You're an attorney.  You need open source education.  Get it here.
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Blog: The Software Freedom Law Center is offering a free day of open source legal education.  Send your counsel.  This is a must-attend event.
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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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There's a lot of money to be made in open source, both as a shareholder and for the company.
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What happens to open source in a cloud-based computing world?  Or when the enterprise runs dry?
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It couldn't happen to a better set of people. As 'BusinessWeek' reports, MySQL is well on its way to an IPO. The interesting thing is what it's doing to get there. From CNET's Blogs network.
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Blog: Open source renewal rates don't tell the whole story.  The real story is how companies grow their presence within target accounts.
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Microsoft is applying for a patent for an operating system that starts out crippled.  You must pay to do things like take the throttle off network speed, disk access, install drivers, install software, and more.  Trust me, I rarely even visit Groklaw, even if this is my second consecutive blog entry with a link to a Groklaw article. My VarLinux.org readers posted the article, A Brave New Modular World, and I had to share it.
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Blog: Roy Russo argues that open source vendors are monopolies waiting to happen.  Here's why he's wrong.
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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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"Copyright officials recommended on Thursday that U.S. law be amended so that companies that rely on copyright infringement to make a profit can be held liable for their actions."  Which of course applies only to US companies.  Kazaa should be free and clear.  ...  Should have supplied a link.  I'm a BAD blogger!
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Sandro Zic recently gave a presentation on Java and PHP, and posted his slides here. I didn't attend his talk, so I don't have all the facts, but I would like to comment on one of his slides [...]. First, a minor point. Limited or no OOP has rarely stopped any software from being enterprise-ready. Most modern operating systems continue to be written in C, and the large Cobol programs running on mainframes that manage your bank accounts and insurance do not use OOP. [...] Let's address some of his other criticisms: Virtually no multi-threading, Lack of maintenance tools, and Immature frameworks.
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In what may be the first action of its kind in the U.S., the Software Freedom Law Center has filed a lawsuit to enforce an open-source license.
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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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We all have a Mr. Hyde in us. Open source helps to protect the world (and ourselves) from that side.
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One of the proverbial back stories of IT operations has always been the battle between the "suits" and the "techies." From the techie point of view, the hapless but disturbingly powerful suits are the business guys who put more thought into picking out hundred-dollar silk ties at Nordstrom than they put into million-dollar IT decisions. Worse, the suits gravitate towards outsourcing and service firms that implement big-dollar solutions. Many techies start on the other end of the spectrum with free open source solutions that reflect a substantial DIY ethic. Will the twain ever meet?
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In How to sponsor an open source project?, Dave Winer says, I want the OPML Editor to run on Linux... and floats the idea of a bounty for the job.  He's taking comments here. Guidance: I'm looking for ideas, established practices, do's and don'ts for sponsoring an open source project, Dave says.
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There are no guarantees in business -- especially when it comes to getting to the top of the ladder. Wired's How To Wiki gives you career-advancement suggestions that don't involve subterfuge and blackmail. But we can't cover everything ... without your help, so please give us your suggestions, too. It's a wiki, you know.