Latest News from Open Source Magazine

TraceView’s Oboe Symfony No. 1

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:15:00 EDT

The incorporation of Symfony components into Drupal 8 prompted me to take another look at what I’d lumped into ‘yet another PHP MVC framework’. It quickly became clear that I’d horribly misjudged Symfony. Drupal 8 hasn’t quite hit code freeze yet, but the adoption of Symfony has already let it pull in some beautiful pieces of architecture. I was able to code up more than just improvements in the months leading up to DrupalCon, though. If you stopped by our booth, you’ll have heard all about this, but we have a second important release to announce: we have a beta Symfony bundle and a (very!) preliminary port of our module to Drupal 8! While I had initially planned to just work on Drupal 6 and 7 improvements for TraceView, the announcement that Drupal 8′s SCOTCH and WSCII initiatives had resulted in the incorporation of Symfony components into Drupal 8 prompted me to take another look at what I’d lumped into ‘yet another PHP MVC framework’. It quickly became clear that I’d horribly misjudged Symfony. Drupal 8 hasn’t quite hit code freeze yet, but the adoption of Symfony has already let it pull in some beautiful pieces of architecture.

The Evolution of Professional Services and Key Lessons Learned

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 06:45:00 EDT

As the leader of Netuitive’s dedicated professional services team, I believe I work with some of the best and the brightest in the industry. My team is focused on enabling our IT analytics software to be delivered as a turnkey solution, and we have cut our teeth doing this at the world’s largest enterprises. So I thought I would share some of the insight we have gained over the past year. Following are four key lessons learned about what it takes to successfully deploy IT analytics software for some of the world’s largest companies.

Join the Conversation on Platform 3.0

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 10:00:00 EDT

The Open Group is planning a tweet jam around what it calls Platform 3.0 issues -- big data, cloud computing, the consumerization of IT and other current trends. Over recent years a number of technologies -- cloud, mobile, big data, social -- have emerged and converged to disrupt the way we engage with each other in both our personal and business lives. Most of us are familiar with the buzz words, including "the Internet of things," "machine-to-machine (M2M)," and "consumerization of IT," but what do they mean when they act in concert? How can we treat them as separate? How can we react best? Technologies have emerged and converged to disrupt the way we engage with each other in both our personal and business lives. I was early to recognize this confluence as more than the sum of its parts, back in 2010. And Gartner was early too to recognize this convergence of trends representing a number of architectural shifts which it called a "Nexus of Forces." This nexus was presented as both an opportunity in terms of innovation of new IT products and services and a threat for those who do not keep pace with evolution, rendering current business architectures obsolete.

A Change in Commerce: Open-Source 3D Manufacturing

Fri, 31 May 2013 06:00:00 EDT

In Shelly’s awesome post on 3D printing,he hints at a future where spare parts will live on files and not shelves. It completely upsets our notion of manufacturing, where commodities are tangible objects. Physical would become virtual. The question would then become: open-source or closed-source? What’s the Difference? Open-source software and application-development tools are available...

Dell Keeps a Toe in the OpenStack Camp

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:00:00 EDT

After trashing its public OpenStack cloud efforts Monday in favor of reselling third-party widgetry – and reportedly canning workers in the 300- man group according to TechCrunch – Dell folk who are left were anxious to say that Dell is still in the private OpenStack game, pointing to another press release put out Monday saying that Dell will enable Microsoft’s Windows Server Hyper-V as a viable hypervisor on the OpenStack cloud platform.

