We continue to watch the growth and evolution of open source systems management vendors, particularly those growing their enterprise products and customers. Companies such as Groundwork, Hyperic and Zenoss — featured last year in our report CAOS 4 Managing in the Open — have demonstrated traction and staying power in the enterprise, largely based on [...]

There are some indications that yes, indeed, Linux netbooks may have to fear Apple Netbooks. They should. While I’m bullish on the opportunity for netbooks that are based on Linux, that is based partly on the fact that Linux faces really only one competitor, which is actually a ‘retired’ OS (Windows XP). An Apple netbook [...]

I’ve long been lucky to have some of the key open source software conferences occurring in my home town, Portland, Oreg. While I was sad to see recently that the biggest Portland open source show of all, OSCON, was moving to the Bay Area, I was encouraged this week when the Linux Foundation announced LinuxCon, [...]

Agenda
* Essentia builds out open source community, collaboration and commercial prospects
* Untangle releases Re-Router to bring open source security software to Windows PCs, networks
* A report from the Linux Plumbers Conference in Portland, Oregon
* Google Android is out with G1 handset from HTC, T-Mobile
iTunes or direct download (35:15, 8.1MB)

I’ve been talking to mobile OS, mobile middleware and mobile application vendors over the last few weeks as part of my research for another CAOS special report on open source in the mobile market. At the same time, the news has been full of headlines about the first Google Android phone, the outlook for an [...]

In case anyone’s wondering, I’m off on paternity leave for a few weeks following the birth of my second child last Wednesday. Until then I’ll leave you in Jay’s capable hands.

This week’s Linux Plumbers Conference in Portland was a great opportunity for many of the Linux kernel community people to get together, challenge one another, hash out some differences and hone their similarities and synergies. What strikes me as perhaps most interesting is that while there was some discord felt throughout the event among the [...]

When I talk to vendors, I can often tell how truly open source they are based on their response to the question: what has been the impact of the economy on your business? Those that still have a foot or more in the proprietary software world frequently say, ‘Well, times are tough, but we aren’t [...]

Until this week Infobright’s claim to open source fame was its partnership with MySQL that enabled its analytical data warehousing software to act as a storage engine for the open source database.
However, the company is now taking the open source route itself by releasing the code behind its Infobright data warehouse (formerly Brighthouse) as [...]

Agenda:
* Red Hat buys Qumranet
* Google’s Chrome browser
* Status of MySQL founder and CTO at Sun
iTunes or direct download (26:30, 6.1MB)

We’ve sure seen some interesting maneuvering on virtualization recently by the major OS players Microsoft, Novell and Red Hat. While Red Hat sought a bigger stake in virtualization with its $107m Qumranet acquisition, Microsoft and Novell were busy releasing the first fruit of their interoperability lab - native support and performance for Novell’s SUSE Linux [...]

Matt Asay has continued his public conversion to the merits of proprietary extensions/value-add services with the publication of a new post in which he argues that the Open-Core Licensing model is not just good for business but also good for community-relations.
“It’s actually quite difficult to distribute a 100 percent open-source product and monetize [...]

CA and IBM, two of the so-called Big Four in systems management software, announced this week a federated configuration management database (CMDB) system for interoperability of their software. Something like this comoing from two of Big Four (BMC, CA, HP and IBM) wouldn’t normally hold much meaning for open source players such as GroundWork, Hyperic [...]

Still no official news on the rumour that Monty Widenius has left Sun, but Dave Rosenberg confirmed over the weekend that he is leaving MuleSource, the open source ESB vendor he founded in 2006 with Ross Mason, creator of the Mule project.
“After two and a half years I’ve decided to transition out of my operating [...]

The technology and buzz keep on coming in the netbook space, which consists of lower-cost, smaller-size notebook computers (many of them Linux-based) that are as much like a smartphone as they are like a PC. One of the most exciting develoments this week was Dell’s introduction of its first line of netbooks to come with [...]

Valleywag reports that Monty Widenius has quit Sun. The Pythian Group reckons its true. Kaj Arno’s non-denial denial would appear to confirm it despite his protestations otherwise.
“Technically there is no resignation letter. However, I spoke to Monty yesterday, and yes, resignation is an option he considers,” writes Kaj before expanding on some of the reasons [...]

I mentioned just few weeks ago that virtualization specialist Qumranet, would make an “obvious target should Red Hat decide it needs more hypervisor in-house expertise.”
It was so obvious that Red Hat announced today that it is to acquire Qumranet for $107m in cash, adding its KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) platform and SolidICE virtual desktop infrastructure [...]

I don’t want to go overboard on Google’s Chrome browser given the fervoured image of another world suggested by some reports, but the implications of the release are worth considering.
Jay Lyman has already covered the most disappointing feature: the lack of support for Linux or Mac machines.
Meanwhile, Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation argues that [...]

I’ve been excitedly anticipating the release of the new Chrome browser from Google, but now that it’s out in beta for Windows, I don’t think I’ll be using it very much.
It’s too bad, because I was just thinking what a good thing Apple’s Safari and Mozilla Firefox have been, pushing innovative features and forcing the [...]

I finally got around to reading this update from Red Hat about Spacewalk, the open source version of Red Hat Network Satellite, launched in June.
Other than the progress in attracting participants and patches, the interesting news is that PostgreSQL support is being added after being demanded by the community. The roadmap confirms that work on [...]