The Open Source Update #30

Compiled weekly by Raven Zachary for Enterprise Open Source Journal (EOSJ)

THIS WEEK'S TOP NEWS

SUGARCRM OBTAINS $18.77 MILLION US FUNDING ROUND. SugarCRM, an open source CRM company, obtains $18.77 million US in its Series C investment round from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Walden International.

FIREFOX SURPASSES 100 MILLION DOWNLOADS. Firefox, the popular open source Internet browser, surpasses 100 million downloads less than one year after its official launch.

RED HAT FOUNDER RESIGNS FROM BOARD. Bob Young, the co-founder and former executive of Red Hat, resigns from the Board of Directors to pursue other opportunities.

SURVEY SHOWS GROWTH IN OPEN SOURCE DATABASE MARKET. Evans Data Corporation releases the results of a survey showing a 20% growth in open source database deployments in the past six months, and showing that proprietary databases are twice as likely to suffer from security breaches.

PERU APPROVES OPEN SOURCE BILL. Alejandro Toledo, the president of Peru, signed legislation last week allowing public institutions to consider the adoption of open source software.

PERSPECTIVES
A collection of open source editorials, opinions, and blog entries from around the world.

"Open Source Software: It's Not (Only) About the Money" by Pete Loshin

"Commercialization of open source" by Martin Brown

"The Future's So Bright For Open Source I've Got to Wear Shades" by Mark Hinkle

"CIOs Explore Open Source Options" by Sarah Lourie

"Enterprise Open Source Conversion Model Explored!" by Paul Sterne

"Mozilla Foundation and Corporation" by Mitchell Baker

"Open source: Big and getting bigger" by Mike Ricciuti

"Gartner predicts, errs on open source" by David Berlind

"OpenOffice.org, AJAX and Common Sense" by Jonathan Schwartz

"IBM bemoans Joomla-Mambo split" by Stephen Shankland

ANNOUNCEMENTS
News, press releases, and announcements from open source vendors, organizations, and projects. Submit your news to update@eosj.com.

Alfresco
Alfresco and Siennax Announce Trusted Hosted Service for Enterprise Content Management; ECM open source leader Alfresco and Sienna Announce Partnership at OSCON

Answers.com
Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership

Black Duck
Black Duck Offers FREE Online Service To Analyze Software for Open Source License Compliance

CollabNet
CollabNet Marks 5-Years of OpenOffice.org

Command Prompt
The PostgreSQL Company, Command Prompt, Inc. Enhances Support Offerings

Covalent
BEA WebLogic Teams with Apache Tomcat; Company Blending Leading Commercial and Open Source Software

DataDirect
DataDirect Technologies to Bring Enterprise Class Data Access to JBoss Users

Eclipse Foundation
Ward Cunningham Joins the Eclipse Foundation

Evans Data
Database Developers Embrace Open Source Database Solutions, New Evans Data Survey

GroundWork
GroundWork Unveils GroundWork Monitor 4

hyperSystems
hyperSystems Provides Customization Services for Gallery Open Source Software

i-Konect
i-Konect Announces First Milestone Release of "Singularity", An Open Source RFID/Sensory Integration Platform

Logicalware
Logicalware partners with MySQL

Mergere
Mergere to Accelerate Enterprise Consumption and Management of Open Source Software

Message Partners
MPP offers new Regulatory Compliance Features for Linux Email Servers

Mozilla Foundation
Firefox Surpasses 100 Million Downloads!

National Center for Open Source Policy and Research (NCOSP)
Introducing the National Center for Open Source Policy and Research

NoSoftwarePatents.com
Richard Stallman, Tim O'Reilly, Alan Cox, Rasmus Lerdorf and Monty Widenius call on worldwide community to vote against software patents

OpenOffice
OpenOffice.org 2.0 Is Here

Open PLC European Research Alliance (OPERA)
OPERA to release specification by the end of 2005

Open Source Business Conference (OSBC)
Open Source Business Conference Sponsors Include Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Novell, Sybase, Intel, EMC, Goodwin Procter and SugarCRM

Open Source Development Labs (OSDL)
OSDL Targets Next-Generation Handsets with Mobile Linux Initiative

