I love talking about supply chain management in an open source software context, especially as it applies to managing collaborative processes between upstream projects and their downstream products. In the article linked above, I called out a couple of examples of supply chain management: an enterprise OpenStack distribution and a container management product utilizing Kubernetes… Continue reading Supply Chain Case Study: Canonical and Ubuntu
Congratulations, Docker. You've taken the advice of many and gone down the path of Fedora / RHEL. Welcome to the world of upstream/downstream product management, with community participation a core component of supply chain management. You've also unleashed a clever governance hack that cements your container technology as the property of Docker, rather than let… Continue reading An Open Letter to Docker About Moby
On Tuesday, Solomon Hykes, Docker's CTO and co-founder, unleashed the Moby Project on the world. I'll admit I didn't fully grasp its significance at first. This might have something to do with being on vacation in Cape Cod and not being at DockerCon, but I digress. It wasn't until I read this Twitter thread from… Continue reading Why Project Moby is a Brilliant Move by Docker
Back in the early days of open source software, we were constantly looking for milestones to indicate how far we had progressed. Major vendor support: check (Oracle and IBM in 1998). An open source IPO: check (Red Hat and VA Linux in 1999). Major trade show: check (LinuxWorld in 1999). And then, of course, a… Continue reading How Silicon Valley Ruined Open Source Business
Update: Red Hat is sponsoring food and drinks, and the CIC is sponsoring meeting space. Our agenda is as follows: 6pm - Introductions, food and drinks 6:30pm - Open Source Business Models, Dave Neary, Red Hat 7pm - From Project to Product, John Mark Walker, Dell EMC and OSEN 7:30pm - Learning from the OpenNebula… Continue reading Updated: OSEN Meetup in Cambridge, MA 4/25
I can't believe that journalists still, despite a wealth of resources at their fingertips, continue to get the story completely wrong about building a business on open source software. I've never met Paul Rubens, but he should never be allowed to write on the subject again. Witness his article "How to Make Money From Open… Continue reading Dear CIO Mag: 2005 called, wants its article back
Bitnami has officially entered the highly competitive race for cloud native platforms, acquiring Skippbox and joining the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. To those who have been observing Bitnami over the years, this move is not a surprise. Previously known as the world's #1 service for launching apps in AWS, it seems a natural move for… Continue reading Bitnami Enters Kubernetes, Cloud Native Race
Depending on open source software introduces some challenges for those looking to create products or services derived from upstream open source components. There's a lot to consider regarding risk management, engineering efficiency, and how to influence the nebulous upstream open source world - and why you should. Original content was published at opensource.com: Open Source… Continue reading Managing Your Supply Chain
I wrote this 4-part series at linux.com in mid-2015 about creating products based on open source platforms, and how to provide value to a paying customer. The response was great! Read for yourself below: Part One - Open Source Platform Basics Part Two - Open Core vs. Hybrid Products Part Three - Creating a Product… Continue reading How to Make Money with Open Source Platforms
