How open source is beating the status quo

One of the biggest problems with open source is understanding what it means out in the real world. I'm not talking about understanding the actual technology. I'm talking about the impact of open source, how it is actually useful. What's clear to me is that open source is not an end in itself. Open source is an enabler. It's a catalyst. It allows other things to happen. It's the fulcrum upon which can be rested the lever that will move the world. But it isn't the lever itself.

Open source cannot change the status quo on its own. This has become entirely clear now, after 10 years of hype leading to effectively the exact same situation as when we started. No, open source needs to be combined with something else, and that's usually a technology. That technology can be the Web, in the case of Mozilla, or a hardware platform, in the case of the recent netbook revolution.

Below I look at some of the biggest challenges to the current computing status quo. In each case, open source is playing a part. It's only now, around 10 years after the open-source revolution was supposed to have begun, that we're actually seeing things really begin to happen.

In the examples below, it isn't the case that people make a choice to use open source. It's more the case that open source is the only choice because only open source offers what's needed.

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Open source can still win in a down economy

I was meeting with venture investors the last few days and it's clear that the impact of the credit crisis and the overall bleak economic outlook has people really freaked out. Rightly so, but it's times like these where smart investors invest in early-stage ideas that will take a few years to mature.

And, while it's clear that spending will slow a bit in the technology sector, there is less risk then there was in the last meltdown where everyone was over-invested in technology. That doesn't mean we won't be impacted, just that the nuclear winter in financial services probably won't effect tech as much as it did circa 2001 when every startup failed and big companies lost billions.

Open source consumption did really well during the last economic downturn. In this downturn, open source offers the best value for money and with more mature supported products, enterprises can continue to innovate while budgets are frozen.

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Linux Foundation plans new, more open open-source conference next year

Pro-Linux consortium says LinuxCon will be open to all comers, not invitation-only

After holding an invitation-only conference for key open-source developers and community members in each of the past two years, the Linux Foundation is expanding its events schedule to add a conference focused on a broader attendee base.

In an announcement today, the San Francisco-based consortium, which sets Linux standards and works to promote the use of the open-source operating system, said it will hold an event called LinuxCon next September that will be open to anyone who wants to attend.

The first LinuxCon will be held in Portland, Ore., and will include a technology showcase as well as technical sessions, tutorials, keynotes and targeted mini-summits on topics such as enterprise open source, mobile computing and embedded systems. LinuxCon will take place simultaneously with the foundation's second annual Linux Plumbers Conference, a previously planned event for leaders of the open-source development community.

"People who've attended our other events have asked for [a conference like LinuxCon], including people who are members of the foundation who'd like to open it to a broader audience," said Jim Zemlin, the consortium's executive director.

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When is open source just throwing it all away?

Today ZDNet has yet-another story about microblogging going open source.

Andrew Mager has the story of Laconi.ca, which lets you “build your own Twitter” with support for the Open Microblogging protocol.

Laconi.ca is not alone. Social bookmarketing site Ma.gnolia is also going open source.

It has become a common sight. A market develops. A leader emerges. Then the laggards say “we’re open source.” It’s beginning to look like the throwing of a bad poker hand.

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Could governments effectively subsidize open-source development?

At the Utah Open Source Conference yesterday I presented a dilemma. Briefly, the idea is that as open-source buyers grow comfortable with open source they will stop spending money on open source. This leads to tragedy of the commons-type problems and a difficulty in encouraging the creation of more open source.

I therefore asked the question, "Who will pay for open source in the future?" I (and the audience) suggested that the problem may resolve itself over time as enterprises come to recognize that their failure to replenish open-source communities with either cash or code may come to harm the code commons from which they derive increasing amounts of value. I also suggested that Eclipse, Mozilla, and other non-profit foundations provide an answer.

Lastly, I suggested that governments might get involved to shore up funding for open-source software development. As I noted, governments derive massive benefit from open source (and from IT spending, generally). Why not fund more of it?

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Microsoft To Counter Open Source With 'Basic' Software Line

The software vendor plans to develop versions of its products with "basic functionality" to be sold at lower prices than its standard offerings.

In response to rising competition from open source software that's community developed and often given away for free, Microsoft said it plans to develop versions of its products with "basic functionality" to be sold at lower prices than its standard offerings.

Once the sole domain of self-styled computer geeks, open source software, such as Linux, is now used in products offered by a growing number of large tech companies, such as Google, IBM, and Motorola. Those companies believe they can earn more revenue by selling add-ons and services around the software than they could by charging for the software itself.

