Latest News from Open Source Magazine

Apache Hadoop: Now, Next, and Beyond at Cloud Expo New York

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:15:00 EST

In 2011, Apache Hadoop received tremendous attention for helping organizations cost-effectively capitalize on their big data. Hadoop is now disrupting the business of analyzing data. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Eric Baldeschwieler, Co-Founder & CEO of Hortonworks, will look at the current state of the Hadoop project, lessons learned by deploying it at scale, and the roadmap for its future. Big Data Track attendees will learn about the exciting developments that have happened recently with the Apache Hadoop project, what is has already accomplished (including real-world examples), and what it is going to make possible in the future.

Cloud Expo New York Speaker Profile: Mark Hinkle – Citrix Systems

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:00:00 EST

With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) just four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses...?

M3 Timers – Improved Server Monitoring

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:56:00 EST

During the lifespan of M3 (Monitis Monitor Manager) there has always been something lacking – timers. M3 execution procedure was outlined in this previous article. The execution mentioned in the latter was a one-time-execution, whereas server monitoring requires periodic invocation of monitors in order to actually provide counters over time, graphing performance. The periodic invocation method suggested up until today was to integrate M3 with crontab. Crontab, in a nutshell, is a Linux/Unix service for periodic invocation of executables. Implementing M3 with crontab properly meant M3 would run every X minutes, producing a Monitis counter update every X minutes, should everything run properly. In the following article I’ll outline the changes done to support timers in M3.

HP Commits to webOS Release Schedule

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:45:00 EST

Seems just the other day – actually it was two weeks ago – that we divined that HP, imagining blowing Google away, would pull out the stops to get the webOS that it bought, put in a tablet that failed in the market, dropped, then open sourced – life’s funny like that – in shape to publish the code in stages. And what do you know – surprise, surprise – HP Wednesday committed to a timetable for getting the thing out in steps by September under the lenient Apache 2.0 license. HP is making much of the fact that it materialized the roadmap 47 days after it said it would open source webOS. God knows whether HP or anybody else will ever really exploit the thing. For HP it depends on the auspices – like two bald eagles seen circling Google or Apple talons extended.

Top 10 Open Source eCommerce Software (Joomla and Drupal)

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:30:00 EST

This is the second of two articles about open source ecommerce software that we hope will help web developers and system administrators in selecting what is best for their needs. The first article Top 10 Open Source eCommerce Software (Joomla and Drupal) reviewed: HikaShop, SimpleCaddy, OpenCart, redSHOP and RokQuickCart. The following article details our own analysis of the last 5 vendors in our article series. Founded in 2005, the company VirtueMart has developed a free and open source shopping cart software as an extension for Joomla. Formerly known as mambo-phpShop, VirtueMart is a popular Joomla extension written in PHP, within a MySQL database environment.

Open-Xchange Adds Chief Operating Officer

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:03:00 EST

Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and collaboration software for cloud providers, has announced the appointment of Carsten Dirks as chief operating officer (COO). Responsible for engineering, professional services, support, key account management and administration, Dirks joins a company that grew to more than 42 million users in 2011 - an increase of 75 percent over the prior year - with plans to increase to more than 80 million in 2012. "We have enormous growth potential as our products serve the increasing demand for communication and collaboration software delivered via the cloud," said Rafael Laguna, CEO, Open-Xchange. "In combination with the mobile and web-based computing opportunities, Open-Xchange is growing to support the market demand. Carsten will help us move ahead from our pole position in this market to further grow our business with our worldwide partner ecosystem."

Powering the Cloud with Open Source

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 07:00:00 EST

“CloudStack grew out of Cloud.com. It’s an open source product, and as the product gains maturity and gains market share we have started to see real contribution coming back,” observes Shannon Williams, President and Vice President, Market Development, Cloud Platforms at Citrix Systems, in this SYS-CON.TV interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 9th International Cloud Expo, held Nov 7-10, 2011, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Cloud Expo New York, June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, and Cloud Expo Silicon Valley, November 5–8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

OpenOffice.com Lives

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:00:00 EST

The Apache Software Foundation, where Oracle sent OpenOffice in June after it adjured the stuff, said Tuesday that it will put out OpenOffice 3.4 in the first quarter whose code will all be under the Apache license, resolving lingering incompatibility issues. It used what was ostensibly an open letter to the Open Document Format community to distance itself from the new German Team OpenOffice.com fork and its fund-raising attempts and warn it about misusing its trademark including “OpenOffice.org and all related marks.”

