing for disk arrays?) It’s about time that we finally get this one online.
But there’s this problem…at one point Hannes casually uses a common interjection of surprise when explaining a hypothetical scenario. The expression contains a term that some would say is inappropriate in a professional setting.
Then, a few minutes later, Kurt uses the exact same expression in exactly the same way. Neither of them deliberately used the phrase to be offensive, abusive or course. It flows perfectly naturally in coversation.
That’s my conundrum. Is “Oh, shit,” acceptable to leave in a production that represents a global software company? For that matter, what’s more offensive: leaving in a not-uncommonly-heard curse word that is used in this case as a regular way of speaking, or assuming that one’s listeners should not hear a certain word that was hardly even used as a curse word in the first place? Then there’s the whole matter of whether we should bleep it out in order to keep our iTunes listing from saying “explicit,” which really doesn’t even apply to this particular show, let alone our tens of other episodes. Dare we risk it?
When I first proposed Novell Open Audio [originally as "Radio Free Novell"] to Novell’s senior management, my proposal included a statement to the effect that the program’s credibility rested on our ability to allow people to speak as much like they normally do as possible. Faced with my first use of what some may consider profanity, I now have to decide: do we bleep the “oh, shits” or not?
Advice appreciated, and tune in to Novell Open Audio tomorrow to find out what we finally decided.
My apologies to our listeners for the delay in posting any interviews about the Novell-Microsoft agreement. I know that there are a lot of questions and I have seen plenty of concern and speculation among the community at large. (There is an annual sales kickoff event that has everyone at Novell tied up. That’s not an excuse, it’s just the terrain I have to navigate to get information.)
The outcry from the free software community about the Novell-Microsoft agreement has been substantial, and a lot of people have been turning to me and asking for answers. I hear you, and I am at last starting to assmble some material.
I finally secured an interview with Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian and Novell General Counsel Joe LaSala this afternoon. Having received many questions from the community, I chose two major items to take up with Ron: Why deal with Microsoft, and, Is Novell abiding by the GPL? More specifically, the questions are essentially these:
I know that there is a lot more ground that needs to be covered than these four questions, but because they will get into technical detail, I will commit to going deeper and further into the matter with people who are involved in the technical aspects.
I’m staying up late tonight to review the audio, and I’ll be mastering this edition myself. As soon as I get it done, I have to put it through approvals (which happens when questions involve legal matters). I hope to have it online by mid-day Thursday (MST), depending on how quickly some of the stakeholders can get back to me. Thanks for bearing with me on this.
Novell has posted a new FAQ for the free software community. (I provided some help on identifying questions and drafting answers on this.)
There is also an accompanying press announcement: Novell Outlines Details of Agreement with Microsoft.
More on the way shortly…
A small flood of requests to get an interview on the Microsoft/Novell announcement has begun to fill my inbox. I will be working today to put together a special edition for Novell Open Audio.
I am not sure who I will have as a guest yet, but if there was ever a time for listeners to provide their questions, it is now.
Here are some ways that you can get your questions in:
I will try to use as many questions from the community as I can.
[Update, Friday evening: I was unable to get time with any of the key people that would be an authorative voice. I think I have someone lined up for Monday and I 'll try to get the interview out the same day if at all possible.]
This afternoon was the first I learned about what I see as a massive announcement: Microsoft agrees to collaborate with Novell to make their software interoperate with Linux.
<Here’s where we insert that classic record-needle-yanked-across-the-LP-grooves sound.>
Beg your pardon? Novell and Microsoft sharing the love? Despite the eerie feeling that something has gone horribly wrong with the space-time continuum, this makes a lot of sense if you know Ron Hovsepian at all. The first time I ever heard Ron Hovsepian speak, he was on stage before the entire North American sales force. He was brand new to Novell. I expected the usual, “I did this and I did that” kind of talk as his introduction. Instead, Ron told a story about the first customer he ever worked with in his life, and that he could still call on that customer today. Then he cited the phone number from memory. Ron’s point? It’s not about him, or anyone else in that room. It’s about serving our customers. (I liked him immediately.)
Since his time at Novell, Ron has been working to change Novell’s systems and methods to be about the customers. Throughout his steady rise to become Novell’s chief executive, that’s been his steady campaign. So it was no surprise to me when, during the press conference web cast, Ron responded to a question about how this big announcement came about by saying that he started it back in April. He called a former customer of his, now working in a senior role at Microsoft, and asked him to help him get the two companies to set aside all the old rivalries (20 years!) and do what is right for our mutual customers.
Yes, it’s a huge day for Novell, for SUSE Linux, and for open source software. And, for Microsoft. But moreso for the businesses who simply want Linux/OSS and Windows to work well together.
Expect more from me on what this is all about from the technology and community side–there is a lot more to discuss. But for now, I use this post to fulfill a promise made so long ago that it’s almost forgotten: the much-delayed post about Ron Hovsepian becoming Novell’s new CEO.
If we have not yet said it enough yet, we really appreciate our Novell Open Audio listeners. So, when we conducted a recent listener survey, we wanted to reward all of the respondents with something cool. And since many of our listeners have expressed some desire, no, call it more of a craving, a yen–dare I say, even a lust–for a personal subscription for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, we decided to give each and every respondent their very own SLED10 activation code.
We didn’t want non-listeners to pound us with responses that would essentially corrupt the survey results…we wanted to do this for our most avid listeners…so if you took the time to tell us what’s what on the survey–some 233 of you–then we now thank you by sending each of you an email containing a subscription activation for SLED10. (If you used a secondary or tertiary email address on the survey, be sure to check it over the next 24 hours or so.)
Meanwhile, in other news that is sure to be mostly eclipsed by other current events, the latest Novell Open Audio delivers on a topic that many have asked us to cover: Training options for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10. Enjoy!