Microsoft says it's a growing threat to its commercial software business.
"Open source software vendors are devoting considerable efforts to developing software that mimics the features and functionality of our products," Microsoft said in its annual report, filed last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Indeed, IBM last year introduced Lotus Symphony, a free desktop suite that provides much of what's found in Microsoft's pricey Office package. IBM says that hundreds of thousands of users have downloaded Lotus Symphony, which is built on the open source OpenOffice.org package, since its debut.

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Why is Asia not open to open source?

One of the main draws--and selling point--of open source technology is its much celebrated developer ecosystem. But, according to an industry expert, this community spirit seems to be lacking in Asia.

In Singapore this week, co-founder of open source MySQL database David Axmark, observed that while more Asian companies are adopting open source technology, few are volunteering to provide related services.

So, businesses in the region have to rely on global open source vendors and settle for products that may not be customized to their market's needs. Or, they'll have to pay and wait for the vendors to tweak their products and integrate additional components that are localized for the Asian market.

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Open source software a security risk, study claims

Open source software is a significant security risk for corporations that use it because in many cases, the open source community fails to adhere to minimal security best practices, according a study released Monday.

The study, carried out by Fortify Software with help from consultant Larry Suto, evaluated 11 open source software packages and each community's response to security issues over the course of about three months. The goal was to find out if the community for each open source software package was responsive to security questions or vulnerability findings, published security guidelines and maintained a secure development process, for example.

Open source application server Tomcat scored the best in the study, titled "Open Source Study -- How Are Open Source Development Communities Embracing Security Best Practices?"

The remaining 10 open source application, tool and database packages -- Derby, Geronimo, Hibernate, Hipergate, JBoss, Jonas, OFBiz, OpenCMS, Resin and Struts -- had a dismal showing. Among these 10 packages, application server JBoss scored higher by providing a prominent link to security information on its Web site and easy access to security experts, but came up short for not having a specific e-mail alias for submission of security vulnerabilities.

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Is Open Source Development Insecure?

A leading application security firm issues research report alleging that open source software developers are missing the security boat.

One of the basic theories behind open source and its relative security is the fact that many eyeballs are looking at code to identify potential and real trouble spots. According to application security vendor Fortify Software, many eyeballs alone aren't enough. In fact Fortify argues in a new study that open source software is insecure and is exposing enterprises to risk since secure development processes have not been properly adopted.

Fortify's study looked at 11 open source java projects and ran them through a barrage of tests to identify secure practices. In general Fortify argued that the projects had a variety of security vulnerabilities including Cross Site Scripting and SQL injection flaws and that there was an overall lack of secure development processes in place.

"We think that open source software is an area of under-explored risk that we want to help enterprises better understand it," Jacob West security research group manager at Fortify told InternetNews.com. "We found notable vulnerabilities in all of the eleven open source packages we looked at. Because of the rampant numbers we found we think that open source projects aren't leveraging security tools properly."

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Symbian Foundation: The Open Source War Is On

As the support and demand for open source increased, the competition got tougher. With the Android practically knocking at out door, Nokia wants to make an entrance on the market and turn Symbian into an open source platform.

For the time being, Symbian is not an open source software. Instead, phone manufacturers are given parts of its source code.

The new announcement was made on Tuesday, when Nokia revealed its plan to buy the rest of the Symbian shares that it does not already own.

Together with partners such as Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, AT&T, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics and Vodafone, Nokia is planning on turning the Symbian into an Android or Linux rival.

The goal of the Symbian Foundation is to make the Symbian OS “the most used platform in the world”, as they announced in the press conference.

Symbian owns over 65 percent of the smart mobile device market at the moment, and Nokia’s plans should put some pressure on the competition.

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Microsoft to developers: ‘Open source is a choice’

MANILA, Philippines -- At the Cebu open source summit, Microsoft was telling developers it is ready to help them go "primetime."

Microsoft's presence in the summit drew quite an impact, if not harmless ribbing. In a presentation by noted IT entrepreneur Winston Damarillo, mentioning indicators that open source is ready for primetime deployment, one answer reads: "The number of times in a month Microsoft says: ‘We support open source.’"

"My answer to that was: ‘We should have done it earlier,’” said Abet Dela Cruz, Microsoft Philippines platform strategy manager, narrating Monday's panel discussion at the Cebu summit.

Dela Cruz represented Microsoft in the panel along with representatives from IBM and Red Hat.

"It took IBM about 10 years to be at this stage and it is only now that Microsoft is going in the same direction," said Dela Cruz, who is still in Cebu attending the two-day summit.

IBM has been a staunch supporter of open source although the tech giant does sell its own proprietary software.Read More Article...

