Development

Learning how software is built

Just came across this blog, which details how software is built in the open and closed-source worlds. It's pretty interesting, even though (or perhaps because?) it's sponsored by Microsoft.

I should have remembered it, as Scott and Sean (the two bloggers on it) contacted me some time ago to do an interview for the blog. It was end of quarter so I failed to keep my appointments....My bad, because it seems like a good series.

Here's a taste from an interview with John McCreesh of the OpenOffice project. I hope Scott's and Sean's comments here aren't intended to sway the written record in Microsoft's favor....… Read more

Top 25 hottest open-source projects at Microsoft

Bayarsaikhan has posted the top 25 most active open-source projects on Microsoft's Codeplex site. Looking at the list, it looks like Microsoft developers spend their time doing much the same as the rest of the Java/other world: play games and make the Web world pretty with AJAX. You can see the top project interests below in the Codeplex tag cloud.

Codeplex is interesting to me for several reasons, but primarily because it demonstrates something that I've argued for many years now: open source on the Windows platform is a huge opportunity for Microsoft. It is something for the company to embrace, not despise.

And it does several things well (better than Sourceforge, in my opinion):… Read more

Linus Torvalds: Open source without commercial interests = crap

Linuxworld has a thought-provoking interview with Linus Torvalds that is a must-read. Linus is always interesting, but this one is particularly valuable because he addresses the role of commercial interests in making Linux better. He also talks about his personal motivations - financial and otherwise - and suggests:

The thing is, being a good programmer actually pays pretty well; being acknowledged as being world-class pays even better....So I think I would have missed the opportunity of my lifetime if I had not made Linux widely available [rather than made it proprietary and built a company around it].

So, if you marry the wide adoption of open source with the talents of a Linus Torvalds and the commercial interests of a Red Hat or MySQL you get...a fantastic community, and one that is good for developers, customers, and vendors.

Linus gives particular praise to commercial interests that have made Linux better:… Read more

Novell calls for Linux standard ISV certification, forgets that it's called "Red Hat"

Plus ca change....

Back in 2001/02, Caldera tried to come up with a hedge on Red Hat's growing dominance. It started shopping around the idea of a "United Linux." Novell, increasingly eager to get into the Linux game, followed suit, and eventually bought SUSE when it couldn't get any traction with United Linux (which apparently stood for "United-as-also-rans-Linux").

Today, Ron Hovsepian, CEO of Novell and astute student of history, issued the clarion call for a united Linux. Again.

The problem for Hovsepian's statement is that the industry already has one. The problem for his business is that the standard is Red Hat.… Read more

Open-source business as pie

I made a raspberry rhubarb pie last night. I will be bearing the weight of that fatty bit of heaven for months to come in the form of belly fat. But it was worth it.

To celebrate pie, I figured I'd mash it up with open source. I'm a big fan of both, and figured that most open-source business models can be expressed through pie. Here's my humble effort:… Read more

Free versus paid support in open source

As I watched Arsenal beat Ajax this afternoon, I kept an eye on an interesting piece of research from The Journal of Systems and Software written by Sowe et al. and entitled Understanding knowledge sharing activities in free/open source software projects: An empirical study [PDF]. The research revealed something that I suspected but had not yet seen data to prove: developer communities are great for developers, and not so great for anyone outside them.

What does this mean if you're an enterprise hoping to hitch a free ride on an open-source project? Well, it means that you're better off paying a little money for professional support. Free support is good up to a point, but if that point ends when your job begins, you may be in a world of hurt without it.… Read more

Open source @ Intel: Dirk Hohndel speaks

I bumped into Dirk Hohndel, Intel's Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist, at OSCON last week and started probing him on Intel's open-source activities. As it turns out, for a hardware company, Intel writes a heck of a lot of software. Dirk and I found time to talk about Intel's open-source involvement in depth. This interview was born.

I've known Dirk for a few years, first bumping into him at OSBC 2004. He was annoyed with the WiFi (or lack thereof), and set about to fixing it. He did, and gained immediate respect from me for that feat. I've been an admirer ever since.

In this interview, Dirk goes deep and broad in his analysis of Intel's open-source activities. Read on for more....… Read more

Drupal on Windows and other tales of open source partnering

In the open source world, you never know who will be certifying you next. Dries Buytaert (Founder and project lead of Drupal) and I were chatting today and he pointed me to this. Microsoft and Spikesource are both certifying Drupal on their platforms.

In true open source fashion, they didn't bother to tell him. The news did.… Read more

TIBCO gets a little open source religion

TIBCO just released its PageBus publish-and-subscribe message bus as open source. And no wonder: the company is under assault from open source projects/vendors like MuleSource (whose EVP of Sales used to work for TIBCO - funny these Oedipal complexes we have in the open source world :-), Talend, etc.

PageBus goes hand-in-hand with the OpenAjax Alliance work that TIBCO has done. It's a good start for TIBCO, though shows that it's still guarding its crown jewels. Give it time. In the meantime, here's what PageBus does:… Read more