Tech News of the Week for 2/20/24

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Announcer: Welcome to Tech news of the Week with your host, the guy who has to clean sting's hotel rooms when he's out on tour.

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Ned: Welcome to they never owned a walrus. This is our weekly tech news podcast where Chris and I talk about four things that caught our eye in the news. And Chris, I believe you're going to lead us off with some interesting news about NgInX.

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Chris: Nginx being forked because Russia. Okay, wait, not really. Not like the way that you think.

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Chris: At least, but maybe kind of.

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Chris: Anyway, TLDR, remember how terraform got forked into the open tofu project and everyone was confused and mad?

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Ned: Yeah.

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Chris: This is kind of like that. Except web servers.

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Chris: Nginx, also known as the make layer seven go Internet Magic machine, has been an open source wonderkind since its inception all the way back in 2004.

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Ned: Wow.

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Chris: The project was purchased by F5 in 2019. And while there is in fact a pay version, it's called Nginx Plus. I did not know that. And let's be honest, you didn't either. Confusing, right? Well, this week it got confusing. Er, Nginx is, like many open source projects, primarily maintained by, like, three guys.

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Ned: Yep.

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Chris: Maxime Dunan, Sergey Kandorov, and Roman Artunian. I apologize about all of those pronunciations. I warned you about the Russia. Anyway, one of those three, Maxim Dunian, announced that due to, quote some nontechnical manager, unquote, at F5 throwing his weight around, Maxim is basically out. If I'm reading between the lines, I am guessing that F5 has decided that a whole lot more people need to know about Nginx plus. Anyway, Maxim took his ball and went home and immediately forked the project. So now out there in the world is freenginx.org. And I have some arguments. I find this spelling and pronunciation problematic. I'm going to list it out for you in case you're not looking at it. Freenginx, you explain to me how to pronounce that Fringenx. It looks to me like Frengin X.

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Ned: Ooh, I want to be friends with Nginx.

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Chris: That sounds like a medicine from the 50s. That is probably poisonous. Anyway, time will tell what happens to the original NginX project, particularly if the other two major developers decide to jump ship too.

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Ned: Speaking of free things, Esxi free is dead. Broadcom continues to add more nails to the VMware community coffin. Effective immediately, the free version of Esxi seven and eight are no longer available from the VMware website, according to a post published on February 14. Really spreading the love there, aren't you Hock Tan? Since the very early days of VMware, there has been a free version of ESX that you could run in perpetuity without paying for a license. While the free version was hobbled in some important ways, you couldn't hook it up to vcenter. It didn't do vmotion, and it could only support two physical cpus. It was also a really great option for anyone looking to learn about VMware and virtualization, or just virtualize a few machines under their desk. In fact, when I was in consulting, we had one client that ran his entire dev environment on an old Dell server under his desk with a free version of Esxi. For many, the free version of Esxi was their on ramp to becoming longtime VMware devotees. If you're interested in running ESXi for free, there is still a 60 day trial that you can sign up for, or you can pony up the money for the VMware user group advantage subscription that gets you access to the larger product suite for nonproduction use.

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Ned: But this change serves as a large signal from Broadcom that they are no longer interested in courting the hobbyist or the beginner. VMware is a mature enterprise product for mature enterprise people, and all you home lab weirdos can suck it. I'll be the first to admit that the actual impact is more emotional than it is practical. But feelings matter in the long run and the junior admins of today will have purchasing power tomorrow. Best to keep that in mind.

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Chris: Yeah, this one's annoying.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Chris: Forrest Brazeal announces the Kubernetes resume challenge. Now, I know what you're thinking. Why did Kyle Shanahan veer so strongly away from a winning game plan in the third quarter? He knew he had the refs in his pocket. All he had to do was feed McCaffrey and boom, game over. And not knowing the rules are different in overtime in the Super bowl. That is a firing offense in my town. It's cool though. I mean, when they shit canned Wilkes, that'll fix everything.

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Chris: What was question again?

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Chris: Oh, right, computers.

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Ned: Yes.

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Chris: So if you're an Internet denizen of a certain age. Side question of a certain age always means old, doesn't it?

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Ned: Yes.

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Chris: Like in a bad way? Generally.

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Ned: Yeah.

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Chris: What's the annoyingly young version of that? You work on that and get back to me.

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Ned: Will do.

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Chris: Anyway. Forrest Brazeal, in the annoyingly young version of the Internet, is a sort of cloud educator mini celebrity. He first made his name with something called the cloud resume challenge. Which, just like it says on the tin, gives you challenges and tips and hints to learn the cloud and create a website for yourself that hosts, you guessed it, your resume. This came out a bunch of years ago and is still available and is still quite popular in GCP, aws and azure flavors. This week Brazeal put out the same thing, except this time with kubernetes. These challenges, again should be noted, are not how tos. The idea is that you understand the goal, then you're on your own to solve it. A bunch of small goals. 13 in the case of this Kubernetes challenge adds up to a total solution and a lot of practical, valuable self learning. It is a great way for the self motivated to learn something. Me, though, I figure I'll just keep saying kubernetes is dumb and people who call it k eight s or Kates need to be put on a list.

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Chris: But you know, that's just me.

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Chris: We serve the masses on this show and I bet someone out there will hear this and think it's super cool. And as long as they don't call it Kates, they'll be right don't you say a word. I'm looking at you. Don't you say a word.

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Chris: Don't say that word.

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Ned: Fair.

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Ned: Cohesity is acquiring Veritas data protection. Backup exec for everyone! The first time I came across Veritas was in the form of backup exec. That was the data protection software of choice at the SMB I worked for back in 2002. Since that time, Veritas was acquired by Symantec in 2005, who promptly made backup exec infinitely worse and a lot more Yellow. Then split off into their own company called Veritas Technologies Corp. In 2015 through funding by the Carlisle Group. After seven years of struggling with relevance and milking their existing customers, the data protection arm of Veritas is being acquired by Cohesity for an undisclosed amount, but cohesity for their part, is claiming a $7 billion valuation after the merger completes. Cohesity was last valued at 2.5 billion after a round of funding in April 2020, so that's a lot more. While Cohesity has focused on a hardware based solution on prem coupled with a robust cloud offering, as far as I know, Veritas has mostly just been keeping the lights on. It's likely that the acquisition is really an opportunity for cohesity to get a foot in the door at all of Veritas's current customers.

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Ned: Longtime rival Rubric is set to go public this year with their most recent valuation being $4 billion in 2021. I suspect that cohesity will follow suit with an IPO later in 2024, and they're looking to spike their valuation and make their forthcoming S-1 more attractive to investors. Yeah, that's a real stupid rivalry between those two companies founders.

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Chris: Maybe they can have a boxing fight.

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Chris: That would be fun.

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Ned: I mean, it might be. I wouldn't pay money for it, but I'd watch it on live stream.

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Ned: All right, that's it. We're done. Go away now. Bye.