People

A Week in Silicon Valley

Posted on by tarus

Sorry I’ve been so quiet lately. I spent last week in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale, to be exact) and it kept me so busy that I wasn’t able to find the time to write anything.

I’ve been to this area of California dozens of times, but I can barely suppress my delight at seeing the headquarters of all those tech companies. Just driving around for lunch is a veritable Who’s Who of the industry. Seriously, as we went to In-N-Out one day we drove past a building that had a sign out front for a company I’ve been talking to for a couple of months about using OpenNMS, but we had never met in person. I dropped them an e-mail and we went out for dinner on Thursday. Too cool.

The company I was working for was right across the street from Palm.

Speaking of Palm, I’m still trying to decide on a new phone. The Palm Pre is out to relatively positive reviews. There is always the iPhone, but until AT&T gets their femtocell solution figured out it is not an option for me. A friend of mine at Google hooked me up with a G1 Android-powered phone, but one of my requirements has to be an easy way to sync my calendar and contacts from my Mac.

From what I can tell, the only way to easily sync your contacts with a G1 is to sync them through Google. I’m enough of a privacy nut that I really don’t want to have my address book on a server I don’t control, so that option is out. For the Pre there appears to be a Missing Sync that’ll work, so that is an option. Bah, I think I just hold off for a few months and see what else comes up.

One thing I really liked about being back in California was the plethora of places to eat. My throat has been bothering me lately, so it was nice to be able to get a big hot bowl of Pho.

On the way to the restaurant I saw a very typically California sign on a post:

I hope they find it.

Tuesday night I got to meet up with a friend of mine from high school named Geoff Davis.

He’s doing some interesting things at Google, and plus we got to try this great Thai place in Mountain View.

We talked past the last shuttle back to San Francisco, so I ended up driving him back to his place in the Haight. It was nice coming over that last ridge on the 101 and seeing the city skyline. I think there will always be a special place in my heart for San Francisco.

On Friday I made plans to meet up with John Mark Walker in San Mateo. Neither of us realized it at the time, but they were having a “wine walk” street faire so it took awhile to find a place to park. As I was waiting for him I wandered around a bit, and came across this Porsche 550. I’m not sure it was authentic, since they are extremely rare and worth north of US$1 million, but it was in any case a nice looking car.

We ate at this Indian place and got caught up on gossip in our little world of open source. He will be moderating a panel with me, Luke Kanies and Michael Coté at the LinuxWorld reboot called OpenSourceWorld in August.

I’m not sure what he was planning with the knife.

I made it home with little trouble on Saturday, ending my third trip out west in six weeks. In addition to the trip in August for the conference, I have only one more short trip to New York City scheduled, so perhaps I’ll get to sleep in my own bed for a change.

Order of the Blue Polo Profile: Ho Trong Dat

Posted on by tarus

When we started the Order of the Blue Polo, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s been interesting, since most of the OBP members so far are people I either didn’t know or haven’t heard from in a long time, and some people I figured would be the first to jump on it haven’t (probably due to the fact we require a company name).

Back in 2002, OpenNMS was pretty much just me in my attic (well, the room over the garage). The economy was still depressed post-9/11 and sometimes I wondered if it was all worth it (luckily I don’t give up too easily).

However, something happened in September of that year that gave me my first glance into how powerful an open source community could become, and it strengthened my resolve to make OpenNMS the de facto management platform used by everyone.

It was a letter from Vietnam.

Hi MAN.
I am calling you MAN because I consider you as a great man in NMS field. You and your band have made an wonderful product as I’ve ever seen and used. I am using OpenNMS 1.0 ( from 0.8.x) at my sites for approximately a year and it keep running well. In future, we will use NMS to monitor almost our VNPT’s network ( VNPT – Vietnam Post and Telecomunication ).

Here our information:
CDIT – Center for Development of Information Technology-VNPT
http://cdit.com.vn/
VietNam

I hope some day I will have a chance to contriubte my little knowledge for OpenNMS’s development.
Best regard.

It was from a man named Ho Trong Dat and it seriously made my day, if not my month. Here I was, working by myself in a little town in rural North Carolina, getting a great letter from a guy in freakin’ Vietnam (and while some readers will probably chuckle at the English, Dat’s English is a hell of a lot better than my Vietnamese).

Note: In most Asian cultures the family name comes before the given name, and I make sure I am aware of this when I travel. However, especially in Japan, some business cards will compensate by reversing them on the “English” side of the card. Note that I said “some” and since I don’t read Japanese I often can’t figure out if it has been done or not. It’s an example where accommodations made for Westerners cause more problems than they solve. So let me apologize in advance if I ever get your names backward.

