While Oracle deserves some praise for its donation of OpenOffice.org code to the Apache Foundation, it is disappointing again to see a legitimate open source market contender that has been marginalized by miscommunication and mismanagement of the project by a large vendor.

OpenOffice.org, warts and all, was probably the most significant competition for Microsoft Office for years and in many ways demonstrated the advantages of open source, helping usher in wider use of it, as well as greater usability. OO.o was in fact my reason for originally investigating and moving to open source software more than a decade ago. Regardless of past mismanagement of community and technology, that competitive factor has been diminished greatly since Oracle took ownership of OO.o. Now, after prompting a fork — as has …

This is my 2 cents in the Open Source vs. Open Code vs. Commercial debate. And it's a long one...

Maybe some of you reading this are offended already, but bear with me, I'll get there. The way I see the Open Source model, having worked with OSS at MySQL for 6+ years now, is that this is a great way of developing software. Not brilliant, but great, but I'll get there also.

Users of OSS, in my mind, are OSS users for one or more of three reasons:

• It's Open - The users using OSS for this reason believes that being open is in and of itself a great thing, enough so to use OSS even when non-OSS is less expensive and/or better.
• Cost - OSS is typically less expensive than non-OSS, and this is the reason these users get here. There are then 2 subgroups here, one that represents users that just aren't funded at all, many websites are in this category, the users building Joomla and Drupal sites and …

We’re continuing to see signs that the dominant GPL open source license may be fading from favor among commercial open source software players. The latest move away from the GPL comes from content management software vendor Alfresco, which is moving to the LGPL after originally releasing its code under the GPL three years ago. The reasoning for the shift, according to Alfresco CEO John Newton, is the company sees greater opportunity beyond being a software application, particularly given the emergence of the Content Management Interoperability Services standard. Alfresco won mostly praise for its move, and it does make sense given where open source is going these days.

I believe the emerging trend away …

I’ve been talking to device manufacturers and the Linux-centered software providers that feed them code for mobile phones, TV set-top boxes, industrial control, automotive technology, medical devices, military uses and a slew of other categories commonly classified as embedded devices, and I can definitively report that I am not hearing or sensing any fear, uncertainty or doubt (FUD) as a result of Microsoft’s TomTom patent suit.

I wrote last month that the controversial MS TomTom suit was not aimed at Linux as much as TomTom and some market categories for Microsoft. While we must all remind ourselves that anything may be possible considering court rulings and Microsoft strategies, I don’t see Microsoft’s TomTom suit as truly aimed at Linux. If it is, I don’t see it having much, if any, impact on Linux. …

The MySQL Enterprise Monitor continuously monitors MySQL servers and alerts to potential problems before they impact the system. It helps eliminating security vulnerabilities, improves replication, optimizes performance, and more. Its newest feature, Quan (Query Analyzer), helps identify queries that could be tuned to improve performance. Quan enables database administrators to do the work that would otherwise require hours in just minutes, or even seconds, and it provides ongoing statistical information about the performance of your queries.

MySQL Enterprise Monitor is a commercial offering by Sun Microsystems, and so was the documentation. To help anyone (even if they're not customers) get a better and complete understanding of what exactly MySQL Enterprise Monitor is about and what it can do, we've decided to make its full documentation publicly available. This has been done now, and the docs are part of the MySQL Manual now; see: …

Less than two weeks ago, I posted my Database Survey. As of just a few minutes ago, I have had 215 responses. That's pretty awesome. I'd like to get at least twice that though.

I haven't looked deeply at it yet to see if there are any trends. I think it will be best to wait until the survey is closed. I did look at some of the responses, kind of as a quality check. Looks like MySQL is fairly well represented. I didn't see any DB2 responses (for primary database). I did see plenty of Oracle and a few Postgres.

I will leave it up for another 2 1/2 weeks (for a total of 4 weeks). If you haven't taken it yet, please do so if you get a few minutes. It only takes 5-10 minutes as there is only 25 questions.

Also, if you have a blog, post on forums (without spamming), or have any other ways to spread the word, I would …

Sparse notes from the talk, I noticed Sheeri recording some video, so sitting through that at some stage might make sense. There were no slides, this was a panel discussion. Suggested reading: Organic vs. Non-organic Open Source.

Does Open Source need to be “Organic”?
Brian Aker, Rob Lanphier, Stephen O’Grady, Theodore Ts’o

Taking code, and slapping a certain license on it, doesn’t a successful software project make.

Blurring the distinction, by marketing. Not doing any work to get external contributions.

Open sourcing a product one plans on “genociding”, its really bad.

“Corporate sociopathic Druckerism” — Brian Aker

“As long as the source code is …

Maybe it’s a coincidence but this week has seen evidence of tension between commercial open source vendors and elements of the open source user community. Matt Asay stirred up something of a hornet’s nest with his post questioning how open source vendors can find ways of encouraging users to contribute either code of cash in return for free software.

The question itself might be innocuous but Matt’s use of the term “free-riders” prompted a couple of angry responses. Storm in a tea-cup stuff really.

Meanwhile, in a unrelated …

I was just reading Fabrizio Capobanco’s take on the MySQL excitement (”this move is clearly into the right direction”) when it occurred to me that the situation is related to the comments recently made by the former CTO of Kaplan Test, Jon Williams, at the recent OSBC conference.

As I wrote at the time: “Another point Jon made was that the subscription model helps keep open source vendors on their toes as every year he gets to decide whether they will received another payment.”

In other words, as …