The latter seems far more likely, especially in the current economic climate. We have written before about the open source vendors most likely to go public in the next couple of years.

Looking at the list of contenders again it is easy to imagine that they could all be snapped up before they make it public thanks to the fact that 1) open source vendors are very attractive investments 2) it is difficult for open source vendors to build the momentum to do so.

I spoke recently with Bernard Dallé at Index Ventures, which has previously invested in the likes of MySQL and Trolltech.

Bernard made the point that while the open source distribution/subscription model is a great way of reaching potential new customers and generating predictable revenue, revenue is on average three times lower than a traditional licensing approach. The result is that it takes more time to build the momentum required to go public.

I previously wrote that for open source vendors patience is a virtue, noting that it took MySQL 12 years to grow to the a position where it was preparing to go public - and even it couldn’t avoid the lure of Sun’s lucre. The open source vendors that have followed MySQL’s example barely get the chance to build a meaningful revenue stream.

There is also the issue that the pure play open source vendors like Red Hat do not have the financial clout to compete with the likes of IBM and Sun and Oracle when it comes to potential acquisitions. You can read a little more about our view on that here.

In his take Matt writes that “I’m coming around to the idea that everything will be a blend of open source and proprietary software or services, at least for the foreseeable future.”

I can’t go in to too much detail but I’m doing some research on this right now and the fact is that the future is now. There is very little money being made out of open source software that doesn’t involve proprietary software and services.

Which is not to say that open source won’t survive and thrive, but if you’re waiting to see pure play open source vendors replace the current crop of industry giants you’re going to be waiting a long time.

Don’t get me wrong. Linux and open source have not reached the point where the software is so good, vendors and customers don’t have to care about it. The point seems to be this: there is less concern or ‘care’ about whether the operating system is Linux, Windows, Solaris or other; fewer customers care whether the software in use is open source or not; and there seems to be a general recognition that the fact a product or vendor is open source does not matter as much.

Sure, open source is still a significant differentiator. It allows vendors to get software and products into customer hands more quickly and broadly. It typically provides significant cost savings to customers. However, it is far less exotic and foreign in the enterprise, both for vendors and customers, who seem to be viewing open source not as religion, philosophy or idealism, but as just another option.

Vendors supporting various operating systems indicated there is less care about the underlying OS. Part of this can be attributed to virtualization, which allows servers and VMs running different operating systems to be managed in a unified manner. Still, even the difference between virtual and physical servers seems to be of less care to vendors, which are now moving to support and include both in their products and plans. Other vendors discussed how the use of virtual appliances and cloud computing were minimizing how much care centers on the OS, since it is becoming less visible to partners and users.

As for those users and customers, who are playing an increasingly significant role in Linux and open source, there also appears to be less care about whether software is open source. Instead, customers have come to expect comparable or superior features and functionality at less cost. Open source is often the way vendors and their products get there, but customers don’t really care.

So does all this lack of care mean that open source is in danger of losing its edge? I don’t think so. Rather, it is further testament to the continued enterprise maturation and acceptance of Linux and other open source software.

In celebration of Linux’s imminent domination of the desktop market I thought it would be worth remembering how we got here:

The year of the Linux desktop: 2003
Linus says 2004 is the year for desktop Linux
2005 will be the year of the Linux desktop
2006 - The year of the Linux desktop
2007 - The year of the Linux desktop
2008: Year of the Linux desktop

* OSCON review
* LinuxWorld preview
* Red Hat M&A
* Who will capture Sun?

iTunes or direct download (23:28, 5.4MB)

He was responding to this post from Michael DeHaan that defines a list of the principles he feels vendors should follow if they are to benefit completely from open source development and licensing.

The blogs resurrect a discussion that I previously mentioned here about whether the industry needs an open source definition for business and development models.

I wrote at the time that the publication of social contracts by open source software vendors might go some way to setting and managing the expectations of community users and potential contributors, however I am unconvinced that some sort of open source business model definition would have real value.

Andrew writes that “A lot of ‘new breed’ open source companies and ‘old school’ tech companies that are getting involved in open source structure a lot around maintaining control” and that “in that process you diminish some of the benefits of open source. You loose the synergies of cooperation.”

While I accept the point that a lot of open source vendors are failing to experience the full benefits of the open source development and distribution model by limiting external contribution or access to some elements of the code, or both, I would also maintain that is, literally, their business.

