Open Source Articles

With the holiday officially upon us now -- did someone say Advent Calendar? -- you may be saving all your money to buy an Xbox or a WII. But if you aren't, or you are one of the fortunate few to have tons of money to spend, we have a few conferences that might be tempting.

eZ Systems is on the cusp of launching a Software-as-a-Service offering for its media-oriented Web CMS, eZ Publish. We covered the original news here, and as promised, we spoke with eZ’s global partner manager Bertrand Maugain to get more insight into the new eZ Publish SaaS offering and their partner in arms, Mamut ASA.

Open source platforms have been cropping up more and more over the years. From web and enterprise CMS’s to video games. And now video platforms have been added to the list of open source solutions. YouTube was able to start a video sharing platform that had never existed before, Kaltura takes it to the next level.

Drupal is one of the most mentioned open source Web content management system out there today. But not everyone knows about it and how it fits into the content management world. So if you are one of those people, or just want a refresher, O’Reilly is hosting a webinar entitled: Everything you Wanted to Know About Drupal but were Afraid to Ask.

Time again to bring you a list of upcoming webinars that may send you straight to the executive office. Learn a little something new and impress the boss, or just the guy sitting next to you who thinks he knows it all.

This time we have have views into open source Web CMS and Enterprise CMS, publishing with XML and developer looks into the world of Alfresco content management.

Remember Bluenog ICE, the Integrated Collaborative Environment created by a group of ex-BEAers? The Enterprise CMS solution, based on an open source technology stack was announced mid-September and is just one of the latest open source solutions to hit the market.

Today they announce that to help ensure they continue to grow to their solution, they have added a couple of well known open source leaders to their Board of Directors.

Joining current board members Scott Barnett, Suresh Kuppasamy and Sastry Taravai (the three co-founders), and Mike DiPiano and Michael Poise are:

• Andy Astor — As co-founder and EVP of Business Development for EnterpriseDB, Astor is known for his strong support of independent open source communities such as PostgreSQL. He has been a champion of hybrid open source business models since 2004.
• Anthony Gold — Gold founded Unisys’ global open source practice and currently resides there as VP and General Manager of open source business.

According to Suresh Kuppusamy, chief executive officer, Bluenog: “Their [Astor and Gold] experiences working with both open source and proprietary technology will be invaluable. We continue to innovate in areas that allow our customers integration options they didn’t have previously.”

With individuals like this on the Board of Directors, Bluenog will have no excuses when it comes to creating and enhancing a true open source solution.

Learn more about the entire team at the Bluenog website.

Claromentis has recently made all Linux users much happier by releasing a collaboration and information management platform for Linux.

It includes the brand new Project Manager application, content and document management, as well as process management using e-forms.

Open source DAM anyone? It has arrived — an open source enterprise-level DAM system named Razuna. Fathered by a Swiss company called SixSigns, Razuna comes to the world with its latest release 1.1.2. Albeit a point release, this version has a lot to offer (to some scenarios).

The popular micro CMS and blogging engine WordPress is getting ever closer to releasing version 2.7 of their platform. With the final version likely coming later in the month, version 2.7 beta 2 was recently released.

A welcome and much-needed new feature in WordPress 2.7 is support for threaded comments and comment paging. Also, if a site administrator wants to keep a certain post at the top of the page, WordPress now features “sticky” posts to accomplish the task.

SilverStripe, an open source PHP-based Web content management system, has recently released a new version of their Web CMS to fix a few critical security issues. It is strongly advised that all users upgrade SilverStripe to version 2.2.3.

While the team cleans up version 2.2, the release of SilverStripe 2.3 is quickly approaching. SilverStripe is going to be showing off features of the latest release at a pre-release event on November 17, 2008.

It’s back again. Alfresco has released its 2008 Open Source Barometer and the results really should not surprise many. Enterprises like mixed technology environments that leverage Windows, Java, rich internet applications with AJAX and integrated Web 2.0 tools.

We ran through the results with Alfresco CMO Ian Howells to get the scoop on the key findings and what they mean to Alfresco going forward.

It’s a Swiss treats day for a Swiss vendor. Enterprise CMS provider Day Software has received the Swiss Open Source Award 2008 in the business category.

Recipe for success? Mix two tablespoons of Day with several pounds of a new chief marketing officer, who has arrived from Interwoven via the open source devout Alfresco. And, voila! The open source awards will follow.

