Economic Motivation of Open Source Software

Posted on by John

I came across Dirk Riehle’s excellent article: “The Economic Motivation of Open Source Software: Stakeholder Perspectives” while reading the April issue of Computer on the train this morning.

Thankfully, he’s also put it online:  “The Economic Motivation of Open Source Software: Stakeholder Perspectives”

Some interesting conclusions about system integrators:

Large system integrators, or solution providers, stand to gain the most from open source software because they increase profits through direct cost savings and the ability to reach more customers through improved pricing flexibility. Every dollar a system integrator saves on license costs paid to a software firm is a dollar gained that the customer might spend on services.

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State of the What?

Posted on by John

David Sifry from Technorati has posted the latest State of the Blogosphere – except that now it is the “State of the Live Web.”

He notes that, in a change from the old State of the Blogosphere reports:

With this report, we expand on this tradition by introducing information and analysis relating to the broader range of social media on the Web — what we and many others call the Live Web (another good definition). Technorati continues to grow well beyond its roots at the leading blog search engine; increasingly, we are the main aggregation point for all forms of social media on the Web, including blogs, of course, but also video, photos, audio such as podcasts and much more.

It’s odd to me that the links for “Live Web” actually point to Linux Journal – I’d always though of “Live” as a kind of Microsoftism – to go with Windows Live Search, Live Spaces, Office Live, etc.

(According to Doc Searls, the “World Live Web” meme goes back to 2001 and was coined by Allen Searls – I know Doc has been using this distinction between Live web and Static web for some time.)

Anyway, some conclusions:

  • 70 million blogs tracked, 120 thousand new ones each day
  • Doubling now takes 320 days, not 180 (continued lengthening from last report)
  • In Q4 2006, there were 22 blogs in the top 100 most popular sites, up from 12 in Q3 – there is an increasing overlap / mixture of “mainstream media” and “blog” audiences

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How would you like your Web 2.0?

Posted on by John

In the last couple a week, a number of surveys about Web 2.0 in the Enterprise have been published:

(The McKinsey and Optaros reports are free with registration)

So what should we make of all these surveys, and their conclusions?

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Kflickr – Flickr uploader for Kubuntu

Posted on by John

Tired of having to use the web form based flickr upload process, and uploading six photos at a time?

or, tired of rebooting into windows just to upload photos?

I just discovered kflickr – it’s in the Ubuntu repository for Edgy. (Looks like it is in Dapper and Feisty as well)

(At a terminal, sudo apt-get install kflickr, or use aptitude and look for it by name)

Very nice. Take a look later today or tomorrow for some Zurich photos from today and yesterday.