Python Trademark At Risk In Europe: Python Software Foundation Appeals For Help

The open source programming language Python -- named after the British comedy series "Monty Python" -- became popular in the 1990s, along with two other languages beginning with "P": Perl and PHP. Later, they formed a crucial part of the famous "LAMP" stack -- the GNU/Linux operating system + Apache Web server + MySQL database + Python/Perl/PHP as scripting languages -- that underpinned many of the most successful startups from this time. 

On Techdirt.

Netflix Opens up About Open Source

Even though it is generally accepted that open source is used widely throughout the business world, it doesn't hurt having a few high-profile examples to point at when people doubt its suitability for this role. Obvious ones like Google and Amazon have been joined more recently by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. And now here's another well-known name opening up, Netflix:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Free Software's Second Era: The Rise and Fall of MySQL

If the first era of free software was about the creation of the fully-rounded GNU/Linux operating system, the second saw a generation of key enterprise applications being written to run on that foundation. Things got moving with the emergence and rapid adoption of the LAMP stack – a term coined in 1998 - a key part of which was (obviously) MySQL (the “M”).

On The H Open.

Shining Light on Why Microsoft Loves LAMP to Death

Here's an interesting little tale:

I was fortunate enough to spend last Thursday with a group of LAMP engineers who have some experience with Windows Server and IIS, and who are based in Japan.

The three - Kimio Tanaka, the president of Museum IN Cloud; Junpei Hosoda, the president of Yokohama System Development; and Hajime Taira, with Hewlett-Packard Japan - won a competition organized by impress IT and designed to get competitive LAMP engineers to increase the volume of technical information around PHP/IIS and application compatibility. The competition was titled "Install Maniax 2008".

A total of 100 engineers were chosen to compete and seeded with Dell server hardware and the Windows Web Server 2008 operating system. They were then required to deploy Windows Server/IIS and make the Web Server accessible from the Internet. They also had to run popular PHP/Perl applications on IIS and publish technical documentation on how to configure those applications to run on IIS.

The three winners were chosen based on the number of ported applications on IIS, with the prize being a trip to Redmond. A total of 71 applications out of the targeted 75 were ported onto IIS, of which 47 were newly ported to IIS, and related new "how to" documents were published to the Internet. Some 24 applications were also ported onto IIS based on existing "how to" documents.

So let's just deconstruct that, shall we?

A competition was held in Japan "to get competitive LAMP engineers to increase the volume of technical information around PHP/IIS and application compatibility"; they were given the challenge of getting "popular PHP/Perl applications on IIS", complete with documentation. They "succeeded" to such an extent, that "71 applications out of the targeted 75 were ported onto IIS, of which 47 were newly ported to IIS".

But that wasn't the real achievement: the real result was that a further 47 PHP/Perl apps were ported *from* GNU/Linux (LAMP) *to* Windows - in effect, extracting the open source solutions from the bottom of the stack, and substituting Microsoft's own software.

This has been going on for a while, and is part of a larger move by Microsoft to weaken the foundations of open source - especially GNU/Linux - on the pretext that they are simply porting some of the top layers to its own stack. But the net result is that it diminishes the support for GNU/Linux, and makes those upper-level apps more dependent on Microsoft's good graces. The plan is clearly to sort out GNU/Linux first, before moving on up the stack.

It's clever, and exactly the sort of thing I would expect from the cunning people at Microsoft. That I understand; what I don't get is why these LAMP hackers are happy to cut off the branch they sit on by aiding and abetting Microsoft in its plans? Can't they see what's being done to their LAMP?

Sun's Open Source Appliances

When Sun announced at the beginning of this year that it was buying MySQL for the not inconsiderable sum of a billion dollars, the question most people posed to themselves was how Sun was going to recoup its investment. I was initially worried that Sun might try to push Solaris over GNU/Linux in the LAMP stack, but Sun's CEO, Jonathan Schwartz was adamant that wasn't going to happen.

Now, nearly a year later, we're beginning to see what exactly Sun has in mind....

On Open Enterprise blog.

If You Can't Beat Them...

...bribe them:

Microsoft BizSpark is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources when they need it the most:

* Software. Receive fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions. There is no upfront cost to enroll.

Fortunately, people don't choose the LAMP stack predominantly because it's free, but because it's better.

What next - *paying* people to use Microsoft's products? Oh, wait....

Open Source (Still) Seeds the Startups

On Open Enterprise blog.

Lost in the Clouds

Here's a piece about cloud computing that ask a pertinent question:

Why isn't the world's biggest and most powerful software company taking the initiative here? For all of Microsoft's chest beating about internet delivery as the next phase of its development, we've seen precious little in the way of action.

There are so many reasons that it's hard to pin down. Perhaps it's with Ray Ozzie, the successor to Bill Gates, who is still settling into his job. Or perhaps it's just the stifling bureaucracy of a corporation that stretches as far as the eye can see.

But there's also something missing from this analysis of cloud computing. Nowhere is it mentioned that an essential prerequisite for creating huge server farms to keep the clouds afloat is free software: if Google or Amazon had to use proprietary software, paying for each instance clouds would never, er, get off the ground.

