Updates from February, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Roberto Galoppini 3:38 pm on February 25, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Avocent, BobWaldie, console server, Digi, Lantronix, MRV, Nagios, NUT, okvm, Perl Systems, PowerMan, Raritan, ToddRychecky, TonyMerenda   

    Open Source Console Servers: Opengear goes well and emphasises Channel Importance 

    Opengear, a leading provider of next-generation console server solutions, yesterday announced its record order bookings, largely due to its (open source) channel, according to a report.

    Opengear generating 75 percent of its revenue via partners, recently has put in place a very aggressive partnering program offering channel partners 25% margins, to further speed out-of-band management solutions sales.

    Todd Rychecky, VP of Sales at Opengear, told me more about the company, and how power management and an open source approach to console servers has helped Opengear achieve record sale.

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  • Roberto Galoppini 4:52 pm on February 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , DavidMaxwell, DHS, Open Source Hardening, Software Integrity,   

    Open Source Quality: Application Architecture Data from Over 2,500 Projects Made Available 

    Coverity – a company specialized in software integrity products and testing services - today announced the publication of application architecture data from over 2,500 popular open source software projects on http://www.scan.coverity.com.

    All data is provided as an extension of Coverity’s work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with a Creative Commons license, and individual developers and open source vendors can freely benefit from it.

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    • Georgia 9:59 am on September 23, 2009 Permalink

      Coverity Announces the State of Open Source Software Integrity

      Releases 2009 Coverity Scan Open Source Report

      San Francisco/London – September 23, 2009 – Coverity®, the software integrity leader, today released the 2009 Coverity Scan Open Source Report. This report is the result of the largest public-private sector research project focused on open source software integrity. Originally initiated with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the 2009 Coverity Scan Open Source Report details the findings from analyzing more than 11 billion lines of open source code from 280 open source projects over the last three years.

      The Coverity open source integrity report is an objective presentation of open source code quality and defect data collected from the Coverity Scan service. The report findings provide a unique opportunity for the business industry to examine coding and software integrity trends from some of the world’s most well-used and popular open source packages, including Firefox, Linux, PHP, Ruby and Samba.

      Some highlights of the report findings include:

      • Overall integrity, quality and security of open source software are improving.

      The Coverity Scan service measured a 16 percent reduction in static analysis defect density over the past three years among participating projects.

      • Open source developers are actively improving software.

      Since 2006, more than 11,200 defects in open source programs have been eliminated as a result of using the Coverity Scan service. Total developer support has increased with more than 180 projects having active developers scanning and fixing software defects discovered by Scan.

      • Projects continue to advance up Coverity Certified “Integrity Rungs” from year to year.

      In 2009, the number of Rung 1 certified projects increased 32 percent from 2008 and doubled on Rung 2 in the same time period. OpenPAM, Ruby, Samba and tor are the first projects to begin Coverity Integrity Rung 3 certification. Rungs are certification levels indicating high-integrity open source software.

      • Most common defect types are holding steady.

      The most common defect types across participating open source projects are still NULL Pointers, resource leaks and unintentional ignored expressions.

      “High-integrity open source software is critical, especially given Gartner’s estimate that at least 80 percent of commercial software will contain open source code by 2012,”1 said David Maxwell, Coverity open source strategist. “Coverity would like to thank all the open source teams and developers who participate in Coverity Scan. This report could not have happened without their support. Specifically, we applaud the OpenPAM, Ruby, Samba and tor teams for embarking on their Coverity Integrity Rung 3 certification.”

      The 2009 Coverity Scan Open Source Report includes the following topics:

      – Introduction to static analysis
      – Open source projects participating in Coverity Scan
      – Overall code improvements by participating projects
      – Projects with most improved quality and how it was achieved
      – Most commonly found defects
      – Function length and defect density
      – Complexity metrics and defect density

      “The Coverity Scan service began as a public-private research partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to harden the integrity of open source code,” said Andy Chou, chief scientist and co-founder of Coverity. “The Coverity Scan service is a key pillar of our strategy to help open source and commercial developers to continually improve the integrity of all software.”

