Planet Profoss

Connecting the Dots: US SEC, ABS Mandates, Financial Modeling and Python - ActiveState webinar on the potential use of Python in US financial system (there is a proposal to require the use of Python in Asset-Backed Security market to give better transparency to regulatory bodies like the SEC.
September 22, 2010 10:00 AM PDT

Webinar: From RDBMS to Apache Solr/Lucene – Open Source Search for database developers - In this webcast, author and database/XML expert Nicholas Chase contrasts the conventional SQL-driven programming approach with the simpler, more streamlined approaches available with Solr/Lucene. He will explore how to approach search with Solr and get started on a real search application that produces useful search results, along with a sample application and sample data.
September 8, 2010, 09:00 AM PDT

DimDim myScreen 6 is here! - Not a webinar, but a webinar and conferencing open source tool now with new features, included the myScreen plug-in to share your entire desktop, a region of your screen or just a single application.

Open World Forum is only a few weeks away and once again The 451 Group will be represented at the event in Paris.

On the morning of September 30 I’ll be taking part in the Open Analysts summit: The 2010 barometer of Open Source, along with Roberto Galoppini, James Governor from Red Monk, Jeffrey Hammond from Forrester Research and Mathieu Poujol from Pierre Audouin Conseil.

“By attending this first ever Open Source Analysts Summit, you will be able to debate with the major analysts today about their vision of how Open Source is evolving in 2010, and their predictions for the future. This panel discussion will explore trends in the adoption of Open Source by both customers and vendors, as well as how business strategies and procurement policies fit into the picture.”

Then in the afternoon I’ll be taking part in the FLOSS Visions track, which includes a series of presentations on a variety of topics of interest to free and open source software. I’ll be presenting on the topic of regional variations in attitudes to open source adoption.

“The objective of this presentation is to discuss the different attitudes to FOSS adoption in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. It will include the results and a discussion of The 451 Group’s survey of 1,700 open source users and comparison of the results from different regions.”

Day one also includes a keynote on the state of open source in 2010, a roundtable on the challenges of open communities, and keynote presentations from Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation; Walter Bender, MIT Media Lab and SugarLabs Founder; Dominique Vernay, Chairman, Systematic; and Franz Meyer, COO EMEA, Red Hat.

Day two, October 1, begins with a keynote and roundtable discussion on the topic of open democracy before breaking in to a number of tracks covering software as a commons, interoperability between forges, marketing, the video industry, open cloud, diversity, the open innovation awards, and open technologies for the future.

The session on how corporations benefit from communities looks interesting, although it is entirely in French. Last year they had those headsets so you could pretend to be at the United Nations, so I may give that a go if they are available, or the session on best practices in the governance of open source also looks good.

The event concludes with the conclusion of the open BRIC summit, presented by Michael Tiemann, president of the Open Source Initiative, vice-president at Red Hat, and the presentation of the 2020 FLOSS roadmap from Jean-Pierre Laisne, chairman of OW2, and open source strategy director at Bull.

It’s been interesting to see how many people have picked up on the concept of open source 4.0 especially since it was ignored when I first made reference to it over eighteen months ago.

A little bit of flattery goes a long way, and referring to it this time as potentially the golden age of open source probably didn’t hurt, but I also think it is now evident that the focus has shifted from vendor-dominated open source development and distribution projects to corporate-dominated development communities.

Not all the feedback has been entirely positive, of course. Alan Shimel voices his scepticism with a comparison to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and 5th Dimension.

Personally I would consider Wyld Stallyns as a better musical comparison since, like open source 4.0, Wyld Stallyns music promises to help put an end to war and poverty… align the planets and bring them into universal harmony, allowing meaningful contact with all forms of life: from extra terrestrials to common household pets. And, it’s excellent for dancing.

But I digress… Alan's scepticism about the concept of open source 4.0 is based on the view that "as soon as any of these large consumers of open source that are dominating a community sense an advantage to be had over their competitors, they will seize it and run with it."

This is a very "open source 3.0" view of the world – which is to say that it relies on an assumption that in order to gain commercially from an open source project a vendor needs to control it. The point of open source 4.0 is that collaborating on development projects and seizing commercial advantage are not mutually exclusive concepts.

By commercializing open source projects indirectly, through complementary products and services, multiple vendors are able to seize a commercial advantage and run with it without endangering the core open source project. As long as they continue to collaborate on the non-differentiating code, the project should benefit from being stretched in multiple directions.

There will inevitably be some vendors that want to have their cake and it eat – benefiting from the work of others without sharing – but that is an inherent risk with community-developed open source, and I would argue that most have learned that they stand to gain more from collaborating than they do from forking and that it is in their own commercial interests to contribute to the common good.

Witness the current ecosystem of vendors growing around Hadoop. IBM, Cloudera, Karmasphere, Datameer, GOTO Metrics, Pentaho and many others are working on (often) proprietary extensions to the Apache Hadoop projects to respond to commercial opportunities – and yet they all continue to contribute non-differentiating code back to the core project.

