IBM vs. TurboHercules… Fight!

First of all a disclosure – I am currently employed by IBM as a software developer (but not in the z/OS group), however I will try to be impartial in my assessment of the situation. As you read this post keep in mind that the opinions expressed are mine alone and not representative of the opinions of IBM or its affiliates.

If you haven’t heard about the recent shots fired between IBM and TurboHercules, Ars Technica has good coverage of the whole situation which can be found here. If you don’t have a few minutes to read the whole thing there I can give you the gist: The Hercules open source project allows applications written for the IBM System Z operating system to run on alternate hardware (including desktop computers) within mainstream operating systems. IBM had no problem with this until recently, when TurboHercules was founded to offer the software commercially – and made a move against IBM accused monopoly of the mainframe space. Now, IBM has asserted a number of its patents against TurboHercules (some of which were pledged to the open source community back in 2005).

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Remail acquired, open sourced by Google

So when I first heard about Remail’s acquisition by Google I had expected this would culminate (maybe) with a native GMail app for the iphone sometime next year using some of the newly acquired tech. So, Imagine my surprise when it was announced the client would be open sourced and availale for download on Google code!

Jacobsen v. Katzer settled, open source lands decisive win

In the first ruling of its kind, damages were paid to an open source project who’s source code was copied and used as part of a commercial package. Read the whole story here.

From open core to complimentary services

SpringSource recently announced a change in their open source strategy. SpringSource’s dm Server project (a Java/Spring application server) was previously monetized using the open core model in which a product’s core functionality is available as open source and a commercial version of the product is sold with a different license agreement and/or an enhanced feature set. SpringSource has decided to move to a complimentary service model in which the product is offered entirely free of charge and subscriptions for support can be purchased.

As organizations better understand their own offerings, the markets they operate in and open source  itself, changes in strategy and business model can be beneficial to their ability to create value. As an acquisition of VMWare, there may be ulterior motives to this strategy switch which is counter to what has been happening in the open source word as of late. Savio Rodrigues of InfoWorld weighed in on the switch  here stating that:

“It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that VMware is attempting to drive dm Server adoption through the Eclipse Foundation and monetize the adoption when operations team want to deploy dm Server applications on Cloud infrastructure. The dm Server support subscriptions are a stop gap until VMware can build out its cloud offerings and dm Server adoption increases.”

Read Savio’s whole post here.

The open source science movement

The ideals and ideas that make up the foundation to the open source software movement may be applicable to other fields. One such field is research science. Open source science means that research, data, results and ideas are all freely shared so that new breakthroughs can be made faster cheaper and more collaboratively in a global community. Walter Jessen, of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital was interviewed by LinuxInsider about what open source science is and how it works.

With the controversy currently shaking the climate change research community, maybe open access to research isn’t such a bad idea.

Read the whole interview here.

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(image from opensourcescience.net)

Open sourcing your startup – a good idea?

Novell VP Miguel de Icaza recently stated that “making a successful open source business has been incredibly difficult” and “If your livelihood depends on the product that you’re selling, until you can figure how you’re going to make money on that thing, I say, keep it proprietary.” Now, while these statements may sound as though open source is a terrible business model, let’s look a bit closer before we decide.
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Google to demo Chrome OS tomorrow

With all of the rumors that Google would be releasing their new Chrome OS this week, the world took a disappointed sigh yesterday as word came this was not the case. Since July, it has official that Chrome OS is coming, and tomorrow the it will be demoed and future plans for the operating system will be detailed. For the moment, Google-loving netbook owners will have to bide their time.

Chrome OS will be a new Linux distribution specialized for netbooks which will be available free of charge for anyone who wants to download it. Much like Android, Google’s specialized Linux distro for smartphones, ChromeOS will come pre-bundled with all of Google’s services including Mail, Search, Maps etc. A free, snappy and secure netbook operating system could be exactly what users are looking for and may be a threat to Microsoft’s dominance of the netbook market thus far.

To be honest, I don’t think Chrome OS is going to take a huge bite out of Microsoft because the general public just doesn’t know enough about Linux yet. I think the new OS will be very popular with the technology crowd and hopefully it will join Ubuntu as an operating system that helps bring open source to the masses. Time will tell.

Microsoft releases .NET Micro FW as Open Source

This might be old news for you by now (first announced yesterday morning), but Microsoft has decided to release version 4.0 as open source, licensed under the Apache license. For the whole story, read it here.

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(image from http://www.microsoft.com/netmf/default.mspx)

Open source’s “romantic narrative”

Here is a quote from Brian Prentice’s (Gartner) post entitled “Open Source’s Dying Narrative” (read the whole thing here):

Big software vendors and VCs throwing money around is not particularly interesting – that’s just the nature of the beast. But the fact that there are so many members of the “open source community” ready to sell out – now that’s interesting.

Well, actually, it’s interesting only to the extent you still believe the romantic narrative that commonly circulates around Open Source. That story involves bands of fiercely independent geek-heroes. Armed only with an Eclipse IDE, a weekend’s supply of Jolt Cola for energy and a poster of Jean-Luc Picard for inspiration, they set out to usurp the big software companies in their attempt to control the software universe.

Who would have thought such esprit de corps would be so easily bought…

Does such a “romantic narrative” really exist? Is it the norm or do most managers have a more updated view of open source? I thought we had gotten to the point that many managers and top management teams had a much better understanding of what open source is and how it works. Let me know what you think.

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Open source and the 10x advantage

Michael Tiemann of opensource.org blog recently covered the London Stock Exchange’s acquisition of MilleniumIT. MilleniumIT is a medium-sized development firm from Sri Lanka, that utilizes open source technologies. MillenniumIT’s CEO Tony Weeresinghe recently told the press “This transaction with London Stock Exchange Group is a tribute to the innovative culture of our company, the quality of our technology solutions and our deep pool of talented staff.” Read Tiemann’s post here.

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