Open source is frequently compared to a religion complete with zealots and evangelists, and some religions are even using open source methodologies to create belief systems (known as open source religions).

However, Rev. Don Parris has extended this idea to a new level:

“This ordained Baptist minister with the Charlotte, N.C.-based Matheteuo Christian Fellowship has made it his mission to spread the good word about free and open source software (FOSS). The Greek word “Matheteuo” translates to “to make disciples,” and Parris has extended the moniker to include making other software users into Linux and open source disciples themselves.

Parris is a longtime user of the Ubuntu Linux distribution and a contributor to the Freely Project, which is a community of users that promotes open source software (OSS) in churches across the United States as a less expensive alternative to the high licensing costs associated with owning Microsoft Windows. Through the Freely Project, a cadre of technically savvy Linux users helps churches migrate from Microsoft Windows to free or less expensive alternatives.” (SearchOpenSource.com)

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I ran across this Free Firefox Facts eBook on Asa’s Blog. You can download a copy from firefoxfacts.com

As Schwartz takes over from McNealy, insiders are saying that Sun is considering open sourcing Java in time for the JavaOne conference in May. Schwartz led the open sourcing of Solaris, and he could be considering the same for Java. “According to sources inside Sun, an ongoing debate over whether to open-source Java is coming to a head with the JavaOne conference looming May 16.” (eWeek)

Peter Yared (previously Sun’s CTO of Liberty Network Identity initiative and CTO of Sun’s App Server Division) has been publicly calling for Sun to open source Java and take other actions related to open source. At this point, we can only speculate on what Sun will do. I personally think that Sun should open source Java; however, we will just have to wait and see what happens.

The Federal Aviation Administration saved $15 million dollars and completed an upgrade to the air traffic control systems in one-third of the projected time.

“The upgrade is part of a broader service-oriented architecture initiative that will replace proprietary traffic management systems with applications using Java, Web services, open-source software and Oracle products. …

The air traffic flow system, called the Enhanced Traffic Management System, predicts traffic surges, gaps and volume across the national airspace. The FAA tracks about 8,000 airplanes at any given time. The agency uses the real-time analysis system to keep the skies running smoothly.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is on all traffic management systems at the traffic flow central processing facility, located at the Transportation Department’s Volpe Center in Cambridge, Mass. More than 100 sites rely on the system for air traffic management, including military facilities and international sites.” (FCW)

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Have you ever wanted to know just how much money has been invested in open source companies? A recent article, The Open Source Venture Capital Universe, attempts to answer this question and more characterizing open source investing as: “A rollercoaster – as trite as that image may be – is the right analogy for venture capital investing in open source companies. And what a long, strange trip it’s been.”

Matt Asay puts the figure somewhere around $1.3B and rapidly growing. It is anyone’s guess for where open source investing will go from here.

I found this info via Alexander Muse at the Texas Venture Capital Blog.

Ross Mayfield describes the Power Law of Participation as patterns that “have emerged where low threshold participation amounts to collective intelligence and high engagement provides a different form of collaborative intelligence” (Mayfield). Within this model, a large number of users of social websites will not have a high level of engagement thus taking advantage of the value with few contributions back to the community while other users will contribute most of the content. This generates two very different forms of intelligence, collective and collaborative, which co-exist together to form the essence of a community.

This reminded me of a number of studies on open source that support this idea. For example, a case study of the Apache project published in 2000 found that 80% to 90% of the submissions came from a set of 15 core developers in a community of more than 3000 people. A study of the GNOME project had similar results with 11 people contributing most of the output. Relating this back to the Power Law of Participation, the small number of core community members leads to collaborative intelligence, while the larger community provides an important collective intelligence by contributing bug reports, ideas, and comments. These two types of contributors and the resulting intelligence generated both feed off of each other and allow the community to prosper. I would be interested to see how this applies to other communities.

Sources:

A case study of open source software development: The Apache server (Mockus, Fielding, & Herbsleb, 2000).

Effort, co-operation and co-ordination in an open source software project: GNOME (Koch & Schneider, 2002).