All of these companies have no doubt weighed up the advantages and disadvantages of being more or less open and come to their own conclusions. Michael’s list is a valuable resource for this decision-making process, but to turn it into a check-list that defines the ‘openness’ of a vendor has questionable value in my view.

Apart from anything else, you would be left with very small list of vendors that meet all of the criteria. The cat is already out of the bag when it comes to open source related business models and there is no way it is going back in. No organisation, and especially not one that is self-appointed, is going to be able to dictate to vendors what revenue generation strategies they should or shouldn’t be following.

I am also unsure of what the purpose of such a definition would be. I wrote in May that the Equitable Open Source idea might “create a level playing field upon which vendors can be judged”. However I viewed that as a developer-level initiative that would aid communication between a vendor and its community of users/contributors.

As I later clarified however, I also think that for enterprises “such a thing could actually cause more harm than good by confusing potential adopters”. Stephen O’Grady is right in saying that most enterprise adopters would not care about an openness index.

Personally I cannot see what would be achieved by an OSI business model definition.

UPDATE - Russ Nelson of the OSI has also posted on the same topic, arguing that “open source is not about freedom, nor is it about licenses. It’s about community”. That might well be true but I think the OSI risks alienating a lot of vendors if it suddenly decides that their open source efforts are not open enough. - UPDATE

His interview with Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat is an entertaining (if superficial) four and a half minutes as they discuss the company’s battle with Microsoft and Oracle.

Jim Whitehurst does a good job of publicly dismissing Microsoft while claiming not to compete with Windows. My favourite comment though has to be “I don’t see Oracle as really assaulting us”. Jim Cramer is certainly convinced despite admitting that he finds the company “hard to understand.”

Meanwhile the New York Times also has some, dare I say it, interesting and slightly more sober analysis.

Kickfire Raises $20 Million in Series B Financing, Kickfire (Press Release)

10gen, New Cloud Computing Firm, Closes $1.5m Series A, 10gen (Press Release)

BusyBox Developers and Supermicro Agree to End GPL Lawsuit, Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) (Press Release)

OpenLogic Releases Survey on Enterprise Open Source Support, OpenLogic (Press Release)

Open Source Database Survey Shows Strong PostgreSQL Adoption in Enterprises, EnterpriseDB (Press Release)

SourceForge.net Announces 2008 Community Choice Awards Winners, SourceForge (Press Release)

Sun Microsystems Unveils Enterprise LAMP Stack for Solaris and Linux, Sun Microsystems (Press Release)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7 Released Today, Red Hat (Press Release)

Launchpad 2.0 Radically Improves Collaboration for Open Source Projects, Canonical (Press Release)

Jaspersoft Unveils New Community Platform at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON), Jaspersoft (Press Release)

CherryPal to Launch Two-watt PC using Freescale Processor based on Power Architecture Technology, CherryPal (Press Release)

SnapLogic Announces SugarCRM Solution Pack, SnapLogic (Press Release)

Open Source Collaboration Project, ICEcore, Becomes Kablink and Adds Unique Workflow Functionality to Improve Teaming, Novell (Press Release)

Signature Devices, Inc. Launches Open Source Video Game Development Engine, Signature Devices (Press Release)

Kineo Open Source Acquires Open Source Testing, Kineo (Press Release)

Black Duck Software Adds C/C++ Open Source Software to Koders.com Code Search Engine, Black Duck Software (Press Release)

WSO2 Mashup Server 1.5 adds rich data services and expanded security, WSO2 (Press Release)

Openbravo releases new version 2.40 of leading ERP solution, Openbravo (Press Release)

Keynote Presentations Announced For Mobile Linux Conference At LinuxWorld, IDG World Expo (Press Release)

Grid.org Launches Open HPC Management Interoperability Project, Univa UD (Press Release)

Essentia Launches New Flagship Product for Open Source Communities, Essentia (Press Release)

MindTouch Announces MindTouch Deki “Kilen Woods” Release, MindTouch (Press Release)

Actuate Initiates Open Source Advisory Board, Actuate (Press Release)

Kineo Open Source Acquires Open Source Testing, Kineo Open Source (Press Release)

Red Hat’s new CEO aims Linux at the cloud, News.com, Stephen Shankland (Article)

2008 SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards (video), Linux.com, Robin Miller (Article)

LinuxWorld 2008 features cloud, virtualization topics, SearchEnterpriseLinux.com, Pam Derringer (Article)

history.forward(), Port 25, Sam Ramji (Blog)

