Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker
May 15, 2008
Winning with the family
Last week I learned that Sun has put its 3 database groups (Java DB, MySQL, PostgreSQL) under Marten Mickos. First off, who knew Sun had such a broad database portfolio???? Second, smart move putting them all under Marten. In speaking with Marten's Java DB team I gave them a small nugget of advice that has served us incredibly well with WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE). Simply put win with the strengths of the family, not individual products. I've written about customers wanting choice and flexibility and the challenges of trying to position any product, OSS or not, as... more
TAGS: Open Source
May 15, 2008
Why Fake Steve Jobs is worth reading
Every now and then I wander over to Dan Lyons' Fake Steve Jobs blog. If you haven't you should take a look some time. Whether you think his caricature of Steve Jobs as a tyrianical artiste is funny or not, you may be surprised by the insightful commentary. Personally, I think FSJ is a pretty good satire, but I wouldn't keep reading it if it weren't for how sharp Dan is. As a Forbes Senior Editor, I think Dan can't help analyzing the IT industry even if he occasionally throws in some humor. Recently, FSJ did a great analysis of... more
TAGS: Open Source
May 14, 2008
Is "the community" hurting the OSS business model?
I had an interesting discussion with Marten Mickos at JavaOne last week that I've been meaning to blog about. I was disappointed that MySQL decided to put encryption and compression backup into MySQL Server (GPL license), versus including those features only in MySQL Enterprise (commercial license). Most of you will recall the outrage from "the community" that began when MySQL considered adding these enterprisey features only inside of MySQL Enterprise. I wanted to discuss this situation with Marten. I do not believe that Support and/or Monitoring around an OSS product are viable long term value propositions that will convince users... more
TAGS: Open Source
May 14, 2008
Is Apple eating into Vista?
Interesting to note that Apple recently posted 51% growth year-over-year in their computer business. While Apple still has a modest 6% market share in the computer business according to IDC, that's double what it was a few years ago. Under Steve Jobs, Apple has defied analyst predictions who left the company for dead years back. For open source developers, the recent growth of the Mac may be less of a surprise. I've noted for several years that open source developer conferences appear to be a sea of Apple laptops. (Not that Apple's OS is open source, but it's based on... more
TAGS: Apple
May 12, 2008
Marc Fleury's next project?
Marc Fleury, founder of JBoss and former open source bad boy posted an intriguing update saying he's hanging out with Digium co-founder Mark Spencer, who is now CTO. Who knows what they're up to, but I have a sense it's more than just ATV riding. When I last met Mark at the Open Source Goat Rodeo he said he was completely done and had no interest in getting back into business again. And then he immediately described an interesting project he was working on. So who knows. In Marc's own words, he says he's too smart to try it again.... more
TAGS: Open Source
May 12, 2008
SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards
SourceForge.net is opening up its awards program to all open source projects this year for the first time (vs. only projects at SourceForge.net). The open nominations period runs until the middle of June. Finalists will be announced and voting will commence. The awards party will be OSCON in Portland, July 24th. Categories include: Best Project overall Best New Project Best Project for the Enterprise Best Project for Gamers Best Technical Design Best User Support Get involved and nominate the projects you want to see recognized! PS: Kudos to Microsoft for being the "Diamond Partner" for the program. PPS: I should... more
TAGS: Open Source
May 09, 2008
Questioning Josh Berkus on how to encourage a community
Like Zack, I too enjoyed Josh Berkus' tongue in cheek session on how to destroy a community. Josh provided an anti-list for those who would like to encourage a community as follows: Familiar tools Discourage poisonous people Document everything Accessible online meetings Minimize legalese Expert liaison Governance simplification Treat licenses with respect Promote outside committer Communicate (Source: Josh Berkus as best as I can remember his list from my chicken scratch notes - Used under Creative Commons License) However, I'd like to respectfully disagree with Josh's patent-pending list. I'll going to go out on a limb and suggest that Josh's... more
TAGS: Open Source
May 09, 2008
Java One: diversity and freedom
While this was by no means my first Java One conference, I had not attended in the last four years. Just as the market has changed, so has Java One. Two observations struck me about the conference: it's more diverse than ever and secondly, there's a lot more emphasis on freedom. In terms of diversity, Java One has now become much more interesting to programmers using a wider variety of languages. In the past, Sun had been critical of scripting languages, missing out on much of the growth of web application development. That's changed with the broad availability of languages... more
TAGS: Open Source
May 08, 2008
Borland sells CodeGear to Embarcadero for $23 million
After more than two years, Borland has finally sold its CodeGear division to Embarcadero a database tools company for a mere $23 million. It's a sad ending to one of the great software companies of the 1980s and 1990s. And it shows just how badly a company can suffer when it misses out on major shifts in technology or business. Borland's developer tools, including Delphi, JBuilder and C++ defined the state of the art Integrated Development Environment (IDE) since the company's early days with Turbo Pascal. OK, maybe I am being sentimental; I worked at Borland in the 1990s and... more
TAGS: Open Source
May 07, 2008
Josh Berkus on how to destroy a community
It's been interesting to see a large number of non-technical open source presentations at Java One this year. It's a sign that indicates that not only has Sun embraced open source, but they are also attracting a new audience that is interested in open source. It's not quite OSCON, but it's definitely a more diverse audience than just a few years ago. Josh Berkus, Sun Community guy, gave a tongue in cheek discussion about how to destroy your community. He made the point that many companies that start to adopt open source like the licensing model and the distribution mechanism,... more
TAGS: Open Source
May 06, 2008
Ever wanted to create a Blu-ray disc?
