Open Source Daily Journal

With the fourth month of the Writers Guild of America’s strike showing no signs of ending, some companies are taking a look at the key issues involved. One of the most publicized issued involves the profit sharing of proceeds from online distribution. With this on the table, some companies which include Founders Media Group, Hollywood Disrupted and Virtual Artist would like to meet with representative of the Guild in order to explore new avenues of experimentation in finding ways to resolve the issue. The group is putting forward the idea of alternative online distribution which just might hit the right note with the striking WGA.

From the very rise of an instant manufacturing to the growth of open-source business models, these trends show that innovation can bloom even in a grim economic climate.
Take a look at the nine trends driving business in 2008 — and a deeper explanation of the ever surprising secrets to Apple’s success. Last spring, the marketer and blogger Hugh MacLeod posted a question on his site: If an open source is such a phenomenon, where are all the open source billionaires? His audience wasn’t bit amused. The open source software relies on a community of a volunteer developer who amend program.

One of the key findings is that the open source software has had a superficial impact on all the enterprise database market in that adoption has been widespread but shallow. While the open source databases have been widely deployed for the Web-tier applications, there has been a minimal adoption in the enterprise application tier, and adoption for the enterprise applications is at this time limited to certain but specific application of workloads.
To which I’d always respond, yes, but you’ve got to start it somewhere, and it’s impressive to be able to start with some of the most and very demanding customers on the planet. It’s a bit like programming platforms in the entire enterprise.

1. Free Redistribution

2. Source Code

3. Derived Works

4. Integrity of the Author’s Source Code

5. No Discrimination against Person or Groups

6. No Discriminations on Fields of Endeavour

7.  The Distribution of License

8.  It Must not be specific to a Product

9.   It Must not restrict other Software

10.  It Must be Technology Neutral

(Source: Opensource.org)

A. Compliance Levels

To support governments and other bodies in acknowledging and selecting
standards that conform to this Requirement, the OSI defines two levels
of compliance:

1. OSR Compatible

This indicates that the owner of the standard has self-certified
that their standard conforms with this Requirement, and all Compliance
Criteria. Anyone may ask the OSI to review an OSR Compatible standard;
if the OSI finds that the standard is incompatible, the owner must either
modify the standard or stop using the OSR Compatible mark.

2. OSR Conformant

This indicates the OSI has reviewed a standard, as submitted by the owner,
and certified that it fully conforms to the OSR. The OSI may charge a fee
to balance the costs of this certification.

3. Versioning

The OSI may, at its sole discretion, update the Criteria from time to
time to ensure they continue to fulfill the intent of the Requirement.
These updates will include an explicit version number, and the most
current version will always be available from

(Source:Opensource.org)

Open Source Software or OSS which refers to software that source codes are distributed with no charge or limitations on modification has spawned a significant amount of interest for the past years. It sells this approach as a business model that emphasizes quicker growth and lower overhead as well as a closer customer relationship and exposure to wider market. The concept of Open Source is based on the philosophy of free software wherein it advocates freely available source code as a fundamental right with an inclination of course to a more commercial approach including a business model and development tactic. Encompassing development methodology, this software can be incrementally enhanced and more easily tested that result to a highly dependable product.

MIT soon collaborated with Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Carnegie-Mellon University. They all thrived to develop software that is able to communicate with each other with the use of the ARPAnet. ARPAnet, built by the Defense Department in 1960 is the first transcontinental high speed data network. It was formerly intended as an experiment in digital communication until is rapidly grew to link hundreds of universities, research laboratories and defense contractors. With this, it allowed free exchange of information along with exceptional speed and flexibility. Programmers then began to dynamically contribute to different shared projects. And all these led to casual principles and guidelines for dispersed software development rooting from the Hacker Ethic.

That is a very difficult question to ask for big businesses who normally have complex customized programs that allows them to function as a business. But the economic conditions have been forcing a lot of thought into the technology, considering both the advantages and disadvantages of the many successful open source projects that have already been out on the market. To ask that question would result in varying answers depending on who you ask, for large companies that use large programs and technology would not be so keen on adopting such a public technology. This does not however mean that they are not considering them for even some of the staunchest developers of closed systems have been trying out some of these technologies on a limited basis, proving the benefits, which is mainly cost are enticing enough for them to take notice. Continue Reading »

More and more businesses are considering the benefits in terms of cost in re-deploying their previously closed programs onto open systems that can be quite prone to hacking. Security has been on the agenda and is one of the major focus of developers and technology experts who have been promoting the new and improved open-system designs. Securing a very large distributed system that uses open technology is a very large task but developers are getting there, finally agreeing on how best to approach the security of the many projects being deployed or are already in place. Continue Reading »

The methods at which businesses and communities are trying to reach out and garner members vary depending on the technology they are promoting. Imagine FireFox that has been a long time in the making, a product of the Mozilla Foundation that came up with a web browser that was not only faster but much better than the long standing leader of the pack, Internet Explorer. They considered the changing web and how people are using the web, designed a framework, published the designs and asked for comments, suggestions and just about anything you might want to say to improve on the proposed browser. Get back down and incorporate the best suggestions in terms of improvement and release the browser into the wild that is the internet, viola, success in the making. Continue Reading »