Recently I got the opportunity to be a part of the windows team. We are (yes still are) using a microsoft (yes the same microsoft) product to handle one of our websites due to legacy bindings - user base, existing technology, backend team. My first encounter with microsoft on the enterprise end was when we were trying to use Microsoft Navision - supply chain management solution - in one of my

I feel a sense of pride when I think that I was involved in the development and maintenance of what was probably the first piece of software accepted into Debian which then had and still has direct up-stream support from Microsoft. The world is a better place for having Microsoft in it. The first operating system I ever ran on an 08086-based CPU was MS-DOS 2.x. I remember how thrilled I was when we got to see how my friend’s 80286 system ran BBS software that would cause a modem to dial a local system and display the application as if it were running on a local machine. Totally sweet.

When we were living at 6162 NE Middle in the nine-eight 292, we got an 80386 which ran Doom. Yeah, the original one, not the fancy new one with the double barrel shotgun, but it would probably run that one, too. It was also …

The MySQL developer tools team announces the availability of version 5.2.41 of the MySQL Workbench GUI tool. This version has significant improvements in several parts of the tool and also includes the new Migration Wizard plugin.

The new Migration Wizard presents an easy to use GUI for migrating databases from third party products to MySQL. In this initial release, support for Microsoft SQL Server is included, in addition to other products that support ODBC, such as PostgreSQL.

Other improvements include:

• More than 100 bug fixes
• Code completion in the SQL Editor (beta)
• Better handling of schema synchronization in modeling

For a full list of issues fixed in this release, see  http://dev.mysql.com/doc/workbench/en/changes-5.2.x.html

Please get your copy from our Downloads …

Previously, I’ve called out years for non-desktop Linux in 2008, Linux in both the low and high-ends of the market in 2009, ‘hidden’ Linux in 2010 and last year, cloud computing in 2011. For 2012, I see continued growth, prevalence, innovation and impact from Linux, thus leading to a 2012 that is dominated by Linux.

I expect to see nothing but continued strength for Linux and …

Jive goes public. webOS goes open source. Cloud Foundry goes .NET. And more.

# Jive Software started IPO at $12 a share, closing the day up nearly 30%.

# HP announced that it plans to release webOS under an open source license. Details are thin on the ground, although Fedora is reportedly an inspiration. Joel West’s post pretty much summed up my thoughts.

# Tier 3 …

There has been no shortage of reaction to HP’s move to make the Linux-based WebOS open source software. Below, I offer some of my thoughts on the meaning for the different players affected.

*What’s it mean for WebOS?
Moving WebOS to open source was best option for HP. It retains some value in the software depending on its involvement. It is also the best fate for the code, rather then being sold or simmered to its IP and patent value or even used as another weapon in the ongoing mobile software patent wars. Still, the move comes amid huge developer and consumer uncertainty for WebOS. Nevertheless, at least WebOS was already in the market with a compelling products, the Palm the Pre, in the modern smartphone market. WebOS will hopefully have a faster path to open source than Symbian since the former is based on Linux. I still think the greatest opportunity for WebOS may be in serving as an …

Rapid7 secures new funding. Microsoft drops Dryad. And more.

# Rapid7 secured $50m in series C funding.

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

# Arun Murthy provided more details of Apache Hadop 0.23.

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

# openSUSE released version 12.1.

Topics for this podcast:

*Opscode Chef extends to Windows for more enterprise devops
*Black Duck continues growth, gains new funding
*Cloudant expands NoSQL database focus, customers
*New open source Web server and vendor Nginx arrives
*The downside of Microsoft’s Android dollars

iTunes or direct download (27:35, 4.7MB)

Microsoft: “more than half your Android devices are belong to us”. And more

# Microsoft claimed that more than half of the world’s ODM industry for Android and Chrome devices is now under license to Microsoft’s patent portfolio following its agreement with Compal Electronics.

# Hadapt expanded its board of directors and confirmed its $9.5m series A funding round.

# Appcelerator entered into an agreement …

Red Hat’s $136m acquisition of open source storage vendor Gluster marks Red Hat’s biggest buy since JBoss and starts the fourth quarter with a very intersting deal. The acquisition is definitely good for Red Hat since it bolsters its Cloud Forms IaaS and OpenShift PaaS technology and strategy with storage, which is often the starting point for enterprise and service provider cloud computing deployments. The acquisition also gives Red Hat another weapon in its fight against VMware, Microsoft and others, including OpenStack, of which Gluster is a member (more on that further down). The deal is also good for Gluster given the sizeable price Red Hat is paying for the provider of open source, software-based, scale-out storage for unstructured data and also as validation of both open source and software in today’s IT and cloud computing storage.

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