The Open Road

Beyond the hype: Where open source actually saves you money

commentary

Talk to any open-source vendor (myself included), and we'll tell you that there's a lot of money to be saved by dropping your proprietary software in favor of open-source alternatives. But is that always the case? And, if so, what are the necessary preconditions for saving money?

I chaired a panel at OSCON 2009 where we explored this topic, with some interesting results.

Jeffrey Hammond, a senior analyst with Forrester, provided the underlying data, but Matt Deuel (Virgin Mobile) and Barry Klawans (San Francisco International Airport, IT&T Department) offered real-world experience deploying open-source software, while Zack … Read more

Open-source legal education comes to OSCON

commentary

If you're an open-source developer, OSCON is the closest you'll come to Mecca, whatever your religious persuasion. But OSCON has been branching out in the past few years, and this year, for the first time, it includes a a one-day, free seminar focusing on significant legal issues, called "Understanding Legal Issues in Open Source."

Given the revived interest in open-source licensing and the impact it can have on one's project or business, this strikes me as a "must attend" event.

The seminar isn't part of the official OSCON proceedings, but is free … Read more

Open source + open data = Open cloud

commentary

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

The Apple imprint on open source continues

commentary

The VAR Guy was on location at the annual O'Reilly Open Source Convention. Despite it being an open-source conference for developers, the event was awash in a sea of (highly proprietary) Macs.

...Apple Corporate is nowhere to be seen at OSCON. Steve Jobs must be locked away, designing the next proprietary software platform tied to proprietary hardware and proprietary online Apple services. And yes, The VAR Guy will buy it.

Still, Apple is EVERYWHERE here at OSCON. The VAR Guy estimates that 20 percent to 35 percent of the crowd is carrying MacBooks or MacBook Pros....So here we … Read more

Microsoft's 'photo op' moment at open-source conference?

commentary

Due to demands at work, I wasn't able to attend OSCON (Open Source Convention) this year. I was particularly wanting to attend Microsoft's Participate08 day. I like to see what Bill Hilf, Sam Ramji, Robert Duffner, and others there are working on, to get a sense of any outbreaks of rage against the Microsoft machine.

My friend and blogging peer Zack Urlocker attended Monday and, based on his comments, I worry that I didn't miss much. I say "worry" because I expect and we need more from Microsoft than this:

While there were some good comments here or there from the audience, overall, it felt a bit like a committee examining open source from the outside looking in. We spent two hours talking about various themes and models and sociological implications but when the moderator asked the panelists to comment on what they learned, there wasn't much to say. It felt like an academic discussion to me.

This could be because the primary currency of open source is code. Microsoft has done a decent job of opening up to open-source code with Codeplex, but it has yet to engage with open source at the code level from a corporate standpoint. … Read more

Pendulum has swung in the open source debate

commentary

Once upon a time, the term "open source" was coined to save the free-software world from itself--or, rather, from the free-software zealots, as you can read on the Open Source Initiative's Web site.

Today, I can't help but feel that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, where we're so self-satisfied with the money we're making off open source that we have neglected the essential freedoms that make open-source profit possible.

The wake-up call about the necessary freedoms came from Eben Moglen at last week's O'Reilly Open Source Conference. Some, including software consultant Stephen Walli, don't like the way Eben said it. I wasn't in the room to hear Eben. At any rate, I'm not one for handwringing and am just glad it was said.

Why?… Read more

The ironic rise of the Mac among open source developers

commentary

I've been attending the O'Reilly Open Source Conference for years and have watched an interesting thing happen. A rising number of attendees have come with Mac OS X-based laptops. In fact, throughout the tech world, you see a dramatic increase in the number of people toting Macs. Why?

The Mac, after all, is a closed platform, just as Windows is. In fact, arguably, Apple is a more proprietary company than Microsoft has ever thought of being, controlling hardware and software alike. Just look at how Apple has managed its iPhone product: developers were initially shunned, and then they were allowed to crawl onto the device through the browser (and not a community-based browser like Firefox, but rather through its own Safari).

As a die-hard Mac addict and open-source advocate myself, I was thinking this morning about why the two increasingly converge, despite all the ironies and conflicting approaches. Here's my best guess.… Read more

Fontango COO votes with his feet: no open source, no future

commentary

Somehow I missed this surprising move by Fontango's COO during OSCON. He quit. The keynote was going swimmingly, and then Simon Wardley (then COO) quit. I really wish I would have seen that.

Why?… Read more