[nycbug-talk] open source software and licenses

[Pastor Mac]

I don't know how many here read Bob Cringely's ruminations on the PBS 
site <http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050127.html> but I 
thought (yeah, I know, that's what I get for thinking) some words from 
this week's column referenced above might be intriguing to a few here 
for enjoyment, irritation, amusement or whatever:

I wrote that the Mac Mini is destined to be a high definition movie 
machine, but the fact is that it will find many uses. Wil Shipley of 
Delicious Monster Software (www.delicious-monster.com) sees it as his 
ideal server.

"I bought two Mac minis this week -- both will be servers. One is going 
to run my company's store. Our new product is a runaway success -- 
we've sold $350,000 worth of software in the first two months. I say 
this not to brag, but to make a point. The store is running on an old 
G4 cube. The cube isn't under any kind of load at all. It processes one 
sale every five minutes or so. There's absolutely no need for more 
store sites to run on a G5. If you're processing a transaction every 
second, sure, get a G5. But if you are, chances are good you're a 
multi-multi-million dollar business, and you don't care what an Xserve 
costs."

"The second box is going to be our source-code server. It's safe as 
heck, because OS X includes one-click firewalls. And, again, it's not 
like I have so many engineers that we're checking in code every second. 
If it processes a transaction every ten minutes, I'll consider our 
company very productive. For us little guys, the Mac mini is the 
absolute perfect server. I'm hooking up two identical external drives 
to each Mac mini (total of four), each two set up as a RAID 1. (Each 
drive is slightly bigger than the mini.) The chances of losing data via 
disk failure are astronomically low this way. And if a motherboard 
crashes, I can swap in the other box -- I have a $500 hot-backup OF THE 
WHOLE MACHINE. I have a complete server 'closet' that fits in less than 
a cubic foot. It's quiet. It's got a redundant RAID built-in. It's easy 
to administer and set up. I share a monitor and keyboard with my main 
workstation, so I don't have any extra clutter. Look out, Linux."

Imagine a Mac Minicluster running Apple's xGrid software. Start with a 
16-port fast Ethernet switch and stack 16 Mac Minis on top. That's a 
720 gigaflop micro-supercomputer that costs less than $9,000, can fit 
on a bookshelf, and can be up and running in as little time as it takes 
to connect the network cables. High schools will be sequencing genes.

Pax,

Pastor Mac
On OS X

Grace is when life itself is more than good enough.
						--Garrison Keillor