This year, I have been following the advice from my Zen Teacher on how to properly relax: take three weeks off in a row. I was usually taking 2 weeks but that didn't work for me: I was spending the first 7 days to try stop thinking about work and the last 7 thinking about my restart. 3 weeks worked like a charm! Still, this week, when I checked my e-mail, I felt a bit anxious: "Did a drama take place in my absence?". Nothing! Nada, rien, nichts! It could not have been quieter. Well, let me state that more accurately. It is not that nothing took place;it is just that traditional non-events took place, and that, in some sense, is very reassuring. I guess I wasn't alone in taking some time off. So, let me go through some of the best non-events I found in my inbox.

First of all, the winner is certainly BEA with yet another wagon of rumors concerning its possible acquisition. This one has been going on for years, much like a good old Summer Soap Opera. BEA is certainly the most-frequently acquired company. Except it rarely happens. Anyway, something tells me not everybody took some time off this Summer at BEA [1, 2, 3]. Anyway, we will see...

Second on my list is Novell with IBM. They made a HUGE announcement: Novell will package (and resell support for) Websphere Children's Edition with SUSE Linux. Damned, that's big news! But wait... wasn't that reactive move already announced 10 months ago... Maybe somebody screwed up in their PR department and re-issued an old announcement.... Well, let's be fair, I know that some evil minds might criticize that alliance a bit too fast by saying this is very much the wedding of two lousy products. That would indeed be an over-simplification. Websphere Children's Edition is, it seems, growing very fast and SLES is number two on the market (even if SLES worldwide sales would equal RHEL sales in Antartica, that would still makes it a #2 -- formally at least). Anyway, if you want to look different, now you have the choice: you can either opt for a nose-piercing or for a SLES/Children's Edition bundle.

And last but not least, Oracle. Oracle is still arguing that Unbreakable Linux is not a fork of RHEL. Damned, that is starting to be embarrassing... Someone needs to go there and explain to Larry how it really works, maybe he *really* thinks this is not a fork... Look, he somehow has an excuse: he has been busy fishing in Spanish waters in the last few month, so maybe he didn't give full attention to this issue. Now that he is back, it might be a good time to sit down with him.

To be frank, I am slightly exaggerating: some important news indeed took place in the IT space during my holidays, but that didn't impact our business too much...

Onward,

Sacha