No innovation in open source? What planet are you from?

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No innovation in open source? What planet are you from? | The Open Road - CNET News

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The Open Road
January 5, 2008 3:56 PM PST

No innovation in open source? What planet are you from?
by Matt Asay Font size Print E-mail Share Yahoo! Buzz

I just finished scoring the JBoss Innovation Awards. Red Hat asked me to judge and I was glad to participate, having enjoyed judging the Red Hat Innovation Awards earlier this year. While I unfortunately am prohibited from talking about companies or specific applications that are involved in the judging process, I can say that I was absolutely bowled over by the quality and innovation large and small enterprises are delivering through open-source solutions, in this case JBoss-based open-source solutions. I read several dozen entries and was astounded by just how far open source has come. Some of the applications built on JBoss were very creative but not mission critical. Some weren't very creative (meaning, my kids wouldn't think it was very cool) but were highly mission critical - the kinds of applications that would bring down multibillion dollar companies if they failed. Many were from companies who migrated away from BEA's Weblogic or IBM's Websphere, and not just because of cost (though that was often an issue). Some of them huge enterprises that everyone reading this blog would recognize. Why migrate? Because Websphere and Weblogic couldn't handle the loads or were too rigid to allow for the kinds of innovation required. Often both. I'm betting that were IBM or BEA to read through what I just read through, they'd wet their pants. It's convenient to think that open source will take years to mature. It's also false. Innovation in open source is alive and well. When Red Hat announces the winners at

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9840987-16.html?tag=mncol

4/15/2009

No innovation in open source? What planet are you from? | The Open Road - CNET News

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JBoss World in a few weeks, you'll get a taste. Very cool stuff. Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging opensource business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Topics: Red Hat Tags: JBoss, innovation, Red Hat Share: Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Yahoo! Buzz

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9840987-16.html?tag=mncol

4/15/2009

Summary This article states how open source has changed the ballgame of application development and why people may have moved away from traditional platforms.

Description Open source has indeed completely evolved the approach of application development. It has certainly created more room for innovation since open source does away with the limitations of traditional application development platforms.

Tags: Innovation, Jboss, Open source, Red Hat, Weblogic, Websphere

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