Update – BusinessWeek has an article on Open Source that discusses the application of Open Source vs. the database Vendors. It’s interesting to note that many companies are focused on using open source to save money, rather than finding news way to innovate.
Jan 30, 2006 – Software companies have a very difficult time becoming viable businesses… most of their product developments efforts are viewed as a “sunk cost” that only has value if the software is successful. We’ve seen the tremendous growth of Open Source software such as MySQL, JBoss, etc. (in fact, this Blog runs on Open Source software). The interesting trend is the move of major companies to provide versions of their intellectual property for free. Most recently, IBM has elected to offer a version of its flagship database management system, DB2, for free. This ZDNet article does a nice job of explaining the directions and limitations… I think we are going to continue to see a shake-out in the licensing models for software.
DB2, Oracle, and Microsoft have created their piece of open source software too late in the game. Many open source projects use MySQL Server as their database of choice, including Source Forge, which hosts over 100,000 open source projects! (http://www.sf.net)
As always, if you are unfamiliar with the term open source, visit this URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software
Bottom line: open source is gaining strength. And just to prove it: approximately 70% of the Internet web servers are using Apache HTTP Server (open source project – http://www.apache.org) to serve up their web pages, as opposed to using Microsoft’s IIS Server. Apache is an open source project, and has been adopted by small to large businesses. (http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html)
And yes, when you are visiting this blog, you are connecting to Apache.
Just to keep my tech jargon to a minimum and in case anyone is interested to know what’s keeping this Blog alive…
This Blog is running on a Dell Power Edge SC420 running Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Apache 2, PHP 4, and MySQL 3.
The total cost: FREE, minus the cost of purchasing the Microsoft Windows Server operating system…
BTW (By the Way): the little footnote at the bottom of the page… that’s me! If you run into any problems, make sure to mail me first, before DZ. I don’t need anyone killing my jugular vein!
LennySokol (at) ren-servicesXYZ.com
Remove the XYZ.
Software is sure taking it’s turn.
MySQL may go public… There is, however, a lot of risk with open source software. Yet, many small-mid size biz can trust MySQL, Apache, and JBoss.
That is b/c of their years staying in biz.
🙂
Thankfully.