Announcing the Open Web Foundation, Open Web Foundation, Eran Hammer-Lahav (Blog)

Economic clustering and Free Software release coordination, Here Be Dragon, Mark Shuttleworth (Blog)

Red Hat: How to Settle a Patent Lawsuit for an Open Source Community, Law & Life: Silicon Valley, Mark Radcliffe (Blog)

My new project: OpenRemote, Maison Felury, Marc Fleury (Blog)

Holistic Role, SunMink, Simon Phipps (Blog)

Wordpress 2.6 downloaded 345,000 times in ten days, Ars Technica - #open.ended, Dave Moyer (Blog)

When Is Open Source Not That Open Source?, DevXtra Edtiros’ Blog, Glen Kunene (Blog)

What Microsoft can do for Open Source, OSI Board Blog, Michael Tiemann (Blog)

OSCON in 37 Minutes, O’Reilly Radar, Nat Torkington (Blog)

Google Android and Symbian to merge?, CNET - The Open Road, Matt Asay (Blog)

After speaking to and reporting on various Linux vendors — in servers, embedded, mobile sectors and around the globe in geography — we realized we were continually referring to the pricing, support and general competitive pressures on paid Linux business from unpaid, community and DIY Linux distributions. The significance of these Linux options, and more precisely their cumulative effect, was confirmed in our discussions with Linux vendors and enterprise users.

We believe it is valid for commercial Linux companies and others to refer to community Linux distributions as catalysts and contributors to growth. After all, whether it is using CentOS and supporting it on its own or using RHEL via paid subscription to Red Hat, it’s another Linux user that means a greater ecosystem, pressure to support Linux on hardware vendors, ISVs, SIs, etc. and more open source participation (I just wrote about the significance of customers and end users).

At the same time, we believe increased use of community Linux distributions, helped along by support and credibility from large vendors such as HP and Sun Microsystems, is having an impact on the enterprise Linux market. First, it is contributing to a fragmentation in the market where Linux users have more options, not only for distributions but also for commercial support. Second, more community Linux use puts support pressure on vendors that must differentiate their Linux offerings and subscriptions. Third, the increased community Linux also creates some pricing pressure since these versions are free. Certainly, most large enterprise organizations still require the assurance of an established vendor and Red Hat and Novell with SUSE remain the most popular choices. However, we found organizations are using community Linux similarly to how they’ve historically used open source software in general: quietly. Some organizations, particularly outside of the U.S., are also adjusting and changing their IT procurement practices and policies to include community Linux distributions.

While community Linux is contributing to more Linux use and growing the market for paid, commercially-supported Linux, the impact of the community distributions will also grow as they are used more by IT organizations of all sizes, and this means greater challenges to today’s Linux incumbents.

Stay tuned to CAOS for word about our coming webcast on this report.

The conversations involved big companies with substantial budgets/IT costs, truly mission-critical applications and a tendency towards being early adopters. Suffice to say they are interested in cloud computing as an opportunity to lower costs and improve the efficiency of their IT systems.

However, they also want to prove the model and technologies internally before they are prepared to migrate significant workloads to the cloud (this might sound counter-intuitive to some but we’re not talking about one-off skunkworks projects here).

Two of a number of reasons holding them back from more rapid adoption of cloud computing are the ability to migrate workloads to cloud environments and the fear of getting locked in to a particular cloud.

This is where the open source opportunity arises. With the likes of Microsoft and Google offering a walled garden approach, developers are able to write/port applications to those clouds, but only if they buy into a particular stack.

The ecosystem of vendors that have sprung up around AWS makes it easier to migrate existing workloads to Amazon’s cloud but there is still a requirement to buy in to Amazon’s stack. What are the implications for portability?

As Todd Hoff recently wrote: “Portability is a key capability for cloud customers as the only real power customers have is in where they take their business and the only way you can change suppliers is if there’s a ready market of fungible services. And the only way their can be a market is if there’s a high degree of standardization.”

That is where Eucalpytus comes in to its own in enabling users to download the software and test it internally or externally.

