There are many questions that arise out of Oracle’s copyright and patent infringement complaint against Google regarding its use of Java in Android. There are several things that make the suit significant to the entire industry: it centers not just on software copyright, but also software patents (an increasingly and hotly debated issue), the quickly-expanding smartphone market and open source software. The first question is: what is Oracle doing?

Many are speculating that this is simply an effort to further and more effectively monetize Java, a storied program language that has move more toward openness and survived several supposed death sentences as newer languages arrived. Still, with all of the open source parts — GlassFish application server, MySQL database, OpenOffice.org suite — is Java the most significant to Oracle? It may be, but regardless of what Oracle is doing, its legal moves here may certainly have an impact on the …

Compliance. Funding. Financial results. Copyright assignment. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

Compliance
# The Linux Foundation launched the Open Compliance Program, including tools, training, and consulting.

Funding
# VentureBeat reported that Joyent has raised $7m in a second round of funding.

# Basho Technologies secured $2m from angel investors in a Series C preferred equity financing.

# …

Stephen O’Grady and Simon Phipps have both recently published interesting posts on the current state of open source, with Stephen pondering the relative growth of open source and Simon wondering whether the “commercial open source” bubble has burst.

What they are describing, I believe, is the culmination of the trends we predicted at the beginning of 2009 for commercial open source business strategies – specifically the arrival of the fourth stage of commercial open source.

What is the fourth stage of commercial open source? In short: a return to a focus on collaboration and …

One of the issues that has arisen from the ongoing debate about the open core licensing strategy is the continuing confusion about open core compared to the use of open source components in a larger proprietary product – such as IBM’s use of Apache within WebSphere.

To some people there is no difference between the two (since they both result in products that make use of open source but are not open source), however it is clear to me that while the end result might be the same these are very different strategies that involve different approaches to engaging with open source communities/projects.

While open core has a clear definition there is no agreed term or definition for the latter category.

Over the years we have used a variety of terms to describe it, including “open and …

New projects. Old arguments. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

New projects
# Gemini Mobile Technologies released Hibari, a new open source non-relational database for big data.

# Lockheed Martin launched the Eureka Streams open source project for enterprise social networking.

# Sony Pictures Imageworks expanded its open source initiative with the release of OpenColorIO.

Old arguments
# Kirk Wylie discussed the …

In the first part of this post I discussed the underlying division that drives the debate about open core, and the futility of arguing about what constitutes an “open source company” without any relevant definition.

Since then Monty Widenius has proposed a definition that would exclude any company that does not produce open source software (including open source support providers) and any company that does not provide access to 100% of its code (which would often exclude Red Hat as it moves to open source acquired code).

In the meantime others have declared that there is no such thing as an open source company and …

SugarCRM. Funding for EnterpriseDB and Morphlabs. Even more core. And more

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

Bittersweet
# OStatic asked whether SugarCRM has violated open source principles.

# Larry Augustin clarified SugarCRM’s approach to open source and openness.

# Savio Rodrigues advised anyone considering SugarCRM not to get hung-up on source code availability.

Funding round
# EnterpriseDB has reportedly raised $7.5m of a …

There are signals of continued problems and dysfunction — namely lack of support, organization and communication — in the OpenSolaris community. This follows on a deterioration of the OS leadership and support since Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, including the elimination of OpenSolaris CDs, one of the things that made the open source version of Solaris more like Linux.

We had speculated on the fate of Sun open source software under Oracle and while we acknowledged Oracle’s participation in, contribution and commitment to and opportunity from open source software, we …

Funding for Eucalytus and Moodlerooms. SkySQL offers support for MySQL. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Eucalyptus Systems raised $20m in a second round of funding led by New Enterprise Associates.

# Moodlerooms reportedly raised $7.15m in equity funding.

# SkySQL announced its intention to provide support & services for the MySQL ecosystem.

# StatusNet launched the open source StatusNet Desktop Client.

# Rhomobile …

Elephants on parade: Hadoop goes mainstream. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

Elephants on parade
# Cloudera launched v3 of its Distribution for Hadoop and released v1 of Cloudera Enterprise.

# Karmasphere released new Professional and Analyst Editions of its Hadoop development and deployment studio.

# Talend announced that its Integration Suite now offers native support for Hadoop.

# Yahoo …