Should "open source" include open data?
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Open source is increasingly meaningless if the data it manages isn't open, too.  Should the Open Source Definition be expanded to include data provisions?
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It's not so much that there aren't workable business models around Open Source. But life is so much easier when those models can include pieces that people have to pay for as well.
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One great way to determine whether your digital product is destined for greatness is how many people want to steal it. The same goes for open source.
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No one would have believed me if I had said five years ago that Microsoft would have a page on its Web site called âOpen Source at Microsoftâ with the following remarkably sane and reasonable statement on the subject: Microsoft is focused on helping customers and partners succeed in a heterogeneous technology world. This starts with participating and contributing to a broad range of choices for developing and deploying software, including open source approaches and applications. From thousands of lines of code and scripts on MSDN and TechNet, to open source applications like IronPython, ASP.NET AJAX, SharePoint Learning Kit, and WiX on CodePlex and SourceForge, Microsoft is continually growing the number of products released with open source access.  That's right: Microsoft has released not one but several pieces of code as open source.  Moreover, it's submitting some of its home-grown licences to the Open Source Initiative  for approval.  So what is going on here?
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(InfoWorld) - A new U.K. think tank launched on Monday will analyze how open-source software can be used in government and the private sector. The National Open Center, based in Birmingham, England, will be composed of working groups that will study open-source issues, such as the use of standards and procurement guidelines, said Ed Downs, of the National Computing Center, a professional IT membership organization. Unlike other European countries, the U.K. lacked an organization dedicated to studying open-source software, he said. "If open source and open standards can make a contribution, that's what we want to do," Downs said. Many of the innovations on the Internet would not have been possible without open-source softwareÂ like the Apache Web server, said Scott Thompson, one of the founders of the National Open Center. Companies like GoogleÂ and Yahoo use open source to drive down their software costs, he said. Open source helps avoid such trapsÂ as vendor lock-in and higher costs associated with proprietary software, he said. But using open source is fraught with risks as well as opportunities. Many public sector agencies are ignorant about open source, and misguided procurement policies have complicated open-source implementations, said John Pugh, a member of Parliament. Some open-source companies have also struggled in selling their products and services, while their continued viability has been sometimes questionable, Pugh said. The politics around open-source software are bitter, he said. "Open source has enemies, and its enemies are very, very close to government," Pugh said. MicrosoftÂ believes organizations don't care whether their software is open source or proprietary as long as it's the best product, said Jerry Fishenden, the company's U.K. national technology officer, who attended the launch. About 5 percent of the total IT spend in the U.K. is actually on the software itself with the rest comprised of consulting fees, system integration costs, and more, Fishenden said. Those costs are where organizations could make significant savings, he said. Â
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There's a lot of money to be made in open source, both as a shareholder and for the company.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Data integration will be one of the major themes at Oracle's OpenWorld conference this week.Â
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Russ asks: Where's the OpenSocial container API? I love Russ because he cuts through all the BS and gets right to the core, most basic question, and he doesn't care who he pisses off. That's my kind of developer. You can't lie to the compiler, when the bits hit the road, you gotta know what garbage goes in and what garbage comes out.  (Ahh programmer's humor!) In other words, suppose I wanted to compete with Google, MySpace, Plaxo and LinkedIn, well, where's the spec that shows me how to do that? Well, of course I don't know, they aren't communicating with riffraff like me, but I have some experience with this kind of stuff, so I can hazard a guess. If they publish a spec,all kinds of projects will likely get started to enable the API in (just for the sake of argument): Drupal, WordPress, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Scripting News (why not add widgets to a random blog), CNN, The New York Times, well you get the idea. There might be lots of implementations very quickly. And that would be it for changes. It would be frozen de facto, they'd have to live with what they have, which given how quickly it was thrown together, probably isn't very good. Not the kind of stuff you'd like to support for the next decade or two. Or maybe they would break everyone, something guaranteed to make them a lot of enemies, much the way Microsoft did, and they were good at migration of APIs.  Google is good at doing AJAXy web UIs, they make users happy, but they're not very good at APIs. This one is a loser, for sure. That's the answer to Russ's question. It's probably not malice that keeps them from releasing details to everyone outside their club, it's pragmatism. They have to try to hold on to it to keep it from becoming even more of a mess than it already is. Just my opinion, for what it's worth. I've been wrong many times before.
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Open source vendor OpenLogic is today kicking off a new industry initiative meant to help both users and software companies find out precisely what kinds of open source software is being used -- and who is using it.
