Mark Hinkle: Socialized Software: April 2008 Archives
By Mark Hinkle
Bill Gates steps down as the Chairman of Microsoft on July 1st to transition to full time philanthropic efforts with the Gates Foundation. However, I wonder how effective Bill will be other than writing checks. You see Bill's never played well with others.
By Mark Hinkle
Yesterday was Earth Day (visit the open source Drupal-powered website for details from the Earth Day Network). In September 1969, at a conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment. Senator Nelson first proposed the nationwide environmental protest to thrust the environment onto the national agenda. This would be the first Earth Day. Now the event is celebrated twice a year at different times depending on what hemisphere you are on.
I have been trying to digest two unrelated stories from last week. The first was the report by the Standish Group on the $60 Billion dollars open source is purported to be costing the proprietary software industry. The second was Steve Reubel's, "The Web 2.0 World is Skunk Drunk on Its Own Kool-Aid." As I looked introspectively into these stories I wondered how relevant they were. I came to a realization that while the one of the most commonly espoused virtues of open source is more eyeballs generating better code that perhaps one of the least mentioned strengths is their marketing ability. Bear with me as try to explain why.
By Mark Hinkle
Last year open source analyst Michael Coté of Redmonk coined the term Little Four to describe four up-and-coming open source management vendors and as a foil to the Big Four of systems management.
In the open source space, the 4 names that come up each time--usually from people I'm talking with even before I say anything--are: Zenoss, Hyperic, GroundWorks, and openQRM.
The 451 Group's Raven Zachary recently used this slide at an address in Redmond during Microsoft Open Source Day.
I am a fan of the open source analysts RedMonk and 451 Group. I think Alex Fletcher from Entiva has good open source insights and Jeremy Owyang from Forrester share great information on his blog about social media. However, when it comes to IT buying decisions I have never been much of a fan of the big analyst firms.
I am often dismayed by the misappropriation of the term open source. Companies apply the term to products that are free though not open source. It's a classic marketing maneuver to leverage a brand that already has broad recognition.
A clothing company sent me a release not too many months ago about their new open source clothing line. After close inspection they meant design your own outfit from their catalog of designs that they owned. It wasn't open source but I recall a number of open source trade publications picking up the story. Good marketing stunt but not accurate.
