Shifts and shake-ups in open source
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MySQL developers turn to an unlikely source for database tool: Microsoft. Also: SGI visualizes Linux, and the return of Java veteran Kim Polese.
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Open Source methodology has gained some ground in one of the last places you and I might expect: In the development area of corporations. Consultants are calling environments like Sourceforge Enterprise Edition a Digital Development Environment.
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Travis Swicegood is teasing us with some output from a script in his latest blog post:   So my free time of late (what there is of it) has been spent on a project that's getting really close to v0.1 release. In other words, its first functional release. If you've ever run a test using the PEAR installer or know what a .phpt file looks like, you might be able to guess what I've been up.   Keep an eye on his blog for more information on his "secret project".
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It's not every day that the entire technical press goes bonkers over news in the open source world, but that's what happened last week, when Sun announced that it was buying MySQL.  Doubtless, the pleasant roundness of the sum involved - $1 billion â helped, as did the fact that most of that was cash.  But leaving aside the sense of satisfaction that events in the free software world should be suddenly thrust centre-stage, Sun's move does raise a larger question about the fate of all open source start-ups. read more
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Sometimes developers just don't think about how much trouble they'd cause with a rewrite of existing software. They think that moving up to the latest and greatest is the way to go, and that it makes perfect sense to say out with the old and in with the new. Aaron Wormus disagrees. Well, sometimes - it depends on the circumstances, really.   At ZendCon I talked about "Planning a PHP 4 to PHP 5 codebase rewrite, a practical approach". The talk was based on my own experience, as well as famous discussion of the topic such as Joel Spolsky's "Things you should never do" and the examination of "famous" platform rewrites.   Aaron gives an example of a large company making a move from a COBOL system out to C for a mission critical system. Based on his tale, they didn't put the thought needed into making this move - new development time, keeping old developers on staff, etc - besides the fact that customers don't like change and making a move to another platform is almost definitely going to be noticed by them.
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I have an observation I'd like to disclose about the Open Source community: we tend to leap into all kinds of things before we have all the facts and/or information necessary to make intelligent decisions. We criticize other communities, laugh at things like directory services from the two major NOS players, talk about all our great applications, etc. we hang on to old notions about a what makes Linux tick. Sorry, but that model Eric doesn't fit any more. The community natter appears to come mostly from people who lack deep technical skills and knowledge of enterprises.
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Not my bag, baby The news that the operations chief from a major US airline, Jim Whitehurst from Delta, is taking over at Red Hat from Matthew Szulik is a further sign of the growing legitimization of open source and Linux in the eyes of corporate, mainstream America. It underscores how the âsuits to sandalsâ ratio in the open source and Linux movement sliding further towards the suits.â¦
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OCTOBER 18, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - The biggest challenge for the open-source community is that there are too few open-source developers, according to Michael Tiemann, vice president of open-source affairs at Red Hat Inc.
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Like many, I was pretty shocked by the recent Microsoft-EU deal to settle the long-running investigation into interoperability issues.  This was not so much because of the way Microsoft has used every kind of delaying tactic it could before eventually agreeing (for the nth time) to try harder in the future.  My real dismay was provoked by the gap between appearance and reality â a chasm that I think bodes ill for the future of open source. read more
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TechWeb - Open source projects can flounder without strong leadership. JBoss' new team must keep that from happening.
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People are people, sang Depeche Mode.  But people adopt open source in very different ways, as I've seen at Alfresco.
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Three Illuminata research notes take a look at some of the intersections between cloud computing, the way operating systems are designed, and open source.
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Open source has many good uses.  Beating up one's competitors shouldn't be the primary one.
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Red Hat Inc.'s woes this week raise the issue of whether IT investors are turning sour on open source. A somewhat disappointing forecast for the next quarter has investors fleeing, just as they have from the company's open-source rival, Novell Inc.
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Self assembly Open source is moving beyond the real worlds of business and consumer systems into the more experimental sphere of personal gadgetry.â¦
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Nat Torkington stirred up some controversy when he asked, "Is 'Open Source' Now Completely Meaningless?" He has a good point, however. With so many companies claiming to be "open source" -- despite seemingly disparate business models and licensing schemes -- it's getting hard to tell what is legitimate open source and what isn't. The mere fact that so many voices have begun to weigh in on the issue is proof of how murky these waters have become.
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InfoWorld - SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- Accommodating large patch sets in Linux is expected to mean forking off of the 2.7 version of the platform to accommodate these changes, according to Andrew Morton, lead maintainer of the Linux kernel for Open Source Development Labs (OSDL).