Another Note: Vietnam has become a popular tourist destination. Think about it – in 40 years the in place to be might be Bagdad.

I was both surprised and extremely happy to see that Dat was to become one of the founding members of the OBP.

Dear OpenNMS users

My name is Dat and I am working for CDIT, a subsidiary company belong to PTIT (Post & Telecommunication Institute of Technology). We are R&D centre. We know OpenNMS when we researched about open source software.

We have been using OpenNMS in CDIT since 2002. From that time, OpenNMS did not release the first version, still 0.9, I remember. We had to install and reinstall OpenNMS a lot of time to get familiar with it. After six month, we finally and totally control OpenNMS in administrating our network. We deployed an WAN for our mother company (VNPT) with over 50 network nodes (router, firewall), a lot of servers (30). Using OpenNMS, we can monitor the status of links between subsidiaries, the performance of the link, of the server. We also monitor a lot of services such as : email, web of collaboration – our internal website, file servers, We think OpenNMS is a very convenient, flexible and highly configurable network management software. We feel happy when using OpenNMS.

Thanks you guys who have been developing such a nice and beautiful software.

So here is a guy from halfway around the world who used OpenNMS back when it first came out, and nearly seven years later he’s still using it (plus Dat’s English is much improved).

It’s letters like these that make me feel happy making OpenNMS.

Announcing Desloge 2.1

Posted on by tarus

Rebekah Desloge, wife of one of our team members, Donald, gave birth to a son early this morning.

Jack Armstrong Desloge came into this world at 1:49am weighing in at 9lbs 8oz and almost 23 inches long. This is the second child for both of them.

Congratulations to the whole Desloge clan.

The Order of the Blue Polo

Posted on by tarus

As many of you know, the OpenNMS project is run by a super-secret cabal of ex-Illuminati called the Order of the Green Polo. The membership requirements are pretty stringent (and the initiation process is obscenely biological) and thus only the clinically dedicated tend to be involved.

However, we know that there are others out there that simply enjoy using OpenNMS to solve their management needs (or at least enjoy downloading it – our servers post several days with greater than 300 GB of traffic every time we do a release) and now we want to hear your story.

Becoming a member of The Order of the Blue Polo is simple: write to us a testimonial about why you like OpenNMS and how you use it. It would also be cool if you tell us the size of your network (number of devices, interfaces, and services). In exchange we’ll send you a super limited edition, very nice Royal Blue polo shirt embroidered with the OpenNMS logo. This is open to anyone on any size network in any country, subject to a few small requirements:

1) We get to print your testimonial on our website.

2) We get to print your name on our website.

3) We get to print the name of your company on our website.

In our experience that last requirement is a bit of a sticky one. We have some commercial support clients in the financial sector that make us sign NDAs where we can’t even acknowledge they exist (seriously). To make things easier, we won’t use your company’s logo, and the header of the Order of the Blue Polo page will include the text:

These testimonials reflect the opinions of the people writing them and not their employer. This should not be considered an official endorsement or recommendation by any of the companies listed. Think of these as director’s commentaries you find on DVDs with the same disclaimer that the movie studios use (and we all fast-forward through) at the beginning of the film.

We need that information for two reasons: first, these shirts are really nice and they are not cheap, and second we are doing this to raise a greater awareness of how OpenNMS is being used, so we want to show that it is being used by real companies and not just some guy in his basement (although to all you guys in your basements using OpenNMS – we still love you, just not enough to send you a shirt).

To join, send your testimonial to bluepolo@opennms.com along with your shirt size and a mailing address. We’ll have your shirt to you within three to four weeks. If you send us a picture of you wearing your shirt, we’ll be more than happy to add it to the website.

Finally, we reserve the right to limit the number of members in the OBP (we don’t have unlimited money to spend on this joint). It will be first come, first served.

-T

Size     Neck     Chest
Small     14 (36)     34 (86) – 36 (91)
Medium     15 (38)     38 (97) – 40 (102)
Large     16 (41)     42 (107) – 44 (112)
XLarge     17 (43)     46 (117) – 48 (122)
XXL     18 (46)     50 (127) – 52 (132)
3XL     19 (48)     54 (137) – 56 (142)

size in inches (centimeters)

Mark Estill (1954-2008)

Posted on by tarus

My friend Mark Estill died today.

I won’t pretend to have known Mark well. He had never been to my house, nor I to his. I knew him mostly through his brother Lyle and the fact that his company is in the same building with mine.

But Mark was one of those rare individuals who you could consider a friend pretty much upon meeting him. He was incredibly down to earth. Growing up in a family with three brothers, each of whom was really successful in their own way, Mark could hold his own.