Achieving Scale and Performance in the Cloud

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:00:00 EDT

New breakthroughs in cloud-based data management empower databases with the necessary elasticity they need to be truly responsive to the ebbs and tides of supply and demand. Cloud computing allows all capital assets – computing power, memory and storage for example – to be exchanged at the best price, giving everyone the best value for their money. Like any free market, it will only deliver its full benefits to buyers and sellers if the right conditions are available. There can be no barriers to entry, and assets in the cloud must be capable of free movement. Unfortunately, the unsuitability of traditional relational database management systems (RDBMS) has created such a blockage. Their lack of elasticity or liquidity demobilizes computing resources. However, new developments in cloud database technology (like database bursting and hibernating functions) show how the database component can have the necessary fluidity to bring cloud-computing closer to ‘perfect market’ conditions and begin to deliver its full benefits.

Supporting CIO Strategies and Priorities from the Cloud

Sun, 19 May 2013 09:00:00 EDT

A recent Gartner study states that the function of the modern CIO is in flux and that his or her future focus must incorporate digital assets (aka cloud-based data and applications) to remain relevant. Towards the goal of riding the sea change a compiler of stacks to a broker of business needs, security from the cloud is used as the example of this new prioritization and strategic thinking.

Is Cloud Safer Than Your Traditional Datacenter?

Sat, 18 May 2013 12:00:00 EDT

These days, it seems that every cloud provider claims that cloud is safer than your traditional datacenter. Is it though? In his General Session at 12th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo New York, McAfee expert Rishi Bhargava will help you explore and address the security challenges and considerations for public cloud (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS).

The Top Five SaaS Risks and How to Mitigate Them

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:00:00 EDT

You may have heard that cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models can turn software technology into a pay-as-you-go utility that businesses can “plug in to” and use like electricity? Perhaps — however, software technology is far more varied, nuanced and diverse than electricity. You don’t win customers by having better electricity than your competition. Software, by contrast,...

Cloud Expo New York: Big Data on OpenStack

Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 EDT

The massive computing and storage resources that are needed to support Big Data applications make cloud environments an ideal fit. In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Nati Shalom, CTO and Founder of GigaSpaces, will show how to build your Big Data "database on-demand" using MongoDB, Cassandra, Solr, MySQL, or any other Big Data solution, as well as manage your Big Data application using a new open source framework called “Cloudify.” All this, on top of the OpenStack cloud.

Eucalyptus More Compatible with AWS than Ever

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 02:00:00 EDT

Eucalyptus Systems, Amazon’s private cloud partner, was expected to announce a new 3.3 release of its open source cloud platform Monday that promises its greatest compatibility with AWS yet. Its new capabilities are also supposed to make Eucalyptus the solution for developing and testing applications built for AWS. Users get new levels of availability, speed, resource utilization and cost savings across the application development lifecycle.

Why the Pivotal Initiative’s Fate Will Mirror VMware’s

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 06:00:00 EDT

An Enterprise PaaS must truly be agnostic to the underlying elastic infrastructure, and fully support open standards. So the big question is whether the Pivotal Initiative will be able to break away from its roots with EMC and VMware and the associated ties to VSphere?

Python and gevent

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:00:00 EDT

The easiest way to make your code run faster is to do less. At some point, though, you don’t want to do less. Maybe you want to do more, without it being any slower. Maybe you want to make what you have fast, without cutting out any of the work. What then? In this enlightened age, the answer is easy — parallelize it! Threads are always a good choice, but without careful consideration, it’s easy to create all manner of strange race conditions or out-of-order data access. So today, let’s talk about a different route: event loops.

Headnet Improves Drupal Performance and Reliability with TraceView

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:41:01 EDT

Until November 2012, Headnet relied on “old-school” monitoring tools, such as open-source infrastructure monitoring, to ensure the machines its applications ran on were up to the task. When a problem arose, sometimes they could add more RAM or replace a disk to fix the issue, but more often than not, it was an application issue. In many cases, Headnet engineers were left digging through application logs for days before identifying a resolution.

