Or: “Don’t be a Cnut.”

Yesterday I had a look at the response of the Joomla! community to the news that Microsoft had signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement and was contributing code to the content management project.

You probably won’t be surprised to find that some people don’t like the idea. The speed and vehemence of their rejection of Microsoft’s involvement in the project is entirely predictable, but none the less depressing for that.

The usual complaints were rolled out:

when Microsoft contributes a major product to open source, we’ll listen Microsoft is only doing this to sell more proprietary software

.
Taking those in reverse order: yes Microsoft is doing this to encourage Joomla developers to use Windows. Just as IBM supports Linux to …

A special extended edition of Tech Messages for 2010-04-15 through 2010-04-24:

• The Onion Uses Django, And Why It Matters To Us
  I love Django too.
• Open Source Network Monitoring and Systems Management - Zenoss Blog: No Node Left Behind: Datacenter Barometer: BitNami Simplifies Stacks
• mysql-cacti-templates
  Offers complete templates and a method for adding your own. Highly recommended.
• Increase maximum size of PST files
  Microsoft Outlook …

Talend raises $8m. Cisco leaves a TIP. Exit strategies. And more.

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

# Talend raised $8m Series D from existing investors Balderton Capital, AGF Private Equity and Galileo Partners.

# Cisco promised to open source Telepresence Interoperability Protocol.

# Alfresco Community 3.3 included CMIS 1.0, Google Docs and IBM Lotus integration.

# Exit strategies – secrets of success for open source companies, from the Open Source Think Tank.

# …

I caught some of the keynotes and discussion at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit today, and was particularly interested in the panel discussion on open source and cloud computing. While we are used to hearing and talking about how important open source software is to cloud computing (open source giving to cloud computing), moderator John Mark Walker posed the question of whether cloud computing gives back? The discussion also rightfully focused on openness in cloud computing, how open source might or might not translate to cloud openness and the importance of data to be open as well.

The discussion also centered on some issues regarding open standards and how open is open enough for cloud computing? …

If the recent debate about open core licensing has proven one thing, it is that the issue of combining proprietary and open source code continues to be a controversial one.

It ought to be simple: either the software meets the Open Source Definition or it does not. But it is not always easy to tell what license is being used, and in the case of software being delivered as a service, does it matter anyway?

The ability to deliver software as a hosted service enables some companies that are claimed to be 100% open source to offer customers software for which the source code is not available. Coincidentally, James Dixon has this week highlighted one …

One of the first special reports I wrote for 451 Group was an analysis of the open source systems management vendors on the scene — GroundWork, Hyperic, Zenoss, OpenNMS Group, Nagios Enterprises and some others. These named ones are those that made it and while there was some reckoning in the market and there have been changes, it is interesting to see these players still plugging away, pushing into new markets and powering open source for systems, network and application monitoring and management, including cloud computing environments.

When acquired by SpringSource a year ago, there was some question as to the real value of open source systems monitoring and management company Hyperic, which had taken the …

Last week I presented “From support services to software services – the evolution of open source business strategies” at the OSBC event in San Francisco.

The presentation was effectively a work in progress update on our research into the various strategies employed by technology vendors to generate revenue from open source software.

It included a partial explanation of my theory that those strategies do not exist in isolation, but are steps on an evolutionary process, and also introduced our model for visualizing the core elements of an open source-related business strategy.

I provided a number of examples of how the model could be used to compare the strategies of various open source businesses. …

Updating the MPL. Funding for Lucid and eXo. StatusNet. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

Updating the MPL
# ZDnet reported that the 10-year-old Mozilla Public License will be updated by the end of 2010, while Mitchell Baker explained the process.

Funding for Lucid and eXo
# Lucid Imagination raised $10m in series B funding from Shasta Ventures, Granite Ventures and Walden International.

# eXo Platform raised $6m from Auriga …

Novell’s Q1. The future of OpenSolaris. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca

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

# Novell reported Linux platform revenue of $37.5m in Q1, up 6.4%.

# Internet.com reported that Novell’s Linux business broke even as Microsoft deal revenues fade.

# As the H reported Oracle exec Dan Roberts confirmed that OpenSolaris has a future at Oracle.

# Citrix acquired Paglo, launched GoToManage service.

# StatusNet …

There’s been a fair amount of attention – both positive and negative – on dual licensing in recent weeks. A few days ago Brian Aker wrote: “The fact is, there are few, and growing fewer, opportunities to make money on dual licensing.”

It is a sweeping statement, but one that is worth further consideration, especially since, as Stephen O’Grady noted it is directly contradicted by Gartner’s prediction that: “By 2012, at least 70% of the revenue from commercial OSS will come from vendor-centric projects with dual-license business models.”

Success?

I remember reading this prediction back in December but dismissing it as …