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Top Ten Open Source Innovators
42istheanswer writes "Open source is so much more than Linux these days. A lot is happening beyond the popular operating system. Open source models are thriving in CRM (SugarCRM), messaging (Scalix), and systems management (Zenoss). Datamation has identified ten leading commercial open-source innovators and the projects they are working on in their article, Ten Leading Open Source Innovators."
What do all these stories of open source "innovation" have in common? They all include prominent mention of how much venture money the companies have raised. I can only assume this publication is Straight Out of Silicon Valley (tm).
I have been pretty under impressed with SCALIX, which really doesn't do anything that Outlook does. Zimbra I think is breaking new ground, but they really need some serious speed boost to make it competitive with outlook. I do think that if the Zimbra folks get mashups right they will leapfrog Outlook and Exchange, one of the weakest areas out there.
I think people complaining here are missing the fact that Linux has had a bitch of a time breaking into the enterprise messaging market. That market really drives out Linux IT shops, and replaces them with expensive exchange servers. The larger a company grows, the more you have to make the executives happy. And nothing makes executives happy like blackberries, integrated email and calendaring.
Isn't open source free (as in beer)? The one that caught my eye was "OpenAir" ... which certainly doesn't appear to be in that category (contact us for pricing!).
j
Open Source software tends to work on a very darwinian model. Yes, there are "category killers" (who wants to code up a new text editor?) but for the most part, when a new "category" of open source application start taking off, it generates a lot of interest. You see about a zillion projects form up on Source Forge. Those that are able to actually produce usually get weeded through based on the quality and features. With price being removed as a deciding factor, it becomes all about how good the product is. Those that are good, survive. Those that aren't, don't. Occasionally, the old stand-bys get replaced.
What I see a lot of is companies, like Second Life (gaming company) who will "open source" part of their product, but not all of it, hoping to garner free work from the open source community. Devs are the backbone of the OSS community. With out someone to sling the code, nothing gets done. Most devs are wise to these tactics, since they're not nearly as new as the marketing poohbahs think they are. Not only does it not draw as well as they'd hoped, but it has a serious backlash. Most devs, myself included, view companies who engage in such tactics with suspicion and refuse to work on the projects even if they become fully open source later.
The other business model I've seen a lot is that the product is "open source" but some how you can never get the stuff to install or work properly unless you pay for them to host the application. This *always* ticks me off and I usually let everyone I know who might be looking for a simliar package not to waste their time. I love my Tivo, and I don't mind paying for it so don't take this the wrong way. This is what I've dubbed the "Tivo business model". If any of you ever downloaded the Tivo open source project, thinking that you might be able to get a working Tivo out of the deal, you know what I'm talking about. Yes, you could eventually get it working if you hacked away at it long enough or you can just buy the thing and get on with your life.
IMHO, if you don't have a working project that I can download for free, install on my own hardware, and get working without having to hack the source code in a major way, you're not really an open source project.
2 cents,
QueenB.
HDGary secures my bank
That list reads more like a pump and dump stock tip email. Who's getting paid here?
Speak truth to power.
P2P certainly did. Using P2P for swarming download amplification? That's another story. It had been tried before, but it took Bram's genius to make it work.
oh please, the *way* BT does file sharing is simply amazing compared to the earlier competition. It IS innovative, give them some props there
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RMS created gcc. Without gcc there would be no LINUX or BSD. Most of the utilities in the article would be impossible without gcc. Who was the original author of gcc? RMS.
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RMS created most of the GNU utilities without which most of GNU lINUX and BSD would be worthless.
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RMS was the first to proclaim the need for a free OS platform. He was the first to
try to make such a platform a practical reality. (GNU).
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RMS created the GPL.
There is no one who has made contributions to the Free software and/or "open source" software communities equal to that of RMS.This includes LINUS.
I realize that RMS can be idealogical, stubborn and hard to deal with, but the fact remains that in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, no one has made as great a contribution.
Open Source may largely be available for free, but the ads do go to show that the bills still have to get paid. I wish like crazy that there were a better way to make money off of open source rather than charging like crazy for support or constant maintenance. Closed source companies provide craptastic support in many cases, but their licensing is more or less a permit to print money...
Do you understand the difference between "open source software" and "free software"?
By your description SugarCRM is not free software but it certainly sounds like it is open source. Likewise, it sounds like SugarCRM is keeping to the spirit of open source but is not keeping to the spirit of free software.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Unix has had GUI long before Apple even existed
TFA is total crap. Out of the 10 projects I've heard of 2 (KVM and MontaVista), and I'd hardly call any of them (except maybe KVM) even remotely "innovative". They just happen to be what venture capitalists think is profitable - virtualization and enterprise "management" software. Actually most of them aren't even real products but "platforms" or "frameworks" which can only be described in buzzwords. Quote:
What the hell is that supposed to mean anyway?
The real strength of open source is its technological superiority in some fields (e.g. LAMP, Mozilla, some open source kernels), new approaches in development (the "distributed development" model) and some technological innovations (BitTorrent etc), but definitely not in "enterprise software".
The word 'innovation' has a funny meaning in OS, doesn't it? Zenoss is a Tivoli clone that now "claims it provides 80% of the functionality of the big offerings". rPath is another virtualizer. Sugar CRM is another CFM system. Linux is a copy of Unix. Even Frozen Bubble is a copy of Puzzle Bobble! They couldn't come up with their own puzzle game??
COM, Java, Civilization -- those were innovative.
Yeah, blah blah blah, linux has more innovation in its little finger that Microsoft has in its whole bloated body, I'm a troll, etc etc.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Exactly. BitTorrent does one thing: co-ordinating clients so they can distribute data. Everything else for creating a complete file-sharing system -- search, accounting (enforcing ratios, etc.), authentication, whatever -- can be layered on top of this, but the hard part is taken care of by BT.
Saying that BT is "incomplete" because it doesn't do stuff like that is like saying that a coffee grinder is incomplete because it doesn't also brew the coffee
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 Whoops, silly middle mouse button...
"The "private business model" is a red herring because it implies that there's some other viable business model. But in the case of open source it's not"
And then, old cute Diogene after carefully listening why indeed there's no movement in Universe, put himself on his feet and slowly went away.
Change Diogene by Novell, or Red Hat, or MySQL AB, or...
"Make a note that all the suggestions that people have made about how to make money with open source don't really have anything to do with the open part."
So there's no money on sellings since money always comes from what you sell, not on the selling fact.
"The "open" in open-source may give many benefits, but making money isn't one of them. And that's by design."
Even clever Bill Gates thougth there were no bussiness-case in the "Internet thingie"... till the facts showed him his mistake. You better say *you* don't know how to make money out of producing open source software. I myself have earned a life out of it for the last ten years, go figure.
There's one thing that's true: open source is by no means a basis for a bussiness as profitable as one based upon closed source can be. But that's no wonder: there's no other bussiness -in the whole world, in the whole History, with a profitability potential as the privative software one. Intellectual Property-based bussiness are the most profitable ever, and closed source-software based ones are the more profitable among them. Of course, the problem with such a bussiness is that is terribly unethical and diminishing for society as a whole.