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I had the opportunity to participate as a speaker in the first Open Your World forum.  My presentation, "Open Source License Compliance", was an adaptation of a talk I've previously given to lawyers with varying levels of experience in the legal issues surrounding open source software.  It is always challenging to speak on this sort of subject when you aren't sure who your audience is, and I worried that the topic may have seemed relatively dry.  Nevertheless, I believe it is worthwhile to accompany discussions of applying open source principles to a wide range of non-technic

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This week I finally got a chance to sit down and digest IBM's latest Global CEO Study, newly published last month and entitled Capitalizing on Complexity. This marks the fourth study IBM has done (they complete them once every two years), and I've personally found them to be really useful for getting out of the weeds and looking at the big picture.

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If you have ideas on articles about movies that you'd be interested in, let us know in the comments. We'll do our best to act on a blog post.

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A new survey from OpenLogic shows just how much potential open source auditors, like Black Duck, Palamida, and OpenLogic itself, still have in the enterprise space, despite their rising sales and profits.

The survey, which Open Logic also offered as a CSV file, showed that programmers are aware of the problem, but top management remains fairly ignorant.

• Two-thirds of companies that are distributing open source don’t know it.
• Only one-in-five companies are using any tools to keep track of it, even though four in five actually distribute it.
• People who understand copyleft’s requirements are far more likely to use audit tools to identify and manage their open source assets.

The Web and mobile applications are behind this trend, the survey said. Almost half the companies surveyed who said they didn’t distribute open source in fact had Web-facing applications that did. Offshore development, the delivery of mobile apps to customers, and the addition of software to existing products are also pushing the trend.

When the audit companies first emerged, almost five years ago now, I was skeptical of how much good they could do. Now I know different. Open source is diverse, enterprise computing is diverse, and keeping track of licenses, and their requirements, should be a no-brainer for any CIO.

This post is based on "Spreading the Word : Copyright, Dissemination and Independent Publishing," a workshop organized by Alternative Law Forum and Independent Publishers' Distribution Alternatives. It first appeared in the blog for Pratham Books, a non-profit trust that publishes high quality books for children at affordable prices and in multiple Indian languages. <

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If we look at the differences between closed and open source software development processes, we can identify aspects that can be generalized and applied to other industries and domains.

Open source development—that combination of transparency, iterative development with early-and-often releases, and open participation—leads to higher quality products. When we're talking about software, people tend to think of quality in terms of bugs. But this is only part of the story of open development.

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I've talked here about privacy on Facebook. And that's one thing--a place where in general, the people you friend are likely to already know your real name. But how would you feel about everyone who so much as passes by your favorite message board knowing you as Merle Schwarz instead of clawfoot78?

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With the impending release of version 9.0 of the open-source Postgres database, due in mid-August, the developers behind the project are hoping that the new features will attract more interest from enterprises.

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Imagine you are there on the day of Open Your World forum and listening to all the talks that day, seven hours so far with a few fifteen minute breaks.  You are learning, things are clearer, but all the ways of applying the open source way outside of software may have you feeling a bit lost in a sea of new ideas.

Just in time, the final talk is here, and it presents more relief than just the end of a long day.  It is here to tell you about a handbook called

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 beta 2 is now available. The new beta reinforces Red Hat’s strategy to promote RHEL in conjunction with KVM-based virtualization. Here’s an update on the efforts.

The Red Hat News Blog indicates that partner and customer testing of RHEL 6 Beta 2 is “in full swing.” The new beta sports an updated installer and bug fixes from the first beta. Red Hat has hinted that the final production release could surface before the end of 2010.

RHEL 6 will be closely paired with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), which is based on the KVM hypervisor. During Red Hat Summit in June 2010, CEO Jim Whitehurst predicted RHEV would eventually leapfrog VMware — similar to how RHEL overtook the Sun Solaris installed base.

For the latest on RHEL 6, along with the installation and download packs, you can visit Red Hat’s Beta Portal here.

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• Red Hat’s Partner Progress: A Reality Check
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• Six Channel Blogs The VAR Guy Didn’t Write: June 25
• Mac Server Virtualization: Hot or Not?
• Red Hat Hires Novell Veteran for Virtualization Push

Let’s start the second half of the baseball season with an important statement.

For open source to push further into enterprises, enterprises need to change their procurement policies.

Mulesoft CEO Greg Schott (right, from Mulesoft) chatted with me about this over the weekend, and he’s got an excellent point.

“Companies are interested in open source but when they try to consume it with the same model as commercial software things break down,” he explained.

“They’re looking for busloads of consultants and engineers to download the product, install it, go through Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and open source companies are not set up to do that. We’re set up for companies to do that on the front end and benefit on the back end.”

This is important. A lot of enterprises think services like that are “free” because no bill comes, and if another vendor is chosen nothing is paid for them. But they do cost. They are folded into your cost when you sign on the line which is dotted.

By contrast, Schott notes, open source may cost time (i.e. money) to set up and evaluate, but you save that on the back-end, on lower subscription costs and no initial license cost. You have to sell yourself, in other words, but you save big.