Forrester Wave: Open Source Business Intelligence

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:00:00 EST

Open source software and Business Intelligence are two related market segments where Forrester sees continually increasing interest and adoption levels. BI specifically continues to be one of the top priorities on everyone’s mind. Comparing open source BI technologies is often an apples-to-oranges comparison: 1) not all vendors include the same functionality in the free community versions of the software versus commercial open source versions that carry license and/or support cost, 2) some tools offer full BI suites, while others offer just reporting and analytics. Download Forrester’s evaluation of open source BI vendors and learn why Actuate BIRT led the pack due to its richness of reporting functionality.

Open-Xchange Plans to Double Again to 80 Million Users

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 07:45:00 EST

Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and collaboration software for cloud providers, announced on Tuesday it expects to again double its number of users -- reaching 80 million paid mailboxes by the end of 2012, making it among the world's largest providers. The company is a pioneer in enabling service providers to offer a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution to their customers - from consumers to businesses of all sizes - and is now entering its fifth year since the introduction with 1&1 in Europe and the U.S. Open-Xchange gives service providers of all kinds and sizes the ability to compete with global and local cloud mail offerings. In 2011, Open-Xchange announced agreements with 15 partners in North America, Europe and Asia growing to more than 42 million users -- an increase of 75 percent over the prior year.Its software reaches end customers through partners worldwide that include web hosting companies, telecoms, cable carriers, system integrators, value added resellers and distributors.

HP to Open Source webOS

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:15:00 EST

Unable to turn a buck on the thing after killing the tablet and smartphones it was meant to power, HP said Friday that it’s going to open source webOS, the mobile operating system it got last year when it bought Palm for a sweet $1.2 billion. It claims there is still an “opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.” It’s speculated that some Android OEMs might adopt it as a hedge against possible legal calamity since webOS is believed to have a stronger patent defense against Apple and Microsoft than Android, which is also open source, and because of Google’s impending $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a potentially Google-favored rival. Whether webOS could give Android a run for its money at this point is debatable.

Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress - What Will You Choose?

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:08:00 EST

Some questions can never be answered; they can only be debated but we never get the solution to it. The same is the case for CMSs; people for years have been trying to find out which one is best for them and which is good to manage a website. Open source CMSs have had great success and demand for many years because they're easy to work with and are also flexible. But open source development offers you multiple choices when it comes to a CMS. So there is the age-old confusion of which one to choose. Even though you can't decide which one is the best, you can definitely pick the one that suits your needs the best. There is no Content Management Solution that is the best so you settle with what you are comfortable using. However, I am writing this so you will choose WordPress and you should choose WordPress as your CMS. It provides loads of extensions, add-ons and plug-ins, themes and templates, etc., that are easily customizable and easy to use. Scalability is amazing; help and support are top class; there's a strong user community; integration and other systems all make WordPress a formidable choice to be used as a CMS. It powers many great websites all over the world and this CMS is totally customizable and can be tweaked according to your needs.

Open-Xchange and Openprovider to Offer Hosted Business Email

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:18:37 EST

Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and collaboration software for cloud providers, announced on Tuesday an agreement with Openprovider to be the exclusive distributor of Open-Xchange in The Netherlands. Openprovider will make hosted Open-Xchange available to resellers, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and small web hosting companies. Openprovider partners now are able to provide collaboration and mobility services to consumers and small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). In the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model, customers subscribe to the application instead of purchasing it, typically on a monthly basis. In this pay-as-you go approach, SMEs are afforded an easy-to-use, low-cost service.

CFEngine Moves to the US

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:15:00 EDT

CFEngine AS, the Norwegian outfit with the popular eponymous open source configuration and compliance management widgetry for automating distributed infrastructure, has moved its sales operation to Palo Alto in hopes of turning its freeloading Fortune 1000 accounts into paying customers. Its first job will be to identify the big companies using its free software that haven’t taken a subscription yet. Its cross-platform commercial stuff, just upgraded to CFEngine 3 Nova, costs $250 per server. The new rev is supposed to give system administrators more control over constantly changing, increasingly complex IT infrastructure.

