Category Archives: Open Source Software

Survey indicates four out of five developers now use open source

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Summary: Forrester Research's survey shows that most developers, even ones who usually stick with Microsoft Visual Studio, are now using open source.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- At the All Things Open conference, Jeffrey Hammond, aForrester Research VP and Principal Analyst, revealed that four out of five programmers are now using, or have recently used, open source development tools.

Forrester, with Black Duck software and North Bridge Venture Partners, conducted a survey of over 1,400 programmers and found that 84 percent now use open source software. The survey includednot just programmers from open source companies but also developers from traditional proprietary companies such as Microsoft.

Why? The majority of them have switched to open source because they perceive open source development programs as having better performance and reliability. This, as Hammond observed, is a change. "Open source used to be popular because of the lower cost. Now the cost of tools is the least important element for developers."

This popularity, said Hammond,means that "open source is taking over. This is a golden age for developers." A consequence from this is that "We are now seeing open source tech compete with open source tech; it's no longer open-source software vs proprietary."

In addition, the survey reveals the three industries expected to be impacted the most by open source software are education, government, and health care. In these, and other areas, Hammond said, open source projects like Apache Tomcat, the JavaServer Pages (JSP) server, are replacing proprietary programs.

And open source is doing more than just replacing old software. It's also leading the way in new software. Hammond cited big data and NoSQL as areas where open source has become the software groundbreaker. Proprietary software doesn't really stand a chance in these new fields.

Companies are going along with this, according to Hammond, not just because of the cost savings but because they'd rather try an open source solution than deal with the hurdles of acquiring proprietary software.

The survey indicates that open source is leading in several other fields as well, includingcloud/virtualization (73 percent); Content Management Systems (CMS) (66 percent); Mobile (61 percent); Security (59 percent); and network management (57 percent).

However, while development has swung heavily toward open source on the server, datacenter and cloud, on the desktop Windows still rules. The most popular single developer desktop operating system is Windows 7. Indeed, slightly more than two out of three programmers are running Windows, while just over 12 percent use Linux and slightly less run Macs.

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Survey indicates four out of five developers now use open source

PrestaShop Announces New Hires to Support Ambitious Growth Plans: New Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Marketing …

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Miami, FL (PRWEB) October 29, 2014

PrestaShop, an industry leader in open source software for ecommerce, today announces two executive appointments to support significant growth plans across all parts of the business. Arnaud Bourboulon joins as Chief Revenue Officer and Leah Anathan joins as Chief Marketing Officer.

As Chief Revenue Officer, Arnaud Bourboulon will lead PrestaShops worldwide sales and partner teams. Arnaud is the former Managing Director for Experian CheetahMail France. At Experian, Arnaud was responsible for managing the business transformation of CheetahMail from a pure play email solution to a market leader in cross-channel digital marketing. Prior to Experian, Arnaud spent more than 10 years in leadership positions in the mobile industry. He is the former CEO for the Swiss mobile service provider, MNC, later acquired by Alcatel-Lucent. Under Arnauds leadership the company successfully expanded into the French and US markets with customers such as Orange, SFR and T-Mobile. Prior to MNC, Arnaud was the Head of the Mobile Kiosk Business Venture at Alcatel-Lucent. Arnaud started his career as Product Marketing Director for Mobileway, later acquired by SAP.

As Chief Marketing Officer, Leah Anathan will lead PrestaShops worldwide marketing program and teams. Leah is the former Director of Corporate & Product Marketing at Emailvision. While at Emailvision, Leah led an award-winning rebrand of the company and the launch activities for multiple new products and acquisitions. During this same period, Emailvision grew revenues from $40M-80M and launched operations in over 10 countries. Prior to Emailvision, Leah spent more than 10 years at BMC Software, a $2B leader in IT software and services, where she served in multiple product marketing and product management roles in BMCs US and European operations.

"PrestaShop has one of the most widely adopted ecommerce platforms in the world. Now is the time for us to aggressively grow our business through partnerships, international expansion and growth in the user base, said Benjamin Teszner, CEO of PrestaShop. Im very pleased to have Arnaud and Leah on my leadership team. Their tremendous strategic and operational experience in the technology industry will help to take our business to a whole new level."

Since day one, I truly wanted PrestaShop to be a global company. With a product translated into 65 languages, 5 worldwide offices and a team of 20+ different nationalities, the time has come for PrestaShop to go even further. Thanks to their strong international experience, Leah and Arnaud will definitely play a key role in achieving this goal." said Bruno Lvque, Founder of PrestaShop.

