Digital music sales seem to have peaked, as Nick Carr highlights on his blog, and as the WSJ recently reported. [Subscription required.] For this reason, EMI is beginning to experiment with non-DRM protected music files: MP3s.

For many in the music business, the sky is about to fall. Or so they think. "Why will anyone buy our wares if we don't force them to do so by preventing copying?!?"

What they don't realize is that the people who don't buy from them won't buy from them, DRM or no. The people that aren't thieves (and that's most of us) will, but convenience of purchase is key. I don't buy from iTunes because I can't get the files elsewhere. I buy from iTunes because it's a safe, super-convenient experience …

These companies have fought long, hard battles to get Open Source into the corporate data centers.  It was an uphill battle, requiring education on a concept new to many people.  They couldn’t just blaze a path for themselves, they had to prove an entire business model; explain its viability, its resulting products, and value.  The developers and executives at these companies fought a hard, honest war and have established a beach head.

The Marines have blazed the trail.  No mucking around with convincing a CIO that “not just anyone can update their source automatically” and that Open Source companies can generate real value, revenue with a product you COULD …

From me, to Ross and license-discuss:

Socialtext which wishes to find a resolution for the attribution issuethrough the proposal of a Generic Attribution Provision.  A copy ofthe following message is available in HTML format here:https://www.socialtext.net/stoss/index.cgi?attribution_memo

I look forward to the conversation,

Ross, as I commented on a ZDNet thread, you’ve earned my respect (not that it matters) by bringing your license to OSI and having a real discussion about UI attribution.  I’m one of the critics of UI attribution licenses, but I’m glad someone brought it to place where forced UI attribution can be vetted to OSD in a reasonable manner.  I do hope you receive the criticism of this provision in that light.

needs than Linux. These application products could be “lost” in thelarger distributions. The …

DBA’s working in environments where MySQL database is for production critical applications are constantly pushed to their limits. Database Users and DBA’s are humans too. So, a dropped table here or a misconstrued MySQL statement there is not out of ordinary. Recovering from these kinds of user errors is extremely vital to production databases. Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL, is a good way to recover from user errors. Consider this example - You [DBA] find out that an user has made an unforced error which is affecting your production database. You further find out that this has happened in the last half hour. Lucky for you, you use ZRM for MySQL in your environment to make nightly backups. You spring into action! You first verify that a nightly backup was run. You then make an incremental backup now. Using ZRM for MySQL, you identify the point at which the user …

Pam @ Groklaw is tracking Novell's marketing efforts around SUSE Linux, post the Microsoft pact. Novell's UK office has started blanketing the inboxes of its customers with patent FUD:

The patent cooperation agreement enables Microsoft and Novell to give customers assurance of protection against patent infringement claims. It gives customers confidence that the technologies they use and deploy in their environments are compliant with the two companies’ patents.

As part of this agreement, Microsoft will provide a covenant not to assert its patent rights against customers who have purchased SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or other covered products from Novell, and Novell will provide an identical covenant to customers who have a licensed …

David Kaefer, the director of business development for intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft, is on the record as saying a rather curious thing:

We've been very clear from the outset, and the financial realities of the deal underscore this, that Novell's patents have value. One need only go back to the late 90s with Novell's leadership in the directory space to recognize the benefits of much of the research and development that they conducted at that time.I'm sure this is true; at least, I'm sure it's true (in fact, I know so) that Novell's patent portfolio is significant. Not nearly as extensive as Microsoft's, but significant in its own right.

But let's assume David is telling the truth. If so, then Microsoft, not Novell, …

Mark Webbink, Red Hat's deputy general counsel and secretary, looks at the Microsoft/Novell agreement through a historic lens...

As a history buff, reading the Novell and Microsoft open letters this morning conjured up the image of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain standing in front of 10 Downing Street in 1938 and declaring: "My good friends this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time."

We all know how well that turned out.

...and discovers that all that glitters is not gold:Microsoft's principal objective in this exercise was to get someone ostensibly from the free and open source software community to acknowledge the tacit validity of Microsoft's patent portfolio. And despite Hovsepian's protestations to the contrary, …

Forrester Research has discovered the obvious: open source databases are much cheaper than proprietary databases:

Noel Yuhanna, a senior analyst at Forrester covering database management systems, estimated that average savings on the total cost of ownership are about 50 per cent. The data is based on surveys and customer interviews.

Open source databases such as Enterprise DB, Ingres and MySQL do not carry licence fees, and management tools tend to be less expensive than for proprietary databases from Oracle, Microsoft and IBM.

Open source offerings especially outshine their proprietary competitors in low-end applications with databases of less than 200GB in size.

"Eighty per cent of the applications typically use only 30 per cent of the features found in commercial databases," Yuhanna told vnunet.com. "The …

Unisys, which was the first large system integrator to build out an open source practice, has expanded its open source arsenal to include Alfresco, the open source alternative for Enterprise Content Management. From the press release:

The agreement enables Unisys to offer a team of Alfresco-certified consultants who can migrate, implement and deploy content and records management solutions based on open source software. Adding this team and capability rounds out an impressive Unisys worldwide set of ECM resources and solutions built around best-in-class ECM software products and providers.

The alliance also singularly positions Unisys, with its services-led solutions approach, to deliver highly scalable and available Alfresco implementations based on new open source or hybrid stacks. …

I'm in the middle of working through the agenda for the upcoming Open Source Business Conference (May 22-23, 2007, San Francisco), and wanted to solicit outside input.

OSBC has made great strides for its 2007 show, if for no other reason than I'm actually listening to what other people want on the agenda. :-) OSBC's Advisory Board includes: Larry Augustin, Zack Urlocker (VP of Marketing, MySQL), Bill Hilf (General Manager, Platform Strategy, Microsoft), Mark Radcliffe (Partner, DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, LLP), Tim Golden (SVP, Linux Engineering, Bank of America), Andrew Aitken (President, Olliance Group), and Robin Vasan (General Partner, Mayfield).

The board has been very active in shaping the conference, making it into a much more CIO-friendly event than in years past.

You'll see this emphasis in the preliminary (very) draft below of the conference. Some of the sessions …