He would sometimes come to the office in the late afternoon, with me neck deep in work, and say “let’s go get a beer.” His timing was always perfect, as I was usually stressing about work to the point where I wasn’t very productive. So I’d turn off the laptop and we’d head out to the General Store.

We’d just sit and talk about pretty much anything that came to mind. One beer would turn into two. I’d call my wife to tell her I’d be late for supper. Sometimes I’d call my wife to have her come pick me up – our quick beer having turned into a chat several hours (and beers) long.

Out of the past four weeks I’ve been gone for three. When I left, Mark seemed fine (I learned that he wasn’t, but he didn’t let on). During that time he was diagnosed with lung cancer (even though he is a non-smoker) and now he’s gone.

It just goes to show you how quickly things can change, and that you can’t take anything for granted.

Woody Allen once said he wanted to achieve immortality, not through his work, but through “not dying”. Unfortunately, we don’t have that option, so what we do and how we behave may be the only things left when we’re gone.

It’s one of the reasons we work on OpenNMS the way we do. We’ve had opportunities to take different directions with the business, but our goal is to build something lasting, to change the world, and not to focus on short term financial gains for a few people. Doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do is something Mark demonstrated every day.

When someone like Mark makes an impact on your life they never really go away. They help make you a better person, and by being a better person you affect those around you, and in turn they improve the people they know.

It’s the heart of “community”, and by that measure Mark will be around for a long, long time.

Holiday Cards

Posted on by tarus

The OpenNMS office is full of festive cheer, made even merrier by some recent cards that have arrived.

One was from Tobi Oetiker, although it is in Swiss German so I’ll assume it’s positive (grin).

I got to meet Tobi many moons ago, and his RRDtool project drives a lot of open source tools as well as a number of closed source ones.

We also got a cute card from Mike Huot. He lives in the frozen mid-west and sent us “A Minnesota Christmas”.

Both have been enshrined on the amazing, wonderful Wall of Cards.

London: Day 4 – Me Tarus, You Jane

Posted on by tarus

Today was the first day of the Linux Live show. The exhibition hours are pretty long, from 10am to 6pm Thursday and Friday, and 10am to 5pm on Saturday. Working a booth can be a bit tiring, so since this schedule is about an hour longer each day than I’m used to I expected to be exhausted by the end of the day.


Jeff, Me, Jonathan and Dr. Craig

Luckily the crowds were much larger than I thought they would be and we were kept very busy. The exhibition opened at 10am and when I first checked the time it was already 2pm.

I also got to meet Jane Curry. She’s an old-school network management consultant who recently reviewed a number of network management products including OpenNMS.


Me and Jane

Although OpenNMS did not come out on top on her list, we were a close second and as we are addressing most of her issues in the new releases I expect that if she re-evaluates it again in a year the outcome will be different.

Speaking of new releases, OpenNMS 1.5.99 is out. The guys back home have been working like mad to meet our 1.6.0 release deadline of next week, and I have a good feeling about this release candidate being the one that makes the grade. Please test it out and give us feedback.

London: Day One

Posted on by tarus

The GPS tells me I am 3904 miles away from home. The flight was uneventful, although I wasn’t able to sleep on the plane.

I arrived to a pretty grey day in London, and due to traffic it took awhile to get to the hotel. Due to a misconfiguration I thought it was an hour later than it turned out to be, so I raced toward central London for a meeting with Rod Montgomery, thinking I was late. Turned out I was pretty much on time, which was wonderful since I really enjoyed our conversation.


Rod and Me

Rod is the guy responsible for services at Digium. I’ve alway been a fan of that company (just search for Digium or Asterisk on this blog) and it was really nice to meet Rod in person, especially with two hours available to chat versus the hour I thought we had (those who have met me would say that it takes two hours for me to tell you my name).

Digium and OpenNMS share a viewpoint on the issue that open source software should be 100% free and open, and while some would say you can’t make money on a “pure play” open source strategy, it doesn’t seem to have hurt Digium any. There is also a lot of synergy between the two products, and we’re working to make them more tightly integrated.


Jonathan’s Network Operations Center

Speaking of integration, today we can announce that OpenNMS now supports the OTRS open source trouble ticketing system. After Rod and I parted ways I met up with Jonathan Sartin for lunch. Jonathan is an OGP member and he has spent a good part of the last year working on getting the OpenNMS Trouble Ticketing API to talk with OTRS. While the amount of code is not huge, the effort that went in to understanding the SOAP interface that OTRS uses was pretty large. His work resulted in a module that was contributed back to the OTRS project which was released today. The wiki has all of the necessary details.


Me and Jonathan

I then took the tube back to the hotel where I crashed for a couple of hours.


Craig and Me

Dr. Gallen (OGP) showed up about 8 and we went off to a really nice Indian place called Eriki. He’s up in London so we can go and visit a couple of potential clients tomorrow. Should be fun.

