February 25, 2007
Open Source Innovators
Datamation has a great article Ten Leading Open Source Innovators. From monitoring to virtualiation, and distributed computing to CRM. It's all here.
Posted by admin at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2006
The Next RedHat or Buyout?
Savio Rodrigues is a blogger who covers enterprise open source topics.
He has an insightful discussion about consolidation in the open source space. Quoting a VC he says "Everyone's hoping to either become the next Red Hat or get sold to IBM or Oracle." Indeed. But the question remains, what will happen, and how will those projects fare as they are bought, and rolled up into the corporate fold. It is likely, as he surmises, that a diffusion of ideas will happen in both directions.
Posted by admin at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2006
Oracle's Not The Only Eyes On Open-Source
Oracle is not the only one watching open-source technologies. Competing ERP vendor SAP AG is Keeping a Close Eye on Open-Source.
The gist of the article is an ambivalent conclusion. On the one hand open-source competes and threatens proprietary solutions, but on the other it brings a new opportunity, new challenges, and new directions.
A bit like Anderson Cooper's famous "keeping 'em honest", in the final analysis, the impact of open-source will be a net win for businesses.
Posted by admin at 03:55 PM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2006
Rough Talk About RH
Our friend and heir apparent has chosen to use some rough words to talk about the folks over at the popular Linux distro. And although technically I wouldn't quibble with what he says, why not at least use nicer words, considering all that the freebie technology has done for your business over the last half decade.
Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik suggests that Oracle is feeling the heat because of their recent purchase of JBoss, and IBM has something to say too!
Posted by admin at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2006
Sugar On-Demand
The CEO of phenomenally popular SugarCRM talks with Search Open Source about on-demand CRM, Oracle, and Microsoft. Interesting insights from a man who has built a real business around the open-source technology model, and is finding success in so doing.
Posted by admin at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2006
Dvorak on .NET & Other Comments
John Dvorak has an interesting article over at Market Watch entitled The Microsoft malaise. What caught my eye is his comment on .NET:
He's probably referring to LAMP, the phenomenally popular Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP (or Perl) framework that many websites are now built on.
The .Net framework that many believe is an example of how Microsoft can actually put together elegant and powerful architectures when it wants to, is being killed by Open Source systems that are free and almost just as powerful. Microsoft has been unable to cope with Open Source except to complain about it.
He's probably referring to LAMP the phenomenally popular platform based on Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP.
Posted by admin at 01:54 AM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2006
Business Models & Openness
There's a really great interview with Esther Dyson over at Open Business. She discusses openness as a phenomenon so prevalent on the internet, and how businesses are adapting to that environment.
Posted by admin at 12:10 AM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2006
Security & Source Code
Pete Finnigan recently featured a mention about Scott McNealy's comment about how Open Source is important to solving Security problems. Also it's amusing McNealy's potshot at Oracle, near the bottom of the article.
In affect it's all about auditing of what by whom. The more critical eyes on the code, the more bugs and potential problems that can be solved.
Bruce Schneier has a good discussion of this where he concludes that although Open Source certainly does not guarentee you're going to have better security, it certainly has that potential and tendency.
Posted by admin at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2006
How Disruptive Is Open Source?
Along with the discussion of Open Source technologies is often how disruptive they are to established technologies, and commercial companies.
Open-source continues to loom large for Oracle as their recent shopping spree attests. With Sun's dual-source model it continues to confound entrenched companies how they should deal with open-source, whether it's a fight, mixed, join-em or acquire-em approach. In Joe McKendrick's ZDNet Blog he asks is it SOA or Open-source which is killing the software industry faster?
Although open-source is clearly a factor, and a big one for firms like Sun, there is still much to debate here. Some argue that Open-source innovation remains somewhat elusive. I tend to agree on the whole. Here's why.
I think there are a few different ways open-source projects get started as can be seen in our open-source interviews post a couple of weeks ago.
1. University or government project where public funds fuel the work (think CiviCRM)
2. Starts with a small community building up around a need (think Toad or Apache)
3. Commercial company sponsoring existing project to promote a better market playing field (Google, IBM, Novell)
4. Pet college project which then gains a huge following (Linux)
Of course there's a lot of overlap here, but the point is that there are a lot of starting points. Fame and respect among ones peers is certainly a driver, but leveling the playing field is often just a big a driver, think Firefox, and Linux as serious alternatives to Microsoft offerings.
Innovation is still difficult and startup companies with great ideas still abound to try their hand at building the next great internet platform or application. It will likely continue to be a combination of grassroots open-source projects, and commercial startups that fuel innovation in the future.
Posted by admin at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2006
SCOPE Alliance + Open Standards
A new group called SCOPE has formed including members such as NEC, Nokia, Motorola, Alcatel, Siemens, and Ericsson. It's purpose is to promote open standards using Free and Open Source Software components, as well as commercial off-the-shelf software. Interoperability, and open standards are the key and important words here. Symbian One has an article.
Posted by admin at 02:23 AM | Comments (0)