News about Open Source projects, licenses and luminaries in the Open Source movement

 Winning war won't secure peace for open source, Jul 03, 2009

According to Mahatma Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."* So by that reckoning, it must be pretty much 'job done' for free software.

Macs vs. PCs vs. Linux arguments are dominating two mailing lists I'm on. The vitriol may be slightly less than in the past, but many of the same attitudes exist with subjective arguments trumping logic on both sides. While I can ignore fanatics on a mailing list, owners and managers in businesses have to coerce all sides of the operating system wars into working together.

I can talk until I'm blue in my space about the technical advantages of Linux and open-source software. Forget about that for now though. Let me give you a reason for your office to use them that may strike home: It can save jobs, including, just maybe, your job.

The open source movement gave rise to Linux and spawned a generation of collaborative coders. Now it's extending its reach to the hardware industry.

As the Internet becomes more vast open source communities need to be not only educating potential users on the benefits of open source software but also encouraging them to become part of the community.

When Microsoft purchased Hotmail in December of 1997 for an estimated $400m, it ran on FreeBSD. But Redmond ripped out the open source OS and replaced it with Windows 2000. Or at least, it tried to.

Need a Linux cluster for an hour or two? Powua is a new cloud computing service that uses open source software to allow users to rent up to 64 CPUs for high-demand graphics rendering or scientific applications.

The researchers behind the open source Eucalyptus project have launched a company to commercialize the technology. They plan to offer services and support to companies that want to use Eucalyptus to build self-hosted elastic computing clouds.

Twelve years ago, Bruce Perens, who was then leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project, drafted the Debian free software guidelines as part of the project's social contract.

Linux vendor Red Hat has published a study it calls the Open Source Index, which presents a comparison of open source adoption and potential in 75 countries.

While most small businesses have heard about the low-cost world of open source, it still remains a mystery to many. Open-source software is generally free and is usually downloaded from a website.

Does using open source software pay off in a total cost sense when compared to commercial offerings today? Is it worth the usually lower cost, or will an enterprise that casts its lot with FOSS be trapped in a high-risk situation where they can't get support and innovation?

Cost is the primary driver for open-source consideration, as a recent Forrester report suggests, but what is most significant is the overwhelmingly positive experience CIOs are having with open source.

Why is Open Source becoming so pervasive? The reason is that we are now entering an era of Collaborative Innovation. Open Source Software (OSS) is the leading example of this trend, but the Open Source development model based on collaboration, community and the shared ownership of knowledge is rapidly expanding to other areas.

The main point of the GPL license is it is impossible to use it to create proprietary software. It’s deliberately designed that way by a man who views proprietary software as immoral. The GPL is designed to ensure all derivative works remain Free Software.

Do bought in open source enterprise services really deliver, or do companies find themselves just as locked in as when dealing with a proprietary vendor?

Device and hardware makers are discovering the flexibility of the Linux stack as the foundation of a platform for mobile applications that bring value to the wares they want to sell. Complications exist, but manufacturers are working through them to further drive the adoption of the Linux stack.

Prominent open source executives make the case for lower-cost alternatives during the economic crisis.

A bad economy is good for open source, declared Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst in his keynote at Open Source Business Conference 2009, but open source's value proposition should play well in any economy.

Companies turning to open source in the recession should know that free software is about much more, according to the GNU founder.

Sometimes our best intentions give way to our worst, for a wide variety of reasons. This is as true of corporate amalgamations of individuals as it is of those individuals on their own, and it's as true for open-source companies as it is for proprietary companies. Community is the tonic that keeps corporate aspirations in line, just as community helps to keep individuals walking the straight and narrow of societal norms. As The Economist recently highlighted, new research suggests that "having a crowd around often makes things better."

With cost cutting being the main agenda of the corporate sector now, web based companies have been thankful, for the boon of open source software and cloud computing.

If you want to see where the technology industry is heading in the next few years, a quick review of the past might be useful. The personal computer industry was born in the pain of the 1980s economic recession.

The good news is the deployment of open source is growing. The bad news is that policies managing those projects are an afterthought. Among the biggest concerns keeping both large and small developers up at night are licensing and support.

