Open Source as a Driver for CRM Innovation

With the success and wide deployment of RedHat, Apache, mySQL, etc., open source has become influential within the enterprise technology landscape, primarily in terms of infrastructure. Over the last couple of years, several strong open-source products and projects have emerged in the CRM business application space, beginning to challenge parts of the traditional CRM market by providing functionality and suitability for enterprise integration and, most important, an ecosystem of integration services and support offerings.

The traditional CRM market consists of three partly overlapping segments, each with its own advantages and drawbacks:

• Products focusing on large enterprisewide CRM deployments (e.g., Oracle and SAP) provide a large set of industry- and/or domain-specific functional features, yet have high per-user license costs; a feature overkill where only parts are used; and a heavy "project infrastructure" in terms of system and business process implementation.
• Products focusing on deployments at small and midsize businesses (SMBs) or business units (BUs) tout a focused set of domain-oriented features and limited industry focus, but they don't scale well across domains, and functional extensions are costly due to vendor and technology lock-in.
• The software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings, also focusing on the SMB/BU segment, have good functional offerings and a pay-per-user model. However, SaaS solutions tend to become relatively expensive in terms of total cost of ownership as user population grows and additional features are required. In addition, many companies are uncomfortable with external data ownership and the high costs for integrating additional systems.

Open-source CRM projects and products are becoming an attractive fourth alternative in the CRM solution space. While premier open-source products -- such as SugarCRM and Concursive's Concourse (formerly CentricCRM) -- cannot compete head-to-head with the enterprise CRM products such as Oracle's Siebel, they provide a broad functional offering across the core CRM domains. This offering is compelling and increasingly competitive for the SMB and BU implementations, while being free from both the license costs of installed software and the subscription model of the SaaS products.

The real upside with open-source CRM products is the high level of flexibility provided through open source code, modular components, and standards adherence. This flexibility enables companies to easily adapt the technology to achieve true usability, which, with commercial packages, is something that can only be achieved with high levels of effort and cost.

Additionally, open-source CRM products can be assembled like building blocks for solving specific business problems. These building blocks come with a core set of functionalities and each can be enhanced to meet specific business requirements. The different building blocks are easily integrated through the use of open-standard technologies, and additional features can be custom developed in a modular way.

The following examples demonstrate how open-source CRM products are being assembled as new, innovative solutions:

• A French travel company implemented a brand new Web presence and go-to-market approach, integrating the osCommerce e-commerce modules with open-source CRM for customer data management, online product management, partner transaction management, and email campaign management.
• A Swiss government department is implementing a solution to improve the efficiency of the process for issuing work permits. Open-source CRM provides the relationship management features, tightly integrated with legacy billing systems and another application for document storage, workflows, and approvals.
• Many companies are struggling with getting transparency into their Web-based demand-generation activities such as marketing and sales. Combining a lead-generation tool with open-source analytics and a CRM application provides the core features required to address the online demand-generation challenge and serve as a flexible platform for situation-specific extensions.

Open-source CRM products have matured rapidly over the last few years. They offer true benefits in terms of a base set of features at a very low cost, which can be subsequently enhanced to meet very specific needs without the limitations inherent in proprietary products. Thus, open-source CRM opens up many new possibilities for addressing specific business issues in a cost-efficient manner, either as a standalone CRM solution or as building blocks in more-complex solutions. The approach is suitable for the SMB segment, as well as for the large enterprise, and offers the required business agility to compete in an increasingly fast-paced and competitive market space.

Thomas Lundqvist, CRM and self-service solution lead, Optaros
destinationcrm.com

HP Promotes Open Source Software Governance with New Initiative

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced a software governance initiative to help companies address the legal, financial and security risks faced when adopting free and open source software (FOSS).

Underlying this community-based initiative is a major contribution from HP’s research and development efforts to help effectively manage open source as part of an overall enterprise IT plan. This intellectual property contribution is based on seven years of internal development and includes processes, policies and tools.

Traditional corporate policies for managing software assets are often inadequate to address the unique characteristics of free and open source software. During a recent customer engagement, for example, HP discovered three times as many FOSS licenses as the client originally thought it held - 75 versus 25. This left the customer with a choice: implement governance policies to allow the safe use of FOSS or replace the software at an estimated cost of $80 million.

To help enterprise customers mitigate these kinds of risks and realize the full business benefits of free and open source software, HP has introduced FOSSology (http://www.fossology.org) and FOSSBazaar (http://www.fossbazaar.org) - the industry’s first open source initiatives dedicated to these goals.

"Companies adopting free and open source software will save money and improve their ability to operate, but they need to understand the license requirements of the programs they use and adopt appropriate governance measures to ensure proper compliance," said Eben Moglen, founding director, Software Freedom Law Center. "The principle of ‘share and share alike’ requires governance measures different than those for the protection of proprietary assets, but not more burdensome. Resources like those HP announced today can help businesses understand how to make using free and open source software in a compliant manner very simple, effective and profitable."

FOSSology is based on the tools HP uses to effectively manage its own use of free and open source software. It is designed to help users address deployment issues such as the acquisition, tracking and licensing of FOSS. FOSSology’s flexible and open architecture framework, along with detection agents, can help users discover FOSS and related licenses within their own organizations. This toolset is free and downloadable from FOSSology.org for immediate use under the General Public License (GPL) version two.

FOSSBazaar makes HP’s expertise freely available to the software community as part of a collaborative effort with industry-leading software vendors and The Linux Foundation. Coverity, DLA Piper, Google, Novell, Olliance Group, OpenLogic and SourceForge have joined HP to offer online resources, educational documentation and community interaction to address FOSS business issues and promote best FOSS governance practices.

