Matt Raible at Virtuas posted a blog entry yesterday about the possibility that Sun may open-source Java at JavaOne in mid-May. Specifically, Matt wonders if the timing on Jonathan Schwartz’s ascendancy to the CEO role at Sun Microsystems may be a precursor to this announcement.
While I don’t think that that the management announcement at Sun […]

LinuxWorld Magazine has an article by Paul Sterne and Nicholas Herring today on open source investments entitled “The Open Source Venture Capial Universe“. There are some interesting figures in the article that help to paint a picture of the activity, and Matt Asay blogged about this (”Open source VC: Now a good time to invest?“), […]

Of course, right after posting about Compiere’s new corporate infrastructure and potential plans, we learned that CEO LaVonne Reimer has left the company to pursue other endevaors after only a couple months at the post. We wish her well and are sure she will continue to be a part of the community at large. Not […]

Peter Galli at eWeek has written an article, “OpenBRR Launches Closed Open-Source Group“, about a new initiative that Murugan Pal, the CTO of SpikeSource, announced at the Linux on Wall Street Conference this week. The OpenBRR Corporate Community aims to support greater corporate involvement in the Business Readiness Rating effort.
I emailed Murugan to get some […]

As Rachel mentioned in an early post today, the MySQL Users Conference is taking place in Santa Clara, California, this week. The conference web site has a Conference News page if you are interested in checking out the various announcements made at the conference.

JBoss announced the winners of its first annual “JBoss Innovation Awards” today. I thought that was going to be announced at JBoss World in June? I was mistaken - it looks like the ceremony is planned for JBoss World. The early announcement would presumably encourage the winners to attend for the awards ceremony. I was […]

Call center software vendor Aspect Software says it will provide and support the Digium open source internet protocol (IP) PBX, the Asterisk Business Edition – a commercial version of the industry’s first open source IP –PBX – for customers of its Unified and Signature product lines. This news comes as we are seeing not just […]

O’Reilly & Associates is having a crazy busy week. The company’s Make magazine took over San Mateo County Fairgrounds all weekend for its inaugural Maker Faire, featuring the Mythbusters, Segway polo and Satan’s Calliope, a fire-breathing robot. Today’s MySQL user conference (co-presented by O’Reilly) in Santa Clara won’t be quite so Burning Man, but the […]

Just the other day I was officially invited to JBoss World. As I already plan to be in Vegas that week for The 451 Group’s own Software Business Transformation Summit I plan to check out JBoss’ user/developer conference. While we’ve been told to expect keynotes from Microsoft, HP and Unisys executives at the conference, the actual […]

At first blush this looks like good news for open source Sun. Schwartz’s blog has spent the last couple of months talking up standards and free tools like Open Document Format and Grid Engine. (It’s not quite that simple - after the OSBC he reposted a letter from Ning’s Marc Andreessen comparing Solaris on Opteron […]

I’m at the Linux on Wall Street Conference today in New York City. The web site lists the conference as “Linux on Wall Street”, but the show guide prominently displays “Linux/Open Source on Wall Street” - a sign of greater diversity. While the exhibition area is dominated by Linux hardware vendors and the big guys […]

Bill Burke, Chief Architect at JBoss, posted a blog entry this week entitled “Synergies and Cultures” about the Red Hat acquisition and the process of merging two cultures. Take a look.

I’ve been watching Compiere a little more closely lately with a bit of wonder. The company has made some serious moves on both the technology and management fronts in recent weeks, which could seriously affect its operations.
Not much of a fuss was made about the naming of new CEO LaVonne Reimer, but it does bring […]

Pentaho, an open source business intelligence sofware vendor, announced the release of two “Professional Edition” products today - BI Suite and Reporting Server (press release). It seems that the model being used these days looks a lot more like Pentaho than JBoss. Providing an open source product with a complimentary enterprise/pro version is becoming the […]

While at InnoTech in Portland, Oregon, today, I attended the session “Open In Oregon - What does being an Open Technology Mecca mean to the State?“. This panel included many of the people that are working hard to put Oregon on the open source map.

Cheryl Vandemore, Cluster Coordinator, Open in Oregon
Deborah Bryant, GOSCON Director […]

As we’re working our way through the world’s Linux distros - see comments to Raven’s post a few days ago for interesting discussion about Miracle Linux - thoughts of some have turned to Ubuntu. Wonder what Mark Shuttleworth would have to say about that? I think we’ll find out soon enough.
And here’s a good […]

I’m in Portland, Oregon, this week for open source briefings and the InnoTech Conference. Portland has been getting attention as a hub of open source activity, and I don’t just mean as the home of Linus Torvalds. Today, I had meetings at the Open Technology Business Center (OTBC) and Compiere, and had dinner with open […]

In the FT interview mentioned by Raven below Oracle CEO Larry Ellison weighs in on the twin topics of software as a service and the long-term viability, or otherwise of open source business models.

In large part the interview is good old fashion Ellison knock-about in which he takes the opportunity to give both JBOSS and Red Hat a kicking after the the acquisition. However the rough and tumble is interspersed with insightful comments and … to be honest… comments that suggest that Ellison hasn’t thought through all of the issues with regard to open source models.

I like the new product Solid Information Technology announced today - a combination of Solid transactional software with MySQL Server. For MySQL AB, it’s a useful and timely countermeasure against the double threat of Oracle-Innobase and Oracle-Sleepycat. And it’s just in time for the MySQL user conference in Santa Clara next week.

I mentioned that during Linux World Boston I had picked up books from several publishers - another one was Apress, which has just released Beginning Ubuntu Linux: From Novice to Professional by Keir Thomas. It’s an interesting read because it marks a transition from the typical full-blown Linux distro guide to one more similar in […]