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In 2009, developers created an average of 52 new projects per day.  These projects cover the spectrum of functionality from games to tools to desktop applications to frameworks.  Everyone is familiar with Linux, Apache, MySQL and other well known projects.  Brand new projects don’t always receive the same level of awareness, so at Black Duck Software we set out to remind people that great new projects are being created every day.  That’s the motivation behind our annual list of open source “Rookies of the Year.”   Congratulations to our 2009 winners and their developers!

I've noticed what seems to be a growing demand on behalf of downstream recipients of open source software to provide a list of all the licenses which can be found in the software provided. Generally, what is meant is a 'license overview' of the various packages in the software and not a comprehensive analysis of all the licenses in the source package.

About RPM packages and distributions

What a downstream recipient normally receives and installs is a compiled binary package. In the case of the 'RPM' distributions such as openSUSE, Fedora and Mandriva, this is a binary 'RPM' package (e.g. mypackage-0.1.i586.rpm would refer to a package called 'mypackage' in version 0.1 for a i586 (32bit) architecture).

Both BT's open source innovation capability, Osmosoft, and its open source governance unit, the Open Source Operations Team, aim to operate in as transparent a manner as possible. In support of this we contribute to initiatives such as FOSSBazaar and the European Legal Network, and where possible publish information about how we deliver using F/OSS technologies and how we implement the associated governance.

BT recently had an article on open source initiatives published in the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals Journal. This covers topics such as:

So once an entity decides to "open up" its proprietary product, what does it entail?  Porting to open source operating environment is not similar to that of porting to a tightly managed operating environment (Windows, MAC OS X, HP-UX, Solaris) since there are more than a dozen varieties of Linux operating environments in the market, amongst them Ubuntu, Redhat, SUSE, Debian each with their own intricacies.  Of course one can decide to build its own distro from scratch.

Eran Strod of Black Duck Software will give a webinar about the "Top 10 Questions to Ask Before Exporting Software Containing Encryption" on Thursday, January 14th (11:30am ET, 8:30am PT).

This webinar is free of charge but you have to register.

Here is the full description: