Software Free

(Remix of an original CC 2.0 licensed work by Joichi Ito.)

From the Ruby Inside job board (costs $99 for a 60 day listing - and you get featured on Ruby Inside like this) come a few new opportunities:

erubycon is a Ruby conference taking place in Columbus, Ohio between August 15 and 17, 2008. The e seemingly stands for “enterprise” with The Enterprise (and not the Star Trek variety) being a key focus. Earlybird registration is $199.00 and is open till July 4.

The speaker list is quite substantial and includes Neal Ford (Thoughtworks), Stuart Halloway (Relevance, Inc), Jim Weirich, Josh Holmes, Giles Bowkett (is there a conference Giles doesn’t speak at?), Evan Light, Anthony Eden, Michael Letterie (IronRuby), Brian Sam-Bodden, Jeremy McAnally (ENTP and the Humble Little Ruby Book) and Lance Carlson (Ruby Skills).

Apple is starting to push the iPhone from the realm of the trendy and hip  into the enterprise. Maybe el Jobso will be trading in his black t-shirts and Adidas running shoes for Brooks Brother suits.
Here’s the copy from the Apple web site:
What makes iPhone a great business phone? Simple. The same features that make [...]

Red Hat is on top of the business Linux world and it has no intentions of coming down. Its newest release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), version 5.2, is designed to make sure that it stays on top.

I’m in San Diego this week for the Enterprise³ conference, which the organizers describe thusly:

Enterprise³ consists of three separate, but related, components:

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Source: Open Parenthesis

I don’t normally cross-promote heavily across the multiple places I blog, but this one seemed worthwhile.

From my blog at Optaros.com: “Enterprise 2.0 Free Conference Pass”

At the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston this June, I will be moderating a panel on Open Source Platforms.

The panel will be Thursday, June 12th, at 8:30am.

Here’s the session description:

Community and collaboration pervade open source. It’s no surprise therefore that there are a number of open source platforms which are not only capable of delivering Enterprise 2.0, but are delivering it with innovation, flexibility, and agility. This session covers several, including (but not limited to) Alfresco, Drupal, and Ringside Networks.

Participating on the panel with me will be:

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Source: Open Parenthesis

ERP has been a kind of final frontier for open source software. But now more IT leaders at midsize and smaller businesses are saying yes to open source software for ERP systems that pump the very heart of the business.

Last spring, marketer and blogger Hugh MacLeod posted a question on his site: If open source is such a phenomenon, where are all the open source billionaires? His audience wasn't amused.

Normally IT gets walloped in a recession, with new projects put on hold until the economy thaws. Take the 2001 recession, for example, which saw IT budgets that had been growing 12.9% per year shrink to a 2.8% growth. In such circumstances, enterprises have traditionally placed existing projects on life support while cutting off the air supply to new projects.

Open source management applications disrupted the market a few years back and some of the pioneers in the technology area continue to progress and grow their business.

I'm really fascinated sometimes how many people talk about Linux. This definitely includes your truly - we often talk with our emotions and with some sort of will to make to a headlines. It is not bad to be passionate about something, but it leads sometimes to overvaluing the issue on hand. I make such an error myself at times.

While two thirds of enterprise companies have some degree of interest in open-source, far fewer indicate its adoption is a high priority, according to a Forrester survey of 2,252 software decision-makers.

Thomas Howe is a telecommunications developer and consultant who is passionate about the role of open source software in the telephony industry.

OSS does not necessarily represent the increase in choice you might expect as in many cases the big players either dominate or can dominate if they choose to.