Jazzing Up Collaboration

• By Ed Scannell
• 05/24/2007

One of the long-term goals of the technology is to help far-flung development teams spread around the world to both integrate and automate a lot of the server-based aspects of development as a way of providing real-time information for managing projects such as those involving services-oriented architectures (SOA).

In a conversation with Dana Gardner, principal analyst with Interarbor Solutions Inc. and Redmond Developer News columnist, Scott Hebner, IBM's vice president in charge of marketing and strategy for IBM Rational Software, said Jazz is being worked on by the same team that developed Eclipse.

"What they are trying to do now is automate the lessons of this proven, open-collaborative model that Eclipse represents," Hebner said. "And so I think we have learned a lot about how to facilitate collaboration. Eclipse did a lot on the client side to integrate the desktop. You can think of Jazz as being a similar approach, but on the back end -- or the server side -- where the teams need to have the same ability to collaborate more effectively and to gain integration."

A full transcript of the conversation is available here.

Taking It One Child at a Time
It didn't arrive with the promised price point, but that seemed to do little to quell the enthusiasm of some Latin American elementary school kids. The much-anticipated "$100 Laptop" made its debut in South America over the weekend as part of the "One Laptop Per Child" project launched by former MIT Media Lab Director Nicholas Negroponte in 2005.

The systems -- which currently cost $175, although they are expected to drop to $100 once they are produced in much greater numbers -- also arrived in Nigeria and Thailand.

Primarily designed for grade-school children, the Linux-based units contain processors made by AMD, 1GB of flash memory, built-in support for wireless connections to the Internet, a pulley for generating power by hand, a display that can be read even in direct sunlight and file-sharing capabilities. The new machines came bundled with some of the children's books in their local languages, along with encyclopedias and other software.

The Penguin Pushes Back
Normally laid-back Linux inventor Linus Torvalds was quick to return Microsoft's push with a shove recently, saying that Microsoft violating a number of open source patents is more likely than Linux and other open source technologies violating some 235 of Microsoft's.

In a public statement, Torvalds contended that Microsoft's claims of patent infringement are unsubstantiated and come with no concrete evidence.

Earlier this month, Microsoft claimed that the Linux kernel alone violates 42 of its patents, the Gnome and KDE technologies run afoul of 65, and Open Office violates 45.

Torvalds said he believes Microsoft's true intent in issuing these claims is to merely create fear, uncertainty and doubt about Linux, and that the claims have little to do with actual incursions involving intellectual property.