Just as the open source LAMP stack created the current wave of Web 2.0 companies, so free software will run the magic machinery keeping clouds aloft.

Who's Got the Right Idea? Dave Sifry Has

On Open Enterprise blog.

Best4C: Best4U?

I was interested to read Vic Keegan's column in the Guardian today:

This week I bumped into a number of people who had no office to go back to. But there is no need to feel sorry for them. It was not that they were too poor or unemployed, they just did not need an office to work from.

the reason being, of course, that they mostly use web-based apps.

I'm not quite office-less, since I do tend to work in the same room, but I'm certainly big into web apps, and I'm always on the look-out for new additions to my collection.

Here's one, the wonderfully literalistic Best4C:

Best4c(Best for chart) is a Web-based, online diagram tool that allows you to create, edit and share charts anytime, anywhere.

The interface is rather clunky, and the icons almost indecipherable, but, do you know what? It works, and has a lot of nice computer-related artwork. Not that I have much need for any of this, but if I ever do, at least I won't need to go to an office.

Of course, it's not open source in the traditional, client-side, sense, although the underlying server-side code probably is (LAMP etc.). Which raises the whole issue of what's to be done about such web services that take so much from the free software commons without always giving back. But that's a post for another day.... (Via China Web 2.0 Review.)

Blogging Open Stack Integration

One of the great but rather submerged stories in the open source world is stack integration. With the exception of the LAMP stack, free software solutions have been rather fragmented, with little inter-project coordination. One important development in this space is the creation of the Open Solutions Alliance, whose main task is ensuring better cooperation between disparate products.

I wrote about this recently, and I notice that the OSA blog is quite active at the moment. It's a good place to find out what exactly is happening in this important but neglected area.

Opening Up Advertising

As the post below indicates, one reason that open content strategies are working is that online advertising is increasingly profitable (just ask Google). Further proof that advertising is evolving rapidly is the rise of OpenAds, one of open source's better-kept secrets. Here's a piece by Matt Asay with some useful background:

OpenAds is one of the most interesting open source projects/companies on the planet. Period. It's an open source ad server. Like Doubleclick without the lock-in or fees. In other words, open source. 100% GPLv2. I guess it should be no surprise that the world's most popular ad server, powering Web 2.0 business models, is open source, just as the LAMP stack is the technological basis for Web 2.0 sites/services.

Amazingly, OpenAds is British, too.

The Penguin Goes to Redmond

Well, to Redmond Magazine, that is....

Park at My LAMP Server

Up to the London OpenCoffee meeting yesterday (well, with a name like that, how could I resist?), where I met Anthony Eskinazi. He's the MD of the self-explanatory ParkAtMyHouse.com:

We are a brand new and innovative service which aims to provide affordable and penalty-free parking around public venues by enabling property-owners to rent out their empty driveways, garages, car parks and other spare pieces of land to drivers needing somewhere to park.

Motorists and cyclists on their way to work, a big sports match or a hospital appointment for example, can arrange to use a property-owner’s space on a one-off or regular, short-term or long-term basis.

What I love about this idea - aside from its blindingly obvious nature, always a good sign - is the way it uses technology to make economic and social activity more granular, and hence more flexible and efficient. It also has a green angle, thanks to this tie-up with Zipcars.

Not surprisingly, one reason why Eskinazi was able to turn this idea into reality with minimal resources is because he's built his site (personally) on a LAMP stack. He also mentioned how much he owes to the content management software Joomla, which he says is both easy to use and yet extremely powerful.

Not So Lonely

Geek that I am, the only thing that really interests me about Lonelygirl15 is the technology behind the follow-on Web site:

On a shoestring budget themselves, the trio supports the Web site with open-source technologies like MySQL databases. "Our entire backend that supports the Web site is free because we use WordPress," Beckett said. "Five years ago, you would have had to buy UNIX boxes and build a custom content management system."

That is, a LAMP stack like just about every other Web 2.0 startup - not so lonely. In this respect, it feeds off the same forces that made the original videos possible:

The Lonelygirl15 episodes cost virtually nothing to create. All are shot with a $130 Web camera. The sound is recorded from the internal microphone. Two desk lamps provide the lighting. Beckett's laptop is the computer required to record the segment.

No wonder Hollywood is in trouble.

Zend, Zend, Zend

News that Zend is picking up a fat bunch of VC dosh is no suprise: PHP is consisently one of the most popular options for the LAMP stack. What's more interesting is what they are going to spend it on:

“The new funds will enable us to expand faster in emerging geographical markets, accelerate our product development and extend the services organization to meet the demands of our growing number of enterprise PHP customers,” said Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, the co-founders of Zend Technologies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah: but what are you really going to do with it? (Via Matt Asay.)