Day’s recently-onboarded CMO Kevin Cochrane tells us all the glorious details about this award and (much) more — including, why he left Interwoven and Alfresco.

New Apatar Connector was recently released to aid those struggling with integration of open source suite SugarCRM with third-party applications, databases, flat files, other CRM/ERP applications and Web 2.0 destinations.

Apatar claims to be able to do it all “without coding.”

Microsoft, a company that isn’t known for working tightly with the open source world, has announced the Microsoft Web Installer. This beta application is aimed at helping Web site administrators install and configure widely-used Web Applications onto a Windows-powered server.

Surprisingly, Microsoft is aiding administrators with installing popular open source software packages — including WordPress, Drupal, DotNetNuke, phpBB and Graffiti CMS.

Beyond the iPhone, never before has there been a single gadget, service, application or anything that has been as anticipated and hyped within mobile industry than Google Android. For months the chatter has been building, and eagerly we all have been waiting. Many say Android will change the world — has the Google revolution truly begun?

Recently, Google officially released Android 1.0 to the open source development community and T-Mobile officially released the HTC G1, the first Android enabled device. Customers can now purchase the HTC G1 (if they can find one) while developers can freely create amazing applications with no boundaries, something never before seen in the mobile industry. The possibilities are endless, and the whispers say this is only the beginning.

According to a recent study by the 451 Group — an independent technology industry analyst company — the pure, non-hybrid open source is, apparently, not a viable business model.

Addressing the ever-so-popular question of how to make money from something that’s in its foundation free, the analyst company assessed the development, licensing and revenue-generation strategies used by open source.

At the same time, we’ve noticed that software giants like Microsoft started playing friendly in the open
source space. In addition, CMS vendors like eZ and Alfresco report that open source can be profitable.

Good for Google = good for the universe. What would a social network be without applications, you ask? Nowadays, probably obsolete; which is why the ambitious, sort-of-new social network Ning made a good move by announcing their support of Google’s OpenSocial v0.7 standard.

This will allow developers to easily build applications that can also be shared across a variety of other supporting social platforms.

Cris Ewing is reprising his presentation from the Plone Symposium in New Orleans that was held earlier this year. Cris has been working with Plone for several years, but was working in a silo of nothingness. Before he knew it, the Plone Conference was being held in Seattle, where he was working, and he was meeting the people that built this thing.

Alexander Limi led the “Future of Plone’s User Experience” session this morning at Plone Conference 2008 in Washington, D.C.

Limi talked about the future of Plone’s User Interface. We won’t see anything new that he’s working on, but we are talking about new ideas.

As Plone Conference 2008 continues today, we bring you more live blogging coverage. In the spotlight now is Mike Robinson. He talked about challenges faced by software development teams and how to solve them.

Presented by Nate Aune, Jon Stahl, Calvin Hendryx-Parker, Geir Baekholt, Matt Hamilton and Brian Gershon as part of Plone Conference 2008, this panel discussion focused on the Plone consulting world.

We have a lot of consultants in the Plone community. As the popularity of Plone rises, so does the demand for competent Plone consultants. It’s fairly common for those who hone their skills to eventually break out on their own.

Plone Conference 2008’s presentation is streaming live: http://broadcasturban.net/webcast/plone2008/

Bradley Kuhn is speaking a bit about the history of open software licensing, and how our world is changing as technology changes. This is a great talk for anyone interested in GPL type licensing. Watch the rest of it streaming, or keep an eye on Plone.org for the full video.

Joel Burton has been doing Plone boot camps and presenting on the topic of Intranets for several years now, and it never fails to be a popular and useful talk. In this session, Joel touched on a lot of really great tips for those using Plone for their Intranets.

As part of Plone Conference 2008, Sally Kleinfeldt from Jazkarta, a Boston-based Plone provider, gave a presentation on how Jazkarta runs their Plone based business. Sally covered all the tools that Jazkarta uses, not just Plone.

Open source CMS provider Plone kicked off Plone Conference 2008 today in Washington, D.C., with founders Alexander Limi and Alan Runyan presenting their annual State of Plone address.

It’s been a rough start for Plone Conference 2008. We swamped the network this morning, and it’s been down ever since. I believe things are finally fixed, so I can officially start as your live blogger for Plone Conference 2008.