As well as contributing to the CAOS research practice here at The 451 Group I am also part of the information management team, with a focus on databases, data caching, CEP, and - from the start of this year - data warehousing.

I’ve covered data warehousing before but taking a fresh look at this space in recent months it’s been fascinating to see the variety of technologies and strategies that vendors are applying to the data warehousing problem. It’s also been interesting to compare the role that open source has played in the data warehousing market, compared to the database market.

I’m preparing a major report on the data warehousing sector, for publication in the next couple of months. What follows is a rough outline of the role open source has played in the sector. Any comments or corrections much appreciated:

Unlike other …

OIN offers cash for patents. CentOS crisis averted. Microsoft denies GPL violation. And more.

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

# Open Invention Network offered individual inventors cash for patents, and acquired patents from V_Graph.

# The H Open reported that the management problems at CentOS are now resolved.

# Sam Ramji told Network World in detail why Microsoft believes its Linux IC code did not violate the GPL (from 15m 30s).

# Canonical delivered an on-premise version of …

When open source goes bad. Is open source a success or failure? And more.

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

When open source goes bad
The H reported on the apparent turmoil at the CentOS project, while Jay Lyman offered the CAOS perspective. Meanwhile Slashdot reported that Alan Cox has quit as Linux TTY subsystem maintainer.

Success or failure?
Danny Windham, Digium CEO, …

Intuit launches open source project. SFLC on Microsoft GPL violation accusations.

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

# Intuit launched open source projects and community to develop apps based on its Intuit Partner Platform, while Savio Rodrigues declared Intuit’s open source play is all business.

# SFLC’s Bradley Kuhn told SDTimes Microsoft was in violation of the GPL.

# MySQL and Memcached-based appliance vendor Schooner Info Tech has raised $20m in Series B funding.

# …

Microsoft contributes to Linux. Acquia raises $8m. And more.

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

Microsoft contributes to Linux
Microsoft announced that it is to contribute device driver code to the Linux kernel under the GPLv2. Prompting us to publish a CAOS Theory Q&A. Answering one questioning we failed to ask, ZDnet reported that Microsoft’s Linux contributions should find their way into the 2.6.32 release.

Acquia raises $8m
Mass High Tech …

Microsoft has announced that it is to contribute code to the Linux kernel development effort under the GNU General Public License (GPL) v2. What on earth does it all mean? Here’s our take on the situation. With thanks to Jay Lyman for his contribution to the following:

Q. This is a joke, right?

A. Not at all, although if any announcement is better suited to the image above, we can’t think of one. Microsoft has announced that it is going to contribute code to Linux under the GPLv2.

Q. What code is Microsoft contributing?

A. Microsoft is offering 20,000 lines of its own device drivers to the Linux kernel that will enable Linux to run as a guest …

Funding for Aptana and Jolicloud. Ingres targets MySQL. Trent Reznor on Open Core (sort of). And more.

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

Funding
# Aptana raised $7.8m in funding from Rembrandt Venture Partners and Accel Partners.

# Jolicloud raised $4.2m in series A funding for a Linux-based Netbook OS.

Not with a bang…
# Sun reported preliminary revenues for Q4 2009 of $2.58bn to $2.68bn, compared to $3.78bn a year ago.

Best of the rest
# Ingres …

Microsoft makes a patent promise. JBoss is certifiable. And more.

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

# Microsoft announced that it will be applying its Community Promise to the ECMA 334 (C#) and ECMA 335 (CLI) specifications, reducing patent concerns related to Mono.

# Red Hat achieved EAL 2+ security certification for JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

# A European Commission white paper on standards stirred some controversy with regards to open source. …

Governments. Governance. Customers wins. And more.

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

Governments
The Examiner provided a two part interview with Daniel Risascher, Office of the CIO, Department of Defense, on open source at the DoD, while Government Technology Magazine reported on how open source software and cloud computing can save government money. Similarly, The UK Conservative party delivered a paper on the future of open standards, open source, SOA and cloud for UK Government, while it was reported that Vienna to …

Red Hat betas Enterprise Virtualization, partners with HP for SOA. And more.

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

# Red Hat announced that its Enterprise Virtualization portfolio of products is now available for beta testing.

# Red Hat collaborated with HP on SOA.

# David Megginson published mixing GPL and non-GPL: a different perspective. A new take on the MySQL/MariaDB storage engine debate.

# UK Government CIO shed some light on “G-Cloud” plans and how the new open source policy provides an opportunity.

# WAZI: …