They do so not for altruistic reasons, and not because they are compelled to do so, but because it benefits them commercially. This is not an ideal, and it is not not a theory. It is the modern Apache community. It is Eclipse community. It is OpenStack. It is open source 4.0.

In other words – be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes.

We will be explaining more about our theory of the evolution of commercial open source in a follow-up to our Open Source is Not a Business Model report, which is due to be published later this year. It will provide more context for the economic motivators and issues involved in the various models, as well as updated research on which vendors are following which strategies, and why, as well as a survey to uncover what software users make of it all. The report will be freely available to CAOS subscribers. For more details of the CAOS research practice, and to apply for trial access, click here.

VMware launches vFabric. Actuate claims $50m OSS-related revenue. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca, and daily at Paper.li/caostheory
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# VMware delivered vFabric cloud app platform, based on SpringSource, Hyperic, RabbitMQ, and GemFire technologies.

# Actuate claimed to have generated over $50m in BIRT-based revenue in less than four years.

# TierraCloud launched the HC2 open source private cloud project, based on the code from Sun’s Project Honeycomb.

# EnterpriseDB raised a strategic investment from KT (Korea Telecom) and new VC funding from TransLink Capital.

# Cloudant released its BigCouch project as open source software under the Apache 2.0 license.

# Nuxeo published an introduction to fise, an open source RESTful semantic engine.

# Gijs Hillenius reported on the increased use of the European Union Public Licence.

# Javlin released CloverETL Community Edition, based on the CloverETL open source transformation engine.

# Stephen Walli emphasized the difference between project and product when it comes to open source software.

# James Gosling began a campaign to hold Oracle to its pledge to create an open independent vendor-neutral JCP.

# The Software Freedom Law Center opened a branch in India.

# General Hugh Shelton was elected to serve as chairman of Red Hat’s board of directors.

# Citrix is integrating its OpenCloud with OpenStack and the Open vSwitch project.

# The Ruby on Rails community completed its work on Rails 3.

# Interesting perspective on the future of the government forges with reference to Forge.mil and Forge.gov.

# Adam Leventhal discussed the past, present and potential future of Solaris.

Red Hat Italia is organizing an executive meeting in Milan, on the 28th of September 2010. The event will focus on how open source can help to fulfill today’s business requirements with less cost and complexity.Gianni Aguilletti, Red Hat Italia country manager, will welcome attendees at 3 PM, and then I’ll give a speech about the state of the art of open source adoption and governance in Italy.

Werner Knoblich - Red Hat VP and General Manager EMEA - will talk about Red Hat news and strategies, and a customer success story will close the working session.

All attendees will be given the opportunity to visit the Museo Diocesiano at 5.15 PM, just before the aperitif/dinner with a selection of wine-food combinations.

The event is “invitation only” and is limited in terms of availability.

There are a number of cloud computing events and announcements taking place — VMworld, a countering announcement from Citrix, and recent partnership among rPath, newScale and Eucalyptus Systems for private and hybrid clouds — that we believe are indicative of the significant role and impact open source software is having in cloud computing — a topic we cover in depth in a new 451 Group special report, Seeding the Clouds, which is a collaboration of our CAOS and CloudScape practices.

By considering the open source pieces and players that constitute much of the infrastructure and underpinnings of cloud services from major providers Amazon, Google, Rackspace, VMware and Terremark, we analyzed they key pieces prevalent across them all and also picked out patterns that we are seeing repeated in the broader cloud computing market. We also consider how these larger vendors are playing a role in the rise of open source pieces and commercial supporters, which are finding opportunity among several categories of customers, including enterprise and service provider cloud users.

For example, the recently announced OpenStack from Rackspace, NASA and host of other partners (covered on the CAOS Theory blog and in a 451 Group report, is something we anticipate we’ll see more of in the form of greater participation, opening of code and open source-centered initiatives. We also expect both response to these efforts and other initiatives that offer more open alternatives to existing, unofficial standards such as VMware and Amazon. One such example announced after the writing of the report is the initiative for self service private and hybrid clouds among rPath, newScale and Eucalyptus Systems with the systems integration heft of Momentum SI.

As stated, the response and competition is not limited to the open offerings, as we see a variety of large cloud and IT services providers understanding and appreciating the value of communities: Amazon, Oracle, VMware and even Microsoft, which as we discuss in the report is among other cloud providers in its use of and participation with the PHP community. Citrix is another example, and it’s evident the company believes openness in the cloud is a good thing based on its Citrix OpenCloud announcement and focus on ‘Open Cloud,’ (which also coincides with its acquisition of virtualization management vendor VMLogix).

We also expect VMware and others to continue to increase their involvement and strategy with open source software for cloud computing, and would highlight the prevalance of open source software now within VMware (SpringSource, Hyperic, Zimbra, for example) and its prominence at VMWorld this week.

While there will certainly be challenges, including the maturity, evolution and learning from open source we are seeing and expect more of from larger, non-open source competitors, we expect more open source code and commercial supporters in enterprise and service provider cloud markets for some time. For customers, the competition, not only between open source and proprietary vendors, but also within open source and in partnerships and collaborations, and presence of open source in the cloud mean additional options and value — another reason we expect open source to maintain its prominent place in the clouds.