"The FOSS governance initiative allows HP to share the insight gained from its own experiences managing open source software with other enterprises and the broader FOSS community," said Christine Martino, vice president, Open Source and Linux Organization, HP. "As the No. 1 provider of Linux-based systems for nine years straight,(1) HP’s leadership around this initiative underscores its commitment to address the challenge of managing open source software proliferation, while reducing barriers to adoption."

HP Open Source Health Check

Customers can extend and complement the content available from FOSSBazaar with new HP services called the HP Open Source Heath Check (http://www.hp.com/go/oshealthcheck), which also was announced as part of the FOSS initiative. In addition to creating a snapshot of current FOSS usage, the services assist customers with analyzing FOSS management and reducing the risk associated with it.

HP Open Source Heath Check includes:

• Open Source Management (Governance) Workshop guides cross-organizational audiences through issues managing open source in the enterprise;


• Open Source Exploration Service uses the HP FOSSology tool to discover open source components in legacy applications;


• Open Source Governance Assessment Service provides a gap analysis of existing open source management practices and industry best practices, with recommendations to address the gaps;


• Open Source Total Cost of Ownership Analysis Service uses an HP-developed model to assess the cost benefits of moving to FOSS.

The HP Open Source Health Check complements HP’s rich portfolio of FOSS-related services, which help customers to take advantage of the benefits of FOSS in their IT environments.

More information is available at www.FOSSology.org, www.FOSSBazaar.org and www.hp.com/go/OSHealthCheck. More information on open source and Linux at HP is available at www.hp.com/go/linux.

businesswire.com

OpenLogic Recaps 2007 Open Source Trends

Enterprises Adopting More Open Source Software Packages

BROOMFIELD, CO--(Marketwire - January 22, 2008) - OpenLogic, Inc., a provider of enterprise open source software solutions encompassing hundreds of open source packages, today announced year-end statistics on enterprise open source adoption based on an analysis of OpenLogic's enterprise customers.

Key Trends for 2007:

Increased adoption of open source: On average, enterprises reported using 94 different open source packages, up 26% from 75 in 2006.

Apache license most common license in the enterprise: Breakdown of licenses for the top 25 packages found that Apache, not the GPL, is most common license in packages used in enterprises today. Sixty-two percent of the packages use Apache, 27% use some variant of GPL and 4% each use BSD, CPL, Eclipse, MPL and Perl licenses. Since packages may be released under two or more licenses, percentages total to more than 100%

Top 25 open source software packages (includes ties): OpenLogic ranked the most common 25 open source packages (plus ties), as reported by enterprises. Hibernate and Struts topped the list with more than 71% of customers using each. JasperReports is the only newcomer to the list this year over last year's report.

Hibernate

Struts

Xerces

Log4j

Ant

Jakarta Commons

JUnit

Axis

Spring Framework (Spring)

POI

Eclipse

Apache HTTP Server

Xalan

Tomcat

Velocity

Jakarta Taglibs (JSTL)

JDOM

Perl

JBoss Application Server

iText

dom4j

Regexp

MySQL Server

PHP

CVS

JasperReports

Top categories for open source software adoption: OpenLogic also ranked the top categories for open source packages based on enterprise adoption.

Libraries and Utilities

XML related

Application Frameworks

Development tools

Build and Source Code Management

Database and Database tools

Application and Web Server

Programming Languages

Web/HTTP tools

Security tools

Web services

Introduction of The Open Source Census

In 2008, OpenLogic plans to launch The Open Source Census, which will expand the statistics collected and reported on enterprise open source adoption. The Open Source Census, announced by OpenLogic in December 2007, is a collaborative initiative designed to provide enterprises a way to easily inventory the open source software installed on their machines, and anonymously submit that data to The Open Source Census. Data collected in The Open Source Census will be aggregated and shared publicly on the Internet and will also be available to the enterprises who contribute data.

For more information on The Open Source Census project or co-sponsor opportunities, please visit www.theopensourcecensus.org. Downloads for OSS Discovery, a tool used to inventory installed open source, and access to the community for OSS Discovery are at www.ossdiscovery.org

About OpenLogic

OpenLogic is a leading provider of open source solutions that enable enterprises to safely acquire, support, and control open source software. OpenLogic provides enterprises with a certified library of open source software that encompasses hundreds of the most popular open source packages via OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX), a free web site where companies can find, research, and download certified, enterprise-ready open source packages on demand. With the broadest open source coverage in the industry, OpenLogic offers indemnification; updates; and enterprise-grade technical support backed by the OpenLogic Expert Community. OpenLogic also provides solutions for open source governance and to automate the integration and deployment of open source components -- reducing the risk and maximizing the cost savings associated with using open source software. For more on OpenLogic, go to www.openlogic.com.

SOURCE: OpenLogic, Inc

marketwire.com

Open-Source Chief Executives Make 2008 Predictions

Open Solutions Alliance finds that changes in the economy will open the door for new deployments of open source in business.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA), a nonprofit, vendor-neutral consortium dedicated to driving interoperability and adoption of comprehensive open solutions, today announced the findings of its 2008 Predictions Survey, which polled open-source CEOs on their forecasts for the coming year.

"Our member CEOs have given us important insights into what they expect for the coming new year," said OSA President Dominic Sartorio. "The OSA is home to some of today's most successful commercial open source companies, which allows us to spot trends and their impact early."