How Does the DoD Fight Terrorism Despite Budget Cuts?

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EDT

United States military contractors are under unprecedented pressure to find ways to cut costs for their federal government customers despite the interest in developing new technologies to fight the war on terrorism. Gone are the days when contracts would swell exponentially without any regard for initial quote figures or recourse from their customers. The federal deficit debt-reduction plan, which includes massive defense spending cuts, recently put the contracting community on notice that it has to change the way it does business, become more accountable for cost overruns and find ways to do more with less. Those who don't meet this mandate will find themselves on the outside looking in. Getting the military contractor community to radically change the way it does business is akin to trying to turn around an oil tanker with an oar. It’s a daunting challenge, but not an entirely impossible one. The answer may be easier to find than many would expect: open source technologies. By using open source software (OSS) and Government off-the-shelf (GOTS) technologies, contractors can offer quality products and services that are significantly more flexible and cost-effective than proprietary systems, and can be reused indefinitely and shared with other federal agencies without additional cost.

Openwave and Open-Xchange Partner to Deliver Advanced Email

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 06:00:00 EDT

Openwave Systems Inc., has announced an agreement with Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and groupware for cloud providers, to integrate Open-Xchange's email technology into its Openwave Rich Mail product. Open-Xchange has grown to more than 40 million users worldwide in 2011, which represents an increase of nearly 70 percent from last year. The agreement extends Open-Xchange´s reach from hosting providers to telcos, carriers and cable providers. Four customers representing regions from all over the world have already selected the integrated solution. Most recently, Openwave entered in to an agreement with one of the largest telecommunications companies in Western Europe for Openwave Messaging products including Openwave Rich Mail, which is expected to serve millions of email users.

Samsung Plans to Open Source Smartphone Platform

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:00:00 EDT

Wall Street Journal reports that smartphone maker Samsung could be looking to open source its Bada OS within the next year. Seeking to imitate Google android's thriving developer ecosystem, Samsung might want to shine the light on its homegrown mobile software platform by bringing in external developers and device makers. It apparently also has plans to expand bada's reach into television sets and tablet devices in the future. Global Internet information provider, comScore says (reporting key trends in the US mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending July 2011) that Samsung is now the leading handset maker in the US thanks to the popularity of its android phones. Google's open source mobile operating system, Android continued to gain steam reaching 41.8 percent market share. With Google announcing that it is buying Samsung's key competitor Motorola, speculation abounds that Google might end up giving preferential treatment to Motorola and keeping the latest versions of its mobile platform away from its other android OEMs. Samsung is probably looking to create an open and viable alternative in Bada to reduce its dependency on the android devices that it is best known for.

Open-Xchange Enhances Integration with Parallels Automation Software

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:02:32 EDT

The Open-Xchange 4PSA OXtender for Plesk (www.open-xchange.com/en/solutions/4psa-oxtender-for-plesk.html), a software connector that makes deployment and billing of Open-Xchange simple for service providers and customers using Parallels Plesk Panel and Parallels Automation, now also supports Parallels Business Automation Standard. Parallels Business Automation Standard is the first available hosting automation software that manages all business aspects of shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting from a single management system. Integration of Open-Xchange with Parallels industry-standard control panel and hosting automation software, enables web hosters and their resellers to enter into the business application market with Open-Xchange. Hosting providers can easily replace the Standard Plesk Webmail in existing shared hosting environments with the feature-rich AJAX interface of Open-Xchange and deliver business-class email and collaboration features.

New OpenNebula Working Group on Cloud Interoperability and Portability

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:30:00 EDT

OpenNebula has just announced the creation of a new Working Group on Cloud Interoperability and Portability. The aim of this working group is to discuss open standards and their implementation in projects that make use of OpenNebula clouds. Inter-project collaboration especially in the realm of support for open standards such as Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI), Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), and Open Virtualization Format (OVF), and development of standard APIs with interoperability among different ecosystem modules will be the focus of this working group. OpenNebula has emerged as a viable open source alternative to commercial cloud management solutions. A number of companies are adopting OpenNebula in their IT infrastructure. Not only that, it is also been actively promoted by the European Commission as the basis for numerous cloud computing related research. There is a real need for interaction and exchange of ideas between such projects and the industry partners alike. The OpenNebula Interoperability Working Group has been established to facilitate such an exchange.

