Top Ten Open Source Innovators

42istheanswer writes "Open source is so much more than Linux these days. A lot is happening beyond the popular operating system. Open source models are thriving in CRM (SugarCRM), messaging (Scalix), and systems management (Zenoss). Datamation has identified ten leading commercial open-source innovators and the projects they are working on in their article, Ten Leading Open Source Innovators."

Gnus

so Some GNUz, IS good gnuz....

Real OSS = Darwin In Action

Open Source software tends to work on a very darwinian model. Yes, there are "category killers" (who wants to code up a new text editor?) but for the most part, when a new "category" of open source application start taking off, it generates a lot of interest. You see about a zillion projects form up on Source Forge. Those that are able to actually produce usually get weeded through based on the quality and features. With price being removed as a deciding factor, it becomes all about how good the product is. Those that are good, survive. Those that aren't, don't. Occasionally, the old stand-bys get replaced.

What I see a lot of is companies, like Second Life (gaming company) who will "open source" part of their product, but not all of it, hoping to garner free work from the open source community. Devs are the backbone of the OSS community. With out someone to sling the code, nothing gets done. Most devs are wise to these tactics, since they're not nearly as new as the marketing poohbahs think they are. Not only does it not draw as well as they'd hoped, but it has a serious backlash. Most devs, myself included, view companies who engage in such tactics with suspicion and refuse to work on the projects even if they become fully open source later.

The other business model I've seen a lot is that the product is "open source" but some how you can never get the stuff to install or work properly unless you pay for them to host the application. This *always* ticks me off and I usually let everyone I know who might be looking for a simliar package not to waste their time. I love my Tivo, and I don't mind paying for it so don't take this the wrong way. This is what I've dubbed the "Tivo business model". If any of you ever downloaded the Tivo open source project, thinking that you might be able to get a working Tivo out of the deal, you know what I'm talking about. Yes, you could eventually get it working if you hacked away at it long enough or you can just buy the thing and get on with your life.

IMHO, if you don't have a working project that I can download for free, install on my own hardware, and get working without having to hack the source code in a major way, you're not really an open source project.

2 cents,

QueenB.

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IMHO, if you don't have a working project that I can download for free, install on my own hardware, and get working without having to hack the source code in a major way, you're not really an open source project.

Translation: if you're trying to make mone

Re:Real OSS = Darwin In Action

"Translation: if you're trying to make money off it, it's not Open Source."

Retranslation: if you try to bastardize the expression "open source" so you can use it as a buzzword atracting people to your old privative bussiness model, then no, to my eyes it's not open source no matter the distribution license of the bare source code.

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"The "private business model" is a red herring because it implies that there's some other viable business model. But in the case of open source it's not"

And then, old cute Diogene after carefully listening why indeed there's no movement in Universe, put hi

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The other business model I've seen a lot is that the product is "open source" but some how you can never get the stuff to install or work properly unless you pay for them to host the application.

One of the oldest examples of this is the venerable PBS queu

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So what we need to do, is take these intentionally broken source code releases, fix them up and produce ready to go packages for other people to use. Complete with good documentation, and easy to install packages for common distributions.
Mozilla used to be

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This is very similar, but not identical, to the Cedega model, in which you make something very difficult to compile and install, and in addition, when the community produces tools to make it easier for people to accomplish this monolithic task of installin

Innovations?

SugarCRM, Scalix and Zenoss are hardly innovative. Equivalent technologies have been around on IBM's various mainframe systems for nearly 30 years now! Sure, they didn't have flashy GUIs like they do today, but the core concepts were well-established decades ago.

The big battle is usually getting those core concepts to a level where they're applicable, especially on the relatively limited 1960s and 1970s hardware. That's the hard work. Tossing on a GUI, and running on systems equivalent in computer power to 250 S/370s isn't much of an innovation.

Re:Innovations?

And while we're at it, Apple isn't innovative. They just made a slick GUI and called it an iPod.

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And while we're at it, Apple isn't innovative. They just made a slick GUI and called it an iPod.

