Open Source Movement dot Org

Here’s one of the most interesting open source projects I’ve seen in quite a while. The company responsible for this project says the following about themselves on their site:

EnterpriseDBмебеликомпютри was founded in March, 2004 to bring the benefits of open source to enterprise databases. Headquartered in New Jersey, EnterpriseDB has engineering and support centers in North America, Europe, and Asia. EnterpriseDB has received venture capital financing from Charles River Ventures, Valhalla Partners, Sony Online Entertainment and Fidelity Ventures.

Sony Online Entertainment? That part surprises me, I wonder how large that part of the investment is. Regardless, I think all of the investors will make a bundle if Oracle doesn’t pull any long, drawn-out intellectual property battles with them. This seems ripe for a legal IP battle.
This new database is basically PostgreSQL, not forked, but synced with their additions. Their additions basically emuate PL/SQL and most if not all of the commands that oracle provides with same syntax so most apps should be able to be converted from Oracle to EnterpriseDB with little or no change to the code. I’m curious to see if they can run eBusinessSuite (Oracle ERP).

This will be very good for other projects such as Compiere ERP, an open source ERP system that was built for Oracle originally, this may speed up freeing projects such as that one from requiring licensing fees to use them.

The IDC comes out with a great study, someone want to buy it for me?

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=202511
For now, I will have to trust the reports on this that I’ve seen thusfar:

http://ce.tekrati.com/research/News.asp?id=7614

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8982719739.html

The bottom line is that open source is everywhere already, and IDC makes some conclusions on how this may effect the industry in the future.

Homeland Security has partnered with two commercial, and one educational institution to study the disparity between vulnerabilities between commercial and open source software. This may verify or put to rest (to some degree at least) the argues from vendors such as MicroSoft that open source software, due to it’s open nature, is more prone to vulnerabilities. According to News.com:

the department has given $1.24 million in funding to Stanford University, Coverity and Symantec to hunt for security bugs in open-source software and to improve Coverity’s commercial tool for source code analysis�.The list of open-source projects that Stanford and Coverity plan to check for security bugs includes Apache, BIND, Ethereal, KDE, Linux, Firefox, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSSL and MySQL�.

Symantec is the provider of the Norton Internet Security tools which has a lot of prior and current vulnerability data and has a good practical understanding of threats and their reach in real world scenarios. This is a more objective measure, but does not really address the issue of general quality of code and the adherence to safe and well formed code.

Coverty is a source code auditing firm, they are well positioned to review source code and find previously undiscovered vulnerabilities and/or give subjective opinions on the level of quality of the source code and how likely it is that a particular set of code may prove to have vulnerabilities in the future. Now, the money is most likely going to be spent on the subjective end of things, the finding of previously undiscovered vulnerabilities will just be a bonus. (as ethically speaking they should be bound to reporting these to the appropriate parties)

I’m not sure what this research will discover, and I’m also skeptical that 1.24 million dollars is enough to actually complete a review of even just the list provided by the media, however, I welcome my tax dollars being spent on improving the standing of open source software within the government. Even if there are a number of vulnerabilities found, it will be firmer ground to start from when government agencies begin their research into deploying some of the staple products offered under open source licenses. I believe regardless the level of increased usage of open source will eventually save tax dollars that would otherwise unneedfully go to a commercial vendor.

Lessig has posted a video of a recent talk to his site that is currently being distributed via Bittorrent. Since some of you may not have a bt client, I decided to redistribute it via video.google.com which allows you to stream it. He covers the details of his arguments for Google, and as usual, pro innovation. The industry is simply never going to create a market for the out of print books, and we may loose vital historical and cultural information should these out of print books go to waste.

Fair Use is being eroded by a congress that does not seem to really know how and why CopyRight protection was created in the the first place. I can only hope that the reforms that will soon be coming forth due to the Abramoff case will stop the eroding of CopyRight, and especially the perpetual extensions of CopyRight terms that are also hurting our access to our own heritage.

Unlike libraries which carry books that are out of print, the same does not apply to video and audio content. The same large middle-section of “out of print books” applies to out of print music and films. These recordings, unlike books (if a copy still exists) are on media that are turning into dust simply because there is no public library for them, they are only digitized and kept alive if the companies that own the last copies spend money to keep them alive.

I don’t understand why so many in congress do not seem to understand the value in this set of intellectual property that is going to waste. When a company comes along to challenge an entire industry, they should not be shut out simply because they found a way to make money legally off of something that was being eroded by an entire industry.

The open source community has gotten together, with some leadership by RedHat, to make an attempt at preparing a war-chest of patents for defense against potential suits in the future. In this way I see the community taking on some of the most complex facets of commercial software entities which is the management of IP. It makes sense, this is where the open source movement has shined. If it wasn’t for the tools such as cvs and an interconnected network of computers, this movement would not be able to act in defensive ways such as this. It is truly a precedent setting endeavor, I think some of the folks at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco were inspired by Lawrence Lessig’s speech.

The potential use of patent litigation in an offensive way against open source projects is something that has concerned me for a long time, and it has been getting more and more “buzz” lately, because it is seen as an area where Open Source is weak. I’m hoping efforts such as this will mitigate the risk the community has in this area. It certainly sounds like a good start.