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99% Open Source

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Everything to do with the realities of adopting an Open Source approach in business IT (e.g: the benefits expected and undertakings misunderstood). Image credit: http://www.opensource.org/

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Latest Activity: Nov 15

Open Source involvement survey

I created a 4 question surveymonkey and asked for responses during Week 1 of March 09. The following are the results:

Response Summary

Total Started Survey: 4
Total Completed Survey: 4 (100%)

1) Do you use Open Source in some form? 4/4

2) Do you produce solutions based on Open Source? 4
Software: 4/4
Support Services: 2/4

3) What type of Open Source solutions do you use? 4
Application Software: 4/4
Application Development Software: 3/4

4) If you do use Open Source in some form
do you know what the usage undertaking or the licensing rules are? 4
Yes: 3/4

Thanks for those who were able to respond. It would be good to repeat a similar exercise if the group grows.

Discussion Forum

Increased adoption of free software 5 Replies

Started by Martin Kendall. Last reply by Paul Walsh Feb 19.

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Comment by Martin Kendall on May 26, 2009 at 4:16pm: Lisa, thanks again for the additional info. Yes, I am a member of Cambridge Network and your idea is a good one.

Alex, thanks for stepping in. What would be really good IMHO is a focus on what we could define as popular as opposed to what there is. I wasn't planning on a survey but ideally (and this is may be a little naive) wanted those in the group to put forward an open-source technology that they apply in some way - which may also have proprietary version.

Perhaps one way of depicting it all would be a cloud formation, each cloud being a need and the open-source technology concentrations within the various clouds - maybe?

Comment by Lisa Garwood on May 26, 2009 at 3:57pm: Hi Martin

Sounds good - let's see if we can get some more people interested in taking part.

Re: Expo - perhaps mention to the Software group - I see you are a member of it - in particular a chat with Mark Dalgarno might be useful as he organises the Code Generation conference each year - he might have some suggestions on getting the Expo set up.

For Vendor sponsorship - suggest talking to Rabbitsoft http://www.rabbitsoft.com/

They're quite new to the cambridgeshire scene but look like they have a great product - could well be up for a sponsorship deal to raise awareness?

I also have a possible other contact for you who may be interested in presenting their product - but probably won't have the budget for a big sponsorship - perhaps you could offer different level packages?

Lisa

PS Are you a member of Cambs Network? If you are you could try promoting the Expo to get more interest on their news section... If not give me a shout as nativeBrand is a member and I could post on your behalf :)

Comment by Alex Bennee on May 26, 2009 at 3:51pm: Are you looking to run a survey or get the data from other places?

As far as technologies are concerned:

Word Processing: AbiWord, kOffice also exist

Web Forms: The FLOSS world is not short of frameworks for this: Ruby on Rails, Drupal, Django to name but a few.
Database: MySQL is interesting and likely to see some changes following the Sun->Oracle acquisition. There are already a number of forks in progress. PostgreSql is the other biggie on the block.

Storage: A wide range of technologies involved here depending on which part of the stack your looking at from file-systems to NAS/SAN protocols. Certainly on the Linux side there are a number of interesting file systems and clustering solutions coming on stream now. OpenSolaris and ZFS is probably the biggest in enterprise use at the moment.

Virtualistion: Xen, KVM, OpenVZ

One advantage of the open source sphere is the breadth and depth of offerings that can be tailored to a particular set of requirements.

Comment by Martin Kendall on May 26, 2009 at 3:42pm: Hi Lisa,

Thanks for your offer. What I was thinking of was taking a set of popular functions such as application development, web technologies, office automation, storage, virtualisation, any others?
and then getting our group to add open-source technologies that are commonly used to service these needs. We can then see what might be the the most informative graphic method to present the concentrations of open-source technologies in the context of how they are applied.

I will look into the Moller Centre thanks. So far nobody else has expressed an interest in the idea.

Comment by Lisa Garwood on May 26, 2009 at 2:52pm: Hi Martin

I'd be happy to get involved with your technologies analysis.

And - for a venue for the Expo have you approached the Moller Centre - I hear it's quite the place for events these days and although I'm not sure if they'll give it to you for free in return for a sponsorship package they might give you a very decent rate. Might be worth a try?

Lisa

Comment by Martin Kendall on May 26, 2009 at 2:29pm: It would be fun (and useful) to show a graphical representation of which open-source based technologies are being used for a set of popular/common functionality.

For example:

Word processing: Open Office, etc.
Web Forms: Joomla, etc.
Database: MySQL, etc
Storage:
Virtualisation:
others?

Anyone care to get involved?

Comment by Martin Kendall on April 24, 2009 at 7:50am: Cambridge Open Source Expo.

I am trying to organise a venue and some funding to set this up for this Summer. In the mean time I would be grateful for any contacts for those who wish to provide a short presentation on either their service or product offerings or indeed a presentation from a user perspective.
My draft funding model so far assumes a vendor sponsorhip based approach. Anyone know of any potential venues?

This could be a great way to provide a really useful "state of the art now" type of format.

Comment by Martin Kendall on March 2, 2009 at 9:37am: I have a number of ideas for what I hope would be interesting for both those involved and those not - as yet - to get together in a small "conference". Anyone interested in discussing specifics please do get in touch.