January 10, 2009 7:07 AM PST
Open Sources, Episode 5: Be wary of building on others' open source (or Amazon)
Episode 5 of Open Sources, the podcast that fellow CNET blogger Dave Rosenberg and I perform somewhat sporadically, is now live.
Dave and I discuss open-source venture funding (We think it's going to do well now that companies actually have to make money again), as well as the importance of owning (or controlling in some way) the open-source or cloud components upon which you build your solutions. Against the grain of the common myths of open source? Maybe. But there are clear examples of why you wouldn't want to be Amazon'd out of business.
Enjoy.
Listen now: Download today's podcast
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
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- by perspectoff January 13, 2009 6:41 AM PST
- This would have been an interesting target if I could read the text. I don't watch podcasts.
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- by Matt Asay January 13, 2009 6:55 AM PST
- Watch this space on Zimbra. I suspect that there is desire there to go to a more standard license like the GPL.
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(4 Comments)GPL-license is more important (Richard Stallman is a hero) than whether code is open-source.
Zimbra is a good example. It's "open-source" groupware software, but it is owned by Yahoo. If you make changes to the software, the changes are owned by Yahoo.
It's a model for companies to get free work out of the community but retain the rights.
GPL-license is more important than "open-source".