Tracing Python — An API

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:45:00 EDT

We’re pleased to announce a new Python instrumentation version — Oboeware 1.1! We’ve added a few new libraries recently, but we’re really excited about the new customization API we’ve introduced in this version. More than just a Python bump, this is the first package we’re releasing with an implementation of our new Oboe API. The Oboe API is a common set of idioms and metaphors for extending Tracelytics instrumentation or quickly writing your own from the ground up. We’re excited to get it out there, and we’re even more excited to see what you build with it! Conceptually, the Oboe API is a multi-tiered system that allows instrumentation of everything from simple function calls to crazy distributed asynchronous event-driven applications. There are three parts: the low-level API, the high-level API, and language-specific functions.

Abstractness vs Instability: A Neo4j Case Study

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:45:00 EDT

Abstractness is a measure of the rigidity of a software system. Higher the abstraction, lower the rigidity (or greater the flexibility) and vice versa. And the stability is a measure of tolerance to change as in how well the software system allows changes to it without breaking it. This is determined by analyzing the interdependencies of the components of the system. Let's discover the relation between these two concepts and how we can improve our application by measuring them.

Cloud Expo New York: NoSQL and Big Data, the No 'BS' Edition

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 07:00:00 EDT

A lot of companies are checking the NoSQL conversation box these days but end up getting confused by the sheer amount of information that is available on the Internet. In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Sam Bisbee, Director of Technical Business Development at Cloudant, will look at how NoSQL impacts your application building decisions. He will discuss some of the insider baseball in the NoSQL community, cover a few tons of misconceptions, and discuss Cloudant's views on what all this NoSQL and Big Data hullabaloo is all about. The session will be littered with case studies and examples from clients and previous projects.

Rackspace Takes On Patent Troll Parallel Iron

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 07:00:00 EDT

By Bob Gourley

I know you have heard of patent trolls, those sham companies that are created to assert patent-infringement claims to shake down firms for money or other assets. They have been around for a long long time, stifling innovation and removing more value from our economy than the Chinese steal in all their hacking (no kidding, costing [...]

Google Makes Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 02:45:00 EDT

Google has made an Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge not to sue any user, distributor or developer of open source software over specified patents unless it’s sued first. It’s starting with 10 patents all relating to MapReduce, the computing model for processing large data sets originally developed by Google and now widely used in open source versions.

Rackspace and Red Hat Celebrate Victory over Troll

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EDT

Rackspace and Red Hat were patting each other on the back Thursday morning after they got a patent suit against Linux thrown out on its ear by the usually plaintiff-friendly federal court in the Eastern District of Texas. Uniloc USA, a so-called non-practicing entity (NPE) or patent troll, filed suit against Rackspace in the Texas court last year alleging that the processing of floating point number by the Linux operating system violates one of its patents (US No. 5,892,697). Red Hat rode to its customer’s rescue, providing Rackspace’s defense as part of its Open Source Assurance program. The court invalidated the patent claims alleged to cover Linux and dismissed the case after Rackspace and Red Hat moved for dismissal on a 12(b)(6) motion before even filing a rebuttal.

OSSI Shares Its Open Source Vision Across Government Technology Systems

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 06:45:00 EDT

“Our common interest in open source solutions has enabled OSSI to put together an all-star team of Government, commercial and community partners,” said John Farrell of HP/Fortify, OSSI's volunteer chairman and Chief Information Security Officer, as OSSI named several new members to its Industry Advisory Board.

Fusion-io Sucks Up ID7

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 06:45:00 EDT

Flash house Fusion-io has acquired low-profile British start-up ID7 and with it the primary developers of SCST, the open source storage subsystem used by EMC, HP and IBM and anybody else dabbling in storage for Linux boxes.

The Math of FOSS Freeloaders

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:45:00 EDT

Concerns are raised every once in a while in the broader free and open source software community about freeloaders. The attitude expressed is that if you're getting the benefit of FOSS, you should contribute. Building a business on a FOSS project you don't own, whether you're providing a service or product around a FOSS project should in return garner some sort ofquid pro quo. In reality, freeloaders are desirable. I think we need to look through the other end of the telescope. The people most often concerned about freeloaders and the free ride are actually the ones with the motivation problem - they expect free work (or "free" customers). I recently wrote about "Making Open Source". One of the first things required is a motivation to share. One of the next requirements is an ability to collaborate. I believe the people most likely to express concerns about freeloaders seem to be uncomfortable with the idea of sharing their work.

