At OSCON this year, I noticed a distinct increase in the number of open source startup companies that are emerging.  More and more open source developers are realizing that the same mechanism that enables them to develop better software faster can also be used to lower the cost of starting a business. And Entrepreneurs who may not have been paying attention to open source as a social movement in the last few years are realizing it's a heckuva good way to get investors' attention.  In the last few months, several open source startup companies have generated investor interest, primarily in new, emerging categories.  This includes the likes of SugarCRM (CRM), JasperSoft (Reporting), …

Dave Rosenberg, author of the previously mentioned report over at Release 1.0 on Open Source Community has also written a brief but interesting article on what he calls "the voodoo" of open source marketing, citing examples of MySQL, SugarCRM and Firefox.  Since I've been in software marketing for twenty years, it's not voodoo to me, but it's clear marketing folks and developers often speak different languages.  Engineers want to be factually correct and marketeers want to be dramatic.  If an Engineer was marketing Sushi they might call it "cold dead fish"; technically correct, but not very compelling.  Or putting it differently, if Engineers are from Mars, Marketing is from Uranus.  (Yes, that's a joke.)

Though Rosenberg gets a bit over analytic citing John Seely Brown and John Hagel, the point is clear: …

Release 1.0, the newsletter of software industry pundit Esther Dyson, has published a very lucid report called "Open Source Community: How to win friends and influence developers."  Consistent with the whole open source model, the report, ah, requires registration.  Ok, well, at least it's available online free.  Not everything in the report is 100% correct, but author David Rosenberg has done his homework, and he provides a good overview of the value of community and the different models for working with an open source community.  If you're thinking of starting an open source company, working for one, or investing in one, then this report is worth reading.

It's safe to say that companies like MySQL would not exist today if it were not for the hard work of the community.  While MySQL has …

Today's AlwaysOn conference included a panel session on called "Is the World Going Open Source?"  The panel was led by former Oracle COO turned VC Ray Lane and included panelists Jonathan Schwartz (Sun), Marten Mickos (MySQL), Kim Polese (SpikeSource), Rod Smith (IBM) and lawyer Rahul Kapoor (Morgan, Lewis, Dewey, Screwem and Howe LLP).  I think the answer is an obvious "yes" in the sense that not only is software increasingly open source, but startups are building on open source, we are seeing more and more open, collaborative technologies, and there's a raft of open and participative systems emerging, whether it's blogs, podcasting, peer-to-peer VOIP, social networking and so on.  Many of the old models of maintaining proprietary closed systems, whether they are enterprise software or communications systems, in my view will face increasingly tough propositions in the wake of the rapid growth of …

Tony Perkins, editor-in-chief of the AlwaysOn-Network, is publishing a three-part interview with MySQL CEO Marten Mickos.  For those who have not seen Marten present his views at conferences, it's a good opportunity to get his perspective on the database industry and open source in general.  Mickos is different from the usual hyped-up Silicon Valley CEO and also different from the open source extremists.  Mickos' view of open source, and that reflected in the interview, is that open source is simply the most effective and pragmatic way to do things.  But its not a religious issue, it's just a good business approach. 

• Part 1: MySQL's Non-Traditional Customers
• Part 2: …