      Powering the integrity Scan service is Coverity Static Analysis, the industry’s leading static analysis product. In February 2009, Coverity also published application architecture data for more than 2,500 popular open source software projects and provides this information as part of the free service to the open source community.

      For more information about Coverity Scan and to download the 2009 Coverity Scan Open Source Report, visit http://www.coverity.com/scan. To hear what open source project leaders have to say about software integrity, go to http://blog.coverity.com/.

      Coverity will be hosting a free webinar to delve deeper into the findings from the 2009 Coverity Scan Open Source Report. To register for the event, visit http://www2.coverity.com/l/584/2009-09-09/ESBU7.

      About Coverity
      Coverity (www.coverity.com), the software integrity leader, is the trusted standard for companies that have a zero-tolerance policy for software failures, defects and security breaches. Coverity’s award-winning portfolio of software integrity products identifies critical defects to prevent software quality and security problems throughout the application lifecycle. More than 100,000 developers and 600 companies rely on Coverity to help them deliver high-integrity software. Coverity is a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco.

      Coverity is a registered trademark of Coverity, Inc. All other company and product names are the property of their respective owners.

      1 Gartner. Gartner Highlights Key Predictions for IT Organisations and Users in 2008 and Beyond. http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=593207.

      Media Contact
      Jasmine Teer
      Page One Public Relations
      415-321-2348
      coverity@pageonepr.com

      Georgia Hanias
      Page One Public Relations
      44(0) 7812 211 403
      georgia@pageonepr.com

  • Roberto Galoppini 3:56 pm on February 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: davidaxmark, , monty, ,   

    MySQL Open Source Heroes Leave Sun 

    MÃ¥rten Gustaf Mickosformerly MySQL CEO and now open source strategist at Sun until the end of Sun’s fiiscal 3rd quarter 2009 – and Ulf Michael Videnius (aka Monty) – MySQL co-founder and CTO, now driving the development of Maria, the new storage engine Maria – both quit Sun Microsystems.

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  • Roberto Galoppini 12:29 pm on January 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: MarcBrandsma, open source investments,   

    Open Source Investments: Talend’s Third Round, News from an Insider 

    In such a down market, raising $12m with Balderton Capital and get Bernard Liautaud, founder and CEO of Business Object, on board is a testimony of the fact that some VCs keep investing in open source companies.

    Marc Brandsma, a Partner at Chausson Finance who advised Talend on its three rounds of funding, yesterday twittered about the deal, and I asked him few question about his personal story with the company, and why he thinks that Talend is a great company.

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  • Roberto Galoppini 7:24 pm on January 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: e-government, Europe e-gov, paolozocchi, RenatoBrunetta   

    Open Source e-Government? No, thank you! by Renato Brunetta 

    Renato Brunetta, Italian Minister of Public Administration and Innovation, two days ago disclosed his plan for Innovation. Open Source is not mentioned, as well as there is no mention of cloud computing.

    The Italian e-gov plan is contained in two power-point presentations, and seems not taking in any consideration the most up-to-date trends in the ICT sector.

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    • Josef Assad 9:00 am on January 24, 2009 Permalink

      Why cloud computing? How does cloud computing single itself out sufficiently to warrant explicit mention in the precise context of e-government?

    • Roberto Galoppini 11:02 am on January 25, 2009 Permalink

      Hi Josef,

      cloud computing is increasingly going to be more and more important, even if government remains skeptical about the cloud. Despite Italian thought leaders at CNIPA – the National Centre for ICT in the Public. Administrations – take part in international conversations on e-government in cloud, regional and national IT laws are ignoring the cloud.

      Tim O’Reilly says:

      that a new kind of proprietary lock-in in the cloud.But just “paying attention” to cloud computing isn’t the point. The point is to rediscover what makes open source tick, but in the new context.