The OSA survey revealed that CEOs agree that commercial open source will become more mainstream and continue to be a worldwide growth story in 2008. Moreover, growing economic uncertainties could further expand the opportunity for open source in the enterprise.

"Demand for Linux and open-source applications, infrastructure and services will increase substantially in 2008, driven partially by an economic slowdown in the United States," predicted Doug Levin, CEO of Black Duck Software, an open-source code management company. "These open-source solutions will be active in more corporations and SMBs in 2008 than ever before."

"During '08, the pressures CIOs will face to drive greater business innovation with a fixed (or low growth) IT budget will conspire to challenge every possible traditional software license," said Brian Gentile, CEO of JasperSoft, an open-source business intelligence application. "Open-source software can be a significant catalyst in liberating more of this maintenancebudget, freeing it for use in driving new business and improved profitability."

Michael Grove, CEO of OpenIT Works, an open-source CIO collaboration group, pointed out that the collaborative nature of open source makes it cost-effective for development. "Our challenge is to demonstrate that collabsourcing (collaborative outsourcing) will generate two to three times the savings that typical outsourcing approaches provide."

Other key predictions from OSA member company CEOs for 2008 include:

* A confluence of open-source and software-as-a-service (SaaS) models.

"These are the two most powerful trends in software today, and while they've traditionally been seen as separate, parallel developments, they are rapidly combining to create the new business model for enterprise software," said William A. Soward, CEO of Adaptive Planning, an open-source budgeting, forecasting and reporting software company.

* No one region will lead the charge in terms of adoptions of open-source software, but each will have its area of strength.

"There are certain markets that have always been historically more embracing of the notion of open source, such as public sector bodies in Europe, compared to the U.S. where open source is more prolific in private organizations," said David Richards, CEO of Concursive Corp., an open-source customer relationship management company. "But implementation in Asia will be much more rapid than in the U.S."

* A shake-out among open-source business models.

"We've seen a lot of open-source entrants into a number of categories of software," said Javier Soltero, CEO of Hyperic, an open-source systems management software company. "Most of these companies will be transitioning from 'advocacy and awareness' mode into 'make money' mode and it's in that latter phase that we'll see whose models work and whose don't."

* Consolidation.

"Watch for consolidation among open source organizations as a way to strengthen their offerings and development efforts as well as acquisitions of open source market leaders by large commercial vendors who have a desire to expand their market reach and revenue stream," said Mark Tolliver, CEO of Palamida, an open-source IP management company.

* License issues are becoming less of a factor in decision making by commercial customers.

"Customers continue to get educated about the code they use and about open source licensing in general, so FUD will have less of a factor than in the past," said Kim Polese, CEO of SpikeSource, an open-source application integration platform.

* Interoperability between open source and closed source solutions.

"As enterprise open source solutions become more prevalent and more mission critical in the information system, they will need to interoperate with all systems," says Bertrand Diard, CEO of Talend, an open-source data integration software company. "Most information systems are heterogeneous and rely on multiple technologies, open source and closed source, that all need to interoperate. This will be the main challenge faced by most open source vendors in 2008".

The full text of the CEO predictions is available on the OSA website, www.opensolutionsalliance.org

The OSA is focused this year on improving the interoperability among the point solutions developed by its member companies to better position commercial open-source solutions to compete with those from proprietary software vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle.

About the Open Solutions Alliance

The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) is a nonprofit, vendor neutral consortium dedicated to driving the interoperability and adoption of comprehensive open solutions. Founded in 2007, it is supported by leading companies from around the world who are dedicated to improving interoperability among software products, resulting in integrated and rapidly deployable solutions for business users. Through cooperative action and advocacy, the OSA helps facilitate interoperability, reduce barriers to adoption and raise the awareness of open solutions in business. For more information, please visit www.OpenSolutionsAlliance.org

SOURCE Open Solutions Alliance

Christina Williams of Page One PR, +1-503-206-7775, christina@pageonepr.com

reuters.com

Sun SPOT technology set for open source

Sun is set to open-source everything related to SPOT, from hardware to software, but a user questions Sun's commitment to the technology

Paul Krill (InfoWorld)

computerworld.com.au

Sun is expected to announce this week that it will make the Sun SPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) device platform available via open source, but a user expressed concerns about Sun's commitment to the technology.

Sun SPOT is a Java-based experimental platform intended to enable development of products like wireless sensors, robotics, and communication devices. The open-sourcing is expected to be made official at the Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days Conference in California, which is being held January 23-24.

"In this case, I think what's a little bit different is it's not just open-sourcing just the Sun SPOT code," said Roger Brinkley, mobile and embedded community leader at Sun. "It's everything related to Sun SPOT. It's the hardware, it's the software."

Included in the open source endeavor would be the Squawk virtual machine featured as part of Sun SPOT. Through the open-source move, Sun hopes to attract more developers to Sun SPOT. "The open-sourcing allows a lot more extension and development to occur," Brinkley said.

The plan calls for Sun SPOT to be offered under the GNU General Public License version 2, which means derivatives of GPL code and code that is combined with it must be redistributed. Sun, however, previously has permitted use of the "ClassPath" exception to the GPL, which enables combining of proprietary code with GPL ClassPath libraries without the need to redistribute proprietary code.

Contacted afterward, Sun SPOT user Bruce Boyes, president of Systronix, lauded the technology but had concerns about Sun's commitment to it. By classifying the technology as experimental, Sun shows no published commitment to make it available for any period of time commercially, he said. Systronix has been trying to get a commercial license for two years, he said.

