SourceForge grew revenue 17% in Q1. What Sun should do. HP falls out with GroundWork. A new license for openSUSE. And more.

…is the title of this post written by Tim Bray a few days ago in which he outlined the directions he would like to see his employer take to improve its fortunes. He also invited others to continue the thought process. Many have already done so (I’ll include the best in tomorrow’s CAOS Links post) [...]

As noted the other day, this week I am attending ICT 2008 in Lyon, a European Commission Information Society’s research event for information and communication technologies. That means I don’t have too much time for blogging and other tasks. I thought it would be useful to provide some information on the European Commission’s position on [...]

When I was a reporter a few years ago, I began covering the fast rise of Linux to dominance on the Top500 Supercomputer list. Since the list comes out every six months, I would end up getting a response like, “Is it that time of year again already?” to which I would respond, yes. My [...]

Novell takes the lead in certified ISV support for Linux. Or does it? Red Hat announces Fedora 10. DotNetNuke gets funding. And more.

There is a really interesting thread over at Alfresco’s licensing forum that points to one of the central problems with dual licensing as an open source business strategy: it is potentially confusing, even for the employees of the company in question. The thread deals with the questions of Jerico, a potential Alfresco partner over the [...]

Topics for this podcast: * Updates on GroundWork, Hyperic and Zenoss * Sun’s ups and downs * Symbian’s open source course emerges * CAOS 10 on mobile open source iTunes or direct download (27:20, 6.3 MB)

Sun updates MySQL Enterprise. The Microsoft/Novell deal is two years old. Nuxeo and Boxee get funding. Red Hat’s CEO on open source in a downturn. Steve Ballmer as a glove puppet. And more.

On the open source panel at the recent 451 client event I was asked by Raven what impact I expected the current financial situation to have on M&A for open source vendors. I responded that I expected to see an increase in M&A activity related to open source in the first half of next year. [...]

There’s been plenty of reaction this week to Sun’s restructuring announcement from last Friday. That announcement included the inevitable (cutting 15-18% of the workforce), the expected (organisational changes), and the surprising (the departure of Rich Green). The conventional wisdom appears to be that Sun is positioning to sell off some of its less profitable product [...]

Next week I’ll be jetting over to Lyon to attend ICT 2008, the European Commission Information Society’s research event for information and communication technologies. It promises to be a fascinating and lively event and will examine topics such as European Union priorities in ICT research for over €2 billion of funding available in 2009-2010, the [...]

I was pointed toward an interesting article recently that centered on a competitive battle of netbooks v. smartphones, indicating the latter will emerge victorious. It is true that smartphones are bucking the bad economy and gaining market like never before — with traction for iPhone and BlackBerry and even mobile Linux making a go of [...]

Red Hat’s chairman wins enterprising award. Sun updates StarOffice. Barracuda Networks acquires 3SP. Reaction to Sun’s reorganization. Barack Obama’s laptop. And more.

Back in April I stated that “how” was the most important question open source vendors could answer. That statement was based on the need to encourage greater adoption of open source software by demonstrating to enterprise users the potential advantages of open source software. While that need remains it has occurred to me that there [...]

An emerging and ongoing trend that should be a concern to open source software vendors is the use of free versions, SaaS, easy deployment and credit card payment for easier access and low-friction sales by non-open source competitors. Proprietary vendors are finding that they can match, or at least come close to matching, the availability, [...]

Sun Microsystems slashes jobs in major restructuring. SpringSource gets Groovy with G2One Novell goes after Red Hat. Sonatype confirms Marc Visser as new CEO. Neil Young’s new car (yes, that Neil Young). And more.

The 451 Group’s CAOS analysts have more than 20 years combined experience covering open source projects, communities, and vendors. The wider group of 451 analysts have produced more than 1,500 reports over the past five years that have analyzed open source technology providers, their business models and their competitive positioning at various levels. As an [...]

We delve into this question and look at how mobile Linux and a general move toward openness in the mobile industry are coinciding with the disruption of Apple’s iPhone and resulting mobile combat with other heavyweights such as Research In Motion (RIM) in our latest long-form report, CAOS 10 Mobility Matters. While mobile Linux and [...]

Open source ERP comes of age. Openbravo hits one million downloads. The Force is with Red Hat. BitTorrent in crisis. And more.

I’m in Boston this week attending The 451 Group’s third annual client conference, which means there won’t be much time for blogging.

In lieu of a post today I thought I’d provide a view of the open source-related research published by The 451 Group last week. Clients can read the reports and non-clients can apply for trial access by following the links below.