The Mellon Foundation will for the first time “recognize not-for-profit organizations that are making substantial contributions of their own resources toward the development of open source software and the fostering of collaborative communities to sustain open source development.” (Mellon.org) Multiple awards will be given at each level: $25,000 and $100,000 depending on the significance and benefits of the project.

“To nominate an organization for an award, please click here. Each nomination must address one organization and one software project. You may nominate more than one organization, or nominate the same organization for more than one project, but each organization/project pairing must be a separate nomination. You may nominate your own organization or project.” (Mellon.org)

This is a great way to recognize an open source project!

People are now using open source methodologies and collaborative approaches to create new religions that often focus on working together to create a belief system rather than receiving instruction from a small inner circle of leaders. Examples include Yoism, the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn, and the open source theology movement.

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As anticipated, Oracle announced yesterday that they will release some Ajax user interface technology into the open source community.

“Oracle said it would donate a set of Ajax-enabled user-interface components in the next few months. The Redwood Shores, Calif., database company said developers would be able to assemble the reusable components on a page and connect them to an application data source. The company has integrated Ajax with JavaServer Faces technology to build highly interactive user interfaces that run 100 percent within a browser with no downloads, officials said.” (TechWeb)

This is not a big announcement, but it does support Oracle’s recent focus on open source. From my perspective, open sourcing existing technology is a better open source strategy for Oracle than the acquisition strategy that it has been rumored to have been pursuing.

At JavaOne today, Sun announced that they will open source Java. They have not yet released a timeframe because they still need to figure out exactly how they will open source it and resolve a few issues first. This is a positive step in the right direction for Sun.

I have discussed the difficulties of getting wide adoption for Linux on the desktop in quite a few blog entries (here and here). In short, we have a chicken and the egg problem: there are not enough Linux desktop users for application vendors to justify the port to Linux on the desktop; however, users are not willing to move to desktop Linux until it supports the applications they require. I have also talked about the lack of vendor driver support that would allow users to plug and play with any device they happen to buy at the local electronics store (scanners, printers, digital cameras, MP3 players, etc.) The human tendency to resist change is another factor slowing the growth of the Linux desktop.

Yesterday, a Wall Street Journal reporter, Mark Golden, discussed his experiences with installing and using desktop Linux on his Pentium III Sony Vaio. He tested six distributions: Linspire, Fedora, Suse, Xandros, Mandrake, and Knoppix. His findings are not surprising. Printing, email, surfing the web worked well, but getting sound and graphics cards to work (drivers) along with multi-media applications and iPod / digital camera operations did not work properly. As I have said many times before, until we get the applications and drivers for desktop Linux in good shape with plug and play capability for consumer devices, ordinary users will continue to struggle and ultimately will not use Linux on the desktop.

Golden also struggled with OpenOffice.org due to his use of complicated Microsoft Office documents that could not be properly converted. Most of us, meaning ordinary office workers, can easily convert documents back and forth between Microsoft Office formats and OpenOffice.org formats; however, people using some of the more complex features of either application will find conversion between formats difficult.

The blogosphere has a number of opinions on Mark Golden’s experiences. For example, Scott Granneman of theopensourceweblog thinks that Golden should have tried Kubuntu instead of the six that he originally evaluated, and Ed Caggiani of Life in the Valley thinks that Linux should be used where it performs well: on the back end running servers.

I still think that Linux on the desktop could be a great solution for some people if we can just get over the application, driver, and plug-n-play issues.

Josh Kopelman on the Red Eye VC blog recently had a thought-provoking post that was widely discussed within the blogosphere. He stated that 53,651 people subscribe to the TechCrunch blog feed. I am one of these subscribers along with 53,650 other people who follow the web 2.0 trends closely, and most of us probably know quite a bit about Digg, MySpace, Flickr, Frappr, del.icio.us, and many other web 2.0 sites. Herein lies the problem; most of the rest of the billions of people on this earth have never heard of these sites, and we throw these terms around as if everyone else in the world is as immersed in this phenomenon as we are. Om Malik of the GigaOM blog recently realized that even many of his tech-savvy friends who read blogs and listen to podcasts are not fully aware of the web 2.0 phenomenon.

At this point, you are probably wondering if I am ever going to tie this back to open source software. This idea, that a few tech savvy early adopters do not represent the entire population of people, is also applicable to open source software. In March, I blogged about how difficult it is to get users to try a new browser (Firefox) when most people do not understand what a browser is and why they would want a different one. We get so caught up in our techie world where people understand terms like browsers, operating systems, Firefox, del.icio.us, and Flickr that we do not always think about how to reach the masses. This requires education and lots of it. A number of times recently, I have informed reasonably tech-savvy people that OpenOffice.org can actually open and save documents in Microsoft formats to clear up the common misconception that the two are completely incompatible.

