Blogs

Matt Asay’s blog entry on Feb. 26 calls into question OpenLogic’s business methods of offering FOSS support and lifecycle management. He refers to this practice as “skimming the fat” off the top of the open source community. I don’t see it that way and here's why.

Open source software is an example of a user-driven innovation network. These are defined by large groups of people working on some common goal. The internet has become a new and very profound facilitator for this type of network, and FOSS is the best example of a user-innovation network to date.

Li Yang, who works for Freescale Semiconductor, gave a very interesting talk at linux.conf.au a few weeks ago about the obstacles of getting people from all around the world involved in FOSS projects. He started off by saying that he'd like FOSS to be really global, and not just global in the sense that developers from North America, Europe and Australia are involved.

Chris Coppola has posted a good overview of the discussions that were had at the Open Source Think Tank on his blog. I thought I'd add my comments as well.

I've been traveling for 3 weeks straight now and am definitely looking forward to heading home. The experience though has risen my awareness of the challenges that licensing and legal compliance pose to organizations wanting to participate in the FOSS community that are not based in the United States.

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of being asked to participate on a panel at the first annual Qualipso conference in Rome. For those who have not yet heard of it, Qualipso's charter (from their website) is:

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The launch of some new endeavors goes quite smoothly, the iPod for example, and some don’t, evidence the iPhone. The launch of FOSSBazaar and FOSSology might fall into the latter category.