      That’s why we open source and open standards advocates should be part of this process, since open source will fuel the growth of cloud computing anyway.

    • Carlo Piana 9:40 am on January 26, 2009 Permalink

      Beats me, there is no vision. One can have a bad vision, but having none is dreadful.

      “One computer in any classroom”: this morning’s buzz. For doing what? To teach how to start Word? Is that what we want our children become? Tamed monkeys?

    • Roberto Galoppini 11:39 am on January 26, 2009 Permalink

      The government is just planning to reduce costs, they don’t plan to increase vision AND efficiency. That’s probably why they don’t talk about open (source, standards) and show cases mentioned are only promoted by vendors.

    • Alex Roe 4:46 pm on April 18, 2009 Permalink

      “and seems not taking in any consideration the most up-to-date trends in the ICT sector”

      From what I’ve seen of Italian graduates over the last five years or so, not many of them are particularly up-to-date in terms of IT. Most need lessons on how to use Excel, and very few seem to know that Word can check the spelling of English words automatically. In this day and age, I find this amazing, and worrying. I hate to think how much companies in Italy have to spend on training employees in basic computer skills.

      Surely the Italian education system could devote a few hours to teaching high school students how to use Word and Excel – they would not have to invest in software either OpenOffice is free, and if you can use the open source equivalents of Word (Writer) and Excel (Calc), then using Word and Excel would be easy.

      Open source software is not popular institutionally in Italy because no money can be made from supplying it! The infamous ‘interests’ at play, one fears.

      Best,

      Alex in Milan, Italy – and an open source fan too

    • Roberto Galoppini 4:40 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink

      Ciao Alex,

      I believe that Italian companies can make also big money from open source, QualiPSo is the living proof. Still large system integrators and solution providers are reluctant to approach open source beyond tactics, probably leaving on the table a number of opportunities.

      About schools and IT skills, there are interesting alternatives to the ECDL, like INGOT, and we could save some money approaching IT education in similar ways.

  • Roberto Galoppini 10:10 am on January 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: CDT, COPA   

    Internet Censorship: US Supreme Court says no to onerous restrictions on Internet content 

    In a major victory for free speech online, the federal District Court in Philadelphia on March 22 issued a sweeping rejection of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), and a broad endorsement of the “user empowerment” approach to protecting children online.

    Read the full article, and the CDT press release.

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 5:09 pm on October 14, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    OpenOffice.org: OpenOffice.org 3.0 breaks through 390,000 downloads in a day! 

    In its first day of availability OpenOffice.org 3.0 has been downloaded 390.000 times in the world, 32.000 of which in Italy!

    PLIO, the Italian OpenOffice.org Association created an alternative source for downloads.

    Comparing Firefox and OpenOffice.org downloads, OpenOffice.org 3.0 in its first day in Italy has moved much more bytes (4,7TeraBytes), roughly corresponding to 580,000 Firefox’s downloads, while during the Firefox Guiness World Record “only” 320,000 downloads were actually done.

    Well done OpenOffice.org!

    Post Scrittum: If you want to know more read also “This is not a Guinness, but is definitely a world record

    Technorati Tags: PLIO, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Guiness World Record

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 11:18 am on September 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Survey: Open Census updates 

    Updates from the Open Source Census, the survey launched in April by OpenLogic to collect quantitative data on the use of open source software.

    Up today 2,181 machines have been scanned with OSS Discovery, discovering over 767 unique open source packages and nearly 300,000 open source package inm    stallations. founding on average 57 unique packages per enterprise.

    Stormy Peters, now Executive Director of The GNOME Foundation, in the press release talking about how open source software compares across different operating systems says:

     As expected, Linux (an open source operating system) had the most with an average of 87 instances of open source found per scanned system. FreeBSD (also open source) was a close second at 81, but Mac wasn’t far behind with 75. Judging by the large number of Macs seen at open source conferences like OSCON and LinuxWorld, there are probably a lot of Mac users who are open source fans.

