You know open source has arrived when the Boy Scouts of America begin promoting its principles and adoption and the LDS (Mormon) Church starts hiring open-source developers. This week, we get both and more in today’s edition of Random Sampler.
- The Boy Scouts of America have created a website focused on open source. It’s designed “as a place for scouting leaders to go when they need an application for their troop events or when they want to help other troops with their software projects.” It’s also intended to add some end-user usability to open-source development, which has long been lacking from many projects. Good effort.
- David Ascher, Mozilla’s email guru, went on the record to speak about the future of Mozilla’s email project, suggesting that he’s not interested in building an Outlook clone, but instead wants to bring “new energy” to email. Let’s hope he succeeds.
- Hyperic keeps getting asked by its customers, “Who can we hire to administer our Hyperic IT management systems?” Among those asking the question? CNET and the LDS church. Nice to see my blogging and tithing dollars going to good use.
… Source:The Open Road
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The big news this week for Apple wasn’t the new 3G iPhone. It was the business model behind the next-generation iPhone, and the threat it poses to Research in Motion (RIM). Apple’s model depends on developers. RIM’s model depends on devices.
If history repeats itself, the developers will win. Just ask Microsoft.
More on that in a minute. For now, consider the better TCO (total cost of ownership) argument that Apple now has for both developers and end-users. Many enterprises are going to find the cost/benefit analysis of RIM vs. iPhone favoring the iPhone. RIM’s Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) solution costs $5 to 10 per mailbox per month (for Exchange), plus an additional $10 per mailbox per month for BES, which includes a combination of licensing plus the cost of administering BES. Not so cheap.
The iPhone? It’s still going to cost $5 to 10 per mailbox per month (for Exchange or Zimbra or whatever your mail service happens to be), but the extra $10 charge is wiped away. Gone. This leaves the enterprise with a two-times price advantage for the SaaS/iPhone world, which doesn’t even include the cost of the device, which also continues to plummet.
Again, RIM’s business model depends on extracting maximum value from each device/user, and it does so to good effect. Apple’s business model is shifting to be about ubiquity of devices, and then the monetization of the applications.
Which will be better? Well, that depends on how one feels about developers and their impact on markets.
… Source:The Open Road
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Filed under: WWDC, World wide web Tools, .Mac, MobileMe
I’m eager to test out Apple’s upcoming MobileMe service, the .Mac replacement scheduled to launch in a few weeks. Unfortunately for many, my enthusiasm is matched by disdain for the MobileMe logo.
Gawker says “…it should be on a package of Japanese soap.” Paul Thurrott notices a similarity between MobileMe and Microsoft WindowsME and Manhattan Offender asks flat-out: “Is ‘MobileMe’ the worst logo in the history of Mac?”
First of all, Manhattan Offender, Apple is the company that produced MobileMe and its graphic representation, not “Mac.”
Remember, Apple is pushing this (get it?) as “Exchange for the rest of us.” It’s not a corporate product, but a consumer service with corporate-like features. We think the logo is airy and fun.
What’s your take? Decent enough or utter garbage?
[Via Geek & Mild]
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(Credit: The Atlantic)It’s not yet on the Web, but In the the July issue, The Atlantic has an exceptional and provocative article by Nick Carr, asking “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” It’s a riff on Carr’s book, The Large Switch (reviewed here), but covers new ground and has me worried. Carr writes:
The human brain is almost infinitely malleable…James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind “is very plastic…The brain…has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.”
As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our “intellectual technologies”–the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities–we inevitably start to take on the qualities of those technologies.
“Excellent!” you say, “Now I’ll be able to retrieve an infinite amount of information, like Google.” Maybe. Or maybe our ability to retain and process information will continue to dwindle. Remember books? Those were the things we read before e-mail, Web browsing, and Twitter came on the scene.
Talking of Twitter, am I the only one who views it as further evidence of a soundbite culture that struggles even to think beyond 140-character blips?
… Source:The Open Road
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Forrester just released a new survey, one that begs the question: Who paid for this rubbish?
I generally like Forrester’s work, but this survey flies in the face of each piece of research on open source that I’ve seen in the last five years…including research from Forrester. Also, as the research itself finds, often its survey respondents are using open source even when they don’t know it: Nearly half of those surveyed by Forrester who are using open-source frameworks (e.g., Spring) still claim they’re not using open source.
Forrester’s newest research finds:
- Seventy percent of decision-makers responded that they don’t have interest or have no plans to adopt open-source software;
- Only 23 percent of respondents stated expanding their use of open-source software was a priority;
- Security is the main concern around adopting open-source software. Eighty-eight percent of respondents stated it was an important or very important concern.
Incredible how open source’s greatest strengths are now being used against it. Security? I’m not suggesting that open source is perfect here, but it’s one of the primary reasons that people are dumping proprietary software for open source. This is a classic Microsoft spin, and directly contradicts Forrester’s own, earlier research that open source offers security advantages, not disadvantages.
Fortunately, if CIOs care to spend even a nanosecond checking Forrester’s claims about tepid adoption of open source, there’s a wide array of contradictory evidence, including from Forrester:
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