"SPOT is a very cool educational and experimental device. We'd like it to become a great commercial and industrial device too. Systronix would like to help make that happen," Boyes said. Systronix is using Sun SPOT in robots, which could be networked and potentially be used in applications, such as roaming of airports to provide security. "We use the Sun SPOT as the application brain," said Boyes.

He also expressed concerns about the GPL, which has requirements that can place limits on its use in commercial ventures since software involving it has to be contributed back to the open-source arena. "Open-sourcing would be most interesting if there was a reasonable path to a commercial license," Boyes said. Sun officials were not available to respond to Boyes's concerns on Friday afternoon.

In other happenings at next week's conference, application developers in the mobile and embedded space will get together to learn about different topics ranging from virtual machines to mobile clients. Presentations will be done by representatives from such companies as Nokia, Intel and, of course, Sun. James Gosling, CTO of Sun's Client Software who is widely considered the father of Java, will give a keynote presentation on Wednesday.

Java, according to Sun, is on 95 percent of mobile phones shipped today. Sun makes money off of mobile and embedded Java through commercial licenses that feature support services.

One topic that is not expected to get a lot of play at the event is Sun's JavaFX and JavaFX Mobile technology. The JavaFX platform, featuring JavaFX Mobile, is intended to provide a consistent and graphical user experience on systems ranging from desktops to mobile devices and other systems. More on JavaFX will be aired at the JavaOne conference in May in San Francisco, a Sun insider said.

Currently, Sun's new acquisition, MySQL, maker of the open source database of the same name, has not been factored into Sun's mobile plans, according to Brinkley. Sun agreed to acquire MySQL this week for US$1 billion, with the deal expected to close later this quarter or early in the next quarter.

First technology seminar is held

MICHAEL D. McELWAIN
reviewonline.com

EAST LIVERPOOL - The first of what organizers hope will be a long series of free technology seminars was held Saturday at Coffee Fusion and Tea Company.

Despite the cold temperature, some 40 area residents headed to the business along West Fifth Street for a presentation on the merits of free, open source software.

The event was organized by Shawn Golden, a computer technology instructor at the local branch of Kent State University.

However, Golden turned the program over to Steve Curtis and David Pipes who not only gave a presentation on open source software, but also provided free CDs filled with examples.

Using word processing and other software as a comparison, the two spoke of Microsoft Office’s monopoly and suggested an alternative suite of applications in the open source world.

"The biggest advantage is it’s going to be free," Curtis, an instructor at NewLife Technical Institute, said.

Another advantage of open source software is that, by its very nature, it is constantly updated to meet the needs of the end user, Curtis added.

In face, when the end user first runs the open source software they must agree to never repackage the software for sale.

Open source software is written by a loose consortium of programmers from all over the world aiming to bring free, high quality software to computer users.

"They (programmers) are end users themselves who work during their free time mostly to make the software better," Pipes, a software engineer himself, said. "People love doing this."

The result is software that instead of several hundred dollars is free and has features often just a robust as the name brand counterpart.

Just one of the open source packages competing against Microsoft Office is Open Office.

Instead of Access as a database, the alternative is Open Office Base. Powerpoint has an equal alternative in Open Office Impress and the venerable Microsoft Word has Open Office Writer as a competitive alternative, according to Curtis.

"It basically looks the same and behaves the same," Curtis said about Writer.

Pipes said there are occasional backward compatibility issues with some of the software, but as time goes by, programmers will release free updates or improved versions of the software.

The two went through other open source software possibilities like sound file editors, antivirus programs, data security solutions and photo editing tools.

Perhaps the most widely known example of an open source software alternative is Mozilla Firefox, a web browsing utility.

"It’s not susceptible to viruses as much as Internet Explorer," Curtis said.

Pipes also showed off a memory stick, or jump drive, filled with applications so a user can plug it into any USB port and run a program directly.

Applications are more stable and more user friendly in the open source community than ever before, according to Pipes. But those applications typically run off of some version of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

For those who delve deeply into the field, there are versions of open source operating systems also available for free and most are based on some form of Linux programming.

"It’s a lot less user friendly and a lot more involved," Curtis said about entire open source operating systems.

Golden said he was impressed with the presentation and glad that so many people came out to attend.

The next scheduled presentation is tentatively set for 2 p.m. Feb. 23 at Coffee Fusion and Tea Company. Golden said he and East Liverpool resident Matt Stewart will give a presentation on using digital cameras.

FOSSology: Track Open Source Software Within Your Company

nixCraft

cyberciti.biz

Hewlett-Packard has launched the FOSSology Project, a tool for tracking and monitoring the use of free and open-source software within an IT environment. The FOSSology Project is a Free Open Source Software (FOSS) project built around an open and modular architecture for analyzing software. Existing modules include license analysis, meta data extraction, and MIME type identification. This open source software tool analyzes a given set of software packages, and reports items such as the software licenses used by these packages.

More than simply reporting, "Package X uses license Y," the FOSSology tool attempts to analyze every file within the package to determine its license. The license report is thus an aggregate of all of the different licenses found to be in use by a package. A single package may be labeled as "GPL" but contain files that use other licenses (BSD, OSL, or any of the hundreds of other licenses). Even if an exact license is unknown, the license may be identifiable by common license phrases.

The availability of free open-source usage data "will help people make much better - and affordable - decisions about what open source to use and not use," Cote said.

How Do You Market Open-Source Applications That Are Free?

