Blog

The Open Source Initiative ran the first Open Source Awards, but when we dropped them, Google and O’Reilly picked up the idea (yay!). Nominations are currently open, but close in a few short weeks.

We’re realizing is that Open Source is more than just free software. Free software is like free rocks. You need rocks, but rocks aren’t enough to build a house. You get the Open Source effect only when you have a pyramid of people (roles, actually — you can still get the Open Source effect if…

The subtitle of this Computer World report quotes Nicholas Negroponte as saying that insitence on Open Source scares people away. Boggle. I believe that without open source, the fundamental purpose of OLPC will fail, because it will create another generation of slaves to proprietary technologies and corporate largesse. In other words, it will perpetuate the…

This report is a summary of Zak Greant‘s Open Source Initiative activities for the weeks of March 30th to April 5th and April 6th to 12th, 2008. These Weeks Light OSI community service work (mostly answering private queries on mailing lists, discussing OSI issues at Go Open, etc.) Dropped the ball on the RfP –…

… based on an extensive screening of software companies, with more than 700 responses. Analysis shows that close to 50% of the software industry integrate OSS components into vertical solutions serving all major business sectors. In addition, more than 30% of the companies using OSS components have over 40% of their income from OSS related…

In 1997, Eric Raymond first presented The Cathedral and the Bazaar at Linux Kongress. I was not there, but I read the paper, and it struck me as no less revolutionary in thought or effect than must have been Thomas Paine’s publication of Common Sense or Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Eric turned that paper…

In my day job at Red Hat I see daily examples of open source best practices, be it at the architecture, infrastructure, or application level. I see how individuals focused on a specific problem are able to best solve that problem using the vast resources of open source (230 million source lines of code in…

This report is a summary of Zak Greant‘s Open Source Initiative activities for the week of March 23rd to 29th, 2008. This Week Alolita Sharma, Andrew C. Oliver and I sent the draft infrastructure RFP to the board for review. Worked with the rest of the OSI team on developing the affiliate/membership/somethingship program. Next Week…

This report is a summary of Zak Greant‘s Open Source Initiative activities for the week of March 16th to 22nd, 2008. This Week Alolita, Andrew and I worked on the draft infrastructure requirements for the various online services that the OSI needs and provides, and developed a corresponding RFP. A few instances of lightweight community…