Exist Celebrates 10 Years of Software Engineering Innovation

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:21:00 EDT

Exist Global, pioneers in Open Source software engineering in Asia Pacific, commemorated its 10th anniversary with co-founders Winston Damarillo, Willex Perez, and Junnie Arreza joining CEO Jerry Rapes in a toast to honor 10 extraordinary years of software innovation and the next 10 years of success. "Exist has had an amazing global trajectory since 2001," said Winston. "Our head count, roster of clients, industry network and service portfolio have expanded tremendously." Exist began with venture-funded start-up clients and 7 employees. Today, it runs the most modern development centers in Manila and Cebu with 180 technologists, serving world's leading companies in Healthcare, IT, Telecoms and Finance. In addition, Exist has established itself on the forefront of bleeding-edge technology development -- globally recognized innovators and producers of almost 3 dozen Open Source contributors.

Platfora Wants to Make Sense Out of Hadoop

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:15:00 EDT

Platfora, a Hadoop analytics start-up, has gotten $5.7 million in Series A money from Andreessen Horowitz and the CIA’s venture arm In-Q-Tel. The fledging is trying to make pretty, understandable graphs out of big petabytes-size Hadoop data. Its product, which will compete with Datameer’s, won’t be available until next year. It says Hadoop lacks the interactivity and sophisticated reporting capabilities needed by business users. It’s aiming to work with existing Hadoop clusters, including Cloudera, MapR and Amazon EMR, among others, and automatically turn the questions business users pose into dimensional and predictive dashboards, reports and insights.

Exist Celebrates 10 Years of Software Engineering Innovation

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:26:00 EDT

Exist Global, pioneers in Open Source software engineering in Asia Pacific, commemorated its 10th anniversary with co-founders Winston Damarillo, Willex Perez, and Junnie Arreza joining CEO Jerry Rapes in a toast to honor 10 extraordinary years of software innovation and the next 10 years of success. “Exist has had an amazing global trajectory since 2001,” said Winston. “Our head count, roster of clients, industry network and service portfolio have expanded tremendously.” Exist began with venture-funded start-up clients and 7 employees. Today, it runs the most modern development centers in Manila and Cebu with 180 technologists, serving world’s leading companies in Healthcare, IT, Telecoms and Finance. In addition, Exist has established itself on the forefront of bleeding-edge technology development -- globally recognized innovators and producers of almost 3 dozen Open Source contributors.

Spanish Web Hoster Acens Enters Cloud Application Market

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 06:15:00 EDT

Acens, one of Spain's largest web hosting service providers, will bring its customers cloud-based business email and collaboration capabilities from Open-Xchange. Open-Xchange, a supplier of business-class email for cloud providers, on Wednesday announced an agreement with Acens, one of Spain's largest web hosting service providers, to bring cloud-based business email and collaboration capabilities. Acens will replace its Atmail-based webmail system with Open-Xchange providing all 300,000 email accounts with the full webmail, mobility and teamwork capabilities of Open-Xchange. The implementation is scheduled to be completed this fall.

Hyper-V Reportedly Picking Up Speed

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EDT

Microsoft is closing in on VMware for virtualization market share, according to a Stratus Technologies-ITIC survey that found Hyper V use increased over 20% in 12 months. In its spring 2010 survey, 78% of the 243 respondents said they were using VMware while 38% said Microsoft Hyper-V (numbers don’t equal 100% because some respondents use multiple vendors’ products). In the 2011 survey of 250, the gap had closed to 59% for VMware compared to 53% for Hyper-V. Citrix XenServer users doubled year over year from 9% to 18%. Ninety-four percent of respondents have virtualization somewhere in their infrastructure. Seventy-four percent said they currently run business-critical applications on virtual machines and have plans to increase the number of these applications in the next 12 months.