Laurie Sullivan
-MediaPost Publications

THERE HAVE BEEN A BEVY of low-cost PCs hitting the market. Sears.com began selling $199 PCs pre-loaded with the Linux-based Freespire operating system on Thursday. The Everex Cloudbook, which uses a 1.2-GHz Via C7 processor, is priced at $399 and scheduled to hit Wal-Mart store shelves next week.

But those in the biz of developing open-source software and products say marketing efforts could help to inform consumers that there's a low-cost alternative to Microsoft Windows.

"One day we'd like to see ads for four Linux desktops and three Linux laptops when you walk into at a Best Buy store," says Larry Kettler, president/CEO of Linspire, which designs and supports Linux-based operating systems for PCs selling at Wal-Mart, Sears.com and other retailers. "That's our goal."

Kettler says Linspire has run promotions with computer stores MicroCenter and Fry's Electronics in the past, but there are no plans to market the $199 Mirus PC now selling through Sears.com. Pre-installed with a Linspire OS version called Freespire 2.0, the Mirus PC comes with an Intel Celeron 420 1.6-GHz processor, 1-GB memory, 80-GB hard drive, as well as multimedia support for MP3, Windows Media, Real Networks, Java, Flash, ATI, nVidia, and WiFi.

Interestingly, there are "severe obstacles" in marketing Linux products, says Robin Rowe, an expert in Linux and open-source technologies. "You can't carve up a marketing budget out of free; what percentage do you want?" he says, referring to the fact most open-source applications are free to users. "Another issue is getting approval to use the trademark from Linus Torvalds," which first developed the open-source software on which programmers around the world build.

Marketers know what it takes to sell PCs, says Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst at research firm iSuppli, pointing to efforts by Microsoft and Intel. "It takes a lot of investment on behalf of the companies looking to sell the boxes," Wilkins says.

"In this area the Linux movement sits at a disadvantage. There isn't one big company behind the open-source movement prepared to put millions into marketing and educating consumers. The typical consumer who buys PCs pre-installed with Linux tends to have more knowledge about computers."

Businesses also have an appetite for Linux-based machines. Novel--along with Sun Microsystems, which announced this week the purchase of the Swedish software company MySQL for $1 billion--have major commitments to support open-source platforms, but rather than target consumers, they aim at enterprise customers with applications and servers.

Sun says MySQL's product line will further support the open-source Web application platform known as LAMP, the acronym for the Linux OS, Apache, Web server, MySQL database and PHP/Perl programming languages. Sun will pay $800 million in cash and $200 million in options. The deal is expected to close by June 30.

Big Blue’s patent surprise

Posted by Joe McKendrick

- zdnet

An interesting announcement just came out of IBM today. Namely, Big Blue is publicly pledging that 500 of its patents will be made available for use in open source software projects. Since many Web services and SOA projects are built on IBM’s J2EE-based Websphere - and open-source platforms such as Apache and JBoss — this may help clear some of the air around SOA projects as well.

Patents covered by IBM’s pledge include interfacing, storage management, multi-processing, database and data handling, human interfacing, image processing, security, software development, e-commerce, and network management.

The industry has been awkward, ham-handed, and inconsistent with handling patents. You may have seen David Berlind’s post last week on Microsoft’s patent moves. Last month, the industry let 39 Web services patents slip through its fingers in the Commerce One sell-off.

Let’s hope IBM’s example will inspire others to keep the lawyers out of the software development process.

MySQL CEO: Sun Deal 'Huge Victory' for Open Source

By Nathan Eddy, CMP Channel

2:11 PM EST Wed. Jan. 16, 2008

On the heels of Sun Microsystems (NSDQ:JAVA)' declaration of intent to acquire open source software company MySQL, company CEO Marten Mickos says MySQL's acquisition was a "huge victory" for open source software and compared Sun favorably to his own company. "It's very refreshing to engage with them because they have a fresh view of the world," he says. "I feel like I've joined a startup, even though in reality I've joined a Fortune 500 company." The $1 billion acquisition is not expected to close until the end of Sun's 2008 Q3 or early Q4, but Mickos says he's already received many emails from partners thrilled with the deal. He was quick to allay any potential apprehension from partners concerned by the acquisition. "We have always had a partner-centric view, and we've always been focused on that and we will continue to focus on that," he says. "And now, we can offer faster evolution of our own products and maybe some new channels for our partners."

Mickos, who will join Sun as an SVP and report to Sun's EVP of software Rich Green, says his highest priorities will be building MySQL bigger and faster than before while in the immediate term actively engaging with their current clients. "We have a simple rule here at MySQL: We're here to serve customers," he says. "This is a super big announcement, but at the same time we can't take our hands off the steering wheel."

In speaking of the acquisition in a historical context, Mickos doesn't hold back his pride and enthusiam for open source. "It validates it as a superior way of developing software and building a business," he says. "You could see when Linux went into the enterprise it was a big thing. I think this is an even bigger thing -- you see the whole stack going into the enterprise."

Through the acquisition, he says MySQL is now able to reach out to the more conservative large customers. "It will be easier to reach into larger corporations because we have the backing of one of the huge players in this space," he says. "That's where we have taken a step, because now we have access to the support structure for the most demanding customers."

He remains steadfast in his view that open source is the best way of producing software and says the acquisition is far bigger than MySQL alone. "Wherever it goes in other open source applications go in," he says. "This is the adoption [of open source] in the corporate world, in big business, and that's what's significant."

Mickos predicts as large corporations see the benefits and value of open source software, adoption will steadily increase. "This is a great validation of the value we are providing to the world," he says. "The trend is clear. The benefits of open source are undeniable, and smart guys will adopt it."

