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I read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War more than 10 years ago, and there is one bit of advice that I still use daily in my business dealings. It can be paraphrased as “when attacking an entrenched competitor, you need four times the force. Ten times the force is better.” Thus, when Red Hat…

When I wrote about Organic Software recently, I was largely eulogising the community dimension of open source software. But there’s another way in which the idea of “organic software” is helpful to understanding the dynamic in free and open source software. Here are the comments I have been making at Open World Forum here in…

This week I’m speaking at Open World Forum in Paris on the subject of open source and the digital recovery (la relance numérique), and for a change I’m going to try writing down all my references before my talk rather than after it. To speak to the subject of a digital recovery, one must also…

I’m not sure why, but the “there is no open source business model” discussion has woken up again, with Matthew Aslett and Stephen Walli in particular chipping in views. Last time this debate arose was when 451 published a report of the same name. That report made quite a few people in the FOSS communities…

My activities in Open Source have paid for our house, car, etc etc (despite there being no such thing as an “open source business model”). However, I have never really actively attempted to convert my wife, Erica, to use Linux. Mainly, I have never really felt that Gnome (the predominant desktop environment) was particularly non-technical…

According to a new article in the Business Standard, Open Source software can save India $2 BN per year. Based on my experiences and discussions with Indian IT executives, that number is both accurate and low. For the past year I have written, talked, and blogged about my own estimates (based on industry studies) concluding…

Of the people, for the people, by the people. These three ideals were framed in the Constitution adopted in 1789, but according to 21st-century Pamphleteer Carl Malamud, the actual history of America shows that they were adopted in three distinct phases spanning three centuries in time. Malamud explains all at the O’Reilly Gov 2.0 Summit…

I’m participating at the O’Reilly Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington DC this week, and it is amazing to see the people that the O’Reilly conference team has brought together, both in terms of speakers and participants. In the afternoon, WAMU radio host Kojo Nnamdi interviewed Macon Phillips, the White House Director of New Media, revealing…