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COM automation in Silverlight 4 is not an “edge case”

By tim, on November 23rd, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

I wrote a piece for The Register about the arrival of Windows-specific features in Silverlight, which attracted some comments both on the Reg and also on Slashdot. Plenty of people said it was just what they expected from Microsoft, some of them misunderstanding the point that this only applies to out-of-browser applications that are trusted:

…continue reading COM automation in Silverlight 4 is not an “edge case”

UK lagging rest of Europe in open source adoption

By tim, on September 30th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

Sun conducted a survey of small and medium-sized businesses (up to 500 employees) to discover their usage and intentions towards open source software and MySQL in particular. I was interested to see the report, particularly after attending an open source round table last week about open source software in government.

The researchers interviewed around 100

…continue reading UK lagging rest of Europe in open source adoption

Why the EU should not worry about Oracle and MySQL

By tim, on September 4th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

The European Commission is examining Oracle’s acquisition of Sun and has concerns about the implications for MySQL:

Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said: “The Commission has to examine very carefully the effects on competition in Europe when the world’s leading proprietary database company proposes to take over the world’s leading open source database company. In particular,

…continue reading Why the EU should not worry about Oracle and MySQL

The end of Sun’s bold open source experiment

By tim, on April 21st, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

This is a sad day for Sun. It sought to re-invent its business through open source; and the experiment has failed, culminating not in a re-invigorated company, but instead acquisition by an old-school proprietary software company, Oracle.

It is possible to build a successful business around open source software. Zend is doing it with PHP;

…continue reading The end of Sun’s bold open source experiment

RIA (Rich Internet Applications): one day, all applications will be like this

By tim, on April 16th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

I loved this piece by Robin Bloor on The PC, The Cloud, RIA and the future. My favourite line:

Nowadays very few Mac/PC users have any idea where any program is executing.

And why should they? Users want stuff to just work, after all. Bloor says more clearly than I have managed why RIA is

…continue reading RIA (Rich Internet Applications): one day, all applications will be like this

Google’s cut-down Java: wanton and irresponsible, or just necessary?

By tim, on April 15th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

Sun’s Simon Phipps stirred things up last weekend when he called Google’s actions wanton and irresponsible. Its crime: delivering a cut-down Java library for use on its App Engine platform, “flaunting the rules” which forbid creating sub-sets of the core classes.

It does sound as if Google is not talking to Sun as much as

…continue reading Google’s cut-down Java: wanton and irresponsible, or just necessary?

Open Cloud Manifesto – but from a closed group?

By tim, on March 30th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

I’ve read the Open Cloud Manifesto with interest. It’s hard to find much to disagree with; I especially like this point on page 5:

Cloud providers must not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms and limit their choice of providers.

Companies like IBM won’t do that? I’m sceptical. Still, it

…continue reading Open Cloud Manifesto – but from a closed group?

Tim Bray’s contrarian views on Rich Internet Applications

By tim, on March 24th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

There’s a though-provoking interview with Sun’s Tim Bray over on the InfoQ site. One of his points is that Rich Internet Applications aren’t worth the hype. He says that web applications are generally better than desktop applications, because they enforce simplicity and support a back button, and that users prefer them. He adds:

Over the

…continue reading Tim Bray’s contrarian views on Rich Internet Applications

Have you seen a real JavaFX app yet? Sun’s misleading 100 million claim

By tim, on February 16th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

I haven’t – only samples and demos. Which makes Jonathan Schwartz’s claim of 100,000,000 downloads, presented as “JavaFX Hits 100,000,000 Milestone!”, suspect. Still, I reckon there is an easy explanation. JavaFX is now included with the JRE, the standard Java runtime download. So what Schwartz means – please correct me if I am wrong –

…continue reading Have you seen a real JavaFX app yet? Sun’s misleading 100 million claim

JavaFX warns against itself on Macs

By tim, on December 8th, 2008 Follow tim on Twitter

If you navigate to JavaFX.com on a Mac, you get this warning – at least, I do, and so does at least one other:

In case you can’t read it, it says:

This applet was signed by “JavaFX 1.0 Runtime,” but Java cannot verify the authenticity of the signature’s certificate. Do you trust

…continue reading JavaFX warns against itself on Macs

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