Differences between European and US adoption of open source
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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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No one is forcing anyone to put their work into the public commons. But, once you do, you need to accept that you no longer can wholly control how it is used. The open-source software world understands this to its benefit.
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(Source: Ingres)  INGRES reveals the truth behind todays open source software and dispels the plethora of myths purported by the closed-source camp. Learn why open source is a viable option for large enterprises and small businesses alike, and understand why its a threat to closed-source vendors' bottom line.
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Educational institutions will increase spending on open-source software and services over the next few years, but that doesn&#39;t mean proprietary software will be left in the dark, according to a new report covering 14 countries.Market research company Datamonitor predicts that primary and secondary schools and universities will spend $489.9 million on open-source software by 2012, up from $286.2 million now.The figure is based on interviews with vendors and school officials in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Australia, India, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Sweden, and Italy, said Justin Davidson, associate analyst at Datamonitor who covers education technology.The spending estimate covers operating systems and learning management systems, such as software used to make webcasts of lectures available online, plus maintenance and support.The figure represents a small portion of the $9 billion overall educational IT spending by those countries, but shows growing interest.&quot;I don&#39;t think we expected it [the figure] to be so much,&quot; Davidson said. Beyond 2012, however, Datamonitor expects open-source spending to flatten.Educators said they&#39;re attracted to open-source software since they feel they have more control over how applications are developed, Davidson said.&quot;Some institutions feel they will get a better return on their investment from open-source software,&quot; he said.Institutions were also aware that although the software licenses are free, maintenance and support can often make open-source offerings just as expensive as proprietary programs, Davidson said.A small minority of schools have opted for open-source for &quot;philosophical&quot; reasons, such as a desire not to give their money to a commercial software company. However, most decisions to use open-source were strategic, he said.Other drivers for choosing open source are increasing government interest. Certain regions in India, as well as the French government, have encouraged schools to use open-source software, especially operating systems, Davidson said.Interest in open-source software also seemed to be prompted by dissatisfaction expressed by some schools with Blackboard, a major provider of enterprise educational software and services, Davidson said.In 2005, Blackboard bought WebCT, another educational software company, for $180 million. Blackboard&#39;s share of the market grew to more than 70 percent, Davidson said. Concerns remain within schools over the dominance of one company in the market, he said.But Blackboard&#39;s software has an appeal for institutions with smaller budgets that can&#39;t fund developers to build their own open-source applications, Davidson said.It shows proprietary and open-source software will complement each other, depending on the needs of the schools, Davidson said.&quot;It&#39;s not the death of proprietary software,&quot; he said.&#160;
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An Indian Institute of Technology professor--and open-source evangelist--discusses the role of Linux and open source in India. By Larry Greenemeier.
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It seems that the proprietary world is doing just fine in the face of open source.  But for how long?
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The Linux operating system is based on source code that is freely shared among developers worldwide. The Free Standards Group is touting the agreement as a milestone in Linux&#39;s march into the mainstream.
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Open-Xchange plans to expand from Europe to the United States--and move many operations too. Also, more components are becoming open-source software.
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More and more open-source developers these days are employees of companies, paid to work on open-source projects, rather than independent programmers doing it for fun. The change raises issues for projects, programmers and employers alike.A number of corporations are moving into the free software arena, and this has resulted in legions of programmers, paid by companies, moving into free software communities, Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems said Friday at FOSS.IN, a conference on free and open-source software in Bangalore, India.This development has thrown up questions about how open-source developers on corporate payrolls can protect their freedom and rights from the demands of their employers, and resist corporate influences that may run counter to the free software community&#39;s interests.At the conference, an employee of an Indian government lab complained that his employment rules require him to turn in to the company any software developed by him, including what is done outside office hours.In this context, Danese Cooper, a member of the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), who also advises Intel on its open source strategy, dedicated an entire session Friday at the FOSS.IN conference to outlining strategies employees can use to protect their autonomy from the &quot;corporate elephant&quot; that is both powerful and resistant to change.Historically, companies claimed rights to any software code written by their employees, but there are some changes, for example in California where employee agreements now allow the employee to retain the right to his work outside office hours, according to Cooper.&quot;Corporations are profit-driven, and are required to do well for their shareholders,&quot; Cooper said. To make profits, companies are going to shift their strategies quarterly, and employees may often find that projects they work on are cancelled, she said.&quot;Companies tend to like to think of their employees as interchangeable plug-ins, that can be renewed in different jobs,&quot; according to Cooper who added that this perception is slowly shifting as companies find that they are losing their employees.Companies also tend to want to manage open source projects, rather than facilitate them, to serve their business objectives, Cooper said. They demand, for example, that their staff work on open-source projects that are of interest to the company. Companies have created a pattern of working that lets them predict how much it is going to cost to do, and when it is going to get done, and though they have to change, it is taking them time to do it, she added.It is a lot harder to make money from offering support on open source software than from licensing software, according to Cooper. That is the reason employees should watch out for companies that have only halfheartedly embraced open source, she said. &quot;You see that specially in companies that throw code over the wall without any resource tree,&quot; she added.&quot;The open-source brand has become so powerful that people are trying to wear the brand, without wearing the behavior that goes with it,&quot; Phipps said.Employees are also likely to get caught up in ownership fights on contributions, on whether the contribution should be recognized on behalf of the employee, or the company. Even when employee contributions are recognized, it may be a figurehead rather than all the contributors that are recognized, Cooper said.The best path ahead for open source developers is to get more assertive when identifying the companies they would like to work with, and in negotiating agreements with companies that protect their rights.Employees should assert, for example, the right to blog and continue to participate in the projects they have been involved with, because these activities give them visibility beyond the company they work with, and also helps them if there is a dispute with an employer, Cooper said. &quot;Having a well-read blog is the best defense you can have against any problems you may encounter,&quot; she added.
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At work we're mostly an OSS shop.  Partly because I have a strong bias towards OSS but cost, reliability, security, etc are all leading factors.  For the last several months now I've been in an interesting position to prove the benefits of OSS in a real-world environment.  We've had to extend a number of OSS tools to fit into our production environment.  These are significant additions and non-trivial.  Open Source allows you to STAND on the shoulders of gods.  For example we've been having a problem with the Jakarta DBCP  connection pool.  It was running out of connections in highly threaded environments and is slow.  Certainly slower than would be necessary.  Long story short.  Last night  ...
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Ziff Davis - Linux and open source are at the heart of today's computing technology. Deal with it.
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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
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InfoWorld - Educational institutions will increase spending on open-source software and services over the next few years, but that doesn't mean proprietary software will be left in the dark, according to a new report covering 14 countries.
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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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Blog: Time to ponder why the U.S. continues to enjoy a big advantage in creating software.
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TechWeb - European businesses that have thus far shied away from Linux might not be more inclined to go open source as a result of the restrictions imposed by the commission.
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The open-source project, still in early stages, is a cross-platform development tool that some are comparing to Java. Support is currently limited to Web applications and command-line tools.