I have heard a number of people talk about Richard Stallman’s ideas in the context of wanting software to be free (as in price). This is a misunderstanding about how the Free Software Foundation defines the word “free” meaning freedom, including the freedom to view the source code, modify it, and redistribute it to others.

A recent incident in Brazil highlights this misunderstanding. At the 7th Annual International Free Software Forum, Stallman asked for a small donation to the Free Software Foundation (US$2.00 – $5.00) in exchange for the time that he spent signing autographs and posing for pictures. This resulted in a geek protest and march at the event. Richard Stallman responded with the following:

“I believe that all software ethically must be free, free in the sense of respecting the users’ freedom, but I don’t believe that software must be gratis–nor services, such as autographing or posing. Rather, I believe people deserve the freedom to decide whether to do these things. So I decline to support the newly formed gratis autograph movement. Instead, I hererby launch the free autographing movement, which advocates everyone’s freedom to sign autographs or not.” (NewsForge)

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Rob Enderle does not think Linux will ever get traction as a desktop OS. He presents an interesting argument based on history with IBM’s OS/2 and the OEM business model. He highlights a number of challenges including OEM costs, the number of Linux distributions, excessive advocacy, and more.

He also outlines “A Reliable Road Map to Linux Desktop Success”

“The list of clear requirements includes:

• Clear OEM resources to match or exceed those currently provided by Microsoft. This would include R&D support and co-marketing dollars.
• Embrace existing desktop requirements (roadmaps, application support, proprietary drivers, consistent patch releases schedules and documentation, clear escalation lines for support).
• Seek out reasonable advocates who will take direction from their executives and not from other advocates.
• Make it profitable for the OEM.” (Enderle)

His conclusion is that he doubts these requirements can be achieved. I think that we have many challenges before Linux can become a viable solution for broad desktop deployment, but I am not quite this skeptical.

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A recent ZDNet interview with Jesper Anderson, Oracle’s senior vice president for application strategy, shed some more light on Oracle’s open source strategy. Oracle has a strong preference for the use of Linux internally at Oracle, which Anderson said is driven by Larry Ellison.

“I mean I’ve been in meetings with Larry where people walked in with purchase order requests for big Sun Solaris or HP-UX servers and Larry just looked at it and said ‘Nope, denied’.

And then he turned around and said ‘it’s not the money, you come back to me with a purchase order, same amount or more for Linux, and I’ll approve it right away’,” Anderson said.

It was good to see that this strong preference for Linux usage internally at Oracle is not driven as a cost savings move, but for more strategic reasons.

Anderson also pointed out that “the service component of our software business is increasingly important. The maintenance revenue of our business is a bigger and bigger part of our business.” This seems to be part of why they see open source as an opportunity for them. I am still concerned that Oracle may try to acquire a critical mass of open source companies, which would consolidate too much of the open source ecosystem under one company; however, with the Red Hat acquisition of JBoss, this is becoming less of a concern.

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Earlier blogs have discussed the tremendous opportunity that open source could have for developing nations; however, this does not mean thinking of open source as a cheap alternative to Windows. The real opportunity for open source in developing nations is for governments to use open source as a way to grow the local software ecosystem by creating local support and services companies that help organizations more effectively use open source software. Local software companies can also use open source software as a starting point while building value added products on top of it.

Currently, many governments encourage the use of open source software; however, they have few open source developers. The UNU-IIST Global Desktop Project is working to address this issue. The UNU sees that

“Being a ‘passive consumer’ rather than an ‘active participant’ is not in a developing nation’s best interest as both government and business will miss out on what essentially is the power of open source: technological self-determination. Of perhaps more immediate interest are the new businesses that are growing out of the open source phenomenon. Because the underlying technology is freely available, entrepreneurs can build value added products on top of open source software, giving startups quicker time to market while lowering development costs.” (UNU)

The UNU-IIST Global Desktop Project is chartered with growing the number of open source developers in Asia by focusing on improving the open source desktop. It will be interesting to see the impact of open source over the next few years as governments start to focus less on using it as a low cost alternative and more on how they can leverage open source software in order to grow their local software ecosystem.