It is good to see settlement — something I’ve been calling for, while also warning against patent and IP aggression. However, this settlment comes from the one conflict in this ongoing war that was actually shedding some light on the matter, rather than further complicating it.

See the full article at TechNewsWorld.

It is good to see settlement — something I’ve been calling for, while also warning against patent and IP aggression. However, this settlment comes from the one conflict in this ongoing war that was actually shedding some light on the matter, rather than further complicating it.

See the full article at TechNewsWorld.

When participating recently in a sprint held at Google to document four free software projects, I thought about what might have prompted Google to invest in this effort. Their willingness to provide a hotel, work space, and food for some thirty participants, along with staff support all week long, demonstrates their commitment to nurturing open source.

Google is one of several companies for which I'll coin the term "closed core." The code on which they build their business and make their money is secret. (And given the enormous infrastructure it takes to provide a search service, opening the source code wouldn't do much to stimulate competition, as I point out in a posting on O'Reilly's radar blog). But they depend on a huge range of free software, ranging from Linux running on their racks to numerous programming languages and libraries that they've drawn on to develop their services.

So Google contributes a lot back to the free software community. The release code for many non-essential functions. They promote the adoption of standards such as HTML 5. They have been among the first companies to offer APIs for important functions, including their popular Google Maps. They have opened the source code to Android (although its development remains under their control), which has been the determining factor in making Android devices compete with the arguably more highly-functioning iOS products. They even created a whole new programming language (Go) and are working on another.

Google is not the only "closed core" company (for instance, Facebook has also built their service around APIs and released their Cassandra project). Microsoft has a whole open source program, including some important contributions to health IT. Scads of other companies, such as IBM, Hewlett Packard, and VMware, have complex relationships to open source software that don't fit a simple "open core" or "closed core" model. But the closed core trend represents a fertile collaboration between communities and companies that have businesses in specific areas. The closed core model requires businesses to determine where their unique value lies and to be generous in offering the public extra code that supports their infrastructure but does not drive revenue.

This model may prove more robust and lasting than open core, which attracts companies occupying minor positions in their industries. The shining example of open core is MySQL, but its complex status, including a long history of dual licensing and simultaneous development by several organizations, make it a difficult model from which to draw lessons about the whole movement. In particular, Software as a Service redefines the relationships that the free software movement has traditionally defined between open and proprietary. Deploying and monitoring the core SaaS software creates large areas for potential innovation, as we saw with Cassandra, where a company can benefit from turning their code into a community project.

# Rapid7 secured $50m in series C funding.

# Microsoft confirmed that it is ditching its Dryad project in favour of Apache Hadoop.

# Arun Murthy provided more details of Apache Hadop 0.23.

# The Google Plugin for Eclipse and GWT Designer projects are now fully open source.

# openSUSE released version 12.1.

# Amazon released the source code of the Kindle Fire.

# Black Duck Software joined the GENIVI Alliance.

# dotCloud announced the availability of the top three databases MySQL, MongoDB and Redis on its PaaS.

# Rackspace announced its intention to form an independent OpenStack Foundation.

# HP has chosen Ubuntu as the lead host and guest operating system for its Public Cloud.

# Pentaho appointed Quentin Gallivan as its new CEO.

# Hortonworks continued the discussion about contributions to Apache Hadoop.

# Bob Bickel explained why CloudBees is not, itself, open source.

# Google announced the limited preview release of Google Cloud SQL.

# Eucalyptus Systems, Nebula and Virtual Bridges joined the Linux Foundation.

# Dave Neary discussed the different types of community in relation to the Tizen project.

# Akamai joined the OpenStack community.

# Daniel Abadi provided his perspective on Oracle’s NoSQL Database.

# One more thing…
Apple’s relationship with open source may be somewhat tenuous – Paul Rooney provides some background – but given the impact Steve Jobs has made on the industry as a whole it seems wrong not to mark his passing in some way. We’ll leave the words to the company he created.

# Google accused Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies of organising a hostile patent campaign against Android. That prompted Microsoft executives to claim that Microsoft invited Google to be involved in the CPTN purchase of Novell’s patents. However, Google explained that joining CPTN might have decreased its ability to defend itself against potential patent claims.

# Actuate announced its Q2 financial results, including BIRT-related license business of $5.3m, up 130% year-over-year.

# Dell and Cloudera announced a combined hardware, software, support and services offering for Apache Hadoop.

# France and Tunisia have signed a joint declaration on governmental cooperation on open source software.

# Mitchell Baker explained the Mozilla Foundation’s Gecko project.

# VisionMobile published a report assessing the relative openness of Android, MeeGo, Linux, Qt, WebKit, Mozilla, Eclipse and Symbian.

# Sandro Groganz published an article on the benefits of the community for partners of open source vendors.

# Twitter announced plans to release its Storm distributed stream processing software as an open source project.

# Georg Greve discussed his perspective on freedom in the cloud.

# MySQL performance specialist Percona celebrated its fifth birthday, now with 50 employees and 1,200 customers.

# The Open Cloud Initiative launched to drive open standards in cloud computing.

# HP announced its support for OpenStack.

# Oracle announced the availability of Java SE 7. The Apache Software Foundation warned of index corruption and crashes in Apache Lucene and Solr.

