There’s been a lot of talk today about Microsoft’s effort to acquire Yahoo and what a successful takeover might mean for various open source software work with which Yahoo is associated. I’m not sure what to make of all that, but I am struck by the fact investors seem to think that a Microsoft takeover of Yahoo will make the combined company worth about $8 billion less than the sum of the values of the separate companies. How did I get this number? Well, the merger became public information before the stock market opened this morning. At the end of today’s trading, Microsoft’s stock price had fallen by $2.15 per share, while Yahoo’s stock price had risen by $9.20 per share. Multiplying these share price changes by the number of shares for each respective company, the implied value of Microsoft was reduced by $20 billion, while that of Yahoo was increased by only $12 billion. Investors, at least, are betting that Microsoft cannot successfully integrate Yahoo’s business into its own, and that the takeover will effectively waste $8 billion.

As one blogger points out, Opera’s minimal success is difficult to understand, because Opera is filled with innovative and useful features, yet it has no where near the adoption of Firefox. The blogger’s explanation is that the user interface and experience is too different from Firefox and IE, and therefor not appealing to new users. While this may in part be true, I believe that openness is the key difference that prevents adoption. By openness, I mean the ability to customize the browser to be what you want it to be. Firefox accomplishes this on multiple levels. First of all, everyone is encouraged to write extensions (and a lot of people do.) These extensions are enough for most people to customize their browser to be anything they can think of. (Skins should be mentioned too, but Opera has those.) At the base of this ability of customize Firefox is that it is an open-source project. You can’t get any more customizable or flexible than that.

The author of the post mentioned above dismisses these differences as not things the average user would care about, but I think this misses a key point. Firefox is mostly spread through word of mouth, originating at tech-savvy users who care enough to do the research. These tech-savvy users tell their friends to use whatever browser they like and soon enough their friends are telling their friends and so on. In this way, some one who has no idea what an “extension” is or what “open-source” is may be using Firefox because it is open-source.

There is no reason this should only apply to Opera and Firefox. This same reasoning can be used with almost any piece of software. If you can think of any more examples of this, go ahead and post them in the comments!

One of the main reasons the Eee PC is as attractive as it is to so many people is the price. $400 for an ultra-portable is incredibly cheap compared to other ultra-mobile computers, which often cost over $2000. (See the Sony VAIOs.) As a post on Crave points out, though, the Eee is not really quite a full computer. (Both due to the hardware and the pre-installed software, which is what most people will use.) That post proposes an alternative computer for those looking at an Eee PC, a refurbished 15″ HP notebook that goes for $465 and includes 1GB of memory and a 120GB hard drive. Although this machine may have better specifications, it is not an Eee PC competitor for a number of reasons. (To be fair, the writer did mention that these differences existed, but still pitched the HP notebook as an Eee PC competitor.) First, there is a huge difference between a 15″ and a 7″ screen. The HP’s 15″ screen is starting to approach desktop replacement size, while the Eee PC’s 7″ screen is in the ultra-portable range. Second, the HP notebook that is referenced is a refurbished model. It is not at all uncommon to have huge discounts on refurbished models. If the Eee was refurbished it would cost even less.

Although the HP laptop mentioned above may not be directly competing with the Eee PC, it is still an attractive deal that could pull away customers from the Eee PC and Linux. Right now, there is not a compelling Linux-based alternative to regular budget laptops that has gotten any attention. Linux needs something to fill this gap and someone that will do it as well as Asus did. (I know someone will tell me there is one that exists, but if I have never heard of it, they are not doing a very good job marketing it.)

A recent post on Pingdom looked at what Google Trends has to say about Linux distributions, Linux, KDE, and other similar keywords. Although Google Trends, which lets you compare how many searches various terms are getting in Google, has the potential to reveal many interesting trends, it is not clear that the results are an accurate representation of interest in a particular subject. Words that have multiple meanings, for instance, will not be accuratly represented in Google Trends. This, however, is rarely a problem for Linux-related terms, due to the uniqueness of most names.

Apart from these confusions, however, how accurate is Google Trends as a measure of interest? Well, it depends on what you mean by interest. Because Trends is based on total searches, it is basically impossible to distinguish between a few people who do a lot of searching or a lot of people who do a little searching. While this might make it a bad option for deciding which product is more popular and similar comparisons, it does not make it bad for everything. Google Trends is very useful for discovering which term is used more. For example, a comparison of Ubuntu and Linux shows that Linux has gone down while Ubuntu has gone up, indicating that the trend (no pun intended) is for people to talk about individual distributions, not Linux as a whole.

