Earlier this week Infoworld published an article entitled “the fight over open source leeches”, which I described as “a good summary from InfoWorld of the issues related to (lack of) corporate contributions.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that I agree with the underlying theme of the article: that non-contributing open source users are damaging the commercial [...]

Following the launch of the Open Database Alliance some people have assumed that it is only a matter of time before MariaDB becomes the de facto replacement for MySQL. That assumes that Oracle will allow the development of MySQL to stagnate, either deliberately or through neglect – something that we have expressed our doubts about, [...]

Tarus Balog of OpenNMS wrote an interesting post today on the similarities between the four freedoms of Free Software and the Open Source Definition, essentially making the point that “open source software is also free software”. I would agree with Tarus’s assessment about the way in which the four freedoms and the OSD overlap (in [...]

Are vendors that ask their paying customers to also contribute code changes trying to have their cake and eat it too? The issue of increasing corporate contributions to open source has been bubbling under ever since Jim Whitehurst highlighted the lack of enterprise participation during a speech at the 2008 OSBC conference. Whitehurst also mentioned [...]

I mentioned in yesterday’s CAOS Links that Microsoft had published a white paper (PDF) on open source. Called “Participation in a World of Choice” it outlines Microsoft’s perspective on various issues related to open source development, distribution and licensing. There is plenty for open source advocates to discuss and argue with (and Carlo Daffara has [...]

Back in July last year we reported on the formation of a new open source cloud computing start-up called 10gen on our Cloud Cover blog as well as here. Seven months later and there have been a few changes at 10gen, such that our information management blog is arguably the most suitable venue for discussion [...]

In conversation with an open source vendor’s CEO the other day I was reminded that in 2007 there was a relatively large fuss about the creation/approval of two new open source licenses designed to close what was known as the ASP loophole. It occurred to us that in hindsight perhaps the issues that drove that [...]

When Monty Widenius published his criticisms of MySQL 5.1 recently a lot of the coverage that followed focused on his belief that the product had been made generally available too early and has too many serious bugs. A solution to this problem would have been told hold 5.1 back even longer for more testing or, [...]

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 [...]

I wrote yesterday that Christensen’s law of Conservation of Attractive Profits could be used to explain why open source vendors are increasingly turning to hybrid development and licensing strategies to generate revenue from open source. Before I could think about doing so Arjen Lentz wrote a comment that did a lot of the explaining for [...]

There has been a lot of talk recently about the difference in attitudes towards open source projects and open source vendors in the US compared to Europe. As previously mentioned the debate was triggered by write-ups of conversations at the Open Source Think Tank from Mark Radcliffe and Larry Augustin. Tarus Balog, Fabrizio Capobianco, Gianugo [...]

What happens between a company announcing its intention to license its code using an open source license and the resulting project being launched? Mostly the answer involves a whole lot of legal discussions as the intellectual property and licensing issues are ironed out and the processes and structures are put in place to support the [...]

(Or “freedom of speech won’t feed my children”) Last month I noted that Matt Asay, one of the highest profile proponents of open source software, had changed his position on the use of proprietary extensions as a means of attracting paying customers to software based on open source code. Having previously advocated a 100% open [...]

Matt Asay has continued his public conversion to the merits of proprietary extensions/value-add services with the publication of a new post in which he argues that the Open-Core Licensing model is not just good for business but also good for community-relations. “It’s actually quite difficult to distribute a 100 percent open-source product and monetize it [...]

The effects of global warming must be worse than were first thought. Matt Asay has admitted that it makes sense for software vendors to charge upfront license fees. While I am being facetious, the recent post from Matt – titled “the problem with open-source revenue models” – is an interesting insight into the fact that [...]

Larry Dignan reports on a coming revolution in software support and maintenance contracts, prompted by Dennis Howlett’s excellent analysis of why the reliance of enterprise software vendors on maintenance revenue is unsustainable. Noting the negative response to recent price rises from Oracle and SAP, Dennis maintains that increasing maintenance costs is unsustainable as it reduces [...]

At the OSI blog Andrew C Oliver discusses the potential for the OSI to “develop standards beyond the current license-centric set of standards known as the ‘Open Source Definition‘” with which to judge the business models of open source vendors. He was responding to this post from Michael DeHaan that defines a list of the [...]

Dana Blankenhorn asks whether open source is hurt by piracy, prompted by comments made by Louis Suarez-Potts, Sun’s community manager for OpenOffice.org at OSCON. Dana is unconvinced that open source supporters should necessarily be doing anything about piracy, noting that “There is no direct financial loss to Open Office when someone has a pirated copy [...]

It seems almost churlish to wonder whether Google could be even more successful than it already is with a different strategy, but the company’s approach to open source and open development has come into focus in recent weeks. On last week’s podcast we discussed whether the company should see the AGPL as more of an [...]

ZDNet and its sister sites ran an interesting story yesterday indicating that IBM might be preparing to release its DB2 database under an open source license. If true, it would be a fascinating turn of events that would have a significant impact on the database industry. Unfortunately, it’s not. I was immediately suspicious when reading [...]