Cloud Expo New York: How to Use Google Apps Script

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EDT

Google Apps Script is a cloud-based JavaScript environment that allows you to write powerful applications and workflows around Google Apps such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, and Sheets. The development is entirely within a browser and it's free and easy to get started. In his upcoming session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Arun Nagarajan, Senior Developer Advocate at Google, will demonstrate all the capabilities of Google Apps Script. Delegates will walk away being able to write their first script.

Take the 2013 Future of Open Source Survey

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 01:45:00 EST

Every year for the past six years, a consortium of software companies has collaborated to conduct a survey on attitudes and adoption of open-source software in business. The 2013 Future of Open Source survey is now open and taking responses until March 28. Open source analyst group 451 Research is a collaborator again this year, along with Revolution Analytics, Red Hat, Hortonworks, and several other open-source software firms.

Red Hat Spin-Off Simplifies Orchestration

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EST

A brand new Red Hat spin-off wants to support servers whether they’re physical or virtual, on-premise or in the cloud. It’s called AnsibleWorks and the open source automation software it’s promoting is called Ansible. The Ansible open source project was run up last year by one of the company’s founders to address limitations in Puppet Labs, a VMware investment, and Opsware, an Amazon buddy. Who knows, given some time, Red Hat may buy it. Unlike its rivals Ansible is supposed to make server management radically simpler, way easier to maintain and more secure, providing a multi-tier orchestration system that handles deployment, configuration and management altogether, relieving companies of writing complicated pain-in-the-neck scripts.

The Age-Old Innovation Conundrum

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 12:00:00 EST

Over the past 6 months, CA Technologies has been running IT innovation-related polls on http://www.ca.com/. On average, these 9 polls garnered 660 responses each, and present a stark picture of the challenges and frustrations that come with being an IT leader today. While some of the results are presented in this recent infographic, it doesn't fully answer the question that, gauging from our...

CRaSH for Mule, an Introduction

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 11:00:00 EST

This blog is the formal introduction to the CRaSH console for Mule on which I've been working for the past month or so. I've decided to interview myself about it because, hey, if I don't do it, who will? It is a shell that is running embedded in Mule and that gives command-line access to a variety of Mule internal moving parts. It's built thanks to the excellent CRaSH project, a toolkit built by Julien Viet and sponsored by eXo Platform, which allows the easy creation of embedded shells. Well, it's easy to find it out. Let's connect to CRaSH for Mule and ask for help:

10gen Gets New CEO

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 06:00:00 EST

10gen, the outfit behind the open source MongoDB database, which has been downloaded 3.8 million times, has named its president Max Schireson CEO. Former CEO Dwight Merriman becomes chairman. Schireson has been at 10gen since 2011. He was once chief applications architect and VP for e-commerce and self-service applications at Oracle. 10gen has raised more than $81 million and its customers include Cisco, Disney, eBay and Salesforce.com.

Open Source Release of the OpenNebula Apps Suite

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 11:00:00 EST

Continuing its strong commitment to open-source and to the OpenNebula community, C12G Labs has just announced the open-source release of OpenNebulaApps, a suite of tools for users and administrators of OpenNebula clouds to simplify and optimize multi-tiered application management. The new software has been released under Apache license and will be incorporated into the main distribution of OpenNebula. After the announcement made two weeks ago about the public distribution of OpenNebula Maintenance Updates and Service Packs, the incorporation of this innovative functionality consolidates OpenNebula's position as the most advanced, enterprise-ready open-source cloud management platform.