I'm sitting here beside Sun's A. Sundararajan before the JavaOne keynote starts. He is one of the core developers on Sun's HDcookbook project. I didn't know this, but all of our Blu-ray players have a J2ME JVM inside. So, if you want to create a Blu-ray disc, you'll need to write some Java code. A. Sundararajan and team are tying to make this easier by offering libraries and tooling for developers. It's all under the BSD license, so have at it. Apparently Canada's Neil Young is here at JavaOne to make an announcement about Blu-ray... Captain Canada over and out.... more
TAGS: Open Source
May 06, 2008
Fortune's 20 most profitable tech companies
A friend sent this to me...thought I'd share the list. Funny how vendors like Xerox, TI or even "MEMC Electronic Materials" (seriously, who are they??) get virtually no attention compared to the Yahoo's & EBay's of the world. Microsoft: $14.1B IBM: $10.4B Cisco: $7.3B HP: $7.3B Intel: $7B Oracle: $4.3B Google: $4.2B Apple: $3.5B Qualcomm: $3.3B Dell: $2.9B Texas Instruments: $2.7B Corning: $2.2B Applied Materials: $1.7B EMC: $1.7B Xerox: $1.1B MEMC Electronic Materials: $0.826B Nvidia: $0.798B Adobe: $0.724B EDS: $0.716B Lam Research: $0.686B PS: I should state: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s... more
TAGS: IT
May 06, 2008
RedMonk's 2nd annual unconference rocked
I learned too much from the audience at last year's RedMonk Unconference at CommunityOne last year to not attend this year. I got there a little later in the day, so I missed some of the early sessions, especially on TaskTop ;-( The discussion on Cloud Computing was very well attended and nearly everyone at the table contributed. Interestingly enough the discussion centered on the security of data that lives in a cloud. Someone from the audience made a comment to the effect: "the biggest issue isn't multi-tenancy, it's data concurrency; it’s your data sitting next to someone else’s". Atlassian's... more
TAGS: Software
May 05, 2008
Un-Conferences at Community One
Before kicking off Java One this week in San Francisco, Sun held their second Community One conference, pulling in several thousand developers for a free technical conference. While there was a large keynotes in the morning featuring Ian Murdock of Debian fame and Rich Green, head of Software at Sun, the real appeal was in the smaller sessions throughout the day. In many ways, Community One was not a single conference, but rather a gathering of mutliple different conferences (and un-conferences) under one roof. There was RedMonk's un-conference which covered topics ranging from business models, to Twitter best practices. There... more
TAGS: Open Source
May 01, 2008
3G iPhone?
