Cloudera lands funding. SourceForge acquires Ohloh. Novell reports Linux growth. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory

Cloudera shows signs of progress
GigaOM reported that Cloudera raised $6m Series B funding from Accel and Greylock and is now looking beyond web applications to wider enterprise adoption of Hadoop. Cloudera also announced its first certification program for Hadoop.

Open source goes mainstream in the UK
There have been signs of change recently with regards to open source adoption in the UK, which has traditionally lagged behind the rest of Europe and the US. CBR Magazine provided an analysis of …

The big news to kick off this week was Oracle’s announced acquisition of Sun Microsystems. There is already a lot of discussion of the integration challenges, how Oracle is getting into hardware (or as Matt Asay describes it, having an ‘iPod moment’) and of course, the implications for open source software. What stands out to me is the fact that the world’s biggest proprietary database player — one of few software giants that still sells and supports primarily proprietary software — will own the world’s most popular open source database, MySQL. It is unclear how significantly MySQL figures into the deal, but given Sun spent $1b acquiring it and further invested in its enterprise readiness and use, …

Open source in government. Sourcefire announces relationships with Symantec and Microsoft. EPL supercedes CPL. The cost and potential savings of open source. The origins of open source. IBM and Sun - back on? And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory

# OStatic: Why Isn’t Open Source Even Considered at the U.S. State Government Level?

# Simon Phipps: Five Ideas To Get FOSS Into Governments.

# Sourcefire’s 3D system to be bundled as part of the Symantec Managed Security Services offering.

# Sourcefire has also announced a strategic relationship with Microsoft.

# The Eclipse Foundation has …

Since I’m creating a new install of a development environment on an XP gaming machine, I thought I’d just document the process for posterity. Make sure you are running at least Service Pack 2. Here is the version I’m installing: … Continue reading →

Sun reports second quarter results. Compiere reports 216% quarterly revenue growth. EnterpriseDB grows customers accounts. Hyperic and JasperSoft team up on BI for IT. Microsoft embraces Apache but resists GPL. And more.

Sun up or Sun down?
There was some comparatively good news from Sun, which reported a net loss of $209m on revenue down 10.9% at $3.2bn. As Sam Diaz at ZDnet notes, however, “after excluding one-time costs related to recent layoffs and other costs, the company posted a profit of 15 cents per share, beating analysts’ expectations of a 10 cent loss”. In regular trading, shares of Sun were up more than 5%.

Matt Asay noted the impact open …

The future of commercial open source software lies in commercial licensing strategies, but which are the strategies that are more likely to deliver the results vendors are looking for?

Much of the open source blog chatter over the Christmas period was related to open source business models/strategies, largely triggered by a post written by Dave Rosenberg in which he declared that commercial licensing, and specifically open core licensing will be all the rage in 2009:

“Typically we now see an “open core” freely available with “exclusive” or proprietary features only available when you pay. If you are trying to build a commercial business on top of an open source project, this is likely the right answer.”

…

A bumper CAOS Links rounding up the news and views from the festive period, including: Red Hat revenue up 22% in 3Q. Alan Cox departs for Intel. Evolving open source business strategies. The commercialization opportunity around OpenOffice.org. And more.

Official announcements
Red Hat Reports Third Quarter Results Red Hat

OpenLogic Survey Highlights Enterprise Perspectives on Open Source Application Servers OpenLogic

Asianux Concludes Triumphant Year, Welcomes Fifth Member Asianux

News articles
The future of open source …

Back in October last year a corporate accountability group called As You Sow attempted to persuade Oracle to detail its commitment to open source by publishing an Open Source Social Responsibility Report.

Oracle resisted the proposal but did promise to share more details on its use of open source in the next version of its Oracle’s Commitment social responsibility report. I just noticed that the renamed Oracle Corporate Citizenship Report (Pdf) was recently published (in late November as far as I can make out) and does indeed include a section on Oracle’s commitment to open source.

In the section “Open Source and Accessibility” Oracle notes that …

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with Juanjo Hierro from the Morfeo Project, a Spanish community of open source communities set up to speed up the development of Service Oriented Architectures-related software standards and create business opportunities for local suppliers.

Hierro explained that the Morfeo Project is based on “The Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits”, articulated by Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Solution:

“When attractive profits disappear at one stage in the value chain because a product becomes modular and commoditized, the opportunity to earn attractive profits with proprietary products will usually emerge at an adjacent stage.”

Christensen’s law has also been used by Tim O’Reilly …

Sun and Sourcefire report Q3 results. SpringSource elected to JCP executive committee. Alfresco launches Enterprise 3.0. How to go from 0 to 700 customers in one year. Open sourcing Jonathan Schwartz’s ponytail. And more.

Press releases
Sun Microsystems Reports Final Results for the First Quarter Fiscal Year 2009 Sun Microsystems

Sourcefire Announces 2008 Third Quarter Results Sourcefire

Sourcefire Adopts Stockholder Rights Plan Sourcefire

…