Forbes.com::Open Source Goes Mainstream

   "'Open source is not a get-rich-quick scheme,' says Marten Mickos, 
    the former CEO of MySQL and now a senior vice-president at Sun. 
    'You have to have patience.' He adds that the company was 
    13 years old when it sold."

BusinessWeek.com::Open Source: An Open Question for Red Hat and Others

[20 August 2008, top]

   NewsFactor.com; Richard Koman posted on 7 August 2008 
   "IBM Vice President Bob Sutor has challenged Linux developers 
    at LinuxWorld to 'stop copying 2001 Windows' and focus on 
    usability design. IBM is putting its weight behind a drive 
    to advance Linux, and Sutor also urged a focus on business 
    and efficiency. IBM has joined with Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell 
    and Red Hat to promote 'Windows-free' PCs."

This is excellent news for the FLOSSers.

NewsFactor.com::IBM Urges Better Linux Design, More Business Focus

[07 August 2008, top]

   "As those conversations transition to sales cycles for MySQL 
    Enterprise subscriptions (for those seeking mission critical 
    support, eg), the number one question I get asked by traditional 
    customers has become... '...but does MySQL scale?'"

When it comes to Open Source, a FAQ answers the frequently asked question (of which there are a lot).

Schwartz continue his posting as follows.

   "And there's no better way of putting that question to rest than 
    citing the global businesses powered by MySQL - at least one of 
    which is often used by the very individual asking the question: 
    LinkedIn. Click here to read how Sun and LinkedIn are working 
    together to serve one of the world's largest, most valuable, 
    and fastest growing social networks - at truly global scale."

I created my LinkedIn account on 19 June 2008.

Schwartz continue his posting as follows.

   "At the pace LinkedIn is growing, they will be managing services 
    to far more accounts than most of the world's banks... and building 
    exceptional value along the way."

The following was copied from a Sun Microsystems' press release.

   "SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sun Microsystems, Inc. 
    today announced that the largest professional networking site, 
    LinkedIn has selected Sun's MySQL Enterprise, database subscription 
    to support the company's rapid growth. With a network of more than 
    25 million professionals in more than 170 industries from around 
    the globe and many more joining daily, LinkedIn turned to Sun when 
    it recognized the need to increase the speed and performance of the 
    open source database that powers its public Web site."

Blogs.Sun.com::MySQL Wins at LinkedIn!

[04 August 2008, top]

According to the San Jose Business Journal:

   "The Google gift is included in the Campaign for OSU, the 
    university's first comprehensive fundraising campaign. The 
    campaign seeks $625 million to provide opportunities for 
    students, strengthen the Oregon economy and conduct research 
    that changes the world."

Kudos to Google and let's hope the students at OSU are successful at changing the world.

[25 July 2008, top]

Wow... It had been a few years since I had heard the term "netnews." NETNEWS was software created at the University of Pennsylvania to enable BITNET users to access USENET and other discussion groups."

[side-bar] While surfing the Internet looking for information about NETNEWs, I decided to peek at the Hobbes' Internet Timeline and found that in 1992 Jean Polly was the first to use the phrase "Surfing the Internet."

Speaking of the iPhone...

   "Larry Page said Google sees 'tremendous' revenue from the Apple 
    Inc. iPhone because it is the only mobile phone that offers full 
    Web browser capabilities."

[side-bar] Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, is on Apple's board of directors.

Anyway... Kudos to SourceForge for keeping the term NetNews alive.

[14 July 2008, top]

According the Collab.net website, "Subversion is the fastest growing open source application for version control."

The CollabNet Board of Directors contains two GDT::DreamTeam members: Brian Behlendorf and Tim O'Reilly. Behlendorf founded CollabNet, with O'Reilly & Associates, in July 1999.

Side-bar: SourceForge sold its SourceForge Enterprise Edition to CollabNet in exchange for a minority equity interest in CollabNet comprised of 11,733,777 shares of its Series C-1 preferred stock.

Collab.net::Subversion Growth

[03 July 2008, top]

   "Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, 
    we now hold a Guinness World Record for the most software 
    downloaded in 24 hours. From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 
    18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded 
    Firefox 3 and are now enjoying a safer, smarter and 
    better Web."

As of 3 July 2008 at 3:41pm MST, there had been 29,428,818 total downloads of Firefox 3.

Kudos to the Mozilla Foundation and all Firefox users.

[03 July 2008, top]

                Revenue: $156.6 million
             Net Income: $ 17.3 million
    Operating cash flow: $ 63.4 million
   Cash and equivalents: $1.35 billion

During the 1st-quarter 2009, Red Hat spent $9.1 million to repurchase approximately 500,000 RHT shares ($18.20 per share).

RHT closed at $22.30 on 25 June 2008.

[26 June 2008, top]

The following was copied from Red Hat's press release.

