People often ask me, “Tarus, even though you are over 40, how do you keep looking so darn good?” The answer is a steady diet of fine fermented beverages, usually involving hops, barley, malt and pure water. In fact, about once a year I take a trip to England (which in the Saxon tongue means “Land where everything costs double”) simply for health reasons, and since beer is the only thing affordable over there I pretty much live on a liquid diet (again, it’s for health reasons).

Recently, the Carolina Brewery opened its second location in my small town. A harbinger of development to come, it is at least locally owned. I was looking for an excuse to visit when I found out that John Willis was going to be in nearby Durham, NC.

Me and John hoisting pints of Copperline Amber Ale

I first met John at this year’s OSCON, and again at LinuxWorld. John reminds me a lot of Doug Stevenson. Doug has forgotten more about network management then I will ever know, and back in the OVForum days he was pretty much the “Elvis” of the OpenView world. John seems to be his opposite number on the Tivoli side of things.

Having worked in the network management world for a number of years on the proprietary side of things, John is getting real excited about the benefits of open source solutions. It was fun chatting with someone who obviously knows his stuff and sees the potential of what we are doing. Whether they admit it or not, the so called Big Four have stagnant product lines that are slow to react to changes in the market, and since they have been reliant on professional services for so long it isn’t too much of a stretch for those consultants now using their solutions to find it faster and easier to use open source.

John wants to get the Enterprise Systems Management (ESM) world together to address some of these issues, and he really wants me to come to BarCampESM. I am a big fan of the BarCamp format (I missed this year’s BarCampRDU ’cause I was on the road), but I am not certain that it will provide the format he is looking for. But it is in Austin (I’ll be in San Antonio next week) which I like, and I think I’ll have to show up to keep just to keep everyone honest (grin).

whurley, one of the organizers, now works for BMC (one of the Big Four) and I have my own little history with PATROL and the Boole and Babbage stuff, so while I like him I still have to remain skeptical of the motivations of BMC. There has been a lot of talk lately of successful open source projects being acquired by commercial companies (forgive me for not being able to find a relevant link, it seems they have slipped out of my RSS reader). One has to wonder if it is because these commercial companies have had a change of heart or if they just want to get a handle on, and perhaps stifle, projects that threaten their bottom line. But I like whurley, as does Ethan Galstad, and so I’ll probably go with my gut and at least listen to what he has to say. Plus it looks like Coté will be there, and I want to meet him in person.

Oh, speaking of Ethan Galstad, check out this Splunk ad that came across the screen when I was working on Sourceforge. Studly. Too bad he’s too skinny. Perhaps he can join me on a trip to England.

For health reasons, of course.