James Urquhart explained the opportunity as follows:

“This is big stuff, despite the skepticism of some cloud fanatics who can’t grep why “private clouds” (I am beginning to like that term) are legitimate. I most certainly don’t fall into that particular camp, having real experience working with customers who realize that they have to start with an in-house cloud to satisfy corporate and legal mandates. Ideally, though, this infrastructure would allow them to migrate all or portions of their applications out of house when the time and technology are right. If Eucalyptus can pull this off and really provide a killer Amazon clone for private deployments, they may become the core technology for an awful lot of enterprise SLAuto platforms in years to come.”

Of course it doesn’t have to be open source, but the fact that it is levels the playing field and provides and opportunity for multiple cloud providers to focus on differentiate themselves on service levels rather than lock-in. As Simon Wardley recently noted, “All we need now are multiple providers, some trademarks and a compliance authority.” Who’s first?

In the interest of fairness and also to continue our study and lesson of how vendors can successfully interface with developers, users, partners and others, I am now highlighting some positive open source developments out of VIA. First, the company has wisely found itself an open source liason, picking a prominent, popular figure in Harald Welte, a Linux hacker, GPL enforcer and recipient of the FSF 2007 Award for the Advancement of Free Software. Second, VIA is providing programming guides for a security engine and some chipsets. The best part is, the code and data is available for download without VIA’s previous developer agreements or NDAs.

Hiring an open source software development and community expert such as Harald Welte, establishing its own Linux Portal and releasing source code, drivers and programming guides without non-disclosure strings finally puts VIA on the path to rewards from open source. This does not mean the company is guaranteed efficiency, development or competitive advantages from open source, but it certainly means VIA will be getting more than ridicule and doubt from open source developers and supporters.

The move also comes as a number of hardware and open source opportunities begin to emerge, such as netbooks, which was enough for Linux vendor Xandros to acquire fellow Linux seller Linspire for an undisclosed amount earlier this month. VIA may soon have a lot more to gain from supporting Linux and open source software, and the company now seems to be recognizing this.

“Organic projects might generate more contributions which in turn might allow them to evolve faster which in turn might allow them to compete more effectively. And so on. Which is ultimately why I’m comfortable with inorganic projects and contributions: I (generally) trust the market,” he writes, adding:

“With but a few exceptions, I’m a believer in allowing the market to make its own decisions on which software development and governance models they choose to support. I’m not naive; I understand that commercial deployment is hardly a strict meritocracy, and that influence - financial and otherwise - is rampant.”

Stephen is right that the claims that an inorganic approach is somehow “not open source” do no one any favours and distract attention from the real issue, which - to my mind - should be identifying the comparative benefits to ensure that the next generation of vendors learn from the experience of current vendors to choose the right approach to fulfill their specific goals.

The second post, from Matt, links to an interview with OpenOffice.org contributor and Novell desktop architect Michael Meeks in derStandard in which he discusses Sun’s apparently diminishing involvement in the project.

Leaving aside this claim for a moment, which I am sure Sun would dispute, what Michael’s comments highlight is that what matters is not so much whether a project is organic or inorganic per se but how it is managed.

“This isn’t just a Sun problem,” states Matt. “Michael’s comment speaks to a much broader problem as more and more open source goes corporate: How do you encourage development as a corporation?”

Pentaho’s CTO James Dixon has described the vendor-based approach using The Beekeeper model, while in June I examined how that model could also be applied to community-based projects.

In The Beekeeper James does a great job of listing some of the tasks involved in managing a community, while in my post I touched briefly on some of the relative strengths and weaknesses:

“While the honey collector does not have responsibility to look after the bees that a bee keeper has he will have to take care not to disrupt the nest and may well choose to make an effort to nurture the nest and encourage honey production. Of course, as these are wild bees there is also always a risk that the bees will leave the nest or production will dry up. The collector is also aware that any improvements resulting from his efforts are available to everyone and rivals can easily set up alternative honey collection businesses.”

There is much more to it than that of course, and it is important to study and understand the differences rather than simply dismiss one model or the other out of hand. Stephen is right, toning down the rhetoric is an essential part of the process.

Dana is unconvinced that open source supporters should necessarily be doing anything about piracy, noting that “There is no direct financial loss to Open Office when someone has a pirated copy of Microsoft Office. To the extent that BSA enforcement actions cause fear in the market, that just benefits open source, so why join it?”

He also notes that “On the other hand if we helped Oracle enforce its license terms we might accelerate the move to MySQL and Ingres.”

