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February 28, 2006
Business Models & Openness
There's a really great interview with Esther Dyson over at Open Business. She discusses openness as a phenomenon so prevalent on the internet, and how businesses are adapting to that environment.
Posted by admin at 12:10 AM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2006
Security & Source Code
Pete Finnigan recently featured a mention about Scott McNealy's comment about how Open Source is important to solving Security problems. Also it's amusing McNealy's potshot at Oracle, near the bottom of the article.
In affect it's all about auditing of what by whom. The more critical eyes on the code, the more bugs and potential problems that can be solved.
Bruce Schneier has a good discussion of this where he concludes that although Open Source certainly does not guarentee you're going to have better security, it certainly has that potential and tendency.
Posted by admin at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2006
How Disruptive Is Open Source?
Along with the discussion of Open Source technologies is often how disruptive they are to established technologies, and commercial companies.
Open-source continues to loom large for Oracle as their recent shopping spree attests. With Sun's dual-source model it continues to confound entrenched companies how they should deal with open-source, whether it's a fight, mixed, join-em or acquire-em approach. In Joe McKendrick's ZDNet Blog he asks is it SOA or Open-source which is killing the software industry faster?
Although open-source is clearly a factor, and a big one for firms like Sun, there is still much to debate here. Some argue that Open-source innovation remains somewhat elusive. I tend to agree on the whole. Here's why.
I think there are a few different ways open-source projects get started as can be seen in our open-source interviews post a couple of weeks ago.
1. University or government project where public funds fuel the work (think CiviCRM)
2. Starts with a small community building up around a need (think Toad or Apache)
3. Commercial company sponsoring existing project to promote a better market playing field (Google, IBM, Novell)
4. Pet college project which then gains a huge following (Linux)
Of course there's a lot of overlap here, but the point is that there are a lot of starting points. Fame and respect among ones peers is certainly a driver, but leveling the playing field is often just a big a driver, think Firefox, and Linux as serious alternatives to Microsoft offerings.
Innovation is still difficult and startup companies with great ideas still abound to try their hand at building the next great internet platform or application. It will likely continue to be a combination of grassroots open-source projects, and commercial startups that fuel innovation in the future.
Posted by admin at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2006
Debt Larry Style
All of us who work in the Oracle space enjoy watching, talking, and reading about it's charismatic leader's lifestyle. So this article over at Siliconbeat piqued my interest. Larry Ellison's Budget Woes. Some goodies:
1) Life Style -- annual $20m
2) Interest Accrual -- annual $75m
3) Villa in Japan -- $25m
If you want to read more, I heartily recommend Mike Wilson's The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison : *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison. It is a well written, and often funny account of Oracle through the 1990's. Sales folks booking uncompleted sales, battles of personalities, and plenty of drama, with interviews of ex-employees, and ex-wives alike!
Posted by admin at 07:52 AM | Comments (0)