As of today I no longer need to have Lotus Notes installed on my Macbook Pro! Woo hoo!
I was very excited at the prospect of uninstalling it (yes, uninstalling bad software is all it takes to get me excited). Lotus Notes is far and away the largest installation on my laptop. It weighs in at an incredible 792 MB! The next largest application I have installed is iPhoto at 430 MB and then follows Gimp at 263 MB. There would be very few people that would argue that Lotus Notes provides more functionality per megabyte than Gimp does. In my experience IBM is especially good at producing bloatware, but even this is beyond any rational (pun intended) explanation.
What makes it worse is that Lotus Notes is a just plain awful tool to use. So its a one-two punch, first it takes up ridiculously unjustified amounts of disk space, then it rubs salt in that wound by just being horrible to use. Nothing has ever made me long for Microsoft Outlook like Lotus Notes does, and that is saying something since I am a self-confessed Apple fan-boy.
I am pretty sure my laptop sighed in relief when I deleted Lotus Notes, like a giant burden had been lifted from its shoulders.
The only upside to Lotus Notes, is that it does have an Apple version at all, although this is more due to the fact that the recent versions are based on Eclipse (ie. Java), not so much that IBM really loves Apple users in any way.
Farewell Lotus Notes, it was depressing and frustrating to know you, and I hope we never cross paths again.
The likelihood that we will be blessed with a JavaOne conference in 2010 just got a whole lot better.
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The following image is available on the Oracle website currently (original URL):
For me personally the 2 biggest questions about the whole deal have always been What happens to MySQL? and What happens to Java?
MySQL has always been open source and Java has been creeping slowly towards open source over the last few years.
Can Oracle really kill either of these technologies if they chose too? Probably not outright, but they could certainly damage their reputation and community support. People can fork code bases and start again, but it would take time (many years) to build back up to the flagships they are today.
The above image from Oracle is interesting in that it does call out MySQL but does not mention Java at all.
Perhaps Oracle sees more value in MySQL than Java and is attempting to protect it better. Or perhaps Oracle believes Java needs less protection than MySQL, after all, much of the debate over the Oracle/Sun deal has surrounded MySQL and not Java.
Wednesday is the day when some of these questions will hopefully begin to answered.
Why do you think Oracle called out MySQL and not Java?
In the Pig and Chicken analogy for Scrum participants (Jeff Sutherland explains Pigs & Chickens), the Pig is the one who is required to make the biggest commitment and put his proverbial skin in the game. For the Pig, it is an all or nothing proposition. They either meet their commitment or they do not, there is no gray area. However, many teams fail to get this level of commitment from their Pigs, or don’t even ask for it in the first place. This is the genesis of the Outlier Pig.
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Well, it seems almost official now, Oracle will get it hands on Sun and the Java and MySQL communities (among others) will need to hold their breath and wait to see what kind of chaos this might cause for our industries.
James Gosling (the father of Java) has long been publishing Java related images on his internal Sun blog. He has now posted his very last one.
The best comment I saw so far was “So long and thanks for all the Glassfish”.
You can read the original post here.
I’ve heard it said that the difference between useful software and worthless crap is that people build useful software for themselves, and build worthless crap for other people to use.
“Uncle” Bob Martin
Java Dates
It’s official: the European Commission has granted regulatory approval for Oracle to acquire Sun Microsystems for approximately $7.4 billion, without further conditions. In a statement released moments ago, Oracle says it expects unconditional approval from China and Russia as well and intends to close the transaction shortly.
Robin Wauters @ TechCrunch
EU Approves $7.4 Billion Deal Between Oracle And Sun
The prioritization of Stories is a core practice in the Scrum agile development process. In fact it is probably the single most important responsibility of the Product Owner – making sure the Product Backlog is prioritized properly to maximize business value (a.k.a ROI). However, there is a common anti-pattern that I see regularly in which the Product Owner and the Delivery Team act complicitly to establish a priority order for Stories that are being committed too within a single Sprint. The need to do this comes from a negative place and it has dramatic consequences for the Delivery Team.
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Programmers are responsible for software quality – quality in their own work, quality in the products that incorporate their work, and quality at the interfaces between components. Quality has never been and will never be tested in. The responsibility is both moral and professional.
Boris Beizer
(from Software Testing Techniques, Chapter 13)