The Open Innovation Revolution - opensource.com kicks off a webinar series with a discussion on “The Open Innovation Revolution” with the author of the book, Stefan Lindegaard.
Wed, Sep 1, 2010 1:00 PM EDT

Open Source Software Adoption in Enterprise IT - Black Duck Software and Jeffrey Hammond of Forrester Research (who will join the upcoming open source analyst session at OWF) will discuss data showing increased developer adoption of open source platforms, frameworks and development processes, and how the IT management benefits of a mixed source development model.
Wed, Sep 15, 2010 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM EDT

Magento U - Summer Webinar Series - A registered “Getting Started” webinar series designed for beginning Magento.

Plone Cono Sur invites you to attend and show your Plone skills at the second edition of the Plone Symposium South America to be held in Cordoba, Argentina. Plone Symposium South America is a regional event created to gather Plone users from Government, Education, NGO and Private Sector. We also strengthen the Plone Community in South America, socially and technically, through training and sprints. Promote Plone locally through the half-day Success Stories session.

Red Hat takes a PaaS at the cloud. Novell’s Linux revenues slide. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca, and daily at Paper.li/caostheory
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Red Hat outlined its PaaS strategy as part of its Cloud Foundations portfolio.

# Red Hat submitted the API specification for Apache Deltacloud to the Distributed Management Task Force.

# Novell reported (PDF) Linux platform product revenue of $35.5m in Q3, down 7.1%. Total revenue was $199m, down 7.9%.

# Simon Phipps asked whether open source communities should avoid contributor agreements.

# OpenGeo announced the release of OpenGeo Suite Cloud Edition.

# UK councilor, Liam Maxwell, said central govt is holding up adoption of OSS, councils could save at least £51m.

# Sacha Labourey launched CloudBees, offering PaaS for Java applications based on Hudson Continuous Integration.

# Simon Phipps said “which open source licence” is the wrong question.

# Matt Asay asked “can open source be saved from itself?”

# Motorola has reportedly acquired 280 North – creators of open source Cappuccino app framework – for $20m.

# Marten Mickos explained Eucalyptus Systems’ perspective on the NASA/OpenStack brouhaha.

# Carlo Daffara explained the intricacies involved in open source software license selection.

# Colosa released the enterprise edition of its ProcessMaker BPM software.

# Eucalyptus Systems released version 2.0 of its open source private cloud software.

# ZDNet reported on the importance of VMware to Novell.

# ReadWriteWeb explained why Large Hadron Collider scientists are using CouchDB.

# Diaspora, the “open source Facebook” will launch on September 15.

# Simon Phipps explained why GNU/Linux is finally Free software.

Simon Phipps has published an interesting post today examining the issue of contributor agreements and copyright assignment.

This is an issue that has been thrown into focus by the recent debate about the open core licensing strategy, and the disagreement between NASA and Eucalyptus Systems, and is likely to remain significant thanks to Project Harmony.

Simon’s post is an interesting introduction to the topic but is particularly important, to my mind, as he has attempted to differentiate between agreements that require copyright assignment to a controlling organisation (which Simon refers to as “contributor agreements”, and those that do not (“participant agreements”).

It is important to make the distinction as it is the contributor or participant agreement that defines the terms of the relationships among the developers of a project, and whether such a community exists at all.

It is rare to find someone making the distinction but it is important to do so because, as I have found from experience, it can lead to confusion: I was surprised on one occasion to find someone disagreeing with my assertion that contributor agreements were controversial, until it became clear that they were thinking of participant agreements.

However, it is also important not to assume that contributor agreements are automatically bad, just because participant agreements are automatically good.

As we previously noted, “copyright control has a symbiotic relationship with both the open source software license and the development strategy, and is influential in determining both the end user license strategy and therefore the choice of revenue trigger”.

Clearly copyright assignment is integral to the dual licensing and open core licensing strategies in enabling those vendors to sell closed-source licenses to the core project and extensions, and it does restrict developer communities in those situations.

However, as Simon briefly explains, copyright assignment is equally used by other organisations, such as the Free Software Foundation, to protect the core project. Glyn Moody described the potential benefits of such an arrangement earlier this week, while Tarus Balog provides another example of copyright assignment protecting an open source project.

That is why, in our assessment of open source-related business strategies, we make a distinction between copyright that is owned by (and assigned to) a vendor, copyright that is owned by (and assigned to) a foundation, and copyright ownership that is distributed amongst participants.

While I totally agree with Simon that relaxing control over a project enables the benefits of true community development, copyright assignment needn’t negate those benefits entirely, and we should be wary of lumping contributor agreements in the same bucket as open core.

That said, the differentiation between contributor agreements and participant agreements is a good start.

NOTE Anyone interested in Project Harmony and contributor/participant agreements should be aware that a workshop to discuss project Harmony will talke place at the Open World Forum in Paris in September.