A few weeks ago (Computerworld, August 20) I wrote about commercialising our national IP. The basic idea — and it was basic — was that there is a lot of clever development going on within government and that this should be captured and commercialised where appropriate.
Business users of open source software should review their open-source licensing agreements, audit their use, and create formal policies for managing source code, especially mixed-source code.
JBoss has announced a faster version of JBoss Rules, the company’s open source business rules engine.
Open-source software vendor OpenLogic has unveiled a free software tool aimed at helping businesses look under the hood of their IT systems to find and inventory the open-source applications they’re running.
The New Zealand Open Source Awards has received 30 nominations so far, ranging from small to large projects, says Chris Daish, business development manager of Wellington’s Catalyst IT.
News that the New Zealand Automobile Association is to throw out Open Office in favour of Microsoft’s software is a blow to open-source ambitions. But it shouldn’t surprise. The AA cites interoperability as the major issue here and says, whether we like it or not, Microsoft Office, and its document formats, are a de facto industry standard.
Free Software Foundation (FSF) leader Richard Stallman said at the launch of version 3 of the General Public License (GPLv3) late last month that businesses are “foolish” not to adopt non-proprietary technologies.
A director of development company Catalyst, Don Christie, has been elected as president of the New Zealand Open Source Society.
Is 2008 the year of the open-source desktop? Red Hat Linux is now widely deployed on the servers in my datacentre. Users have no idea what operating system underlies our web applications and databases, nor do they care, as long as those tools are highly available.
Two start-ups in the open source management software field have received millions of dollars’ worth of venture capital funding.
For corporate environments, how viable an alternative to Microsoft is Linux and other open source software? I’m not qualified to answer that question, but as the issues around Microsoft’s copy protection, licensing and software quality mount, it’s one that more and more people are asking. The answers they reach, however, seem to be split pretty evenly on both sides of my concern.
As it happens, the finalists in the Mobile, Wireless and Telecommunications Solutions category of the Computerworld Excellence Awards fall neatly into each niche: Kiwibank, and its Mobile Banking; Canning and Associates Limited, with its WIZWireless rural/remote ISP solution; and Spinning Planet, with its global media convergence telephony and internet access implementation.
The presidency of the New Zealand Open Source Society is up for grabs, as the current president, Peter Harrison, is not standing for re-election.
A new IDC study says that the growth in adoption of stand-alone open source software is accelerating and that the total market will be worth US$5.8 billion (NZ$7.7 billion) in 2011.
The open-sourcing of the Java platform has brought new blood, fresh ideas and energy to the Java community, says Laurie Wong, product business manager for Sun software in Australia and New Zealand.