Agenda: * Microsoft and Novell extend partnership * Oracle grows support for its own Linux * Open source and commercial questions * Doug Levin leaving Black Duck iTunes or direct download (23:40, 5.4MB)

Google has gotten itself into a little bit of a licensing game again. This time, the company’s open source leader Chris DiBona had to come out and reverse a previous ban of the Mozilla Public License (MPL) from Google Code open source project hosting. The thinking was that MPL represented only a minimal number of [...]

Continuent is probably best known for its database clustering technology for MySQL, as well as PostgreSQL, but the company has for some time had its sights set on expanding beyond open source databases and enabling horizontal database scalability. It has just taken a major step towards delivering on both counts with the launch of Tungsten, [...]

The effects of global warming must be worse than were first thought. Matt Asay has admitted that it makes sense for software vendors to charge upfront license fees. While I am being facetious, the recent post from Matt – titled “the problem with open-source revenue models” – is an interesting insight into the fact that [...]

A couple of articles have been published recently that point to a growing realisation/admission about the role that open source will play in the future of enterprise software. In “The Commercial Bear Hug of Open Source” Dan Woods details the various methods by which open source has become increasingly commercial in recent years, while in [...]

Microsoft is drawing on the humor of Jerry Seinfeld to more effectively counter those ‘I’m a Mac’ ads — not that there’s anything wrong with that. Seinfeld is a funny guy and Microsoft needs something to promote its latest OS. But Jerry Seinfeld? I fear that by drawing on this star of the ’90s, Microsoft [...]

We previously reported on the demise of Qlusters, the former open source systems management firm that handed the development of the openQRM project over to the open source community in April and apparently closed its doors in July. OSTatic offers a reminder that the project lives on via an interview with project manager Matt Rechenburg. [...]

Larry Dignan reports on a coming revolution in software support and maintenance contracts, prompted by Dennis Howlett’s excellent analysis of why the reliance of enterprise software vendors on maintenance revenue is unsustainable. Noting the negative response to recent price rises from Oracle and SAP, Dennis maintains that increasing maintenance costs is unsustainable as it reduces [...]

Canonical, the UK-based company that distributes and supports Ubuntu Linux, has joined the Linux Foundation. The news is not surprising, except for the fact perhaps that Canonical, which oversees development and distribution of the most popular desktop Linux, had not joined until now. I wrote about this when the Linux Foundation announced its board in [...]

A classic Morecambe and Wise comedy sketch from the 1970s sees Andre Previn criticizing Eric for playing all the wrong notes while attempting the Greig Piano Concerto. Morecambe responds that he is in fact “playing all the right notes. But not necessarily in the right order.” I was reminded of the sketch this morning while [...]

Black Duck CEO Doug Levin, who started the software IP scanning company turned software development scanning, search and analysis suite player five and a half years ago, is stepping down as the company’s chief. Levin will continue to serve on the board of directors and will play an advisory role for Black Duck’s new Office [...]

Agenda: * CAOS Report 8 – Community Linux * Linuxworld review * A look at SourceForge * Microsoft’s new database push iTunes or direct download (26:48, 6.1MB)

There was a major open source legal development this week and surprisingly, it did not involve the string of BusyBox lawsuits, which included settlement from mobile and telecom giant Verizon in March 2008. Instead, the latest open source victory involves a federal appeals court ruling that basically upholds the idea and enforcement of ‘copyleft.’ The [...]

I was in San Francisco at the tail-end of last week and was fortunate to have some time to meet up with Josh Berkus, a member of the PostgreSQL core team and, until recently, a Sun employee. Our conversation covered a lot of ground, including his reasons for leaving Sun (he didn’t go into detail [...]

A recent talk I led about community Linux and Ubuntu in the enterprise at LinuxWorld generated some discussion over at Slashdot. I can’t say that I completely agree with the headline, ‘Paid support not critical for Linux adoption.’ Well, not critical to some adoption. If we’re talking about the enterprise, and particularly if we’re talking [...]

Matt Asay writes today about the prospects for open source vendors going public or, more likely, being acquired, and wonders whether open source vendors should “hold out for an IPO” or “capitulate” and be acquired. The latter seems far more likely, especially in the current economic climate. We have written before about the open source [...]

There are certain phrases that we tend to hear a lot from vendors — ‘enterprise-class, best of breed, customer choice,’ etc. However, I was repeatedly hearing somewhat surprising phrases as I made the rounds at LinuxWorld this year: ‘We don’t care, customers don’t care, no one cares …” Don’t get me wrong. Linux and open [...]

IBM, Canonical, Red Hat and Novell have put out an interesting joint release about how they are working together with regional hardware manufacturers to “to deliver Microsoft-free personal computing choices with Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony in the one billion-unit desktop market worldwide by 2009.” In celebration of Linux’s imminent domination of the desktop market [...]

Agenda: * OSCON review * LinuxWorld preview * Red Hat M&A * Who will capture Sun? iTunes or direct download (23:28, 5.4MB)

At the OSI blog Andrew C Oliver discusses the potential for the OSI to “develop standards beyond the current license-centric set of standards known as the ‘Open Source Definition‘” with which to judge the business models of open source vendors. He was responding to this post from Michael DeHaan that defines a list of the [...]