Open Source Strategies
Free Sequoia Open Source ERP Released

PalmSource
PalmSource Joins OSDL

Pingtel
Pingtel Named a Top Technology Innovator by VARBusiness Magazine

Preventsys
Preventsys Announces Open Framework

Red Hat
Bob Young to Resign From Red Hat Board

rSmart
rSmart and IBM Partner to Offer Bundled Solution for Sakai 2.0

Solsoft
Solsoft Unveils Firewall Management Tool for netfilter

SugarCRM
SugarCRM Receives $18.77 Million in Series C

Sun
Sun Takes Bold Step in Open Source Education - Spins Off Global Education and Learning Community (GELC) as Nonprofit

Trolltech
Trolltech Expands Industry Leadership Role as Founding Member of Two New Linux Initiatives

Turbolinux
Turbolinux Introduces FUJI Desktop Linux Operating System with Enhanced Windows Compatibility

Zend
Zend Announces Industry-Wide PHP Collaboration Project At Its Inaugural PHP Conference

UPCOMING EVENTS

OSBC East
Newton, MA, USA
November 1-2, 2005

Advanced Software Law & Practice (Open Source)
San Francisco, CA, USA
novdember 3-4, 2005

Open Source Database Conference 2005
Frankfurt, Germany
November 8-9, 2005

Gartner Open Source Summit
Orlando, FL, USA
December 7-9, 2005

ApacheCon US 2005
San Diego, CA, USA
December 10-14, 2005

Open Source in the Enterprise
San Francisco, CA, USA
January 23-25, 2006

The Open Source Update #29

Compiled weekly by Raven Zachary for Enterprise Open Source Journal (EOSJ)

THIS WEEK'S TOP NEWS

ORACLE ACQUIRES OPEN SOURCE DATABASE COMPANY. Oracle acquires open source database company, Innobase, for an undisclosed amount. Innobase's database technology, InnoDB, is distributed as part of MySQL.

CHECK POINT SOFTWARE ACQUIRES OPEN SOURCE SECURITY COMPANY. Check Point Software, an Internet security company, acquires open source security company, Sourcefire for $225 million US. Sourcefire is responsible for the development of Snort, a popular open source security project.

OPEN SOURCE RULES ENGINE PROJECT JOINS JBOSS. Drools, an open source rules engine project, joins JBoss as the rule engine for JBoss' SOA offering. The lead developer of Drools, Mark Proctor, has joined JBoss as an employee.

IBM CONTRIBUTES SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS TO OPEN SOURCE. IBM contributes a subset of the Rational Unified Process (RUP), a software process platform, to the open source community.

OPEN SOURCE PROJECT TO BECOME CLOSED SOURCE. Nessus, an open source security project managed by Tenable Network Security, announces its plans to become closed source, due to competitive pressures.

PERSPECTIVES
A collection of open source editorials, opinions, and blog entries from around the world.

"The Lure of Open Source Software: Why Consider It for Your Business?" by David Chisnall

"Open Source Versus Commercial Software: Why Proprietary Software is Here to Stay" by Shawn Shell

"The ROI of open source" by Bernard Golden

"OSS in the enterprise? Show me the money" by Darryl LeCount

"Open source for the enterprise" by Dan Woods and Gautam Guliani

"The Changing Face of Open Source: What It Means For IT Managers" by Darren Massel

"Open source could use a face-lift" by Neil McAllister

"Nessus creator challenging the community" by Dana Blankenhorn

"To the Snort community" by Martin Roesch

"OSBC director: Linux, open source profitable, stable and on the minds of CIOs" by Jack Loftus

ANNOUNCEMENTS
News, press releases, and announcements from open source vendors, organizations, and projects. Submit your news to update@eosj.com.

Active Endpoints
Active Endpoints Names Leslie S. Trachtman as CEO

Actuate
39% of financial services companies using open source software

Aculab
Aculab Announces Support for Digium Asterisk Business Edition

Alfresco
Alfresco Enterprise Network Release Candidate Announced at JBoss World Barcelona

ApacheCon
ApacheCon US 2005 - Leading the Wave of Open Source

Astaro
Astaro Introduces First Unified Threat Management Solution with Dual Virus Scanning

Cenzic
Cenzic Releases Breakthrough Nessus Plug-Ins for Application Vulnerabilities to Open Source

Check Point
Check Point Software Technologies to Acquire Sourcefire

Cignex
Cignex Responds to Customer Demand; Re-Launches with Open Source Focus

ClearNova
ClearNova Launches Partner Program to Accelerate Delivery and Adoption of Rich Internet Applications

Coalescent
Open Source Asterisk Management Portal Project Celebrates One Year Anniversary

Compuware
Compuware Announces Strategic Commitment to Eclipse Foundation at OJ.X Conference

