Most Influential People In Open Source

October 27th, 2009 | | Uncategorized

As part of MindTouch’s 2009 open source best practices research,  we asked C and VP level Open Source Executives who they thought are the most influential people in the industry today.  Over 50 votes from Executives in Europe and North America were cast to determine the 2009 edition (note: they could not vote for anyone in their own company).  What makes this list remarkable is that industry insiders were the judges.

There were a few surprises from outside of the open source industry.  For instance, Steve Ballmer was voted in because of his negative remarks on the open source industry and its subsequent positive impact.  Vivek Kundra was voted in because of his contributions to the industry inside the US Federal Government (in fact the Whitehouse.gov site was revamped with open source software).  Notably absent however are any influential women.

This list of the top influential Executives of the 2009 is ranked by the effect these individuals have had on the open source industry.  Not all are recognizable, but these leaders are the movers, shakers and thought leaders of the open source industry.   Want to know the future direction of open source?  Just ask a few of the people on this list.

Read more…

CodePlex Foundation: Microsoft, an Open Source Leader?

September 13th, 2009 | | Editorial

CodePlex Foundation logoLast week I joined the advisory board of the newly created CodePlex Foundation, which was forged in the bowels of Microsoft. Sounds scary doesn’t it?

The foundation, a 501.c6 non-profit, endeavors to increase participation in open source community projects. The intent is to provide a framework for commercial (proprietary) software companies to more easily contribute to open source projects. Specifically, the CodePlex Foundation wishes to help resolve concerns commonly shared among commercial software companies about contributions downstream; such as implied patents, copyright, licensing, etc.

How will the CodePlex Foundation compare to other open source foundations?

Excerpted from the CodePlex Foundation:

Other foundations are targeted at particular projects, platforms, or applications, such as Firefox and the Mozilla Foundation, or Gnome and the Gnome Foundation. We wanted a foundation that addresses a full spectrum of software projects, and does so with the licensing and intellectual property needs of commercial software companies in mind. Having said that, we expect the Codeplex Foundation to be complimentary to, and not competitive with, other open source foundations. One measure of our success will be if other foundations experience an increase in participation from commercial software developers because of us.

[Emphasis added]

Put away your tin foil hat. In my opinion, The motivation is simple.

Read more…

Microsoft Port25: Open Source Collaboration Built On .NET

August 6th, 2009 | | Uncategorized

Microsoft Port25Earlier this week I wrote a guest post at the Microsoft Open Source Community blog Port25. Peter, Duff, Chris and the rest of the team at Port25 and the open source lab are doing incredible work. They also are fanatical MindTouch customers. Thanks for your support and cheer leading guys. :-)

While the vast majority of MindTouch users and customers are deploying MindTouch on Linux/Apache/Mono I am keen to make Windows/IIS/.NET users aware of the availability of MindTouch on this platform as well. In fact, MindTouch 2009 has a very elegant Microsoft Installer (MSI).  If you are a Windows Server 2003/2008 user I encourage you to download the MSI and give it a whirl. The installation is immediate and painless.

Read more…

MindTouch Collaborative Networks: Measurable ROI

July 7th, 2009 | | Dream, Editorial

We have received a number of requests recently from companies looking for hard ROI data on our Intranet Collaborative Network so that they can sell our solution internally.  The issue that immediately comes to mind is that each company uses their intranet differently so that quantifying ROI is a subjective exercise.  In other words, every company will realize benefits and ROI differently depending on how they use their Intranet.  I am confident however that a large number of positive benefits can be realized and measured by focusing on specific business needs that address cost savings, revenue gains, or cost avoidance.

Implementation Timeline

A few areas that have proven to yield hard ROI benefits using MindTouch:

Read more…

MindTouch CEO to Speak at Open Source Business Conference

March 22nd, 2009 | | Conferences

Open Source Business Conference

Aaron Fulkerson, MindTouch CEO and Founder will be speaking this week in San Francisco at the most respected conference covering the convergence of open source and business, the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC). The 6th Year of the Open Source Business Conference will bring together senior business leaders, C-level technical strategists, lawyers and venture capitalists to collaborate on emerging business models, strategies and profitability for open source software use.

