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Governments want more commercial out of commercial open source

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http://www.linuxfoundation.org – The 451 Group covers GOSCON, the Government Open Source Conference: "Yet, based on my conversations and interactions at GOSCON and others in the public IT sector, there are still many government users that are ready and willing to use open source software, but need more commercial assurance behind it." (General)

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Submitted by taskli on 11/05/2010

Stories similar to Governments want more commercial out of commercial open source

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Most commercial software today depends on open source software. The commercial software might be using an underlying open source platform, or it might be incorporating open source components, or it might be provided as a commercial open source product itself.

Recent conversations at OSCON, which I've attended since 2004, as well as observations through talks with vendors, users and developers in open source all indicate a common theme: With commercial successes for open source software come some community growing pains.

Open source software is everywhere, it seems—and increasingly, in our government. This article outlines some of the advantages that open source software presents for governments worldwide, as well as some examples. Transparency To Trust Many people are distrustful of the government in this da...

The transformation of open source projects into business ventures doesn’t always proceed smoothly: Witness Mandriva Linux and OpenOffice.org, to name just a couple examples. But ownCloud, which began the launch of a commercial entity in December 2011, seems to be off to a decidedly successful start, with the release of the company’s first commercial products.

Virtualization kingpin VMware (NYSE: VMW) last week signed on as a Platinum member to the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI), a nonprofit organization whose members include corporate, government, academic and open source development community supporters.

Sugar CRM may have open source technology at its core, but with the latest release of its customer-relationship management platform offers two different interfaces for the commercial and community versions.

Database Journal: "One of the key elements that helps to enable open source software applications to gain broader enterprise usage is the availability of commercial support options. In the case of the open source MongoDB NoSQL database, that commercial support is now coming from project backer 10gen."

Gunnar Hellekson, Technology Strategist for Red Hat's U.S. Public Sector Group, presents a timeline created by tying together data about software the government has released as open source. 

Gunnar Hellekson, Technology Strategist for Red Hat's U.S.

The Federal Government's peak IT strategy branch has published the final version of its second guide to open source software for departments and agencies, in its latest move to help the public sector better understand how to buy and use open source software.