fettig.net

I came across this today (via Planet Gnome): the Virtual Bugzilla Server. It’s a packaged version of Bugzilla, which isn’t anything too exciting in itself. But what’s interesting it the method of distribution: a VMware image, playable in the free VMware Player, that includes not only the Bugzilla application but an entire Linux operating system.

There several advantages to this distribution method:

• You can bundle lots of heavyweight dependancies with your application: database servers, web servers, java, python, you name it.
• The customer/user doesn’t have to do any setup besides downloading and running the image
• You can run your application on Windows and Linux without having to get all the dependancies running on Windows

Of course, there’s an existing way to accomplish the same thing: Install your software on a server and sell it as an “appliance”. That’s what we do at JotSpot with the Jot Box, as do many other companies including Google. Appliances are cool because you can match the software to appropriately powered hardware, and all the IT department has to do is plug in the power and network cables. But for a lot of cases it’s overkill, and it limits your customer base to people who can afford to buy the hardware.

From my perspective, that makes the VMware image distribution model very attractive. In fact, I think in the future companies are going to expect to get their enterprise software as images instead of appliances (or maybe even instead of installable software). I can imagine the day when every company will have a machine or two running the free VMware server, and all they’ll have to do is download and install a new image file to have a new virtual server up and running on their network. And everybody wins. The software company doesn’t have to mess around with hardware, and they can still charge big bucks for their product. The customer can easily install and manage applications and combine servers as needed. VMware gets to have their image file format become a standard means of distributing enterprise software. And Linux gets installed more places, even on top of Windows.

Of the many cool little independent stores here in Portland, my favorite is the ferdinand home store. We shop at ferdinand, we give gifts from ferdinand, we hope to get gifts from ferdinand. Check out their selection of weird and wonderful t-shirts, cards, soft heads, handmade underwear, and various items screenprinted with their iconic drumming squirrel. You won’t be disappointed.

We’ve just started rolling out a new improved version of the JotSpot Wiki. Instead of looking like this…

…JotSpot Wikis now look like this:

Aside from looking a lot better (JotSpot css hacker Diane Soini affectionately labeled our old design “the Blue Tabs of Death”) the new interface is a lot easier to navigate. The sidebar in particular is a big upgrade: instead of static content, you’ve got your own list of favorite pages, plus recent changes. It’s really easy to add a page to your Favorites:

Screencast geeks: that’s an animated gif made with Byzanz on Linux.

We’ve also added some dojo-powered ajax goodness around the UI. For example, you can add comments and upload attachments without leaving the page (click the link for another mini screencast).

We’re currently serving up the redesign to new accounts. Existing customers will be updated soon (we’re doing additional testing to make sure we don’t step on the toes of people who have customized the old interface). It’s been fun to work on making our wiki better, and I can tell you that there we have lots more cool features in the the pipeline. Watch for more in the coming weeks.