Sorry if I'm a bit iPhone obsessed lately. But what the heck. Since my buddy Joe seemed to know all about the iPhone 3G release, I figured I'd share what I learned from him and from a bit of web research. Looks like the new iPhone is slated for release in June and will include a new firmware upgrade 2.0 as well as some new capabilities from the Infineon SGOLD3H 3G chipset including 3G support, the possibility of a 5 megapixel camera, video recording and playback, FM radio and a capuccino maker. Ok, I'm kidding about the capuccino maker. And... more
TAGS: Apple
April 30, 2008
Categorizing OSS customers
I've been thinking about this statement from Sun/MySQL's Marten Mickos: "There's a difference between organizations that have more time than money and organizations that have more money than time." I coming to realize that OSS users split into three, not two, categories: A] An organization that has more time than money B] An organization that has more money than time but is used to getting what they need for free and is comfortable enough with OSS to rely on their own skills C] An organization that has more money than time While Marten has grouped categories "B" and "C", I... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 29, 2008
McKinsey releases 2008 Enterprise Software Survey
Via Nick Carr's posting today. The McKinsey survey suggests: The software industry technology innovations of the past 2-3 years are nothing compared to new technologies we're about to see This innovation is likely driven by SaaS/PaaS and Web Services/SOA with 31% and 25% of respondents selecting them as the most important trend impacting their business. Open source received 8% of the votes from 857 respondents, just above 7% for "Software industry consolidation" Currently 65% of software spending is through traditional license/maintenance models, with 19% coming from subscription/on-demand. These figures are "expected" to shift to 58% & 21% respectively by 2009.... more
TAGS: Software
April 29, 2008
Ziphone your iPhone
As soon as I told my buddy Joe I had borrowed an iPod Touch, he asked me whether I had unlocked it. Hey, it's a Touch, not an iPhone. He told me about an open source application called Ziphone that enables you to unlock any iPhone or iPod Touch in order to install custom applications. Joe's a closet geek, so he had installed an assortment of apps including a Chess game, several productivity apps and probably a hex-editor on his iPhone. In fact, in the course of a two hour party, I ran into at least three other people who... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 28, 2008
Guerrilla IT? Sounds like open source
Dan Tynan wrote a great story in InfoWorld recently about Guerrilla IT and how to leverage it by empowering your super users and implementing ways for folks to collaborate and share best practices. I couldn't help but think how so many good innovations have snuck into IT through the back door, the side door and under the radar of what management officially approved. Consider in the early days that lots of CIOs didn't want to have to deal with PCs or Macintoshes. So departments just approved the expense themselves and that's how killer apps like Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3 and Aldus... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 28, 2008
Black Duck Acquires Koders
In a move that makes perfect sense, Black Duck Software acquired Koders. Most of you know Black Duck as a company that helps businesses manage the legal risks around using OSS inside of their company or product. In many cases, Black Duck really helps managers and corporate lawyers get a handle on just how much OSS is being utilized at their company. According to Black Duck, "...for example in technology M&A, where from 2005-2007 Black Duck products and services were used for due diligence of transactions with a total value exceeding $30 Billion." That's a shockingly high figure. Wow. Kudos... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 25, 2008
Tidbits on Amazon's Web Services business
This Wired story has some very interesting comments on Amazon's Web Services (AWS) business. The first point was news to me: "And the idea that AWS is mostly about wringing extra bucks (especially off-season) out of Amazon's data centers? "We've far exceeded the excess capacity of our internal system," Amazon's Jassy says. "That ship sailed 18 months ago." .... "I'd be surprised if no one else does this," Bezos says, pausing for effect. "It's a really good idea!" And there may be an ace up his sleeve. Any economist will tell you that a commodity business — storing and processing... more
TAGS: Infrastructure
April 25, 2008
Trying out the iPod Touch
A buddy of mine just upgraded to an iPhone so he lent me his old iPod Touch to try out. I used it at the MySQL Conference along with my Palm Centro chick-phone to see if I could get away without dragging my laptop everywhere. And if I was successful, then I'd upgrade to an iPhone myself. I must admit, I was more impressed with hands-on use of the iPod Touch than I expected. It's small enough and light enough that you barely notice it in a jacket or pants pocket. And despite the small screen, the browsing experience via... more
TAGS: Apple
April 23, 2008
Snaplogic's latest update
SnapLogic has done some interesting work in their latest release being announced this week at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. Their focus is on providing a simple approach to integration that is not unlike using RSS for data. It's a cool concept and one worth looking into. There's also a growing number of snaplogic components and connectors (they call them pipelines) available at www.snaplogic.org. For example, there are pre-built components for integrating Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Quickbooks and Excel. It's a good start and it will be interesting to see what else SnapLogic and its community create. Of course, Snaplogic... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 22, 2008
Clipperz, zero-knowledge apps, cloud computing and SaaS
