The Red Hat Summit started today here in Boston. Based on the evening reception today, it is shaping up to be a pretty good show. I will be speaking at the show on Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 11:30 AM eastern time. I will discuss current state of open source backup as well as where things are headed. We also have a booth located towards the right side of the exhibit floor (by small meeting rooms). We are demonstrating Amanda as well as ZRM for MySQL. Do stop by if you are coming to the show!
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I usually try very hard to not write about IBM. But the following from Matt Asay requires a reply. Regardless, IBM isn't in the habit of open sourcing technology in which it has a lead or at least a strong position, such as it does with DB2. IBM strategically invests in open source to undermine the margins of its competitors, not its own. Really? Take a look into OSGi, SCA, Apache HTTP Server or the countless other open source projects into which IBM has open sourced technology. This technology didn't undermine competitors; it helped customers and competitors alike (and let's... READ MORE

There's a story on CNet about IBM considering open sourcing DB2. While there are no immediate plans, IBM UK's director of information management software Chris Livesy has said that market conditions may make it unavoidable. "Looking at IBM's heritage in contributing to the open-source market, we've been particularly keen to lead that market. Open source is an interesting space, as a whole. As the future unfolds, and the economics become clearer, there's going to be more commitment to open source by everybody. We've made good steps towards that." And why not? A while back, I predicted that within 10 years... READ MORE

Dave reports that IDC's latest report "Worldwide Standalone Open Source Software 2008?2012 Forecast: A Preliminary View" estimates that the stand-alone OSS market will grow from $1.73B in 2007 to $4.83B in 2012. That's a 23 percent annual growth rate to 2012 vs. 7.7 percent annual growth for the overall software market. Interesting to note that $4.8B represents 1.3 percent of the overall software market. The previous version of the IDC data suggested that stand-alone OSS spending would come in at 1.8 percent of the total 2011 market spending. (Don't try to reconcile the two figures, as forecasting is difficult and... READ MORE

I was pretty excited when OpenLogic announced the Open Source Census. A key feature of the census was a tool that scanned respondents' servers to determine which open source products/packages were actually being used. Anonymous data from these individual scans was going to be shared with the public in order to revolutionize our understanding of OSS usage. This data-sharing would be very important for companies whose IT leaders don't know that they are using OSS. However, to date, only ~= about 1300 machines have been scanned. News from InfoWorld today that Microsoft has also sponsored the Open Source Census is... READ MORE

There's an interesting post from a few weeks back by Guy Kawasaki in an article entitled "How to pickup a VC." While it's a short piece illustrating how boneheaded "attention grabbers" will work against you with VCs, I think it's actually quite a good reminder about effective communications for any IT vendor. I can't count how many times I've sat through a vendor pitch or product presentation and after 20 minutes I'm wondering "Why don't they just tell me what it is that they do?" Instead, I get a lot of discussion about open source freedom, community, business models, licensing... READ MORE

When a Forrester Research representative emailed with the following survey highlights, I was more than a little surprised: "Forrester released data today analyzing trend lines in enterprise open source usage in 2007. Among the key findings: Seventy percent of decision-makers responded that they don't have interest or have no plans to adopt open source software; Only 23 percent of respondents said expanding their use of open source software was a priority; Security is the main concern around adopting open source software. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said it was an important or very important concern." The data is from 1,017 decision... READ MORE

Its facinating to see what a couple of years development and bugfixing work upon MySQL has unwittingly done to the free space on my main G5 PowerMac at home. I have captured a screenshot from GrandPerspective and as you can see, the largest file on my hard disk is the MirrorAgent.crash.log file, and all those pretty blocks on the left hand side of the window: They are all coredumps. A few swift

In response to my previous post, Matt Aslett aptly asks: Does open source have a glass ceiling? In a word, yes. But it doesn't have to be this way. The "OSS business model" is a misnomer as there are many variations. But the business model that the majority of large and leading OSS vendors utilize has one common aspect. These vendors are all selling support and "other stuff" (indemnification, additional testing, better management, and so on) around a product that is indistinguishable from what a user can get freely from the related open source project. Giving away all the value... READ MORE

I've been doing some sales calls to prospects and customers in the midwest the last week or so. I like to do this periodically to make sure I'm not just drinking the open source koolaid, but really hearing from customers, prospects and the sales reps in the field. One advantage of MySQL being a part of Sun is we are now able to get appointments with CIOs and CTOs of Fortune 500 companies more readily than before. These are large accounts that have significant scale and expertise in IT, but are usually more conservative than most of the west coast... READ MORE