I've been fortunate to be able to help Tim put together the Open Source Executive Briefing for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention this year. Fortunate because my views of open source tend not to stray far from "What will make my company more money today?" Tim, of course, tends to think in terms of years and decades, not days and weeks. So working with him has helped me see a bit farther out into the darkness to see where open source is going.

The picture is very, very bright.

However, most people will continue plodding along in their "open source is about commodification" mode, missing out on the bigger picture(s), unless they attend. There are very few events that I think can fundamentally change the way you look at, invest in, and monetize open source technology. This …

I got asked (being a Java developer) about what was involved in creating an Eclipse Plugin for Mercurial. Well in true Google style, why invent when somebody probably already has. A quick check finds Mercurial Eclipse by VecTrace.

Now until last week, I’d never heard of Mercurial, so this is really an introduction to somebody that has no idea.

What is Mercurial?

Mercurial is a fast, lightweight Source Control Management system designed for efficient handling of very large distributed projects.

Ok, so big deal, I use CVS. I also use Subversion (SVN) for my Apache contributions, and also for MySQL GUI products. Why do we need another Version Control Product? Mercurial is a Distributed Software Configuration Management Tool. …

eWeek Labs ran an extensive "stack" test pitting various Windows and Linux stacks. The results show that the opportunity for open source apps is probably larger then most of have realized. The results also show that there are use cases to support both sides. Let the battle rage on.

eWEEK Labs Bakeoff: Linux Versus .Net Stacks
Based on our forays into user forums for many top open-source enterprise applications, there are many IT managers attempting to run open-source products on Windows servers-attracted, no doubt, to the benefits and efficiencies of using open source without having to become Linux administrators.

The results of our WAMP stack tests indicate that these folks might be on to something. Our WAMP stack setups included …

I'm not sure what it is, but Silicon Valley so desperately wants to be the center of everything, that sometimes it has to resort to myths to keep itself there. Where? Exactly. That's the question. It's a question I didn't think could be all that controversial when I said it at OSBC London, but now that it has been slashdotted, I guess it's officially a Big Deal. For 3.5 seconds.

Dana had a good response to my post about Europe remaining the center of open source. Now a few others have jumped on the bandwagon, and their critiques aren't quite as salient.

Matthew Aslett tries (and fails, though he never claimed his method was perfect) to illustrate on a map …

Greg Lehey wrote today Is MySQL getting buggier?. The underlying question of his comments is a more fundamental and passionate topic, and especially for me. That is “Software Quality”.

The quintessential question is this. “How do you determine the ’software quality’ of a product?” And then quickly followed by, “How do you benchmark this with other software products?”

The short answer to second question is simple. You can’t. The reasons why become apparent in addressing the first question. (There’s a mathematical term for this two question situation, another one of the million things to research and remember one day).

15 years ago as part of my masters research I worked on “Improving Software Quality and Software Productivity”. At the time when I started, I found that these were generally considered …

Paul has released Version 0.95 of his PBXT MySQL Transactional Storage Engine.

Here is what I did to get it operational under CentOS 4.3.

su -
useradd pbxt
su - pbxt
wget http://www.primebase.com/xt/download/mysql-4.1.16-pbxt-0.9.5.tar.gz
tar xvfz mysql-4.1.16-pbxt-0.9.5.tar.gz
cd mysql-4.1.16-pbxt-0.9.5
./configure --with-debug=full --with-pbxt-storage-engine --without-query-cache --with-mysqld-user=pbxt  --prefix=/home/pbxt/mysql
make
make install
scripts/mysql_install_db
cd /home/pbxt/mysql
./bin/mysqld_safe --user=pbxt --basedir=/home/pbxt/mysql &

Now, lets test and confirm PBXT is operational.

bin/mysql -uroot mysql
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this …

I’ve yet to find any Java project that doesn’t have dependancies on some other Open Source external libraries. I’ve yet to find a Java project that manages these external dependencies appropiately for support and integration at an enterprise level.

As with most projects, understanding an applying sound principles that scale will help you at a later date, and generally the cost of implementation is minimual at the start, but of course becomes more expensive when it’s really needed. The classic case is Version Control. For over 10 years, even on small single developer projects, I’ve used Version Control, it should be taught at university as an introduction to good programming design, it would greatly benefit software development and maintenance.

Back onto the topic of hand. Let’s use a moderate Java Web Based application, and for the purposes of this discussion the following Open Source external libraries are incoporated. …

As mentioned in this CNET article, Tuesday at OSBC London I opened the conference with a suggestion: Europe, the birthplace and cradle of the open source revolution, needs to reassert itself as the center of the open source phenomenon. Linux, MySQL, JBoss (Well, Marc is French with influences of Spain in him... :-), Trolltech, etc. These early open source leaders all came out of Europe.

As open source has commercially matured, however, the United States has taken over. Silicon Valley has funded the next round of open source, and we're not necessarily the better for it. There is an ethos in the projects and startups that emerged from the social democracies of Europe that one doesn't necessarily find in the capitalism-spawned companies.

Let's be clear: I am an unabashed open source capitalist. I live in the US and think …

Marc Fleury is giving the opening remarks at today's OSBC London, and is talking about the rise of open source. As Marc said, it's no longer a question of "Why?", but rather of "How?" with regard to open source. Open source is not going away - it's only going to thrive and dominate.

A few interesting points:

1. Debt to IBM. He talked a bit about the debt we owe to IBM for getting open source started with its $1 billion commitment to Linux, but noted that IBM seems conflicted now on that initial support for open source. It has a range of software businesses that compete with open source, rather than leverage it, in his words. True enough. In a company the size of IBM, you never get a single, consistent vision.

2. Bottom-up and top-down phenomenon: the system administrators are driving adoption from the "bottom," whereas CIOs are pushing for adoption …

Watching the World Cup this year (and yes, I've watched many of the matches - last night's Switzerland vs. Ukraine match took years from my life - it was the essence of boredom), I've been reminded at how differently teams can play the same game. England with its obnoxious long balls into Peter Crouch. France with...well, so far, with nothing. Argentina with its flair and momentum.

Italy, however, takes "difference" to a new level. From today's The Times:

Italy’s method is rooted in pessimism. Ask an Italian whether the glass is half-full or half-empty and he is liable to reply that it is poisoned. Ask an Australian and he will ask if it is a free bar.The Italian I know best - Fabrizio - is no pessimist (He's taking on one of the most interesting and sexy markets on the planet), but the football/soccer he watches certainly is: …