You're kidding? Apple not innovative?

What about spaces? Noone saw anything like that before,
OS X? Noone put a GUI on Unix before!
Tabbed Browsing? First Javascri

huh?

"Open source is so much more than Linux these days"

Maybe I'm just old and cranky but I find this really annoying given that my own involvement with what is now called Open Source predates Linux by 15 years.

If it'd said unix I think it would have been more meaningfull. Linux schminux.

free software, not open source

Free Software might predate linux by that long. And it's worth noting that Linux IS Free Software (GPLv2), NOT Open Source.

Venture Funding == Innovation (?!?)

What do all these stories of open source "innovation" have in common? They all include prominent mention of how much venture money the companies have raised. I can only assume this publication is Straight Out of Silicon Valley (tm).

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It's no wonder venture funding and AJAX go together so well. Both are built of the same nonsense.

Venture capitalism is mostly just a game for rich Californians to play. They toss a small portion of their money around, just to feel important.

AJAX is much th

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They mean the business is innovative, not the product. This could mean an unusual business model, first to open source, first to market, first to commercialise, etc.

This is linked to why politicians do silly things like pass software patent laws. They unde

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I agree.

Why does anyone have to be 'the best' or 'most innovative' ? This doesn't make free software authors strive to reach sume inane dumbass lists, it makes them pissed (or some I'd imagine rather happy) that once again their efforts didn't get them the

Another open source project to keep an eye on...

We recently discovered an open source project that is easily on the leading edge of its industry.

In my opinion there has been a huge gap in open source software covering the employee payroll and time management industry and TimeTrex [timetrex.com] seems to have stepped up to the plate in a major way.

Our company used to spend over $30,000 a year outsourcing just our payroll to ADP and another $5000-10,0000 a year on time and attendance software. With TimeTrex we were able to consolidate them into one package and eliminate those costs and integration headaches in one fell swoop.

If payroll is a headache at your company, check this project out.

Open Source?

AFAICT the software is only "free" as in beer.

Re:Open Source?

How hard did you look?

http://sourceforge.net/projects/timetrex/ [sourceforge.net]

Not impressed with SCALIX

I have been pretty under impressed with SCALIX, which really doesn't do anything that Outlook does. Zimbra I think is breaking new ground, but they really need some serious speed boost to make it competitive with outlook. I do think that if the Zimbra folks get mashups right they will leapfrog Outlook and Exchange, one of the weakest areas out there.

I think people complaining here are missing the fact that Linux has had a bitch of a time breaking into the enterprise messaging market. That market really drives out Linux IT shops, and replaces them with expensive exchange servers. The larger a company grows, the more you have to make the executives happy. And nothing makes executives happy like blackberries, integrated email and calendaring.

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There are a number of groupware packages for Linux, ranging from the trivial to the fairly comprehensive. True, none of them are "there", I don't know of any that are included on any mainstream distribution, and those that I've seen are trying to copy Exch

Where's Bram Cohen?

If you're talking leading INNOVATORS, Bram Cohen and BitTorrent [bittorrent.com] are notably absent. BitTorrent is IMO absolutely the most novel and fascinating idea that was released straight to open-source. Their funding also ranks up with the other people mentioned. So why were they omitted?

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Innovator? Novel? I don't know about that. The BitTorrent protocol is extremely simple (it lacks, for example, the ability to batch multiple torrents into a single tracker request), and so is the concept. A large part of its popularity is due to legal reas

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It seems simple, and it is, but there's subtlety involved that prevented earlier attempts at the same idea just wouldn't work right. Bram's P2P economy concepts got it working, and working superbly. Nitpicking about features you believe it lacks is missi

Re:Where's Bram Cohen?

Sometimes the innovation is not in what features you add, but which you remove.

The BitTorrent protocol was such a huge hit not despite its simplicity, but rather because of it. When everyone and their pet hamster can write a client, then it follows that you get incredible diversity in available software for that protocol.

