Updates from April, 2007 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Roberto Galoppini 6:00 pm on April 5, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Market: OpenLogic’s CEO unveils new trends 

    Steven L. Grandchamp, OpenLogic’s CEO, has wrote an insightful article entitled “The Evolution of Open Source” (require membership), explaining that there are many sourcing and selection issues and how this market is evolving.

    Support can be particularly vexing, with companies juggling support contracts with dozens of different commercial open source companies or trying to tackle problems internally without the proper expertise, either one a risky and time-consuming proposition.[..]

    The open source service companies can assume many forms: One form is the stack supplier, and others include the support provider, systems integrator, consultant, software developer, and a combination of all of the above. Among the newcomers are Virtuas, BitRock, SpikeSource, and OpenLogic[ the author’s company], but the larger, traditional IT players are also beginning to take notice and build practices in this area.

    Trends Trends by farfalina

    I would also add open source consulting firms like Navica and Optaros, just to name two of.

    While the size and substance of the service companies differ, all share a common philosophy: each eschews the typical model for the commercialization of open source. Rather than latch onto one, particular open source product with a big installed base and monetize it with subscriptions, support contracts, and consulting, each company provides solutions that extend across many open source products. Each supplier traffics in expertise about how to use open source in concert with software downloaded, purchased, or developed internally.[..]

    The real opportunity for growth is in demystifying the use of open source. Those third-party, open source firms that focus on helping enterprises develop policies, pick projects, and manage deployments are the ones most likely to succeed and excel.

    I would rather say that “horizontal” business models are new – compared to the “old” vertical ones – not sure they are more likely to succeed, though.

    Those firms are all taking advantage of the absence of a Corporate actor:

    • Consulting, because (almost) no one is marketing OS products;
      .
    • Selling quality assurance, because (almost) no one is tracking the production process;;
      .
    • Building Stacks and Benchmarking, because (almost) no one develop partnership programs;
      .
    • Mediation, because (most of) open source projects lack of commercial support;
      .
    • Offering indemnification and IP coverage, etc.

    OpenLogic is an open source consulting firm based in Colorado, has just added sixty new open source to its Certified Library, also releasing a new version of its Enterprise 4.4, with added also Open Source Governance functionalities designed to help enterprises.

    Technorati Tags: OpenLogic, Commercial Open Source, Grandchamp, Open Source Service

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 10:24 am on April 4, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Licensing: is StillSecure trying to redefine Open Source? 

    I already mentioned StillSecure releasing Cobia, a security platform that they call “Open Source”, redefining the meaning as reported by the license FAQ:

    Is Cobia open source?

    The definition of “open source” is evolving as companies create new licenses or add “riders” to OSI licenses such as the GPL. Some believe that open source means it must be one of the OSI compliant licenses (GPL, Mozilla, Apache, etc.). We’ve found what is most important to a majority of open source software users is that open source software is free of charge and include easy access to source code. Cobia software meets these requirements through our community license structure.

    Shift Shift Freedom by aliceinreality

    Being compliant with OSI or FSF definitions is mandatory if you want to call open source or free software your products, wehther or not you like OSI and FSF licenses’ approval processes.

    Thomas Ptace at matasanochargen blog wrote a post entitled “Questions for StillSecure About Cobia” raising some issues about Cobia’s restrictions about redistribution and asking them to stop calling Cobia an open source product or fully complying with the OSI definition.

    Reading the license I found things like this, not really open source style indeed:

    2. GRANTS OF RIGHTS

    (a)From original developer. Subject restrictions in Section 2 of this License, the Original Developer grants you a non-exclusive, worlwide, royalty-free license:[..]
    (iii) to Distribute Unmodified Code, but only if:[..]

    B. You do not embed, integrate, bundle or incorporate the Unmodified
    Code with any other product or good (whether tangible or intangible)

    Alan Shimel, Chief Strategy Officer of StillSecure, replied:

    1. Is Cobia open source? The not so short answer Thomas, is that if you are a strict constructionist and believe all open source must have an OSI approved license, than I guess you can say it is not open source. Me personally, I don’t like strict constructionists in my Supreme Court judges and I don’t deem software open source or not by a strict construction of whether or not an OSI approved license is in place. Thomas, I don’t say this flippantly either. We thought long and hard about licensing and this issue around Cobia. Here is the story. We believe and our research proves it, most people consider software open source if the product is free to use and it includes the source code. I think only purists will get hung up about the OSI stuff.