Canonical
Canonical Launches Ubuntu 5.10 - Possibly the World's Favourite Linux

Covalent
Covalent Technologies, Leader in Apache Open Source Solutions for the Enterprise Joins Open Source Software Institute

DataSynapse
DataSynapse Announces Certification on JBoss Application Server

Digium
Digium Announces Partner Program for Growing Asterisk Ecosystem

Exadel
Exadel a Natural Choice for Sierra Club

eZ Systems
eZ publish 3.7 Released

Free Software Foundation
Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit

IBM
IBM to Contribute Software Development Blueprints to Open Source Community

IOSESC
International Open Source Embedded Software Competition

iRadeon
iRadeon Launches Affiliate Program for On-Demand Open Source Business Applications

iZeno
iZeno BV (Powered by Compiere) goes open source

JasperSoft
JasperSoft Unveils New JBoss Reporting Portal at JBoss World Barcelona

JBoss
JBoss Further Builds Out JEMS as the Industry's Only Open Source Platform for SOA

Linspire
Educators Make the Move to Desktop Linux in Classrooms

Linux Professional Institute
Linux Professional Institute offers reduced pricing on Certification Exams at the LinuxWorld Utrecht, Netherlands

Mandriva
Mandriva releases 2006 convergence products, extends innovation

Medsphere
Medsphere Plays Key Role in Healthcare Emerging Technology Discussion at HP Worldwide IT Symposium 2005

Mozilla
Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 Now Available

MySQL
MySQL AB Welcomes Oracle's Endorsement of Open Source Database Technology

National Center for Open Source Policy and Research
Introducing the National Center for Open Source Policy and Research

Novell
Novell Launches the Better Desktop Initiative

OpenOffice
Five Years of OpenOffice.org, More To Come

OpenSUSE
Released SUSE Linux 10.0 available from today!

Oracle
Oracle Announces the Acquisition of Open Source Software Company, Innobase

Rackspace Managed Hosting Europe
Rackspace Managed Hosting Europe wins Best Linux/Open Source ISP/Host award at Linux Expo 2005

Red Hat
Red Hat Announces First Performance-Based Security Certification

RoundCube
RoundCube Webmail Project Announced

Sourcefire
Sourcefire Named One of Maryland's Fastest Growing Companies for Second Consecutive Year

SugarCRM
100th Project Posted on SugarForge and Announcing Developer Contest

Symbian
Symbian joins Eclipse Foundation to support free Open Source development tools for Symbian OS

Tango Project
Announcing the Tango Project: Making Open-Source Software Beautiful

Xara
Xara announces Xtreme Open Source

Xcalia
Xcalia Announces the Availability of the Xcalia Intermediation Platform 4.0

Zend
Oracle and Zend announce general availability of Zend Core for Oracle

UPCOMING EVENTS

O'Reilly European Open Source Convention 2005
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
October 17-20, 2005

Zend/PHP Conference & Expo 2005
San Francisco, CA, USA
October 18-21, 2005

OSBC East
Newton, MA, USA
November 1-2, 2005

Open Source Database Conference 2005
Frankfurt, Germany
November 8-9, 2005

Gartner Open Source Summit
Orlando, FL, USA
December 7-9, 2005

ApacheCon US 2005
San Diego, CA, USA
December 10-14, 2005

EOSJ Digital Edition Format

At Enterprise Open Source Journal (EOSJ), we've received some complaints about the Flash-based format of the digital edition. In general, people are happy with it (I think it's a great example of the capabilities that Flash brings), but some would prefer that we use PDF instead.

What do you think? Should we offer a PDF edition? Should we replace the Flash edition with PDF? Is the Flash edition working fine for your needs?

Please post your feedback.

Faxing and Blogging

I tend to be an early adopter of technology. As part of the first generation having grown up with video games and home computers, it feels as though it's in my brain wiring somehow, much to the disappointment of my wife who sees electronics as a big money pit with no return ("Wouldn't you rather fix the sprinkler system, honey?"). Two exceptions in my early adoption: faxing and blogging.

I don't know how I missed faxing - I think as an early adopter of email, documents were transferred more easily through the Internet. Almost everyone I needed to send documents to already had an email address. In the early 90s, I've been told that faxing was the preferred communication medium for ex-pats living in Bali. All the benefits of email, I guess, without the intrusion of a phone call. Having to sign and fax a document still feels like an anachronism, but the digital signature "revolution" still has yet to go mainstream. Why is that, exactly? There certainly are not any technical limitations to digital signature ubiquity, and we have institutions in place to validate your identity, banks, for instance, or how about Verisign? I digress.