The Next Frontier for Open Source

Open Source is still a disruptive idea. It has moved beyond that in server operating systems, of course, with Linux on 20% of servers shipped these days. That’s known as being “mainstream.”

But the effects of open source development and business models continue to be heavily disruptive as they spread into new technology markets. Disruption often benefits consumers directly.

Cell phones are the next device that will move to open standards. Whether the big providers like it or not.

Can you remember doing business before there were cell phones? Neither can I. It’s one of those technologies that became truly indispensable. (link) Indispensable but not invincible. Quality of service is somewhere near early-adopter stage even after over 15 years of mass adoption. Intentionally obtuse billing. And from a technology standpoint, there’s vendor lock-in, monopolistic advantages, and a resistance to new disruptive technologies. Still, being able to do a phone call from virtually anywhere is extremely valuable, so the consumers put up with a lot.

If you can do phone calls from anywhere you should be able to do computing from anywhere. Reading email, browsing the web… you’ve become dependent on those apps at your desk. In the rest of the world, you’re used to it on your phone now, too. (link) In the US, the cell phone carriers and manufactures misguided attempt to control everything has left consumers short and arguably not served their shareholders as well.

Open source is about to hit the cell phone industry hard. It may even take with it one of the early darlings of US smart phones — a halfway station to open cell phone technology — the iPhone. Apple will be announcing the results of opening up the iPhone to third party developers next week at Apple’s WWDC 08. But the iPhone SDK is accessible only to existing Mac developers. That’s not open enough. ABI Research is estimating that somewhere near one quarter of the world’s smartphones will be Linux-based in 5 years. (link) This is the iPhone’s real competition: Linux.

Where Linux goes, the consumer wins.

Source : http://www.e-linux.it/

Open-source Flash rival "Gnashes" out

A non-profit open source project with high-profile backers has released beta code for an open source Flash media player, with a media server in the wings. Open Media Now's Gnash player runs standalone or as a plugin, and may run better than Flash on constrained devices.

Last week the Gnash development project released the first beta (release 0.8.2) of its GPLv3 SWF (Shockwave Flash) movie player and browser plug-in. The free player is designed for "computer, gaming, embedded, and consumer electronic devices," according to the non-profit Open Media Now Foundation (OMNow) funding the effort. Gnash is likely to use less memory and power than Adobe's Flash.

Originally created as a user interface for a digital stereo set-top box (STB), and based on work done by the GPLFlash project, the Gnash player runs as a browser plugin for Firefox, Mozilla, Konqueror, and NetFront, and is optimized for Firefox 1.0.4 or higher. Gnash is said to run on embedded GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. There is also a standalone player for GNOME- or KDE-based desktops, and ports to Darwin and Windows are said to be in progress. The player supports embedded architectures including MIPS, PowerPC, ARM, and Sparc.

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Experts contradict on open source

The use of open source software will become a key enabler for software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform adoption, says Gartner. However, software developers at the IQ Business Group (IQBG) say there is no such thing as a free lunch.

A new Gartner report enthuses that 90% of SaaS providers will have some open source component in their technology infrastructure stacks (that is, operating system, application server and database) by 2010 to reduce software acquisition expenses.

The research firm adds that user communities are expanding around application-platform-as-a-service providers and will leverage open source practices for sharing software applications.

"As the community of SaaS users increases, along with the emergence of associated application-platform-as-a-service providers' open source-type practices, application exchange will continue to grow," says Gartner VP and analyst Robert DeSisto.

"Community capabilities, such as voting and validation of those useful applications versus ones that are not, will help self-police these emerging communities. The more SaaS vendors use open source in the technology stack, the lower their software acquisition cost becomes,” DeSisto adds.

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Open Source: Commonplace or Confusing?

The latest offering from Research and Markets indicates that open source has quickly become commonplace in the business of software, such that most vendors consider it “just another piece of business.” From the Saugatuck Technologies abstract:

Within the past 12 to 18 months, many software vendors have moved from fear to aggression, pursuing open source development firm acquisitions, incorporating open source code into offerings throughout their portfolios, and looking for (or planning) open source offerings.

At the same time, researchers note, there is also evidence that some vendors may not understand all the implications of open source licensing and development. They report that they are on top of “the open source thing,” but they are hard pressed to show how they’ve worked open source into business strategies or detail the resources that management has committed to open source initiatives.

Nonetheless, writers say the results are far from their findings just a year ago, which indicated that many “were struggling” with what the increasing demand for open source meant for their businesses.

Source : http://www.itbusinessedge.com/