OSI Board Blog

In a free market, over time, competition in the production of a commodity product will eliminate all profits. Bread-makers can sell their bread for enough money to cover the cost of the capital invested in the bakery, the cost of the flour, yeast, sugar, and water, the fuel needed for firing, and the salary of the baker. They can earn no more money than that. If they did, then another bakery would be established which would price its products lower, splitting that profit between the customer and the owner of the new bakery.

When Starbucks grew from regional powerhouse to cultural phenomenon, there was one small problem: the coffee they sold did not jive with their brand. So much so that in 2000 they printed millions of pamplets in the US explaining why it was that even though they really, really wanted to sell organic, shade-grown, fairly traded coffee, that due to lack of adequate supply, customers should be delighted that they were at least committed to finding a way to sell some fairly traded coffee somehow.

Last week I read the book small is possible. It's a great read, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who enjoyed books like The Tipping Point, The Wisdom of Crowds, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and other books that powerfully explain the world from a new perspective.

I was happy to learn on Monday that the Petaflop barrier has been broken. IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer achieved this feat with commodity hardware and open source software (including Red Hat's Enterprise Linux).

I just read the story of Helmer, a Fedora 8 linux cluster in an IKEA Helmer cabinet. The story begins

3D computer rendering are very CPU intensive and the best way so speed up slow render problems, are usually to distribute them on to more computers. Render farms are usually very large, expensive and run using ALLOT of energy. I wanted to build something that could be put in my home, not make too much noise and run using very little energy... and be dirt cheep, big problem? :) no computer stuff cost almost nothing these days, it just a matter of finding fun stuff to play with.

Apparently somebody somewhere sometime recently called Walter Bender, late of the OLPC, an open source fundamentalist. Walter expressed confusion about what that meant. I wish I could clear it up for him, but I don't know what it means either. We never talk about Open Source in terms of religion or philosophy, morality or ethics. There is simply no place for one to be fundamentalistic about Open Source. If Open Source works for you, great!

I first met Dr. Phatak at the Red Hat Summit in New Orleans in 2005. Dr. Phatak exemplifies what Amartya Sen lovingly calls The Argumentative Indian. Dr. Phatak is passionate, well educated, articulate, and most of all, sincerely committed to raising the standards in India to the highest levels. After spending time with him in Mumbai (aka Bombay), I truly envied those students fortunate enough to have him as a mentor and a teacher.

This report is a summary of Zak Greant's Open Source Initiative activities from April 13th to May 17th, 2008.

These Weeks