Valve, JAAS and Filter in Tomcat

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 06:15:00 EDT

Tomcat is a widely popular lightweight application server. When securing Tomcat web applications, Valve, JAAS and Filter are used in various scenarios. The challenges for developers are when to use each of these methods and how to integrate them together if more than one method is chosen. For example, the WebSeal agent discussed in the article [1] uses Valve. If a customer needs to integrate WebSeal and its own JAAS-based authentication module, they will need to know how to configure Tomcat to use both the WebSeal Agent Valve and the JAAS module and how to pass information between them. In this article, we will explain the concepts of Valve, JAAS and Filter, and their relationships such as the order that they get called. Through an example application, we will explain how you can use them together and pass information among them for an authentication process. How to configure and run the example application using Tomcat 7 will also be discussed.

Open-Xchange Integrates with cPanel

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 11:01:47 EDT

Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and groupware for cloud providers, joins forces with cPanel, a leading provider of hosting automation tools, to enable web hosts and service providers to offer advanced email and teamwork capabilities to their hosting customers. The integration of Open-Xchange into cPanel's industry-standard control panel will be previewed to the service provider industry at HostingCon in San Diego, August 8-10. "Communication and collaboration tools are leading the way to Cloud applications for consumers and SMEs (small- and medium-size enterprises). Providing customers with an expanded messaging experience, helps web hosts to grow their profitability and deepen customer relationships," said Antonio Piraino, vice president and research director, at Tier1 Research.

Adobe Blinks; Builds Product on HTML5

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EDT

Adobe is in the process – as it put it – of recognizing HTML5, the modern answer to Adobe’s sacred, Apple-loathed Flash plug-in, as something serious. It’s started to preview a free new design web motion and interaction design tool called Edge for editing animations and interactive web page elements based on HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.

Data Integration Study Compares ETL with Next Generation Technologies

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:53:49 EDT

While ETL continues to be the predominant data integration technology in use today, the sheer size and complexity of today's information and application systems require new levels of innovation that lower costs, deliver rapid time to value, and put more control into the hands of business users. A new study by IdealNet, a professional business expertise and technical services company, takes a look at the data integration technology curve, from the 1980s to present day, examining first, second and third generation solutions. It also compares first generation tools such as conventional ETL with newer open source and data virtualization technologies, and includes recommendations as to which technologies would be most appropriate based on an organization's data integration requirements. The results of the study are captured in a video, titled "An Analysis of Data Integration Technologies." Some of the key findings: · Informatica is the leading provider of ETL, clearly defines ETL for batch oriented bulk file transfer · Talend and Pentaho are the open source leaders with associated ETL and BI strategies · ETL is limited in scalability – each connection is essentially standalone · Queplix 3rd generation product – leading data virtualization solution, better suited to integrate 2, 3, 4 or more sources · Unique advanced data virtualization platform provides greater capability, lowers costs To learn more, see http://bit.ly/qY0RFx. Tweet This: Data Integration Study: ETL vs. Next Generation Technologies - http://bit.ly/qY0RFx For parties interested in Queplix, data integration, data management, data quality, data virtualization, data integration software, master data management, MDM, business intelligence, informatica

Social Coding and uberApps for App Dev in the Enterprise

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 09:00:00 EDT

With the opening of WANdisco’s uberApps Store, we felt it was a good time to have a chat with David Richards, WANdisco President & CEO. Subversion has over 5 million installations in everything from one person all the way up to the world's largest development teams with over 40,000 users. Our business model is similar to Red Hat's where we make our money from the top of the pyramid where companies need enterprise-class performance, scale and availability. We also offer a security and access control add-on that gives the kind of audit reporting that Sarbanes-Oxley requires. And we offer professional support for the pure open source Subversion product that gives enterprise the peace of mind...

Jenkins Now Available on uberSVN

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:04:00 EDT

WANdisco, the leading provider of Apache Subversion-based software and services for the enterprise, today announced that it has partnered with CloudBees to offer Jenkins - the number one open source continuous integration (build) server - with WANdisco's free, open uberSVN application lifecycle management (ALM) platform for Apache Subversion. Project managers can download Jenkins, together with enterprise support, from the new WANdisco uberApps Store, which offers one-stop shopping for application lifecycle management solutions.

Top 10 Reasons to Choose an Open Source Application Integration Solution

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:06:00 EDT

Why choose an open source ESB? To learn more about the value open source brings to application integration, download the whitepaper, “Top 10 Reasons to Choose an Open Source Application Integration Solution.”