However, one need only remember these comments from last year made by the president of Microsoft’s business division, Jeff Raikes, to understand why piracy is bad for open source:

“Our number one goal is that we want people to use our product. If they’re going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else. And that’s because we understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the install base of people who are using our products.

What you hope to do is over time you hope to convert them to licensing the software, legally licensing it, so on, and so forth,” he added, neatly - and presumably accidentally - describing the method by which commercial open source vendors benefit by making their core code available free of charge.

So it’s always a delicate balance, because what you want to do is you want to push towards getting legal licensing, but you don’t want to push so hard that you lose the asset that’s most fundamental in the business.”

Additionally on our recent virtual tour of Europe we saw how piracy was seen as a barrier to further adoption of open source in countries like Greece and Romania.

Supported by government, open source can be used as a tool defeat piracy. Louis explained, ComputerWorld reports that: “By cracking down on software piracy, nations around the globe are starting to see that they can help themselves dramatically by encouraging innovation and creativity — as well as job growth and richer economies — through open-source development.”

An example of this is Russia, where Microsoft’s bungled attempt to crack down on software piracy resulted in a decision by the government to reduce piracy and encourage local business by encouraging the use of open source software.

The company has announced its membership of the FOSSBazaar open source governance project, outlined its use of open source, and detailed its commitment to open source as a business enabler.

“BT is proud to use Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) throughout the entire organisation, and is actively engaged in numerous FOSS communities, projects, initiatives and events,” the company stated.

“More than this, though, BT believes that FOSS is crucial to our continuing development and growth as a software driven organisation. FOSS is helping us to improve the quality and interoperability of our products and services for the benefit of our customers.”

By engaging with FOSSBazaar the company is committing to dedicate free consultancy time and assistance to the forum, contribute to white papers, and also work on the development of open source governance tools. As the announcement states:

“BT has its own open source operations team (OSOT), which supports the effective adoption of open source software and principles in BT. Among its responsibilities, OSOT provides clear guidelines and support for making use of and contributing open source code on behalf of BT.”

Given the calls for more community involvement from end-user organisations it’s good to see a company like BT stepping up to the plate and being willing to share its experience.

More details on the open source software used within BT can be found here, while details of the company’s contributions are here. Also worth a look is Osmosoft, BT’s open source innovation arm.

One of the big themes that stood out this year and one of the biggest changes at OSCON was the importance and impact of open source software users. Believe me, at OSCON 2004 there was certainly not as much talk, focus and demonstration that was user oriented. In contrast to this week, there seemed generally a lack of concern about what the code meant to the user. This is logical since back then, open source software was far more infrastructure-oriented. However, I think it reflects a maturity of open source that is helping to fuel broader commercial adoption.

Some vendors queried about my sense of how developers view the business end of open source. While we certainly see somewhat negative reactions ranging from resentment to trepidation, we have to remember that we are at an open source software developers conference, where developers can be developers and not worry as much about the business, legal or other ends of commercial open source.

However, when it comes to users, I believe that open source software developers are coming around to not only considering and including users in communities, but to value their contributions. Whether it’s features or code, shaking out bugs or establishing more enterprise use of open source, communities and companies are realizing the imporatnce of users. When Mark Shuttleworth talks about taking Linux desktop past Apple, it shows the user is more intensely involved in the Linux desktop than ever before. Ubuntu has been a big part of the user focus. The debate among Gnome and KDE has also, I believe, showed us that to overlook or underestimate the importance of the user is folly.

Instead, the successful vendors and communities all seem to be embracing users, customers and their input. They generally see value in user contributions, which have often been scoffed at, laughed at or dismissed by developers in open source history. Beyond the large swaths of end users, open source also has much to gain from the biggest open source software users. Consider the importance of large enterprise users that are contributing significant code, features and suggestions to open source software projects and vendors. The two groups seem to be coming closer together, and both have much to gain in doing so.

The OpenRemote team also includes the creator of Asterisk Mark Spencer, JBoss veterans Juha Lindfors, Christian Bauer, Java X10 project creator Wade Wassenberg, and Linux Home Automation founder Neil Cherry.

Together they, and others, plan to create a complete open source home automation including the OpenRemote Controller hardware, OpenRemote Console Applications to make use of the iPhone and iTouch as a universal remote (although any device with browser will work), the OpenRemote Manager, and the Beehive Database.

As Marc notes (”I have invented Professional Open Source, have you heard of it?”) he has also created OpenRemote Inc to support the community via debt funding and is exploring different potential business models to generate revenue.

He doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to do so, however. “This is first and foremost a community effort and what will come of it will come of it. Planning to far ahead would be counterproductive and futile,” he writes. “Figuring out the business model, this is one thing I can help with. But for right now, let’s focus on a community. Without a community, there is no OSS model. The community is what you do with it.”

Few would have predicted that we would also see a project that would make the database smaller and lighter, but that is exactly what Drizzle, a new project from Sun’s MySQL director of architecture Brian Aker, is all about.

Drizzle is taking a back-to-the-drawing-board approach to refactoring MySQL by ripping out much of the additional enterprise functionality that has gone into it since version 4.1 and focusing on the demands of a core set of applications.

As Brian explains : “Stored Procedures, Views, Triggers, Query Cache, and Prepared Statements are gone for now. The field types have been simplified and there is an open debate about the SHOW commands (I am falling into the camp that think they may just belong in the client application but not in the server). Will any of this go back in? It is hard to say. The goal right now is to target a certain class of applications/developers and see if this is useful. As an example:

1) Web based apps.
2) Cloud components.
3) Databases without business logic (aka stored procedures).
4) Multi-Core architecture.”

The project also has a more community-centric development philosophy, although it is not clear from the FAQ what the copyright implications are for would-be contributors.

Brian announced the project with the caveat that it is “not looking to be 100% compatible with MySQL” and “certainly not a replacement for MySQL” which is important to consider, but the project clearly has the blessing of MySQL CTO Monty Widenius who has stated that “Drizzle solves many of the problems that MySQL’s development has had for years.”

Among the benefits noted by Monty are:

* “It opens up MySQL development for the community; You no longer have to wait years to get your patches and reasonable extensions into the server.

* Critical bugs that have existed for years can finally get fixed as the development is no longer constrained by unrealistic release schedules that put artificial constraints on things that can be fixed.

* Drizzle will put some MySQL server differentiation on a true test; A bit like Fedora does to Red Hat.

* Drizzle has created new excitement in the MySQL developer community; A lot of people seem to be very enthusiastic to work on it in a true community-oriented manner.

* Developers working on Drizzle is doing drastic refactoring of the server, something that MySQL planned to do years ago but never happened.

* Development decisions is again driven by people that are using the server daily; This will ensure that Drizzle will be faster and more stable than what can be done with current MySQL development model

* Drizzle will target the MySQL core users, the web users, whose requirements have been ignored for years while the core MySQL developers have added features that they don’t need.

* In addition Drizzle will include the latest InnoDB code; You don’t have to wait for MySQL 6.0 or go to the trouble of annually downloadoing and installing the InnoDB plugin from Oracle just to get access to the latest and fastest InnoDB version.”

It is interesting to see Monty mention Drizzle as a potential Fedora-like project, especially given his link to ProvenScaling’s publication of MySQL sources and binaries and a blog post from Peter Zaitsev wondering whether it makes MySQL Community redundant.

It would be wrong to claim that as an official endorsement, but MySQL is clearly not trying to discourage community-led projects while it has also moved its sources to Bazaar and Launchpad to (as Kaj Arno puts it) “expand our external contributor base”.

All in all it is fascinating to see that MySQL, which many would consider one of the more mature open source projects, continues to evolve and experiment, especially now it has more freedom to do so as part of Sun. As Monty says:

“Drizzle is one of the good things that have been made possible by Sun acquiring MySQL. Brian has been working on Drizzle with the blessing and encouragement from Sun’s upper management. We are finding Sun to be open and encouraging of innovation, this has been a good aspect of the acquisition.”

While the company understandably highlights the adoption of PostgreSQL for transaction-intensive applications and its high reliability and performance and scalability EnterpriseDB has done a pretty good job of presenting the results in an unbiased manner.

I couldn’t help feeling that some of the more interesting results are hidden at the end of or buried within EnterpriseDB’s write-up, or even missing entirely, however.

For example, right at the end of its report EnterpriseDB states that “eight three percent have yet to pay for the use of their open source database” which speaks volumes about both the challenge that open source database vendors face in converting users to paying customers and the opportunity that is open to them if they can find a solution.

The company also states that “a majority of respondents indicated that they used an open source database in order to migrate away from their use of Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle commercial databases” which is technically accurate but a little misleading. It further adds that “less than one percent indicated they moved off of IBM DB2 to an open source database. Microsoft SQL Server was the highest at eleven percent while Oracle was at six percent.”

