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

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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 …

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Can a panel of so-called experts make sense of open source? READ MORE

EnterpriseDB announced the results of the survey they did a few months ago at OSCON. Now, take the results with a grain of salt as it was done by EnterpriseDB. EnterpriseDB is based on Postgres so there is a vested interest in making Postgres sound good. Results can be skewed depending on how the survey is worded, what options are available as answers and who the respondents are.

The results summary is available for free.

Some key facts:

500 respondents. The download page says "500 corporate IT leaders". Or maybe, 500 open source developers. ;-)

Only 9% of respondents indicated that they preferred commercial solutions over open source solutions. I would guess that a majority of those responding …