Portico
Attended a presentation today by a representative of Portico (a “dark archive” of e-journal content brought to us by the folks who created JSTOR). It’s an interesting project, trying to solve some of the same problems that LOCKSS addresses.
I find the technology behind LOCKSS more interesting but mention Portico here because we’re talking about business models. How about this one—the people who pay 20% of the costs of the service (publishers) get to make 100% of the rules on how the people paying 80% (libraries) will use it.
As I listened to the presentation, I tried to think of what a service like Portico might look like if the publishing industry just designed it themselves. Had to finally admit I might just be looking at it.
OK, you’re right, they probably would drop the part about kicking in 20% of the costs.
Novell and Microsoft
The first time these two tangled, Netware crushed Microsoft’s LAN manager. Then a few years later, Windows NT effectively eliminated Netware. Round three finds Novell and Microsoft announcing today that they’ll cooperate on getting Windows and Novell’s SuSE Linux to interoperate.
Here’s a IT press blurb on the agreement and the official joint press release.
There are three major pieces to the deal:
Virtualization – Microsoft and Novell will jointly develop a compelling virtualization offering for Linux and Windows. [Guess it has to be really compelling since other companies like Parallels and VMware already do this quite well]
Web Services for managing physical and virtual servers – they’ll work to tie Active Directory together with eDirectory. [Not to be too snarky, but can we can hope the combined weight of these two tied together will be enough to sink them both for good?]
Document format compatibility – Will work out how Open Office and Microsoft Office documents can be shared.Â
The agreement will run until 2012. Wonder if anyone will care by then?
I run a couple of SuSE Linux servers (including the one hosting this weblog) so I’m hoping any tech transfer that occurs flows from SuSE to Windows and not the other way around.