EnterpriseDB doesn’t tell us how many migrated from ‘other databases’ (which was the other answer available) but I think it’s fair to say that the majority of respondents in fact indicated that they had not used an open source database in order to migrate away from a proprietary database.

This supports the results we saw in our own recent open source database report as well as recent results from a Forrester survey. As I told eWeek in response to that survey, “Even EnterpriseDB, which offers proprietary Oracle-compatible functionality on top of PostgreSQL, is pitched more at Oracle avoidance projects than Oracle replacement projects.”

Back to EnterpriseDB’s survey, and Sam Dean at OStatic has questioned the finding that “only nine percent of respondents said they prefer commercial databases to open source ones”. The answer lies in the question being asked, which was “What prevents you or your company from using an open source database?”.

Clearly the result Sam mentions doesn’t mean that 81% of respondents prefer open source databases, but it does mean that only 9% have a preference for commercial databases that would prevent the use of open source databases.

While 85% indicated that “nothing prohibits their company from using an open source database” likewise that doesn’t mean that 85% are actually using an open source database.

Unfortunately EnterpriseDB didn’t share the result of the question “Have you ever used an open source database in your job or company?”. In the context of this survey, that’s a pretty significant result to leave out.

What I didn’t discuss at the time was the potential risk of application vendors finding themselves locked-in to the App Engine platform. Of course Amazon also has this issue, the potential impact of which was revealed this weekend.

It is with this in mind that it was interesting to see the debut of 10gen, a new open source cloud computing start-up founded by Doubleclick veterans and backed by Union Square Ventures.

Over at The 451 Group’s Cloud Cover blog, Vishy Venugopalan has the details:

“10gen offers an open source stack consisting of an app server and object database; developers can write apps in server-side Javascript or Ruby (experimental) and host it on their own computing clouds,” he writes.

“It’s also striking that many platform-as-a-service companies deviate from the standard Web server-app server-relational DB trio, of which the LAMP stack is an example. Google App Engine uses BigTable for its storage whereas 10gen wrote its own MongoDB database.”

10gen also has it own application server and file system, and the whole lot is available under open source licenses.

Of course 10gen isn’t the only open source cloud enabler/provider. There’s also Enomalism and Joyent among others that boast their ability to reduce vendor lock-in. Then there’s the likes of Eucalyptus, Puppet, Hypertable, Hbase, and Hadoop.

While Amazon and Google have first mover advantage when it comes to the cloud, could concerns over lock-in and portability mean that open standards and open source are the long-term platform for cloud computing?

Zemlin recently commented that Nokia’s opening of the Symbian OS marks the beginning of a ‘full-scale war for the mobile OS.’ He talked about the flexibility advantages of Linux, and how only a full-scale OS development effort such as Linux will be able to keep up with the complexity, hardware, middleware and content of next-generation mobile devices.

Others, such as Stefano Maffulli from mobile open source player Funambol, say the mobile software battle will be fought at the browser-level. This next round of browser wars, however, will be characterized by a move to openness prompted by the need for interoperability, flexibility and the lessons of past, according to Maffulli.

Another view, held by Trolltech (now a Nokia company) Chief Technologist Benoit Schillings, is that the mobile operating system consists of low-level components common to all of the major systems and will not be as important going forward. Instead, Schillings sees the battle being fought at the software layers above the OS and in their interoperability and functionality with other devices, such as desktop and notebook computers.

While there is debate about where mobile open source software will have the greatest opportunities and the greatest fights, there seems to be agreement that open source, open standards and real openness will be a critical to mobile software going forward.

Josh has now confirmed that he is indeed leaving Sun, but before the doomsayers start writing of Sun’s PostgreSQL support business completely, Josh also notes that Peter Eisentraut is joining the team as PostgreSQL software engineer. Peter has also confirmed his new role.

From the MySQL team, Kaj Arno does the hellos and goodbyes. Losing Josh is significant for Sun’s role in the PostgreSQL community but the quick appointment of Peter indicates that PostgreSQL still has a role to play at the company.

I certainly think there is room for both PostgreSQL and MySQL (and indeed JavaDB) at Sun, although I have been somewhat surprised that the company hasn’t yet come out and made a case for working with both databases and explaining their respective strengths and weaknesses. The details are there if you want to find them, but you have to be prepared to do a bit of digging.