Jaspersoft Picks Up Another $11 Million

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 04:45:00 EDT

Jaspersoft, the open source BI house, has gotten $11 million in new “strategic” capital financing. It’s coming from existing investors Red Hat, SAP Ventures and new investor Quest Software, along with the participation of all its existing major investors including Doll Capital Management, Morgenthaler Ventures, Partech International, Scale Venture Partners and Adams Street Partners. Jaspersoft’s already seen at least $32.5 million, with the last VC infusion maybe being a $12.5 million E round; it never did say. The money is evidently supposed fuel its “aggressive” product roadmap, global expansion and potential strategic acquisitions.

Likewise Names Leading Open Source Voice as CTO

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:03:31 EDT

Likewise, a software platform provider for identity, security and storage, announced today the promotion of Gerald (Jerry) Carter to Chief Technology Officer, starting immediately. Carter has been developing, writing about, and teaching on open source since the late '90s at events such as LISA, LinuxWorld Expo, SANE, SambaXP, OSCON, and the SNIA SDC. He was a member of the Samba core development team from 1998-2009 and has authored both "LDAP System Administration" and the third edition of "Using Samba," as well as for O'Reilly Publishing. "Jerry has been such a vocal advocate of the open source community and a driving force of the great differentiation of Likewise technology - an open source, not just free product," said Barry Crist, CEO, Likewise. "As we begin to open more expansive channels in the storage arena, Jerry's expertise in building Likewise Storage Services will become increasingly valuable."

Hadoop Begets Hortonworks

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 07:30:00 EDT

Yahoo, which needs to turn a buck as well as focus on its own issues, is spinning out its Hadoop unit into an independent new company co-funded by Benchmark Capital called Hortonworks after the Dr. Seuss character Horton the Elephant. It’s a nice whimsical touch considering Hadoop is really a stuffed elephant who had his identity stolen, which may explain why the code is sometimes cranky. Hortonworks will compete against other Hadoop commercializers like Cloudera, IBM, newcomer MapR and its buddy EMC and figures to accelerate Hadoop’s adoption by making the code “more robust and easier to install, manage and use for enterprises and technology vendors.”

Apache Takes in OpenOffice Waif

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 06:30:00 EDT

This is not exactly going to come as news to anybody but the Apache Software Foundation has taken in the Oracle-orphaned OpenOffice.org for incubation under its Apache 2.0 license. Open Document Format (ODF) architect Rob Weir said in a blog post that the breakaway LibreOffice people tried to “smother” the project “in its crib” because they “see Apache OpenOffice as a mortal threat to their project, since its gain comes only at their expense” by garnering all the developer talent. Weir basically says they should stop playing a zero-sum game and get back to trying to diminish Microsoft’s hegemony. Apache plans to try to collaborate with LibreOffice, which may be strong on Linux but whose market share on Windows is negligible compared to OpenOffice. Maybe they’ll reunite at some point. Who knows?

EBay Acquires Open Source E-Commerce Platform Magento

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 13:36:00 EDT

EBay Inc. has announced that it is buying open source e-commerce platform maker Magento Inc. which helps merchants build online stores with functions that include payment capabilities, marketing services, merchandising, content management and inventory management. The company had taken a minority stake in the Los Angeles based Magento last year. EBay indicated that Magento would be a fitting addition to its newly created "open commerce platform" group, X.Commerce in order to provide merchants with an all-encompassing range of web commerce solutions. The company plans on creating a developer ecosystem around the product so that retailers will have greater control and flexibility over their stores. The deal is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2011.

Jahia Launches Jahia 6.5, the Next-Generation Enterprise CMS

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:53:59 EDT

Jahia, provider of next generation Open Source CMS solutions, today announced the commercial release of Jahia 6.5, the first open source, zero-coding, next-generation CMS, featuring a broad range of Enterprise capabilities. The new release bridges web, portal, social, search, mobile user experience, and content management, with a single composite platform.

Android Security Issues - A By-Product of Using Open Source?