Avnet to Design Systems

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 08:30:00 EST

Avnet Embedded, an Avnet unit by way of Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas, has launched Open Compute Project (OCP) Innovation Labs as both technology showcases and development labs for users, developers and partners to design, deliver and integrate cost-effective, power-efficient compute, storage and networking solutions. It says the lab will provide the OCP community with local and remote access to resources offering “hands-on” enablement of platform and configuration testing, hardware and software validation, performance tuning and community innovation. Avnet will bring together the hardware, connectivity and technical support resources to assist developers with application creation.

The Science and Art of Open Source Software License Management

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 07:00:00 EST

The industrial revolution continues - starting with the steam engines of the 18th century, continuing with large-scale steel production, oil exploitation, electrical and photographic innovations of the 19th century, and moving on to the transportation, communications, computation and electronics of the 20th century. It is still early in the 21st century, but we can safely say software has become the engine that feeds the industrial, economic, medical, and gradually the political issues of our existence. The only way to satisfy the demand for the volume and complexity of the software that is needed to keep our world moving is to maximally share and reuse code within and across application domains.

Which Open Source Software License Should I Use?

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:30:00 EST

I've recently been involved in several discussions that are variations on, "Which open source or free software license should I choose for my project?" Here is my way of looking at the large and growing collection of licenses in the wild. First let's make sure we all understand that I Am Not A Lawyer. This is not legal advice. Depending upon your needs and your comfort with risk around your software, you'll want to confirm your legal choices with counsel in your jurisdiction. The first and obvious consideration is whether or not the license is approved as an open source license by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The OSI created the Open Source Definition in the late 1990s as a set of attributes that a software license must support to be considered "open source". Anyone can take a license to the OSI for debate and discussion and if approved as meeting the OSD, then the license is added to the canonical list. While this seems an obvious place to start, I was recently surprised to discover a license called the "Clear BSD License." It attempts to clarify explicitly that patents are not being discussed in the license. It is not on the OSI list (while the New BSD and Simplified BSD licenses are) and is therefore not worth considering. Inventing new licenses as small derivatives of existing licenses is not helpful and creates costly legal busy work. There exists a broad collection of OSI-approved licenses today. These licenses cover millions of lines of software involved in billions of dollars in procurement. One would be hard pressed to describe a serious set of circumstances that isn't already covered by an OSI-approved license.

Making Commercial Open Source Software

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 13:30:00 EST

I recently blogged about making open source software, and the high level steps for how to think about the process. We started with the need for software to seed the discussion, the need for clear motivation as to why to publish as open source software, and then the structural requirements to build a community (license choice, collaboration platform or forge, and governance considerations). Contributions are the life blood of any community, so lastly we talked about the need to build an onramp to encourage users that will hopefully become contributors, and the additional onramp needed to make it easy to contribute.

Opening the Way for Software Vendors

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 07:00:00 EST

Government ruling paves the way for software vendors to sell to US government agencies, even if some of their code is written in non-designated countries. Open-source provider Talend has received a favorable advisory ruling from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency concerning the government's ability to purchase open-source software, opening the way for all software vendors to increase their share of business with US federal agencies. The CBP has determined that software products comply with the Trade Agreement Act (TAA) when that software is manufactured in what is known as a "designated country," even if the majority of its source code was created in a non-designated country.

Making Open Source Software

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:15:00 EST

Software is surprisingly dynamic. All software evolves. Bugs are found and fixed. Enhancements added. New requirements are discovered in using the software. New uses are found for it and it is shaped to those new uses. Software solutions that are useful and used must by their very existence evolve. Well organized open source software communities create the right conditions to make this dynamism successful. The world continues to embrace and adopt free and open source licensed software across the board. Vendors and OEMs, their IT customers, governments and academics are all using, buying and making open source software, and often all three at once.