Since 2007, PrestaShops open source software has been downloaded over 4 million times. Today, 200,000 ecommerce stores run on PrestaShop software. Earlier this year, the company announced that it had secured $9.3 Million in a Series B funding round led by XAnge Private Equity, Seventure Partners and Serena Capital. With a total of $15 million in funding, PrestaShop plans to accelerate product development, marketing and international expansion.

About PrestaShop

PrestaShop was founded in 2007 with a mission to provide world class ecommerce software for free through open source innovation. Today more than 200,000 ecommerce stores run on PrestaShop technology. The company provides software that enables merchants to have a fully functional online store at the lowest cost possible. The PrestaShop open source community includes 700,000 merchants, developers and web agencies from around the world. PrestaShop is the proud two-time winner of Packt Publishings Best Open Source Business Application, the winner of Europes Bsoco Award in the 2013 CMS category, and rated #1 Open Source Shopping Cart by EcommerceBytes Sellers Choice Awards in 2013. PrestaShop has offices in the US and France, and is funded by XAnge Private Equity, Seventure Partners and Serena Capital. For more information, please visit http://www.PrestaShop.com

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PrestaShop Announces New Hires to Support Ambitious Growth Plans: New Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Marketing ...

The Document Foundation aims to push LibreOffice adoption in the workplace

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Who doesn't like free stuff? Not many people, but there are various definitions of free. Free as in beer, free as in speech, and so on. The open source software movement combines these two ideas, and many more, by making software freely available to anyone who wants to use it, and also affording them the right to tinker with the code and change it in whatever way they want. It's one of the foundations of Linux, and it's a philosophy that -- in increasingly cash-strapped times -- is gaining momentum.

The Document Foundation, creator of the LibreOffice variant of the free OpenOffice suite, today announces that it is joining the Open Source Business Alliance. The aim is to help with the deployment of the free office suite on larger scales within companies and organizations.

There is a reason that Microsoft Office has become an industry standard tool. As well as having the backing of the Microsoft behemoth, there is a great deal of reassurance taken by companies who know that it will "just work". Files that are sent between employees, contractors, and external parties can be opened without problems. Part of the aim of the Open Source Business Alliance is to help ensure compatibility and interoperability so alternatives such as LibreOffice become viable for larger organizations.

The involvement of theOpen Source Business Alliance in the LibreOffice ecosystem has already helped to improve compatibility with Microsoft OOXML -- an important factor for any organization considering making the shift from Microsoft. The Alliance's Peter Ganten said:

Open Source Office Software like LibreOffice has always been very important to most of our members, and there is a long and successful history of cooperation between the OSB Alliance and the respective projects. For this reason we are very happy to have The Document Foundation in our organization and are looking forward for a great continuation of our cooperation.

Photo credit: Gilmanshin / Shutterstock

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The Document Foundation aims to push LibreOffice adoption in the workplace

Bob Young talks about the origins of Red Hat

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Summary: Red Hat, the world's open source leader, is a billion dollar company, but it began in a sewing closet. Co-founder Bob Young talks about the company's humble beginnings.

Raleigh, NC:At the All Things Open conference,Red Hat co-founder Bob Young shared tales of the early days of Red Hat.The first billion dollar pure play open source companyhad a humble beginning.

Bob Young, who've I've known for 20 years, is not a technology guy. The "Linux" part of Red Hat Linux came from Marc Ewing. Still, if it hadn't been for Young, Red Hat (named after Ewing's grandfather's Cornell University lacrosse cap), might have just been another long forgotten Linux company.

Young's rise to success was an unlikely one. He admitted that "I became an entrepreneur because no one would hire me. So I went to Kinkos and printed business cards saying Bob Young, President. It made my mom proud."

Why did such a clearly bright man have so much trouble? He explained, "I had ADD before it was fashionable."

Before he came to Linux, Young had started a retail typewriter business. This was followed by a computer-leasing business. He then became interested in Linux and in 1993 he founded ACC Corporation, a catalog business that sold Slackware Linux CDs and related open source software. (Remember, in 1993, a V.32bis modem with a top speed of 14.4-bits per second was a fast modem, so there was a real market for mail-order Linux CDs.)

Even then, however, Young didn't really "get" Linux. It was only when he visited Goddard Space Flight Center and Don Becker invited him to see a neat project he was working on that he got it. Becker's project, was, of course, Beowulf, the first Linux supercomputer.

It wasn't much to look at. The first Beowulf was made of 16 already obsolete 486 DX4 computers connected by channel-bonded Ethernet. But Becker and his partner, Tom Sterling, had shown that with Linux you could make a powerful computer using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and free software. That night, Young realized that Linux was more than just a neat product.

In talking with other Linux users, Young was told time and time again that sure, "Solaris was much better than Linux, but it was only by using Linux that he could tweak the operating systems to meet their needs."