Tue, 31 May 2011 07:15:00 EDT

A lot of talk has been circulating lately about security issues in Android. Should anyone really be surprised to discover that an open source system is not only open to legitimate developers but also to hackers? Is it reasonable to expect that a system developed and maintained by thousands of heterogeneous developers can be relied upon to behave reasonably well under all circumstances? The concept of Open-Source is very appealing. Highly talented developers have created tremendous products and generously shared them with the rest of us. Individual developers are not at issue here. The issue is with the concept of building critical systems on an unsupported framework such as Android.

Venture Capital for Open Source

Thu, 26 May 2011 05:00:00 EDT

Open Ocean is a leading early-stage venture capital company, with a particular emphasis on European start-ups deploying user community or open source business models. Open Ocean was the first major owner in MySQL AB, which was later sold to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion in 2008. Above and beyond many venture capital firms, Open Ocean is also able to leverage its direct experience as founders of MySQL to provide hands-on support to the management of companies receiving Open Ocean's funding. Open Ocean is led by partners Patrik Backman, Ralf Wahlsten and Tom Henriksson and by "community and open source wizard" Michael "Monty" Widenius, the original developer of the MySQL database and co-founder of the company MySQL AB. Open Ocean Capital just closed its ‘Fund Three' with approx. $60M (€40 M) in capital in the first closing. The fund kicks off the first widespread outreach from the former MySQL team to founders and start-ups in Europe and beyond.

Open Source Software Making Broad Strides Across the IT Landscape

Tue, 17 May 2011 09:00:00 EDT

More than half -- 56 percent -- of respondents believe that more than half of software purchases made in the next five years will be open source. Once viewed in some quarters as a fringe movement and unreliable, open-source software is now a dominant force in the IT industry. It has been embraced by both the public and the private sectors and is being implemented across a wide variety of markets and applications such as social publishing and big data.

Online and Offline Access to Calendar, Emails, Latest for Open-Xchange

Wed, 11 May 2011 04:00:00 EDT

Open-Xchange, provider of business-class open source email and groupware, has announced availability of its Mobile Web App, which gives smartphone users online and offline access to appointments, emails and contacts while on the road. With a smartphone like the iPhone, Android or Nokia Symbian device running a web-based browser, Open-Xchange Mobile Web App is optimized for low bandwidth connections providing instant and fast over-the-air access to data, which is safely stored on the Open-Xchange Server. In addition, users can conveniently initiate a call by clicking on a phone number from their Open-Xchange address book.

Red Hat Traffics with Troll – Again

Mon, 09 May 2011 07:00:00 EDT

Acacia Research, possibly one of the Top 10 trolls, or at least a Top 10 wannabe, said Friday that Red Hat had settled up with its Site Update Solutions LLC subsidiary and resolved the patent infringement litigation Site Update started in the federal court down in the Eastern District of Texas. The settlement is “confidential.” Patent watcher Florian Mueller is pretty confident Red Hat paid Acacia off. If true, it’s the second time in six months Red Hat has written Acacia a check, moving Mueller to crack that Acacia should start a “frequent licensee” program, “pay for 10 patents get a license to the 11th for free.” The patent at issue wasn’t Linux-related and described a “process for maintaining ongoing registration for pages on a given search engine.”

Attachmate Guts Novell

Thu, 05 May 2011 09:00:00 EDT

After taking possession of Novell, Attachmate’s first reaction was to gut the place. According to published reports “hundreds” of surprised employees in Provo, Utah, where Attachmate means to return the company’s headquarters back from Massachusetts, were laid off Monday. One report put the number at 700-800 people and said sales, HR, legal and corporate operations were particularly hard hit. Attachmate didn’t say how many were let go but product lines are reportedly also being trimmed. Staffers on the open source Miguel de Icaza-led Mono Project, the cross-platform version of Microsoft’s C#, Common Language Runtime and.NET framework, were let go

Google Seeks Patent Protection for WebM & VP8

Mon, 02 May 2011 07:30:00 EDT

There is now such a thing as the WebM Community Cross-License (CCL) Initiative, which is out collecting patents presumably to protect the royalty-free open source file format and its VP8 video codec created by Google against any infringement claims made by the MPEG Licensing Association. MPEG LA, which is forming a patent pool – and being investigated by the Justice Department for it – has maintained that “VP8 is not patent-free.” The newborn CCL effort has so far got 17 founding members that have “agreed to license patents they may have that are essential to WebM technologies to other members of the CCL” for free. They are identified as AMD, Cisco, Google, HiSilicon Technologies (for itself and its parent Huawei), LG, Logitech, Matroska, Mips, Mozilla, Opera, Pantech, Quanta, Samsung, STMicroelectronics and its 50-50 joint venture ST-Ericsson, TI, Verisilicon Holdings and the Xiph.org Foundation.

