I like to write a Halloween-theme article or blog every year, and this year, there is no shortage of costuming and character portrayal from vendors turning up in places you’d never expect them. The free operating system vendor? That would be Red Hat or Novell with Linux, right? Oh wait, behind that Azure mask is [...]

Sun and Sourcefire report Q3 results. SpringSource elected to JCP executive committee. Alfresco launches Enterprise 3.0. How to go from 0 to 700 customers in one year. Open sourcing Jonathan Schwartz’s ponytail. And more.

Motorola is reportedly trimming its work force, something that would not normally be particularly notable given the company’s stiff competition from Research in Motion (RIM), Apple’s iPhone and others, as well as the difficult economy. However, according to a Wall Street Journal report, Motorola is also narrowing its focus to the Linux-based, Google Android OS. [...]

I’m still trying to catch up on all the open source-related news I missed during my recent absence. One company that was busier than most in that period was SpringSource, which announced a new maintenance policy, senior executive appointment, partnerships, product releases and growth indicators. The executive appointment saw Rob Bearden joining the team as [...]

Actuate and Black Duck report on third quarter performance. Red Hat welcomes Microsoft to AMQP. Canonial launches Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop Edition. How to pronounce my surname. And more.

One of the criticisms I have seen out in the blogosphere of our recently released report “Open Source is Not a Business Model” is that it overlooks a group of vendors for which pure open source is providing a tidy revenue stream. The comments go along the lines of “what about the consultants I/my friends/relations [...]

Topics for this podcast: -GOSCON and government adoption of open source – Paglo uses search, SaaS and open source for IT management – Engine Yard rides Ruby on Rails for Web application development – Our latest long report, CAOS 9 – Open source is not a business model iTunes or direct download (28:04, 6.5 MB)

Sun expects heavy losses as equity firm ups its stake beyond 20%. The Linux Foundation says Fedora is worth $10.8bn. Red Hat open sources JBoss Operations Network. Will open source survive the economy unscathed? And more.

Click to view today’s 451 CAOS Links.

Matt Asay has an interesting post today on how its getting harder to distinguish between open source and SaaS which reminded me of the presentation I was scheduled to give at a recent SugarCRM event in London. Due to illness I was forced to cancel my appearance (and it’s a good job I did as [...]

As always, the Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON) in Portland, Oreg. provided some fascinating discussion about how governments across the country and across the globe are using open source and how they want to use more of it. The fourth year of the event that brings public servants together with project and thought leaders of [...]

What happens between a company announcing its intention to license its code using an open source license and the resulting project being launched? Mostly the answer involves a whole lot of legal discussions as the intellectual property and licensing issues are ironed out and the processes and structures are put in place to support the [...]

Microsoft continued its moves to make its Windows OS and other software more supportive and integrated with open source last week, releasing Web Application Installer software to facilitate development and use of popular Web applications, including open source software such as DotNetNuke web application framework, Drupal content management software, osCommerce e-commerce software and WordPress blogging [...]

The figures originally reported here were preliminary and have been revised for a formal CAOS report to be published in the first half of 2009. In the interests of accuracy this data has now been removed. For a full assessment of VC funding in 2008 see this post.

VentureBeat and OStatic are among the news source reporting the launch of Cloudera a new vendor set up to provide support for Apache Hadoop and related projects. Given the current economic outlook it’s great to see a new open source start-up rearing its head, and the list of founders indicates that this one has a [...]

I recently had a discussion with Canonical Director of Product Marketing Gerry Carr, with whom I speak fairly regularly about the company’s Ubuntu OS development and business. Gerry’s pretty patient with my persistent hounding about, ‘Where’s the Dell server deal?” I know I’m not the only one who’s asking, still I have yet to sense [...]

(Or “the return of 451 CAOS Links“) Having been a bit busy for the last three weeks I have a bit of catching up to do on the latest open source software news. Here’s the headlines that caught my eye. MySQL co-founder resigns from Sun No, not that one. David Axmark resigned stating “I HATE [...]

(Or “freedom of speech won’t feed my children”) Last month I noted that Matt Asay, one of the highest profile proponents of open source software, had changed his position on the use of proprietary extensions as a means of attracting paying customers to software based on open source code. Having previously advocated a 100% open [...]

Agenda: * Linux and open source conferences growing, changing * Red Hat has low-cost HPC Linux package * Ringside knocked out * Open source software in the struggling economy iTunes or direct download (27:40, 6.5 MB)

We’ve talked recently about how the down economy can be both good and bad for Linux and open source software in general. The more I consider the continued gloomy outlook, the more I am convinced the economic struggle will translate to increased interest, use and adoption for open source software. Part of this is the [...]

We continue to watch the growth and evolution of open source systems management vendors, particularly those growing their enterprise products and customers. Companies such as Groundwork, Hyperic and Zenoss — featured last year in our report CAOS 4 Managing in the Open — have demonstrated traction and staying power in the enterprise, largely based on [...]