Beautiful Music at OpenNMS

Posted on by tarus

I’ve always been amazed at the talented people who work on OpenNMS. Not only can they work on software, most have other talents as well. One of those is Ben Reed, who in addition to being more adept with computers than anyone else I know is also a musician. I’ve been listening to his work for over seven years now.

Recently he managed to finally get an album released named, quite aptly, Finally. This week he received two rather impressive pieces of news concerning his work.

The first is that one of his songs, Pointillize, will be the featured track of the week on GarageBand. I guess at the next party we’ll have to see if he can actually play it.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, Music Reviews gave his album four (out of five) “notes” with one song getting a perfect five:

This brings us to what I consider the strongest song on the album, “Perfect Paranoia”; Raccoon Fink now holds the record for being the first independent artist to obtain a rating of 5 on a track.

So if you like music you should check out his stuff. I only hope I can keep him working on OpenNMS when he becomes a big star. (grin)

Dev-Jam, News, OUCH and echo

Posted on by tarus

Well, things have been a bit crazy around here getting ready for Dev-Jam.

This will be our fourth developer’s conference and it is one of my favorite times of the year. This year we are moving to Georgia Tech (a change from UMN) and I can’t say I’m looking forward to being in Atlanta in high summer, but the rooms we’re using have air conditioning and bandwidth so what more could we want.

We also have people from five countries in attendance. In addition to the USA, we have two guys from the UK, one from Venezuela, one from New Zealand and Alex – who is German, yet works in Switzerland and lives in France – I’ll let you choose which country we should count for him.

Almost all of the OGP was able to make it, so it should be a productive week. Stay tuned for updates from the conference starting this weekend.

Last Thursday I was invited to Michael Coté and John Willis’s weekly podcast. John was a bit late coming to the party, so Michael invited a friend of his, Matt Ray of Zenoss, to join us. I got to talk about OpenNMS (imagine that) as well as my current distaste for the overexposure of the term “cloud computing“.

When John joined the call he tossed OpenNMS a bone by bringing up software licensing. One place where OpenNMS differs greatly from other “commercial open source” companies is that while support and services are available, the software is 100% free and open. Matt’s company publishes some of its code under the GPL (which Matt quickly pointed out) but all of their “non-community” code has a proprietary license.

Matt seems like a nice guy, so I didn’t rise to the bait, plus he had a cold. Most “commercial open source” companies have a business plan that relies heavily (if not entirely) on software licensing revenues. Since it is difficult to sell open source software more than once, software developed for this model can’t be free and open. Since a smart business wants to maximize profit, these business should be finding ways to drive people from the “open” solution to the proprietary one. Most importantly, a smart business will make decisions concerning their “open” solutions to maximize the migration to proprietary software.

This isn’t a bad model, or even a wrong one. I just grouse at using “open source” in any fashion to describe it.

Matt did give us a compliment by mentioning that the new Zenoss Masters program is modeled on the OGP. Building community is fun and we wish them the best of luck with that.

The biggest comments so far on the podcast have been about the ability of OpenNMS to replace portions of Micromuse (now IBM) Netcool. I’ve always been a big fan of Netcool, and I worked with Micromuse even before they had an office in the US. But the price was always astronomical, so a couple of years ago we decided to implement some of the functionality of Netcool into OpenNMS. We have a number of clients who have replaced Netcool, but we are currently working with a large telco in Italy that will be our biggest challenge to see if we can take a very large Netcool install and replace it. David is spending several weeks a month in Italy with Antonio for the rest of the year to implement some of the migration. It’s hard work, but fun.

Both John Willis and Doug McClure posted about it on their blogs, so I hope to be able to send them some actual numbers in the near future.

Hrm, lessee, what else is going on …

OSCON is this week. I went last year, but with Dev-Jam next week I just couldn’t justify going this year. Plus, it is really more of a coders show and I’m not a coder.

LinuxWorld is the week after Dev-Jam. They have been kind enough to give us a booth for a couple of years, but the show has become too much “commercial open source” for my tastes, so we didn’t ask for one this year. Jeff is going there to work in the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) booth. While we’re not a member of the OSA, OpenNMS integrates with both Hyperic and Concursive, which are members, so we’ve been asked to demonstrate this interoperability. David decided to call this integration the “OUCH” stack (grin). It stands for OpenNMS, Ubuntu, Concursive and Hyperic. If you’re going to the show be sure to say “hi” to Jeff.

Finally, I want to send a “shout out” to Eric Bradford at echo. He sent us a card this week for the Fabulous, Amazing, and Incredible Wall of Cards. I’ve included it below, as it made my day.