Ten Tips for MySQL Users

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:15:00 EST

MySQL, just like other relational databases, is complicated. It can jam at any time jeopardizing your applications or business without notice. Most MySQL malfunctions are due to common mistakes. It is essential to avoid these mistakes, often hidden by configuration trap or workload, to ensure that MySQL server runs effectively. Here are 10 tips to ensure excellent performance of the MySQL server. Profiling the server's workload is the best way to know how the server spends time. This exposes the most exclusive questions for tuning. Time is very essential here as one considers how quickly the server completes a request when a query is issued it. Similar queries are grouped by these tools together in a row in order to distinguish slow and fast queries.

Notifications Added to Open-Xchange Browser-Based Email and Collaboration

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 09:15:40 EST

Open-Xchange has announced OX Notifier for Windows that alerts users to new email, meetings and documents and gives them one-click access right from their web browser. OX Notifier works with the Open-Xchange webmail client running in a browser, saving money because users do not need separate client software, like Microsoft Outlook. When notifications are received, the user has the option to immediately access the email, new meeting invite or reminder for upcoming appointment, as well as new or updated document within the Open-Xchange Infostore.

Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: This Is Your Career on OpenStack

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 01:00:00 EDT

In a little over two years, OpenStack has shattered adoption benchmarks set by previous open source projects and gained acceptance as the future of the data center, but has your career kept up with its blistering pace? In her session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Niki Acosta, Product Evangelist for Rackspace Private Cloud, will explain how they have already made a career out of the OpenStack movement and how you can make the transition into making OpenStack your full-time job, from becoming more familiar with the code to selling on the opportunity to the C-suite and startups alike.

Creating a Self-Defending Network Using Open Source Software

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 10:00:00 EDT

A coworker and I put a couple pieces of open source software (OSSEC and Snort) together to respond to certain types of automated attacks we were seeing in our IDS (we use Snort in this case). Prior to this, an engineer would manually respond to alerts by logging into our firewall and blocking the IP address causing the alert. This process was tedious, repetitive, and time consuming. By the time the firewall change would be pushed, generally the scan (it was usually a scan) was over and the attacker had moved on. So we took advantage of a feature in OSSEC called “active response”, which is used to react to events on the network. OSSEC was configured to watch for Snort alerts, and would run a script on our Internet routers (running Vyatta core 6.3) to block the IP for 10 minutes. This response runs almost immediately. We hand selected alerts that we had associated with simple scans, such as FTP Brute Force attacks, and set them up to block the addresses. But this wasn’t enough for us.

Five Pitfalls to Avoid with Open Source ERP

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:00:00 EDT

Don’t you just love spending millions of dollars to license a commercial ERP package? And then I bet you feel warm and fuzzy about hiring a bus-load of expensive consultants to come and tell you how to run your own business, following so-called ‘best practices’ built into an inflexible ERP package. And just when you thought you were going to realize all the benefits of ‘off-the-shelf’ software, you find you have thousands of lines of custom code lashing together old systems you didn’t dare remove, third-party bolt-on solutions to plug gaps in the ERP software vendor’s package, and customized reports, forms and enhancements no-one ever thought someone in your industry could ever need.

Red Hat Claims Twin Peaks Copied Open Source Code Wholesale

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 14:00:00 EDT

Red Hat has countersued Twin Peaks Software, the California outfit that back in February and again in an amended complaint in July alleged that Gluster, Red Hat’s bought-in storage subsidiary, infringes an August 2008 patent it holds on widgetry called a Mirror File System. Despite all the patent litigation flying around, infringement charges against Red Hat are pretty darn rare. Twin Peaks’ claims touch GlusterFS technology such as the Red Hat Storage Software Appliance and Red Hat Virtual Storage Appliance. Red Hat denies any infringement and claims the Twin Peaks patent (US No 7,418,439) is invalid because it has no utility. It says Twin Peaks isn’t entitled to the injunction it wants.

