Open Source software is often being referred to as commodity products. This is particularly true for OSS databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL. Developers of such systems can heavily make use of defined standards. In this case, it’s the various SQL standards. These standards define the general functionality set your product should have. They help you define the commodity features of your software.

The question is: where do you get your software requirements from if the OSS product you are developing cannot rely on any or only a few standards?

Let’s take a look at two other types of OSS products: Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and collaborative software. I used to work for an Open Source ECM vendor until recently and just …

At last month’s Vancouver PHP Conference, local journalist Bruce Byfield gave me a quick interview about how I got involved in Free Software and Open Source. We chatted for a while about my time at MySQL, my bits of work in the PHP community and what I am currently up to. The interview turned into a profile for Linux.com that was published a few days ago.

I was a bit surprised to find that there have been a few anonymous trolls for the profile - I didn’t think that there would be any comments on the profile.

The Linux.com profile: …

Matt Casters has been around the open source business intelligence, ETL, and data warehousing scene for quite some time. He is the original developer of Kettle, an open source Java tool now packaged by Pentaho as Pentaho Data Integration. He's also doing a couple a couple of absolutely dynamite sessions at the MySQL conference in April, which I asked him recently to comment on.

Our own Roland Bouman is a huge Pentaho fan, and is also doing a session called …

Zend becomes even more interesting every day. PHP, the programming language that powers more than twenty-two million Web sites [Note: 22M is "a lot" :-) ] and boasts over 4.5 million developers, has long been on the rise. But Zend, like XenSource (virtualization) and others that build companies around open source projects, has long been searching for the right formula to maintain maximum openness in its community while still earning a solid return.

With the release of Zend Core 2.0, I believe the company has taken a big step in this direction.

As the company announced today,

Zend Core [is] the first fully tested, supported and enhanced version of PHP. Zend Core is based on the …

Despite Jeremy Cole's stinginess in his replies to my last speaker spotlight entry ( ) I'm continuing my efforts this round with Zak Greant, who will be leading a session for MySQL newbies at the conference called "MySQL Sandalcamp: A Relaxed Introduction to MySQL". This hour-long session is aimed at beginners who want to learn the basics of creating and querying tables, setting up a user, etc.

One of the coolest blokes I've had the privelege of meeting, Zak is one of those personalities who leave an instant impression on you (if you meet him, check out his wedding "ring" ... it's actually a tattoo...). Anyway, …

Savio just posted on MySQL's Quality Contribution Program. This is the first I've heard of it, and what a great idea.

I'm on a plane right now, and so can't follow the link, but apparently the program rewards community members who contribute code, bug reports, etc. with credits that can translate into a one-year subscription to MySQL Enterprise.

I agree with Savio that this "rocks! It’s a great way to build and maintain community."

(The one thing I'd disagree with is Savio's contention that JBoss' community was stacked with JBoss developers. Savio has a vested interest in trying to undermine JBoss, but I think he knows that one of the primary reasons JBoss' community would come to have jboss.org email addresses is that JBoss tended to …

BusinessWeek has a great cover story this week on customer service, and lists the top-25 "Customer Service Elite." USAA (insurance company for military personnel), Four Seasons Hotels, Cadillac, and Nordstrom top the list. I've been fortunate to experience two of these top-four (USAA, because my dad funded his medical school training through the US Navy) and Nordstrom, and I agree that there is a profound difference in how they treat their customers than most other companies.

They certainly didn't get there by focusing on their competitors, as Oracle apparently did in its Hyperion acquisition. (It's astonishing to me how much they trumpeted the move as anti-SAP, rather than as pro-customer.). The "Elite" got there by devoting …

Thanks to Google we have a few tech talks about MySQL. One talk about NDB and another about MySQL performance tuning.

I know this stuff and even I learned a few things.

I spent some time talking with Steven Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic, today, and am very glad I did. I've been operating under a two-years old understanding of OpenLogic's business, and it's time for an upgrade.

OpenLogic is not a "stack provider." Rather, it provides a gateway to a high-quality library of open source projects, certified to work together, with the ability to apply and enforce policies around adoption and deployment of those projects.

Interestingly, OpenLogic's technology isn't solely applicable to open source. It actually allows enterprises to extend the OpenLogic library with open source or proprietary modules (applications/databases/whatever) that they prefer. Enterprises, for example, may be an Oracle shop, and …

MySQL and JasperSoft today announced a new OEM relationship. In fact, I think it's the first OEM deal that MySQL has done (InnoDB excepted). Is this a new trend for MySQL? For JasperSoft?

Here's the deal:

[The two companies announced the] availability of Jasper for MySQL: OEM Edition, a suite of operational reporting products that includes a high-performance interactive report server, a graphical report creation tool, and a pixel-perfect reporting system with dashboards, tables, crosstabs and charts.

The two companies have signed a joint reseller agreement that allows MySQL to offer the new product to its commercial ISV and OEM customers. JasperSoft will also have the right to resell MySQL's database solutions as part of the JasperSoft Business Intelligence Suite.

With Jasper …