Tim O'Reilly talks about the value of data and lock-in READ MORE

I recently posted about the results of the EDB Open Source Survey. It doesn't look like the raw data is going to be released. I was also reading about an O'reilly survey that costs $350 to see. Not that I am opposed to them making money, but I wanted to see the results and I think there are a lot people who feel the same. I have no idea if my survey is anything like O'reilly's.

Anyway, I have created a new survey. It has about 10 demographics questions asking who you are, where you are, what kind of role you have, etc. The rest are related to databases and open source. ALL data, and I mean all of the raw results, will be made available to anyone who wants to see it. I will also do some analysis and I will make that data available to any who want to see that.

All questions on the survey are optional. Feel free to skip …

Sparse notes from the talk, I noticed Sheeri recording some video, so sitting through that at some stage might make sense. There were no slides, this was a panel discussion. Suggested reading: Organic vs. Non-organic Open Source.

Does Open Source need to be “Organic”?
Brian Aker, Rob Lanphier, Stephen O’Grady, Theodore Ts’o

Taking code, and slapping a certain license on it, doesn’t a successful software project make.

Blurring the distinction, by marketing. Not doing any work to get external contributions.

Open sourcing a product one plans on “genociding”, its really bad.

“Corporate sociopathic Druckerism” — Brian Aker

“As long as the source code is …

Larry Wall, Tim O'Reilly, Brian Aker, Michael Tiemann and more READ MORE

Some likely and unlikely candidates snap up SourceForge Community Choice Awards READ MORE

CTO Scott Dietzen takes on a bigger role in Yahoo READ MORE

A report suggests 5%-15% of IT jobs call for open source software skills. Understand the research methodology before deciding where to focus your learning. READ MORE

I didn't get a chance to go to OSCON 2008. Bummer. But I can live vicariously through google. So, along with all of the announcements you've heard from OSCON, I know present the OSCON 2008 - Google popularity contest. This is a completely unscientific survey of google hits. I was searching blogs and news. I started with just news but the blogs hits really upped the numbers.

To run these searches, I use "oscon 2008" and the search term, for example:

"oscon 2008" mysql

In the case of open source, I also quoted "open source".

I'm using google's about number. I didn't sit and count each hit. ;-)

party on, garth! READ MORE

Have you heard of Drizzle? It was announced at OSCON yesterday and is all over the blogosphere. From the Drizzle FAQ:

* So what are the differences between is and MySQL?

No modes, views, triggers, prepared statements, stored procedures, query cache, data conversion inserts, ACL. Fewer data types. Less engines, less code. Assume the primary engine is transactional.

Also from the FAQ is that, right now at least, there is no intention to make this run natively on windows and they make the point:

* "This is not a SQL compliant relational..."

Very true, and we do not aim to be that.

It is a fork of MySQL that takes it backward to pre-5.0 in features but hopefully greatly reduces the bugs and instabilities. I plan to look at it but I don't see …