In summary, while Google Trends may not be perfect, it is very useful for comparing trends in how people refer to various things, particularly if the phrases are unique.

A lot of people (myself included) have been closely following OOXML’s progress to becoming an international standard and speculating on its chances of success. I suspect, however, that standardization will not decide OOXML’s death or life, instead the decision will already be clear by the time the ISO finally gets around to voting on it again.

This post makes a very good point about the state of OOXML. As it says, it is simply not safe to save your files in the OOXML format, since it is still being changed and has not yet been adopted (officially or unofficially.) Right now, there is no good reason to save documents in the OOXML format and unless this somehow dramatically changes in the next months, OOXML will already be on the way to death by the time it has another chance at becoming a standard. In short, the OOXML war, much like the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD war, will eventually come down to how many people use each format, not which format becomes the standard. In this respect, OOXML is fighting an uphill battle. Formats already exist that people are (for the most part) happy with, so why should anyone go to the effort of converting everything into OOXML?

For me, the only remaining question is could standardization create a significant boost to OOXML’s adoption to pull it back from death? It is hard to say what the answer to this question is. If it did make a significant enough impact, it would be through governments, whose documents must remain accessible for tens or hundreds of years. Only time will tell the answer to this question, if time does ever tell the answer. It is quite possible OOXML will not receive ISO standardization anyway.

It may be too early to say if OOXML will be adopted or not, but I think it is fair to say that international standards will only be a small part of the picture.

For anyone not familiar with the OOXML standardization process that has been going on, OOXML is Microsoft’s new office document format and the ISO is the International Standards Organization. Previous, OOXML was rejected by the ISO, but it will be voted on again in the future.

Don Reisinger, a CNet blogger, just posted a look at the community behind Linux and some thoughts on all the Linux distros out there. His main point is that the community is incredibly helpful and I could not possibly agree with him any more. (Although he mostly focuses on how easy the community makes it to get support and that is very true, it is also worth noting that Linux and open-source software would not exist at all without the community.) He also discussed how there seem to be a few distros that have polished software and are generally very good and others that, in his view, are bad. (Go read the article and than you will understand what I am saying.) On this point, I disagree.

Lets face it, the Linux community has a lot of hardcore geeks in it. These are the kind of people who frequently rebuild their kernel to improve performance, compile all their software from scratch, consider GUIs useless, and so on. There is nothing wrong with that. I may be exaggerating some here, but this is the target audience for many Linux distros. When was the last time you heard Slackware trying to attract the “average user?”

Reisinger’s post suggests that everyone rally around the “good” distros and leave the others behind. This has happened. Distros like Ubuntu and OpenSuse that aim to be a distro for the “average user” are far more popular than the “geeky” distros, but it will never happen completely, because there are people who prefer the “geeky” distros. Instead of eliminating the “geeky” distros, these distros should simply make it clear that if you want a distro designed for the “average user” you should look to somewhere else. This way the right people will download the right distro for their needs and everyone will be happy. Part of the point of open-source software is that everyone can customize it to be exactly what they want.

A few days ago, DeviceGuru posted a suggestion for Ubuntu (or an open letter to Mark Shuttleworth as DeviceGuru calls it.) The basic idea is that the various Ubuntus (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.) should all use the name Ubuntu something edition. The idea is great in theory, but I see a few problems with the names DeviceGuru suggested. The biggest problem is they sound like Vista’s version scheme where they are all basically the same except some features are removed from the less expensive ones. This can be fixed by making the name clearly show why you would want that edition, not some other. Here are the names DeviceGuru suggested and my thoughts on them:

(DeviceGuru’s names are in bold.)

Ubuntu GNOME Edition This should just be called “Ubuntu.” Shuttleworth or whoever made the decision already decided that GNOME will be the default desktop environment, there is not need to confuse things. (In fairness to DeviceGuru, he did say aka Ubuntu, so we may be in agreement on this point.)

Ubuntu KDE Edition The problem with this is that the letters k, d, and e mean nothing to most people. How would you know if you want the g, n, o, m, e or the k, d, e or the x, f, c, e edition? I am not really sure what this one should be called, but perhaps something like “Ubuntu Alternate Interface Edition”? That is a terrible name, but at least it sort of makes sense.

Ubuntu XFCE Edition See “Ubuntu KDE Edition.” The problem here is exactly the same. One possibility is to name it something like “Ubuntu Light Edition,” but to someone coming from the Vista world that would probably mean a less-expensive version that has so many features stripped out you might as well just use a previous version of Windows. Possibly Light Edition could be used if there was a sentence of explanation attached, or something like “Ubuntu for Old Computers.” Again, that is a terrible name, but it makes sense.

