Apparently someone at Sun agreed with my sentiments about moving to a more closed-source model for MySQL.

While my original comments are self serving, apparently Sun believes that it will make better business sense in the long term to keep these components open-source. Hopefully this is a vote of confidence for the quality of product the open-source model has helped MySQL create.

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I’ve been Linux-only on the desktop for 4 years now. And now, I’m considering adding Windows back to my daily life. Linux provides an excellent environment to do many of the things I do:

• web - Web Browse
• remote administration - Use a terminal
• services - Run servers
• video - Transcode, edit, convert, and Backup DVD’s
• music - Listen to music

A few things Linux hasn’t done well and why I’m considering adding a second OS to my desk here (alongside Linux):

• Money Management - GNUCash is the closest thing here, but doesn’t hold a candle to the financial institution integration MS Money and Quicken can offer
• audible.com - my audible.com content forces me to boot into Windows every few months to add new audio books to my iPod mini
• Music - I’ve made limited use and I’d like to make more use of services like Rhapsody.com, Napster.com, or Yahoo Music to have a wider variety of music to listen to.

There are a few ancillary things that don’t necessitate daily Windows usage, but I do need them occasionally:

• Harmony Remote - make my Harmony remote do new things
• Some multimedia stuff, CNN Video - most of this is going to Flash anyway

Wow, that’s a pretty short list. I had in my head that there were more things I wanted from Windows. Maybe I’ll suck it up and work with GNUCash!

On that note, recently solved things that used to suck about Linux on the desktop:

• Flash 9 - Like it or not, Linux is all about choice, now you have the option of running Flash 9 on Linux.
• DVD Backups: This has gotten easier and easier on Windows; I just tried an amazing piece of Linux software called Thoggen which backs up DVD’s to my hard-drive-based media server with a surprisingly few number of clicks.
• Music Management - Rhythmbox and the new player Banshee have made music management and playback much more manageable on Linux. Keep up the great work!
• Network Manager - the network manager makes wireless/wired connection management a cinch. I highly recommend it!

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It’s a very sad day when the open-source community is forced to take a highly-successful, visible, driving project like Firefox and change its name to something like Iceweasel. By changing the name we lose invaluable branding and popularity for the Debian and other distributions that choose to make this distinction. This sort of decision is equivalent to a 3 year regression for Linux.

The name Iceweasel sounds like the odd name of an infant open-source project. Many people give up on Linux read names like Iceweasel and GIMP.

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