Marco Barulli from Clipperz reached out to introduce their online password-manager. I'd been looking for a good solution for some time now. While their Password manager seems pretty cool, especially the Direct Logins feature, I'm more intrigued by how Marco and team will apply this technology to other areas. Clipperz had originally used the term "zero-knowledge web application" to describe Clipperz's approach to managing sensitive data via/over the Internet: "We simply meant that Clipperz knows nothing about its users and their data!" It appears that the term "zero-knowledge" has a previous meaning, but I can't think of a better term... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 21, 2008
Zenoss grows customer base and sets up shop in Austin
Mark Hinkle, VP of Business & Community Development at Zenoss reached out to bring me up to speed on Zenoss. Zenoss provides software for network, server and application management. Zenoss Core is a community offering licensed under the GPLv2. Customers can purchase support around Zenoss Core, or purchase Zenoss Enterprise Edition, available under a commercial license. Zenoss also has specialized offerings for xSPs that need to manage hundreds/thousands of clients. Zenoss announced the following news today: Added 32 new paying enterprise customers in 1Q08 Counts over 100 paying enterprise customers including SugarCRM, Rackspace, Disney, Georgia Tech & Instinet Over 3,500... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 21, 2008
RedMonk's unconference at Java One
RedMonk, the analyst firm that seems to have the best understanding of developers in my book, is hosting an unconference at JavaOne. This will be held in conjunction with the overall Community One event on Monday May 5th in San Francisco. More info about RedMonk's Unconference is available on the wiki. And you can register for Community Oneonline. Of course, there's not much of an agenda at this point; that will be determined largely by the participants. But presumably Michael Coté, James Governor and Stephen O'Grady will be on hand. Hope to see many of you there...... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 20, 2008
WaveMaker is a very cool visual AJAX tool
Chris Keene of WakeMaker reached out to me in response to my Freetard post. Since then, I've been reading his blog and have learned a thing or two about his thoughts on Web 2.0 and why WaveMaker is addressing the market in the way they are. Chris writes: "Applications are like meteorites - they never migrate, they just land and stick. ... The real power of Web 2.0 lies not in modernizing legacy client/server applications, but in modernizing the skill sets of client/server developers. If an app was built in VB or MS Access and it works, leave it there.... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 16, 2008
Get your software counted in the Open Source Census
Just read about the launch of "The Open Source Census". This is the next step in OpenLogic's efforts to get a better sense of which OSS products are actually used in enterprises. Until now, the OSS product usage data we've seen has been from surveys of people who likely don't know the extent of OSS usage across their company. So, time for you all to participate: Start here Take inventory of OSS packages installed Upload the results (anonymously) to The Open Source Census Review the consolidated results from others The results so far: 231 machines have been scanned and a... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 16, 2008
When does a product become a platform?
At the MySQL Conference and Expo this week, we've seen new storage engines popping out of the woodwork and it caused me to wonder at what point MySQL went from being a product to a platform. From a technical perspective, you could argue that MySQL has always (e.g. for at least 5 years!) been a platform, since it's enabled plug-in features and storage engines since the early days. Heck, Arjen wrote about it back in 2004! The pluggable storage engine API become increasingly important in recent years as people began extending MySQL in many different directions. The virtue of the... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 16, 2008
MySQL Conference kicks off
This week is the annual MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara and I'm happy to report that we have hit record numbers with more exhibitors (over 50) and more attendees (over 2,000) than ever before. Monday was primarily tutorials as well as our Customer Advisory Board and partner meetings. Those are great sessions as we get tons of input from bleeding edge customers including some of the world's largest web sites, retailers, telecommunications customers and software ISVs and OEMs who embed MySQL. It's a "no BS zone" in that we have product management and lots of developers there to... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 16, 2008
Dude, where’s my $60B?
Dave's writes about a new report from Standish Group that claims: FOSS is costing traditional vendors $60B in annual revenues. Having spent 4+ years doing market forecasts, I can think of two key methodologies that Standish used to come up with the $60B figure. Option A: [1a] Only count revenue that OSS vendors (and products) are generating from the sale of product licenses and/or subscription contracts...i.e. $X [2a] Use an uplift factor, y, to account for total revenue lost (license, services and maybe hardware) .i.e. $Xy [3a] Add up all the $Xy figures and the result is $60B If Standish... more
TAGS: Open Source
April 16, 2008
Compiere releases V3.0 of its open source ERP package
Compiere just released version 3.0 of its namesake product with "well over 150 improvements". If you're not familiar with Compiere (hey, how many of us purchase ERP products), think of Compiere as an open source alternative to SAP or Oracle's applications. Judging by a quick look at their product line and Compiere's customer success stories, Compiere is squarely targeted at the SMB customer segment. As such, this would put Compiere up against Microsoft, more than it would against SAP or Oracle. Compiere offers 3 editions, a free "Community Edition", a "Standard Edition" priced at $25/user/month and a "Professional Edition" priced... more
TAGS: Open Source