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P2P certainly did. Using P2P for swarming download amplification? That's another story. It had been tried before, but it took Bram's genius to make it work.

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Using P2P for swarming download amplification? That's another story. It had been tried before, but it took Bram's genius to make it work.

I was using eDonkey2000 long before BitTorrent showed up. At an abstract level, they work in an almost identical manne

Calling SugarCRM "open source" is generous

http://www.vtiger.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=22 [vtiger.com]

Their original SPL was basically a search and replace of "Mozilla" in the MPL, replacing "Mozilla" with "Sugar"

After another group *gasp* dared exercise their rights provided for in the SPL(MPL), they threatened to sue, pissed and moaned, complained because trademarks were removed (Uh, They HAD to remove trademarks for redistribution of a modifief variant to be compliant with your license!)

Since then SugarCRM has NOT been open source; it has been shared source. Here's why:

You cannot derive a new product from SugarCRM; for all practical purposes, the "license" forbids it.

The license allows you to view and modify the source, and extend to it
If you contribute code to the core project, you give all ownership and credits to SugarCRM. OK, fine, I can buy that you give ownership to them, but you should be able to be credited in your code contribution.

If you ever subscribe to the Pro/Enterprise version of Sugar, you agree to waive your rights to use the "Open Source" edition ever again, and are "forbidden" to take your Pro/Enterprise database and import the data into the "Open Source" edition.

I hardly consider that to be open source, or to be in the spirit of open source.

If you need a CRM, I highly recommend vTiger over SugarCRM.

Open Source != Free Software

Do you understand the difference between "open source software" and "free software"?

By your description SugarCRM is not free software but it certainly sounds like it is open source. Likewise, it sounds like SugarCRM is keeping to the spirit of open source but is not keeping to the spirit of free software.

Re:Open Source != Free Software

I'm afraid you are misinformed, and those that moderated you up are misinformed too. SugarCRM certainly doesn't conform to the OSI definition [opensource.org] (redistribution of modified versions), and therefore isn't "open source software".

It is a wide misconception that open source != free software. In a sense, they are two movements that both emphasize different sides of the same coin. There is a problem with the term "open source" being used as a marketing tool for products not adhering to the proper definition, but the same could apply for the term "free software".

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Haha, an anti-Free Software shill. That's a good one. There's no point to troll, lets just stick to the facts and maybe you'll get a wider perspective on this topic. Or maybe I'll become informed. Or both, which would be twice as good.

I try to see both sid

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This is over the top and unfair. The FSF has not called OSS or Torvalds 'heretics'. Your saying so falsely implies that the FSF is filled with evangelical, religious-like zeal. If you have even a shred of evidence to support your absurd implication, please

We don't need no stinking badges!

I have an installation of SugarCRM "Open Source" on my laptop that I am using for evaluation purposes. I attempted to install a plugin created by a developer, and somehow it modified the code that displays the SugarCRM logo image on every page. All of a sudden, I was completely locked out of the system. I could no longer log in, even to disable the plugin that I had installed. The error message "Please replace the SugarCRM logos" kept popping up every time. So I Googled around a bit and found this article about "Badgeware":

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=867 [zdnet.com]

Apparently this "feature" was added into the code to try and prevent companies like vTiger from doing exactly what the parent poster said - exercise their rights under the "Sugar Public License". You can't even post the word "vTiger" on their forums without it being censored:

http://sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20207 [sugarcrm.com]

There are lots of companies trying to jump on the open source bandwagon, but not many that actually stick with a "real" open source license like the GPL.

In what way are these open source?

Isn't open source free (as in beer)? The one that caught my eye was "OpenAir" ... which certainly doesn't appear to be in that category (contact us for pricing!).
j

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"Open source" doesn't always mean "free". Open source software is simply software that developers have made the source code viewable for.

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No, open source code is not necessarily free as in beer. Pay for the product, get the source as a form of insurance in case the company goes under, or you want to fix bugs or extend the functionality. Open source/free software is not a charity, unless it's

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No, that is incorrect. Under the GPL, they are only required to provide source if you pay for the binary. If you don't pay for the product, they don't have to give source code to you at all. Of course, once you buy it and have the source, you can redistrib

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Under the GPL, they are only required to provide source if you pay for the binary.