If we want to drive broad adoption of open source software, we need to take the time to step back and patiently educate people in terms that they can understand without assuming that people have the same knowledge and passion about the topic as we do.

Sun is unlikely to release Java under an open source license if James Gosling, the father of Java, has anything to say about it.

“There’s a bunch of people out there getting all hyper, and I don’t believe there’s anything there for them to get hyper about,” Gosling said when asked about the possibility of a full open source route for Java.

Source code for Java already is available and has been for 10 years, he said. The current model for Java is close to an open source model, Gosling said. (InfoWorld)

Interesting. “Close to an open model”, but not open source. Peter Yared (previously Sun’s CTO of Liberty Network Identity initiative and CTO of Sun’s App Server Division) and others have been publicly calling for Sun to open source Java. I tend to think that Sun should open source Java. Releasing the JVM under an open source license would have quite a few benefits (greater community innovation, better adoption within the LAMP stack, etc.)

This type of infrastructure software has become so commoditized that I do not see how Sun could possibly be getting any measurable benefit by keeping it proprietary.

Gosling also had this to say:

Despite some assertions to the contrary, Sun is doing fine with making money from Java, he said. The company earns money with its Java Enterprise System network services software and also in selling services and support, Gosling said. (InfoWorld)

Assuming this is true; Sun could continue to make money from an open source Java by offering value-added software and by selling services and support as described above.

I cannot seem to find a compelling reason for Sun to keep Java proprietary. This is especially perplexing with Sun, a company who typically “gets” open source and has done quite a bit in support of the open source community.

In a recent OpenForce blog entry, Zack Urlocker makes a couple of interesting observations about open source software complexity, ease of use, and features:

“It used to be that to go open source meant making trade-offs. For example, Open Office still never quite does as good a job as Microsoft Office. But when you get to the On Demand systems, I would argue that the open source systems are in many ways better than the traditional closed source on-site systems: Less complexity, better user interface, easier to use. That may not necessarily be due to the free availability of the source code, but more in the spirit of open source that focuses on the basics, not all the bells and whistles. And why is that? Because open source developers shouldn’t be caught up in adding every feature under the sun in order to justify an annual upgrades.” (Zach Urlocker)

Zack makes a great point about how “open source developers shouldn’t be caught up in adding every feature under the sun”. Open source software seems to be better at figuring out which features are really needed by most people and not getting into the trap of trying to satisfy every need that a potential customer might someday have. Too many proprietary companies end up with bloatware because they try to provide too many features.

By providing the source code, open source software often avoids feature bloat. The source code gives a customer with a specific need the flexibility to add a feature. In some cases, projects nurture open source sub-communities who serve this purpose. Firefox, for example, has a robust community of developers who write extensions and themes that people can use to enhance Firefox with a flexible set of additional features. By providing these separately, Firefox avoids becoming too bloated with infrequently used features.

It boils down to this. When considering feature bloat, open source software has an advantage over proprietary software because the source code provides more flexibility to the user community. Users can choose to add features and functionality as needed without relying on a vendor to satisfy their every need.

More on the document format wars that I mentioned on Monday. Now a group working closely with Microsoft is accusing the Massachusetts government of having an open source bias.

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I read a really interesting blog post this morning called Microsoft…Attacked By Killer Bees. Here’s the idea:

“A hive of bees weighs just a couple of pounds. If a man were attacked by a single animal weighing just a few pounds…say a Killer Chihuahua, it wouldn’t be much of a contest. But 5 pounds of killer bees make a formidable assailant. They succeed by being many, being quicker, more agile and extremely determined.” (Below the Bottom Line)

The point of this blog entry is that as Microsoft tries to shift from a software company to a media company, they are facing many small, but nimble competitors. “In other words, they’ll be surrounded by Killer Bees.”

This got me thinking about how you could extend this line of thinking and apply it to the software market with open source software as the killer bee. As of 12:33 PM today, there were 118,717 registered open source projects hosted on SourceForge alone. Like the killer bee, there are many open source software projects that can move and respond quickly to changes in the environment. The larger software companies like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP and others will continue to face tough competition from open source software. The software companies that are able to successfully embrace open source software, like IBM, will probably be in a better position to prosper in the long-term.

With killer bees and open source software, you might be able to swat a few down (or acquire them); however, more will come to take their place.