Open source makes noise
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Developers forum looks at Linux for the disabled. Also: Microsoft chided for ad campaign.
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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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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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As companies ramp up open-source deployments, expertise is in high demand and short supply. The costs of developing talent can add up.
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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: Open source is not up to each individual to define.  It's up to the community, and the community has traditionally delivered its verdict on licenses through the OSI.  CentricCRM has given no good reasons for this to change.
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Blog: Those who consider acquiring an open source company must be careful not to upset the associated open source community.  Is there such thing as a hostile takeover in open source?
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By its very nature, open-source software would appear to run counter to the goals of venture capitalists. Not only is it distributed and developed for free by a loose-knit group of techies from around the
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The worlds of Open Source and proprietary software have collided once more with the news that Debian - builder of a version of the GNU/Linux operating system - announcing it cannot live with the terms of Microsoft&#39;s licence for its technology in the
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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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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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Back in February, Ralph Green asked me to speak at the North Texas Linux Users' Group. I discussed Linux administration and then took questions. Some one in the audience asked me about Mono. I gave a cavalier answer having a bias against it. Then someone else in the audience said that I needed to get my facts straight.
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In open-source software and new media, there's big money in unpaid labor
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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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Travelers on the road from proprietary to open source software won&#39;t be driving on an Interstate. Enterprise open source deployments are still uncommon enough that companies
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Ziff Davis - Opinion: Open-source software development may not be easy, and no one likes to air their dirty laundry, but in the end, it's the smartest way to make software.
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'Open source' means lots of people and resources can help, but here's a reference for both beginners and the experienced.