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Hewlett-Packard&#39;s recent announcement regarding a pair of free and open source software projects has irked one of its co-sponsors, OpenLogic.FOSSology is a tool for tracking the use of open source software in an enterprise, and is based on technology developed in-house at HP, the company has said. FOSSBazaar is an accompanying Web site housing best practices and other information concerning FOSS governance.OpenLogic&#39;s CEO, Steven Grandchamp, said in a blog post Tuesday that HP&#39;s media release essentially hogged the limelight, downplaying the fact that many other companies are backing FOSSBazaar, including Google and Novell.&quot;Although this initiative was started and led by HP, it is designed to be backed and supported by many in the open source ecosystem,&quot; he wrote. &quot;Just as no single member of a large open source community would claim responsibility for all the results, FOSSBazaar will need to follow these same open source community norms. In HP&#39;s desire to talk about their leadership on FOSSBazaar, they may have lost sight of the open and community aspects.&quot;In addition, the HP announcement mixed together news of the free information housed at FOSSBazaar and&#160;the&#160;company&#39;s&#160;new set of commercial services, he noted. &quot;Those details of HP&#39;s open source services may have been better left for a different forum or separate press release.&quot;Grandchamp also said he has received phone calls and e-mail regarding whether HP is now competing with OpenLogic, which makes a tool called OSS Discovery.Describing the two tools as &quot;complementary,&quot; he wrote, &quot;OSS Discovery can be used to discover which open source packages are installed on your machines (providing package names and versions), regardless of license. FOSSology can be used to search for open source licenses in a set of source or binary code.&quot;But Grandchamp extended an olive branch to HP even as he chided its actions. &quot;Bottom line, we think that FOSSBazaar can be a valuable resource for enterprises, despite some confusion around the announcement. Our intention is to work with all of the participants in FOSSBazaar to ensure that it is a valuable resource helping enterprises to become more knowledgeable about open source governance issues and therefore more comfortable in using open source software.&quot;HP could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.
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The Story: What?s in a name? Back in the days of the Gingrich revolution, the nastiest label you could pin on a politician was ?liberal.? And now that open source has become an essential technology, the quickest way to get a rise out of an open source executive (and to get flamed on dozens of blogs) is to say his or her company is ?commercial.?[ Slideshow: 2007's top underreported tech stories ]                                                    No matter what you call them, open source companies have been steadily integrating parts of the hated commercial software subscription model into their business. First it was support, and now it is software access. Say it ain?t so, Linus.MySQL, for example, will charge users of its enterprise edition to use the code, not just for support as has been the traditional open source business model. ?We are looking for ways to extend our offerings in a way that can be monetized,? bluntly says Kaj Arno, the company?s VP for community.Chander Kant, founder of the open source storage software company Zmanda, is likewise frank about the need to drive revenue. Speaking of the open source community as a whole, he says, ?We are not a charity. We need to monetize.?Recognizing that charging to use open source software flies in the face of the original open source premise of freely sharable code open to everyone, Arno is quick to note that the paid version of Workbench has code and features not found in the free version ? and that the free version ?is not crippled.? Arno calls the move an experiment, and acknowledges that MySQL needs to move carefully to avoid upsetting the often quick-tempered open source community.Is this a trend? Red Monk analyst Stephen O?Grady says it is: ?Ultimately when you look at a high-profile firm like MySQL embracing it, it?s difficult to conclude anything else.?InfoWorld blogger (and IBM employee) Savio Rodrigues notes another example. In a recent blog post, he looked at changes to JBoss since it was purchased by Red Hat Software and concluded: ?The Fedora/JBoss subscription is just like the software subscription business model that commercial software vendors have been using for decades.?Does that mean a company that adopts the usage-based pricing model isn?t really open-source? That?s an interesting point, since as Zmanda?s Kant acknowledges, ?the litmus test of open source is control of the code.? Open source software delivered through appliances keeps the access ? and thus control ? away from users, he notes. But code binaries distributed as software remain open to their users ? for now, at least.The Bottom Line: Have MySQL and Red Hat run away from the principles of open source? Who cares. The real point is that the open source business model is evolving away from the ?free? model and toward an alternative development approach for commercial software. If you adopted open source due to its cost, you may not save as much as you thought. If you adopted open source for the access to source code or the community-supported development approach that is supposed to result in better software, it?s not yet clear if the greater commercialization will enhance those aspects or drive away the true believers and make open source no different than the old-fashioned commercial offerings.Complete list of 2007 underreported stories: 1.? Java is becoming the new Cobol 2.? Sun Microsystems is back in the game 3.? Hackers take aim at Mac OS X 4.? There are some threats you can worry less about 5.? Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits 6.? Open source?s new commercial strategy 7.? End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives 8.? Blade servers arrive for the masses 9.? BI is dead; long live BI 10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
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Some are questioning the fit between the two companies from the perspective of open-source tools and APIs.
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Most out there enjoy hacking around on scripts, sometimes altering others' Open Source code to meet their needs. What happens, though, if you decide to make that step and jump out with your own Open Source project? How can you do it? What resources do you need? Well, this new article (via a link from PHPKitchen) can give you all of the answers and more.
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The company is shipping the open-source database for Linux and Windows to revive its usage. By Darrell Dunn. Computer Associates on Monday will take the next step in its open-source strategy with the announcement
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Blog: Open source applications will drive a hefty load of infrastructure purchases in the future.  Proprietary vendors who hide their heads in the sand and try to avoid this trend or make it difficult for would-be open source partners to work with them will fin
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Blog: It's true that open-source applications and infrastructure don't necessarily play well together today, as Microsoft suggests.  But it's also true that more than enough integration is in place for current market demand.
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This is the question posed by Will Hurley of BMC.  After chatting with him today about life, the upcoming elections, and the open source community in general, I decided that I am pretty curious about how to answer that question myself. read more