• tecosystems » Facebook Rolls Their Own PHP: What HipHop Means

  Grady offers an interesting take on how a third party can monetize Facebook’s HipHop project.

  tags: facebook, php, runtime, hiphop, tecosystems, zend, businessmodels, opensource

  • History indicates, then, that HipHop could easily be supported, on a for profit basis, by a third party. Who might the logical candidate be? Well, why not Zend? They know the runtime as well or better than any other third party, leaving them presumably well positioned to understand how the code can – and can’t – be translated to C++. They have existing support agreements in place with many of the potential HipHop users. So what if they didn’t author the project? The market is littered with companies supporting products written by others.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Cloud and open source meet to test Web apps | Software, Interrupted – CNET News

  tags: opensource, cloudcomputing, selenium, saucelabs, crossbrowsertesting

• 451 CAOS Theory » What is Open Core Licensing (and what isn’t)

  tags: opensource, licensing, opencore, caostheory

• Commercial open source had very good 2009 | The Open Road – CNET News

  tags: opensource, 2009, stats, mattasay, m&a

• 75% of Linux code now written by paid developers

  tags: opensource, linux, linuxkernel, developers, 2010, January, stats

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Open Source Clouds On The Rise — Government Clouds — InformationWeek

  tags: cloudcomputing, opensource, opencloud

• On Selling Exceptions to the GNU GPL – Free Software Foundation

  tags: opensource, gpl, gnu, richardstallman, stallman, licensing, gnuexceptions

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• A Bushel of Free FOSS Resources

  tags: opensource, tools, apps

• 11 open source companies to watch – Network World

  tags: 2010, January, opensource, cpmpanies, towatch, vendors

• Snoracle, MySQL and the Death of Dual-Licensing

  tags: opensource, mysql, licensingcosts, licensing, license, duallicensing, postgresql

• WebMink

  tags: opensource, freesoftware, stallman, enforcement, license

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Seeking Profit in Open-Source Search Software – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

  tags: opensource, businessmodels, search, lucene, lucid, 2010, january, analysis, startups

  • This setup has a boil-in-the-bag flavor because the software has already done the hard part: it found a devoted audience. All the entrepreneurs have to do is try to cash in on that proven popularity through support contracts and some marketing polish.

• 11 open source business models | Open Source | ZDNet.com

  tags: opensource, businessmodels

• The case in favor of the open source enterprise database | IT Systems News – Betanews

  tags: opensource, enterprise, enterpriseit

  • One might argue that MySQL (ignoring the pending acquisition for a moment) is already mainstream, that the database has been commoditized, and there is a viable open source alternative to the dominant vendor. Not so. MySQL never challenged a major enterprise DBMS — nor did it try to. The success of MySQL stems from the fact that it filled a market need that was largely being ignored by commercial vendors.

    The low-end, low-cost database market had no incumbent, and MySQL quickly filled the void giving developers a quick and easy tool for quickly creating Web-based applications that were easy to deploy and to administer. MySQL is developer-friendly and is geared for programmers who typically build client-rich applications using Ajax, PHP, or Perl.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• 5 Free Business Intelligence Crunchers for Your 2010 Arsenal – GigaOM

  tags: businessintelligence, bi, tools, free, opensource

• Eucalyptus open-sources the cloud (Q&A) | The Open Road – CNET News

  tags: cloudcomputing, opensource, eucalyptus, mattasay

• Hugin – Panorama photo stitcher

  tags: panorama, software, photography, tools, opensource

• Oracle, MySQL and the GPL: don’t take Monty’s word for it

  tags: opensource, licensing, sun, oracle, mysql, oraclemysqlsaga, toresearch

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Red Hat makes desktop virtualization protocol open source | Virtualization – InfoWorld

  tags: opensource, virtualization, redhat, desktopvirtualization, spice

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

I have been advocating my theory on Open Source as a SaaS endgame for sometime now. My recent post on the topic quoting the example of Storytlr has kcik started a round of debate in the web. Matthew Aslett of 451 Group pointed out that releasing the SaaS application as Open Source doesn’t guarantee its success. Serdar Yegulalp of Information Week agrees with Matthew’s assertion and I also agree that any open source project (for that matter, any software) needs a vibrant vendor or developer community to succeed. In response to Matthew’s post, I clarified where I am coming from. My argument is that Open Source licensing of a SaaS application going down will ensure the business continuity of the users of the application. The author and Enterprise Irregular, Nenshad Bardoliwalla, pointed out to the SaaS Bill of Rights which states that when a SaaS provider goes out of business, their customers would be to receive a virtual machine image with the software configured as they have in the multitenant instance and with their data. This is definitely a good idea but, as I pointed out to Nenshad, the customer will be left in the lurch if something goes wrong with the software installed using VM. With an open source solution, the user has the option to hire a developer to fix any issues that arises later on. (more…)

I recently revisited my “open source as a SaaS endgame” theory quoting a news about another web app releasing their code under an open source license before shutting down the shop. As I do with many of my posts here in Cloud Ave, I was wearing my evangelist hat and it resulted in the crux of the post getting hyped up a bit. It appears to have given an impression that I am predicting the SaaS app to flourish if it had an open source endgame.

Matthew Aslett, of 451 Group who writes the CAOS Theory blog, disputes this and makes a very important point.

with open source there is life after death – if there is a committed group of developers prepared to put in the effort to keep the project alive. For many open source projects that’s a pretty big “if”.

