After all the fuss it appears that MySQL will be remaining open source after all. As Kaj Arno and Monty Widenius report, Marten Mickos announced at CommunityOne that the MySQL Server will stay open source, as well as the forthcoming encryption and compression backup features, which MySQL had considered making available only to paying customers.
“The […]

Given the previous discussion on this blog and elsewhere about the commercial benefits of the GPL versus more permissive open source licenses it is fascinating (if you’re in to that sort of thing) to see that SpringSource has chosen the GPLv3 for its new Application Platform.
Due for release in June the SpringSource Application Platform combines […]

While Microsoft’s focus on its making its applications (almost) exclusively available for its own software stack is understandable, I have often thought that in the systems management sector the strategy had the effect of restricting Microsoft’s potential market and increasing opportunities for its rivals.
The company’s decision to offer cross-platform extensions for System Center therefore makes […]

I was just reading Fabrizio Capobanco’s take on the MySQL excitement (”this move is clearly into the right direction”) when it occurred to me that the situation is related to the comments recently made by the former CTO of Kaplan Test, Jon Williams, at the recent OSBC conference.
As I wrote at the time: “Another point […]

“Sun to Begin Close Sourcing MySQL” screamed the headline on Slashdot last night. The headline is not entirely accurate (although slightly more accurate than the bizarre statement that “Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything”).
So what is going on at MySQL? To get to the bottom of that you have […]

Given the role the Open Source Initiative plays in protecting the open source brand and reviewing and approving licenses as conforming with the Open Source Definition, it is somewhat surprising how little interest there has been in the recent election of the OSI board.
As the OSI’s announcement explains, just two out of ten seats at […]

That has emerged as the question, or at least a major factor in determining whether open source software works in the enterprise systems management market.
The three open source players that have managed mid-market and enterprise customer growth — GroundWork Open Source, Hyperic and Zenoss — all base their products, both community and enteprise versions, on […]

Bruce Perens has announced his intention to stand for election to the executive board of the Open Source Initiative with a stated policy of reducing vendor representation and license proliferation. He is asking for individual open source developers and supporters to back his campaign and show community support for his candidacy.
I mentioned recently that “As […]

Sun’s chief open source officer, Simon Phipps, has written and interesting post today that relates to a couple of posts I’ve written about recently, particularly The impact of licensing choice and Is FOSS heading for an identity crisis?
In Software Freedom: More than Copyright Simon argues that “certain recent events between the open and proprietary software […]

In his recent Forbes article Cash Me Out (by way of The Register’s Open Season) Dan Lyons likens the assimilation of open source into the mainstream IT industry to the incorporation of gay culture into mainstream culture.
In his article, Lyons references The End of Gay Culture, an essay written by Andrew Sullivan and published in […]

I’m still kicking around the ideas suggested by Tim Bowden’s post, which suggested that the GPL is a better licensing choice than BSD for vendors establishing commercial dominance around an open source project.
If you were to draw up a list of the most successful commercial open source vendors, I believe they would all be based […]

Tim Bowden published an interesting post earlier this week about the impact that the choice of open source license has on the potential valuation of an open source vendor. Taking the MySQL and PostgreSQL databases as an example, Bowden wrote:
“When it comes to takeovers and valuations, I think the role of GPL as a strategic […]

UPDATED - As you can see from the comments on this, the change is not Sun limiting Enterprise Unlimited, but being being more open about the limits. Kudos to Sun for doing so - UPDATED.
Sun Microsystems has announced the completion of its acquisition of MySQL - “the most important acquisition in the modern software industry” […]

Adobe has announced that it is sponsoring the SQLite public domain database engine project by joining Mozilla and Symbian on the SQLite consortium. The news is interesting in that it balances Google’s recent sponsorship of efforts to support Photoshop on Linux, while it also raises an interesting question about Microsoft’s attempt to define commercial open […]

Microsoft has announced that it is to provide rivals and partners with free access the APIs and protocols it uses to ensure interoperability between its core products (Windows Vista and Server, Office, SQL Server, Exchange and SharePoint), as well as a new strategy that is focused on open access, portability, open standards and engagement with […]

It’s good to see I’m not the only person concerned about Zimbra’s future in a world where Microsoft owns Yahoo. In fact, the open source collaboration firm offered a timely reminder that it is part of the Yahoo empire with version 5.0 of its Collaboration Suite, prompting many more people to wonder about the project’s […]

Q. When is a program not a program? A. When it is all the works ever licensed under GPLv3. Via the Software Freedom Law Center comes news that the Free Software Foundation has published a document clarifying its position on patent litigation related to the GPLv3 - specifically what constitutes a program under the GPLv3 […]

I recently noted that Centeris, which enables the integration of Linux into Microsoft environments, had changed its name to Likewise and launched a new open source authentication project called Likewise Open. This week I was able to catch up with Likewise CEO, Barry Crist, who shared some more details about the company’s products and strategy […]

Sun’s Allan Packer (author of Configuring and Tuning Databases on the Solaris Platform) has published a lengthy and fascinating blog post on the future of proprietary databases in which he discusses the likelihood of MySQL, PostgreSQL et al challenging Oracle, IBM and Microsoft.
Packer’s multi-part post covers a number of areas including:
Feature Stagnation In The Traditional […]

The Dutch government’s decision to favor the use of open source software over proprietary alternatives has naturally received a lot of press attention over night, and rightly so. The news has overshadowed a similar decision by New Zealand’s Ministry of Justice.
It’s a shame the Ministry of Justice’s decision hasn’t garnered more attention, because it is […]