I was late to blogging, as well. I experimented with a personal blog a few years ago, but I didn't have anything that interesting to share with the world, to be honest. Blogging always seemed like the photocopied Christmas letters sent to everyone - no personal touch, a one size fits all narrative. Do we have the time to consume everyone else's life details while we're so busy living our own? For me, writing about day-to-day experiences on a blog brought neither therapeutic nor social benefits. It always seemed like a solipsistic practice (for me specifically, not a commentary on blogging, in general), and with time limited due to work and family, my blogging experiment fizzed out.

I'm back to blogging this year, only after having a topic to write about - open source. The focus has shifted from my own life to a form of journalism. This is an avenue for me to share information on open source issues. I am exposed to open source news every day, so why not share this information with people who don't have the time to dig deep? As you will see from my weekly Update postings, my latest blogging attempt is way to share information more than personal commentary.

I recently completed a migration of my blog from the EOSJ website to Blogger (we couldn't get critical mass with the blog feature at EOSJ, so we decided to shut it down and focus on other things). I loved the backdating feature for archived postings - this made the migration process more transparent. It was an eye-opener for me after turning on the various publicity features (linkbacks, technorati, weblogs.com, feeds, etc.). Only a week after migrating to Blogger, I already have people linking back to my entries. I'm still learning about all the intricacies of blogging, feeling a little "old", actually.

I see this as more of a weekly exercise, unlike my blogging compatriots Matt Asay and Dana Blankenhorn who always seem to have interesting, insightful entries on a daily basis. I need to learn some time management skills from these guys (or make it part of my job duties...oh wait, I am my own employer, I'm not going to pay for that)!

Once I launch "Project Ofo", maybe I'll have more to write about on a regular basis. Until then, plan to visit weekly. The weekly Update will be posted sometime between Thursday and Sunday every week, depending upon my schedule. As time permits, I'll post additional entries.

The Open Source Update #28

Compiled weekly by Raven Zachary for Enterprise Open Source Journal (EOSJ)

THIS WEEK'S TOP NEWS

SUN AND GOOGLE FORM PARTNERSHIP. Sun Microsystems and Google announce a partnership to promote Java, Google's application initiatives, and OpenOffice. Analysts expect this partnership to lead to a web-based version of OpenOffice, hosted by Google.

CHINA PLANS MAJOR LINUX DESKTOP ROLLOUT TO SCHOOL DISTRICT. The Chinese Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education plans to distribute over 140,000 desktop Linux systems for schools, powered by Sun Wah Linux, a Debian-based Chinese operating system.

MIT UNVEILS $100 LINUX LAPTOP INITIATIVE FOR KIDS. The MIT Media Lab unveils a plan to develop a $100 Linux-powered laptop computer for children, with a focus on the developing world.

U.S. COLLEGE TO OFFER OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM. North Lake College in Dallas, Texas, announces plans to be the first U.S. College to offer an Open Source Technology certificate program, beginning in Spring 2006.

DELL SHIPS OPEN SOURCE READY SYSTEM. Dell ships a desktop computer with no pre-installed operating system to meet the growing demand for desktop open source systems.

PERSPECTIVES
A collection of open source editorials, opinions, and blog entries from around the world.

"Putting the Sun/Google Partnership in Context" by Jonathan Schwartz

"Open Source Advocacy for the Enterprise" by Jono Bacon

"Cry freedom" by Gervase Markham

"Fleury: JBoss' Model Is 'Here to Stay'" by eWEEK.com

"Open Source: Now It's an Ecosystem" by Sarah Lacy

"Open Source Spreads Its Wings in Enterprise" by Darryl Taft

"Web 2.0 day 1: Open Source Infrastructure" by Robert Kaye

"Ubuntu carves niche in Linux landscape" by Stephen Shankland

"Hi, I'm from the government of Venezuela. Will you help me migrate off Windows?" by Matt Asay

"Linux: GPL impedes more than it helps" by Paul Murphy

ANNOUNCEMENTS
News, press releases, and announcements from open source vendors, organizations, and projects.

