Updates from October, 2007 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Roberto Galoppini 8:28 pm on October 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Code Search: a talk with Laura Merling, from Krugle 

    Large enterprises embracing Open Source software need to to put some structure around their use, and they need tools – like search engines such as google code search, koders and krugle – to locate and manage these resource.

    Krugle Open Source Search, a search engine managing 2.6 billion lines of code, 600 repositories and over 100,000 projects, allows web users to search for open-source code on the Internet.

    FindingFinding a needle by Marion A’s photos

    Also Internal open source teams, responsible for keep a collection of things used internally, need to make them available for others in the organization, and here comes a need for internal code search engines, like Krugle Enterprise Edition.

    I asked Laura Merling, VP, Marketing and Business Development of Krugle, to tell us more about this area.

    As the number of languages increase, the number of development “platforms” increase, and the amount of code increases in the enterprise (and the public arena). There are these large “development silos” of products and tools that have been created by developers, and search driven development is an emerging need.

    Is the Enterprise Edition easy to sell?

    We have been brought in by senior developers, dev managers and architects the pain they have is things like impact analysis: I am changing this code, who else is referencing it?
    We have not had to encounter the CIO yet. The great part is that typically the people that bring us in have already written use cases they want it for and have already sold it up as needed. Most of them have a budget to some level, our target is mid-level management.

    Are you wondering to invite users to produce use cases, may be giving prizes?

    Absolutely – we did this last summer and got great responses – we really want use cases for the enterprise!

    How the company was conceived?

    Ken Krugler was working on the Chandler project with Mitch Kapor and was looking for code to some stuff he figured the code had to be out there somewhere. So he began “searching” for it he used regular search engines, went to repositories and nobody had anything that would help him find. What he already knew was out there so he decided to fix the problem and build a code search engine.

    As he started talk to other developers, there was a strong desire to not only have it to find open source code, but their own stuff in the enterprise. Imagine how much code a 20 year financial services firm or how much code a telco might have!

    Besides the Enterprise arena, Krugle DevNetwork powers also SourceForge.net, Yahoo! Developer Network, developerworks and now Amazon Web Services Developer Connection. So may be you are already using it and you didn’t know..

    Technorati Tags: Krugle, Source Code Search, Amazon, Yahoo, SourceForge, LauraMerling, KenKrugle, MitchKapor

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 5:49 pm on September 19, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Business Intelligence: Actuate preview, by Seth Grimes 

    Actuate next monday is going to launch a new community site named BIRT Exchange, and Seth Grimes got the opportunity to have a preview, below some excerpts of his article.

    BIRT is a set of Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, simultaneously an Actuate commercial product and “an Eclipse-based open source reporting system for web applications, especially those based on Java and J2EE.” Eclipse participation has paid off for Actuate. According to Vijay Ramakrishnan, Actuate director of marketing for Java reporting, “Eclipse is such a diverse ecosystem of projects, and reporting is a pretty horizontal technology. There will be lots of cases where developers come to BIRT through other technologies.”

    Note that open-source BI rivals including Pentaho and JasperSoft and non-OS powerhouses such as Business Objects offer Eclipse plug-ins that are similar to Actuate’s and allow comparable interoperability with non-BI Eclipse projects. Their technologies do not, however, share BIRT’s status as a top-level Eclipse project. [..]
    By contrast, other commercial open source BI providers welcome community project participation. Pentaho and JasperSoft, for instance, welcome outside developers. JasperSoft CTO Barry Klawans says that his company tends to get “a constant trickle of small contributions and 2-4 major ones a year.” And Pentaho Marketing VP Lance Walter estimates that while 80-85% of contributors work for Pentaho, a spectrum of outside developers submit code with no single company contributing more than 2%.

    Personally, I think that a broader base of user-contributors is a healthy thing, a lesson I learned from Eric Raymond.

    Cooperation is a nice to have, but so far the application arena didn’t proof to be as interesting as the infrastructural one for open source firms and individual developers, though.

    The site blurs the boundaries between what is free, open source and what is closed and not free. You can exchange code, tips, and tutorials in the DevX section, and you can as easily jump to downloads of trial versions of Actuate commercial products. The site is an “almost no cost sales and marketing” opportunity, quoting Actuate briefing materials.[..]

    The site is an almost no cost sales and marketing opportunity… for Actuate. It is not an open marketplace like SugarExchange, where third-party providers can sell their SugarCRM-related wares, or Red Hat Exchange, a similar marketplace for applications validated to run on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. Actuate will insist that non-Actuate BIRT developers — and BIRT trainers and consultants — look elsewhere than the BIRT Exchange to sell their tools and services, regardless of the boost an open marketplace could bring to BIRT users and Actuate itself.

    Read the full article.

    Technorati Tags: Open Source BI, Business Intelligence, SethGrimes

     
    • Joe M. 9:53 pm on April 16, 2008 Permalink

      I haven’t used Actuate before, primarily use JasperSoft for my business intelligence needs, but that is an interesting method of combining open source and premium services. I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t just go one way or the other, although this surely allows them to make some money while still being affordable to the end user.

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:29 am on September 12, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Library Systems, an introduction 

    Today viable open source solutions are aivalble to manage a public library. By using them, the money can be used for other important resources, such as purchasing additional books, DVDs, etc.

    Eric Hebert from DegreeTutor told me about his “How Open Source Software Can Improve Our Library“, a good start to become more comfortable using open source solutions in a Public Library.

    Googling around I also found an old comparison of Open Source Software Library Management Systems, maybe Eric or others might update it a little bit.

    Technorati Tags: Open Source Library Systems, DegreeTutor, EricHebert, Public Library

     
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