EU says to study Microsoft's open-source step

The EU executive will investigate if steps announced by Microsoft to make it easier for users of an open-source rival to work with Microsoft Office would give consumers greater choice.

"The Commission will investigate whether the announced support of ODF (Open Document Format) in Office leads to better interoperability and allows consumers to process and exchange their documents with the software product of their choice," it said in a statement on Thursday.

Microsoft said on Wednesday that starting some time next year it will make it easier for users of an open-source rival to work with Microsoft Office.

Without adding any special software to Office, users will be able to open documents sent to them in the open source Open Document Format (ODF), the company said. Users will also be able to edit and save documents in that format.

The Commission has fined Microsoft 1.68 billion euros (US$2.7 billion) since 2004, in large part for the company's failure to provide proper interoperability between its dominant Windows operating system and other software.

Source : http://www.itnews.com.au

The open-source industry is worth $60 billion

John Powell, CEO of Alfresco, has declared that the open-source industry is worth $60 billion, not necessarily because of its vendors' collective revenue, but rather because of the value of the cost savings for customers.

That's the right way to think about software: From the customer's perspective.

• Open source is now the world's largest software industry....You measure it in the savings people are making in licence fees....Licence fees don't add any value to the product and are purely a transfer of wealth from consumers to software vendors.

Subscription-based business models are ideal for customers because they focus the vendor on delivering constant, consistent value. License-based businesses? Not so much.

As a case in point, Alfresco (Disclosure: I work for Alfresco) just closed a deal with a large US federal agency. The project is worth over $50 million, with Alfresco at the core. But if all of that $50 million were going into my pocket it would be a success for Alfresco and a failure for the customer. Why?

Because as it stands, most of that money is going to integrators to customize our software (and others' - it involves a few big proprietary vendors, too) to fine-tune it to the agency's needs. Our proprietary competition on the deal started the bidding at $2.5 million, and would have cost multiples of that to get it do what the agency actually needed, as the agency determined.

So, we shaved costs off the project, and allowed the agency to divert funds from license costs to system integrators to ensure a close fit. Perfect.

Open source tends to be less costly because of its $0.00 acquisition cost, but also because it is more easily customized and integrated with other systems, including proprietary ones. Open source, open APIs, open standards. They tend to travel together.

Source : http://www.cnet.com/

Open source largest software industry: Alfresco CEO

How can something given away for free end up being the world's largest industry of its type? Well, according to open source content management vendor Alfresco CEO John Powell the value of open source is not what it generates, but what it saves, and that's worth billions.

How can something given away for free end up being the world's largest industry of its type? Well, according to open source content management vendor Alfresco CEO John Powell the value of open source is not what it generates, but what it saves, and that's worth billions. BPO services are booming in industry now a days.

"Open source is now the world's largest software industry," Powell declared during his keynote address as the first Alfresco community conference in Sydney, Australia.

"You measure it in the savings people are making in licence fees," he said. "Licence fees don't add any value to the product and are purely a transfer of wealth from consumers to software vendors."

By that rationale, the open source software industry is worth $60 billion - not from sales but from what customers have saved by choosing an open source product over a proprietary one with hefty licence fees attached.

"Open source itself is powered by people and it is allowing software to be deployed in a way that hasn't been possible before, and what that is doing is commoditizing the industry," Powell said. "If the database industry is worth $10 billion, the open source database industry might be worth $1 billion and the nine billion left over stays with the customer to help make the product work."

Powell boldly remarked that open source is not just software, it's "the most profound change in the computer industry since its inception".

"In the last couple of years it has moved from being the province of geeky individuals to becoming mainstream," he said. "Sun bought MySQL, Yahoo bought Zimbra, and Citrix bought XenSource for $500 million - a company with less than $1 million in revenues showing open source is about more than the traditional revenues of proprietary software companies."

Powell also talked up the success of the Alfresco open source content management system, saying the product has been downloaded over a million times and is running on some 30,000 production servers.

"We now have over 500 enterprise customers and to acquire this customer base in the traditional way would have been virtually impossible," he said. "We've gained some of the largest enterprises in the world. Governments love alfresco because of the economic benefit. If you buy proprietary the economic benefit directly goes to the vendor because the only people that can change the binaries of the code is the vendor. With open source local companies can support the product which helps the local economy."

Locally, Alfresco claims to have chalked up 1500 installations of its community edition in addition to a number of paying enterprise edition customers it has acquired with Sydney-based partner Lateral Minds, including Mincom, Sensis, ANU, and Leighton Contractors.

"Alfresco is the fastest, most scalable CMS on the planet," Powell said. "A large retail bank is using Alfresco for loading 80 faxes per second and an unnamed US government agency - one that takes pictures of eyeballs at airports - is loading 200 million objects into Alfresco."

Powell also digressed into a lengthy discourse as to why classical enterprise content management is the wrong vision that was "artificially constructed by content management vendors in the 90s to sell more product".

"ECM implies silos of information," he said. "People want transparency and trust, and rather than thinking about ECM as a product, think about content services delivered to users on demand in the application of their choice. It should be available to everyone. Open source is driving this change and so is the Web 2.0 revolution. The open source model is built on the Internet and collaboration. ECM leaves the boundaries of the enterprise and can be used through Facebook or Google."

Powell touted Alfresco as "the open source alternative to Microsoft's SharePoint", saying it is the only software distribution model that will level the playing field.

"Many organizations are deploying SharePoint because it's included in the Microsoft distribution, and suddenly I need SQL Server, SharePoint Portal, and I'm locked in the Windows platform and you must pay licence fees," he said.

"We don't care what the operating systems is, what the database is, whether it's Java or .Net, so there is no hidden lock in and you won't end up in a position you will regret."

Source : http://www.itmatchonline.com/



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