What enterprise software can learn from community sites

Linux & Open Source News Alert This newsletter is sponsored by Blue Coat Get the latest on Web Acceleration Tools Discover how to significantly improve document delivery times for users that are physically away from your centralized data center. A document that takes 80 minutes to deliver to a user across the globe could be delivered in three minutes with Web acceleration. Learn how your IT organization can benefit from this technology. Listen to this Webcast now. LinuxWorld's Linux and Open Source News Alert, 10/17/07 LinuxWorld.com Feature Story What enterprise software can learn from community sites: Gary Little October 16, 2007 Gary Little, a partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, explains the interaction between an open source company and its user community, and how companies don't just cash in on the community, but the community changes the shape of a company. "We found that that traditional model of enterprise software was becoming a challenge to invest behind because of that up-front cost in sales and marketing on one hand and then in many aspects a smaller market as all of the different software companies have spliced and diced those respective areas. So starting when Oracle started to roll up even huge giants like PeopleSoft, we decided we needed a more disruptive approach to the marketplace. Panscopic acquired JasperReports, which was the open source leader in business intelligence reporting, and we changed our name to JasperSoft." (Read more) Executive Guide:Virtualization Meets Reality Virtualization is being used to make the most out of everything from applications and servers to desktops and storage. But as companies expand their reliance on the technology, challenges mount. Read this guide authored by a host of Network World editors and review this timely topic. Click Here for More Information More Linux news Red Hat, Novell sued for patent infringement October 12, 2007 Linux vendors Red Hat and Novell are being sued for patent infringement by a patent troll firm, IP Innovation and Technology Licensing. (Read more) OSI approves two Microsoft shared-source licenses October 16, 2007 The board of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has approved two Microsoft Corp. licenses that allow proprietary source code to be shared, a move that is likely to inspire protest and spur controversy for die-hard open-source proponents. (Read more) Kernel space: Linux gets CAN support October 16, 2007 The rugged communications bus designed for automotive and other high-noise applications now has Linux support, thanks to kernel developers at Volkswagen. (Read more) Open-source CMS app grows from a drop to an ocean October 15, 2007 Drupal started out as a college experiment. The Open Source content management system, which is written in PHP and runs on a LAMP stack, now powers about 200,000 public facing Web sites and numerous intranet sites around the world. Needless to say, it has thousands of contributors. (Read more) LinuxWorld.com Community How to risk-shift the desktop productivity suck October 16, 2007 The Bring Your Own Laptop movement is the IT side of The Great Risk Shift. Just as companies have moved employees from "defined benefit" pension plans to "defined contribution" plans, it makes sense to offload the risks of desktop PCs from the company to the user. Today's desktops are the worst of both worlds: they're as flaky as an innovative product, with all the differentiating value of a commodity product. It's a no-brainer for the CIO to disconnect his or her performance from the Great Desktop Productivity Suck. And no, the problems of desktop machines aren't vendor-specific. (Read more)

Contact the author: Don Marti is editor of LinuxWorld.com. This newsletter is sponsored by Blue Coat Get the latest on Web Acceleration Tools Discover how to significantly improve document delivery times for users that are physically away from your centralized data center. A document that takes 80 minutes to deliver to a user across the globe could be delivered in three minutes with Web acceleration. Learn how your IT organization can benefit from this technology. Listen to this Webcast now. BONUS FEATURE IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: networking.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007