    I wouldn’t describe myself as a purist, but I as Thomace I firmly believe that outsiders need incentives, and such license can be an obstacle to firms’ participation.

    Alan added also this:

    Thomas, todays commercial open source business model isn’t the open source model you grew up with. I am glad you brought up both Snort and Nessus. Go ask Ron and Marty if they were starting today if they would do it under GPL from the beginning again. If they are being truthful, they would tell you no way. The idea we are trying to get across here is that if you are using Cobia for your own use in your network and not reselling it or packaging it for profit, it is free and open. If you are going to use it for profit, why should we not share in this? Someone has to pay the bills here.

    Success story like Snort are a typical case of open source community-based product that turns in a proprietary product and I can’t believe they might get there without going that way. As a matter of fact, many open source firms are giving away software “for free” getting advantage of positive externalities and contributions.

    StillSecure can choose its way, I can’t say anything about that, but they can’t pretend it to be the only way.

    Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, StillSecure, Cobia

     

    • Nick G 3:01 am on January 7, 2008 Permalink

      Robert,

      I think a lot of people would agree that open source should be about giving back to the community.
      Most of us use open source software every day, without even thinking about it (yes even windows users). And it sure would be nice to see people contributing back to the community…

    • Roberto Galoppini 8:47 am on January 7, 2008 Permalink

      I definitely agree with you Nick.

      I am volunteering by OpenOffice.org community from more than five years now, and it has been also an interesting professional experience that I would recommend anyone in the field.

  • Roberto Galoppini 1:56 pm on March 31, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Marketplace: SourceForge’s Long Tail and Blueprints 

    Savio Rodriguez in response to my post about the post about the SourceForge’s initiative, said that, being SourceForge the place where to look for if interested in OSS products, the idea of making a marketplace out of it sounds quite natural. Rodriguez addressed also other interesting issues.

    For emerging projects or for projects with a small development team/community, a majority of the 144,548 projects on SF (i.e. Longtail projects), getting included in the Marketplace would make a lot of sense. [..]
    Experience tells me that customers are cautious when it comes to spending money. When they do, they want to spend with vendors that have a strong future. So, for longtail projects on SF, I’m not sure that the SF Marketplace will change much of this customer behaviour.

    I just received SourceForge Update: 2007-03-30 Edition email, and in the top 25 projects’ list there is about no trace of large projects who already have support & services business attached. I know that is not easy to turn a user in a customer, but many are downloading packages that do need some work to be setup in a working environment.

    Blueprint Blueprint by sweetsexything

    Alex Fletcher commenting Savio’s post come out with some examples of the diversity of use cases for open source, showing how an open source package can be a key component within customized solutions, regardless if are developed in house or otherwise.

    Commenting the examples Alex wrote:

    The associated process involved much more than downloading and running an executable version, but did not entail the purchase of a commercial version or indemnification protection from a vendor. [..] This is exactly what needs to be standardized for open source products across the board.

    I do totally agree, but the construction of open implementation standards could be highly expensive. SMEs, creating and supporting most of the commercial open source products in the “long tail” are not going to do that, because too busy with daily activities. In this respect the previously mentioned Observatory of European SMEs finded that:

    Small firms have a short-term perspective and expect quick and concrete results.

    Could eventually SF help them to get paid to produce vertical, clear, good blueprints?

    Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, SourceForge, Marketplace, blueprint

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:45 am on March 30, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    GPL: Linux’s father is pleased, and Google doesn’t see any problem. Everyone is happy? 

    The GNU GPL draft for the long-awaited third revision has now been read by a multitude of people, and all changes went under deep scrutiny. The blanket prohibition on DRM has been removed, and the SaaS loophole has not been fixed. As a result both Linus Torvalds and Chris DiBona are happy.

    chooseChoosing sign by elston

    Today reading Fabrizio Capobianco’s post, I understand there is a “minority” that is not welcoming all these changes. Before Funambol wrote the Honest Public License people at Affero worked on the Affero License and also my friends at Partecs spent some efforts to find a countermeasure at the service loophole.

    Congratulations to the Free Software Foundation for daring, choosing is always difficult and I believe that it wasn’t easy to take an unpopular decision, but I guess they had to.

    Changing topic: Will OSI eventually be able to sort out what to do with the attribution thing? They were supposed to close the issue within February.

    Post Scrittum: Steve Mills, IBM Software General Manager, and Matthew Szulik, Red Hat CEO, are happy too. The former said:

    At some point you become so shrill and beyond what’s required that you lose the audience and the audience moves on to something else. We’ll have to see what finally evolves through the [GPL] process, it’s going through an update and the Free Software Foundation has a particular view of free software. Free software is a wonderful thing but there’s also a business model.

    while the latter said:

    I think the draft we saw last night was much better than the earlier drafts, especially around patent infringement and TiVo-ization.

    Technorati Tags: GPL, GPLv3, Affero, OSI, FSF, attribution

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 4:52 pm on March 29, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Licensing and Patents: GPLv2 has already adressed the issue 

    Reading Groaklaw I happened to know about “Potential Defenses of Implied Patent License Under the GPL“. a must read for people who thinks that GPLv2 is silent about patents.

    Laura Majerus, OSI Director of Legal Affairs and Partner at Fenwick & West, previously wrote “Patent Rights and Open Source – can they co-exist?“, already containing some interesting spots on the subject:

    no sw patentAgainst software patent by kianee

    Setting aside any arguments that the Preamble of the GPL is somehow not a part of the license, it seems clear that an author or modifier who distributes software under the gpl cannot assert his patent rights against subsequent users and redistributors of the GPL’d software. Thus, there is
    at least an implied license to those who receive the GPL’d software in any patents covered by the software.
    Why then, would anyone want to obtain a patent on an invention that is going to be distributed under the GPL?
    There are several reasons:

    1. the author may plan to license the patent to others to produce a revenue stream
      .
    2. the author may want to assert his[/her] patent rights against redistributors who do not conform to the GPL license terms (for example, by failing to redistribute under the GPL)
      .
    3. the author may want to have patent rights to use as an offensive or defensive weapon against infringers who are not using the GPL’d software and
      .
    4. the author may plan to also distribute a non-GPL’d version of the software.

    According to one reasonable interpretation, the GPL only precludes the patentee from asserting his [/her] rights against people who are practicing the invention by using his[/her] GPL’d software. People who independently create other software are not subject to this implied license. As an aside, it seems that the author could assert his[/her] patent rights against a competitor who is himself releasing independently developed software under the GPL, as long as it is not based on the original author’s distribution. The fact that the infringer himself distributes under the GPL is irrelevant as to whether he[/she] is infringing patents of others. The original author has not given permission for his[/her] competitor to use the patented technology.

    The author could sue people implementing his/her patents without using his/her GPLed implementation. Infringing activity falling outside the GPL scope are, in this perspective, subjected to patent infringement suit.

    The follow up article analyzes in more depth the impact of the GPL on the patent rights of the patentee, and various implied license theories that users of GPL’d software could use in defense against a patent suit.

    Read the full article.

    Technorati Tags: GPL, GPLv2, software patent, Majerus

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 6:27 pm on March 27, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Marketplace: SourceForge Marketplace about to launch 

    I just received an email from Sourceforge.net team, advising me about a new feature to buy or sell services for Commercial Open Source on SourceForge.net.

    forging Forging by stefmaxwell

    Dear SourceForge.net community member,

    As an active participant in the Open Source community, you may be excited to learn about a new feature that we will add to SourceForge.net in late
    spring/early summer. This feature will allow you to buy or sell services for Open Source software on SourceForge.net.

    Interested? Follow the link below and we’ll keep you updated as we move towards the official launch of this feature:

    https://ostg.wufoo.com/forms/marketplace-interest-list/

    Thank you for your continued support,
    The SourceForge.net Team

    Sourceforge’s marketplace apparently will be soon released, and I believe it is great time to, and no one is in the position to do it effectively as they are.

    They also opened a position for a Senior Marketing Manager, SourceForge.net Marketplace in Fremont, California. In the meanwhile they invite all SourceForge users to fill in a simple form, a sort of marketplace interest list.

    VA Linux’s quarterly report contains many forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The software segment, focusing on SourceForge Enterprise Edition products and services, despite the increase in the number of customers, is of little importance nowadays, being less than 10% of the last quarterly results. It worth to notice that sales were primarily to customers located in US.

    Considering that their network of web sites serves more than 30 million unique visitors monthly I believe that they can easily open up new markets acting as the mediator.

    I wish them best of luck in the near future!

    Technorati Tags: SourceForge, Commercial Open Source, Marketplace

     

    • Andrew 1:49 pm on July 17, 2007 Permalink

      SourceForge has been a great forum and promoter of the OpenSource community for some time. I’m excited to see them get the exposure they deserve. I hope that “marketplace” won’t become synonymous with “giant sponser-driven site full of crap”, but that doesn’t seem to be SourceForge.net’s style.

  • Roberto Galoppini 6:04 pm on March 24, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Novell: Novell’s apologizing is a sign of .. ? 

    Matthew Aslett’s article “Novell apologizes for false free software funding claim” tells the full story of Novell’s head of marketing for Linux and open source, Justin Steinman, who just apologized to the FSF after making misleading statements about the company’s financial contribution to the FSF.

    Steinman made the claim in an online interview last week but was quickly forced to retract the statement after the FSF’s executive director Peter Brown disputed it via a statement to the Groklaw web site.

    “Novell last gave funds to the FSF in October 2005, when they donated $5K as part of FSF Corporate Patron program. Since their deal with Microsoft was announced we have not asked them to renew as a patron, nor would we. Novell is not ‘a significant financial contributor to the Free Software Foundation’,” Brown stated.

    In his apology Steinman stated that he believed his original statement to be true at the time he made it, but nevertheless apologized for misrepresenting the facts.

    “Further research inside Novell confirms that Peter Brown is correct and I spoke in error. I want to make it clear that I had no intention of making false claims or providing misinformation to the market,” he wrote. “I want to apologize to the Free Software Foundation and to the open source community for making this misrepresentation. I should have double-checked the accuracy of my information before speaking, and for that, I offer no excuse.”

    Read the full story and wonder what is going on at Novell, I have no clue..

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 9:10 pm on March 21, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source CMS: the Centre for Inclusive Technology evaluated accessibility 

    The Centre for Inclusive Technology looked at some Open Source CMS in order to assess which would be most suitable from an accessibility point of view. Read the article edited by Josuha O’Connor, Senior Accessibility Consultant CFIT, screen test were executed by Paul Traynor, Expert Screen Reader Evaluation.

    access

    Methodology

    In order to give these tests a real world flavour and to ensure they were ecologically valid, we consciously did not use any particular testing method or script in order to access how intuitive these systems are out of the box.

    For the tests we looked at:

    • Jadu
      .
    • Mambo
      .
    • Joomla
      .
    • Quick and Easy
      .
    • Expression Engine
      .
    • Plone
      .
    • Drupal
      .
    • Textpattern
      .
    • Xoops
      .
    • Typo3

    Results

    Our feedback derives from user testing and observation of a screen reader user performing the following basic tasks, as well as the same tasks being performed by a user with no Assistive Technology/Special User Agent requirements and with an average computer skill level.

    The tasks included:

    • Uploading content and, where possible, editing and formatting content (using a WYSIWYG editor).
      .
    • Creating new pages (Category/Section headings and sub categories/headings).
      .
    • Basic administration of user groups and permissions.
      .

    Some excerpts from the results:

    Joomla

    Visually, the graphic style of the Mambo interface was pleasant to work with and the style of the Windows operating systems graphics would no doubt be appealing to many users and would not be too much of a departure from what they are used to, so this could be an advantage.[..]

    Some problems encountered were:

    1. Some links reading On Mouse Over could not be activated by pressing the Enter key.
      .
    2. Various items had checkboxes, etc. that weren’t very intuitive. The labels didn’t convey their purpose effectively to the screen reader user.
      .
    3. Radio buttons read well but their labelling could be improved. They often were not understandable as to what purpose they served.

    If these problems could be addressed, we would recommend Joomla.

    Plone

    From a usability perspective our first impression of Plone was that it is not that intuitive. This is primarily down to the labels and page types but this could be improved, as Plone is highly customisable. It is very feature rich out of the box and this may be why it feels rather unwieldy and a little intimidating.[..]

    The negative points are:

    1. Overall lack of consistency between what elements are visible when in forms mode/virtual PC mode.
      .
    2. The naming conventions for items used in the interface are a little unintuitive. Use of terms like Smart Folder wasn’t great, and we had no idea what a Smart Folder does. However, reading the manual would no doubt shed some light on this, which as previously stated, we have not done for this test in order to assess the CMS‘s level of instant usability.

    Overall, Plone was a good CMS and highly customisable and extendable. We would recommend it.

    Drupal

    In terms of the interface out of the box, Drupal takes the opposite approach to Plone. The interface is simple uncluttered and clean.[..] It could however be improved. For example the labelling of checkboxes in the blog administration page is not very good. There are checkboxes that allow the administrator to set permissions for anonymous and authenticated users that are also not labelled very well. This makes it difficult for a screen reader user to administer the site well as they cannot associate each checkbox with its relevant command.

    However, these are our first impressions and we feel that Drupal is one of the best that we have come across and would recommend it with some customisation.

    Read the full article.

    Technorati Tags: open source, CMS, Plone, Drupal

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 5:58 pm on March 21, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Embedded Linux: Ocean Blue chooses commercial Linux for Set Top Boxes 

    Ocean Blue, a UK software house developing software solutions for the digital home, Digital TV, mobile TV and Digital Video Broadcasting markets, has chosen Linux for advanced Set Top Boxes.

    Bristol, England – 20 March 2007 – Ocean Blue Software, the specialist digital TV software developer, has released a Linux version of its Sunrise, Voyager, and SurfSoft software products, with ports to the leading hardware platforms complete or well under way. The company reports that Linux is emerging as the preferred platform for developers of set-top boxes, particularly at the high end, such as Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) and IPTV.

    set top box chartset Top box Diagram by drazen

    Ken Helps, Managing Director of Ocean Blue Software, commented:

    The major chipset manufacturers are introducing new Linux platforms almost monthly, IT vendors that wish to produce products for the Digital Home and are used to working with Linux in the past, now have the option of using Linux based DVB and MHEG-5 Digital TV software products. The Linux operating system features in many of the new raft of IPTV Set Top Boxes, being powerful enough to support advanced functions but not requiring a license fee. All the industry reports indicate strong growth in this area and we are developing our software to support most platforms.

    Today I asked Ken if they are using non-commercial Linux distros:

    Chipset vendors such as NXP ( formerly Philips semi-conductors) and Toshiba Electronics usually adopt or develop a mature, robust version of Linux for the embedded set top box market sector. The Set top box (STB) market is different from the pc market as these digital TV set top boxes are generally closed boxes, with no floppy or CDROM drives, no USB connection and therefore no way to update the software inside the set top box. Hence the Linux and Digital TV middleware software inside these TV receiver devices has to be robust, tested to Digital TV software industry standards, fault tolerant if possible , compact and mature.

    As far as I understand players like Montavista, providing commercial-grade Linux OS for embedded systems, are welcome in some niche markets, and Television and Home Entertainment is definitely one of them.

    Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, Embedded Linux, Montavista, Ocean Blue

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 2:43 pm on March 20, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Embedded Linux: Commercial Linux vs non-commercial 

    Venture Development Corporation, a technology market research and strategy firm, has recently published “Linux in the embedded system market“, a study revealing that embedded hardware makers prefer non-commercial Linux solutions over commercial ones.

    The author, Stephen Balacco, stated:

    While some OEMs have chosen to use a commercial Linux solution, more are using and/or expect to use a publicly available Linux solution in future project development. It is this trend that will continue to put pressure on commercial Linux suppliers to provide value above and beyond the growing sophistication of publicly available Linux solutions.

    embedded market shareVDC survey’s graphs (current&expected users), reported by Linuxdevices.com

    Survey respondents, chosen from embedded systems developers, were 428. As you can see 12% of them use non-commercial Linux distro, while only 3 percent use a commercial Linux OS. VDC asked also about future plans and discovered that 20% of interviewed developers plan to use a non-commercial Linux distro and only 5% a commercial one.

    No surprise that non-commercial is the hardware makers’ favourite choice, allowing them to avoid the burden of licensing and to make savings maintaining internally their platforms.

    Balacco talking about the preference for non-commercial distros said:

    [the preference] will continue to put pressure on commercial Linux suppliers to provide value above and beyond the growing sophistication of publicly available Linux solutions.

    I totally agree, let’s see how will eventually react commercial Linux suppliers to this challenge..

    Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, Embedded Linux, VDC

     

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