open

I'll be honest: I didn't even know that Autodesk was doing anything with open source. As Directions Magazine points out, however, it does/has been, some of which sounds truly useful. Here's a taste:… Read more

I came across this surprising piece of news in ars technica (I always feel a little dirty saying that :-). Surprising, because it's such a good idea. Most surprising?

It happened at Novell.

What idea? Why, to set the Linux engineering team loose for a week to do work on whatever they wanted. Full freedom to hack at will on the open source projects of their choice. Appropriately, they called it "Novell Hack Week."

I like this quote from one of the participants:… Read more

I was thinking through the open source diffusion model over the last few days, and put together this slide. It's not groundbreaking by any stretch (Larry Augustin and John Roberts are much more articulate on this point than I am), but it reflects the way open source spreads.

On the open source side, you start with users and then convert them into customers. On the proprietary side, you start with marketing and sales to create customers. No users until they pay.

The key point here is in the difference in focus.… Read more

As Steven Vaughan-Nichols is reporting, the Software Freedom Law Center is offering a free day of open-source legal education from the best in the business. Let's put it this way: if you get any opportunity to hear Eben Moglen speak, you take it. Especially when admission to the event is free.

The Summit will have two parts: a closed session in the morning for a private meeting of some of the world's foremost FOSS attorneys, and an open session in the afternoon consisting of free legal presentations to the public.… Read more

I was fortunate to have lunch today with Pete Childers, Chander Kant, and the Zmanda team. We got together to exchange notes on strategies and markets that are working well for our respective companies.

The most interesting takeaway for me, however, was just how consistent the open source market has become in selling value. You still get new entrants that don't realize that open source for open source's sake became passe a year ago. But for companies like Zmanda that have been around for awhile, you sell value. Open source might get you in the door, but value closes the deal.

In Zmanda's case, it has the opportunity and challenge of building a business around a robust community project, the Amanda network backup project. This is an opportunity because, like Linux, Amanda adoption is widespread and hence provides a strong pool of proponents to sell into. However, it's also a challenge because many in this community get along very well with Amanda (command-line driven), without need for any commercial frills around the edges.… Read more

I was just geeking out (to the maximum extent that I am technically capable, which means, not much) on Adobe's Apollo site at the suggestion of a friend. Wow. This completely breaks the paradigm of how we (or, at least, I) think about computing.

We talk a lot about mixed source. You know, open-source and proprietary software, living in perfect harmony. But that is nowhere near as interesting as true mixed source: desktop code intermingled with "cloud" code. What happens when the line between my desktop and the Internet blur to the extent that I neither know nor care where one ends and the other begins?

Microsoft has a desktop fetish that inhibits its ability to think cogently online. Google has the opposite problem. Adobe, however, seems to be striking the balance just right, what with its symbiotic balance between Web technologies (Macromedia) and desktop technologies (Adobe).

While I eagerly, hungrily anticipate The Big Blur, I can't help but worry about open source's lack of preparation. Our licensing debates will soon smack of silly sciolism as the Web moves offline and the desktop moves online. What relevance do 99 percent of our licenses have to this blurred world? Not very much.… Read more

Everex has unveiled its $298 back-to-school desktop, touting its open-source productivity software.

Databases, spreadsheets, word processing and graphics, open-source or not, are lost on most K-through-5 kids. I know. I have one.

Ditto for the junior-high market, where concerns over acne and hormonal changes are likely to outrank the question of "to open-source or not to open-source." Similar issues may plague kids in high school, unless it's shown that using open-source productivity software can boost SAT scores or geek cred.

Nonetheless, parents, aka the walking wallets, may care.

It's all about giving our kids an edge … Read more

Luis Villa commented on an earlier post wherein I had asked, "Why doesn't Oracle just buy Red Hat?" His remark was, "Because Red Hat employees would leave en masse."

Think about that. To the extent that an open-source company is driven by a culture of freedom, would-be purchasers might be put off by one of two things:… Read more

I was fortunate to catch Red Hat's Todd Barr today while at visiting the company, and during our conversation, we discussed the ruminations of IBM's Savio Rodrigues on the "paltry" open-source renewal rates. Savio asks:

What happens when 15 percent of your current paying customers decide they can use your (open-source software) product without paying you a dollar.… Read more