Schott, a former top manager at Agile who now has open source fire after a stint at Springsource, has developed his thoughts into a series of bullet points companies might want to think about when comparing open source with commercial software:

1.Establish open source centers of excellence. You need someone internally who’s advocating open source.
2.Understand the different evaluation process. You don’t invite IBM, Oracle and an open source vendor through the same process.
3.Establish your own selection criteria. Instead of having an analyst’s checklist of 50 items and making sure everything’s there, ask what you need.
4.Recognize and reward where open source is being used. If you have people doing the work to get open source running, reward those people.
5.Enterprise license agreements (ELAs). Get ELAs itemized so you can pull components out. That will keep big vendors honest over time.

It’s a sign of confidence on the part of open source executives like Schott that they are now willing to admit you can’t compare open source to commercial offerings, apples-to-apples. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Taking pride in it, and having prospects adapt to you, is a good clue.

Likewise Software has released a new version of its open-source authentication software for allowing Linux, Apple Macintosh, and commercial Unix-based computers to hook into Microsoft Active Directory controlled servers and networks.

Version 6 of this open source software speeds the client log-on time and works better in large, complex environments, according to Gerald Carter, director of engineering for Likewise. The upgraded software also comes with an improved service manager and installation manager as well.

Monty Widenius, a leading open-source software proponent, lodged an appeal on Friday against the European Union's antitrust authorities over their decision to green-light Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems at the beginning of this year.

The appeal was filed to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Widenius was one of the co-developers of MySQL, the open source database software owned by Sun, and now by Oracle.

Jeremy Allison of Google and Terri Molini of Initmarketing, both presenting on behalf of Open Source for America (OSFA), joined us for the first Open Your World Forum.  OSFA is organized to advocate for open source technology use in the US Federal government, and represents  well over a thousand members, including tech industry leaders, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and academic research institutions.

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IBM’s position on patents may upset open source advocates, but let it not be said IBM doesn’t like open source.

The whole company is switching to Firefox.

In a blog post set for release today Bob Sutor, the company’s vice president for open source and Linux (right), said out loud what many IBM’ers have been noting for some time.

The company is moving to Firefox as its default browser.

Why all the Firefox love? Take it away, Bob:

• Firefox is stunningly standards compliant, and interoperability via open standards is key to IBM’s strategy.
• Firefox is open source and its development schedule is managed by a development community not beholden to one commercial entity.
• Firefox is secure and an international community of experts continues to develop and maintain it.
• Firefox is extensible and can be customized for particular applications and organizations, like IBM.
• Firefox is innovative and has forced the hand of browsers that came before and after it to add and improve speed and function.

No, this has nothing to do with the fact that the leading rival browsers are made by IBM competitors Microsoft, Google and Apple, respectively. Or that it’s nice to finally have a dog in the fight.

No one is being pushed to use Firefox, Sutor adds. They’re just being “strongly encouraged.” But there’s another, perhaps more interesting, section of this blog post which I would like to bring to everyone’s attention:

There’s another reason we want to get as many of our employees using Firefox as soon as possible, and that is Cloud Computing. For the shift to the cloud to be successful, open standards must be used in the infrastructure, in the applications, and in the way people exchange data.

Got that? For the shift to the cloud to work it needs open standards. Open source is your best insurance of open standards. Put that in your Explorer and run it.

Something to think about this holiday weekend.

We should have all learned that sharing is a good thing at a very early age. I teach my 4-year old son to share. But what about sharing with your friends and neighbors? That's part of being a community, right?

Would you share a

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The speculation won’t go away. Several companies apparently have bid to acquire Novell. Some pundits think VMware is among the bidders. Why’s that? The short answer involves a mutual enemy called, um, Red Hat (assuming you believe the rumor). Here’s the chatter.

First, let’s look at recent developments:

• March 2010: Novell rejects unsolicited takeover bid from Elliot Associates, a private equity firm. But Novell says it’s willing to listen to other takeover offers.
• May 20, 2010: Novell apparently sets a deadline for companies to submit potential takeover bids for Novell’s business.
• June 9, 2010: Novell and VMware announce virtualization partnership involving vSphere and Novell SUSE Linux.
• June 22, 2010: The VAR Guy learns Red Hat has hired a Novell veteran to assist the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) partner push. Also, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst predicts RHEV will leapfrog VMware the way Red Hat Linux leapfrogged Sun Solaris.

Clearly, the stage is set for a Red Hat vs. VMware showdown. Red Hat is willing to partner with Microsoft in its quest to overtake VMware. And Red Hat sees the line between Linux and virtualization blurring.

The VAR Guy wonders: Does VMware see the market similarly? If so, does that mean VMware is willing to pay $2 billion or more to acquire Novell? Plenty of open source pundits are speculating about a potential VMware-Novell merger or acquisition.

The VAR Guy’s prediction: No such deal will happen. Sure, blending VMware with Novell SUSE Linux into a single company is an intriguing thought. But is VMware really willing to take on the rest of Novell’s business — identity and security management, groupware, etc? Hmmm… Difficult to say.

Novell would need to convince VMware that the Novell Intelligent Workload Management strategy (which encompasses all Novell products) can plug into the VMware organization.

By the way, neither Novell nor VMware comment on M&A rumors. And in this case, The VAR Guy believes the speculation is pure rumor. Though our resident blogger will eat crow if such a deal happens…

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