EnterpriseDB has announced the results (PDF) of its recent survey of open source database usage.

While the company understandably highlights the adoption of PostgreSQL for transaction-intensive applications and its high reliability and performance and scalability EnterpriseDB has done a pretty good job of presenting the results in an unbiased manner.

I couldn’t help feeling that some of the more interesting results are hidden at the end of or buried within EnterpriseDB’s write-up, or even missing entirely, however.

For example, right at the end of its report EnterpriseDB states that “eight three percent have yet to pay for the use of their open source database” which speaks volumes about both the challenge that open …

Launching a Startup in 3 Hours was a great talk given by Andrew Hyde (of techstars.org) and Gavin Doughtie (of Google). Both of the speakers are heavily involved in the recent trend of doing “Startup Weekends”, and techstars.org is an organization that hosts startup weekends all around the US (and I think internationally as well - Andrew mentioned one in Germany if I heard correctly).

The first half of the talk was about the general concept of a startup weekend, the problems it avoids (”we’ve been working for 9 months and haven’t launched anything”), the problems it brings up (”If you’re not using Java, you’re an idiot, so count me out!!”), and lots of details about how to organize, how to assign roles, and some common tools they use (like Basecamp and whatever your IM of choice is). There was also talk of legal issues, how (basically) to think about forming the company with the people involved, and decisions that need to …

Last week I wrote about whether Google’s potential acquisitions might be stifled by its focus on its own infrastructure software projects but noted that by releasing App Engine the company was encouraging a wider ecosystem of applications based on its platform.

What I didn’t discuss at the time was the potential risk of application vendors finding themselves locked-in to the App Engine platform. Of course Amazon also has this issue, the potential impact of which was …

I think I have pictures of most of the basic parts of the conference at my OSCON Flickr set, and I thoroughly enjoyed day 1 of the conference. Of course, while *day* 1 is over, *night* 1 has yet to even begin. There are lots of BoF sessions, and maybe even more smaller meetups going on, as smaller groups take to discussing things over dinner and a beer or three.

I have to say, that I occasionally pop into irc channels for conferences I’m not even at and follow up on that because I’m involved a bit in conference planning as part of my work with Python Magazine (I’m helping to organize the PyWorks conference in November). This conference seems to have a pretty happy audience, if IRC chatter is any indication (and it usually is). Sure, there are a couple of weak spots in the wireless network, there are some fuzzy projectors, and there was a little …

In about 20 minutes I leave for the airport, arriving tonight in lovely Portland, OR to attend OSCON.  This will be my third appearance there and I look forward to listening, learning, being interviewed and podcasting.  In fact it was at last year's OSCON that I kicked off my foray into the wild and wacky world of podcasting.    A year later I've got over 70 under my belt and am looking to grab a few more.

What to look for 

As I mentioned previously, Dalibor will be giving a talk and as Ken points out, Sun will be having its "coach potato" booth as …

Zak Greant is running a free event this year parallell to OSCON that should be very valuable to anyone who is trying to get a start in Open Source or looking to start an Open Source project:

The project is called FOSSCoach and it is the successor to OSCAMP (the
Barcamp-like event that OSCON hosted for the last few years.)

FOSSCoach is focused on teaching people the skills that they need to
participate in (or start) distributed online projects - like PHP or
Wikipedia. Participation is free and people don’t need to be signed up
for OSCON to get in.

The event is meant to provide a way for OSCON to better serve the broad
FOSS community in Portland and surrounding regions.

Details on the event live at in a wiki at:

…

I got an early start. Too early. But I’m from the west coast, so my body thinks I slept in. I wandered around a bit, took a few pics which you can see at my Flickr OSCON set, and I discovered a couple of things that might be of interest:

• The starbucks in the conference center charges over $2 for a small cup of joe. There’s a starbucks right across the street (you can see it from the breakfast area - seriously, it’s 5 seconds away), and they charge less than $2 for a medium (grande). That’s less than I pay at home.
• The ATM outside the starbucks charges $3 for cash. I’ll report back when I find a cheaper one, but most places seem to take plastic here.
• Every computer involved in this conference, from registration to the video screens that dot the common areas, are running Windows XP. Just sayin’.
• The …

Ever since Sun acquired MySQL the rumours have been rife that Josh Berkus, PostgreSQL core team member and Sun’s PostgreSQL lead, would soon be heading out the door.

Josh has now confirmed that he is indeed leaving Sun, but before the doomsayers start writing of Sun’s PostgreSQL support business completely, Josh also notes that Peter Eisentraut is joining the team as PostgreSQL software engineer. Peter has also confirmed his new role.

From the MySQL team, Kaj Arno does the hellos and goodbyes. Losing Josh is significant for Sun’s role in the PostgreSQL community but the quick appointment of Peter indicates that …

In about 20 minutes I leave for the airport, arriving tonight in lovely Portland, OR to attend OSCON.  This will be my third appearance there and I look forward to listening, learning, being interviewed and podcasting.  In fact it was at last year's OSCON that I kicked off my foray into the wild and wacky world of podcasting.    A year later I've got over 70 under my belt and am looking to grab a few more.

What to look for 

As I mentioned previously, Dalibor will be giving a talk and as Ken points out, Sun will be having its "coach potato" …

In about 20 minutes I leave for the airport, arriving tonight in lovely Portland, OR to attend OSCON.  This will be my third appearance there and I look forward to listening, learning, being interviewed and podcasting.  In fact it was at last year's OSCON that I kicked off my foray into the wild and wacky world of podcasting.    A year later I've got over 70 under my belt and am looking to grab a few more.

What to look for 

As I mentioned previously, Dalibor will be giving a talk and as Ken points out, Sun will be having its "coach potato" …