The Open Source Advocate

The short answer is that open source reduces the cost of software. It is widely accepted that software is a necessary cost of doing business in today's environment. Therefore, it is beneficial for companies to find ways to acquire software that minimizes that cost. I believe that the open source development model is the most efficient way to create software. In the traditional software development model, each software company creates an isolated software silo. Meanwhile, their competitors are spending resources to create software that does almost the exact same function! Compare that to the open source model, where worldwide resources can be shared to develop an application. Similar to the "invisible hand" of capitalism , there is an "invisible hand" of open source software. The idea is that when each individual works for their own benefit (fix bugs, add new features), it will benefit the entire community. When you have thousands of people doing this it a...

Imagine that you are a software engineering student, with one more year left of school. How do you plan on being hired by a software company, despite the fact that you have no real-world experience? The traditional strategy has been to find an internship with a company. If you can get an internship, it will provide you with a part-time job. The best part of the deal is that you get your real-world experience, which will make you employable after graduation. What do you do if there are no internships available? I propose that you should get involved in developing an open source project. Look for a project that interests you, and perhaps one that uses the programming languages that you would like to work with. For example, if you want to be a game programmer, look for an open source gaming project . There is no interview or job application, you simply start looking at the code and seeing where you can help. The development team will provide direction and encouragement of your eff...

I was on the Novell campus a few weeks ago attending the Utah Open Source Conference. One of the days I went to the Novell cafeteria for lunch. While I was filling my plate with food, a young man next to me asked, "So do you work here?". I replied with "No, I'm here attending the open source conference." A few seconds later I was hit with a question that I was not prepared to answer. "What is open source?" he asked. I was speechless. Did he just ask me what open source was? Is he joking? Nope, he looks pretty serious. Ahh, well then where to start? I only have a few seconds to explain it to him. I managed to come up with a horribly composed answer, and followed it up with "You know, like Firefox and Linux." He nodded and walked away. Now that I have had more time to think about this, I want to come up with a better explanation of what open source software is. That way I will be prepared for the next time this sort of thing happens...

You just may see this on your screen... This program was minimized on the bottom left side of the screen. Anyone other pictures of fun Windows errors in public places ?

I just received an email from a Cisco vendor who is pitching a new product that Cisco has acquired. Within this email, the vendor discredits open source in a couple different ways. Here is some of the content of that email: * Scalability – Our operating system supports up to 10k simultaneous connections per appliance regardless of hardware platform. We developed our own OS (AsyncOS) and do not rely on Linux, Sendmail etc. * Built from the ground up as a Sendmail/open source replacement * Truly fire and forget – All our spam and virus fighting technology is dynamic and updated every few minutes. We do not rely on any open source technologies, all our technology is developed by IronPort. You will not spend any time updating the appliance or trying to find ways to block new spam, that’s our job. No thank you, Cisco. I believe that open source is something to be proud of and not the liability that you claim it to be. Cisco claims to have developed their own operating system, but I doub...

Introduction I am having a great time attending the first annual Utah Open Source Conference . It is always great to meet the people you interact with in the open source community. Last night we had two keynote speakers, Matt Asay and Bruce Perens . Both presenters had great information along with some good humor. I want to discuss one of the ideas that Bruce Perens mentioned. He believes that open source vendors are not necessary, and that they do not add any value to the open source movement. I disagree with him on this point, and I will share my reasons below. Marketing Marketing is a necessary evil in a large economy. It is evil because marketing does not add anything of value to the product. It is necessary because it allows consumers to learn about the product and understand what it does. Some open source projects have been able to create a beautiful website that provides excellent information about the project, but this is not always the case . Even though the project m...

Let the conspiracy theories begin! Seriously, I want to consider how Microsoft will respond if Linux begins to heavily impact their profitability. Consider these possible actions: More anti-Linux marketing campaigns Microsoft has billions of dollars of cash that they can use to create a massive storm of advertisements, comparative "studies", and similar marketing schemes. The question is, will this work, or will it backfire? I think Microsoft is smart enough to balance this effort without causing a backlash. If a lie is repeated enough times, it will become accepted as the truth. Fortunately, open source has the benefit of word-of-mouth recommendations and truth on our side. Threatening customers with potential lawsuits Microsoft has been using this technique for a few years now. They claim that Linux infringes on their software patents, but they never specify the exact details of this infringement. If they ever did provide these details, the open source community wou...

While reading this article about a miniature Beowulf cluster built by a student and professor at Calvin College, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they were running it on Ubuntu. What was the reason they choose to use Ubuntu, even though they had more experience with Gentoo? For various reasons, we have been a Gentoo shop for a while. So it would seem fairly obvious that we would use Gentoo. But over time we had found Gentoo to be something of an administrative hassle. Since we wanted to keep Microwulf relatively simple (as simple as possible but not overly simple). and we had experience with Ubuntu , we decided to give that a try first. Sounds like a lot of people are discovering the value that Ubuntu provides!