Commercial Open Source Software

SourceForge traffic distribution numbers are a good measure about how much attention and time people from different countries pay to find, download and possibly use open source software. US is still at the first place (15,84%),  followed by Brazil (9.16%), France (6.12%), Germany (5.8%) and eventually Italy (4.27%). The only real change in the top 5 is that France overtaken Germany, a sign that the French approach is paying off. BRIC countries collectively keeps holding over 18%.

Continue reading ‘SourceForge Global Traffic Distribution: France Up, Germany Down’

One year ago, talking about open source adoption in Italian Public Administrations, I reported some SourceForge traffic distribution numbers, showing that Italy was at the fourth place after Brasil.

Italy before was used to be at the third place, but the impact of open source in Brazil was and actually is, definitely stronger. Let’s have a look at the big picture, and how Europe and BRIC countries are today, as of the 29th of July 2010.

Continue reading ‘SourceForge Traffic Distribution: A Picture is Worth a Thousands Words’

Black Duck today released the results of a survey asking 20 developer executives from 14 global enterprises about the top technology trends and about barriers to greater use of open source software in development projects. The 2010 edition of the “future of open source” published a survey reporting feedback from 551 respondents (48% vendors, 52% non vendors), giving feedback about what makes open source attractive and top 3 barriers to open source adoption.

Within the collaboration with IBM Italy to organize a series of meeting for Italian public administrations we asked to 16 IT public decision makers using open source - mostly innovators and early adopters - about open source critical success factors, barriers and open source governance.

Continue reading ‘What Do Open Source Surveys reveal?’

Wubi, the famous Windows Ubuntu installer, is probably one of the reasons why Ubuntu is the most popular Linux desktop distro, at least among Windows users. Agostino Russo - original author and ‘inventor’ of Wubi - told me more about how everything was started from a blueprint. Continue reading ‘Wubi Installer and the Ubiquitous Ubuntu’

I have been already writing about Queplix, a vendor pretending to be the only enterprise level commercial open source vendor. Two years later Steven Yaskin reconnect with me to tell me more about his company.

Continue reading ‘Queplix didn’t go Open, but for a Reason’

The OSOR Case Studies section this month covers Grosseto’s OpenPortalGuard eID system. The case study tells the story about an Italian case of excellence, started in 2003 when  the Italian government decided to introduce eID cards. Grosseto, to acquire an eID-based access control system for its ICT infrastructure, applied a rigorous open source strategy, aiming to cut implementation and operational costs.

Is it a sustainable choice for small public administrations?

Continue reading ‘Open Source Case Study and Open Source Governance’

The Software Patents war is finally over, glad open source cluster technology made it possible.

Brussels & Munich, 1st April 2009 — After years of confidential work, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) today announce a radical way to improve software patent quality: Binaries-As-Prior-Art, or BAPA. BAPA combines a database of billions of compiled computer programs (”binaries”) with a powerful Cloud search engine that can find any invention in microseconds.

Continue reading ‘European Software Patents: the War is Over’

Savio Rodrigues cleaned up an old blog post retitling it after a tweet from Bob Sutor, to tell people interested in open source to not consider just Red Hat and alike, but think also go work at IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Tibco, etc.

Many IT jobs call for open source skills, and also Matt Asay called for the shortage of open source talent. What about average salary of open source jobs?

Continue reading ‘Open Source Jobs: Are They Hot or Not?’

The 19th Jolt Annual Award ceremony, held at the SD WEST 2009 earlier this month, celebrated many open source winners this year, also in the books general and books technical categories.

Postgres Plus is the Jolt Winner of the Database Engines and Data Tools category, and I tend to agree with Ed Boyajian, Enterprise DB CEO, saying that the award is an indication that the software industry understands that open sources databases are an increasingly disruptive force in the enterprise market.

Continue reading ‘Jolt Awards 2009: The Open Source Winners list!’

The Venice International University’s research on Open Source in Italy, conducted by Antonio Picerni and Alessandro De Rossi, was presented last Tuesday at the VEGA technology park, in Venice.

Among the many findings presented - resulting from on-line surveys and interviews to 181 Italian firms - the research states that Italian IT companies offering solutions based on open source software reach bigger customers.

Continue reading ‘Italian Open Source Offering: 2008 VIU Research’s Findings’