So Young got together with Ewing, and, from Young's wife sewing closet, they launched Red Hat Linux. It wasn't easy.

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Bob Young talks about the origins of Red Hat

Is open source really a security concern?

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Open Source

Open source code can inject dozens of threats into mobile and web applications, according to a new study by Veracode. But open source proponents say consider the source -- in both senses of the word.

The application security provider released an analysis of 5,000 enterprise applications uploaded to its platform that showed open source components could open up gaping security holes. Veracode gathered data over the last two months using its newly released software composition analysis service. The data, it said, showed that open source and third-party components introduce an average of 24 known vulnerabilities into each web application.

The common use of reusable, pre-fabricated software components from open source developers for IT systems, the company said, could leave large openings in security that increase the risk of data breaches, malware injections and denial-of-service attacks. It quoted other studies that said 95 percent of all IT organizations will leverage some open source element in mission-critical solutions by 2015, including critical infrastructure systems used by financial institutions.

"Most third-party and open source components do not undergo the same level of security scrutiny as custom-developed software," Veracode warned.

Open source advocates, however, said the scenario isn't nearly as scary as the company makes out.

Knowing where the vulnerabilities lie is a key part of securing them, said Josh King, chief technologist at New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute.

"If you want to be cynical about it," King said, Veracode's report could be seen as selling its own services. But more importantly, he stressed, is that the ability to find the security holes is actually a key benefit of open source.

King said open source software is centered on a group approach to finding and securing security flaws. The approach can be more effective than closed source development, as more eyes are on the code. King noted that vulnerabilities in single source code are knowable only to the maker, and only if that maker has vetted the code completely.

"While we can identify and report on the issues in software where the source code is publicly available," he said, "there are an unknown number of unidentified issues in closed source software that may remain unaddressed."

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Is open source really a security concern?

Open source and the corporate concern — Strata + Hadoop 2014 – Video

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Open source and the corporate concern -- Strata + Hadoop 2014
Hadoop creator and Cloudera chief architect Doug Cutting talks with Tim O #39;Reilly about the risks of open source software being absorbed by big companies and the protections that come with the...

By: O #39;Reilly

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Open source and the corporate concern -- Strata + Hadoop 2014 - Video

The Inherent Dishonesty Inside Open Source

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The core theory behind the open source development model for software (or any open thing) states that there should be universal access for all to a product or services design. From this openness we are able to gather community contributions (often known as commits) that will lead to product refinement and enhancement that serves real users needs. Or so the theory goes.

An open system of innovation and development is characterized by a goal-oriented community of loosely coordinated participants. These users will fulfil a variety of roles including design, architecture and hard coding expertise as well as non-technical roles from communications to international language translation and beyond.

Openness is (not always) next to godliness

But openness is not always next to godliness. It is not uncommon for a project (even one as big as the Android mobile device operating system) to be populated with deviant and essentially unsupported skews and forks that find their way out into the total population of code on Earth. Not quite akin to a virus, this is code that has use but is not as useful as code (or product design of any kind) that has been subject to testing and quality control validation.

Then there is so-called openwashing i.e. providing trace elements of open source somewhere on a business model so that a company can attest to and demonstrate its philanthropic side. Purists argue that there is a big difference between opening your data and making it available; the open source list of besmirching malpractice is a long one.

The cod liver oil of open source

Consider the recent developments with the Facebook driven TODO project, aimed at making open source projects work better for big business. TODO describes itself as an open group of companies who want to collaborate on practices, tools and other ways to run successful and effective open source projects and programmes. But TODO has been criticised by open source purists as a kind of crass commercialisation of the open message. So is TODO the cod liver oil of open source such that companies swallow a little and then get on with making real proprietary money?

Theres something inherently dishonest about how these companies are using open source asserts Rafael Laguna, CEO, Open-Xchange, a company that develops web-based communication, collaboration and office productivity software.

Rather than help create open and interconnected systems, they are using open tools to build closed siloes that threaten the very nature of the open Internet. The driving force behind the free and open source software movements is to liberate technology and keep it open and accessible for everyone. Facebook, or Google for that matter, has no interest in making its ecosystem accessible from the outside. Its whole business model is based around it being the sole beneficiary of the data it continually builds higher walls around.

Laguna asserts that the recent tactic of Google, Facebook, et al, has been to create new alliances and cooperative projects to try and prove their open source and privacy credentials. In the last few years weve already seen the Open Computing Alliance, Open Invention Network, Open Data Center Alliance, the AllSeen Alliance which, claim the naysayers are vehicles for the big tech companies to convince us of their openness.

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The Inherent Dishonesty Inside Open Source