Free/Open-source P2P Software

Looking for Free / Open Source P2P Software? Here's some of them:

# BitTorrent
# GNUnet
# BitTornado
# gtk-gnutella
# KTorrent
# aMule
# Torrentflux
# iFolder
# Limewire
# MLDonkey
# Azureus
# µTorrent
# rTorrent

BitTorrent is the global standard for delivering high-quality files over the Internet. Its new site, BitTorrent.com, has been launched to provide a better digital entertainment experience for the community of over 150 million users who use its software. With thousands of newly-released movies, TV shows, music tracks, and popular PC games available for download, you can easily find what you want, when you want it. BitTorrent even enables you to publish your own content. If you are a filmmaker, musician, or even a comedian, it’s the perfect place to showcase your work to a worldwide audience. Download it here

GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking that does not use any centralized or otherwise trusted services. A first service implemented on top of the networking layer allows anonymous censorship-resistant file-sharing. GNUnet uses a simple, excess-based economic model to allocate resources. Peers in GNUnet monitor each others behavior with respect to resource usage; peers that contribute to the network are rewarded with better service. Download it here

BitTornado is a BitTorrent client. It is developed by John Hoffman, who also created its predecessor, Shad0w's Experimental Client. Based on the original BitTorrent client, the interface is largely the same, with added features such as - upload/download speed limitation; - prioritised downloading when downloading batches (several files); - detailed information about connections to other peers; - UPnP Port Forwarding (Universal Plug and Play); - IPv6 support (if your OS supports it/has it installed); - PE/MSE support as of version 0.3.18. Super seeding mode and web seeding were originally developed by the BitTornado group. It is programmed using Python, for platform independence. Download it here

gtk-gnutella is a server/client for Gnutella. It runs on every Unix-like system which supports GTK+ (1.2 or above) and libxml. The GNOME desktop environment is not required. It is currently developed and tested under Linux (Debian) as well as NetBSD. It is known to run at least on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Darwin, Solaris, Tru64 UNIX (OSF/1), SGI IRIX, BeOS whereas CPU architectures include x86, AMD64, PowerPC, SPARC, MIPS. gtk-gnutella is not finished yet, but it is fully functional: you may share, search, and download. And it is stable too, users usually just leave it run unattended for days. Download it here

KTorrent is a BitTorrent client written in C++ for KDE using the Qt user interface toolkit. It is maintained in the KDE Extragear. Download it here
Features:
- Upload and download speed capping / throttling & scheduling
- Internet searching with torrent search engines using KHTML part.
- Support for UDP trackers.
- IP address blacklist plugin
- Port forwarding with UPnP (Universal Plug and Play)
- Protocol encryption
- DHT (mainline version), and support for trackerless torrents
- µTorrent peer exchange (PEX) support (as of 2.1 RC1).
- File Prioritization
-Ability to import partially-downloaded files
- Directory scanner to automatically watch directories for new torrents
- Manual addition of trackers to torrents
- RSS feed support

aMule is a peer-to-peer file sharing application that works with the eDonkey2000 network and the Kad Network, but offers more features than the standard eDonkey client, including support for Kademlia. It is a fork of the xMule source code, which itself is a fork of the lMule project, which was the first attempt to bring the eMule client to Linux. Download it here

Torrentflux is a multi-user GUI for BitTornado. Unlike most BitTorrent clients, its main user interface is a web interface. It is scripted in PHP, with a MySQL database and runs on a web server. It can also be run from a hosting service, allowing very high download speeds for the enduser. The file host company runs Torrentflux on their server to download a torrent, while the enduser connects to the company via FTP to download the file. The advantage of this method is that hosting companies have much higher bandwidth compared with residential homes. This is also an advantage for people with traffic-shaped internetaccess which agressively decreases speed on P2P traffic protocols like bittorrent. Download it here

iFolder is an open source application, developed by Novell, Inc., intended to allow cross-platform file sharing across computer networks. iFolder operates on the concept of shared folders, where a folder is marked as shared and the contents of the folder are then synchronized to other computers over a network, either directly between computers in a peer-to-peer fashion or through a server. This is intended to allow a single user to synchronize his files between different computers (for example between a work computer and a home computer) or share files with other users (for example a group of people who are collaborating on a project). Download it here

Limewire is a peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) client for the Java Platform, which uses the Gnutella network to locate files as well as share files. Released under the GNU General Public License, LimeWire is free software. It also encourages the user to pay a fee, which will then give the user access to LimeWire PRO. Written in the Java programming language, LimeWire is able to run on any computer with Java Virtual Machine installed. Installers are provided for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Download it here

MLDonkey is an open source, free software multi-network peer-to-peer application. It is also the name of the peer-to-peer overlay network that the MLDonkey uses. Originally a Linux client for the eDonkey protocol, it now runs on many flavors of Unix-like, Mac OS X, Windows and MorphOS and supports numerous peer-to-peer protocols. It is written in Objective Caml, with some C and even some Assembly parts. Download it here

Azureus is a Java-based BitTorrent client, with support for I2P and Tor anonymous communication protocols. In 2003, the core developers of Azureus formed a company called Vuze, Inc. (formerly Azureus, Inc.) The program's logo is the Blue Poison Dart Frog (Dendrobates azureus). The Azureus name was given to the project by co-creator Tyler Pitchford, who uses the Latin names of poison dart frogs as codenames for his development projects. Azureus was first released in June 2003 at SourceForge.net, mostly to experiment with the Standard Widget Toolkit from Eclipse. It is now one of the most popular BitTorrent clients. Released under the GNU General Public License, Azureus is free software. Download it here

