When talking about open source software, it is often necessary to mention software that is not open source. Most people use the terms “commercial” or “proprietary” to classify the other kind of software. But neither of these words are right because open …

Roberto Galoppini has an interesting case study on selecting an open source project management tool. In it, he describes his SOS Open Source methodology for filtering open source projects by looking at a number of factors organized into three categories: sustainability, industrial strength, and …

The Open Source Way is a great resource for developers who want to start their own open source project. It is a wiki of lessons learned and best practices gathered primarily from experiences working on the RedHat and Fedora projects. One page that …

I have finally gotten around to reading Clay Shirky’s excellent book Here Comes Everybody. I love Clay’s writing style and the way his perspectives make me think. One of the points that really resonated with me was about open source. But before …

In case you have not been following the open source blogosphere, there is an interesting discussion happening around a new term called “open core.” Open core describes the strategy of building a business on selling commercially licensed software with open source licensed components or …

Nuxeo CEO Éric Barroca has an excellent post that breaks down the hype and decodes the marketing speak around commercial open source software. He doesn’t name names but he does call out some of the claims and language of some commercial open source vendors. …

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As potential customers start to evaluate open source software in the hopes of reducing costs, some are surprised to find the savings is not what they expected. This is not a “free puppy” scenario where the software is so “needy” that …

Last week, I was in San Francisco at the Gilbane Conference on Content Technologies. Like all Gilbane conferences, I enjoyed attending the sessions and getting together with my friends in the industry. My panel was on “Different Approaches to Purchasing a CMS: Open …

John Newton’s blog post on the commoditization of ECM was so good that I nearly stood up and clapped when I finished reading it. In this article, John talks about how ECM has become commoditized – not to the point where the business problems …

In his summary of the SIIA Information Industry Summit, John Blossom makes some interesting observations about the future of the publishing industry. His ideas were largely based by the presence of Craigslist CEO, Jim Buckmaster, and his measured customer focused approach to the content …