    Windows, although not open source, still had a respectable amount of installed open source software, with an average of 39 instances per scanned system.

    I suspect that the average Mac user is not an open source enthusiast, likely respondents belong to the OSCON and Linuxworld crowds. I would definitely be more interested in reading surveys run in broader audiences, though.

    Register anonymously to the census, if interested.

    Technorati Tags: open census, open source usage, StormyPeters

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 1:46 pm on September 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Free Software Foundation: Happy Birthday to GNU! 

    The GNU project yesterday celebrated the 25th anniversary by releasing “Happy Birthday to GNU,” a short film featuring the English humorist, actor, novelist and filmmaker Stephen Fry.

    Happy Birthday Richard!Happy Birthday Richard! by peribanyez

    The Free Software Foundation after “Defective by Design“, the brilliant campaign launched to protect our digital freedoms, did a great move managing to bring Fry on the free software board. He generously donated his time to the cause of free software.

    Well done, and happy hacking!

    Technorati Tags: free software, FSF, Defective by design, happy birthday, StephenFry

     
    • Roy Schestowitz 10:14 pm on September 4, 2008 Permalink

      Nice card. There I was there was resentment here against RMS… 🙂

    • Roberto Galoppini 9:31 am on September 5, 2008 Permalink

      On the contrary Roy, I am a great fun of Richard. Still I think he should spend his energies talking about what he knows better.

      The business side of free software, or open standards are probably not among his strongest points, though.

  • Roberto Galoppini 10:54 pm on August 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source at Wall Street: Groundwork gets momentum in the Financial Sector 

    Groundwork, the provider of the open source based IT management and network monitoring solution, is getting momentum in financial services environments.

    Mary Knox of Gartner Research, says that the adoption of OSS is most notable in the financial sector because “they are impacted by escalating transaction volumes and data processing requirements as well as cost pressures”.

    I asked David Dennis, senior director of product marketing at Groundwork, to tell me if his experience confirms Mary’s ideas on why adoption is arising in the financial sector.

    Earlier this year, GroundWork conducted a survey of the GroundWork Monitor user community, including both users of the free, Community Edition and the subscription-based Professional and Enterprise versions. There were 361 completed surveys, a large enough sample size to be statistically significant.

    One of the questions asked was “Please indicate the importance of the following attributes of open source software when evaluating systems management technologies.” In order of ranking, the top answers were:

    1. Continuity of technology support over time
    2. Access to a wide community of experts
    3. Ability to combine OSS tools together more easily
    4. Less expensive
    5. Higher quality product
    6. Easier to customize
    7. Avoiding vendor lock-in
    8. More secure code
    9. Access to the source code
    10. Compliance with organizational mandates to use OSS

    I agree with Davids saying that the cost savings doesn’t appear to be the most important factor, since commercial and extensive support sounds definitely more interesting to customers (along with integrating different OSS tools together).

    How about the percentage of your subscriber base upgrading (nearly 30%)?

    While GroundWork does have an increasing number of customers who use GroundWork Monitor Enterprise from the very beginning, the upgrade percentage is a reflection of customers who have moved from either GroundWork Monitor Community Edition or GroundWork Monitor Professional to GroundWork Monitor Enterprise. These are deployments that are expanding their use of GroundWork Monitor, looking to add some of the capabilities GroundWork Monitor Enterprise can offer. Namely, support for distributed topologies, standby servers for high availability, or extended network management functions. GroundWork’s largest deployments are now above 10,000 managed servers, split across multiple geographic locations.

    Thank you David, I see the increase include also customers upgrading from GroundWork Monitor Professional to GroundWork Monitor Enterprise, and not only users becoming customers. Even if you didn’t find yet the philosopher’s stone I believe that running similar surveys can help Groundowork and other open source firms to better understand your market.

    Technorati Tags: , ,

     
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