Meryl Streep won the Oscar for Sophie’s Choice, a film that hinges on (spoiler alert) a woman having to choose which of her children will live and which will die. Microsoft is for that kind of choice. In a blog post later copied to GovLoop, Microsoft’s Dan Kasun lays it out. “Choice has been one of Microsoft’s strongest messages for years,” ... [Link]
SpringSource has announced a new lightweight edition of its open source application development and management server optimized for the virtual datacenter, cloud computing — and VMware products, of course. VMware acquired SpringSource in September. SpringSource’s Apache Tomcat-based server is used by more than half of the Global 2000 companies. The tc Server Spring Edition, which will be available as part ... [Link]
Once again, Google has bought something only to open source it. This time it’s ReMail, first acquired, then put on Google Code as open source under the Apache 2.0 license. (It previously did the same thing with DocVerse.) ReMail was more efficient in terms of system resources than Apple’s own mail.app, it offered full text searching, and it had other neat ... [Link]
Apple’s suit against HTC could end one of two ways. Either Apple becomes the next SCO, which ran itself aground claiming rights to Linux, or it becomes the next Microsoft, which is prospering while claiming to own Linux. The answer depends on how hard Apple presses its case. You can get a clue by looking at who Apple has sued. While ... [Link]
The 10-year-old Mozilla Public License will be updated by the end of 2010. At the open source organization’s weekly meeting Monday, Mozilla Corp president Mitchell Baker announced that the MPL needs to be refreshed. It’s not clear if there will be any major league changes to the hybrid license. It appears that the higher ups want the language updated, the ... [Link]
The low-hanging fruit in the renewable energy business still lies with efficiency. Cutting your energy use without crimping your lifestyle gives you a faster payback than turning into Ed Begley Jr. It’s still good to be a little Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) on energy use, even if your politics are to the right of Rush Limbaugh, because there’s money in saving, ... [Link]
Google’s Android code will assume its rightful place in the Linux kernel — in good time, the company’s top open source guru says. The Android code was stripped out of the last kernel release, version 2.6.33, after Google reportedly failed to provide necessary changes and subsystem code required by kernel.org. This led some to claim Google had forked Linux, a ... [Link]
The 311 service has been a “red headed stepchild” for American cities practically since it was launched in the mid-1990s as a phone service. (Picture from Moonbattery, a conservative blog.) The idea was to make 311 the 911 for non-emergency calls. A burning building call 911, a burning question call 311. But that charge was so broad that most cities did ... [Link]
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In all the talk about New York financier Paul Singer’s plan to go all Gordon Gecko on Novell, one word has not been mentioned nearly enough. Microsoft. Microsoft needs a viable Novell, and Novell’s Linux business was on the verge of becoming viable when Singer’s Elliott Associates swooped in with an offer to break up the company, seize its cash, split ... [Link]
Dries Buytaert of Drupal and Acquia is warning that Software as a Service is becoming a threat to open source and that clouds could create the same vendor lock-in customers sought to avoid with open source. (This is Dries at last year’s Drupalcon in Paris, in a close-up of a photo by Pedro Lozano. From buytaert.net.) Even where SaaS companies let ... [Link]
That first step is interoperability. Getting proprietary gear to work together, to transform reports among proprietary standards, is the first step on the road to an open world. The HIMSS show takes that step every year with what it calls its Interoperability Showcase. At this year’s show in Atlanta it occupied the whole end of one hall of the Georgia World ... [Link]
The announcement by Twitter that it is switching to Cassandra for its database lookups puts new attention on a project that has yet to reach Version 1.0. Cassandra had been underway long before Oracle bought Sun and mySQL. Facebook first launched it in 2008 to power their inbox search feature. It was released on Google Code in 2008 and became an ... [Link]
Today Matt Asay urges government buyers to support open source, open data and open standards. Why? Because it’s better. Because it promotes competition. Because it gives government flexibility. But after watching government on every level, in various countries, for over half my lifetime, I can tell you the last thing any government wants is to make a decision its successor can ... [Link]
Novell would be wise to embrace Xen and KVM — but only if the company has adequate resources to support both sets of customers. The Waltham, Mass. company is the second biggest Linux distributor and supporting both open source hypervisors would give it a significant differentiator over its key rival, Red Hat, which announced that it will back KVM as ... [Link]
Since I began writing this blog in 2005 I have watched open source move from a fringe idea to something embraced by the IT mainstream. But there are still extremists out there who want to destroy open source. Some of their names may surprise you. What they have done is retreat into a group where they seek not to be identified. ... [Link]
No. Matt Asay hits the nail on the head. In full “knock this board off my shoulder mode,” the Ubuntu COO dares Microsoft to sue Canonical, or Google, or someone else over its Linux claims who might fight back. To torture my recent analogy (analogies can’t fight back), Microsoft isn’t Neville Chamberlain. It’s the guy on the other side of the ... [Link]
In response to my piece yesterday, my Italian friend Roberto Galoppini referenced a piece he did last August called the Open Source Innovation Backbone. Packaged software companies may just use open source to build a common base on which they can innovate. Or they may copy a proprietary product, competing against it together in order to drive out a competitor’s monopoly ... [Link]
Open source may become the default position of customers, but it is still not the first option when a market is new. This is a point open source executives like Matt Asay continue to struggle with, one that closed-source advocates continue to hammer on. (Picture from the Breakthrough Institute.) Open source is shared freeloading. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. ... [Link]
Another day, another Microsoft patent deal. This time with Amazon. And more whining from Linux advocates that this is a “Microsoft tax” aimed at making Linux users pay Microsoft for the open source operating system. I have thought that too. But let me play devil’s advocate a moment, using as my text Marshall Phelps’ Burning the Ships. Isn’t Microsoft just buying ... [Link]
I’m heading down to the conference today. While not the principal focus of the conference, many of the sessions will be hosted by Open Source companies with presentations ranging from Web Services to SOA to Strategy to Architecture. I will post more after the first day, but I do expect a large turnout and lively discussion. www.transformationandinnovation.com
Tags: Open Source · Trade Events
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