People

Should Microsoft hire an open-source diplomat or a revolutionary?

Microsoft has had some exceptional people driving its open-source strategy over the years.

Now, with Sam Ramji, senior director of platform strategy and Microsoft's point man on open source, officially leaving for a Silicon Valley-based start-up at month's end, Microsoft has the opportunity to select someone who will ramp its open-source engagement to the next level.

Should Microsoft choose a pragmatist or an anarchist?

It's a provocative question, but one that becomes easier to answer when you consider the state of open source at Microsoft and how its various open-source leaders have managed it.

Initially, it was … Read more

IBM is its own open-source lab for social software

Most vendors must guess what customers want to buy, and how they'll use it. For IBM, however, with about 400,000 employees, it has the potential to be its own best laboratory, one that becomes even more potent when mixed with active participation in open-source communities.

That potential, as I discovered in an interview on Friday with Jeff Schick, IBM's vice president of social software, isn't a "gimme," but is powerful if you can enable the right sort of corporate culture and processes.

For example, Schick mentioned that IBM has a technology adoption program for … Read more

Investor reveals secret to $1.6 billion in open-source success

No other investor has had as much success in open-source software as Peter Fenton, general partner at Benchmark Capital.

A competitive triathlete, Fenton has turned the standard marathon of open-source business-building into a sprint, churning out four big open-source sales--JBoss ($350 million), Zimbra ($350 million), XenSource ($500 million), and SpringSource ($420 million)--while most investors have yet to turn a profit on any.

Not that Fenton is a one-trick pony. He also just sold FriendFeed to Facebook and sits on the board of Twitter. It's fair to say that Fenton can now afford a second Aston Martin.

But Fenton … Read more

Mapping celebs' favorite places

JBoss star Bob Bickel starts a new venture

Bob Bickel, often credited with being one of the driving forces behind JBoss' success, has been in semi-retirement since Red Hat purchased JBoss, but he's apparently sticking his head out of hibernation to launch a new venture.

The venture? "A web service that makes it easy for running races to allow users to sign up online."

If this doesn't sound very open source-y of Bickel, it's because it's not. But it does reflect Bickel's shifting interests: some might remember that Bickel helped to start Ringside Networks after the JBoss acquisition, an open-source competitor … Read more

Mark Shuttleworth wins Wimbledon?

On Sunday I tried calling Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, to warn him that Google was going to announce a competitor to Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Alas, he wasn't answering.

Turning to the sports news, I understood why:

Shuttleworth, masquerading as Roger Federer, had just beaten Andy Roddick to win Wimbledon and beat his own record for most Grand Slam singles titles in men's tennis history.

Not bad for a computer geek.

Shuttleworth was, of course, the first African in space, but it's nice to see him getting some exercise and devoting himself to terrestrial pursuits from time … Read more

Former Red Hat execs aim to open-source health care

It was bound to happen. With the U.S. government promising truckloads of cash to overhaul the U.S. health care system, while simultaneously making positive noises around open source, it was just a matter of time before someone connected the dots.

That someone appears to be Joanne Rohde, former executive vice president of worldwide operations at Red Hat, who has launched the Axial Project, a stealth-mode start-up that aims to "combin[e] the principles of Open Standards and Open Source...to connect all the parties in the Health ecosystem safely and securely."

It's a big task, … Read more

Index Ventures gets its Michelangelo

I've suggested before that Index Ventures could well be the "best venture firm in Europe." Index has one of the most interesting investment portfolios of any venture firm on the planet, having invested in companies like Skype, Openads, Oanda, DimDim, and others.

Today, Index became even more interesting, adding Michelangelo ("Mike") Volpi to its investment team as a partner based in London. Volpi was most recently the CEO of online video company Joost, but made his name as the mergers and acquisitions maestro at Cisco, where he oversaw 75 acquisitions.

Given Volpi's background as … Read more

Off-topic: Why can't I have this job?

I wake up at 5:30 AM to write this blog, then spend the rest of the day (and sometimes evening) working my day job at Alfresco, an open-source applications company.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law, Josh Robbins, taunts me by sending pictures of him chumming around with Thierry Henry (FC Barcelona), Ryan Babel (Liverpool FC), Alessandro del Piero (Juventus), Mathieu Flamini (AC Milan), Steve Nash (Phoenix Suns), Tony Parker (San Antonio Spurs), and others at a Steve Nash Foundation event. His job? He's director of finance at Calle, a cool street soccer sporting goods manufacturer that he helped found.

Yes, … Read more