Shuttleworth Invests in Inktank & Ceph

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:06:00 EDT

Inktank, the only company to provide enterprise-level support for the Ceph Distributed Storage System, has gotten a million-dollar investment from Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth. It’s a personal investment made through a convertible note. Ceph is the open source distributed storage system that delivers object storage, block storage and a POSIX-compatible file system in one unified system. Inktank claims Ceph, which runs on commodity hardware, is the “future of storage,” freeing users from restrictive and proprietary storage solutions.

Understanding Linux Deployment Strategies

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 11:00:00 EDT

This IDC white paper compares organizations using a commercial Linux subscription from Red Hat to support their Linux servers with organizations that are using a mixed environment of both commercially supported and non-paid Linux distributions and organizations that are primarily using non-paid Linux distributions aboard their servers.

Case Study: Red Hat Enterprise Linux in Use

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 10:15:00 EDT

The case study features an organization that has made a broad commitment to Linux and has adopted best practices to optimize that environment. The retailer highlighted in this IDC paper has taken an important step toward building a tightly controlled standard Linux server operating system that has a predefined, well-understood life cycle. Through a broad commitment to a single Linux distribution, and through the use of a minimal number of operating system variations, this company has been able to optimize its environment and optimized value received back.

Eureka! Netflix Makes Amazon More Reliable with Open Source Software

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 16:27:00 EDT

Netflix is a big user of Amazon’s cloud infrastructure services—such a big user, in fact, that it has built multiple software programs that make Amazon resources more reliable. Recently, Netflix described its “Chaos Monkey,” which randomly takes Amazon virtual machines offline to help engineers identify network weaknesses. Netflix released its Chaos Monkey as open source, and this week did the same with another project, known as Eureka. Released on GitHub and described in the Netflix Tech Blog yesterday, Eureka fills a gap in Amazon Web Services by providing load balancing and failover for middle-tier servers, Netflix explained.

Why OpenNebula? Because It Simply Works!

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 06:00:00 EDT

“Because it simply works” is the most frequent answer to the question “Why would you recommend OpenNebula to a colleague?” that OpenNebula makes to its users in a short survey that tells them how they are doing. Other frequent answers are “Because it is easy to install, maintain and update” or “Because it is easy to customize”. “Rich functionality and stability” and “support for VMware” are also frequently mentioned by the survey respondents.

VMware’s OpenStack Hook-up: Analysis & Comments

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 02:00:00 EDT

VMware has applied to join the OpenStack Foundation, potentially giving the burgeoning open source cloud stack movement a huge dose of credibility in the enterprise. There are risks to the community in VMware’s involvement, of course, but on the balance this could be a pivotal event. There is an alternative explanation, which I will hit at the end, but it’s a pretty exciting development no matter VMware’s true motivations.

Court Decision Makes Korea a ‘FRAND Rogue State’: FOSS Patents

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 08:00:00 EDT

On the day it won a billion-dollar jury decision against Samsung for patent infringement in the week it became the most valuable company ever on the stock exchange, Apple lost an infringement case in Korea, Samsung’s home turf.

Talend Positioned as Visionary in Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:14:00 EDT

Talend, a global open source software leader, on Friday announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the "Visionaries" quadrant of the newly-published "Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools"[1] annual report. According to the report, "Visionaries in the market demonstrate a strong understanding of current and future market trends and directions, such as the importance of ongoing monitoring of data quality, the engagement of business subject matter experts and the delivery of data quality services. They exhibit capabilities aligned with these trends, but may lack the market presence, brand recognition, customer base and resources of larger vendors." "Our focus is on helping companies realise the full value of high quality data, and we believe being placed on the 'Visionaries' quadrant of the Data Quality Tools Report demonstrates that Talend is delivering a significant return on investment for our customers' top business initiatives," said Bertrand Diard, CEO and co-founder, Talend. "As the first open source provider of data quality solutions, we will continue along our path of innovative product development, including the recent release of our next-generation integration platform, and look forward to advancing beyond our current position."