O'Reilly

O'Reilly: Stop throwing sheep, do something worthy

NEW YORK--Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, is known as a futurist, but his keynote address on Thursday morning at the Web 2.0 Expo was heavy on the realism in the wake of sobering news from Wall Street.

"(These are) pretty depressing times in a lot of ways," O'Reilly said in an address that first had looked like it would simply be a starry-eyed discussion of enterprise opportunities for Web 2.0. "And you have to conclude, if you look at the focus of a lot of what you call 'Web 2.0,' … Read more

A bill of rights for cloud computing

Cloud computing promises to liberate its adherents from the bother of messy implementations of software, while also freeing them from the constraints of hardware capacity. At the same time, however, cloud computing has the potential to deliver the ultimate in vendor lock-in.

My colleague, James Urquhart, has put together a proposed "cloud computing bill of rights" to help guide would-be cloud customers to those clouds best able to guarantee their freedom. Just as some are now clamoring for open-data commitments, James' suggestions are intended to deliver the value of the cloud without the lock-in:

No vendor shall, in … Read more

Tim O'Reilly: "[Open] architecture trumps [open source] licensing any time"

In a fantastic, insightful post, Tim O'Reilly lays the blueprint for the next decade of open source in the cloud. Money quote?

[I]f you care about open source for the cloud, build on services that are designed to be federated rather than centralized. Architecture trumps licensing any time.

This follows on Tim's constant theme over the last few years: Data is the new Intel Inside. It's a critical point given the almost meaningless tie between open-source licensing, triggered upon distribution of software, and the web, which is premised on non-distribution of software. Increasingly the web is being turned into competing bunkers of data, as Tim writes:… Read more

Open source + open data = Open cloud

It used to be taken for granted that the web was and always would be open. That assumption has increasingly come under fire as cloud computing has set up walled gardens for data and services...much as the desktop has done.

Tim O'Reilly addressed the threat of closed clouds and closed mobile devices to access the web in his keynote at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention.

Tim seemed to have lost interest in open source over the past few years, his interest instead turning to Web 2.0 (though he continued to recognize the need for an upgrade to the way we think of open source in terms of licenses instead of services). But somehow, somewhere, Tim re-discovered the importance of open source, this time in keeping Web 2.0 from turning into Manacle 2.0.

I'm not sure that you ever truly left, Tim, but this call to arms is timely and welcome. In his keynote, Tim said:… Read more

Google announces the winners of the 2008 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards

Yesterday Google and O'Reilly Media announced the 2008 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards. Now in its fourth year, the Awards give a peak into some of the most competent and driven people within the open-source community.

The winners?

Best Community Amplifier: Chris Messina - BarCamp, Microformats and Spread Firefox Best Contributor: Angela Byron - Drupal Best Education Enabler: Martin Dougiamas - Moodle Best Interoperator: Andrew Tridgell - Samba and Rsync Defender of Rights: Harald Welte - gplviolations.org

An impressive group, by any standard.

O'Reilly study uncovers multiple reasons for open source's impressive rise

According to new research released today by Bernard Golden (Navica) and O'Reilly Research, there are at least six reasons compelling the rapid rise of open source. Agility and scale, reduced vendor lock-in, quality and security, cost, sovereignty (i.e., Local, not necessarily US-based development), and innovation. No wonder Sourceforge downloads continue to rise.

In one particular area, however, open source shines, in my opinion: The ability to reduce lock-in to a particular vendor. The report suggests:

There is little potential price competition for incumbent vendors: Because locked-in vendors have little fear of being replaced, they are in a position to extract expensive maintenance and upgrade fees, bleeding ever-shrinking IT budgets of precious dollars. For example, Oracle just announced price increases of 20% for its database software (accompanied by increases in ongoing maintenance fees as well), secure in the knowledge that very few enterprises are in a position to resist the increase due to the difficulty of replacing the products.

Whatever the price associated with getting into a relationship with Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, IBM, HP, etc., few enterprise buyers seem to reflect on just how expensive it will be to disengage from that relationship due to lock-in to proprietary technology. Things that may be good for buyers (like SaaS) can be safely avoided by the vendor that owns its customers.… Read more

As Web 2.0 goes mainstream, VCs plot a mass exodus

The other day Forrester Research published the results of a survey that suggested that 63 percent of enterprises feel that Web 2.0 is going to impact their businesses in a big way.

Tuesday morning, I came across some news that venture investments into Web 2.0 start-ups have slowed.

So, just as enterprise adoption of Web 2.0 has picked up, the VCs decide to stop funding it. Does this make sense?

It does if we assume that VCs invest in early stage bubbles, not the later-stage mainstream. VCs got into the early stage consumer Web 2.0 party, … Read more

Web 2.0 Summit now courting clean-tech start-ups

The Web 2.0 Summit--a conference of the Silicon Valley digiterati--seems to have changed its theme from "monetize the Web" to "save the world."

Tim O'Reilly, one of the Web 2.0 Summit organizers, on Monday posted a blog with details on the fifth edition of the conference coming up in November and its Launchpad event for start-ups.

The concept is to break out of the Web-only worldview and see if the ideals of the Web, like collective intelligence and innovation, can be applied to the world's woes.

"In an era of … Read more

Tim O'Reilly wants Web 2.0 for grown-up problems

At last. Tim O'Reilly started the Web 2.0 ball rolling, and then moved out of the way to see what would happen. Though no fault of his own, "Web 2.0" came to mostly be about prettier websites and a rerun of silly consumer web "services" of the dot-com bust.

Today, Tim issues a call to action for Web 2.0 to take its opportunities more seriously, and provide significantly more value to the world:

In an era of looming scarcities, economic disruption, and the possibility of catastrophic ecological change, it's time for … Read more