µTorrent was written with efficiency in mind. Unlike many torrent clients, it does not hog valuable system resources - typically using less than 6MB of memory, allowing you to use the computer as if it weren't there at all. Additionally, the program itself is contained within a single executable less than 220 KB in size. Most of the features present in other BitTorrent clients are present in µTorrent, including bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading and Mainline DHT (compatible with BitComet). Additionally, µTorrent supports the Protocol Encryption joint specification (compatible with Azureus 2.4.0.0 and above, BitComet 0.63 and above) and peer exchange. Various icon, toolbar graphic and status icon replacements are available, and creating your own is very simple. µTorrent also has support for localization, and with a language file present, will automatically switch to your system language. If your language isn't available, you can easily add your own, or edit other existing translations to improve them! The developer puts in a lot of time working on features and making things more user-friendly. Releases only come out when they're ready, with no schedule pressures, so the few bugs that appear are quickly addressed and fixed. Download it here

rTorrent is a text-based ncurses BitTorrent client written in C++, based on the libTorrent libraries for UNIX (which is not the libtorrent library developed by Arvid Norberg), with a focus on high performance and good code. The library differentiates itself from other implementations by transferring data directly between file pages mapped to memory by the mmap() function and the network stack. On high-bandwidth connections, it is claimed to be able to seed at many times the speed of the official client. rTorrent packages are available for various Linux distributions and Unices, and it will compile and run on nearly every POSIX-compliant operating system, such as FreeBSD. rTorrent uses ncurses and is suitable for use with screen or dtach. It supports saving of sessions and allows the user to add and remove torrents. It also supports partial downloading of multi-file torrents. In the release of rTorrent-0.7.0 support for BitTorrent protocol encryption is also implemented. PEX and DHT was recently implemented in rTorrent. Download it here

Unisys Predicts CIOs in 2008 Will Expand Use of Open Source Solutions to Modernize IT Environments

BLUE BELL, Pa. --(Business Wire)-- In 2008, IT executives in large enterprises will weave open source solutions more closely into the fabric of their core IT infrastructure, from procurement processes through deployment of next-generation applications, says Anthony Gold, vice president and general manager, Open Source Business, Unisys (NYSE:UIS).

As solutions include more and more open source content, from middleware to business applications, open source will become key in helping management respond to increasing pressure to align IT with business goals while spending less money and leveraging existing assets more effectively.

Looking ahead at 2008, Gold predicts that:

1. Evaluation of open source solutions will become a standard part of the enterprise IT qualification and procurement process

2. Enterprises will extend - and even modify - their governance policies to include management of open source resources

3. Business services currently offered by legacy applications will be retooled into flexible new "composite applications" based on open architectures, such as SOA, and open standards

4. Businesses will increase the speed with which they leverage open source in enterprise applications as well as in operational and business management functions.

"In 2008, open source will increasingly contribute to solving what I call the 'CIO Conundrum,'" says Gold. "In the face of shrinking budgets, IT executives are being challenged to deliver more business results while simultaneously modernizing the IT infrastructure and leveraging applications they already have. Executives can achieve greater cost efficiency while increasing the value that IT delivers to the organization by using open source software to integrate proprietary solutions and legacy systems as they modernize their IT infrastructure."

1. Evaluation of open source solutions will become a standard part of the enterprise IT qualification and procurement process.

Gold asserts that in 2008, enterprise IT executives will increasingly realize that many of the open source solutions created by virtual communities have potential business value equal to and sometimes greater than those from traditional software providers. They will take steps to ensure that those solutions are evaluated through the same formal process applied to all others.

"IT executives will see more clearly that open source solutions now routinely provide security, high availability, robustness, scalability, and other enterprise-quality features. This realization will cause them to place open source solutions in the front rank of those solutions routinely considered for mission-critical tasks," Gold says.

2. Enterprises will extend - and even modify - their governance policies to include management of open source resources.

Enterprises will increasingly bring open source software under the formal governance policies they already have in place for evaluation, procurement, adoption, testing, and production of solutions. Organizations will also increasingly apply formal policies around measuring the impact of open source solutions and their capability to help the organization meet and exceed service level agreements to support the business.

In fact, according to Gold, businesses are equally likely to adapt their existing governance policies to fit the open source deployment model. Open source projects often provide new software releases much more frequently than slower moving commercial software providers. Enterprise evaluation and production policies will need to adapt to this change.

Gold says, "Extending proven governance policies to new-generation resources will further convince management that open source solutions are as controllable as established proprietary solutions and as capable of providing measurable business value. And by modifying policies to integrate open source resources more quickly, they can reap the operational and economic benefits in more efficiently managed ways."

3. Business services currently offered by legacy applications will be retooled into flexible new "composite applications" based on open architectures, such as SOA, and open standards.

Enterprises need a "toolkit" of components and an architecture that enables creation of an integrated environment in which business services - such as those supporting customer satisfaction - previously delivered through legacy applications are available to all applications, whether legacy, commercial or open source.

Most organizations are now adopting this approach guided by service oriented architecture (SOA). In doing so they leverage open standards, such as those evolving around Web services and orchestration, to enable delivery of those services.

Gold says that, because open source solutions have an exceptionally broad range - from components that solve a very specific integration or processing problem to environmental software such as operating systems and middleware - they are positioned to be a major part of this integrated "toolkit" approach in ways that commercial software cannot. Through emphasis on interoperability enabled by standards, open source is becoming a larger and larger part of the IT fabric enabling composite applications which align more closely with business requirements and which are able to react quickly to business change.

