This year was my first chance to visit the Open Source Business Conference, so while I can’t compare to previous years I must say I was impressed with the consistent quality of both the keynotes and the breakout sessions. One of each particularly stood out for me, however: the keynote from Jon Williams, CTO, […]

Matthew Aslett and I are in San Francisco for the next few days at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC). We will be moderating a total of three panels this year. Matthew’s panel on the the state of the open source database market is especially interesting, given that we are days away from publishing a […]

I’ve been making preparations this week for the panel I’m moderating at this year’s OSBC conference in San Francisco. The title is The State of the Open Source Database Market, and we’re lucky enough to have a great panel, featuring: Andy Astor, CEO, EnterpriseDB; Roger Burkhardt, President & CEO, Ingres; Ken Jacobs, VP Product Strategy, […]

I’m in Napa, CA, through Saturday for the 2008 Open Source Think Tank (OSTT), hosted by the Olliance Group and DLA Piper. This is my second year at the event. I’ll be spending the next few days with some exceptional people in the open source business community, tackling issues such as commercial open source business […]

Could Microsoft acquire an open source software vendor? Yes, is the answer, according to Steve Ballmer’s comments from the Web 2.0 Summit. However, I think there’s some reading between the lines to be done here. Microsoft could certainly buy an open source user, but at this stage an open source software vendor might be a […]

I’m home in Portland (arguably the open source software conference capital of the world) for the third annual GOSCON get-together. Linux Foundation Executive Director and keynote speaker Jim Zemlin says he may have been mistaken in thinking that attendees were fairly well-versed in Linux and open source. The reality is that while these attendees — […]

Further to my recent post about how open source is a global model that enables the growth of local software ecosystems comes news that Indian open source developers are trying to assert the country’s position as a contributor, rather just a user of open source.
As Glyn Moody reports, FOSS.IN - “India’s premier FOSS event” - […]

Much of the talk leading up to this year’s LinuxWorld Conference & Expo centered on how the open source OS has become so mainstream, it seemed somewhat silly to have its own conference. However, the conference (bolstered by the concurrent Next Gen Data Center show) did highlight the continuing evolution of Linux and other open […]

Jay Lyman and I are in San Francisco this week for LinuxWorld 2007. I was planning to post an entry last week with an invitation for people to reach out to the two of us for meetings during the event. However, Jay and I are booked solid for the entire conference. 40 meetings. Seriously. […]

This year’s O’Reilly OSCON event in Portland, Oregon had the usual open source conference hallmarks – long, gray Unix beards, Linux-based long hairs, packs of PHP, Perl, Ruby and other programmers, laid-back geek attire consisting of shorts and sandles, open source executives in jackets (ties are not welcome), and free as in ‘free beer’ beer […]

The O’Reilly Open Source Convention 2007 (OSCON) is taking place in Portland, Oregon, this week. Portland is my home, but I’m in New York City most of the week for business meetings. Ah, priorities. It takes an important meeting for me to give up my time at OSCON, that’s for sure. I will be at […]

I’m at Ubuntu Live today in Portland, Oregon, with my colleague Jay Lyman. Jay and I both live in Portland, making this the shortest conference trip of the year, traffic permitting. The conference takes place just prior to OSCON in the same venue, produced by O’Reilly Media.
MySQL AB CEO Mårten Mickos just finished a keynote […]

I’m in New York City this week for SYS-CON’s Enterprise Open Source Conference, which runs concurrently with SOA World. On Tuesday at 12:30pm, I will be presenting ‘Going Open – A Guide for Software Vendors and Their Customers.’ This will be a summary of the research we did for the CAOS Research Report #3 a […]

Just back from OSBC, and it’s clear that open source and businesses are in step at a fast pace, and it’s not just open source businesses, it’s all businesses. Companies that are users, companies that are investors, proprietary companies, dual-license companies, big companies, small companies – they’re all beyond the point of awareness and […]

I’m in San Francisco for the next few days (along with fellow open source analyst, Jay Lyman) for the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) at The Palace Hotel. The 451 Group is the Industry Analyst Sponsor this year. We’ll have a booth in the exhibit area, as we did last year - please stop by […]

The noise around openness at JavaOne 2007 is deafening. Sun announced the completion of the OpenJDK project and the establishment of an interim governance board to write a constitution and hold elections. Sun has distributed source code to the Java class libraries since the early days, so the completion of OpenJDK may not be technically […]

In January Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users gave a keynote speech that was the talk of Linux Conf Au. Unfortunately, she won’t be providing the same inspiration to attendees at Etech: here’s why.
“My first reaction–and probably yours–is to think, “Of course he doesn’t actually mean it.” But the “funny” thing about crossing the line […]

Having worked with Microsoft’s excellent development tools while simultaneously being bombarded with harsh invective by open source advocates, who can’t view the giant as anybody other than a convicted monopolist, my position on open source is simultaneously cynical and optimistic. I don’t see any obvious moral high ground to open source, yet I strongly believe […]

One of the aphorisms in the tech industry is that there’s no money in software development tools. There is usually a grain of truth in conventional wisdom, but after the past couple of days, I am beginning to believe the opposite.
My colleague, Rachel Chalmers and I just attended EclipseCon in Santa Clara, CA. I wasn’t […]

In a few days, I’m headed off to the 2007 Open Source Think Tank event in Napa, CA, hosted by the Olliance Group and DLA Piper. If you’re planning to be at the event, I will have some availability for meetings during the networking sessions and after-hours from Thursday evening to Saturday afternoon. Send me […]