OStatic

As the InfoWorld Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco gets underway this week, the tech publication is posting a series of interesting transcripts from roundtable discussions on open source topics. The roundtables include a number of well-known pundits, including CNet writer Matt Asay, Bruce Perens (credited by many as coining the term open source), Sam Ramji (senior director of platform technology at Microsoft), Zack Urlocker (vice president of products at MySQL) and many others. Much of the talk surrounds the trend toward commercialization of open source products.

Does widespread commercialization of open source software create unique pressures on those doing open source projects?.....

Is Apple stonewalling open source developers?.....

Check out some interesting predictions about the future of open source from the Open Source Business Conference.....

ProcessMaker and KnowledgeTree, both open source document management solutions, are working together in a new mashup.....

Apple's recent SDK announcement set off an interesting friendly discussion among bloggers about free vs. nearly free software. Jens Alfke says he appreciates all the work open source software developers do, but notes ...a lot of freeware gets abandoned by its developers, because the developers are just doing it for fun and run out of time or energy. ThatοΎ’s sad. And I think a moderate infusion of cash can definitely help alleviate those problems.

In case you haven't noticed, a blog post from a few days ago by developer Vladimir Vukicevic, who is working on performance enhancements for the Firefox 3 browser, has been making major waves for allegedly pointing to programming and API secrets that enable Apple's own applications to run more efficiently with its operating system than other applications can. InfoWorld and other tech publications have made a big deal of the post, and the hubbub made it to Slashdot. The whole thing looks like a tempest in a teapot to me.