"In 2008, enterprise IT management will increasingly move to restructure existing assets to support a more agile application model that delivers business services created through use of components," says Gold. "Those components will be provided by new development, service-enabling legacy applications, or commercial off-the-shelf applications, which are increasingly being restructured to support this model. All these efforts are directly enabled though adoption of open standards, open architectures, and open source."

4. Businesses will increase the speed with which they leverage open source in enterprise applications as well as in operational and business management functions.

Gold says that in 2008, adoption of open source alternatives for a variety of enterprise applications and management requirements will continue to increase in areas that have long been the nearly exclusive province of proprietary solutions.

Increasingly popular tools for business and IT monitoring - such as JasperSoft and Pentaho for dashboard reporting in business intelligence (BI) applications and GroundWork, Hyperic and Zenoss for operations control - will penetrate even further into corporate IT infrastructures. So will business solutions such as Alfresco for enterprise content management (ECM), Concursive Concourse for customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, Compiere and Openbravo for enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, and a host of new collaboration technologies based on web 2.0 capabilities.

Gold points out that market dynamics and government requirements are major factors in this evolution. Many rapidly developing areas, such as China and other parts of the Asia Pacific region, have first-generation IT infrastructures in which proprietary applications have not been widely deployed. Consequently, they are very receptive to open source solutions as a first choice. In Europe, state and local governments and even the European Union are driving use of open solutions for ECM in order to facilitate the sharing of increasingly large amounts of information among governments with a common need for access.

"Open source will continue to grow as an enabling force for business because of its 'perfect storm' of key attributes: a community-driven requirements model; uniquely targeted deployment model; adherence to, and capability to drive, new standards; and low cost of entry. In 2008, users' greater appreciation of those qualities will bring open source closer to becoming competitive table-stakes for enterprises."

About Unisys

Unisys is a worldwide information technology services and solutions company. We provide consulting, systems integration, outsourcing and infrastructure services, combined with powerful enterprise server technology. We specialize in helping clients use information to create efficient, secure business operations that allow them to achieve their business goals. Our consultants and industry experts work with clients to understand their business challenges and create greater visibility into critical linkages throughout their operations.

For more information, visit www.unisys.com

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) Wraps Up 2007 As Its Strongest Year to Date

Flexible, Meritocratic Process of "The Apache Way" Plays Key Role in Meeting Growing Demand for Innovative, Community-Developed Open Source Technologies

FOREST HILL, Md., Jan. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) -- stewards, incubators, and developers of leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server, the world's most popular Web server software for twelve years running -- today announced the 2007 year finished as its strongest ever, reinforcing the broad-reaching success of "The Apache Way."

Lauded as one of the most compelling communities in Open Source, the all-volunteer Foundation looked back on milestones achieved during 2007, with ASF activities having grown at a steady rate.

"We are grateful to all those individuals -- Members, Committers, developers, users, and supporters -- who have contributed to our success over the past year," said ASF Chairman Jim Jagielski. "Our achievements reflect strong commitment from our community, boosting confidence in our ability to meet end-user and market demand and building excitement about the work that is underway."

ApacheCon: The ASF's official conference, trainings, and expo -- now in its 10th year -- continues to bring Open Source users, developers, and though leaders together to explore some of the hottest topics in the industry. Convening in Amsterdam and Atlanta during 2007, ApacheCon Europe returns to Amsterdam 7-11 April 2008; and to the United States for ApacheCon US in New Orleans on 3-7 November 2008.

As the backbone of more Websites than any other Web server software, the Apache HTTP Server remains the #1 Web server, powering more than 75 million Websites across the Internet, according to the December 2007 Web Server Survey by Netcraft. This translates to a 74% market penetration across all Web Server domains, according to the January 1 2008 Web Server Survey by Security Space. In September 2007 the Apache HTTP Server Project announced the stable release of Apache HTTP Server version 2.2.6.

About The Apache Software Foundation

Established in 1999, The Apache Software Foundation provides organizational, legal, and financial support for a broad range of Open Source software projects, including Apache HTTP Server -- the world's most popular Web server software for more than a decade. The Foundation provides an established framework for intellectual property and financial contributions that simultaneously limits contributors' potential legal exposure. Through a collaborative and meritocratic development process, Apache projects deliver enterprise-grade, freely available software products that attract large communities of users. The pragmatic Apache License makes it easy for all users, commercial and individual, to deploy Apache products.

For more information, please see http://www.apache.org/

Ohloh.net - Ohloh Goes Open Source

Ohloh is an open source network that connects people through the software they create and use. It is a useful tool for software programmers. It’s efficient and clean interface allows users to discover new software and contribute to old software. Ohloh comes in multiple languages and has plenty of widgets and other goodies to keep everyone happy.

It aims to provide a new kind of software directory that connects its users through software development and community feedback. Ohloh lets you discover new open source software and share your finds as well as add to others designs and projects. You can do this through Ohloh’s "Stack it" feature. Ohloh already offers an extensive rankings list of the US’s major open source coders. But now Ohloh’s newly opened tracking and ranking tools allows software development teams to track the work of each coder on a team. The to-be-released Ohcount allows users to see how many lines of source code a developer has contributed to a project. Ohcount also analyzes the code, giving you the ability to gauge the performance of a programmer. With Ohloh, you can stay up-to-date on projects anywhere and at anytime.