Yahoo Might Spin Out Hadoop: WSJ

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:00:00 EDT

Yahoo is thinking about spinning Hadoop out into a free-standing company that would continue to develop the open source widgetry, charge licensees for support and compete against start-ups like Cloudera and distributors like IBM, according to the Wall Street Journal. Yahoo would take a “significant” piece of the operation, the paper said, quoting “people familiar with the matter.” Apparently Benchmark Capital has talked to Yahoo about forming a Hadoop company confident Yahoo could make a “ton of money.” The Journal also quotes Forrester analyst James Kobielus as saying the Hadoop market could be worth billions of dollars as its use widens beyond web companies.

Cloudera Puts Out New Hadoop

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:45:00 EDT

Hadoop’s prime commercializer, Cloudera, has started pushing its third rev of the popular Big Data open source data management framework inspired by Google’s MapReduce as the competition for such widgetry is heating up. Tested for production use, it’s supposed to have improved performance, greater stability, and extended authentication throughout. It integrates with business intelligence tools and RDBMS systems like Informatica, Jaspersoft, MicroStrategy, Netezza, Talend and Teradata and, besides Apache Hadoop 3, now includes HBase, the Hadoop database for random read/write access; Hive, the Facebook-built SQL-like queries and tables for large datasets; Pig, the Yahoo-developed dataflow language and compiler; Sqoop, Cloudera’s MySQL-Hadoop connector; Flume, its own data-loading program; the Hue GUI; and the Zookeeper configuration tool.

Oracle Abandons Commercial OpenOffice

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:15:00 EDT

Oracle said Friday that the commercial Open Office it inherited from Sun that Sun used to call StarOffice is toast and that OpenOffice.org will be moved to a “purely community-based open source project.” It’s unclear whether Oracle means a restarted community project although Oracle being Oracle it’s hard to imagine it throwing in with the vendor-neutral Document Foundation that forked OpenOffice last year in response to Oracle’s utter disinterest in, if not open hostility to, OpenOffice.org. What subsequently emerged was the OpenOffice.org challenger LibreOffice, whose second major release, 3.4, just went into beta. It’s also unclear what the move does to the proprietary Cloud Office suite that Oracle announced in December but the material just deleted from its web page doesn’t make its survival look too good despite its independent code base.

Cloud Expo Silicon Valley Opens Call for Papers for “Cloud Foundry” Track

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:15:00 EDT

Cloud Expo Silicon Valley has expanded its technical program through the addition of an all-new "Cloud Foundry" track to complement the already extensive selection of tracks. Cloud Foundry is the open platform as a service project initiated by VMware. It can support multiple frameworks, multiple cloud providers, and multiple application services all on a cloud scale platform.

Open Source - Community-Inspired Software Development

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 14:15:00 EDT

Open source developers and communities operate in a similar fashion as venture capitalists and technologists in Silicon Valley. Open source communities share the same merits: participation, collaboration, communication, interaction, and innovation. The World Is Flat author Thomas Friedman said that "the most disruptive force of all" is that of the increased ability for people anywhere in the world to collaborate. In his book, he re-told the story of how Behlendorf had founded the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), a big self-organizing community of software developers. Apparently Behlendorf wasn't the only one working on the project he was working with so he started to collaborate with the other programmers to -- simply put it -- get things done faster. This collaboration eventually gave birth to ASF.

Open Innovation: Achieving Open Source Success

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:07:00 EDT

Open source has been an agent of innovation for the past years. More than 10 years ago, standards were dictated by the bigger technology companies. However, the past decade has reflected a transformation that distinguishes open source as the de facto choice for majority of global organizations. Open source today sets the trends. Open source, characterized by collaboration, communities of developers, and access to source code in relation to software development, and the business models built around it, continue to reshape the IT ecosystem.