Tomorrow is the fourth annual Software Freedom Day. A world wide celebration of of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). This is the second year I have been involved and am proud to say that Zenoss is a global sponsor along with Sun, Google, and my good friends at MindTouch.

What’s really impressive is the growth of the event which this year will have over 500 teams in over 80 countries around the world. If you want to find the event going on nearest to you try the SFD wiki listing teams and events. If you are in Austin join my buddy Matt Ray on Sunday who will be hanging with Austin LUG and handing out some Zenoss schwag at Caffeine Cafe and Flipnotics.

Technorati Tags: MindTouch, Software Freedom Day, Zenoss

• tecosystems » Earth Class Mail: Still Open for Business? – Stephen’s review of Earth Class Mail a snail mail handling service. Looks intriguing.
• Amazon.com: Intellectual Property and Open Source: A Practical Guide to Protecting Code: Van Lindberg: Books – from Amazon’s description: “Clear, correct, and deep, this is a welcome addition to discussions of law and computing for anyone — even lawyers!” — Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society If you work in information technology, intellectual property is central to your job — but dealing with the complexities of the legal system can be mind-boggling.  [via Matt]
• Walking With Elephants: Taking on a new challenge -Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that the pilot program for PeerToPatent is being extended for a second year and that the areas of innovation it covers is being broadened to include e-commerce and business methods.
• Adeona: A Free, Open Source System for Helping Track and Recover Lost and Stolen Laptops- Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there’s no need to rely on a single third party. What’s more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. [via Savio]
• Compiere Appoints Chief Marketing Officer to Lead Continued Global Expansion Initiatives – Open Source ERP vendor Compiere, Inc., announced that software industry veteran, John Cingari, has joined the company as chief marketing officer.
• Mindtouch: Deki, OSS and Windows – Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft- I am fascinated by the fact that Deki is open source, is written in C# and uses the Mono framework and now runs on Windowws. It’s truly an OSS egnima. And it’s wicked cool stuff.

Technorati Tags: Compiere, DekiWiki, Earth Class Mail, MindTouch, Open Source

It seems that open source maven, Matt Asay along with well-known Microsoft blogger Mary Jo Foley have come to the conclusion that Microsoft doesn’t need open source. Asay contends that Microsoft’s open source activity has more to do with regulators than best practices and user collaboration.

Microsoft’s open-source charade is not about customers. It’s about regulators. Until Microsoft can convince U.S. and European regulators that its market power is not as bad as it once was, the company will need to hide behind expressions of openness.

Hence, Microsoft “opens” up its protocols (i.e., lets everyone read but not touch…without forking over cash). It inks “open” interoperability agreements with Novell and others, which actually do nothing more than bind otherwise open-source success to Microsoft’s proprietary technology. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith acknowledges the shift, or lack thereof:

“It is (a change in philosophy) in some significant ways and yet it has also other aspects that are a continuation and we’re probably thinking a little bit about both pieces,” Smith said, explaining Microsoft’s twin thrusts of promoting intellectual property rights by encouraging interoperability among various software platforms.Business as usual. Just under the openness guise.

I suspect that’s a reasonable assumption. Though the folks working in open source software from Microsoft like Sam Ramji seem pretty sincere. With Bill Gates retiring and Microsoft’s initiatives on open source wouldn’t it be a sardonic turn of events for open source spread like a virus inside the walls of Redmond (especially since that’s how detractors likes to describe open source software).

There are a number of ventures run by ex-Microsofties who are seeing success. Maybe the the question real question is, “How far does the apple fall from the tree?”

Read the full story

Technorati Tags: Black Duck Softwware, Deki Wiki, Koders, Microsoft, MindTouch, Open Search, Open Source, sharepoint

I have been trying to digest two unrelated stories from last week. The first was the report by the Standish Group on the $60 Billion dollars open source is purported to be costing the proprietary software industry. The second was Steve Reubel’s, “The Web 2.0 World is Skunk Drunk on Its Own Kool-Aid“. As I looked introspectively into these stories I wondered how relevant they were. I came to a realization that while the one of the most commonly espoused virtues of open source is more eyeballs generating better code that perhaps one of the least mentioned strengths is their marketing ability. Bear with me as try to explain why.

Read the full story

Technorati Tags: Auttomatic, free software, MindTouch, Open Source, Wiki, Zenoss

I am a fan of the open source analysts RedMonk and 451 Group. I think Alex Fletcher from Entiva has good open source insights and Jeremy Owyang from Forrester share great information on his blog about social media. However, when it comes to IT buying decisions I have never been much of a fan of the big analyst firms.

I remember having breakfast with Sendmail’s Eric Allman after he was the CTO at Sendmail Inc. He told me that when he had problems to solve everyday it was easier to figure out what direction to take his project/software in. When he became a CTO he didn’t solve his own problems and that made it difficult to set product directions. I suspect the same goes for analysts who rely on interviews, briefings, and surveys for a large part of their information. They are largely getting their information second hand and even then what they are receiving is probably to some degree suspect.

Read the full story

Technorati Tags: 451 Group, AaronFulkerson, analysts, Garnter, MindTouch, Redmonk