OStatic

Let's face it, open source software companies and projects have a wide variety of innovative platforms and methods to drum up awareness, business, and interest in development for the projects they create and support. The problem is, it's not always easy to quantify how much interest and awareness (or ultimately, new contributors, users, or customers) result from any specific method.

Social networks are a great way to reach out to people with specific interests and start the chain of word of mouth recommendation. But they just aren't the traditional sort of public relations drives or advertising many organizations are used to. If an organization understands this, there's a lot to gain from social network outreach -- and open source software, a model that works based on input from the wider community, is in a position to benefit even more.

There's just that matter of metrics -- will the push yield good results? Engine Yard, a Ruby on Rails hosting and services provider, found it's well worth the effort.

While there have been some questionable strategies playing out on Wall Street recently, and the Securities and Exchange Commission continues to scrutinize the legalities of a few high frequency trading techniques, former NYSE chairman William H. Donaldson's statement to New York Times holds true: if an individual investor can't keep up with larger brokerages, it's a major disadvantage.

Marketcetera feels that open source software is an ideal way for smaller brokerages to keep up with -- and perhaps outmaneuver -- their larger competition. Marketcetera CEO Graham Miller sees open source hosted/SaaS (software as a service) trading platforms as having particular potential for investors using high frequency trading methods. And Miller isn't the only one who believes this -- the evidence is vibrantly illustrated by Sky Road LLC's integration of Marketcetera's open source, automated trading platform into its SaaS financial services product line.

Open source collaboration software and support provider Open-Xchange announced today that it would offer its webmail module free of charge to qualifying partners. The Webmail4Free promotion is open to companies in the telecommunication industry (web hosting providers and ISPs) as well as non-profit and educational institutions (universities, government agencies, and other organizations granted non-profit status). Additional qualifications and terms depend on the number of accounts required by the interested organization.

While choosing software simply because it's low-cost (or no cost) isn't recommended, and the promotion is (naturally) designed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement, companies and non-profits interested in deploying open source mail, groupware and information management solutions might want to take a closer look at Open-Xchange's offer.

For years, you could tell the hottest open-source projects by the number of programmers on an e-mail list, or by the number of books published. Increasingly, though, the hottest projects are those around whom service-oriented businesses are being formed. Yesterday, Ruby on Rails hosting company Engine Yard received a $15 million series B round from NEA, Amazon, and Benchmark. This follows an earlier $3.5 million round in January of this year.

In a case reminiscent of the DVD hacking cases from the early 2000's, Oregon cable modem hacker and author of Hacking the Cable Modem has been charged with conspiracy and aiding and abetting wire fraud. This is another sad commentary on a criminal justice system that prosecutes the toolmaker without noting the legitimate uses of hardware hacking and modding.?

The art of taking an existing product and modifying it in ways never intended by the original manufacturer has been a core tenet of the open source and free culture movements from the beginning. It is long past time for more sanity when considering these issues and crafting public policy.

At OSCON last year, Jaspersoft revealed that work was underway to re-vamp JasperForge, its developer community platform. Jaspersoft's goal was to ensure that the Forge could support its community into the future by integrating new collaboration and networking tools, while enhancing the Forge's existing features.

Today, Jaspersoft has announced that the JasperForge upgrade has moved into high gear, with all of its new features and enhancements in place and operational.

The Linux Foundation has published a general overview of how Linux is increasingly powering cloud computing. The short document, written by the Linux Foundation's Amanda McPherson, examines in a very accessible manner what cloud computing is, where it began, how Linux became one of its pillars, where it is headed, and how Linux is getting it there.

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.

The Moonlight team has announced that the first beta release of Moonlight 1.0 is nearly ready for testing. Moonlight is an open source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight product.

The project hopes to get new contributors to come aboard as it finalizes the 1.0 release and pushes forward to Moonlight 2.0. Developer Chris Toshok points to some of the upcoming development tasks, and says that because the 2.0 release will be larger and features numerous self-contained subsystems, developers have more opportunity to make a solid impact on the project.

If the fact that the ParanoidLinux distribution (now in an alpha-alpha stage ) is based on a work of science fiction isn't unsettling, consider two key peripheral issues.

The first unsettling issue is that in some censorship-centric areas of the world, an operating system granting a user anonymity could be literally life-saving.

The second unsettling issue is that an effort is being made to package security tools -- ones that exist in current Linux and BSD systems, or are readily available through repositories -- into yet another distribution.