OStatic

My first thought when I saw that OpenText is buying Vignette, one of the oldest providers of content and portal management software, for $310 million, was what a huge player Vignette was as the commercial web ramped up. It was founded in 1995, when all businesses were suddenly forced to build online presences, wrestle with HTML, online collaboration and other new concepts. The number of big businesses that run sites and intranets on Vignette is still long, including Disney, Wachovia, Martha Stewart, Fox NewsDigital, and more. Open source content management solutions have continuously taken business away from proprietary players like Vignette, though, especially as the free and low cost platforms have matured.?

OStatic runs on Drupal, for example, a completely free platform. It works fine for us, and we never need to pay for support or services. As we covered recently in our interview with Alfresco Software Chairman John Newton, Alfresco is doing extremely well with its open source enterprise content management platforms, so we asked the folks there about the meaning of the Vignette acquisition.

While frugality isn't by any means the only reason a business should consider open source software, it would be foolish to think that the current economic situation isn't making it more attractive to companies. There is often, however, an imposing barrier standing in the way of all-out adoption. The mythical learning curve involved in moving to open source isn't half so steep or intimidating as that first step -- where do we go, what applications are best for us, and how do we put it all together and make it all work?

This week, Red Hat and IT services distribution provider, SYNNEX, announced the formation of the Open Source Channel Alliance. The Alliance's aim is to help value-added resellers and solutions providers deliver all the benefits of open source applications to their customers.

Apple Safari 4 beta borrows from Chrome and Firefox. The tabs on top layout is straight out of Google's Chrome browser.

Amazon must open the Kindle. O'Reilly maintains: Open allows experimentation. Open encourages competition.

37 Signals doubts the free model. Free is not the future.

Red Hat and Citrix ratchet up open source virtualization relevancy. Both are taking aim at VMware.

New rival for Microsoft's SharePoint. Ingres and Alfresco have a software appliance that bundles the Ingres database with Alfresco's content management.

KDE 4.2: 10 tips for getting started. This version is loaded with new design concepts and features.?

There was an interesting write up on Forbes.com this week discussing who contributes most to open source projects -- and why. Even though many open source projects have a commercial or institutional component that contributes some degree of direction (or funding) to software development, and even though many businesses and institutions use open source software regularly, the vast majority of contributions to these projects come from individuals.

Forbes' Dan Woods, after hearing Alfresco's Matt Asay and Eclipse's Ian Skerrett speak of this contributor gap, concluded that there must be something very different about how institutions contribute.

There are a number of full featured open source content management systems out there. Content management systems (CMS) are used increasingly in lieu of more traditionally managed web pages, on various sites with diverse audiences and very different goals. They can be updated quickly, easily, and require very little (if any) knowledge of how the inner plumbing works.

There are, of course, proprietary CMS platforms. Many -- from individuals to businesses -- opt for open source alternatives. Cost is naturally a factor, but having used both closed and open CMS platforms, it's been my experience that the open alternatives offer better features, an increased ability to modify and customize easily, and behave with more consistency in different browsers than most of their closed counterparts.

Finding the right open CMS for your needs is the hardest part. But there are a few considerations and rules of thumb that can make this decision a little easier.

Motorola is betting the farm on mobile open source and Android.....

Is Canonical overly paternalistic with Ubuntu?.....

Version 3.0 of the Alfresco Enterprise Edition content management system is out, and adds Alfresco Share for online team collaboration.....

Three scripts for package management on Debian and Ubuntu systems.....

Notable open source innovations.....