From the introduction of the internet through the dot.com crash, this article reviews the defining moments in web history. A significant portion are related to open source software.

Three leading commercial open source companies have been selected to deliver a complete trading desk solution that gives the financial services industry a way to automate a majority of business functions done by most trading desks today.

The brain behind Bug Labs' Lego-like Linux building blocks says we're on the verge of open-source hardware revolution. Open Source hardware will happen. There's nothing stopping it.

As iTunes, Google, and Red Hat indicate, the best business models for the Internet age are those that focus on services around content, rather than on monetizing content directly. Speaking of software, in particular, we've reached the end of an era that treated software as a packaged product. Software is a process, and so demands that it be monetized through subscriptions or other service fees.

Open source software always seems attractive because of the absence of license fees. However, not all open source tools are free of cost, and, at the end of the day, you may actually spend more money going the open source route. The best open source projects represent true community efforts to create software that equals or exceeds commercial rivals. The Linux operating system and unparalleled Apache web server are two poster children for the open source movement.

Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will feature the ability to "disable" Windows components, meaning they're no longer available to users of that machine. Unfortunately this largely misses the point. Even disabled components are still "staged" on the machine's hard drive, so taking up space. Open source software shows us the way it should be done.

Everywhere we turn these days, we see evidence of open source developers trading their time and hard work for little more than the hope of benefiting the ever-growing open source community.

Microsoft takes a lot of grief for its stance on Linux, while IBM gets a lot of credit. Extending from that, the industry tends to view IBM as a paragon of open-source virtue while Microsoft plays the role of villain.

Open Source is the interstate highway system of software. It operates the Internet and telecommunications infrastructure through which business communication is carried out, and much of the infrastructure of each individual business.

Microsoft isn't losing a grip on its groupware business just yet, but the writing seems to be on the wall. This market is simply too lucrative not to attack -- and with Exchange stripped of its secret sauce, it is just a matter of time before companies see some practical, cost-effective alternatives.

Open source has come a long way and with the new administration adopting the open source content management system Drupal to power the recovery.gov Web site, open source's visibility will likely get another big boost.

Until recently "open source" has been confined to software through such brilliant communal projects as Wikipedia, the Firefox browser (which now has 21.5% of the global market) or the Linux operating system.

People have good reason to be skeptical if they feel they're being asked to trade the devil they know (Microsoft) with the devil they don't know (open source).

As the global economy continues its slide, U.S. politicians have staked out their positions at the stimulus trough, stopping only long enough to blame the other party for the world's problems. Given such serious divisions, how can we focus our government on policies, not politics? Mozilla, the creator of the Firefox browser, offers some clues.

The number of open source projects targeting smartphones and other mobile devices continues a dramatic rise, growing at a 55% compound annual rate from 2005 through the end of last year.

People are excited about Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. And who wouldn’t be? With each incarnation, the Linux-based operating system steps further from the shadow of its geekiness.

At the Southern California Linux Expo last week, Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon discussed the importance of community building and the role that it plays in accelerating open source software development.

Using it in proprietary software or products can have serious implications for evaluating the value of a business.

In the Internet age, it's possible for a firm with no formal staff—or even a CEO—to best a giant like Microsoft. Examples cited are Linux and Mozilla's Firefox.

Open source has some specific advantages for New Zealand and in these recessionary times.

The number of open source projects targeting mobile platforms is rising sharply, according to Black Duck Software, the leading global provider of products and services for accelerating software development through the managed use of open source software.

The Washington Times has released the source code of its in-house tools and encourages collaboration. The source code is released under the permissive Apache License, version 2.0.

Customers assume that open source is free and that commercial open source is cheaper, but most companies aren't prepared to deal with the implications of having a lower-cost product. Even when you can clearly demonstrate value, you run into a scale issue sooner or later.

Nokia announced last week that as of version 4.5, the Qt GUI toolkit, most famously used as the basis of the KDE desktop, would change licences from the GPL to the LGPL.

This time it's Zarafa, developer of collaboration software, which has announced it's adding native support for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) to its Linux-based e-mail and calendaring server.

For IT teams, it's not a case of having no budget. It is simply that they must get better value for money. They must invest to grow the business or save significant dollars.

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