Topics Aaron Fulkerson will be discussing with industry leaders include:

Moving Open Source Up the Stack

Open Source Solutions for IT infrastructure have shown great success in organizations of all types and sizes. OSS for business applications have seen greater difficulties in penetrating the glass ceiling of the enterprise stack. We have put together a panel representing the EU and the US, system integrators, vendors and buyers, and corporate focus vs. education focus. We”ll explore how the OSS application strategy has changed over the past four years. We will also look at success and failures, the trade-offs and the opportunities in solving business/end-user needs with OSS enterprise applications.

Open-Core Licensing:  The New Business Model Standard for Commercial Software

High prices and lack of transparency have prompted introduction of the
fundamental benefits of open source to a new generation of software
developers. Initially the open source torch was brought back by grass
roots projects such as Linux, Apache, and MySQL. Now a whole
generation of open source software tools, components, and applications
has emerged. As those open source project communities have grown,
commercial open source companies have been attracted to offer
sponsorship and support of those projects.

….

This session will compare and contrast business models of traditional,
proprietary vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM (all making
forays into open source) with those of the new generation of open-core
licensing vendors. Contrary to some beliefs, open source particularly
with an open-core licensing business model is also a great way to
drive adoption of innovative technology. All of these factors will
have major vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP faltering unless
they can react quickly enough to adjust their models accordingly.

In addition to these topics at OSBC Fulkerson will be speaking at the Third Annual Microsoft Open Source ISV Forum on Monday, March 23.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

MindTouch Developer Blog: The great concurrency challenge

February 13th, 2009 | | Uncategorized

Steve has a great post about concurrency at the developer blog.

Just finished watching a great video discussion between George Chrysanthakopoulos and Erik Meijer from Microsoft about Concurrency, Coordination, and the CCR. George and I share a common past. We worked together for a few years in an incubation project in Advanced Strategies under Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s CTO. That project lead to the creation of the CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) and was also an inspiration to MindTouch Dream. From firsthand experience, I can attest that George is just as passionate and animated in person as he is in the video. He starts off slow and works up to an epic crescendo with arms flailing, expletives flying, and fists pounding… steamrolling his interlocutor into the ground. Very entertaining stuff!

via The great concurrency challenge « MindTouch Developer Blog.

It’s good to see George is as animated as ever.

Setting Up A Development Environment for Deki Wiki

May 13th, 2008 | | Uncategorized

Hey devs! Want to write code for Deki Wiki? We just finished up some step-by-step instructions on how to set up your very own development environment.

You’ll need Microsoft’s Visual Studio (for this set of instructions), and you’ll need to grab the VMWare-Certified MindTouch Deki Wiki Virtual Appliance (found here). After setting it up, the Virtual Machine has an “out-of-body experience”; the PHP and database layers are running in the VM while the API running inside of Visual Studio, allowing you to write code and test it on the fly. Go ahead, check it out and play!

RWW: Seven Leading Corporate Social Media Evangelists Today

April 11th, 2008 | | Awards and Press

The New Robert Scobles: Seven Leading Corporate Social Media Evangelists Today – ReadWriteWeb

Robert Scoble blazed a big trail by blogging and producing video as a technical evangelist for Microsoft from 2003 through 2006. No longer at Microsoft, Scoble now produces media for media’s sake at FastCompany.tv. Others have followed his lead, knowingly or not, and job titles like "social media evangelist" are no longer nearly as rare as they used to be.

Still, many companies wonder what kind of work an employee like that could do for them. We asked around and found seven shining stars engaging in online social media at work.

…

Aaron Fulkerson and the MindTouch Team

aaronpic.jpgMindTouch, the makers of the DekiWiki platform, is a social media company that eats its own dog food very publicly. Every member of the team contributes to the company blog, discussing not just product developments but also general interest industry news.

The company’s active developer forums are filled with media that users are able to repurpose for their own evangelism. The company integrates with a substantial number of other developer-level social media technologies.

They also use the sophisticated Viddler video platform so their videos can be tagged and commented on…

As a result of all this material being made available and the company’s high degree of visibility in several social media fora, the marketability of the widely appreciated wiki software is further amplified. Mindtouch says their enterprise wiki software is downloaded 3,000 times every day.

Great job MindTouch! Everyone on this list is someone I respect. We all should be very flattered to be included. I know I am! Although, I don’t know that I qualify as a Scoble I think collectively we might. And by collectively I mean MindTouch and the community that has organized around the technology MindTouch develops. It’s the community of users and customers that continues to propel MindTouch to new heights. Thanks all. :-) And, of course, thank you Marshall Kirkpatrick.