(more…)

Many societies believe in the idea of Afterlife. As far as the human life is concerned, I do not believe in this supernatural concepts. However, when it comes to software “lives”, I believe in eternity (a life without death). I believe that a software can live eternally without the death faced by the lesser mortals, by adopting open source licensing model. A proprietary software dies mostly with the company or with the ones that acquires the original company. However, open source software, even if it is tied to a particular company, does not die with the company. It is usually cloned or forked and developed by volunteers or another company interested in solving the problems for a niche group of customers. As long as there is an itch in the hands of at least a handful of users, open source software will continue to live. Even if no one is interested in a particular open source software, it will continue to live in one of the open source repositories waiting to be consumed by some soul sometime in the future. This is clearly not the case with proprietary software. In short, my argument is that if the software is released as open source, it can still be useful even after the developer(s) or company behind the software vanish in thin air. (more…)

• Low Cost SAN | HowtoForge – Linux Howtos and Tutorials

  tags: opensource, storage, san

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The beauty of Open Source is that the customers are not tied or locked into a single vendor. For example, customers can use any Linux distribution and take support from third party support services companies. Plus, anyone can take the source code of any open source software, do some customizations and offer it as a clone with their own branding. CentOS is an example of such a strategy. It is also possible for companies to take a particular OS distribution and fork from it to develop their own Linux distribution and bundle services on top of it. Canonical and Ubuntu can be considered as an example for this. (more…)

Image Credit: Linode.com

Libcloud, the open source python library released by the vendor Cloudkick, has taken the first steps to be part of Apache Software Foundation by joining the ASF Incubator. Libcloud offers a single programming interface for apps to access different cloud providers including Amazon EC2, Rackspace, vCloud, Terramark, etc.. Even without any standards, Libcloud can offer interoperability between various Cloud providers. (more…)

Yesterday, DeWitt Clinton of Open Web Foundation announced that Open Web Foundation Agreement (OWFa) is now available for use by the developers

The Open Web Foundation was founded to help developer communities collaborate and share technical innovation on the web, bringing to the world of formats and protocols the same successful grassroots approaches established by the open source community. Modeled after the Apache Software Foundation and Creative Commons, the Open Web Foundation seeks to facilitate the creation and implementation of specifications with legal agreements that make such work simple, safe, and sustainable.

(more…)

This says it all and I don’t even have to do any explaining to emphasize the title of this post.

As the sun set over the Silicon Valley last night, Google pushed the source code for Android 2.0 to the Android Open Source Project. Within two hours, the endlessly able Android community had it up and running on the eldest Android of them all, the T-Mobile G1.

• Does open source still matter in cloud computing?

  I asked this question to Sam few days before the post. The answer he gave to me is now part of this article. In fact, I liked his arguments and very much agree with what he said.

  tags: opensource, samramji

• Miguel de Icaza And Mono: Platform-Agnostic Programming Power – Open Source Blog – InformationWeek

  tags: opensource, mono, tools, programming, monotools, IDE, .net

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Open Source Zenoss Core Project Delivers Cloud Monitoring and Community-Led Systems Management Innovations | Reuters

  tags: cloudcomputing, opensource, zenoss, monitoring

• Amazon RDS out to eat open source vendor lunches | Open Source – InfoWorld

  tags: opensource, cloudcomputing, amazon, aws, amazonrds, mysql, middleware, toblog

• Beyond Social Business Software: The Social Publishing Platform with Open Source Drupal | Reuters

  tags: opensource, drupal, pressrelease

• Open source database company 10gen raises $3.4M | VentureBeat

  This is a good news. Seeing open source vendors raise funding makes the lives of open source evangelists like me exciting.

  tags: opensource, database, 10gen, mongodb, finance, funding

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• With eye on Oracle and MySQL, Red Hat invests in EnterpriseDB

  tags: opensource, database, redhat, enterprisedb

• How Important Is Open Source To Mobile Devices? – Mobile Blog – InformationWeek

  tags: informationweek, opensource, desktop, mobile, android

  • Part of the reason for this may just be expectations. People expect to be able to run certain pieces of software. iTunes, Quicken, Office and Photoshop are just a few examples. You can generally load these onto a Mac or Windows PC with no problem. There are open source alternatives to many of these that run fine on Linux, but they aren’t the same thing – they aren’t what people expect. People don’t run Windows, they run applications and they want an OS that will support their apps.

• The Apache Software Foundation’s President Dissects the “Apache Way”

  tags: opensource, apache, apacheway, philosophy

• The Server Room Blog: Open Cloud – Where it Makes Most Sense

  tags: cloudcomputing, intel, opensource, openstandards, iaas, paas, saas, interoperability

• Thoughts on the Whitehouse.gov switch to Drupal – O’Reilly Radar

  tags: opensource, whitehouse.gov, drupal, government

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Analysts build open source straw men | Open Source | ZDNet.com

  tags: opensource, zdnet.com, analysts, gartner

• Open Source’s Dying Narrative

  tags: opensource, gartner

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

We saw how Novell played the Microsoft game for years. After staying away from Microsoft for a long time, Redhat is getting closer to the proprietary software vendor. Recently, they came together to tell the world that their hypervisors will play nice with each other promise interoperability. (more…)