# Nebula launched with plans for a turnkey OpenStack hardware appliance.

# Concurrent raised $900K in seed funding for Hadoop-based workflow engine.

# Couchbase and SQLite teamed up to create UnQL (Unstructured Query Language), a new data query language for unstructured data.

# Couchbase released a developer preview of Couchbase Server 2.0, combining CouchDB and Membase.

# OpenLogic published its scorecard to assess how well a particular Platform-as-a-Service offering meets the standard of ‘open’.

# Brian Proffitt asked can a commercial vendor lead a project as openly as a foundation?

# Gluster announced the Gluster Connector for OpenStack.

# Google released its LevelDB key value storage engine using the BSD license.

# SkySQL introduced SkySQL Recovery Manager, a MySQL backup and recovery offering powered by Zmanda.

# Metasploit announced the launch of Metasploit Pro 4.0.

# WANdisco partnered with CloudBees to offer Jenkins with WANdisco’s uberSVN application lifecycle management platform for Apache Subversion.

# Brian Proffitt reported on how innovation is the new draw of open source.

Given that we continue to see software patent-based attacks on Android, as well as swirling FUD around coverage of the attacks and never ending suits and settlements and courtroom developments, it is clear it will be a long time before any of this legal business is ever close to settled, unless ended by settlements first, which is likely.

However, I’m more interested in the technology in the meantime. I also think it’s interesting to see, if not a ‘more open’ alternative emerging, at least another, ’somewhat open’ option in the tablet market, this being HP’s WebOS. It’s interesting that WebOS evolved from Palm, which HP acquired in March 2010 for $1.4 billion. Though Apple’s iPad is still the clear leader in tablets, it is interesting to see continuing signs that what happened in smartphones (where iPhone led and Android quickly caught up and then passed iOS) may be happening in tablets. There is also still the possibility that tablets may play out like netbooks, with wild popularity followed by a fade in favor of more traditional PCs for traditional PC needs. It is interesting to note that Google’s Eric Schmidt recently commented on the continued utility of PCs, which will remain key to professionals, consumers, and also developers, largely because of the tactical keyboard. What is most likely is continued convergence, and it will be interesting to see what ties emerge between WebOS and PCs as computer hardware giant HP rolls out the OS in tablets and smartphones.

We also see other signs that new, open entrants may be mixing things up in the mobile and converged device market, such as word of a possible Android and iOS competitor from Mozilla. There is yet another project that is already a factor in netbooks, other mobile devices and the burgeoning IT market of automobile information and entertainment systems, MeeGo, which is also open source. Even Research in Motion’s Playbook is based on the QNX operating system, for which source code was made available by its previous owner to make it more like the open source Linux OS, which was attracting developers and interesting customers.

We believed there was a fairly prominent place for open source software, open source operating systems and general openness in mobile software when we wrote our report, Mobility Matters three years ago, but we would have never guessed that the openness of this software would be so significant in two respects: defense from patent and other intellectual property attacks; the market power of open source, which draws in not only developers, but manufacturers and other third-parties. We’ve seen the speed and strength at which a project and community such as Android can grow. Will we now begin to see other alternatives that are even more open emerge as top choices among developers, hardware companies, wireless players and consumers? Never before have those alternatives really existed in the mobile software world, so it’s good at least to see the possibility is there.

*Oracle, Java, the Apache Software Foundation and open source
*An update on some open source database and data management players
*CorraTech grows with support for open source application alternatives
*Red Hat-Makara acquisition analysis and impact
*Linux kernel report shows strong support, but what now for Novell?

iTunes or direct download (29:31, 5.1MB)

This comes after some ups and downs for Oracle and its oversight of Java and other open source software that was previously under the auspices of Sun Microsystems. Oracle started off on a rough path when it sued Google over its implementation of Java in Android without preemptively or clearly stating that it was not attacking open source. At about the same time, it let OpenSolaris die a slow, somewhat confusing death. Oracle won a point when IBM came out with its support in favor of the JCP and OpenJDK over Apache Harmony, and this contributes to the adversarial positioning between Oracle and the Apache Software Foundation. However, Oracle has also seen an erosion of open source support and confidence as OpenOffice.org developers have migrated away from Oracle, many to contribute to the new Libre Office project.

Oracle’s moves illustrate the company’s lack of complete understanding of open source and the value of open source software communities. While it appreciates and leverages open source as an effective, efficient software development approach, it does not truly see the value of providing software to a community and attaining benefits of efficiency, reach and innovation as a result. This is not to say that supporting an open source software community will automatically translate into commercial and community success (not the case with Symbian, for example), but Oracle does not appear to support community as a priority in its proprietary and admittedly successful software strategy.

MySQL can be an example of Oracle doing things right with open source, though we may see similar dissatisfaction and defection as Oracle moves further toward commercialization and further away from free, community software. Still, Oracle at least showed it could continue and contribute and support a successful open source project in the case of MySQL. The same may not be said for OpenSolaris, OpenOffice.org or, increasingly it appears, Java.