Ubuntu Educational Edition Once again this could be confusing for someone used to the world of proprietary software. Often companies will sell a special “Educational Edition” that costs less but cannot be used for commercial work. Something like “Ubuntu School Edition” or “Ubuntu Learning Edition” might work but again I don’t really like how either of them sound and School Edition could still be interpreted as an “Educational Edition.”

Overall, I support the idea of changing the names of the various Ubuntus, but they should all make sense to anyone no matter what their experience level is.

Also, I have to point out that this is a perfect example of how open-source works. Someone posts a suggestion and people think it is good so it gets attention.

Just a few hours ago, Apple announced a much-rumored new product - the MacBook Air. If you have not already seen the news, the Air is basically a 13.3″ MacBook Pro that is really thin. I hate to give Apple any more hype since they are already so good at making hype, but this thing really is thin. I am sure you are wondering why I am writing about an Apple product on a Linux site. Well, since both the Air and the Eee are considered ultra-portables, they potentially have an effect on one another, so I decided to figure out (or at least guess at) what that effect will be and whether it will benefit or hurt the Eee PC.

The most obvious way the Air could effect the Eee PC is competition. Logically, since both are ultra-mobile PCs, they would compete with each other, right? Not really. The Air is almost $2000 and comes with high-end components compared to the Eee’s minimal resources and $400 price point. Additionally, the Air has a 13.3″ screen compared to the Eee’s 7″ screen. Even once the Eee comes out with larger screen models, they will still be far, far smaller than the Air. Both of these factors make it very hard for the two products to compete.

Even if these two products do not directly compete, they could still generate hype for each other. For example, someone who sees an article about the Air might become interested in a small laptop and look for something less expensive, leading them to potentially buy an Eee PC. In that example, Apple’s amazing marketing ability (you really can’t argue about Apple being great at building hype) is benefiting the Eee PC, but the other question is could the reverse happen? I don’t think so. Someone looking at a very inexpensive tiny laptop, the Eee PC, is not likely to become interested in a higher-cost alternative.

While many Linux users may be frustrated when the Air dominates all the technology news for the next week, it is worth considering that the Air will probley generate many additional sales for the Eee, already Asus’s most successful product.

Additional details of the new Eee PCs with larger screens have surfaced. It seems that Asus did one thing right and one thing wrong. First, what they did right:

The new larger screen Eee PCs will still have the same size case, according to Gizmodo. One of the Eee PCs main advantages is size. If the new Eee PC’s cases were significantly larger than they are now, that advantage would be lost to more mainstream laptops and larger UMPC. Unfortunately, Asus didn’t do everything right.

The new Eee PCs with larger screens will not have a higher resolution (again, according to Gizmodo.) That’s right, the resolution will not change, you will just get a blown-up picture of what you would get on a 7″ Eee PC. I can’t claim to know how much more it would cost to get a higher resolution screen, but it cannot be that much. Just making the picture larger will satisfy anyone who thought the text was too small, but I highly doubt just making the text bigger is going to satisfy the majority of users buying the Eee PC.

A few days ago, this post, which argues that Ubuntu is becoming too synonymous with Linux, created some discussion in the Linux world. At first, I ignored the post, assuming that it was just a complaint about Ubuntu being talked about so much. Later, though, I read this response which argues that Linux should not be thought of as an OS at all. Instead, the post says, Ubuntu and all the various distros of Linux should each be considered separate OSs, and therefore talking about just Ubuntu and not Linux is fine. (Sorry if that was a bad summary, it is hard to describe an entire post in two sentences.)

Although I agree with the original post in that there is so much more to Linux than Ubuntu, it seems to me that the name “Linux” is holding Linux back. Right now, many people think of Linux as a geeky toy. If the name “Linux” is only used to talk about the foundation and specific distribution names are used to talk about the operating system, then people will no longer associate Linux with geeky, because they would just hear about the various distros, not about Linux. This is not to say that the Linux kernel is not important. Apple advertises that OS X is based on Unix to tech-savvy people, but people don’t talk about OS X as being Unix.

In addition, I don’t think that all the other distributions will be forgotten. Ubuntu may be the most talked about distribution, but as people become comfortable with Ubuntu, they will try out other distributions and find the one that is perfect for them.  If each distro develops its own identity there will not be a problem with saying Ubuntu and meaning all distros.