Pablo Picasso 1907 Self Portrait
Here is a section from Pablo Picasso’s 1907 self portrait. Picasso was born on October 25, 1881. Picasso grew up in a middle class family in Malaga, Spain. His father was an art instructer and curator of an art museum. According to Picasso’s mother, his first words were “piz, piz” – short for lápiz, the Spanish word for “pencil”. Picasso is one of the most famous 20th century artists and is best known for Cubist style paintings.
Open Source software projects and FOSS (free open source software) governance policies are becoming more visible at companies like Capgemini, Cisco, CompuWare, EDS, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun, etc.
The news about Microsoft’s Open Source Web Platform Installer probably took a few people by surprise this week. Game plans and strategies are changing quickly, and enterprise open source governance policies (PDF) may need to be reviewed or revised to keep up with the rapid pace of change. Projects like FOSSology and FossBazaar are designed to grapple with governance issues.
Open Source in the Enterprise – 2008, an O’Reilly Radar Report starts with the question/premise: “It’s no longer IF, but HOW?” O’Reilly’s new report is for CIOs, CTOs, IT managers, and business owners who want to make smart decisions about deploying open source. (Disclaimer: O’Reilly makes money selling books about open source software.)
So how do you use open source software in your business? How do you define policies for using open source? How do you govern IT? What are the best practices in the industry today?
The O’Reilly Radar Report, Open Source in the Enterprise – 2008, is authored by Bernard Golden (CEO of Navica).
Mr. Golden starts out by telling us that open source is “growing at a compound rate of 55%”. The number of projects hosted at SourceForge has grown from around 12,500 in 2000 to nearly 200,000 by year-end 2007. However, Mr. Golden also reminds us that Open Source adoption statistics are not very reliable at this point:
It is extremely challenging to assess how much open source is being used within enterprises today. One of the traditional methods of use identification (vendor reports) is missing, as most open source software is downloaded anonymously and copied/redistributed extensively. Self-reporting by enterprises cannot be relied upon, either, as many companies are unwilling to self-report in the interest of avoiding conflict with existing vendors or keeping competitive information confidential.
He goes on to explain his method of research, which involved examining job posting data — looking for tell tale markers of Open Source adoption in various enterprises.
The report lists 6 drivers for Enterprise Open Source Adoption, and follows each with case studies, and analysis of best practices:
The O’Reilly report concludes with details on how to create an Open Source Action Plan.
The critical task at this stage of open source use is to bring it into the open and recognize that it will be an important part of IT initiatives going forward. Don’t underestimate this issue: a recent CIO magazine survey found that about 50% of enterprises claim that they are currently using open source, while 45% cited support concerns as a reason restricting its use—whereas the reality is that nearly every IT organization has open source running today. The first step to solving a problem is confronting it, and the challenge for early open source users is to be honest about their actual circumstances.
I found the report to be well researched and written in a non-technical, jargon-free manner. The case studies are helpful. You might find the report helpful also.
Disclaimer: The values, viewpoints and opinions expressed are totally my own, and do not necessarily reflect the values, viewpoints, or opinions of my employer, clients, suppliers, or any other affiliation.
Title track from the upcoming live worship album, “A New Hallelujah“, available October 28th, 2008. You’ll see the African Childrens Choir singing along in the video. Perhaps there are a few souls looking for hope after the financial troubles of the past week. This is “A New Hallelujah” – not Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah, or Handel’s grand old Hallelujah.
Hallelujah—means “Praise the LORD!” The word is made by putting together two Hebrew words: Hallelu (meaning “praise”) and Yah (for the name of God, “Yahweh,” or “the LORD”). Hallelujah is also the title of the Hollywood’s first all black film, produced in 1929 (the same year that Dr. Martin Luther King was born). Another interesting connection – October 28, 1929 was Black Monday in the stock market crash leading up to the Great Depression.
Look for A New Hallelujah, coming out on October 28, 2008.
Continuing my research on the Essential Reading List for Web Designers, System Architects, Technologists and “other-ologists”. And before I forget — check out my blogroll. The writers (bloggers) on my blog roll are very important (or they wouldn’t be on my blog roll). I’ve been reading some of these blogs for several years. Scroll down and review the blogroll list on the right hand side column (about half-way down).
Remember — this is a survey of books, blogs and magazines that people are recommending to me. I haven’t distilled the list down yet… still collecting suggestions from friends… My friend Antoine told me to look at Digital Web Magazine – they publish a variety of articles of interest to web designers, web developers, etc.
Here’s a few books that Antoine mentioned: