Category: 1.2 Open Source (Industry)
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How Project vs. Product Confuses Open Source Terminology
The terms project and product are used with continued confusion. Both open source and agile methods are particularly bad offenders, leading people astray. Adapted straight from the textbooks: Not always, but typically, a project is used to create a custom artifact, while a product is (by definition) made for a market, that is, many different…
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EU survey on open source software and standardization
Open source software and patents are a tricky topic and resolution of the many hairy issues may need new and/or revised laws. Fraunhofer Gesellschaft is currently running a survey for the European Union to gather broad stakeholder input on the topic. I encourage participation. Deadline is Nov 30th, 2018.
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Amazon’s announcement about Corretto and Java’s future
Ever since Oracle got their hands on Java (by way of acquiring Sun Microsystems), it has worked hard on making money of it. As far as I can tell, it has been as unsuccessful at this as the prior owner, Sun. Compared to Sun, Oracle upped the ante by way of suing Google over Dalvik,…
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No open-source software allowed in products and services
I was recently pointed to a German bank’s AGB (general purchasing terms and conditions), which contained the following clause: 9.5 The SUPPLIER guarantees that as part of provided services no open source software has been used. I think such a clause warrants a deeply humored #MUWHAHA. First, the factual. Even Windows contains open-source software. Open-source…
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On the state of using vs. contributing to open source
Digital Ocean just published a survey of developers that indicates how companies are getting more comfortable with using open source, but remain much less comfortable with contributing to open source. Matt Asay and Chris Aniszczyk picked up on this, suggesting that open source will become more sustainable if we get those contribution numbers up. What…
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Open source license compliance in mobile apps
Open source license compliance is not for the faint of heart. Among many things, a company needs to tell the recipients of a distribution which open source software is used in their products. In the case of mobile apps, free or not, the user is the recipient and the app is the distribution. Downloading an…