apache

IBM on Wednesday is set to announce a new portfolio of solutions and services to help enterprises analyze large volumes of data. IBM InfoSphere BigInsights is based on Apache Hadoop, an open-source technology designed for analysis of big volumes of data.

IBM InfoSphere BigInsights is made up of a package of Hadoop software and services, BigSheets, a beta product designed to help business professionals extract, annotate, and visually uncover insights from vast amounts of information quickly and easily through a Web browser, and industry-specific frameworks to help clients get started.

IBM has been aggressive in consuming and repackaging open-source projects … Read more

And then there were none.

After weeks of showing the world just how much playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live meant to them, a group of hard-core Master Chief devotees who just couldn't let go of the multiplayer version of their beloved game has given up the ghost.

On April 15, Microsoft turned off access to Xbox Live to anyone using an original Xbox. But those who had managed to not log out of Halo 2 were able to continue playing--and won the respect of Xbox Live management, and the attention of the world.

By April 30, there were … Read more

A new company called Riptano recently launched to provide support and services for the Apache Cassandra project, a nonrelational open-source database designed for high performance that has a strong presence in Web shops like Twitter, Digg, and Reddit. I recently had the chance to chat with Matt Pfeil, founder of Riptano, and he provided some insight into the project and the new world of NoSQL database approaches.

What exactly is Cassandra and who uses it? Cassandra is a highly scalable, distributed, open source database. It's a top-level Apache project with committers from Riptano, Rackspace, Digg, Facebook, and others.

Cassandra … Read more

Update at 5:30 AM Pacific on March 2, 2010: I mistakenly reported that Facebook has moved from MySQL in favor of Cassandra. According to a credible source familiar with Facebook's systems, this is not the case. Indeed, you can actually follow "MySQLatFacebook" on Facebook. I apologize for the error and am glad to see MySQL is still in active usage at Facebook.

Open-source software has hastened the evolution of Web applications as it drives out the inefficiencies and costs of proprietary software to enable companies like Google and Twitter to scale. But it's not just … Read more

A few weeks back I wrote about the cloud-related trend of "NoSQL," a set of operational-data technologies based on non-relational database principles. But beyond the developer crowd and smaller Web-based businesses, how much has this trend taken root in "real world" production environments?

I recently spoke with Durran Jordan and Les Hill of Hashrocket, a Florida-based Web design and development group, about their use of MongoDB (which is billed as a scalable, high-performance, open source, schema-free, document-oriented database) in an application for one of their pharma customers.

Hashrocket's customer had an existing SQL-based application that … Read more

Cloud computing has the tremendous potential to free enterprises from the expense and inefficiencies of traditional personal and server-based computing. As nice as this sounds, however, the more we move to the cloud, the greater the opportunity for vendors to lock in their customers.

Once your data resides in the cloud, moving it to alternative vendors may be even harder than in traditional software.

Unless. Unless vendors step in to maintain open data and common tools across disparate cloud resources. In the first area, Google has charted the way with its Data Liberation Front, an internal organization charged with keeping … Read more

Web properties used to treat open source as a resource to be strip-mined. Increasingly, however, successful Web companies like Google and Facebook are giving back, helping to replenish the open-source ecosystem from which they derive so much value.

Facebook and Apacheannounced on Tuesday that it is becoming a "gold" sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation, expanding its open-source investments from code to cash.

Facebook arguably couldn't exist without open source. As David Recordon, Facebook's senior open programs manager, told me by phone on Monday and writes on Tuesday, Facebook owes a lot (and gives a … Read more

Lost in the flutter over Google's hymn to openness is an intriguing factoid on open-source licensing:

Though many of the programs hosted on Google Code are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), when Google wants to open-source its software, it turns to the Apache Software License version 2.0.

Why?

Google's Jonathan Rosenberg elucidates:

When we open source our code we use standard, open Apache 2.0 licensing, which means we don't control the code. Others can take our open source code, modify it, close it up and ship it as their … Read more

There's something different about the Apache Software Foundation. While Apache hosts some of the world's most important software development, its members seem more concerned with good code than good politics.

It's no secret that I've become enamored lately with the Apache License, but it's less well-known what first attracted me to the license: the wonderfully nice people affiliated with Apache. From Greg Stein to Geir Magnusson to Brian Behlendorf, it's hard to find a jerk at Apache. I'm sure they exist, but they hide pretty well.

In fact, in a presentation today I … Read more