Recent news that Microsoft and Barnes & Noble agreed to partner on the Nook e-reader line rather than keep fighting over intellectual property suggests the prospect of more settlement and fewer IP suits in the industry. However, the deal further obscures the blurry IP and patent landscape currently impacting both enterprise IT and consumer technology. [...]

Topics for this podcast: *OpenStack, Amazon, Eucalyptus and Citrix engage in open cloud warfare *Microsoft spins off new company for openness *Updates on automation players Puppet Labs and Opscode with Chef *Percona turns attention to MySQL high availability *Open APIs as the fifth pillar of modern IT openness iTunes or direct download (28:42, 4.9MB)

The recently released Who Writes Linux kernel contributor list reveals that some of the usual supporters of Linux — Red Hat, SUSE, IBM, Intel, Oracle — remain firmly behind the open source OS. There has also been a lot of attention on the other contributors, which now include Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT). What I find most [...]

Black Duck Software and North Bridge Venture Partners, in partnership with 451 Research, yesterday announced a collaboration to conduct the sixth annual Future of Open Source Survey. The survey, an annual bellwether of the state of the open source industry, is supported by more than 20 open source software (OSS) industry leaders and is open [...]

Last year, I wrote about the key pillars of openness in today’s enterprise IT industry, highlighting open source software, real open standards, open clouds, and open data as the ‘Four Pillars of Modern IT Openness.’ More recently, I wrote about what I now consider to be the fifth pillar, which is open application programming interfaces [...]

We got another reminder of how disruptive open source software is to mobile computing this week, when Linux and Android merged back together. This appears to be good news for a number of parties, but Android and Linux developers and users seem particularly likely to benefit. The inclusion of Android code in the Linux kernel [...]

The Linux Foundation has come a long way since initiated in 2007 as the fusion of the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) and Free Standards Group. At its start, I wondered why there was no membership or representation from Canonical, which was the hottest thing in Linux at the time. Today, Canonical is a member [...]

The Free Software Foundation has responded to our analysis of figures that indicate that the proportion of open source projects using the GPL is in decline. Specifically, FSF executive director John Sullivan gave a presentation at FOSDEM which asked “Is copyleft being framed”. You can find his slides here, a write-up about the presentation here, [...]

Topics for this podcast: *NewSQL, new company in Akiban *Discussion of APIs as the ‘new’ open source *NoSQL leader 10gen grows, gets more agile *Our coming report on Cloud Performance Management *Zimory acquires sones NoSQL development team iTunes or direct download (28:01, 4.8MB)

We’ve seen the rise of open source software in the enterprise and also beyond the IT industry, but the real keys to openness and its advantages in today’s technology world — where efficient use of cloud computing and supporting services are paramount — exist in open application programming interfaces, or APIs. Open source software continues [...]

Thanks to everyone who has already taken part in our survey exploring changing attitudes to MySQL following its acquisition by Oracle and examining the competitive dynamic between MySQL and other database technologies, including NoSQL and NewSQL. The response has been great and even a quick look at the results makes for interesting reading, particularly in [...]

If you’re a MySQL user, tell us about your adoption plans by taking our current survey. Back in late 2009, at the height of the concern about Oracle’s imminent acquisition of Sun Microsystems and MySQL, 451 Research conducted a survey of open source software users to assess their database usage and attitudes towards Oracle. The [...]

Topics for this podcast: *Hadoop v1.0 and year ahead *Oracle-Cloudera deal for more Hadoop *Oracle’s ‘Sun spot’ with Solaris *Open Source M&A outlook for 2012 *Our new MySQL/NoSQL/NewSQL survey iTunes or direct download (28:49, 4.9MB)

I’ve just launched a new survey that should be of interest if you are currently using or actively considering MySQL or any of the NoSQL or NewSQL offerings The aim of the survey is threefold: – identify trends in database usage over time – explore changing attitudes to MySQL following its acquisition by Oracle – [...]

Previously, I’ve called out years for non-desktop Linux in 2008, Linux in both the low and high-ends of the market in 2009, ‘hidden’ Linux in 2010 and last year, cloud computing in 2011. For 2012, I see continued growth, prevalence, innovation and impact from Linux, thus leading to a 2012 that is dominated by Linux. [...]

The lack of women involved in open source has unfortunately long been a weakness for open source software and its many, varied communities around the globe. In fact, we found out recently just how significant the problem is, with troubling figures as reported by Valerie Aurora with the Ada Initiative that indicate significantly lower representation [...]

Red Hat revenue hits $290m. New CEOs for Cloudant and Lucid Imagination. And more.

The reason we are confident that the comparative decline in the use of the GNU GPL family of licenses and the increasing significance of complementary vendors in relation to funding for open source software-related vendors will continue is due to the analysis of our database of more than 400 open source software-related vendors, past and [...]

…and it’s totally awesome. For more details of our Total Data report, and how to get it, see our Too Much Information blog.

Topics for this podcast: *Hadoop roundup -Cloudera Enterprise Hadoop update -Hadapt combines Hadoop with db analytics -Informatica grows its Hadoop work *HP open sources WebOS *The GPL fade *Red Hat acquisition targets iTunes or direct download (31:41, 5.4MB)