   "The 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year awards program selects winners 
    from over 50 countries, including 26 regions in the United States. 
    Szulik was selected out of a pool of 30 finalists as one of ten 
    2008 Entrepreneur of the Year award recipients from the Carolinas. 
    He is now eligible to compete in the national Entrepreneur of the 
    Year program in Palm Springs, Calif. in November 2008, where award 
    winners in several categories, and an overall national Entrepreneur 
    of the Year award winner, will be announced."

I suspect the Carolinas have some outstanding entrepreneurs; therefore, this a great honor for Szulik and it is great news for FLOSSers world-wide.

[17 June 2008, top]

   "When Firefox was launched in late 2004, about 95% of the world's 
    Web surfers were using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). As of 
    May, Firefox's worldwide market share was 18.4%, while Internet 
    Explorer's stood at 73.8%, with Apple's (AAPL) Safari browser 
    accounting for most of the rest, according to Web metrics company 
    Net Applications."

Note: This FLOSSer is still leary of "web metrics" regardless of their source.

BusinessWeek.com quoted John Lilly, Mozilla's CEO, saying: "Our ongoing mission is to keep the Web open."

BusinessWeek.com::How Firefox Outran the Hounds

[13 June 2008, top]

Talk about the power of The Code...

   "Two changed lines of code have created profound security 
    vulnerabilities in at least four different open-source 
    operating systems, 25 different application programs, 
    and millions of individual computer systems on the Internet."

SSL stands for "Secure Socket Layer" and it is used to encrypt and decrypt information.

   "Modern computer systems employ large numbers to generate 
    the keys that are used to encrypt and decrypt information 
    sent over a network."

Large numbers are critical when it comes to encryption.

   "Instead, it reduces the number of different keys that 
    these Linux computers can generate to 32,767 different 
    keys, depending on the computer's processor architecture, 
    the size of the key, and the key type."

32,767 is not a large number.

TechnologyReview.com::Alarming Open-Source Security Holes

Blogs.ZDNet.com:: With the Quickness: HD Moore sets new land speed record with exploitation of Debian/Ubuntu OpenSSL flaw

[02 June 2008, top]

[23 May 2008, top]

The OpenID Foundation was established during June of 2007.

OpenID's corporate board members are from the following companies: Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo!

OpenID.net::Single Digital Identity Across the Internet

[19 May 2008, top]

AlwaysOn.GoingOn.com::Failure: Open Source and OLPC

[Extra] On 15 May 2008, Microsoft "reached an agreement to make available its Windows operating system software for the One Laptop Per Child Foundation's XO Laptop."

[19 May 2008, top]

   "A Forrester Research survey of more than 50,000 large enterprise 
    employees found that over the course of 2007, Internet Explorer's 
    overall market share in that segment decreased by 10%, while Firefox's 
    share almost doubled from 9.8% to 18%." [source: InformationWeek.com]

InformationWeek.com::Firefox Gains On Internet Explorer In Businesses

[03 May 2008, top]

   "The CERT Program is part of the Software Engineering Institute 
    (SEI), a federally funded research and development center at 
    Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Following 
    the Morris worm incident, which brought 10 percent of internet 
    systems to a halt in November 1988, the Defense Advanced Research 
    Projects Agency (DARPA) charged the SEI with setting up a center 
    to coordinate communication among experts during security 
    emergencies and to help prevent future incidents. This center 
    was named the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC)."

The CERT is alive a well, but now oCERT has been formed to focus on Open Source systems.

eWeek.com:: Security Pros Lauch Open Source CERT

[14 April 2008, top]

    From Computerworld UK
    Forrester Research has concluded a 2,250 'software decision maker' 
    survey, one which specifically targeted questions relating to 
    open-source software and the Linux operating system, that 
    open-source software adoption lags significantly behind Linux 
    deployments as a mainstream OS.  Concerns over service, support 
    and security are the biggest hindrances, according to the report."

TGDaily.com:: Survey: Linux outpaces generic open-source software adoption

[02 April 2008, top]

Crackers can use GNU Radio software to crack a "combination pacemaker and defibrillator having wireless capabilities."

InformationWeek.com wrote the following.

   "The researchers say they believe that their attempts to 
    reverse-engineer the communications going to and from the 
    Medtronic implantable cardioverter defibrillator represent 
    the first use of software defined radios in the security 
    community for reverse engineering wireless protocols. The 
    group used the GNU Radio software toolkit to create a radio 
    receiver capable of processing radio waves as defined by software."

InformationWeek.com:: Pacemakers Vulnerable To Hacking

[13 March 2008, top]

Linux.com:: End Software Patents project comes out swinging

[04 March 2008, top]

Top500.org:: Operating system Family Share for 11/2007

[04 March 2008, top]

They're hiring at Zimbra and some of the qualifications for their programming jobs are as follows.

   "excellent C++ programming abilities."
   "excellent C, Objective-C or C++ programming abilities"
   "strong understanding of XML"

Many are wondering what will happen to Zimbra if Yahoo! gets acquired by Microsoft.

[25 February 2008, top]

   "A Russian schoolteacher who became a popular hero after he was 
    put on trial for using pirated Microsoft programs has launched 
    a campaign against the software giant's global domination."

