Licensing

Open source @ Oracle: Mike Olson speaks

A week or so ago I mentioned that I'd be running an "Open Source @" series of posts, and try to capture the work that various large enterprises are doing with open source. Being large enterprises, it has taken a bit longer to collect these than I would have liked, but we now have a critical mass and can move forward.

Today we're profiling Oracle. I have been harshly critical of Oracle in the past, and yet I continue to hold the company in high esteem. Oracle is one of the few winners in the proprietary "battle of the ecosystems." I do business with a wide range of Global 2000 businesses, and I see Oracle all over. I can't say the same of several of Oracle's competitors.

I asked Mike Olson, formerly the CEO of Sleepycat and currently vice president of Embedded Technologies at Oracle, to comment on the state of open source at the company. How can a company so dependent on revenues from proprietary software forge ahead into open source?

Over to you, Mike....

First off, thanks to Matt for dreaming up this series of posts, and for inviting me to participate. He and I haven't always seen eye to eye, but I like him and I enjoy our arguments.… Read more

Red Hat discussed patents with Microsoft...this is news?

Reuters is reporting that Red Hat held patent talks with Microsoft but they broke down. This is news? I've been hinting at this for many moons.

But it's not rocket science to infer that Microsoft would have approached Red Hat long before it knocked on the doors of Novell, Xandros, and Linspire. Microsoft said as much when it signed the deal with Novell, and has pined in the press for a deal with Red Hat, only to be publicly rejected.

Is there any scenario under which Red Hat will enter into a patent agreement with Microsoft? I'm … Read more

Customer win round-up (EnterpriseDB and Liferay)

In two separate pieces of news today, EnterpriseDB was selected by FTD to replace Oracle, and Liferay was selected to replace Novell's exteNd portal offering. Both demonstrate the continue value that open source provides (yes, even to EnterpriseDB).

Interestingly, both EnterpriseDB and Liferay have Apache-style licenses at their core. The difference, of course, is what they sell on top: for EnterpriseDB, they add some closed software; for Liferay, they add support. What's exactly the same is dramatic cost savings and improved performance by moving away from 100% proprietary offerings:

On EnterpriseDB's win with FTD, and over Oracle (improving system performance by 400% while dropping the cost by 83%)...… Read more

The GPLv3 according to Luis (Part II)

Luis Villa is running a great series on what GPLv3 means for developers. Here's a snippet:

Q: I'm a developer, and my current code uses GPL v2 - should I update to the v3?

A: Probably. While the license does not include any huge wins for all developers that would make an upgrade obvious or mandatory, there are small wins here for virtually anyone who seeks to have a functional FLOSS project. In particular, every developer should appreciate the improved (if still imperfect) patent protection, the ability to copy and paste APL-licensed code into your code, and the internationalized legal language, offering them stronger protection outside the US's copyright system.… Read more

IBM's patent pledge: you and whose army?

Wow. This post from Glyn Moody just resurfaced memories that should never have been forgotten. Glyn reminds us that IBM made a patent pledge that protects OSI-approved open source projects:

IBM today pledged open access to key innovations covered by 500 IBM software patents to individuals and groups working on open source software. IBM believes this is the largest pledge ever of patents of any kind and represents a major shift in the way IBM manages and deploys its intellectual property (IP) portfolio....

The pledge is applicable to any individual, community, or company working on or using software that meets the Open Source Initiative (OSI) definition of open source software now or in the future.… Read more

The value of candor (Andy Astor)

I spent an enjoyable morning with Andy Astor at a Bank of America Private Software Company Day (or something like that - Kirk Materne of BofA organized it and did a great job of moderating a panel on which Andy and I participated). As we talked before and during the panel, I came to understand and appreciate Andy's position on what constitutes an open source company. I'm still not sure I agree, but Andy has a good point....

EnterpriseDB initially dubbed itself an open source software company, and took some heat as a result. Andy's response? Clearly delineate the company's licensing policies.… Read more

Welcome to the next phase of open source (Glyn Moody)

Glyn Moody has quickly moved to the top of my RSS reader. He consistently writes thoughtful pieces, and this one is no different. As Glyn explains, none but the most determined persist in believing that open source is a fad that will soon die out. On the contrary, open source has taken over infrastructure software and is gathering steam in the application space.

Oddly enough, this is where the problem starts.

The manifest advantages of being open source - to say nothing of the trendiness of the label - has led to many startups adopting the term uncritically. From being an alternative way of branding free software, open source has now become a way of branding any software where the code is available - irrespective of what other restrictions are imposed. This is bad news, because it dilutes the value of the term "open source." That, in turn, could stymie corporate adoption, as companies find themselves increasingly confused about what open source really means, and what the real value is.

More is at stake than semantics. I believe, with Glyn, that the health of the movement depends on proper nomenclature.… Read more

CentricCRM to go open source next week

There has been a lot of fuss kicked up lately over the definition of open source (kicked off by Michael Tiemann), and the OSI's role in defining that term. Word on the street is that CentricCRM will be launching a significant piece of code (Team Elements) under Larry Rosen's Open Software License early next week. This is fantastic news for CentricCRM, as well as for open source (OSI-approved open source).

Why for open source? Because Team Elements is cool and very useful technology. It's a 100% open source, Java-based "Enterprise 2.0" product. It ties together discussions, wikis, blogs, RSS, issue tracking and trouble-ticketing, project management, document management, and federated search into a single, unified application running on a relational database.… Read more

IT Business Edge podcast: the impact of GPLv3

I spent an engaging hour yesterday with IT Business Edge, talking about the likely industry impact of GPLv3. Other participants on the call included:

Rob Enderle, an analyst and principal of the Enderle Group, and also a blogger with us at IT Business Edge; Bernard Golden, founder and CEO of open source consulting firm Navica and a blogger for CIO.com. Chris Maresca, founder and senior partner of the Olliance Group, a leading open source business consultancy. Rob can be a firebrand, but I found him to be a perfect gentleman and his positions well-reasoned. He did help to make … Read more

A day of Bungee (Moving RIA development to the web)

I'm an advisor to Bungee Labs and am spending the day with the company (along with other advisors from Sun, Amazon, etc.). I'm not a developer myself, and so focus more on the community-building activities of the company, but they mentioned an incident at the eBay Developers Conference that I found fascinating.

eBay developed a new eBay Shopping Web Services WSDL. They stopped by the Bungee Labs booth and asked what the company could do with it.

By dragging and dropping components and objects, [Bungee] had a simple application running in minutes. The application had an input field to specify a search query. When you clicked the search button, the query results (item title, gallery URL, View Item URL, etc.) were displayed on the form.

Start to finish, this all took less than 20 minutes. Not bad for working with a new API. And, as [Bungee] pointed out, we never left the web browser!… Read more