Agresso
Agresso Announces Strategic Support for the MySQL Open Source Database

Black Duck
Black Duck Software Names Janpieter Scheerder To Board Of Directors

ComPiere
ComPiere, Inc. to Hold Compiere ERP & CRM Intensive and Advanced Training Sessions in Portland

Continuent.org
Continuent.Org Open Source Portal Launches

GNOME Foundation
Three New Companies Join The GNOME Foundation's Advisory Board

Government Open Source Convention (GOSCON)
GOSCON Conference to Highlight Government Open Source Software Adoption and Best Practices

iRadeon
iRadeon Appoints Three New Members to Management Team

Jaspersoft
JasperSoft Releases JasperReports 1.0 - Adds Scalability and Ease of Use to the World's Most Popular Open Source Business Intelligence Project

Laszlo Systems
Celebrating the Success of OpenLaszlo, Laszlo Systems Charts its Digital Life Application Strategy

Linspire
Ingram Micro Delivers Linspire's Desktop Linux Products

Mozilla Foundation
Mozilla Launches Beta of Comprehensive Online Developer Center

MySQL
Kaj Arno Appointed MySQL VP of Community Relations

NTT
NTT Releases 'NILFS' Linux File System for Prevention of Data Loss

Novell
Woodbine Sees Novell and Linux as Sure Bet

Open Source Business Conference (OSBC)
Open Source Business Conference in Boston to Focus on CIO Issues, Intellectual Property, and Emerging Trends in Open Source

Open-Xchange
Former SUSE/Novell Channel Vice President Joins Open-Xchange to Run Worldwide Sales Organization

Penguin Computing
Penguin Computing Altus Servers Offer New Dual-Core AMD Opteron Processors, Packing In More Performance-Per-Watt for Compute-Intensive Applications

PubSub
PubSub Introduces Open-Source Structured Blogging at Web 2.0

Red Hat
University of Stirling graduates to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Satyam
Satyam Becomes First JBoss Certified System Integrator in India

Scribus
Scribus Team Releases 1.3.1 - Unité

Simian
Simian Systems Announces SiteInvoice Open Source Invoice Manager

Socialtext
World's First Wiki Company Returns to Open Source Roots

Softletter
Softletter's Marketing and Selling Open Source Software 2005 to Feature Powerful Lineup of Experts

SourceLabs
SourceLabs Announces the New SWiK

Sun
Sun and Google Expand Technology Reach And Global Opportunity

Sun Wah Linux
Sun Wah Linux Chosen by Chinese Government for the Largest Linux Desktop Roll-Out in China's History

Univa
IBM and Univa to Partner on Commercially-Supported Globus Software

Wind River
Wind River Announces Industry’s First True Commercial-Grade Linux For Device Manufacturers

XenSource
Egenera and XenSource Strike Alliance

Zend
Industry Veterans Marc Andreessen and Gaurav Dhillon Join Zend Technologies Board

Zimbra
Zimbra Unveils Innovative, Open Source Collaboration Software and Messaging Server

UPCOMING EVENTS

JBoss World Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain
October 10-12, 2005

GOSCON 2005 (Government Open Source Conference)
Portland, OR, USA
October 13-14, 2005

Open Source Desktop Workshops
San Deigo, CA, USA
October 13-14, 2005

O'Reilly European Open Source Convention 2005
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
October 17-20, 2005

Zend/PHP Conference & Expo 2005
San Francisco, CA, USA
October 18-21, 2005

OSBC East
Newton, MA, USA
November 1-2, 2005

Open Source Database Conference 2005
Frankfurt, Germany
November 8-9, 2005

Enterprise Open Source Journal (EOSJ) Issue #2

We've posted the digital edition of EOSJ #2 on the web site. Please check it out!

If you're a US-based subscriber, then you should be receiving your printed copy of the magazine any day now.

Weekly Open Source News Updates

One of my responsibilities with Enterprise Open Source Journal (EOSJ) is the creation of the weekly Open Source Update email newsletter. I've been compiling this newsletter now for 28 weeks, since late March 2005. How time flies!

I will be adding the news content from these newsletters to my blog, starting this week. For those who are using RSS or prefer to read the news via the web, it provides an alternative to the email.

That said, I highly recommend that you do subscribe to Enterprise Open Source Journal (EOSJ), and as a subscriber you will receive my weekly news email, as well. Subscriptions are free worldwide.

"Gone to Croatan"

I have just finished migrating my blog entries from EOSJ Blog to Blogger. This is a more sustainable solution, and Blogger has more features than the custom blog that was developed for EOSJ.

I will continue to cover EOSJ issues here, and we will likely link to this blog from the EOSJ site.