Comments on: HP Joins Open Source Channel Alliance Party

By: Jef Spaleta

Jef Spaleta — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:33:08 +0000

The VAR Guy:

While JP was being snarky, he does point to a bigger problem associated with the growing culture of online services development. As more and more of our needs both as private citizens and business interests are going to be met by web services businesses the open development methodology may not be transferring over into this new area of development.

Yes there is a very high likelihood that many of these businesses will be leveraging existing open source technology maybe even contributing to it through the open development process for technology they are consuming. But how many of those businesses are going to be adopting an open development model for their own service codebases that their users and customers directly interact with?

We are undergoing a cultural shift right now that might not be healthy for the open ecosystem long term. The new breed of developers, the web-centric SaaS developers, understand the immediate tangible benefits of consuming open code but its not clear they understand the less tangible long term benefits of using an open development process for their own work. That fact has to be bittersweet for many open development advocates. The problem is we really don’t have a strong vocal leader yet who seems to be willing and able to champion open development models in the SaaS space.

This is the sort of cultural shift that may require a generational change in leadership. I don’t think we can rely on the community’s established greybeards to be the most effective communicator about open SaaS development. And the younger luminaries all seem to be trying to build their own closed SaaS businesses in the short term.
The Franklin Street Statement is out now, as a rallying point, but its still not clear who will be an effective leader who can best help see its ideals adopted broadly in the SaaS development community.

-jef

By: Troy Webb

Troy Webb — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:04:26 +0000

By the way CompServ is holding a customer event on VDI with Red Hat and HP as sponsors. HP is already in the game when it comes to being open source friendly! HP and Red Hat make sense!

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:14:47 +0000

Jef: The VAR Guy is at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. So at least for the next few days, he won’t be thinking about open source registration systems. Kidding aside, The VAR Guy will defer to readers. Has anyone heard a of complete registration service that’s totally open source??

By: Jef Spaleta

Jef Spaleta — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:14:05 +0000

@JP:
More to the point, is there a competing registration service provider you would recommend that runs an open source stack? Feel free to name drop. Completely open source web service companies are still few and far between. SaaS businesses using the AGPL and compliant with the Franklin Street Statement even rarer still. Here’s your chance to lift up a business that is doing it the right way and give them some attention.

-jef

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:05:23 +0000

JP: The VAR Guy doesn’t think the Open Source Channel Alliance is trying to fragment the market. Rather, the Open Source Channel Alliance is trying to raise awareness for open source in the IT channel. Generally speaking, that’s a good thing… right?

Your point about OSCA using closed source for registration is well-taken. However, let’s keep this in perspective. OSCA is hosting a small, half-day, regional show in South Carolina. Best Guess is that they simply leveraged a quick online registration system as part of a fast move to get registration going quickly.

So on both points, The VAR Guy is giving OSCA the benefit of the doubt.

By: JP

JP — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:04:58 +0000

Even MORE interesting is the “opensource alliance” uses CLOSED source technology for it’s registration. Hmmm.

By: JP

JP — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:03:31 +0000

Interesting that this event is held during OSCON? Do they have their own agenda? Is this an attempt at fragmentation?

By: Links 11/07/2009: Linux Adoption Up, Bits on Gran Canaria Desktop Summit | Boycott Novell

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:53:28 +0000

[...] HP Joins Open Source Channel Alliance Party When the Open Source Channel Alliance — launched by Red Hat and Synnex — hosts its first conference for VARs and channel partners in late July, a surprise guest will be on hand: Hewlett-Packard. Here’s the scoop and the implications for channel partners. [...]

By: Jef Spaleta

Jef Spaleta — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:05:42 +0000

The VAR Guy:
At this point after the Oracle acquisition of Sun, is it really surprising that MySQL is MIA? I don’t think any of us know how Oracle plans to position MySQL in its product portfolio.

-jef