How the Stacks Stack Up

The ever-interesting Steven Vaughan-Nichols, who goes back a long way in the free software world, has a fascinating article about a comparison of two application stacks, one open source, the other from Microsoft. The results were surprising:

The tests showed that such vanilla LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/PERL) stacks as SLES (SUSE Enterprise Linux Server) 9, Zope, ZODB, and PHP and a pure LAMP based on SLES, produced "C" results. They weren't bad, but they weren't anywhere near as good as an out of the box .NET stack based on Windows Server 2003, IIS (Internet Information Server), SQL Server 2005, ASP (Active Server Pages), and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

The results mirror those of the Mindcraft tests back in the late 1990s, when GNU/Linux found itself whupped by Microsoft. But the consequence was a range of improvements that soon took free software past Windows. However disappointing the current outcome for the stack tests may be, I'm sure that the same will happen here.

Remember: every bug report makes open source stronger, and the same goes for adverse benchmarks.

Scrying an Oracle

This story has so many interesting elements in it that it's just got to be true.

According to Business Week, Oracle is poised to snap up no less than three open source companies: JBoss, Zend and Sleepycat Software. JBoss - which calls itself the "professional open source company", making everyone else unprofessional, I suppose - is one of the highest-profile players in this sector. Not least because its founder, the Frenchman Marc Fleury, has a tongue as sharp as his mind (you can sample his blog with this fab riff on genomics, Intelligent Design and much else).

His controversial remarks and claims in the past have not always endeared him to others in the free software world. Take, for example, the "disruptive Professional Open Source model" he proudly professes, "which combines the best of the open source and proprietary software worlds to make open source a safe choice for the enterprise and give CIOs peace of mind." Hmm, I wonder what Richard Stallman has to say about that.

JBoss has been highly successful in the middleware market: if you believe the market research, JBoss is the leader in the Java application server sector. Oracle's acquisition would make a lot of sense, since databases on their own aren't much fun these days: you need middleware to hook them up to the Internet, and JBoss fits the bill nicely. It should certainly bolster Oracle in its battle against IBM and Microsoft in the fiercely-fought database sector.

While many might regard the swallowing up of an ambivalent JBoss by the proprietary behemoth Oracle as just desserts of some kind, few will be happy to see Zend suffer the same fate. Zend is the company behind the PHP scripting language - one of the most successful examples of free software. (If you're wondering, PHP stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor" - employing your standard hacker recursive acronym naming convention).

Where JBoss is mostly key for companies running e-commerce Web sites, say, PHP is a core technology of the entire open source movement. Its centrality is indicated by the fact that it is one of the options for the ubiquitous LAMP software stack: Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP or Perl or Python. The fact that Oracle will own the engine that powers PHP will be worrying for many in the free software world.

About Sleepycat, I can only say: er, who? - but that's just ignorance on my part. This article explains that Sleepycat's product, Berkeley DB, is actually the "B" in LAMP. Got that? The Sleepycat blog may throw some more light on this strange state of affairs - or maybe not.

Whatever the reason that Oracle wants to get its mitts on Sleepycat as well as Zend and JBoss, one thing is abundantly clear if these rumours prove true: Oracle is getting very serious about open source.

In the past, the company has had just about the most tortuous relationship with open source of any of the big software houses. As I wrote in Rebel Code, in early July 1998, an Oracle representative said "we're not seeing a big demand from our customer that we support it" - "it" being GNU/Linux. And yet just two weeks later, Oracle announced that it was porting Oracle8 to precisely that platform. This was one of the key milestones in the acceptance of free software by business: no less a person than Eric Raymond told me that "the Oracle port announcement...made the open source concept unkillable by mere PR" - PR from a certain company being a big threat in the early days of corporate adoption.

Open source has come on by leaps and bounds since then, and these moves by Oracle are not nearly so momentous - at least for free software. But I wonder whether the otherwise canny Larry Ellison really knows what he's getting into.

Until now, Oracle has mainly interacted with open source through GNU/Linux - that is, at arm's length. If it takes these three companies on board - especially if it acquires Zend - it will find itself thrown into the maelstrom of open source culture. Here's a hint for Mr Ellison: you don't get to assimilate that culture, whatever you might be thinking of doing with the companies. You either work with it, or it simply routes around you.

Yes, I'm talking about forks here: if Oracle misplays this, and tries to impose itself on the PHP or JBoss communities, I think it will be in for a rude surprise. To its credit, IBM really got this, which is why its embrace of open source has been so successful. Whether Oracle can follow in its footsteps, only time will tell.

But the rumoured acquisitions, if they go ahead, will have one other extremely significant effect. They will instantly add credibility, viability and desirability to a host of other second-generation open source companies that have grown up in the last few years. Free software will gain an immediate boost, and hackers will suddenly find themselves in great demand again.

Given the astonishing lift-off of Google's share price, and the palpable excitement surrounding Web 2.0 technologies (and the start-ups that are working on them), the hefty price-tags on open source companies being bandied around in the context of Oracle have a feeling of déjà-vu all over again: didn't we go through all this with Red Hat and VA Linux a few years back?

You don't have to be clairvoyant - or an oracle - to see that if these deals go through, the stage is well and truly set for Dotcom Delirium 2.0.