Research

Goldman Sachs: "Linux will dominate the enterprise" [Updated]

The data in this Goldman Sachs report is dated (2003) [PDF], but it provides an interesting historical look at what we thought Linux would do back in 2003, and what it actually has done. The good news: the data is off. Goldman Sachs underestimated just how prevalent Linux would become in just four short years. For example, Goldman Sachs' survey revealed that only 39% of enterprise IT respondents were using Linux, but today that number is ~100%. Open source does quite well when the customer gets to vote.

It's going to be a long decade for Microsoft and the UNIX vendors especially because, as PJ at Groklaw notes, the widespread adoption in enterprise IT is only one instance of Linux's growing dominance. Significant, but it's the global tidal wave that should be of more concern to the proprietary vendors. Perhaps this is one reason for Microsoft's patent noise?

Linux-on-Intel appears likely to emerge as the dominant platform in corporate data centers....… Read more

The art and science of dual licensing

Stefano Comino and Fabio Manenti have written a useful paper [PDF] on dual licensing in open source. It's a decent resource for helping developers and vendors figure out why, if, and how to dual license their software. (See here for a useful explanation of what dual licensing means, and Heather Meeker's piece is a must read for anyone interested in the legal ramifications of the practice.)

I found myself agreeing with much of the authors' conclusions, but not necessarily the tone or conclusion, because they seem to see dual licensing as a way to drive sales. Of course, it sometimes undoubtedly is - for some time a large percentage of MySQL's, Sleepycat's, db4o's, etc. sales were motivated by a proprietary license waiting to "rescue" the OEM/customer from an open source license.… Read more

US Department of Defense: We love open source lots and lots

Dave, who was clearly being held back by me over at Open Sources, the Department of Defense's latest Software Tech News, and highlights some interesting factoids (though he fails to read pages 37-38, which focus on Alfresco ;-):

The US Army is the single largest install base for Red Hat Linux Government contractor devIS reports that it "saves its clients a minimum of $100,000 per contract by using OSS." US Government policies mandate that government acquisitions consider OSS approaches.

And now you see why Microsoft and the proprietary rabble-rousers are, well, rousing the rabble. Once open … Read more

Why people write documentation (Andy Oram)

I'm glad Andy went through the bother of doing this survey on why people write free documentation. It's a topic of constant discussion at Alfresco, and I'm sure at most open source projects and companies. It's a difficult proposition to get outside contributors to any project, and particularly a commercial open source project, but to get contributions to documentation...? Much harder, because it provides far fewer immediate benefits to developers (and no one likes writing documentation at the best of times).

So, why do people contribute their time and expertise toward writing free documentation. What's … Read more