   "Ponosov announced on Tuesday he is founding a lobby group whose 
    aim is to reduce Russia's dependence on software produced by firms 
    like Microsoft and instead promote so-called open-source software."

Ponosov was quoted saying: "Our dependence on Western proprietary software is a risk for us. We are, in effect, losing the independence of this country."

   "What would you buy for your child if you want them to grow up 
    to be bright -- a pretty toy car or a construction set?" 

   "A pretty car that you cannot take apart is like proprietary 
    software. The construction set is open-source software."

Ponosov's organization is called the Russian Centre for Free Technologies and they are going to "lobby the Russian parliament to adopt legislation encouraging the use of open-source software."

[25 February 2008, top]

   "On February 9, 1998, I published the Open Source Definition  
    and the public announcement of the Open Source Initiative  
    that Eric Raymond and I were starting. This was the first 
    time that the general public heard what Open Source was about. 
    Friday, February 8 is the last day of Decade Zero of Open Source. 
    Saturday, February 9 is the anniversary of Open Source and the 
    start of Decade One.  It's a computer scientist thing. We always 
    start counting from zero :-)
    --Bruce Perens

Yes... Bruce Perens did use a smiley face.

Perens.com:: State of Open Source Message: A New Decade For Open Source

[09 February 2008, top]

   "Absolutely, open source voting software could be used and 
    should be used. There are two major issues facing open source 
    voting software. First, no one in the U.S. has funded a project 
    to build the software. Second, the voting laws across the U.S. 
    are not sufficiently standardized to make the creation of this 
    software practical."--Carl Almond, senior security architect 
    at global IT consultancy firm Avanade

LinuxInsider.com:: A Far-Fetched Fix for E-Voting Woes: Open Source

[04 February 2008, top]

   "Sun hopes that the opportunity for individual developers 
    to be recognized for their contributions will also drive 
    a wave of excitement and collaborative energy, which will 
    help to power these communities toward greater innovation, 
    participation and growth."

According to a Sun press release.

   "Sun Microsystems made a public commitment to Free and Open 
    Source software and in doing so has contributed billions of 
    dollars, as well as more code, to Free software than any other 
    organization in the public or private sector. In addition to 
    leveraging many industry-wide open source projects, Sun has 
    taken the unique step of opening its core software, hardware 
    and storage technologies and sharing them as Free and open source."

Sun.com:: Free and Open Source Software

[29 January 2008, top]

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and president, Sun Microsystems was quoted saying the following.

   "Today's acquisition reaffirms Sun's position at the center of 
    the global Web economy. Supporting our overall growth plan, 
    acquiring MySQL amplifies our investments in the technologies 
    demanded by those driving extreme growth and efficiency, from 
    Internet media titans to the world's largest traditional enterprises."
    
   "MySQL's employees and culture, along with its near ubiquity across 
    the Web, make it an ideal fit with Sun's open approach to network 
    innovation. And most importantly, this announcement boosts our 
    investments into the communities at the heart of innovation on 
    the Internet and of enterprises that rely on technology as a 
    competitive weapon."

From Sun's press release...

   "More than 100 million copies of MySQL's high-performance open 
    source database software have been downloaded and distributed 
    and an additional 50,000 copies are downloaded daily."

As a JAVA shareholder, I say Kudos to Sun.

Sun.com:: Sun Microsystems Announces Agreement to Acquire MySQL

[16 January 2008, top]

   "We are a mission-based company. Democratizing information is 
    a social good. We will be open source. We will be the leader 
    in open source."

At the time of this posting, Red Hat stock was at $19.85 giving the company a market value of $3.85 billion. Red Hat's balance sheet had $1 billion in cash and current ratio of 3.3.

   "Hemingway could talk better about his work than somebody who 
    could just copy it. The same is true about software. We are 
    built around core values about being open and being collaborative 
    ... We are enabled to provide better value because it is part 
    of our culture."

Red Hat's Fedora Project writes it motto in a format that looks like a Unix shell command-line that contains pipes.

   Fedora "infinity | freedom | voice"

FedoraProject.org:: Infinite Possibilities

[11 January 2008, top]

   "Yet it is rare to find a corporate environment where the 
    project team has anything approaching the level of planning, 
    documentation, or review found in successful open source projects."

I can see how the planning and review are minimized, but company auditors typically require measurable documentation.

   "When a corporate developer tries to bring people together to 
    discuss the design of the software or to make plans for how 
    code is added or maintained, he's met with groans about 
    'yet another meeting.'"

Makes sense because so many meetings are inefficiently executed.

The article mentioned a book -- Applied Software Project Management -- that discusses the following five principles for a successful project. I would consider these five "common sense" principles and it is difficult to disagree with any of them.

   "* Tell the truth all the time
    * Trust the team
    * Review everything, test everything
    * All developers are created equal
    * The fastest way through the project is to do it right"

This is a long article and the left is left for you read.

ONLamp.com:: What Corporate Projects Should Learn from Open Source

[03 January 2008, top]

FLOSSER Archives: 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004

[01 January 2008, top]