Stephen O’Grady and Simon Phipps have both recently published interesting posts on the current state of open source, with Stephen pondering the relative growth of open source and Simon wondering whether the “commercial open source” bubble has burst.

What they are describing, I believe, is the culmination of the trends we predicted at the beginning of 2009 for commercial open source business strategies – specifically the arrival of the fourth stage of commercial open source.

What is the fourth stage of commercial open source? In short: a return to a focus on collaboration and …

One of the issues that has arisen from the ongoing debate about the open core licensing strategy is the continuing confusion about open core compared to the use of open source components in a larger proprietary product – such as IBM’s use of Apache within WebSphere.

To some people there is no difference between the two (since they both result in products that make use of open source but are not open source), however it is clear to me that while the end result might be the same these are very different strategies that involve different approaches to engaging with open source communities/projects.

While open core has a clear definition there is no agreed term or definition for the latter category.

Over the years we have used a variety of terms to describe it, including “open and …

New projects. Old arguments. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

New projects
# Gemini Mobile Technologies released Hibari, a new open source non-relational database for big data.

# Lockheed Martin launched the Eureka Streams open source project for enterprise social networking.

# Sony Pictures Imageworks expanded its open source initiative with the release of OpenColorIO.

Old arguments
# Kirk Wylie discussed the …

In the first part of this post I discussed the underlying division that drives the debate about open core, and the futility of arguing about what constitutes an “open source company” without any relevant definition.

Since then Monty Widenius has proposed a definition that would exclude any company that does not produce open source software (including open source support providers) and any company that does not provide access to 100% of its code (which would often exclude Red Hat as it moves to open source acquired code).

In the meantime others have declared that there is no such thing as an open source company and …

SugarCRM. Funding for EnterpriseDB and Morphlabs. Even more core. And more

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

Bittersweet
# OStatic asked whether SugarCRM has violated open source principles.

# Larry Augustin clarified SugarCRM’s approach to open source and openness.

# Savio Rodrigues advised anyone considering SugarCRM not to get hung-up on source code availability.

Funding round
# EnterpriseDB has reportedly raised $7.5m of a …

Funding for Eucalytus and Moodlerooms. SkySQL offers support for MySQL. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Eucalyptus Systems raised $20m in a second round of funding led by New Enterprise Associates.

# Moodlerooms reportedly raised $7.15m in equity funding.

# SkySQL announced its intention to provide support & services for the MySQL ecosystem.

# StatusNet launched the open source StatusNet Desktop Client.

# Rhomobile …

Elephants on parade: Hadoop goes mainstream. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

Elephants on parade
# Cloudera launched v3 of its Distribution for Hadoop and released v1 of Cloudera Enterprise.

# Karmasphere released new Professional and Analyst Editions of its Hadoop development and deployment studio.

# Talend announced that its Integration Suite now offers native support for Hadoop.

# Yahoo …

What’s missing from WebM? VoltDB launches. The importance of profitability. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Simon Phipps examined what’s missing from WebM, from an open source perspective.

# Mike Stonebraker’s VoltDB officially launched its open source in-memory OLTP database.

# Jim Whitehurst argued that one of Red Hat’s most valuable contributions to open source is its profitability.

# Infobright appointed former Aleri CEO Don DeLoach as its new …

Alfresco launches Activiti project. Funding for NorthScale and Zend. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Alfresco launched the Apache-licensed Activiti BPM project, led by Tom Baeyens and Joram Barrez.

# NorthScale announced $10m in series B funding, led by the Mayfield Fund, and a new CEO.

# Zend Technologies raised $9m led by Greylock Partners with participation its existing investors.

# Stephen Walli joined the CodePlex Foundation as its technical director. …

Or: “Don’t be a Cnut.”

Yesterday I had a look at the response of the Joomla! community to the news that Microsoft had signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement and was contributing code to the content management project.

You probably won’t be surprised to find that some people don’t like the idea. The speed and vehemence of their rejection of Microsoft’s involvement in the project is entirely predictable, but none the less depressing for that.

The usual complaints were rolled out:

when Microsoft contributes a major product to open source, we’ll listen Microsoft is only doing this to sell more proprietary software

.
Taking those in reverse order: yes Microsoft is doing this to encourage Joomla developers to use Windows. Just as IBM supports Linux to …