New projects. Old arguments. And more.

As our 451 colleague Kathleen Reidy, notes, we have published a new report entitled, “Open to Disruption: The Impact of Open Source in Content Management.”
Our purpose with this report is to look at the commercial implications of open source in content management. The report goes into a good deal of depth on what [...]

Linagora explores Mandriva acquisition. OpenOffice.org extensions. And more.

Open source methodologies, business models and licensing issues touch every aspect of IT. Consequently you’ll find every member of The 451 Group analyst staff posting here from time to time, whether their expertise lies in software, systems, storage, grid computing, networking, security, or mobile technology. You can find a full set of analyst biographies on [...]

The 451 CAOS Theory blog presents a series of perspectives on the introduction of open source software into the enterprise IT environment – analyzing opportunities and challenges and noting relevant trends and developments in the marketplace. It is written by analysts from The 451 Group, an independent technology-industry analyst company focused on the business of [...]

There’s been a fair amount of attention – both positive and negative – on dual licensing in recent weeks. A few days ago Brian Aker wrote: “The fact is, there are few, and growing fewer, opportunities to make money on dual licensing.”
It is a sweeping statement, but one that is worth further consideration, especially since, [...]

Licensing, community, funding, revenue, business models, patents. And more.

Here are CAOS Theory’s top 20 posts of 2009, in terms of page views:

The Open Source Initiative’s corporate status is suspended: a CAOS Theory Q&A
October – Our take on the potential ramifications of the suspension of OSI’s corporate status.

Commercial open source business strategies in 2009 and beyond
January – An overview of the open core and [...]

Banking on open source. Open source as a business model. 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 [...]

Red Hat invests in EnterpriseDB. The White House goes open source. And more.

Patents. M&A. Adoption. Business strategies. And more.

Although I hesitate to write another post about business models, Open-Core and open source, it was clear from the recent Open World Forum and Open Source Think Tank in Paris that the issue of how to make money from open source software is still of considerable concern to vendors.
Open Source Think Tank attendees were split [...]

Red Hat revenue climbs again. The GPL is enforceable in France. And more.

(Or: Not open source business models)
A year ago this week I completed work on our Open Source is Not a Business Model report. The report and its findings have been very much in my mind this week however, as I presented some of the findings to an event organised by Intellect in London yesterday, and [...]

CodePlex, patents and Linux code. An interesting few days for Microsoft open source.
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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

CodePlex, CodePlex, CodePlex!
Microsoft launched the CodePlex Foundation to facilitate open source contributions, and confirmed the departure of Sam Ramji.
Patents, Patents, Patents!
The OIN confirmed the [...]

UPDATE: The final vote is in and a winner has been declared, with Matt Asay and his arguments for the GPL taking the prize. You can see the debate or follow links to the other judges’ votes and thoughts here.
This is my assessment as a judge of the recent open source license [...]

Novell reports Linux revenue up 22%. GPLv2 in decline. And more.

Eric Barroca, CEO of Nuxeo, has published an interesting take on commercial open source business strategies, highlighting that vendors that treat community edition products like a free demo are failing to make the most of open source.
The key themes of Eric’s post have been discussed before (although his analysis is no less valuable or interesting [...]

Google Chrome OS. Jaspersoft Unlimited. RMS on Microsoft’s Mono promise. And more.