It's actually if they distribute the binary to you. They can charge or not. The GPL only governs redistribution of copyrighted works. It's up to you how you redistribu

Talking of top OSS projects...

...do you guys realise that an open source project [openexr.com] received an Academy Award [oscars.org] this year? I find it weird that it hasn't been reported much in the geek news outlets.

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OpenEXR is a nice piece of work and I believe it is supported on modern Linux desktops. (Now, if only there were cheap monitors and graphics cards that could support it to its full capacity.... What was that about Linux not supporting modern hardware? What

BUY BUY BUY, now... SELL!

That list reads more like a pump and dump stock tip email. Who's getting paid here?

Hmmm

I can't seem to find ESR on that list. Maybe I missed it?

You forgot Digium / Asterisk!

They forgot Digium [digium.com], the Asterisk company. Its hard to imagine a list of open source innovations that doesn't include Asterisk!

Not one of them has come close to RMS.

Not one of these organization has made 1/10th the contribution of RMS.

• RMS created gcc. Without gcc there would be no LINUX or BSD. Most of the utilities in the article would be impossible without gcc. Who was the original author of gcc? RMS.
• RMS created most of the GNU utilities without which most of GNU lINUX and BSD would be worthless.
• RMS was the first to proclaim the need for a free OS platform. He was the first to try to make such a platform a practical reality. (GNU).
• RMS created the GPL.

There is no one who has made contributions to the Free software and/or "open source" software communities equal to that of RMS.

This includes LINUS.

I realize that RMS can be idealogical, stubborn and hard to deal with, but the fact remains that in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, no one has made as great a contribution.

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There is starting a project (emacs macros written for another text editor) and finishing a project (emacs written in C to behave like the original macros that were written by RMS). Like it or not things are a team effort and we really don't need to hero w

This is crap

TFA is total crap. Out of the 10 projects I've heard of 2 (KVM and MontaVista), and I'd hardly call any of them (except maybe KVM) even remotely "innovative". They just happen to be what venture capitalists think is profitable - virtualization and enterprise "management" software. Actually most of them aren't even real products but "platforms" or "frameworks" which can only be described in buzzwords. Quote:

[bla bla] software helps project-based organizations quantify the nature of each engagement in terms of the resources needed to complete the project and the final value to the organization's bottom line.

What the hell is that supposed to mean anyway?

The real strength of open source is its technological superiority in some fields (e.g. LAMP, Mozilla, some open source kernels), new approaches in development (the "distributed development" model) and some technological innovations (BitTorrent etc), but definitely not in "enterprise software".

'Innovation'

The word 'innovation' has a funny meaning in OS, doesn't it? Zenoss is a Tivoli clone that now "claims it provides 80% of the functionality of the big offerings". rPath is another virtualizer. Sugar CRM is another CFM system. Linux is a copy of Unix. Even Frozen Bubble is a copy of Puzzle Bobble! They couldn't come up with their own puzzle game??

COM, Java, Civilization -- those were innovative. .NET, Emacs, Populous -- those I'd call incrementally innovative, not big paradigm shifts but definitely 'new content'. The OSS clone that currently seems to have to exist behind (usually about 2-3 versions behind) every successful piece of large scale commercial software -- not innovative. Useful, sure. Worth working on, sure. But innovation is where you do something _new_.

Yeah, blah blah blah, linux has more innovation in its little finger that Microsoft has in its whole bloated body, I'm a troll, etc etc.

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Open Source may largely be available for free, but the ads do go to show that the bills still have to get paid. I wish like crazy that there were a better way to make money off of open source rather than charging like crazy for support or constant mainten

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At least you can get support if you want it, or you can use it for free if you dont want/need support... You can also buy support from multiple places in many cases.
With most commercial software as you said, you pay for it whether you like it or not, and i