Every once in awhile, we are reminded of years past and some of the old attitudes that used to be popular, but have lost credibility over time. The latest comes via a European CIO for GE, who reportedly describes open source as largely relegated to ‘playground’ development and a ‘huge risk’ in mission critical applications [...]

I’ve been trying to dig a bit deeper into the European Commission’s investigation of Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems, to look beyond the received wisdom about the EC’s concerns about the deal. We know they revolve around the open source MySQL database, the European Commission has said that much. But the Statement of Objections [...]

Chrome OS and Andoid to merge -eventually. Oracle and SpringSource propose Eclipse OSGi project. And more.

A number of people have recently raised the issue of the threat that cloud computing poses to the monetization of open source by specialist vendors, including Savio Rodrigues, Matt Asay, and Mike Hogan. I believe that cloud computing provides an opportunity for open source specialists, but agree that cloud services based on open source code [...]

Savio Rodrigues has published a post arguing that cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure pose a threat to the monetization of open source by specialist vendors. Savio makes a good case based on the recent launch of AWS’s Relational Database Service, based on MySQL, and Microsoft’s support for MySQL and Tomcat [...]

Google launches Chromium project, Terracotta acquires Quartz. And more.

There’s a new Top500 Supercomputers list out, and it still looks good for Linux. As we’ve seen in the past, Linux has maintained its fast-risen dominance of the list in the latest round, now claiming a role in all of the top 10 systems and more than 90% of the world’s 500 fastest, most powerful [...]

Earlier this year Jason van Zyl from Sonatype raised the question as to why so many open core software vendors hide the pricing details of their proprietary enterprise editions, pointing out that it was in their best interests to be transparent: “Potential customers who start out as your Open Core users need to see exactly [...]

Over the years of my observation, coverage and participation in open source software, SourceForge (both the code repository site SourceForge.net and the corporation) has typically served as one key barometer of where things stood. However, this began to change a couple of years ago, when I wrote about how the resources for finding, understanding, assessing [...]

Larry Augustin confirmed as SugarCRM CEO. Red Hat’s Fedora Project is 12. And more.

Topics for this podcast: *Cavium-MontaVista continues embedded Linux consolidation *Day Software’s unique open source story *DataSync and an update on open source for SMBs *Our Cost Conscious survey and coming report iTunes or direct download (21:39, 4.9 MB)

Symbian’s future in the balance? All Go for Chrome OS. And more.

Since the European Commission announced it was opening an in-depth investigation into the proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle with a focus on MySQL there has been no shortage of opinion written about Oracle’s impending ownership of MySQL and its impact on MySQL users and commercial partners, as well as MySQL’s business model, dual [...]

Mobile and embedded Linux consolidation has continued in a big way, the latest evidence being Cavium Networks $50m acquisition of MontaVista Software. As detailed in a report for 451 Group subscribers, we expected to see continued consolidation following Intel’s $884m acquisition of Wind River in June 2009, the advent of Google’s Android and Mentor Graphics’ [...]

Below is a rough draft of the cornerstone slide for a new presentation deck I am putting together to explain the various business strategies for monetizing open source software. The aim is to explain every single existing strategy using the elements on this one slide (although I am yet to test it out). In our [...]

Objctional statements on Oracle-Sun-MySQL. How Google uses Linux. And more.

I’ve written a few times recently about the fact that I think the open source engagement model practiced by companies such as Day Software will become more popular as we see an increasing number of proprietary companies engaging with open source and the pendulum appears to have swung back in favour of community-developed open source [...]

Funambol acquires Zapatec. Open source gains Closure. And more.

We’ve been spending the week at the 451 Group’s 4th Annual Client Conference and speaking to vendors, investors and end users to get their latest perspectives on what is driving open source software in the enterprise. One consistency among all of these different groups who produce, invest in, provide and use open source software is [...]

Yahoo! Open! Sources! Traffic! Server! Funding for 10gen. And more.