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Is there a natural divide between open source and proprietary software market opportunities?

I'm reading through Si Chen's excellent paper called "An Economic Model of Open Source Software Adoption." I got lost in the calculations Si uses, but the conclusion hit home:

[T]he hurdle for adoption of open source software is a function of the relative feature sets, size of user base, scalability of features, and profit margin of competing commercial products. Where existing commercial products enjoy a large user base, can address a high portion of user needs out-of-the-box, and the profit margins of the vendor are reasonable, open source software must offer comparable or better features to gain mass adoption. If, on the other hand, user needs are highly heterogeneous, the commercial product's vendor has excessive profit margins, or where the software is fundamentally not scalable, then an open source product with significantly lower feature sets could gain mass adoption.

These conditions suggest that open source and commercial software models may be well adapted to separate niches of the software industry. Open source software may fundamentally be more suitable for software whose features are not scalable, whereas commercial software may be better suited for mass market software with highly homogeneous user requirements and features.… Read more

News flash: Microsoft finds that it is god of its own world

I must admit that I am shocked - SHOCKED - that Microsoft found that its software is better than open source software on the desktop for European schools. Shocked, I tell you! I mean, after hours of rigorous study and painfully bought and paid for research, to find out that it likes its own software more than open source.... Who would have thought?

For those who aren't aware, Microsoft paid Wipro Technologies to come up with findings (as Mary Jo Foley and others have reported) that show that open source software on the desktop stinks for schools, and that Microsoft is manna from heaven.

Among the "findings":

In schools where both Microsoft Office and Open Office are available, student and teacher satisfaction with Microsoft is consistently higher. For desktop productivity, 48?50 per cent of schools reported that student satisfaction with Microsoft products is higher than with OSS, but only 17?26 per cent reported the same for the open source platform.… Read more

Making enterprise software more like the web

Yesterday was the second day of Alfresco's quarterly management meeting (and no, I don't like this one because there are no football matches during the summer, though I am going with Luis to see The Drowsy Chaperone tonight. During the meeting, we spent awhile talking through changes in enterprise software; or, rather, changes that should happen in enterprise software.

What's the biggest problem in enterprise software today? I mean, besides how expensive, complex, and clunky it is?

It doesn't work the way the world works.

What do I mean? I mean that despite the fact that, as John Donne might write, "no corporation is an island, entire unto itself," most enterprise software treats corporations (and their denizens) exactly as islands. Little pools of creativity who share within the walls of their own corporation, if at all (and generally not at all). … Read more

Traveling The Open Road with Matt Asay

Consider this my "Hello World" from the Land of CNET. I've spent the last year or two of my life talking with you from my Open Sources blog on Infoworld.com. Now it's time to open a new chapter.

For better or for worse, however, I'm the same person. With the same biases. And gunning for the same goal: complete and absolute world domination. :-)

Not really, of course. I'm a pragmatist and understand that the world moves slowly, especially in IT. Remember, I used to work for Novell where the company largely stopped … Read more

Sun supper offer appeals to Torvalds

In the latest word in a peculiarly public interchange, Linux leader Linus Torvalds appears inclined to take up Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz on his offer for dinner.

Last weekend, Torvalds expressed some "cynical" thoughts about Sun's intentions regarding its open-source Solaris operating system, which in turn led Schwartz to invite Torvalds to dinner to demonstrate Sun's intention of being a team player in the open-source realm, not a parasite.

In an interview Wednesday, Torvalds indicated he was interested in the dinner date, even given the condition Schwartz attached.

"I'm a fervent (believer … Read more

Congratulations....it's a BLOG

Even today's most tech-savvy parents didn't grow up in a digital era. For those of us who live on the cutting edge of the latest developments, it comes as quite a shock to realize that there is still a techno-generation gap developing between us and our children. Adults assimilate technology much like they learn a second language, while our kids are "native speakers."

We may think we were pretty cool for growing up with an Atari 2600 or Radio Shack TRS-80 desktop computer, learning to program in BASIC, but what will our kids make of the … Read more

Open source ad player takes on Google

Openads, which offers free software that helps Web sites manage their online ad campaigns, recently received $5 million in initial funding, led by Index Ventures, according to a Reuters article.

Openads is seen as possibly treading on Google turf, competing with ad serving firm DoubleClick, which Google is hoping to acquire. Openads also could butt up against Google's popular AdSense pay-per-click ad network, Radar Research analyst Marissa Gluck told Reuters.

The difference is that Openads serves up ads for Web sites that install the ads themselves and then relies on ad networks to supply advertisers, while Google hosts the … Read more

Sun CEO to Torvalds: Let's work together

Days after Linus Torvalds discussed the possibilities of Linux and Solaris joining forces as open-source projects, Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz has invited the Linux leader to dinner to allay his suspicions about Sun's motives.

"We want to work together, we want to join hands and communities," Schwartz wrote on his blog Wednesday. "We have no intention of holding anything back, or pulling patent nonsense. And to prove the sincerity of the offer, I invite you to my house for dinner. I'll cook, you bring the wine."

Linux is governed by version 2 … Read more

Alpha alert: OpenOffice.org for Mac

OpenOffice.org programmers have released a very rough version of the open-source office suite that runs natively on Mac OS X.

The Microsoft Office competitor works on Linux and Unix systems using the X11 graphical interface, but the new version uses Apple's native Aqua interface.

It's alpha software, though. "This software may crash and may destroy your data. Do not use this software for real work in a production environment," the download site warns. And there are serious issues yet to be addressed: it can't print, copy and paste aren't fully functioning, and the … Read more

'Dance Dance Immolation': Burning up the dance floor, literally

Those schools that are using Dance Dance Revolution to get their kids into shape aren't the only ones who've found a great use for the game, but it's doubtful Dance Dance Immolation will ever make it to a gymnasium near you.

Created by Interpretive Arson, a fire-art group from Oakland, Calif., Dance Dance Immolation uses a freeware version of DDR melded to pilot lights, gallons of propane, and heat-resistant proximity suits. Instead of losing points, though, a single misstep gets you shot in the face with fire.

Originally developed by three friends--Jonathan Shekter, Ian Baker, and Matt Blackwell--Crispix is the name for their hacked version of open-source StepMania (download for Windows or Mac), a freeware adaptation of Dance Dance Revolution that forms the brain of Dance Dance Immolation. StepMania is not only open source, it's also multiplatform. So why was it built on a Windows XP machine?